Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi was born around 870 (Uzbek sources usually give 873). Most sources name his birthplace as Farab — Otrar on the Syr Darya, in present-day Kazakhstan — or the nearby village of Wasij, while some scholars connect him with Faryab in Khorasan. The accounts of his life were written down long after his death, so the year and place of his birth and his origins are still debated.

As a young man he went to Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. There he studied logic with the Christian cleric Yuhanna ibn Haylan and worked through the whole of Aristotle’s logical corpus. In Baghdad he joined the circle of logicians devoted to Greek philosophy, whose most prominent figure was Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus; one of his own students was the later well-known philosopher Yahya ibn Adi.

Al-Farabi wrote commentaries on Aristotle, above all on his logical works, and presented logic as the instrument that opens the way to every science. In “The Enumeration of the Sciences” he arranged the knowledge of his time — the science of language, logic, mathematics, physics and metaphysics, politics, jurisprudence and theology — and defined the subject of each. Since Aristotle was regarded as the “First Teacher”, al-Farabi came to be known in the East as the “Second Teacher”.

He lived in Baghdad until at least September 942 and then moved to Syria. His best-known work, “The Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City”, begun in Baghdad, was completed in Damascus in 942–943. It likens society to a living body whose parts complement one another: such a city is led by a wise ruler, and its aim is to bring people to happiness through reason and virtue. He developed the same theme in “The Political Regime”.

Al-Farabi also made a major contribution to music theory. In “The Great Book of Music” he analysed sounds and intervals, the construction of instruments and the building of melodies on a mathematical basis; the book is regarded as one of the chief sources for the musical science of the Near and Middle East. In “The Book of Letters” he explored the links between language, logic and philosophy.

In 948–949 he visited Egypt and then returned to Syria; according to medieval biographers, in his last years he enjoyed the patronage of Sayf al-Dawla, the Hamdanid ruler of Aleppo. He died in Damascus in Rajab 339 of the Hijra, that is, in December 950 or January 951.

Al-Farabi is regarded as the founder of political philosophy in the Islamic world. Ibn Sina wrote that he understood Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” only after reading al-Farabi’s short treatise on its aims, and his ideas also influenced Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Maimonides. “The Enumeration of the Sciences” was translated into Latin in the 12th century and read in Europe. His works have also been translated into Uzbek.