Talk:Al-Farabi/Archive 2

Good article:Review
This article should be improved more. Therefor I put an On Hold tag on it.

During review, some issues were discovered that can be resolved without a major re-write. This is how the article, as of July 13, 2007 compares against the six good article criteria:


 * 1. Well written?: Expand lead per WP:LEAD.
 * 2. Factually accurate?: You should add reliable sources wherever I put citation needed.
 * 3. Broad in coverage?: Yes, Of course.
 * 4. Neutral point of view?: No problem.
 * 5. Article stability?: Fine.
 * 6. Images?:No problem.

-- Sa.vakilian(t-c) 03:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

accuracy tag
I have a Persian translation of History of Islamic Philosophy(by Henry Corbin). I compared this article with it and found contradictions about his father's name and birth's year. There may be another contradictions too. So I added accuracy tag.-- Sa.vakilian(t-c) 04:14, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I added some information from Corbin's book but I can't determine the exact page because I don't have the English version.-- Sa.vakilian(t-c) 06:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The reference to his father's name was already mentioned in the intro. Now you have added it twice - in the same sentence. The name "Tarkhan ibn Uzalagh" has no historical reference and goes back to Ibn Khallekan (see the reference to Encyclopaedia Iranica and to Prof. Dimitri Gutas (who is an authority on Farabi's biography)). Ibn Khallekan's records are considered bias by many leading historians specialized on al-Farabi, because Ibn Khallekan's only purpose was to redicule the eralier biography given by Ibn Abi Osaybe'a. Ibn Khallekan, who stubbornly tries to prove that Farabi was a Turk (thus contradicting Farabi's closest student Yahya bin Adi and his friend Ibn al-Nadim), even invented the nisba "al-Turk". Ibn Khallekan's work is not ment to be a biography of Farabi, but has the sole purpose to claim a Turkish origin for Farabi - this is basically the only toppic of his work. It happens that many scholars (see the sources mentioned in the text) have simply copied Ibn Khallekan's notes, but only a very few have systematically analyzed his work and have compared it to older biographies or direct quotes from his contemporaries (ibn al-Nadim) and closest friends (Yahya bin Adi). As the distinguished scholar Prof. Mohsin Mahdi points out, Ibn Khallekan pruposely falsified and altered older sources in order to prove his claims. For example, he purposely falsified the words of Ibn al-Qifti who had reported that Farabi had a Sufi garb ("be-zeyy ahl al-tasáawwof"). He took these words decades later and changed them to "Turkish garb" ("be-zeyy al-atrak"). Ibn Khallekan also fabricated many other legends and stories about Farabi. See also Peter J. King's biography of al-Farabi, in which he rejects Ibn Khallekan's evidently biased work and focuses on Ibn Abi Osaybe'a and Farabi's contemporaries, such as Ibn al-Nadim. Another excellent biography of Farabi was published by M. Galston (Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi, Princeton, 1990). I will leave the tag in the article. But you should explain what else you criticize in the article. However, Farabi's name should be mentioned as "Abū Nasr Muhammad ibn al-Farakh al-Fārābi", because this the name all historical sources agree on (even ibn Khallekan). The version you have mentioned is based on Ibn Khallekan's heavily criticized work, and does not appear in any older sources (ibn al-Qifti, ibn al-Nadim, Ibn Abi Osaybe'a, etc). 82.83.153.144 10:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed the tag.-- Sa.vakilian(t-c) 15:42, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Farabi is ethnically,culturally,racially and genetically Persian not Turk
Dear Persian and Turk Wikiuser Brothers,First of all I am an objectif neutral person whose the only aim is scientific and history accuracy.

First of all,Uzbek did not came to Faryab before as late as the 16th century(Please read history)

Ethnicity=mother tongue so Frabi is Persians not Turk as her mother tongue Was Persian.

Even Genetically Farabi was caucasoid raced,with caucasoid "haplotype" and not mongoloid raced Turk with "mongoloid" haplotype so Farabi is genetically Persian and you can see the Turkic C Haplogroup in this map

http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v16/n3/images/5201934f2.jpg

http://thegeneticatlas.com/Y-DNA_map.jpg





In fact Azeris are linguistically Turkicized Persians and Caucasians

and actual Turks of Anatolia are linguistically Turkicized Greeks,Armenians,Luwians,Lydians,Circassians,Georgians,Laz,Arabs,Assyrians,Pomaks,Bulgarians etc etc

Strange.. Not "Turkish people", but "Turkicized people". A very political and sly saying.. So, you mean, today actually there is no such a Turkish nation on the earth, right? They came from space, somewhere around Venus? It'd be better if it could be written like that. At least such a much more honest way.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.114.107.223 (talk) 02:27, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The genetic searches confirm this fact as only as 1% of Turkey population have Turkic Haplotypes (C) and even these 1% by mixing for centuries with Anatolians can not be genetically Turk

Also Actual Turkey Culture is somehow a mix of Greek and Persian culture and it has very few influences from Central Asia nomadic Turkic culture

And just below are the sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_people

The major components, 94.1% (haplogroups E3b, G, J, I, L, N, K2, and R1), are shared with European and Near Eastern populations. In contrast, only a minor share of haplogroups are attributed to Central Asian (C, Q and O; 3.4%)

The Turkish and Azeri populations are atypical among Altaic speakers in having low frequencies of M130, M48, M45, and M17 haplotypes. Rather, these two Turkic-speaking groups seem to be closer to populations from the Middle East and Caucasus, characterized by high frequencies of M96- and/or M89-related haplotypes. This finding is consistent with a model in which the Turkic languages, originating in the Altai-Sayan region of Central Asia and northwestern Mongolia, were imposed on the Caucasian and Anatolian peoples with relatively little genetic admixture---another possible example of elite dominance-driven linguistic replacement.,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkification Anatolia was home to many different peoples in ancient times, including the Carians, Lydians, Lycians, Cappadocians, Cilicians, and scores of others. Hellenization gradually caused many of these peoples to abandon their own languages in favor of Greek, especially in cities and along the western and southern coasts, a process reinforced by Romanization. Nevertheless, in the north and east, especially in rural areas, many of the native languages continued to survive.[1] Even by the eleventh century, when Turks first appeared, "Greek culture was little more than a veneer so far as the mass of the people were concerned."[2] Especially along the frontiers, the Byzantines persecuted local populations for Christian heretical beliefs, causing these areas to have little sympathy for Greek culture.[3] Byzantine authorities routinely conducted large-scale population transfers in an effort to impose religious uniformity and the Greek language. They were particularly keen to assimilate the large Armenian population. To that end, in the eleventh century, the Armenian nobility were removed from their lands and resettled throughout western Anatolia. An unintended consequence of this resettlement was the loss of local military leadership along the eastern frontier, opening the path for the inroads of Turkish invaders.[4] Beginning in the eleventh century, war with Turks led to the deaths of many in the native population, while others were enslaved and removed.[5] As areas became depopulated, Turkic nomads moved in with their herds.[6]

Once an area had been conquered, and hostilities had ceased, agricultural villagers may have felt little inconvenience with the arrival of these pastoralists, since they occupied different ecological zones within the same territory.[7] Turkic pastoralists remained only a small minority, however, and the gradual Turkification of Anatolia was due less to in-migration than to the conversion of Christians to Islam, and their adoption of the Turkish language. The reasons for this conversion were first, the weak hold Greek culture had on much of the population, and second, the desire by the conquered population to "retain its property or else to avoid being at a disadvantage in other ways."[8] One mark of the progress of Turkification was that by the 1330s, place names in Anatolia had changed from Greek to Turkish.[9]

Intermarriage between Turks and the conquered population was frequent, especially among the men of the ruling dynasty, who took wives from various ethnic groups and thus were of mixed ethnic and cultural heritage.[citation needed] Land allocations to Turkic in-migrants also facilitated Turkification, as many recently arriving Turkmen tribes were settled in the vicinity of local populations, to speed up religious and lingual conversion.[citation needed] These Turkmen tribes, in areas in Central Asia, northern Iran, Mesopotamia and Khurasan, saw Anatolia as a land for many opportunities, settled into the region, and mixed with the indigenous population, which is explained by the "continuous migration" theory, not the "elite dominance".[citation needed]

[edit] The imprecise meaning of Türk The word Türk was a derogatory term until the late 19th century, referring to backwards Anatolian nomads or peasants. The Ottoman elite identified themselves as Sunni Muslims and Ottomans, never as Turks.[10][11] In the late 19th century, as European ideas of nationalism were adopted by the Ottoman elite, and as it became clear that the Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, the term Türk took on a much more positive connotation.[12] During Ottoman times, the millet system defined communities on a religious basis, and a residue of this remains in that Turkish villagers will commonly consider as Turks only those who profess the Sunni faith, and will consider Turkish-speaking Jews, Christians, or even Alevi Muslims to be non-Turks.[13] On the other hand, Kurdish-speaking or Arabic-speaking Sunnis of eastern Anatolia are often considered to be Turks.[14] The imprecision of the appellation Türk can also be seen with other ethnic names, such as Kürt, which is often applied by western Anatolians to anyone east of Adana, even those who speak only Turkish.[15] Thus, the category Türk, like other ethnic categories popularly used in Turkey, does not have a uniform usage. In recent years, centrist Turkish politicians have attempted to redefine this category in a more multi-cultural way, emphasizing that a Türk is anyone who is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey.[16] Now article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a "Turk" as anyone who is "bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship".

Genetic testing of language replacement hypothesis in Anatolia, Caucasus and Balkans The region of the Anatolia represents an extremely important area with respect to ancient population migration and expansion, and the spread of the Caucasian, Indo-European and Altaic languages, as well as the extiction of the local Anatolian languages. During the late Roman Period, prior to the Turkic invasion, the population of Anatolia had reached an estimated level of over 12 million people .[16][17][18] The extent to which gene flow from Central Asia has contributed to the current gene pool of the Turkish people, and the role of the 11th century invasion by Turkic peoples, has been the subject of several studies. These studies conclude that local Anatolian groups are the primary source of the present-day Turkish population.[19] [20] Anatolians do not significantly differ from other Mediterranean populations, indicating that while the Asian Turks carried out an invasion with cultural significance (language and religion), the genetic significance is only weakly detectable.[21] Recent genetic research has suggested the local Anatolian origins of the Turks and that genetic flow between Turks and Asiatic peoples might have been slight.[22] These findings are consistent with a model in which the Turkic languages, originating in the Altai-Sayan region of Central Asia and northwestern Mongolia, were imposed on the indigenous peoples with relatively little genetic admixture, possible example of elite cultural dominance - driven linguistic replacement.[23] These observations also may be explained by Anatolia having the lowest migrant/resident ratio at the time of Turkic migrations. Analysis suggested that, genetically, Anatolians are more closely related also with the Balkanian populations than to the Central Asian populations.[24][25] Analogical results have been received in neighbouring Caucasus region by testing Armenian and Turkic speaking Azerbaijanian populations, therefore representing language replacements, possibly via elite dominance involving primarily male migrants.[26] As concusion, today the major DNA components in Anatolian population are shared with European and neighboring Near Eastern populations and contrast with only a minor share of haplogroups related to Central Asian, Indian and African affinity, wich supports the language replacement hypothesis in the region.[27]

http://english.sabah.com.tr/D2DAFD0D3CE84724A6B70975CCBC83B1.html

Migration from Central Asia is a legend

Anthropologist Timuçin Binder said: "research on genetics show that the people living in Turkey have been here for 40,000 years."

Research done on genetics reveals how many of the people living in Turkey actually originated from Central Asia. According to this finding, the Turk's current genetic structure was shaped in the prehistoric ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbeks

Although Altaic infiltration into Central Asia had started early,[13] as late as the 13th century AD when Turkic and Mongol armies finally conquered the entire region, the majority of Central Asia's peoples were Iranic peoples such as Sogdians, Bactrians and, more ancient, the Saka–Massagetae tribes. It is generally believed that these ancient Indo-European-speaking peoples were linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups while the sedentary population finally adopted the Persian language, the traditional lingua franca of the eastern Islamic lands.[14] The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process.[15][16] This process was dramatically boosted during the Mongol conquest when millions were either killed or pushed further south to the Pamir region.

The modern Uzbek language is largely derived from the Chagatai language, an Eastern Turkic language which gained prominence in the Mongol Timurid Empire. The position of Chagatai (and later Uzbek) was further strengthened after the fall of the highly Persianized Timurids and the rise of the Shaybanid Uzbek Khaqanate that finally shaped the Turkic language and identity of modern Uzbeks, while the unique grammatical[17] and phonetical features of the Uzbek language as well as the modern Uzbek culture reflect the more ancient Iranic roots of the Uzbek people.[14][18][19][20]

[edit] Genetic origins

Uzbek children in Hayat Village, Nuratau Mountains, Uzbekistan.The modern Uzbek population represents varying degrees of diversity derived from the high traffic invasion routes through Central Asia. Once populated by Iranian tribes and other Indo-European people, Central Asia experienced numerous invasions emanating out of Mongolia that would drastically impact the region. According to recent Genetic genealogy testing from a University of Chicago study, the Uzbeks cluster somewhere between the Mongols and the Iranian peoples.

From the 3d century B.C., Central Asia experienced nomadic expansions of Altaic-speaking oriental-looking people, and their incursions continued for hundreds of years, beginning with the Hsiung-Nu (who may be ancestors of the Huns), in ~300 B.C., and followed by the Turks, in the 1st millennium A.D., and the Mongol expansions of the 13th century. High levels of haplogroup 10 and its derivative, haplogroup 36, are found in most of the Altaic-speaking populations and are a good indicator of the genetic impact of these nomadic groups. The expanding waves of Altaic-speaking nomads involved not only eastern Central Asia—where their genetic contribution is strong, as is shown in figure 7d—but also regions farther west, like Iran, Iraq, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, as well as Europe, which was reached by both the Huns and the Mongols. In these western regions, however, the genetic contribution is low or undetectable (Wells et al. 2001), even though the power of these invaders was sometimes strong enough to impose a language replacement, as in Turkey and Azerbaijan (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). The difference could be due to the population density of the different geographical areas. Eastern regions of Central Asia must have had a low population density at the time, so an external contribution could have had a great genetic impact. In contrast, the western regions were more densely inhabited, and it is likely that the existing populations were more numerous than the conquering nomads, therefore leading to only a small genetic impact. Thus, the admixture estimate from northeast Asia is high in the east, but is barely detectable west of Uzbekistan.[21]

An Uzbek man in UzbekistanThe Uzbek population, according to this study, shows substantial Caucasoid admixture. The Uzbeks display a much closer genetic relationship with Turkic roots traits than with Iranic populations to the south and west. Another study out of Uzbekistan corroborates this genetic evidence as to the origins of the modern Uzbeks and other regional Turk peoples:

These migrations are reflected in the DNA, too, and it is clear that despite the majority of modern Central Asians speaking Turkic languages, they derive much of their genetic heritage from the conquering Mongol warriors of Genghis Khan.[22]

The Turkic people as a whole share common languages and many common cultural traits, but do not have common origins. The Uzbeks are descended to a large degree from Turkic invaders whose invasions span literally millennia from the first millennium CE with the early migrations of the Göktürks to later invasions by the Uzbeks themselves during the early and mid period of the 2nd millennium. Throughout the centuries, these migrating Altaic peoples began to outnumber the native Iranian people of Central Asia and appear to have assimilated the vast majority through intermarriage, while mainly the Tajiks survived albeit with some Turk intermingling as well. Thus, in the case of Uzbekistan and most other Central Asian states, it was not only a process of language replacement, such as what took place in Turkey and Azerbaijan, but also a mass migration and population replacement that helped to shape the modern Turk people of Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states

Humanbyrace (talk) 20:15, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Humanbyrace (talk) 21:05, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Humanbyrace (talk) 21:05, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Humanbyrace (talk) 21:08, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Philosophical Thought
I found a source which recognized him as Aristotelianism. There is written Neo-Platonism in the article.


 * there are elements of Aristotelianism and Platonism in his work. There are passages in the Virtuous City that are lifted right out of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and there are also a number of neo-Platonic themes (though the degree to which he accepted neo-platonic metaphysics is disputed in the scholarship).

In Iran and Arab countries he have been recognized as Mashsha'ee as well as Avicenna versus Hikmat al Ishraq(i.e.Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi).-- Sa.vakilian(t-c) 14:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think we can't put Muslim philosophers in western categories correctly because some of them like Al-Farabi and Avicenna changed what they learnt from Greek philosophy. These are the main categories of Islamic philosophy:


 * Mashsha'ee:Philosophers like Al-Farabi and Avicenna derived something from Aristotle, Plato, Porphyry and Ptolemy and added something to it.
 * Hikmat al Ishraq:Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi used former methodology to some extent and added some part of Iranian pre-Islamic philosophy to it.
 * Falsafa Nabavi: Corbin introduces a kind of Esotericism thought as falsafa nabavi which typifies by Twelvers and Ismaili's ontology and theology.
 * Irfan: Corbin recognizes Sufis theology especially Ibn Arabi's theology as a kind of philosophy. However it doesn't use logic in its methodology.
 * Transcendent Theosophy or Sadraism:Mulla Sadra innovates a new form of philosophy. This is a separate kind of ontology which is based on the Existence in stead of Essence. It's not well known outside of Iran but it's dominant form of philosophy in Iran after 16CE.

You can find more information about them in History of Islamic philosophy.-- Sa.vakilian(t-c) 14:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Lead
I propose moving Contributions to lead. The lead is too short.(WP:LEAD)-- Sa.vakilian(t-c) 15:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Internal links
There are several technical words like absolute being(Vajeb Al-Vujud) in Works section which needs internal links. (WP:MOS-L)

Failed

 * GA review (see here for criteria)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
 * 1) It is stable.
 * 2) It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
 * a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA):  c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
 * 1) Overall:
 * a Pass/Fail:
 * a Pass/Fail:

Origin
I believe currently the article falls heavily on the theory that Al-Farabi was of Persian origin, this seems to contradict many of the third party sources out there. Please see:


 * Very little is known of al-Farabi's life. He was of Turkic origin and is thought to have been brought to Baghdad as a child by his father, who was probably in the Turkish bodyguard of the Caliph (the titular leader of the Islamic community) Brittanica
 * Born Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzalagh al-Farabi in Fārāb, Transoxiana (now Uzbekistan), of Turkish parentage... Encarta
 * He appears to have been born into a military family of Turkish origin... Richard Netton, Al-Farabi and His School, p.5
 * Al-Farabi, who origins lie in a remote area...whose inhabitants must have spoken Soghdian or maybe a Turkish dialect...Jope Lameer, Al-Farabi and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice p.22
 * Al-Farabi is thought to be of Turkish origin. Diané Collinson, Kathryn Plant, Robert Wilkinson, Fifty Eastern Thinkers p.26
 * As his name implies, he was born in the Farahi district of Wasij, a town in Turkestan...his father was an officer in the Turkish guard of the Caliph. Thomas F. Glick, Steven John Livesey, Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: an encyclopedia, p. 169..
 * Al-Farabi was born in...Turkestan Kleinhenz, Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, p.17.

Despite the article stating that a significant number of scholars consider Al-Farabi to be of Turkic origin, it seems more space is devoted to proving his supposed Persian origin. I the origins sections section needs to be rewritten to correctly reflect the academic support behind each of the claims. --A.Garnet 22:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that this part of the article is fair and well written. It focuses on important scholarly references, such as the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam, and it explains why leading scholars criticize the Turkic origin theory and the roots of this claim. At the same time, it also mentions the large number of authors who do recognize Farabi as an ethnic Turk, while at the same time pointing to the fact that all of these scholars copied from the same source that is heavily criticized by leading biographers of Farabi, most of all by Dimitri Gutas, probably the most important biographer of Farabi. The number of authors and the number of tertiary, non-authoritative sources (such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is a general encyclopedia written by non-scholars) does not really disprove the opinion of leading scholars or professional literature. I think that everything is fine with that section. 193.170.48.2 11:21, 28 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added the pov-section tag. The article at present does not reflect the large number of sources out there which refer to Farabi as being of Turkic origin. Rather, it devotes more space to dismissing those sources on the back of Gutas and Encylopedia Iranica. Imo, the whole discussion on his origin should be trimmed, it is the mans work, not his roots, that should be the main focus of this article. --A.Garnet 14:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Prof. Dimitri Gutas of Yale University (Ph.D. Yale 1974) ist an expert on Arabic and Greek philosophy, an expert on al-Farabi's teachings, and he is one of the very few who have independently done a reasearch on al-Farabi's origin. Your statement that there are many scholars who support a Turkish origin of Farabi is correct. But that's only quantity, not quality. Many of the scholars listed in the article only copied the work of others, on both sides, either supporting a Persian or a Turkish origin theory. D. Gutas is one of the very few listed (and he may be the only one mentioned in the text) who have actually done some research on Farabi's origin and have not simply copied some older source. Unless you can prove that the other scholars mentioned have also done an extensive research on his origins, I do not believe that you have a valid point to object Prof. Gutas' observation and conclusion. The current version of this article slightly favours the Persian origin theory, but this is in accordance with Prof. Gutas' research, and in accordance with all classical sources except ibn Kallekan. And Prof. Gutas has proved that ibn Kallekan's work is biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.58.187.23 (talk) 21:58, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

A great example of WP:SYN here:
 * Earlier than any extant biography of Farabi, Ibn Sīnā states in his book "Al-Shifā":[13]
 * since the Turks and Africans live in harsh territories which are not suitable for the cultivation of intellectualism, consequently they are far away from knowledge and thus obliged to serve the people of the city of virtue ...[14]
 * whereas Avicenna held extremely high opinion of Farabi and considered himself Farabi’s successor."

I suggest to delete the biography section, which is in a miserable state (not just wp:syn above), completely now. And then we can add some info in a wikilike way from scratch, first on the talk page. DenizTC 13:41, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I see here a lot of discussion about the origin. Turkic or Iranian? I suggest to refer him as Eastern, Muslim or Oriental Scientist. And we should change the statement on top of the article saying that Al-Farabi was Iranian scientist. Definetely as we know there was not Iranian people in 10th century.

Ashkazakh (talk) 08:33, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

kazagh people came to kazakistan afer Mongol-conquer
At those ages befor gengis-khan it is cleared that persian people lived in the birth place of Farabi. Farab is a name for a place in persian it means the special-water. Then after Gengis-khan turkic people came to Kazaghistan and made there their country,but before Gengis khan, what can we call the persian people who had been killed and their culture ruined by Gengis khan?are they Persian or kazagh?Still they are many cities and many places there with persian names that turkic people are changing their name to turkish.
 * Please... Learn to spell Kazakh and Kazakhstan. We are having an intellectual discussion here. And, the Turkic ancestors of the Kazakhs lived in Central Asia long before Genghis Khan. First Turk Khaganate(600), and Asia_700ad. Selerian (talk) 19:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Ibn Sīnā Quote on Origin
The way it is worded I don't see how this quote and the following comments-


 * Earlier than any extant biography of Farabi, Ibn Sīnā states in his book "Al-Shifā":[13]
 * since the Turks and Africans live in harsh territories which are not suitable for the cultivation of intellectualism, consequently they are far away from knowledge and thus obliged to serve the people of the city of virtue ...[14]
 * whereas Avicenna held extremely high opinion of Farabi and considered himself Farabi’s successor."

refute the Turkic origin theory. It could be either of the following - 1. Ibn Sīnā knows that Farabi is Persian/ not a Turk and mentions this information to prove his theory about people living in harsh territories 2. Ibn Sīnā does not know Farabi's origin and concludes that he is not Turkic simply because he is a 'civilized' scholar he holds in high esteem.

Either way there is no definite information and the harsh territory reference is somewhat tasteless for an encyclopedic entry - not to mention unscientific. I believe if the proof is explicit it can stand alone without referencing what Ibn Sīnā though about other cultures at the time. Regards... --68.85.99.144 18:59, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, the quote should be removed because it is original research and has no encyclopedic value. Nevertheless, the Persian origin theory should be prominent, because those who claim that he was Persian have actually done a detailed research. Not the quantity of sources proves a theory right, but the quality. D. Gutas' excellent analysis of primary sources is authoritative. The sources which claim a Turkic origin for him are usually neither primary nor secondary sources (except for ibn Kallekan who has been proven wrong), but tertiary works by people who are not interested in Farabi's origin and do not elaborate their claim. Encyclopedia Britannica is not always correct, and most of all, it is not a scholarly work. It does not even cite its sources, and many times it contradicts itself in different articles. On the other hand, the Encyclopedia Iranica picks an author because of his academic qualification. Only articles of the most renowned scholars are published, and the reason why the editors picked D. Gutas was because of his excellent analysis. -82.83.133.187 19:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Was Al-Farabi a Shi'a Muslim
Was Al-Farabi a Shi'a Muslim? A repetitive, persistent edit insists that he was, but the editor refuses to add a citation. I don't know whether this man was Shi'a, but I do know that adding new info to a Wikipedia article requires the addition of a citation that complies with WP:VERIFY. Can someone with more knowledge of this topic shed some light on the subject? Further, should this new addition contain a citation? Kindest regards, Verum (talk) 23:28, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * An earlier edit said he was likely Shi'a (and provided a reference), but the article clearly states that there is no consensus regarding his ethnicity. Returning infobox back to its original state:  He was likely Shi'a.   AlphaEta  00:13, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Blanking Vandalism
82.83.133.161. and 82.83.130.148 IP address continuously blanking the page.

removing even references and changing the identity of Al-Farabi. --Polysynaptic (talk) 10:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I did not blank the page, but it is you who is very obviously ignoring scholastic sources. We had this discussion months ago, and since there is no real consensus among scholars what ethnic background al-Farabi had, we decided not to mention this in the intro. There is a special section about his origin, and it is based on the research of Prof. D. Gutas, the only scholar who has actively studied Farabi's background (unlike the ones you post here who have merely copied the works of others). You are even claiming that al-Biruni was Turkish, and since you have no chance to falsify the article, you have created a second article with the same name, claiming that he was a Turk. That's pure vandalism! You also claim that Ulugh Beg was "Turkish", although Ulugh Beg (and the entire Timurid family) were Barlas Mongols. Ulugh Beg's mother, Gowhardshad, was a notable Persian aristocrat, that's why Britannica 1911 calls him a "Persian prince": . You are vandalizing, not me!


 * HOw can you jump to conclusion and assert that you know Prof. D. Gutas is the only scholar who actively studied AL Farabi? Do you actually know what science is?
 * Al-Farabi is Turkish just like Seljuq Beg, Seljuq dynsty, Great Seljuq Empire, Anatolian Seljuq State, Ulug Beg (actually Uluğ Bey), and Al Biruni. They are all Turkish. I have given the references for their identity. for Persians everyone is Persian including Great Alexander and every state is Persian including Ottoman Empire. Open your eyes. There is no Persianation on Turks. We have never changed our identity. There are 200 milion Turks live on the earth. None of them are Russianated, Persianated, Arabianated, Elleniated, Bulgarianated, Romaniated or Chinianated... living somewhere elese and learning some FOREIGN language and using it does not mean "ASSIMILATION".
 * Stop intervening and distorting Turkish history.
 * --Polysynaptic (talk) 15:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I have been twice to a Gutas conference, and I have read many of his publications about Farabi. He is the only modern specialist on Farabi who has actively and systematically studied Farabi's origins. And although the sources are weak, he concludes that it is most likely that Farabi was of Iranian (not necessarily of Persian) origin. The strongest point is that he has glosses and references in Sogdian (along with Arabic, Persian, and Greek), but not in Turkish. Since Sogdian was already almost extinct at that time, the fact that he knew the language points to an Iranian (Sogdian) origin. You won't find a single work of Farabi containing even a word in Turkish. That's the reason why Gutas and nobody else has written the authoritative articles in Encyclopaedia Iranica. He is the expert on Farabi's life and works. Another very powerful source is the work of Egyptian Prof. Hanna Fakhuri who supports Gutas' points.


 * That's absolutely correct point, scholars had employed their native languages in addition to what was the lingua franca (Persian and/or Arabic). Mahmoud al-Kashgari wrote in Turkic, al-Biruni in Sogdian, Seebaveyh in Persian, Navoi and Ulugbek in Turkic.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sahib-qiron (talk • contribs) 12:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Tarkhan Uzlug Farabi, having a Turkish surname should also be used as support of his "Turk origin". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.0.143 (talk) 18:11, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Protection Helped Vandalism
please;

editprotected

I requested protection against IP Vandalism and blanking. But you protected the article after vandal edited the article.

please UNDO LAST ACTION of anonymous IP user 82.83.133.161.

--Polysynaptic (talk) 15:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Declined. See Wrong version. Sandstein (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Just please Stop it!
This biography has the same problem as in Ibn Sina's biography. There is no confirmed citation for those people to be Shia or not.

Amjad -- 24 May '08 (11.45am +3GMT) —Preceding unsigned comment added by AmjadSafa (talk • contribs) 08:52, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Recent edits
I have restored the version of User:Khoikhoi. There is a consensus on the talk page that no reference to al-Farabi's alleged ethnic origins should be mentioned in the intro. The "ethnic origin" section is quite detailed and there is no consensus among scholars. Besides that, the IP had added 2 wrong sources to the alleged claim. He had simply copied two sources from the Turkish Wikipedia which, in fact, were contradicting his claim. while he put the word "Turkic" in the intro, his sources described Farabi's origin as "Fars", Persian. They are the original Arabic quotes of ibn Abi Osayba, who is already mentioned in the origins section. Tājik (talk) 20:30, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I have cleaned up the article a little bit; I guess the template is not needed anymore, so I have removed it. Tājik (talk) 02:27, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Bias towards Turkic origins
It seems that there is bias towards Turkic origins theory:

1) "Ibn Khallekān's statement also contradicts Ibn al-Nadim and Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī, both contemporaries of Farabi, who had reported that Farabi's birthplace was Faryāb in Khorasan (in modern Afghanistan)."

There was a city of Farab (later called Otrar) in the territory of modern Kazakhstan, with one of the largest libraries in the world at a time (second only to Alexandrian). That's the city he was named after. And that's where he got his basic education before he ventured to the Persian world.

2) Language has nothing to do with origins. If, for example, a person of Russian origin was born in Russia and studies there for some time but then moves to Great Britain and finishes his study and matures there, and starts writing his works in English and not Russian, he doesn't automatically become of British origins. It's just that he becomes more adapted to this language, possibly forgetting his native one, if it is less important. Same applies here.

3) You can't speak for all the scholars. Thus, you can't say, "But scholars criticize Ibn Khallekān's statement, as it is only aimed to ridicule the earlier reports of Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa, and seems to have the sole purpose to prove that Farabi was a Turk". This one is utterly biased statement, which seems not to tolerate others' reasearches.

The word "facts" is very uncertain here. So please don't say ""Encyclopædia Iranica" rocks, all other suck". It's just one side of Truth, but there is other one. You just need to lift the shroud of biasery and start looking more accepting to the other's outlook. Thus maybe the Truth will be there. As of now people simply arranged around one source and spit on everything else. Thus working on ruining of Wikipedia's reputation of ultimate gathering of knowledge collected before and now presented here. --Masterius (talk) 11:06, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You should not remove sourced materials. That's all.--Xashaiar (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Links to "Encyclopædia Iranica" are still there. So nothing is missed. --Masterius (talk) 19:20, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You should not remove sourced materials. That's all. And since the majority of scholars refer to him as Persian, based on the wikipedia policies clearly stated in:
 * WP:POV: The article should represent the POVs of the main scholars and specialists who have produced reliable sources on the issue.
 * .WP:UNDUE:  Now an important qualification: In general, articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and will generally not include tiny-minority views at all.
 * I propose a complete removal of the section about possible non-Persian origin of Farabi.--Xashaiar (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between origins and how he is refered to. He is called Persian because he made his works in Persian and he generally worked to enrich the Persian culture. But that doesn't make him necessarily of Persian origins. Your saying of minority calling him of Turkic origins iVery little is reliably known about Alfarabi's life. Born some time in late ninth century, his origins are said to be either in Fārāb on the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) in modern Kazakhstan, and probably coming from a Turkish background, or in Faryāb in modern Afghanistan, and probably from a Persian background. There is not enough evidence to decide the matter. Indeed, it is unimportant, because pre-modern societies, and especially Islamic societies, set little store by ethnic origins and had nothing resembling contemporary notions of nationalism.s wrong. There are a lot of scholars who accepted his Turkic origins. You seems to be nationalist and you should be reported. --Masterius (talk) 19:36, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Do not make PA and accuse others. Read the article once and write here again. Your comment has three factual errors on Farabi's works, Farabi's origin, scholars.--Xashaiar (talk) 19:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Works in: Iranian languages (Sogdian and Persian) and translated from Greek;
 * Origins: Possibly Turkic, but you won't listen. He is still on the currency of one Turkic nation, not Iranic.
 * Scholars: Nope, just because not works are translated doesn't mean there are none. I know for sure. --Masterius (talk) 19:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The article is well-sourced. Removing sources or sourced quotes is vandalism. That simple. Besides that: the claim that Farab had the largest library is just hilarious. And even if - there is absolutely no proof that the city was Turkic. In fact, it is very unlikely. As for the article: it clearly says that there is no consensus. Both theories are mentioned by scholars, and it's a fact that the Turkic theory is, in regard of sources, weaker. The current version reflects the academic view. Tajik (talk) 22:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Here is what I have found: Alfarabi by Dimitri Gutas.
 * Quote: "Very little is reliably known about Alfarabi's life. Born some time in late ninth century, his origins are said to be either in Fārāb on the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) in modern Kazakhstan, and probably coming from a Turkish background, or in Faryāb in modern Afghanistan, and probably from a Persian background. There is not enough evidence to decide the matter. Indeed, it is unimportant, because pre-modern societies, and especially Islamic societies, set little store by ethnic origins and had nothing resembling contemporary notions of nationalism."
 * At the same time I have checked the EI (to which the statements reference). A more specific link is expected. This project seems to accuse the works of one ancient scholar of bias. What a rush. EI went as far as to call Ibn Khallikan Turkish. Ibn Khallikan was Persian. So what would be the point for bias? He was an honest scholar.
 * There a lot of academics and the truth wasn't determined. As for the city: since Huns have captured the territory, they quickly turkified the local population of the territory of modern Kazakhstan. Southern Kazakhstan (Farab) included. But the rulers could be of Persian origins. Rulers, not the regular commoners.
 * Also, info about city: "Facts about Kazakhstan", "Country Focus: Kazakhstan". Search for 'library'. 'Al Farabi' is nearby. --Masterius (talk) 12:28, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The EIr article is also by Gutas, and it has a little bit more weight, because it is published in a standard scholastic reference work (see Encyclopaedia Iranica). What you seem to misunderstand is that the current version is very much NPOV. It not only makes clear at the very beginning that there is no consensus on his ethnic origin. However, there are certain facts that need to mentioned regarding ibn Khallekan. It does not matter if ibn Khallekan was Persian, Arab, or Chinese (in fact, he was an Arabized Kurd). What matters is that he simply made up words and invented stories for the sole purpose to prove his point. He invented an additional nisba, he purposely misspelled and mistranslated stuff, and he invented Turkish names for alleged ancestors of al-Farabi, a claim that is not supported by any other earlier report. Your theories about the Huns (which have nothing to do with this article) are WP:OR and totally irrelevant, not to mention the fact that the ethnic origins of the "Huns" are disputed and unknown.
 * My opinion on the subject: after reading some works on al-Farabi, I am certain that he was neither Persian nor Turkic, but - almost certainly - Sogdian. His many references to Sogdian language and literature, his birth place, his surrounding, the reports of his contemporaries, etc, all point to a Sogdian origin. By the 9th century AD, Sogdian was almost a dead language and replaced by Persian and Arabic. But like al-Khwarizmi and al-Biruni, al-Farabi had an extensive knowledge of the Eastern Iranian dialects. As late as the 14th century, Turks were noted as nomadic warriors and "barbarians", but al-Farabi was neither a nomad, nor a soldier. Turks were known by their tribal unions, but al-Farabi did not belong to any tribe. He does not have any references to Turks, Turkish way of life, or the Turkish languages - which is very untypical, because usually, converted Turks kept their Turkish identity, at least nominal. Absolutely nothing confirms the claim that he was a Turk, except for ibn Khallekan whose work has been exposed as biased and factually wrong by many experts. Tajik (talk) 13:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If so, then why do you revert my NPoV version of article to the Pro-Persian (and Anti-Turkic) one? Why don't you add " Sogdian origin " version? Why don't you add material to this version and add references?
 * Saying that Turks were nothing but nomads and barbarians is ignorant. First of all, there were cities in the regions of water masses (Zhetysu (reference), Syr Darya (reference, p. 25), Caspian Sea (reference)). Second, there were not only nomads but semi-nomads too, depending on the region's climate hospitability.
 * And I said about Huns because the Turkic history of Central Asia starts with them. And it's not OR. It can be read everywhere. alder.org/Such-n-Such/huns.htm Here, here, here, here, etc. Information is very easy to find.
 * Also, you can check now who wrote EI's article on Al-Farabi and what's Bartholomew's World. --Masterius (talk) 11:06, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Saying that early Turks were nomadic is not ignorant, it's a fact. There is not even a word for "city" or "town" in Turkic languages, and they have adopted the Persian word "shahr" for it (after Atatürk's language reform, they replaced the Persian word with the Sogdian one, "kent"). The Huns were a nomadic confederation of many different origins, and the claim that they were Turkic is just a theory. In fact, going back to the Xiongnu, many modern scholars actually refute this theory. They could have been anything, from Indo-European to Sino-Tibetan (see Xiongnu). Even the origin of the Göktürks is disputed, and some leading Turkologists, such as Peter B. Golden or Carter V. Findley actually believe that they very first Turks, the Ashina, were Iranian Sogdians („The linguistically non-Turkic name A-shih-na probably comes from one of the Iranian languages of Central Asia and means blue (...)“ Carter Vaughn Findley in The Turks in World History, p. 39). So your theory is just WP:OR. As for the Iranica article: the biography section was written by D. Gutas: . That means that your recent revert has not only removed sourced material, but also that you have falsified sources. This is considered vandalism, and may get you banned. You have also violated WP:3RR - I have asked an admin to help out. Tajik (talk) 14:42, 21 March 2009 (UTC).


 * Following your advice, I won't make edits to article (although the last revert seems really unfair to me, as I have really spend some time on careful researching), waiting and contributing to User:Nepaheshgar.
 * Alas, with the last revert, the links to articles have been removed as well. They are still accessible from log though.
 * EI's article is the work of Muhsin Mahdi. This can be seen this way:, search for "Farabi" and it says: "FĀRĀBĪ, ABŪ NAṢR; Muhsin Mahdi". Of course he used materials by others authors, Dimitri Gutas including.
 * But Dimitri Gutas' work is on Bartholomew's World:, this is scholastic work on scholastic site. As Dimitri Gutas says, ethnic origins were unimportant in Islamic societies.
 * Interesting to note, there is also Otrar's article, by Bosworth, on Encyclopaedia Iranica: . It says Al-Farabi was born in this city (Farab), which contradicts with the statement that he was born in Faryab of Afghanistan. I'll study more on other parts.
 * Turks have adopted a lot of words from Southern neighbours (Sogdians, Persians, Arabs, etc.). But the non-existant (or maybe the words were lost in the sands of steppes?) of words doesn't mean the non-existant of objects. I've studied on history of Turks and never heard of word "shahr". The closest thing I can remember is Ma Wara'un-Nahr, also known as Transoxiana, which wasn't city but region. But I do know word "kent", which was used in Turkic languages as "city". Examples: Tashkent, Shymkent, etc. Maybe this word was taken Sogdian, I don't have information on this.
 * History of Turks of Pre-Mongol lands of Modern Kazakhstan: Huns (Xiongnu) -> Göktürks -> Khazars -> Türgeshes -> Kimeks, Karluks, Oghuz Turks -> Kara-Khanids -> Kipchaks
 * And if there weren't Huns, there weren't Göktürks. And if there weren't Göktürks (which were called the first Turks, Hunnic tribe of Xiongnu being called Proto-Turkic) there wouldn't be Turks at all! Central Asia would remain Indo-European (Indo-Iranian), that is. And the existence of Turks shows the other thing. --Masterius (talk) 07:56, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Please do not take this as an offense, but you do not seem to be an expert on the subject. First of all, the biography section of the al-Farabi article is written by D. Gutas. The article has more than one author, and Gutas wrote the biography section, because - as far as I call tell - he is responsible for the most detail research on his origins, evaluating primary sources (which, in case of al-Farabi, are all secondary). As for Otrar, yes, Bosworth names him, but he says that it was "notable as the birthplace" - he does not make a final statement saying that he was born there. Besides that, the al-Farabi article has more weight.
 * Your explanation of the word "shahr" (Persian for city) is unacademic. Turkic peoples adopted the word from Persian, because they were nomads and did not have cities of their own. Even after the language reform of Atatürk, certain cities kept their Persian names, such as Nevşehir ("New City" in Persian) or Akşehir ("White City" in a Turko-Persian mix). The word "kent" was adopted by Atatürk, because he wanted to remove all Persian and Arabic words, but was not able to find a Turkic equivalent. The Central Asian cities Samarkand, Tashkent, Panjkent etc are all derived from Iranian (most likely Sogdian and Bactrian), and they had these names long before any Turks came to the region. The Persian equivalent of "kent" is "gund" (having the same etymological origins), and can be found in names such as Gundishapur ("City of Shahpur"). ما وراء النهر is Arabic and has nothing to do with it.
 * Your reference to the Huns, Xiongnu, etc is basic knowledge, but the real history is much more complex. The origin of the Göktürks is unknown, and the fact that the earliest writings of the Göktürks (Bugut Inscription in Mongolia) were not in Turkic, but in an Indo-European language (perhaps a dialect of Sogdian or Khotanese-Saka), and the fact that all of their names and royal titles (such as Khatun, Tarkhan, Beg, Yabghu etc) were derived from Non-Turkic (mostly Indo-European languages), makes experts wonder if they were "Turkics" - meaning "Turkic speaking" - at all. As Peter Golden points out, it was "hardly a coincidence" that the first envoy of the Chinese to the Ashina were Iranian Sogdians. So, if even the "Turks" of Mongolia were - as it seems - not Turkic, but maybe Iranian, Tocharian, or some other tribe, how can you claim that a non-nomadic and non-tribal philosopher from Parab (assuming that he was born in Parab), a city with a Persian majority population and name, was a "Turk"?! Tajik (talk) 10:43, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * But if the article on Encyclopaedia Iranica was written by several people, wouldn't it be fair to mention all of them, not only Dimitri Gutas? By the way, it is strange to say that one's work has more weight than other's; Bosworth definately wouldn't make theory up, he's serious scholar.
 * Akşehir and Nevşehir are cities of Turkey, what would they have to do with subject? Let's discuss Central Asia. I won't argue about Panjkent, as it is Tajik city. About Samarkand too, it is related. But Tashkent was captured by Turkic tribe. 'Tash' from Turkic means 'stone', so combining with 'kent' it means 'Stone City'. By the way, Turkic states did have cities, atleast capitals. Where the climate allowed, there were severals towns. There weren't many, that's true, most part of steppes was dry to establish town. But on the banks of rivers, lakes and sea (Caspian) some were build. But during the wars between tribes and with neighbours, they were razed to ground and lost in the sands. Remember, the Steppe isn't just a vast lifeless desert.
 * Also, if Turks originated from Sogdians, what's wrong with philosopher being Turk-Sogdian? Why Persian origin is then dominating? --Masterius (talk) 14:33, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This entire discussion is irrelevant to the article. However, just a last point: modern "Tash-Kent" is in fact derived from "Chash" (the medieval name of the city, as preserved in the Shahnama), and the ending "-kand". That's why in medieval Arabic sources the city is known as "Shash". The similarity to the Turkish "Tash" (or "Tosh") is due to a recent change in pronunciation and has nothing to do with the Turkic word for "stone". The "City of stones" is further in west: Samarkand, which means "city of stones" in Sogdian. As for "Turkish states" and "Turkish cities": they were virtually non-existent. Nomadic empires were feudal fiefdoms and confederations of different tribes. The number of nomads was relatively small compared to the settled, urban, and agricultural populations. The first Turkish "capital" was Kashgar in what is now Western China - some 200 years after Farabi. The first semi-nomadic and settled Turkic-speaking group were the Uighurs, themselves as mixed population of Altaic-speaking and Iranian-speaking peoples. and they lived some 2000km away from Parab. The first semi-nomadic power in the region were the Hephthalites, an Eastern Iranian speaking people who vanished around 500AD. To make it short: the claim that Farabi was probably a Turk is based on nothing but ibn Kkallekan whose work has been exposed as forgery. Tajik (talk) 16:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) History of Tashkent; 2) History of Tashkent; Tashkent.
 * Сities that still exist: Sayram, Taraz, Turkestan;
 * Cities that were shared with Sogdians: Suyab and Navekat;
 * Cities that were captured from Sogdians: Balasagun;
 * etc. Anyway, I should be on the way to contribute to User:Nepaheshgar on sources, otherwise I won't archive anything.
 * Case can be closed for now. --Masterius (talk) 09:25, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * None of the cities you have mentioned were "Turkic" or founded by Turks. They were later Turkicized (i.e. linguistically assimilated by ruling nomads). That Central Asia is Turkic-speaking today is due to the Mongol invasion. The Mongols, who shortly after adopted Turkic languages (Chagatai language), killed some 20-30 million (!) inhabitants of the region, creating space for Turko-Mongol settlements. The cities of the region are much older than that. That also explains why the claim that Farabi was a Turk is so weak, because the Turkic and Mongol element of the region - especially in urban areas - was shaped some 500 years later. But I agree with you that we should wait for Nepaheshgar's article. Take care. Tajik (talk) 09:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * How about First Turk Khaganate(600), and Asia_700ad. The Turks already had control of the area around Farab, 300 to 200 years before Al-Farabi's birth, so this definitely creates a possibility for him to be of a Turkic origin. Selerian (talk) 17:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

recent edits
I have reverted the edits by Emperor khosro, because they are contraproductive and violate the consensus we once reached in the discussion. Tajik (talk) 10:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Turk?!!
Why do Turks always try to steal Persian scholars? Farabi was Iranian and is known by the entire world as Persian. So was Rumi (who the Turks also try to claim as Turk). I am neutral person relying on facts not nationalism.

And the title above his picture needs to be changed, 'Muslim scholar' is an insult to Persians, who made up most of the scholars, scientists, intellectuals during the 'islamic golden age'.

"In 1377, the Arab sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, narrates in his Muqaddimah:[17]

It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars…in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs, thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farsi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar. Great jurists were Persians. Only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet (Muhammad) becomes apparent, 'If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it"…The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them…as was the case with all crafts…This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana (modern Central Asia), retained their sedentary culture."

If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it. Muhammad محمّد

The Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day. We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them for an hour. Abbasid Caliphate العبّاسيّون

Excuse me but..
I read the following post (im assuming by an angry Turk)..

"HOw can you jump to conclusion and assert that you know Prof. D. Gutas is the only scholar who actively studied AL Farabi? Do you actually know what science is? Al-Farabi is Turkish just like Seljuq Beg, Seljuq dynsty, Great Seljuq Empire, Anatolian Seljuq State, Ulug Beg (actually Uluğ Bey), and Al Biruni. They are all Turkish. I have given the references for their identity. for Persians everyone is Persian including Great Alexander and every state is Persian including Ottoman Empire. Open your eyes. There is no Persianation on Turks. We have never changed our identity. There are 200 milion Turks live on the earth. None of them are Russianated, Persianated, Arabianated, Elleniated, Bulgarianated, Romaniated or Chinianated... living somewhere elese and learning some FOREIGN language and using it does not mean "ASSIMILATION".   Stop intervening and distorting Turkish history."

It is clear this guy is aroused by his emotions and has no idea what he is talking about. He displays the typical Turk stereotype (please pardon me but it has to be said). In Iran there are many jokes about Turks (not trying to be racist) because they are known for living by the sword, whereas Iranians were always the ones who fought with the pen. All nomadic tribes were good fighters but lacked in the intellectual fields (arabs, turks, mongols, few examples).

Just be proud that Mawlawna (Rumi) is buried in your country...


 * Racism. Please see WP:ATTACK. GnarlyLikeWhoa (talk) 21:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

HEEEEYYYYY!!
Relax! Many of you people are profoundly unprofessional and certainly violating the "neutral point of view" mandate here on Wikipedia. Please stop these barbarian, racist comments .... this is NOT a forum, but a place for discussion on the topic at hand.

And please, sign your posts with four tildes. By the way, you will never get anyone to sign onto your point of view if you use express violence and propel animosity. GnarlyLikeWhoa (talk) 21:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Khorasani?
Please change the beginning part where it mentions...

was a Khorasani polymath and one of the greatest scientists and philosophers of Persia ..

Khorasan historically, geographically, culturally has always been Persian and dominated and influenced by Persian language, literature. Everyone in Iran and perhaps some know outside of Iran that Rumi was a Persian polymath. (not including the Harvard, Oxford scholars who state Farabi was also Persian).

I don't see how people are arguing he was anything else, Rumi on the other hand has an argument (By Turks) but not Farabi, please change this it is just f*&^ing ridiculous, I mean seriously...if your debating that he wasn't Persian your just ignorant! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.58.132.139 (talk) 22:03, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

How can Farabi be Persian when he has an ARAB name,surname and origin and he wrote in Arabic only!!??
How can Farabi be Persian when he has an ARAB name,surname and origin and he wrote in Arabic only!!??

Humanbyrace (talk) 09:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * a) The overwhelming majority of Muslims have Arabic names. It is common belief among Muslims (even though a false belief) that Arabic names are required for being Muslim.
 * b) During Farabis time, Arabic was the lingua franca of science and scholarship in the Muslim world. However, Farabi also wrote comments in Persian and Sogdian. Especially his writings in Sogdian are important, because it confirms that he must have had some kind of connection to Sogdian communities that were almost extinct at that time. Hence, like in case of al-Biruni, a Sogdian origin (or, in a wider sense "Iranian" or "Persian") is very likely.
 * c) Farabi's origin was not Arab. His name, "Farabi", actually hints to his birthplace in Central Asia.
 * Tajik (talk) 12:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Ethnicity dispute
The ethnicity issue is a heated subject, and will continue to be a source of edit wars. Reading the the article I noted:
 * The ethnicity is prominent in the article.
 * The current version of the article semi-endorse in a bias way the Persian ethnicity claim over the Turkic claim.

I tried to be non-selective and searched Google Books for "al-Farabi + origin" and "al-Farabi + ethnicity" to get a sense of how this subject is covered.

The sources that talk about his ethnicity in this search were rare, more sources mention the Turkic ethnicity than the Persian ethnicity. I suggest that we mention briefly that his ethnicity is disputed with refs for each claim. Britannica takes this approach "born c. 878, Turkistan...his ethnic origin is a matter of dispute".

Some of the sources that mention that he was Turkish:
 * The Oxford companion to philosophy By Ted Honderich "Of Turki origin, al-Farabi studied under Christian thinkers"
 * Classical Islam: a sourcebook of religious literature By Norman Calder "H was of Turkish origin, was born in Turkestan"
 * Al-Farabi and His School By Ian Richard Netton "He appears to have been born into a military family of Turkish origin in the village of Wasil, Farab, in Turkestan"
 * Political Islam, world politics and Europe By Bassam Tibi "In fact was by origin a Turk, but his cultural language was Arabic and his commitment was to his was to the Islamic civilization, not to his ethnicity"
 * The Arab world's legacy: essays By Charles Philip Issawi "the part played by the Persians is usually overrated at the expense of Turkish and other ... Thus whears it is usually admitted that al-Farabi was a Turk, it is held that Ibn Sina was a Persian. This, however, has been strongly disputed"
 * An Islamic philosophy of virtuous religions: introducing Alfarabi By Joshua Parens "He was a native speaker of Turkic dialect, Soghdian"
 * Social memory and contemporaneity by Gulnara A. Bakieva "Al-Farabi, a Turk by origin, born in Otrar, which was in the territory of modern Kazakhstan"
 * The future of anthropological knowledge by Henrietta L. Moore "al-Farabi (873-950), a scholar of Turkish origin."
 * Musics of many cultures: an introduction "Of Turkish origin, he was born in Farab in Turkestan"
 * The teacher in international law: teachings and teaching‎
 * Thirty-Five Oriental Philos "Al-Farabi is thought to be of Turkish origin. His family name suggests that he came from the vicinity of Farab in Transoxiana."
 * A history of civilizations by Fernand Braudel "Al-Farabi, born in 870, was of Turkish origin. He lived in Aleppo and died in 950 in Damascus"
 * Short commentary on Aristotle's Prior analytics‎ "Though his family was Muslim (of Turkish origin), he received his education in..."
 * Chambers's encyclopaedia (Volume 1‎ - Page 513) "The main representatives of Arabic philosophy are the Arab Al Kindi, the Turk Al Farabi, the Persian Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) and the Moor Ibn Roshd"
 * Before the European challenge by Jaroslav Krejčí "the Transoxanian Turk al-Farabi (d. circa 950)"
 * Muslim philosophy: science and mysticism By Hamid Naseem "Al-Farabi, the first Turkish philosopher"
 * Thirty-five oriental philosophers by Diané Collinson "Al-Farabi is thought to be of Turkish origin."

I can go forever. Sole Soul (talk) 09:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Most (all of these) of these are not really specialized sources research by Farabi scholars. The article by Gutias (a Farabi scholar) has done a detailed analysis.  --Chetory12 (talk) 22:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Al-Farabi by Dimitri Gutas "Very little is reliably known about Alfarabi's life. Born some time in late ninth century, his origins are said to be either in Fārāb on the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) in modern Kazakhstan, and probably coming from a Turkish background, or in Faryāb in modern Afghanistan, and probably from a Persian background. There is not enough evidence to decide the matter. Indeed, it is unimportant, because pre-modern societies, and especially Islamic societies, set little store by ethnic origins and had nothing resembling contemporary notions of nationalism." . Sole Soul (talk) 22:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Soghdian Origin
Farabi was probably a Soghdian (an Iranian group related to Persians and Persian in the wide sense of the meaning covers all Iranian groups). He not only uses special Soghdian sounds but uses the alphabets. The alphabet/symbols he uses in Soghdian in his Kitab al-Horuf do not exist in Arabic or Turkish. Another statement which supports my conjecture is this: "Within Islam, Farabī’s system was taken up by Avicenna, who further developed and refined it to create a philosophy that was to remain dominant in the East.” ( D. Gutias, “Farabi” in Encyclopedia Iranica)

Thus Avicenna was very familiar with Farabi. Avicenna’s father was from Balkh, a Persian speaking region (the peculiar Persian Balkhi dialect also called Zaban-e-Balkhi is recorded in Zakhira Khwarizmshahi under the name “Zaban-e-Balkh” (Balkhi tongue)) and his mother’s was from Bukhara, which was Soghdian/Persian speaking at the time. His mother’s name is recorded as Setareh(Persian for Star) and his father was a follower of the Ismaili sect which was popular among Iranians. Curiously enough, just like Farabi who brings examples from other languages in his Kitab al-Horuf, there is a statement from Avicenna about the languages he knows and he only mentions Arabic and Persian. Thus unlike Farabi, it seems Avicenna did not know Soghdian but only knew Persian and Arabic according to his own testimony. The statement of Avicenna with this regard is given here from his book Ishaarat: لكه اللغات الحى وعزفها قد خلث فى عاداجها عه اسحعمال الىفى على هذي الصىرة .... فيقىلىن بالعزبية لاشى ء مه ح ب... و كذلك ما يقال فى فصيح لغة الفزس هيچ ح ب ويسث. Thus Ibn Sina states: “In the languages we know … in Arabic it is La-shayy .. and in Persian it is Hich Nist”. This sort of giving examples from other languages in order to come up with precise philosophical concepts is exactly modeled after the Kitab al-Horuf of Farabi. (Dehkhoda dictionary under Abu Ali Sina) Avicenna not only used Persian words, but he also wrote important works in Persian, the most important of them is Encyclopedic Danshenaameyeh ‘Alai, where he coins many pure Persian terms and shows that Persian is also a capable language for the expression of logic, philosophy, medicine and science.

Avicenna in the book of “The Healing: (Ash-Shifa) in Chapter 5 (Concerning the caliph and Imam: the necessity of obeying them. Remarks on politics, transactions and morals) states: “…As for the enemies of those who oppose his laws, the legislator must decree waging war against them and destroying them, after calling on them to accept the truth. Their property and women must be declared free for the spoil. For when such property and women are not administered according to the constitution of the virtuous city, they will not bring about the good for which the property and women are sought. Rather, these would contribute to corruption and evil. Since some men have to serve others, such people must be forced to serve the people of the just city. The same applies to people not very capable of acquiring virtue. For these are slaves by nature as, for example, the Turks and Zinjis and in general those who do not grow up in noble climes where the condition for the most part are such that nations of good temperament, innate intelligence and sound minds thrive”(Chris Brown, Terry Nardin, Nicholas J. Rengger, “International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War”, Published by Cambridge University Press, 2002, pg 156-157). Let us look at the original Arabic of this sentence as well: و انه لابد من ناس يخدمون الناس، فيجب ان يك.ن هؤلا يجبرون علي خدمه اهل المدينه الفاضله، و كذلك من كان من الناس بعيداً عن تلقي الفاضيله فهم عبيد‘’ بالطبع، نثل الترك والزنح، و بالجمله الذين نشأوا في غير اقاليم الشريفه التي اكثر احوالها ان ينشأفيها حسنه الامزجه صحيحه القرايح و العقول (J. Mashkur, Farabi and Farabi,Tehran,1972)

Avicenna (whose father was from Balkh) was born in Bukhara (Central Asia) which is from the same general area of Farabi (either Faryab in Afghanistan or Paryab(Farab) in modern Kazakhistan). What is interesting is that he borrows the term virtuous city from Farabi and at the same time mentions that Turks are by nature slaves and are not capable of acquiring virtue. Obviously if Farabi was a Turk, his follower Avicenna who lived only one generation after the passing away of Farabi and who was born in the area of Central Asia, and claimed to be his successor would not have made such a statement. Also as Avicenna is clear when he expresses in his book of Ishaarat, then one can also surmise that Farabi also gave examples from the languages he knew : Persian, Greek, Arabic, Syriac and Soghdian. Among these, Soghdian would have to be Farabi’s native language since Soghdian was not a major language of Baghdad like Persian and Arabic. Also his usage of a peculiar Soghdian sound shows that he was a native speaker as these sounds do not exist in Arabic, Persian or Turkish. Soghdian would not have importance in Baghdad as did Arabic, Syrianc, Greek, and Persian. Greek and Syriac were already known as scientific languages in Baghdad and were known by Farabi’s Christian teacher Yuhanna b. Khaylan. Arabic and Persian were widely spoken, especially Persian in Central. But Soghdian, an Old Iranian language, was a language in urban centers of Central Asia and thus logically one would believe Farabi’s native language. --Hichimichi (talk) 11:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Documenting the Persian ethnicity claim
It has been a while since I wrote the above comment. All that time, I was watching the article and noticed that nearly all the edits are focused on ethnicity. I'm moving on to do the change I proposed. My suggested version:

There is no consensus on the ethnic background of Farabi (sources). All original sources on his ethnic background have been written at least 300 years after Farabi and these few classical primary sources have described his ethnicity differently and modern sources differed accordingly. Some sources described him as Turkish(sources) and other as Persian(sources).

Before that I will try to document here the Persian claim in the same way I documented the Turkish claim above. Help is appreciated: Sole Soul (talk) 01:33, 18 February 2010 (UTC) Sole Soul (talk) 02:35, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * From Africa to Zen: an invitation to world philosophy By Robert C. Solomon "al-Farabi (870-950), a Persian,"
 * From Muslim fortress to Christian castle by Thomas F. Glick "It was thus that al-Farabi (c. 870-950), a Persian philosopher"
 * The World's Greatest Seers and Philosophers By Clifford Sawhney "al-Farabi (also known as Abu al-Nasr al-Farabi) was born of Turkish parents in the small village of Wasij near Farab, Turkistan (now in Uzbekistan) in 870 AD. His parents were of Persian descent, but their ancestors had migrated to Turkistan."
 * The history of science and technology By Bryan H. Bunch "Persian scholar al-Farabi"
 * The Islamic Conception of Justice By Majid KhadduriAbu "Nasr al-Farabi was born in Farab (a small town in Transoxiana) in 259/870 to a family of mixed parentage — the father, who married a Turkish woman, is said to have been of Persian and Turkish descent — but both professed  the Shi'l heterodox faith. He spoke Persian and Turkish fluently and learned the Arabic language before he went to Baghdad."
 * I have restored the previous version, which is apparently based on an old WP:consensus and addresses both major viewpoints in a neutral manner. You need a clear WP:consensus, to implement major new changes to the article, and your proposal was met with only one comment, and that was negative. That's not a [WP:consensus]]. --Kurdo777 (talk) 10:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comment. I will make my reply in points:
 * Actually, I was very conservative. The usual way of building consensus is through WP:BRD. I started with discussion and waited for nearly 20 days
 * "no consensus" is not a good reason for a revert, Don't revert due to "no consensus"
 * Consensus can be presumed to exist until voiced disagreement becomes evident, Silence and consensus
 * Can you show me the old consensus?
 * Did you read the "only one comment" and my reply to it?
 * Sole Soul (talk) 11:40, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You have violated WP:vandalism by removing sources (Nasr, Gutas and other sources). Also you have violated WP:OWN by deleting the sources of others.  But your intention was possibly to rewrite the article(still one cannot delete the sources).  However, the fact is that Gutas has treated this issue in detail here  and there is no need for user's do it, when a scholar (specializing in Farabi) has done a detailed analysis of all the classical sources.  In Wikipedia we should follow Farabi experts like D. Gutas and give a glimpse of what he has written.  He has written five pages about it, and examined all the classical sources.  You have removed Ibn Abi Usayba, al-Shaharuzi and Ibn Nadim which are the earliest sources on Farabi's origin and mentioned by D. Gutas and Nasr.  In the West, the translation of Ibn Khalikan's work was accompolished first, and that is why his theory gained prominence.  However the methodology should not use some random sources and give no reason why they say Persian or Turkish.  You cannot remove sources here.  There is no need for concensus when there is a separate section describing Persian origin and Turkish origin, since both are opposing theories.  You can add your sources to the Turkish origin section or improve that section as you please.  However as mentioned, Gutas has done a detailed analysis.
 * I have restored the older version, but I have added the sources you brought for the Turkish origin. HOWEVER, it should be mentioned all modern soruces are based on the classical sources Ibn Khalikan (primarily since he became popularized since 1840 in the Western World ) or Ibn Abi Usabya Al-Shaharuzi, Ibn Al-Nadim.  None of them have a done detailed analysis on the reason why, who, when?  But it is of utmost important to mention which classical source states why as Gutas has done here:  and Nasr has mentioned here: .  Again please read the article "biography" by Gutas here: .  If you find another detailed article as such which discusses the origin in 5 pages or so, please let us know.  Also feel free to add details documenting the Turkish origin better.  Thus far, the only reason I see for it is that of Ibn Khalikan.  But there could more.  But please do not just delete sources specially the classics (mentioned through secondary sources such as Gutas and Nasr). The classics is the only account any book, author, article has, and since the classics that mention his origin have been written 300 years after he died, the issue is not 100%.  But we cannot simply delete those classics and the scholarly work done in examining those classics!  Thank you --Hichimichi (talk) 14:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Another one of your sources is written by an Arabian specialist in economy (1981)(Issawi) and seems to have a grudge against Persians (for example it tries to doubt Avicenna or Abu Hanifa being Persians). And he states: "One general warning must however be given, viz., that the part played by the Persians is usually overrated, at the expense.. ".. Usually means that his source is going against the usual which falls under WP:fringe. And then he references an article from 1930 (now is the year 2010 and no source has no doubt on Avicenna see Britannica on Avicenna and Farabi) by a Turkish scholar from 1930 in trying to cast doubt on Avicenna.  That is I do not mind if he was a Western scholar or an Arabian specialist in philosophy, history and etc.  But he is a specialist in Middle Eastern economy, which is not enough qualification and goes against Britannica.  This is precisely why one needs specialized sources. Preferably, we should not use non-specialist sources.
 * One of your sources: "Joshua Parens (2006). An Islamic philosophy of virtuous religions : introducing Alfarabi. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press. pp. 3. ISBN 0791466892 "He was a native speaker of Turkic dialect, Soghdian"".. This is wrong as Soghdian is an Iranian language.
 * However Farabi was a speaker of Soghdian as he uses words from it in Kitab al-Horuf and mentions they are Soghdian words. He even uses a specialized alphabet symbols to pronounce Soghdian words which shows he was a native speaker of the language since he probably could not have learned Soghdian in Baghdad.  However, Soghdian is a well known Iranian language.  You can add scholars/historians in the Turkish origin to make a stronger point.  However the Persian origin section is sourced based on the classical sources mentioned by D. Gutas.   --Hichimichi (talk) 16:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I have added to the intro, that the matter is not known (Britannica - the newest edition states that as well).--Hichimichi (talk) 16:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I also re-added Parens since his book is about alFarabi.. But it is a gross mistake to name Soghdian as a Turkic dialect.. Farabi has words in Soghdian but not Turkish and Soghdian is a well known Iranian dialect.  His book though is good in general as it is about Farabi.  Every article should try to use specialists on the subject and despite this mistake by Parens, his source is good.  However many random non-specialist sources have been added to this article about the origin (for both point of views).  --Hichimichi (talk) 16:38, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I suggest some sources such as "The future of anthropological knowledge", "Social memory and contemporaneity ".. which are not specialist to be removed. However, I believe Sole Soul and other Turkish users can work on the Turkish origin section and expand it.
 * So overall one should use specialist sources and one cannot delete secondary sources that reference primary sources. Since ultimately the dispute is due to the fact that 300 year after Farabi, three sources have differed in the opinion.  So readers should be aware of these classical sources as it is done in detail here .  Can someone present a more detailed analysis than D. Gutas ?  Also since Britannica, Gutas and others acknowledge there is a dispute (and there is a dispute in the sources you have brought), then having separate sections discussing the reasons for each theory.  However summarizing it into one sentence when D. Gutas has done such a detailed analysis  and removing classical sources that mention each theory is a disfavor to the readers. So you can use secondary WP:RS specialist sources to improve the Turkish origin section.  Feel free to improve the Turkish origin section but deleting sources (specially those that mention the contradictaroy classical sources) is unacceptable, and since both Britannica and Gutas mention there is a dispute and other sources mention there is a dispute, it is important to show what the classical sources say (through the eyes of secondary sources) and deleting them is unacceptable and actually constitutes WP:vandalism.   --Hichimichi (talk) 16:53, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

@Hichimichi: I did not yet read your comment but I just hoped that you did not use the word vandalism. You are the one who really needs to read WP:Vandalism, to know when to say an edit is vandalism. I will read your comments with an open mind. Sole Soul (talk) 18:59, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I thought you removed references to the classical authors (mentioned through Gutas). If I am mistaken, then I take it back.  I have given my valid reason for including these classical sources and why it is good to differentiate between the two theories. Thank you for your effort and hope you can improve the other section using specialist sources, but I believe again there is not a more detailed analysis than that provided by D. Gutas (he does mention both theories as well in detail).  --Hichimichi (talk) 23:00, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

@Hichimichi:
 * I'm not Turkish, as you have hinted. Actually, this is may be the first time I edit an article related to Turkey. I'm a Wikipedian since 2005. I will not talk about you in the same way
 * I think one of the main problems with Wikipedia is the plague of nationalism. There is too much emphasis on ethnicity on Wikipedia that you will not find in other respectable encyclopedias.
 * The article put too much emphasis on ethnicity and my change was simply to address this issue. You saw this as vandalism. Sole Soul (talk) 03:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the bad assumption. With regards to your comment somewhere else and regarding this, your critism of D. Gutas is invalid if you read what he wrote carefully. "the pro-Turkish tradition, compiled and composed as a continuous narrative by Ebn Ḵallekān with the purpose of documenting a Turkish ethnic origin for Fārābī" (D. Gutas). The word "pro-Turkish" means "for" or "believing" or "supporting" "Turkish" ethnicity and is valid academic term to use. D. Gutas backsup his claim. Read where he states exactly: "Ebn Ḵallekān’s entry is completely animated by the effort to prove that Fārābī was ethnically Turkish. To this end, Ebn Ḵallekān first gave Fārābī an additional nesba, one he never had, al-Torkī.".

I agree with your plague of nationalism. But with regards to Farabi, these conflicts arose in the 12th/13th century and D. Gutas (whose article is the only extensive one on Farabi's biography that mentions all the sources unlike the books who took Ibn Khalikan's statements blindly since his book was translated since 1840s and became more popularized in the West) has explained these in details. What I saw as vandalism was simply removing references to the classics (Ibn Usayba, Ibn Khalikan, Al-Shaharuzi..). So this is not exactly the typical problems in Wikipedia, rather it is an old issue which was already a point of conflict in the 12th/13th century and the current article just brings out all the primary sources (from secondary RS sources of course).--Hichimichi (talk) 11:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I did not answer in the RS forum about Gutas because 1) all of our opinions are original research 2) it was likely to be fruitless and would shift discussion off topic
 * I will mention my opinion here, knowing that it is an original research and should not affect the article (which is currently contains a lot of OR)


 * In the Stanford site article, Gutas said "his origins are said to be either in Fārāb on the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) in modern Kazakhstan, and probably coming from a Turkish background, or in Faryāb in modern Afghanistan, and probably from a Persian background"


 * Let us look at what Ibn Abi Osaybea in his Oyun says:

هو أبو نصر محمد بن محمد بن أوزلغ بن طرخان، مدينته فاراب، وهي مدينة من بلاد الترك في أرض خراسان، وكان أبوه قائد جيش، وهو فارسي المنتسب، وكان ببغداد مدة ثم انتقل إلى الشام وأقام بها إلى حين وفاته

Translation: He is Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Oozlg bin Tarkhan, his hometown is Farab, a city of the country of the Turks in the land of Khorasan, and his father was an army commander, and he is of Persian ancestry. He was in Baghdad for a period of time and then moved to Syria and stayed there until his death
 * So why Ibn Khalikan is wrong when he simply concluded the origin of al-Farabi from his home city as Gutas himself said?
 * When we say al-Tusi or al-Farabi for example, we are talking about nesba to a geographic location as opposed to ancestry. Many Iranians say their ancestors are ahl albayt who are Arabs, but we do not see their biographies in Wikipedia mention that they are Arabs, and rightfully so. Sole Soul (talk) 20:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

See below

Divergence
Okay please read carefully (I did not want to write a long message but since we are both doing OR).

Nisba is not necassarily geographics by the way. For example "Al-Arabi" "Al-Farsi", "Al-Turki", "Al-Soghdi" and etc are ethnic Nisba. Gutas is correct about Ibn Khalikan since he added the Nisba al-Turki. That is not comparable to the nisba al-Farabi and al-Tusi. Since these Nisba were used during the time of Farabi and Tusi and they are geographical. However al-Turki is ethnic and (even if you disagree), it was not used during the time of Farabi. For example if you mean Nasir al-Din Tusi, he came from Tus (Persian city) wrote in Persian and Ibn Khaldun calls him a Persian and Tus has always been a Persian city. He was called Al-Tusi during his own time. However Farab (after its Turkification Otrar) is less fuzzy and no source exists to call him Al-Turki durin his own lifetime.

The Nisba al-Turki is something that was not used during the time of Farabi and was first used by Ibn Khalikan. Also the Pronounciation (according to Ibn Khalikan too) is "Awzalagh" and not "oozloogh". Turkic languages do not have an "Aw" sound (Soghdian/Persian/Middle Persian does) so they have transformed it to Oozloogh. Also the other term "Tarxan" is a Nisba but it was also the title of Soghdian rulers of Samarqand.

So Gutas is totally correct. Also Gutas in the website article references Iranica and that is an RS source (website is not really RS and Gutas does not delve into the details like he does in the Iranica article). By the way the Iranica article of Gutas is referenced by others in google books (incase you are wondering).

Couple of more points. "Bilad at-Turk" means land of Turks. However during the time of Farabi, the area was predominantly Iranian (Soghdian). See for example this (Bosworth):

According C.E. Bosworth, "The Appearance of the Arabs in Central Asia under the Umayyads and the establishment of Islam", in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. IV: The Age of Achievement: AD 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting, edited by M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth. Multiple History Series. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1998. excerpt from page 23: "Central Asia in the early seventh century, was ethnically, still largely an Iranian land whose people used various Middle Iranian languages.

C. Edmund Bosworth: "In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in the Shahnama of Ferdowsi is regarded as the land allotted to Fereydun's son Tur. The denizens of Turan were held to include the Turks, in the first four centuries of Islam essentially those nomadizing beyond the Jaxartes, and behind them the Chinese (see Kowalski; Minorsky, "Turan"). Turan thus became both an ethnic and a geographical term, but always containing ambiguities and contradictions, arising from the fact that all through Islamic times the lands immediately beyond the Oxus and along its lower reaches were the homes not of Turks but of Iranian peoples, such as the Sogdians and Khwarezmians."( C.E. Bosworth, “Central Asia: The Islamic period up to the Mongols” in Encyclopedia Iranica).

Also we need to be careful with the term "Turk" which in Arabic sources does not necessarily mean Altaic speakers.

According to one modern source with regards to military personal in Baghdad (some sources have stated Farabi’s background was as such):

“The name Turk was given to all these troops, despite the inclusion amongst them of some elements of Iranian origin, Ferghana, Ushrusana, and Shash – places were in fact the centers were the slave material was collected together”(ʻUthmān Sayyid Aḥmad Ismāʻīl Bīlī, "Prelude to the Generals", Published by Garnet & Ithaca Press, 2001.)

M. A. Shaban goes further:

“These new troops were the so-called “Turks”. It must be said without hesitation that this is the most misleading misnomer which has led some scholars to harp ad nauseam on utterly unfounded interpretation of the following era, during which they unreasonably ascribe all events to Turkish domination. In fact the great majority of these troops were not Turks. It has been frequently pointed out that Arabic sources use the term Turk in a very loose manner. The Hephthalites are referred to as Turks, so are the peoples of Gurgan, Khwarizm and Sistan. Indeed, with the exception of the Soghdians, Arabic sources refer to all peoples not subjects of the Sassanian empire as Turks. In Samarra separate quarters were provided for new recruits from every locality. The group from Farghana were called after their district, and the name continued in usage because it was easy to pronounce. But such groups as the Ishtakhanjiyya, the Isbijabbiya and groups from similar localities who were in small numbers at first, were lumped together under the general term Turks, because of the obvious difficulties the Arabs had in pronouncing such foreign names. The Khazars who also came from small localities which could not even be identified, as they were mostly nomads, were perhaps the only group that deserved to be called Turks on the ground of racial affinity. However, other groups from Transcaucasia were classed together with the Khazars under the general description.”

(M.A. Shaban, “Islamic History”, Cambridge University Press, v.2 1978. Page 63)

Note unlike what M.A. Shaban states, someone like Ibn Khaldun has stated the Soghdians as a “Turkish” group and Soghdians live in "Bilad Turk". So "Bilad Turk" or Turkistan is a geographical designation. However the term Bilad Turk and Turkistan does not hold for the time of Farabi. Just the fact that Farab(Parab) is a Persian/Iranian name but later the city becomes Otrar (with a Turkish name) shows the Turkification. At the time of Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa, Otrar was Turkish speaking. However Arabs/Persians used Turkistan for Central Asia and Central Asia had an Iranian population all that time as it still does (Tajiks, Yagnobis (Soghdian related)) also not as mch as say the 8th century. But one can say by the time of Ebn Abi Osaybe, the area became Turkic speaking. Also

As per Iranian Seyyeds, they are Iranian Seyyeds. Seyyeds cannot be classified as Arabs since they speak Persian as their motherlanguage. There are Pakistani, Afghan, Iranian and etc. Seyyeds and Seyyeds are identified by their mother-tongue. But there is nothing wrong to mention people as a Seyyed which ultimately means Arab ancestry. So Seyyeds are a special case. However the identification of Seyyed with Arab is problematic because Arab today is more linguistic definition (take Sudanese, Egyptians or Lebanese who probably have less Arabic ancestry than an Iranian Seyyed). However all these are 20th century stuff and we cannot take 20th century nationality (Iranian Seyyeds, Persian Seyyeds, Afghan Seyyeds, Turkish Seyyeds and Seyyeds are a different case) and transpose it to 8th century (since there was no nation state), specially in Soghdiana/Chorasmia/Ma Wara an-Nahr (land beyond the rivers) which later became known as Turkistan.

Anyhow this discussion can continue forever, but Gutas is correct in my opinion since at the time of Farabi, no such nisba existed, and it is not a geographical nisba (Turkistani can be geographical but al-Turki is not since there is no land by the name of "Turk" however there is a land by the name of "Fars").

I believe you want to improve the artice. These discussions have taken place, so please show where the article needs improvement (or editing in your opinion or contains OR). However deleting the classics like Ibn Khalikan, Ibn Usaybia, Al-Shahruzi.. is not an correct. And giving space for each theory is okay, since more classical sources might trn up (through the eyes of secondary sources). Given the detail work and the disagreement, one should have a section describing which classical say what, and then bring the modern sources that support a thesis. In the long term, oneday people will realize Farabi was a Soghdian (Iranian language and Persian in the widesense of the meaning), but like you said, Wikipedia is not for original research (although one your sources did say Soghdian was his native dialect although it called Soghdian a Turkish dialect).

Thanks--66.92.168.124 (talk) 02:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not read all of what you wrote, because it is too long. Bear with me:
 * Gutas says if al-Farabi is from Farab then he is probably Turkish
 * Ibn Abi Osaybea says al-Farabi is from Farab
 * Ibn Khalikan says al-Farabi is Turkish
 * Gutas says Ibn Khalikan is wrong and pro-Turkish!!

Now in the question of nesba, Arabs usually call non-arabs by their perceived ethnicities. For ex. Salman al-Farsi is Persian, but probably when he was in Iran the Persian people were not calling him "the Persian" or al-Farsi, because they are all Persians. You will find in Ibn Khalikan's book and other Arabic books many examples of calling people by their ethnicities. Some examples form Ibn Khalikan's book of calling people al-Farsi or "the Persian":

Sole Soul (talk) 04:36, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * أبو علي الحسن بن أحمد بن عبد الغفار بن محمد بن سليمان بن أبان الفارسي النحوي
 * أبو محمد عبد الله بن جعفر بن درستويه بن المرزبان الفارسي الفسوي النحوي
 * أبو مسلم عبد الرحمن بن مسلم، وقيل عثمان، الخراساني من ولد بزرجمهر بن البختكان الفارسي
 * أبو الحسن عبد الغافر بن إسماعيل بن عبد الغافر بن محمد بن عبد الغافر بن أحمد بن محمد بن سعيد الفارسي الحافظ

Okay I have changed my username and requested a move. Hope it makes it easier. Let me address your points although it is pointless if you did not read what I wrote.


 * Gutas in the website article gives two theories (but does not limit and say these are the only theories, but has mentioned two popular ones), however this does not exclude other theories (Farabi is from Farab in Khazakhistan (which took the name Otrar after its Turkification) while being an Iranian and other sources have also mentioned this). All the theories and detail is given in Iranica.  The website article has one sentence (websites are not RS usually) where-as Iranica has paragraphs discussing the issue.  So one takes precedence over the other (website), if you (I don't) see a contradiction.
 * If an Arab is born in Khorasan (at that time there was Arabs there), they would not call such an Arab as Al-Farsi. Similarly at the time of Farabi himself, most of Central Asia was Iranian speaking (see the sources above which you did have time to read in the 4-5 hour interval you edited).  Even in later centurues, "Turkistan" or "Bilad Turk" (land of Turks) does not exclusively mean it was populated by Turks as today even there are Tajiks and other Iranian groups (Afghans/Pamiris) in what was called "Turkistan" up to the last century.  In Farabi's time, the area was mainly Iranian speaking (mentioned by some sources as above).  So by adding the Nisba "al-Turki" (a Nisba Farabi never had although the other people you mention might have had like Salman Farsi or other people), Ibn Khalikan has given Turkish origins to Farabi.  Your WP:OR that you claim Ibn Khalikan gave him this Nisba because he was from what  Ibn Abi Osaybea calls "Bilad al-Turk", is connecting two different authors and unsupportable. Just like being from Khorasan (at that time) (which is part of bilad al-Fars or Persian lands) could mean you were Arab, being from Farab (which did become Turkic later than Farabi and that is why its name was even changed to Otrar after its Turkification) does not mean the Nisba al-Turki should have been added by Ibn Khalikan.
 * Furthermore Gutas states: "Ebn Ḵallekān spent considerable time giving the correct spelling and vocalization of all the names which he says are Turkish and are associated with Fārābī: the names of his alleged grand- and great-grandfather, Ṭarḵān and Awzalaḡ (adding explicitly, wa-homā men asmāʾ al-tork, “these are Turkish names”), ". However had Ibn Khalikan done his research, "Awzalagh" cannot be Turkish since "Aw" is not a Turkish sound.  Also Tarxan has numerous etymologies but modern Turkic linguists consider it a loanword to Turkic and plus it has been used by many Soghdians (see classical books like the history of Bukhara).  It was a general military title as well.  So Ibn Khalikan tries to support his thesis by just assuming a word is Turkish (which is not and also has been used by East Iranians).
 * See above on how Arabs used the general term "Turk" in their historiography which included many Iranian speakers (if not mainly Iranian speakers at one time). Even someone as erudie as Ibn Khaldun says the Soghdians are a Turkish people living in the land Ardh of Turk.
 * Finally if "Al-Turki" to you is a geographical designation(I doubt it, since Al-Farsi is not and Al-Farsi as far as I know was not used for Arabs from Khorasan), then D. Gutas has read it wrong, but that means the whole Turkish thesis which relies on Ibn Khalian is wrong.
 * Since wikipedia is not a WP:Forum and you did not bother to take 10 minutes to read what I wrote, I will not discuss the issue further and you are free to conclude that D. Gutas who is a Professor of Yale University was paid to write a bias report and the nisba Al-Torki which Ibn Khalikan used for the first time is neutral. --RustamDastani (talk) 11:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

You cannot blame me for not reading if you cannot write briefly.
 * There is absolutely no policy in Wikipedia that says "websites [in general] are not RS".
 * Nonetheless, this has no bearing here because I'm talking about Gutas contradiction
 * Gutas can write briefly in one place and in details in another, but what he cannot do is writing something in a place and contradicting it in another
 * "Gutas in the website article gives two theories (but does not limit and say these are the only theories"
 * ...And then attack Ibn Khalikan for applying one of these theories!!


 * "you claim Ibn Khalikan gave him this Nisba because he was from what Ibn Abi Osaybea calls "Bilad al-Turk", is connecting two different authors and unsupportable"
 * There is a misunderstanding, I did not mean that Ibn Khalikan said he is Turkish because of Ibn Abi Osaybea. I meant that saying that al-Farabi was from Farab which was written by Ibn Khalikan, was also written by Ibn Abi Osaybea, who Gutas do not think is a pro-Turkish.


 * "If an Arab is born in Khorasan (at that time there was Arabs there), they would not call such an Arab as Al-Farsi."
 * Ibn Khalikan did not think that Farabi was a Persian. To say that Ibn Khalikan should have not called Farabi al-Turki even if he believed that he was Turkish, is simply an Ignorance in the Arab culture.

You and I made our cases about whether Gutas contradicted himself or not which is not consequential, since it is an OR by me and you. Sole Soul (talk) 12:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC) Hi وطرخان: بفتح الطاء المهملة وسكون الراء وفتح الخاء المعجمة وبعد الألف نون. وأوزلغ: بفتح الهمزة وسكون الواو وفتح الزاي واللام وبعدها غين معجمة، وهما من أسماء الترك. Note: "وهما من أسماء الترك". Where-as Turkish does not have "Aw" and Tarxan has also been used by Soghdians and Persians, and is a title.
 * Well I think you are reading too much into the one sentence of the website article. Gutas summarized two viewpoints (but not all the viewpoint).  Obviously there is the viewpoint Farabi was from Parab/Farab in modern Kazakhistan but of Persian descent (mentioned by Gutas in Iranica and other sources).  Gutas is not contradicting himself, but rather one has to go to the detail article to understand what he states.  It cannot be done in one setence.  He has just taken a small partial (not complete) summary of the Iranica in one sentence and did not want to expand on something he has done already.  Note he also uses the word "probably" in one sentence twice.  Ibn Abi Osaybea cannot be "pro-Turkish" because he believed in the Persian theory.  Him believing that Farabi was from "Farab" (now Otrar) is not part of the origin argument (you are reading too much again into one sentence which mentions only two of the many possibilities).  Neither is calling "Farab" in the Bilad Turk since all of Central Asia started to be called Turkistan despite a large number of Iranian elements (which was majority in the 8th century, became minority since the 11th century but still is there).
 * The issue is that Ibn Khalikan did add the additional Nisba "Al-Turki" and also writes about the words "Tarxan", "Awzalagh"

However I think you are making a small English mistake. "Pro-Turkish" does not mean Ibn Khalikan loved Turks or wanted to be anti-Persian or was racist or something. Here the term "pro-Turkish" means that Ibn Khalikan believed in the Turkish theory. So yes one can say Ibn Abi Osaybea was "Pro-Persian" since he believed in the Persian theory and that is obvious. I think you simply need to look at the context of what the word "Pro" means. For example, if I believe Farabi was a Turk (actually I believe he was a Soghdian but for the sake of the argument), then I believe in the Pro-Turkish theory. D. Gutas could have used possibly the term "Pro-Turkish theory" to avoid the confusion, since the word "pro-something" carries wide variety of meanings, but you have focused only on one of its meanings. --RustamDastani (talk) 13:24, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I was going to reply but remembered that I already hinted that I will stop, so I will stop. Sole Soul (talk) 13:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay lets keep out WP:FORUM discussions out as much as possible. I will just mention one more point mentioned by D. Gutas: "Ebn al-Qefṭī adds that he would go around in “Sufi garb” (be-zeyy ahl al-taṣawwof). Understandably, as already discussed, this detail in Ebn Ḵallekān becomes “Turkish garb” (be-zeyy al-atrāk). " --RustamDastani (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Fixing the article
On OR, it is very difficult to avoid if you choose to expand. They include:
 * Quoting directly from primary sources or a translation of primary source
 * Cherry-picking sources that a RS used or skipping the caveats that they stated
 * Linking 2 informations together, that secondary reliable sources did not link. Sole Soul (talk) 08:14, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Response:
 * 1) Yes primary sources can only be used if secondary sources mention them and through secondary sources (like Gutas in Iranica). But quoting directly from primary sources (without translating them yourself) is not OR, and this can be in the biblography.  So mentioing Ibn Khalikan, Ibn Abi Osaybea, Ibn Nadim is not OR if they are mentioned by secondary sources. Deleting them is a disfavor to the reader.
 * If quoting the primary source is not proving or disproving anything, then it's fine with me.


 * 2) There is no caveat as the Iranica article discusses many theories. Note the word "probably" in your Stanford article (which is not really RS as it is website) and is not as detail as (it is a sentence).
 * I think there is when he talks about how reliable these sources for example. I answered the RS point above

My complaint to you:
 * 3) On your third point, you are correct. I will look out for these and have removed some redunadant sentences that carried this.
 * You have used many random non-specialist sources.
 * This is a legitimate point, I will look at it. I'm rushed now.


 * You have removed the names of primary sources mentioned by secondary sources.
 * Give me the link of my edit


 * I should mention that if you google book Ibn Khalikan (with all variant names) and Ibn Abi Osaybea,Al-Shahrazuri if they are mentioned by secondary sources with regards to the points being made, is fine.   You will get 50 more links for Ibn Khalikan since his book became popular much earlier in the West and is also more expansive (bigger book).  Hence more books on Farabi will probably convey that information, which does not mean they are correct since many of these books are general books (even the specialist books are not careful like the one that claims Farabi's native language was Soghdian (probably true) but then calls Soghdian a Turkish dialect).  So you need to do better checking on the speciality of the author and the source.  I have only found one article that has done any extensive research (D. Gutas in Iranica) and if you find another one, please bring it forward.   --RustamDastani (talk) 11:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I replied below each point except the last one. Sole Soul (talk) 12:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

added one more source:

Olivier Roy, "The new Central Asia: the creation of nations ", I.B.Tauris, 2000. 1860642799. pg 167: "Kazakhistan also annexes for the purpose of bank notes Al Farabi (870-950), the Muslim philosopher who was born in the south of present-day Kazakhistan but who persumably spoke Persian, particularly because in that era there were no Kazakhs in the region" This is why exactly the name Farab (a Persian name) became Otrar by the time of Ibn Khalikan.. I will also add something about the etymology of Farab.--RustamDastani (talk) 12:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)


 * "The oldest known document regarding his background, written by the medieval Arab historian Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿa"

First: This is not what Gutas said. He said it is the oldest of the group of writings which were written after the 6th/12th century. He divided the writings into 2 groups, before and after the 6th/12th century. Second: not mentioning the complete info gives the wrong impression. Gutas said "Abī Oṣaybeʿa’s ʿOyūn (final recension completed in 667/1268) and in Ebn Ḵallekān’s Wafayāt (completed in 669/1271).


 * Well that is a minor point, but that is the oldest existing document. However I will fix that.  Would appreciate any other points you have so we can finish this today.  --RustamDastani (talk) 13:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

- with regards to specialist sources let me add what I believe are scholars specializing in this area. You can google them to know why: - D. Gutas - T. J. Denboer, "The History of Philosophy in Islam", - P.J. King, "One Hundred Philosophers", chapter al-Fārābi, Barron's Educational Books, USA 2004 - Ian Richard Netton - Joshua Parens - Hanna Fakhuri - Clifford Edmund Bosworth -   - and there are more. But that will take sometime. However with regards to the controversial issue, I have only found the detailed article of D. Gutas.
 * So we agree that one can mention the primary sources that have been mentioned by secondary sources (standard wikipedia policy). So I was alluding to this (when talking about removal).
 * Any other comments about the current version? --RustamDastani (talk) 13:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm in a rush now. The current version is very biased and contains a lot of OR, IMO. I do not agree that the mere mentioning of a primary source is a free pass to quote anything from it ( this is not a standard policy).

My first choice is the edit that you referred to. But you do not agree with me so my second choice is to add infos that make the ethnicity section more balanced. I will try to do this in the next few days. Sole Soul (talk) 13:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

My Response: You yourself said: "If quoting the primary source is not proving or disproving anything, then it's fine with me.". However no one is quoting primary sources and I am not proposing to quote primary sources in the article. Rather the secondary sources (D. Gutas and Nasr) mention the primary sources and their position and I have quoted the secondary sources. The actual Arabic has also been there it seems, but it is not used in the article. It follows wiki-guidelines.
 * Nothing is quoted from primary sources, but only the names of those primary sources are mentioned (this follows guidelines). The name of these primary sources are mentioned through secondary sources (Ibn Khalian, Ibn Abi Osaybea through D. Gutas and Al-Shahrazuri through Nasr).  The Arabic is brought (if it is found) by no one has translated it (since it would be OR and user insertion).


 * Please point out where the OR is. As per what you believe is "Bias" (I do not), as long as it follows guidelines and is a scholarly source (Books, Journals written by scholars that are known to be experts in this area) discussing Farabi, it is fine.


 * Feel free to add information to the other section. No one is stopping you.  However, everything modern traces one way to another to Ibn Khalikan and D. Gutas has exhausted all the primary sources.


 * Just wanted to mention another point by D. Gutas: "Ebn al-Qefṭī adds that he would go around in “Sufi garb” (be-zeyy ahl al-taṣawwof). Understandably, s already discussed, this detail in Ebn Ḵallekān becomes “Turkish garb” (be-zeyy al-atrāk). ". I seriously doubt D. Gutas would have agenda and I think you put (the nisba, the bad etymology and this and you do get a sense of what D. Gutas is claiming). But that is a separate discussion and since you stopped, I'll stop here as well).  --RustamDastani (talk) 14:04, 20 February 2010 (UTC)