FARABI [

See also:

• ABU

Abu Na*r Muhammad

See also:

• IBN

ibn Tarkhan ul-Farabi] (ca. 870-950)  , Arabian philosopher, was born of Turkish stock at Farah in Turkestan, where also he spent his youth . Thence he journeyed to Bagdad, where he learned Arabic and gave himself to the study of mathematics, medicine and philosophy, especially the works of Aristotle . Later he went to the court of the )•ylamdanid Saif addaula, from whom he received a warm welcome and a small pension . Here he lived a quiet if not an ascetic life . He died in Damascus, whither he had gone with his patron . His works are very clear in style, though aphoristic rather than systematic in the treatment of subjects . Unfortunately the success of Avicenna seems to have led to the neglect of much of his work . In Europe his compendium of Aristotle's Rhetoric was published at Venice, 1484 . Two of his smaller works appear in Alpharabii opera omliia . (Paris, 1638), and two are translated in F . A . Schmolders' Documenta philosophiae Arabum (Bonn, 1836) .

More recently Fr . Dieterici has published at

Leiden: Alfarabi's philosophische Abhandlungen (1890; German trans . 1892); Alfarabi's Abhandlung des Musterstaats (1895; German trans. with an essay " Uber den Zusammenhang der arabischen and griechischen Philosophie," 19oo); Die Staatsleitung von Aifarabi in German, with an essay on " Das Wesen der arabischen Philosophie " (1904) . For Farabi's life see McG. de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikan (vol . 3, pp . 307 ff.) ; and for further information as to his works M . Steinschneider's article in the Memoires de l'Academie (St Peters-burg, serie 7, tom . 13, No . 4, 1869) ; and C . Brockelmann's Gesch. der arab . Litteratur, vol. i . (Weimar, 1898), pp .

210-213 . (G . W .