160 | CHAPTER 5
lated. The possibility of rendering Greek accurately into Arabic, and the re-
lated issue of the primacy of grammar (favored by students of the Qurʾān) or
logic, were much discussed at this time, in the context of a wider debate
about the possible role of reason in thought informed by religious values and,
in particular, by scriptural revelation. Fārābī espoused the view that, with the
help of logic, philosophy can make true statements about everything, includ-
ing God. This marked a distancing from kalām compared to Kindī, and
therefore a less specifically Muslim reading of the Metaphysics;^159 but Fārābī
was not thereby led into confrontation with the Qurʾān. Rather, he inte-
grated the scripture into a previously unprecedented single hierarchy of
knowledge, a synthesis of Aristotle with the revealed religious learning of
Islam, but also with Plato and later Platonism as represented by the Theolog y
of Aristotle in the place of Ps.- Dionysius still favored by Fārābī’s Christian
teachers.^160 Within such a synthesis, concessions had to be made, though
they might be more apparent than real. The Theolog y had already compro-
mised on the Plotinian One’s utter transcendence. Aristotle’s eternity of mat-
ter was saved, but veiled by obfuscatory language.
Alongside Aristotle’s original works, a range of Greek commentaries had
also been translated, by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, Themistius and
various Alexandrians such as Ammonius and Philoponus.^161 Part of Fārābī’s
contribution to philosophy lay in the composition—according to the Alex-
andrian tradition to which he felt he belonged, but also following the exam-
ple of Kindī—of further original commentaries in Arabic. But the next great
figure in Arabic philosophy, Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), was largely an autodidact
and is harder to subsume in an institutional narrative, though he warmly ac-
knowledged his debt to Fārābī, above all to his commentary on the Meta-
physics.^162 And if Fārābī’s travels illustrate the Islamic Commonwealth’s ex-
tent, Ibn Sīnā’s life spent entirely in Khurāsān and other parts of the Iranian
world without, so far as we know, even one visit to Baghdad stands for the
growing autonomy of its constituent regions.
Ibn Sīnā’s familiarity with both Aristotle, whom he praised as the first to
define philosophy’s parts and delineate their fundamental principles,^163 and
159 Gutas, Avicenna [5:150] 238–42, 248–50.
160 Watt [5:84], in IBALA 247–57. Fārābī did not seriously doubt the Theolog y was Aristotle’s: C.
D’Ancona (ed.), Plotino: La discesa dell’ anima nei corpi (Padua 2003) 99 n. 258 (to be revised if the trea-
tise On the harmonization of the opinions of the two sages the divine Plato and Aristotle is not by Fārābī: cf.
Rudolph [5:158], PIW 402–3).
161 J. Jolivet, “Le commentaire philosophique arabe,” in Goulet- Cazé (ed.), Commentaire entre
tradition et innovation [5:41] 397–410; D. Gutas, “Die Wiedergeburt der Philosophie und die Überset-
zungen ins Arabische,” PIW 79–87.
162 The most useful account of Ibn Sīnā from my First Millennium and Aristotelian perspective is
Gutas, Avicenna [5:150], with translations of the relevant sources. On Fārābī, see 28, 64. On Ibn Sīnā’s
autodidacticism, see 211, and R. Wisnovsky, “Avicenna and the Avicennian tradition,” in Adamson and
Taylor (eds), Arabic philosophy [5:158] 120.
163 Gutas, Avicenna [5:150] 45.