Literary Resistance to the Philosophy of Slavery: Al-Farabi and the Ikhwan Al-Safa'

Al-Farabi justifies slavery by naturalizing the social conflict that supports it, and does so in part through a theory of natural slavery. Some people are slaves by nature, and are comparable to animals that have been brought under the yoke of civilization. By contrast, the Ikhwan al-Safa's fable, in which the animals take the humans to court, provides a more thorough treatment of slavery. This includes an imaginative engagement with the perspective of the enslaved. The Ikhwan al-Safa's fable of talking animals is thus more true, hence more philosophical, than al-Farabi's philosophical treatises with regard to the question of slavery.