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Concept
Al-Farabi
Summary
Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (Abū Naṣr Muḥammad al-Fārābī; 870— 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".
His fields of philosophical interest included—but 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.
He 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 developed a philosophical system that 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, can be deduced from the habit of later writers calling him the "Second Master", with Aristotle as the first. His impact on philosophy is undeniable, to name a few, 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.
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.
Official source
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