At Damascus al-Farabi led a secluded life. Most of his time he spent by the borders of one of the many streams which are so characteristic a feature of Damascus, or in a shady garden, and here he met and talked with his friends and pupils. He was accustomed to write his compositions on loose leaves, "for which reason nearly all his productions assume the form of detached chapters and notes; some of them exist only in fragments and unfinished. He was the most indifferent of men for the things of this world; he never gave himself the least trouble to acquire a livelihood or possess a habitation. Sayf ad-Dawla settled on him a daily pension of four dirhams out of the public treasury, this moderate sum being the amount to which al-Farabi had limited his demand." (Ibn Khallikan, iii. 309–310.)
Al-Farabi was the author of a series of commentaries on the logical Organon, which contained nine books according to the Arabic reckoning, namely:
| (i.) | The Isagoge of Porphyry. |
| (ii.) | The Categories or al-Maqulat. |
| (iii.) | The Hermeneutica or al-'Ibara or al-Tafsir. |
| (iv.) | The Analytica Priora or al-Qiyas I. |
| (v.) | The Analytica Posteriora or al-Burhan. |
| (vi.) | The Topica or al-Jadl. |
| (vii.) | The Sophistica Elenchi or al-Maghalit. |
| (viii.) | The Rhetoric or al-Khataba. |
| (ix.) | The Poetics or ash-Shi'r. |
