INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION The general practice of introducing a new work by placing it in the broader context of the tradition to which it belongs en- counters a peculiar difficulty in the case of Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. That is because this work does not conform to the current view of the Islamic philosophic tradition. This view was developed in the nineteenth century and is based on a wide range of representative works and authors. It sees Islamic philos- ophy as a mixture, blend, or synthesis of Aristotelian, Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and, of course, Islamic doctrines. It represents Moslem philosophers as being guided by the belief in the harmony of various philosophic and religious ideas and traditions, with little awareness of the essential heterogeneity of the elements they sought to combine. The estimates of the extent to which indi- vidual Moslem philosophers were aware of possib