Knowra Al-Farabi Al-Farabi Al-Farabi was a 10th-century philosopher from Central Asia whose writings interpreted Greek philosophy and shaped Islamic political thought, logic, and metaphysics.
Aristotle : An ancient Greek philosopher whose works shaped logic, metaphysics, ethics, and natural philosophy. Al-Farabi’s commentaries and interpretations made Aristotle’s philosophy central to later Arabic scholarship.
Active intellect : In Aristotelian and medieval philosophy, an intellect that actualizes human understanding and makes intelligible forms available. Al-Farabi uses it to explain how human thought reaches knowledge and how prophecy receives intelligible truths.
Al-Madina al-Fadila : Al-Farabi’s political work commonly known in English as The Virtuous City. This book develops his account of the ideal community and its leader.
Abbasid Caliphate : A caliphate that ruled much of the Islamic world from 750 to 1258, with Baghdad as its early capital. Its scholarly institutions and networks formed the broad political setting for Al-Farabi’s career.
Plato : An ancient Greek philosopher whose dialogues explore knowledge, ethics, politics, and reality. Al-Farabi combined Platonic political ideals with Aristotelian philosophy.
Emanationism : A metaphysical account in which reality proceeds in an ordered series from a first principle. Al-Farabi uses emanation to connect the First Cause with the celestial order and human intellect.
Political philosophy : The branch of philosophy that studies political authority, justice, law, and the state. Al-Farabi connected political order to human perfection and philosophical knowledge.
House of Wisdom : A scholarly institution in Abbasid Baghdad associated with the collection and translation of learning. The translation culture associated with Baghdad made Greek works available to the intellectual world Al-Farabi entered.
Aristotelian logic : A system of reasoning based on Aristotle’s account of terms, propositions, and valid inference. Al-Farabi’s work on logic helped establish it as a rigorous discipline in Arabic philosophy.
Prophecy in Islam : The Islamic understanding of prophets as recipients and transmitters of divine guidance. Al-Farabi explains prophecy through the perfected imaginative and intellectual capacities of the prophet.
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