Diwan-i Ishraq

In early Islamic philosophy, poetry was regarded as a means to transmit the eternal truths of philosophy to the masses and to move them to virtuous conduct by the use of poetical syllogisms. We find this theory for the first time in the works of Abu Nasr al-Farabi (d. 339/950). In another application, poetry was used as a didactic tool in the philosophical curriculum, like Avicenna's (d. 428/1037)...