FARABI or ALFARABI (Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Tark han ul-Farabi) (c. 870-950), Arabian philosopher, was born of Turkish stock at Farab, Turkistan. At Baghdad, he learned Arabic and studied mathematics, medicine and philosophy. Later he went to the court of the Hamdanid Saif addaula, where he lived a quiet life. He died in Damascus.
Alfarabi's philosophy, which greatly influenced Avicenna and Averroes, is coloured by Neoplatonism. God, the unmoved mover possessing necessary existence and absolute perfection, produces the world by the intermediary of the active intellect. As far as man is concerned this active intellect is the final form and the only immortal part. Alfarabi's epistemology is a naive realism. By his commentaries and interpretations especially on the Organon, Nick. Eths. and the Physics, Alfarabi introduced Aristotle to the Arabs. His De Scientiis and De Intellectu ap peared in Alpharabii Opera Omnia (Paris, 1638). Dieterici has published Alfarabi's philosophische Abhandlungen (Leyden, 189o, Ger. trans. 1892), Alfarabi's Abhandlung des Musterstaats (1895, Ger. trans. 1900) and Die Statsleitung von Alfarabi in German (1904). C. Baumker has edited De ortu scientiarum (1919), and M. Horten has translated and explained The Book of Gems with the commentary of Isma' it (1906) .
See Steinschneider's article in Memoires de l'Academie (St. Peters burg [Leningrad], 1869) ; Brockelmann, Gesch. der arab. Literatur, vol. i. (Weimar, 1898) ; Duhem, Le Systeme du Monde, t. 4 (1916).