Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy.

• Author: Harvey, Steven
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy. By MUHSIN S. MAHDI. Chicago: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2001. Pp. xvii + 264. $37.50.

Muhsin Mahdi's Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, many years in the making, is likely the most anticipated and longed for study to appear in the field of Islamic philosophy. Mahdi, the James R. Jewett Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Harvard University, is by ijma' the leading scholar of Islamic philosophy of our day. Admired for his wide learning, keen analysis, profound insight, and philosophic reflection, Mahdi has charted the straight path for understanding the falasifah, and has guided students throughout the world in their researches. Yet his greatest contributions and strongest passions have focused on one thinker, al-mu'allim al-thani, Alfarabi (ca. 870-950). He once told me that he has antennae homed in on Alfarabi, and I suspect this must be true. He has located and identified numerous manuscripts by Alfarabi, and has discovered and published critical editions of several of his most important writings. Mahdi's own studies on Alfarabi have shed light on almost every aspect of the Master's writings and, in some cases, radically changed our understanding of him. The appearance of Mahdi's Alfarabi is thus a cause for celebration, but the reader may well wonder in what ways does it contribute to our knowledge of Alfarabi and his political teachings.

The initial sentiment of the impatient reader with justifiably high expectations for the book may be one of disappointment. Alfabari consists of eleven chapters and an illuminating introduction or key to understanding them. In addition, there is a foreword by Charles E. Butterworth, Mahdi's closest disciple and an expert in Islamic political philosophy, and a bibliography of works mentioned, list of acknowledgments, and very useful index. But the reader expecting a tour-de-force critical study of Alfarabi in light of the scholarship of past generations, as no one better than Mahdi could do, will be struck by a feeling of letdown. The very short list of secondary literature in the bibliography includes only three studies on Alfarabi: two by Leo Strauss from 1936 and 1945, and one by Ibrahim Madkour from 1934. Moreover, the handful of notes sprinkled parsimoniously throughout the book contains only one reference to modern scholarship on Alfarabi, a comment on Richard Walzer's translation of Alfarabi's Virtuous City (p. 162 n. 5). Rather than addressing the secondary literature, it would seem that Mahdi has slighted it. Again, the reader expecting a revolutionary new study may be disenchanted to see in the acknowledgments that versions of ten of the eleven chapters have already been published over the years (from 1963 to 1999), and that the remaining chapter was delivered as a public lecture in 1995. What, then, is so special about this...