Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/168

 press home their tenets to their logical conclusions. When considering the reconciliation between philosophy and Qur'an attempted by al-Farabi it is important to compare and contrast the reconciliation attempted on quite other lines by al-Ash'ari and other founders of orthodox scholasticism. It must be noted that the beginning of scholasticism was contemporary with al-Farabi.

As has been noted, al-Farabi was mixed up with the Shi'ite group; the supporters of 'Alid claims who held aloof from the official Khalifate at Baghdad. About the time of al-Kindi's death (circ. 260), the twelfth ImanImam [sic] of the Ithna 'ashariya or orthodox Shi'ite sect, Muhammad al-Muntazar, "disappeared." In the year 320, within the period of al-Farabi's activity, the Buwayhid princes became the leading power in 'Iraq, and in 334, five years before his death, they obtained possession of Baghdad, so that for the next 133 years the Khalifs were in very much the same position as the Frankish kings when they, surrounded with great ceremony and treated with the utmost reverence, were no more than puppets in the hands of the Mayors of the Palace. In exactly the same way the Khalifs, half popes and half emperersemperors [sic], whose sign manual was sought as giving a show of legitimacy to sovereigns even in far-off India, possessed in Baghdad only ceremonial functions, and were treated as honoured prisoners by the Buwayhid Emirs, who themselves were Shi'ites of the Ithna 'ashariya sect, and who, consequently,