The works of Abū Naṣr Muḥammad Ibn Ṭarkhān Ibn Awzalagh al-Fārābī (Alfarabi) are severely under-appreciated, especially in modern Western society. Alfarabi is commonly regarded as one of the most influential philosophers in Islamic cultural tradition, and his works are surprisingly similar in theme and style to those of Western intellectual giants such as Plato and Aristotle. These two famous Greek philosophers are actually the primary focus of several of Alfarabi's works, including "The Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and Aristotle" and "Summary of Plato's Laws." These works clearly demonstrate Alfarabi's great familiarity with both of these thinkers, as well as his ability to clearly and concisely summarize each of their philosophies while finding enough common ground to ultimately call them compatible.
Besides the obvious, explicit references to Plato and Aristotle, the very philosophy of Alfarabi plainly speaks to extensive experience with the work of these men. In his work "Selected Aphorisms," he essentially summarizes many of the sayings of "the Ancients" (being specifically Plato and Aristotle) in his own paraphrases while building upon them in a manner that would be relatable for his time period and cultural context. Much of the philosophy found in Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is located in these sayings, which solidify them into pithy aphorisms for easy digestion. The influence of the Western thinkers is also obvious in works like "the Political Regime," where Alfarabi expounds on his idea of an ordered universe and the soul of man, both distinctly Platonic themes and ideas. In his other writings, Alfarabi also puts forward a theoretical model of the "virtuous city" in order to demonstrate the importance of virtue in the soul. This rhetorical device is highly evocative of Plato, who did almost exactly the same thing in his Republic, trying to discover justice in the soul by enlarging the scale and finding justice in the city. Interestingly, this has led to a debate over Alfarabi's model of the city that's almost identical to the debate over Plato's city: was he serious in his governmental proposition, or was it merely a thought experiment for use as an analogical device?
Although Alfarabi's school of thought would eventually be overtaken by that of Avecinnism, his influence on the development of philosophical thought in the Middle East was large, and he is credited with preserving the works of the ancient Greeks through the first millennium AD in that region of the world, both through his translations and through his extensive use of their ideas in his own philosophy. Alfarabi is an unfortunately little-known philosopher in the Western world today, and perhaps we should devote more attention to his work; it is, after all, essentially commentary and extenuation of Plato and Aristotle.
