The questioner
historical figure · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
the questioner · al-sāʼil · if it is said to you · السائل
in the texts
Kitāb madhāhib al-Aʻrāb wa-falāsifat al-Islām fī al-jinn
The unnamed interlocutor of al-Fārābī's epistle who presses the Qurʼānic objection about jinn who listen and speak.
And in an epistle of the Second Teacher, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad al-Fārābī, in answer to questions put to him, there is the like of this:
The questioner said:
Kitāb mīzān al-ḥaqq fī al-manṭiq
The one who asks what a thing is, in whose soul al-Ghazzālī says a real definition must picture the thing's reality, and whose questions structure the worked examples.
As for that about whose quiddity the question has been asked, when you wish to define it with a real definition, you have duties in the matter, and the definition is not real save by them;
For if you state this, you have stated what is essential and constant and convertible, yet it is defective, falling short of imparting the core of wine's reality.
The first — that you gather the parts of the definition from the genus and the differentiae.