Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi, universally known by the honorific al-Muallim al-Thani (The Second Teacher — Aristotle being the First), was born around 872 CE in Farab in Central Asia (present-day Kazakhstan). He stands as the greatest philosopher of the early Islamic world, the thinker who more than any other systematized the relationship between Greek philosophy and Islamic thought and laid the intellectual foundations on which Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and later medieval European scholasticism would build. Al-Farabi traveled to Baghdad as a young man to pursue philosophy, studying Aristotelian logic under the Nestorian scholar Yuhanna ibn Haylan. Baghdad in this era was the intellectual center of the world, and al-Farabi immersed himself in the Greek philosophical tradition with the ambition of demonstrating that reason and revelation were not enemies but partners in the search for truth. His life was marked by studied simplicity: he reportedly dressed plainly, ate little, spent long hours in meditation and writing, and preferred the company of books and a small circle of students to that of courts and patrons. For much of his later life he was associated with the Hamdanid court at Aleppo under Sayf al-Dawla, one of the few patrons of the era genuinely interested in philosophy, though al-Farabi reportedly kept his lifestyle modest even amid courtly wealth. Al-Farabi's greatest contribution was the project of harmonization — demonstrating through careful analysis that Plato and Aristotle fundamentally agreed, that Greek logic was universal and applicable to all fields of knowledge, and that the highest political community, the Virtuous City (al-Madina al-Fadila), was governed by a philosopher-prophet who combined perfect intellect with the capacity to communicate truth to ordinary people through symbols and religion. His 'Kitab Ara Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila' (The Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City) laid out a complete political and metaphysical system in which the active intellect — an emanation of God's intellect — illuminates the human mind as the sun illuminates the eye, allowing the philosopher to grasp universal truths directly. This theory of intellect influenced Ibn Sina's entire philosophical psychology and, through him, Aquinas and the Latin scholastics. In logic he wrote comprehensive commentaries on Aristotle's complete Organon and his own original works on the classification of sciences and the aims of philosophy. His 'Ihsa al-Ulum' (The Enumeration of the Sciences) was a systematic catalog of all branches of knowledge, translated into Latin as De Scientiis, which shaped the European understanding of the organization of learning. In music theory he produced the monumental 'Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir' (The Grand Book on Music), an encyclopedic theoretical and practical treatment of music that remains the most comprehensive Islamic musical treatise ever written. Al-Farabi was himself a musician of legendary ability, reportedly able to play any instrument and to move his listeners to whatever emotion he wished. He died in Damascus in 950 CE at a very advanced age, reportedly while traveling. His influence on the philosophical traditions of Islam, Judaism (Maimonides studied him closely), and Latin Christianity makes him one of the most consequential minds of the medieval world.