Falsafa — the Philosophical Tradition

Falsafa is the tradition of Greek-inspired rational philosophy in Islam — from al-Kindī to Mullā Ṣadrā — which reshaped both Islamic and European thought.

At a glance

When Greek philosophical and scientific works were translated into Arabic in the 8th and 9th centuries, Muslim thinkers took them up and made them their own. Falsafa — the Arabised word for philosophy — pursued the questions of the Greeks (the nature of being, the soul, the cosmos, the good life) with independent power. al-Kindī opened the way; al-Fārābī, the “second teacher” after Aristotle, built a grand political philosophy; and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) produced a metaphysical system of extraordinary influence.

In the west of the Islamic world, Ibn Bājjah, Ibn Ṭufayl and above all Averroës (Ibn Rushd) carried the tradition forward; Averroës's commentaries on Aristotle, translated into Latin, made him a decisive presence in medieval European universities. In the east, the tradition was renewed as a synthesis of philosophy, theology and mysticism — the “transcendent wisdom” of al-Suhrawardī, Mīr Dāmād and Mullā Ṣadrā.

Falsafa did not go unchallenged: al-Ghazālī's famous critique, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, checked its standing in the Sunni world, drawing Averroës's equally famous reply. Yet its problems and vocabulary passed permanently into theology and mysticism, and its influence on the Latin West helped shape the European philosophical tradition.

Related in Chronicle

Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.