Islamic world celebrates 1150th anniversary of ‘Second Teacher’ Abu Nasr Al-Farabi

JEDDAH. KAZINFORM – Kazakhstan as well as a number of universities, scientific centers and cultural organizations in the Islamic world are celebrating until the end of this year the 1150th anniversary of the birth of the Second Teacher, the great Islamic philosopher, and the polymath and music scholar Abu Nasr Al-Farabi, UNA reports.

The celebrations will feature the holding of many cultural and intellectual seminars and forums, especially at the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University which is based in the city of Almaty. Kazakhstan's capital Nur-Sultan has recently launched a museum exhibition containing Al-Farabi’s collections, his books and what was written about him.
Major international organizations, such as UNESCO, ISESCO and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have supported Kazakhstan's initiatives to hold scientific and practical conferences dedicated to Al-Farabi, son of the village of Farab in the Shymkent region of Kazakhstan, in addition to the opening of scientific centers bearing the name of this distinguished Islamic thinker, publishing his works and producing documentary films about him.
Al-Farabi Science and Education Center was opened in Egypt's Cairo University by the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University with the support of Kazakhstan's Embassy in Egypt. Within the framework of the ceremony of the center, an international scientific seminar «The Philosophical heritage of Al-Farabi» was organized.

Scientists who are specialized in Al-Farabi's philosophical and historical autobiography of Cairo University made speeches on the legacy of the great thinker and the importance of his ideas in spiritual and moral education for subsequent generations.

On Al-Farabi's legacy and role in the Islamic and human heritage, Dr. Hassan Khattab, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Menoufia, says: «Al-Farabi set a pioneering example in his scientific and social life, as he was able to draw features of his personality as a scientific and philosophical figure through which he was able to influence others and be among his students Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd.»
«Al-Farabi was a founder of his own school of early Islamic philosophy known as ‘Farabism’, which «breaks with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle,» he added.
With Al-Farabi’s fame as the Second Teacher, he was criticized by some Muslims who saw his knowledge of philosophical sciences make him far from intellectual moderation, but that does not diminish his role as a medical, wisdom, music and politics scholar whose contributions greatly influenced Muslim philosophers who succeeded him, particularly Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd.

Teacher» who presented explanations of the books of Aristotle, who was known as the «First Teacher».
At the level of philosophy, Al-Farabi unites theory and practice in the sphere of the political he liberates practice from theory«. His Neoplatonic theology is also more than just metaphysics as rhetoric. In his attempt to think through the nature of a First Cause, Al-Farabi discovers the limits of human knowledge.
Al-Farabi spent almost his entire life in Baghdad. He was in Baghdad at least until the end of September 942. Al-Farabi later visited Egypt, where he finished six sections summarizing the book Mabāde in Egypt in 948. He returned to Syria in 949 and died in Damascus in 950.