The Ten Spheres of Al-Farabi: A Medieval Cosmology

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi, who lived in the ninth century, left a valuable heritage for Islamic thinkers after him. In the framework of his metaphysics, he developed a theory of emanation describing the origin of the material universe. Ten intellects or intelligences are coming in succession from the First Being, and, from each of them, a sphere of the universe is produced. The first intellect created the outermost sphere and a second intellect. From this second intelligence, the sphere of the fixed stars and a third intellect had been generated. The process continues, through the spheres of the planets, downwards to the sphere of the Moon. From the Moon, a pure intelligence, defined as the "active intelligence", provides a bridge between heavens and earth. In the paper, we discuss this cosmology, comparing it to the cosmology of Robert Grosseteste, an Oxonian thinker of the thirteen century.Read Complete Article at ijSciences: V3201405517 AND DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18483/ijSci.51