Al-Farabi

Al-Farabi was a philosopher of the tenth-century Islamic world, born in Central Asia, who studied in Baghdad and died in Damascus, and whom later Arabic tradition called the Second Teacher after Aristotle. He wrote commentaries on the whole of Aristotle’s logic, a theory of the intellect, and the first political philosophy in Arabic, taking Plato’s Republic as the model for a virtuous city ruled by a philosopher-prophet. The Attainment of Happiness and The Political Regime set out that vision; On the Intellect the psychology behind it. Avicenna said he understood the Metaphysics only after reading al-Farabi’s short treatise on it.