Abū Naṣr Muḥammad al-Fārābī (d. 339/950), sometimes referred to as the "Second Teacher" in the Arabic tradition (after the "First Teacher," Aristotle), was one of the foremost Arabic philosophers of the early, classical Islamic period. He was a polymath who wrote on a wide variety of topics, ranging from music, astronomy, astrology, and geometry, to physics, metaphysics, ethics, and the historical evolution of philosophy and religion. He had a decisive impact on the development of Arabic logic, cosmology, and metaphysics in particular, and his works are cited by