al-Fārābi, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn al-Farakh

Alternate Names

Alfarabius

Abunaser

Basic Biographical Information

Al-Fārābī was born in 870 CE in Turkestan at Wasīj in the district of Fārābī on the Jaxartes. His father was a qā’id, a Turkish soldier at an Abbāsid court. Before going to Baghdad, al-Fārābī worked in a garden and a vineyard in Damascus, reading books at night by the torch of a guard. In Baghdad he studied logic and got acquainted with the whole range of Greek thoughts and contemporary philosophical and theological discussions. Although Al-Fārābī got famous during his lifetime, being called the second master (first master: Aristotle), he maintained his skeptical distance toward actual politics. After settling to the court of Sayf al-Dawla, Amir of Aleppo, and traveling to Egypt and Ascalon, he died in 950 in Damascus at the age of 80.

He lived during a time of deep theological divisions and philosophical controversies due to the vast expansion of the Islamic ummah under the reign of the Umāyyāds. Living at the...