SOURCE: Fakhry, Majid. “Al-Fārābi's Contribution to the Development of Aristotelian Logic.” In Philosophy, Dogma and the Impact of Greek Thought in Islam, chapter III, pp. 1-15. Hampshire, U.K.: Variorum, 1994.

In the following essay, Fakhry discusses the importance of al-Fārābī's continuation of the Aristotelian tradition.

I

During the period separating Boethius (d. 525) and Abélard (d. 1142), William and Martha Kneale, for instance, give no significant logician's name in their Development of Logic. Historians of medieval and premedieval philosophy have tended to take it for granted that, indeed, philosophical learning, including Aristotelian logic, had completely disappeared following the death of the Roman consul and author of the Consolation of Philosophy¹. Today this assumption should be revised, since the continuity of Aristotelian scholarship either in Syriac or Arabic from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, was assured at the major centers of learning in the...