SOURCE: Najjar, Fauzi M. “Al-Farabi on Political Science.” Muslim World 48, no. 2 (1958): 94-103.

In the following essay, Najjar explains that, in al-Fārābī's view, political science is another term for practical wisdom and cannot be separated from philosophy and metaphysics.

Al-Fārābī discusses the subject matter as well as the function of political science in Chapter 5 of his Iḥṣā’ al-‘Ulūm, or “Classification of the Sciences”.¹ In the same chapter he treats the Islamic religious sciences of fiqh (Jurisprudence) and kalām (Theology). That fiqh and kalām should be treated in a chapter devoted to political science is not accidental, and the significance of this arrangement may be grasped in the light Al-Fārābī's conception of political science and its place among the other sciences.

Philosophy or science, he says, consists of two parts: theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy.² Theoretical philosophy supplies...