A Comparative Study of Revelation and Prophecy According to Farabi and Ibn Sina

The explanation of revelation and prophecy has a special place in the view of Muslim philosophers. The ideas Farabi as the first Muslim philosopher who dealt with the prophecy and Ibn Sina in view of his original and precise conceptualization about prophecy and its foundations deserve inverstigation and have always been the subject of different commentaries. Some critics have found faults with Farabi that by introducing the concept of imagination in the process of revelation he has subordinated the place of prophet to that of philosophers and some have objected to Ibn Sina that by introducing the concept of guess in the process of revelation he is unable to account for revelation's knowledge to particular things and only universal knowledge of revelation in his theory are explicable, wheras Farabi recognizes the rational faculty of prophet as perceiving all the intelligible and separate substances and Ibn Sina as well has paid attention to the role of imaginative faculties in revelation and prophecy and has succeeded in explaining the knowledge to particulars things.