Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (; – 14 December 950–12 January 951), known in the Latin West as Alpharabius, was an early Islamic philosopher and music theorist. He has been designated as "Father of Islamic Neoplatonism", and the "Founder of Islamic Political Philosophy".
Al-Farabi's fields of philosophical interest included—but were not limited to—philosophy of society and religion; philosophy of language and logic; psychology and epistemology; metaphysics, political philosophy, and ethics. He was an expert in both practical musicianship and music theory, and although he was not intrinsically a scientist, his works incorporate astronomy, mathematics, cosmology, and physics.
Al-Farabi is credited as the first Muslim who presented philosophy as a coherent system in the Islamic world, and created a philosophical system of his own, which went far beyond the scholastic interests of his Greco-Roman Neoplatonism and Syriac Aristotelian precursors. That he was more than a pioneer in Islamic philosophy is evident from later writers calling him the "Second Master", with Aristotle as the first.
Philosophers influenced by Al-Farabi include Yahya ibn Adi, Abu Sulayman Sijistani, Abu al-Hassan al-Amiri, and Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi; Avicenna, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra; Avempace, Ibn Tufail, and Averroes; Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, and Leo Strauss. He was known in the Latin West, as well as the Islamic world.
Biography The existing variations in the basic accounts of al-Farabi's origins and pedigree indicate that they were not recorded during his lifetime or soon thereafter by anyone with concrete information, but were based on hearsay or guesses (as is the case with other contemporaries of al-Farabi). Little is known about his life. Early sources include an autobiographical passage where al-Farabi traces the history of logic and philosophy up to his time, and brief mentions by al-Masudi, Ibn al-Nadim and Ibn Hawqal. Said al-Andalusi wrote a biography of al-Farabi. Arabic biographers of the 12th–13th centuries thus had few facts to hand, and used invented stories about his life.
From incidental accounts it is known that he spent significant time (most of his scholarly life) in Baghdad with Syriac Christian scholars, including the cleric Yuhanna ibn Haylan, Yahya ibn Adi, and Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Baghdadi. He later spent time in Damascus and in Egypt before returning to Damascus where he died in 950–951.
His name was Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi, sometimes with the family surname al-Tarkhani, i.e., the element Tarkhan appears in a nisba. His grandfather was not known among his contemporaries, but a name Awzalagh, in Arabic, suddenly appears later in the writings of Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, and of his great-grandfather in those of Ibn Khallikan.
His birthplace could have been any one of the many places in Central Asia—then known by the name of Khurasan. The word is a Persian term for a locale that is irrigated by effluent springs or flows from a nearby river. Thus, there are many places that carry the name (or various evolutions of that toponym) in that general area, such as Farab (Otrar) on the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in modern Kazakhstan; Farab, an still-extant village in suburbs of the city of Chaharjuy/Amul (modern Türkmenabat) on the Oxus Amu Darya in Turkmenistan, on the Silk Road, connecting Merv to Bukhara, or Faryab in Greater Khorasan (modern day Afghanistan). The older Persian Parab (in Hudud ul-'alam) or Faryab (also Paryab), is a common Persian toponym meaning "lands irrigated by diversion of river water".Daniel Balland, "Fāryāb" in Encyclopædia Iranica. excerpt: "Fāryāb (also Pāryāb), common Persian toponym meaning “lands irrigated by diversion of river water"Dehkhoda Dictionary under "Parab" excerpt: "پاراب . (اِ مرکب ) زراعتی که به آب چشمه و کاریز ورودخانه و مانند آن کنند مَسقوی . آبی . مقابل دیم" (translation: "Lands irrigated by diversion of river water, springs and qanats.")
Background
While some scholars claim that his ethnic background is not knowable,F. Abiola Irele/Biodun Jeyifo, "Farabi", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, Vol. 1, p. 379. others describe him as being of either Persian or Turkic origin. Medieval Arab historian Ibn Abi Usaibia (died in 1270)—one of al-Farabi's oldest biographer—mentions in his Uyun that al-Farabi's father was of Persian descent.Ebn Abi Osaybea, Oyun al-anba fi tabaqat at-atebba, ed. A. Müller, Cairo, 1299/1882. وكان ابوه قائد جيش وهو فارسي المنتسب Al-Shahrazuri, who lived around 1288 and has written an early biography, also states that al-Farabi hailed from a Persian family.Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Mehdi Aminrazavi. "An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Vol. 1: From Zoroaster to Umar Khayyam", I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2007. Pg 134: "Ibn Nadim in his al-Fihrist, which is the first work to mention Farabi considers him to be of Persian origin, as does Muhammad Shahrazuri in his Tarikh al-hukama and Ibn Abi Usaybi'a in his Tabaqat al-atibba. In contrast, Ibn Khallikan in his '"Wafayat al-'ayan considers him to be of Turkish descent. In any case, he was born in Farab in Khurasan of that day around 257/870 in a climate of Persianate culture"Arabic: و كان من سلاله فارس in J. Mashkur, Farab and Farabi, Tehran,1972. See also Dehkhoda Dictionary under the entry Farabi for the same exact Arabic quote. According to Majid Fakhry, an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, al-Farabi's father "was an army captain of Persian extraction." A Persian origin has been stated by many other sources as well.P.J. King, "One Hundred Philosophers: the life and work of the world's greatest thinkers", chapter al-Fārābi, Zebra, 2006. pp 50: "Of Persian stock, al-Farabi (Alfarabius, AbuNaser) was born in Turkestan" Henry Thomas, Understanding the Great Philosophers, Doubleday, Published 1962 T. J. De Boer, "The History of Philosophy in Islam", Forgotten Books, 2008. Excerpt page 98: "His father is said to have been a Persian General". Sterling M. McMurrin, Religion, Reason, and Truth: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, University of Utah Press, 1982, . page 40. Edited by Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins. (2003). From Africa to Zen : an invitation to world philosophy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 163. "al-Farabi (870–950), a Persian," Thomas F. Glick. (1995). From Muslim fortress to Christian castle : social and cultural change in medieval Spain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 170. "It was thus that al-Farabi (c. 870–950), a Persian philosopher" The World's Greatest Seers and Philosophers.. Gardners Books. 2005. pp. 41. "al-Farabi (also known as Abu al-Nasr al-Farabi) was born of Turkish parents in the small village of Wasij near Farab, Turkistan (now in Uzbekistan) in 870 AD. His parents were of Persian descent, but their ancestors had migrated to Turkistan." Bryan Bunch with Alexander Hellemans. (2004). The history of science and technology : a browser's guide to the great discoveries, inventions, and the people who made them, from the dawn of time to today. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 108. "Persian scholar al-Farabi" Olivier Roy, "The new Central Asia: the creation of nations", I.B.Tauris, 2000. 1860642799. pg 167: "Kazakhstan also annexes for the purpose of bank notes Al Farabi (870–950), the Muslim philosopher who was born in the south of present-day Kazakhstan but who presumably spoke Persian, particularly because in that era there were no Kazakhs in the region" Majid Khadduri; [foreword by R. K. Ramazani]. The Islamic conception of justice. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c1984.. pp. 84. "Nasr al-Farabi was born in Farab (a small town in Transoxiana) in 259/870 to a family of mixed parentage — the father, who married a Turkish woman, is said to have been of Persian and Turkish descent — but both professed the Shi'l heterodox faith. He spoke Persian and Turkish fluently and learned the Arabic language before he went to Baghdad. Ḥannā Fākhūrī, Tārīkh al-fikr al-falsafī ʻinda al-ʻArab, al-Duqqī, al-Jīzah : al-Sharikah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀlamīyah lil-Nashr, Lūnjmān, 2002. ’Ammar al-Talbi, al-Farabi, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education, vol. XXIII, no. 1/2, Paris, 1993, p. 353-372 David Deming,"Science and Technology in World History: The Ancient World and Classical Civilization", McFarland, 2010. pg 94: "Al-Farabi, known in Medieval Europe as Abunaser, was a Persian philosopher who sought to harmonize.." Philosophers: Abu Al-Nasr Al-Farabi , Trinity College, 1995–2000 Dimitri Gutas, Emeritus Professor at Yale University, notes that Farabi's works contain references and glosses in Persian, Sogdian, and even Greek, but not Turkish.George Fadlo Hourani, Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, Suny press, 1975; Kiki Kennedy-Day, Books of Definition in Islamic Philosophy: The Limits of Words, Routledge, 2002, page 32. Sogdian has also been suggested as his native languageJoshua Parens (2006). An Islamic philosophy of virtuous religions : introducing Alfarabi. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press. pp. 3. excerpt: "He was a native speaker of Turkic dialect, Soghdian." [Note: Sogdian was an East Iranian language and not a Turkic dialect] and the language of the inhabitants of Farab.Joep Lameer, "Al-Fārābī and Aristotelian syllogistics: Greek theory and Islamic practice", E.J. Brill, 1994. pg 22: "..Islamic world of that time, an area whose inhabitants must have spoken Soghdian or maybe a Turkish dialect..." Muhammad Javad Mashkoor argues for an Iranian-speaking Central Asian origin.مشكور، محمدجواد. “فاراب و فارابي“. دوره14، ش161 (اسفند 54): 15-20- . J. Mashkur, "Farabi and Farabi" in volume 14, No. 161, pp 15–12, Tehran,1972. English translations of the arguments used by J. Mashkur can be found in: G. Lohraspi, "Some remarks on Farabi's background"; a scholarly approach citing C.E. Bosworth, B. Lewis, R. Frye, D. Gutas, J. Mashkur and partial translation of J.Mashkur's arguments: PDF. ولی فارابی فيلسوف تنها متعلق به ايران نبود بلكه به عالم اسلام تعلق داشت و از بركت قرآن و دين محمد به اين مقام رسيد. از اينجهت هه دانشمندانی كه در اينجا گرد آمدهاند او را يك دانشمند مسلمان متعلق به عالم انسانيت ميدانند و كاری به تركی و فارسی و عربی بودن او ندارند. According to Christoph Baumer, he was probably a Sogdian.
According to Thérèse-Anne Druart, writing in 2020: "Scholars have disputed his ethnic origin. Some claimed he was Turkish but more recent research points to him being a Persian."
The oldest known reference to a Turkic origin is given by the medieval historian Ibn Khallikan (died in 1282), who in his work Wafayat (completed in 669/1271) states that al-Farabi was born in the small village of Wasij near Farab (in what is today Otrar, Kazakhstan) of Turkic parents. Based on this account, some scholars say he is of Turkic origin.B.G. Gafurov, Central Asia:Pre-Historic to Pre-Modern Times, (Shipra Publications, 2005), 124; "Abu Nasr El-Farabi hailed from around ancient Farabi which was situated on the bank of Syr Daria and was the son of a Turk military commander".Will Durant, The Age of Faith, (Simon and Schuster, 1950), 253.Nicholas Rescher, Al-Farabi's Short Commentary on Aristotle's Prior Analytics, University of Pittsburgh Pre, 1963, p.11, Online Edition.Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present, Routledge, p. 61, Online EditionJames Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Kessinger Publishing, Vol. 10, p.757, Online EditionEdited by Ted Honderich. (1995). The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 269. "Of Turki origin, al-Farabi studied under Christian thinkers" Edited and translated by Norman Calder, Jawid Mojaddedi and Andrew Rippin. (2003). Classical Islam : a sourcebook of religious literature. New York: Routledge. pp. 170. "He was of Turkish origin, was born in Turkestan"