al-Farabi Kazakh National University

Mission

Our mission is to strengthen the potential of highly qualified competitive specialists that are capable to meet the challenges and intellectual requirements of the world through innovative teaching methods and integration of education, science and business, which will increase national and international prestige.

Vision

To become a world-class research university, competitive in the global scientific and educational space.

History 

A prominent thinker of East, Abu Nasir al-Farabi was born in 870 in Farab city (known as Otrar), located on Aris river flowing into Syr Darya river (which corresponds nowadays to Otrar region of the Eastern Kazakhstan). As the word “tarhan” included in his full name Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarhan ibn Uzlag al-Farabi at-Turki depicts that he was representative of Turkic tribes. During 9th and 10th centuries Otrar city was a large political, cultural and commercial center that served as a bridge to the Great Silk Road caravan ways that connected Medieval Europe with Asia. The main peace of his knowledge Abu Nasr acquired in Otrar. In this city to the age of 20 there he had an opportunity to get acquainted with philosophical and scientific works belonging to one of the richest libraries of the time (it was considered second after legendary Library of Alexandria). Then he studied and worked in Bukhara, Samarqand, for a long period stayed in Baghdad that was cultural and political center of Arabian Caliphate. The last years of his life were spent in Cairo, Aleppo and Damascus enjoying a lot of appreciation. In Damascus in 950, eighty years-old al-Farabi passed away.

It worth noting that Al-Farabi had an opportunity to get acquainted with the books of Aristotle, Plato and other ancient philosophers in theirs original language, which enabled him to become one of the founders of Peripatetic philosophy in the East. Thus al-Farabi was titled as “The Second Teacher” with Aristotle being the First. He left us huge scientific heritage, including about 200 treatises encompassing fairly diverse branches of knowledge: he commented on Aristotle’s “Categories”, “The Hermeneutics”, “Topics”, “Analytics”, “On Sophistical Refutations”, “Rhetoric”, “Organon” and “Poetics”. The most famous of Farabi’s original works is considered to be his treatise “Pearl of Wisdom”, “On the Perfect State”and “The Great Book of Music” with the last bringing him fame especially in Europe.

In the Medieval Europe translations of al-Farabi’s works to Latin and Hebrew appeared since very early times (12-13th centuries), and in 1930-1932 the translation of the first part of “The Great Book of Music” to French was published in Paris by a French scientist Philippe Erlanger.

The name of al-Farabi has entered the history of world science and culture. Certainly, his works possessed  great influence upon European Renaissance and acted as a connecting bridge that had united Eastern and Western cultures and philosophies.