Abstract

In this long-awaited treatise, the pre-eminent scholar Muhsin Mahdi gathers the finest findings of four decades of path-breaking research and teaching to reveal Alfarabi as a great philosopher who founded political philosophy in Islam. Mahdi’s impeccable analysis brings to light the principal dimensions of Alfarabi’s intriguing contributions to political thinking and its compelling manifestation in the form of a philosophy of religion that is partly instructed by the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. A doyen in his discipline, Mahdi eschews the conventional scholarly appeal to secondary literature by refreshingly concentrating his persuasive philosophical effort on textual interpretations of primary sources and recovered manuscripts, and ultimately approaching Alfarabi by way of a measured thinking that investigates the plausible links between revealed religion and political philosophy.