Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Arabian Neoplatonist, c.870-950 AD, known as "the second teacher" (Aristotle being the first).  Very little is known of his personal life, although it seems that his father was in the Turkish bodyguard of the Caliph and that as a child he would have accompanied his father to Baghdad, the seat of the Caliph's government. 

Late in his life Al-Farabi accepted an invitation to live at the court of a prince in Aleppo.  Al-Farabi's great service to Islam was to take the Greek heritage, as it had become known to the Arabs, and show how it could be used to answer questions with which Muslims were struggling.  To Al-Farabi, philosophy had come to an end in other parts of the world, but had a chance for a new life in Islam.

The major part of his writings were directed to the problem of the correct ordering of the state.  Just as God rules the universe, so should the philosopher, as the most perfect kind of man, rule the state: in this way was Al-Farabi able to relate the political upheavals of his time to the divorce of the philosopher from government.

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