Indeed...

Indeed, al-Farabi’s logical acumen is mentioned as the basis of his great renown by a number of the medieval biographers, and the philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldun (732/1332-808/1406 claimed that it was principally because of his logical achievements that al-Farabi was dubbed the “second teacher” (al-mu ‘allim al-thani), second, that is, only to Aristotle himself (Nasr (1985): 359-60).

Apart from his logical writings, which include both independent treatises and commentaries on Aristotle, al- Farabi also wrote extensively on political philosophy and the philosophy of religion, which he treated as a branch of political philosophy, on metaphysics and on psychology and natural philosophy.

4 Logic, phIilosophy of language and epistemology Al-Farabi’s writings on logic and the philosophy of language include both loose commentaries on the Aristotelian Organon and independent treatises. In the former category al-Farabi produced a full set of epitomes of the Organon, including, as had been the custom since the days of the Alexandrian commentators, Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics (al-Farabi 1959; 1986-7).

He also wrote a great commentary (sharh) on the De interpretation (al-Farabi 1960a; 1981a). His epitomes are not detailed efforts at exegesis of the Aristotelian texts, or mere summaries of them, but take their overall organization and inspiration from Aristotle while developing personal interpretations of Aristotelian logic and the school tradition that had developed from it.

Of his more personal writings, the Kitab al-huruf (“Book of Letters” al-Farabi 1969b) and Kitab alalfaz al-musta‘malah fi’l-mantip (“Book of Utterances Employed in Logic”, al-Farabi 1968a) are also devoted in large part to logical and linguistic topics, emphasizing the need to understand the relationship of philosophical terminology to ordinary language and grammar.

5 One of the overriding concerns of al-Farabi’s logical writings is to delineate precisely the relationship between philosophical logic and the grammar of ordinary language.

The historical reality of the importation of philosophy into Arabic from a foreign language and culture, that of ancient Greece, and the attendant difficulties created by the need to invent a philosophical vocabulary in Arabic, had made this issue of paramount importance for the earliest Arabic philosophers, including al-Farabi’s own teachers and pupils. In addition to this, they including al-Farabi’s own teachers and pupils.