 Although al-Fārābī’s conception of the imaginative faculty departs from Aristotle’s view, it combines some elements coming from the Hellenistic and the Middle Platonist traditions that, as Walzer (1957: 142–148) points out, may have been taken from Porphyry and Proclus. The result is a psychological explanation of prophecy and divination. In recent years, scholars working on the Arabic version of Aristotle’s treatise On Divination in Sleep (Hansberger 2008: 73–74; 2010: 158) have suggested that this work is a relevant source for the understanding of the Islamic philosophical conception of prophecy, including that of al-Fārābī. The Arabic On Divination in Sleep is an adulterated version of Aristotle’s text and provides a different explanation of veridical dreams within a Neoplatonic metaphysical framework, where a universal intellect distributes veridical dreams and some people with outstanding psychological capacities are able to receive them and interpret  them.[4]  Even though no explicit references are made to On Divination in Sleep in al-Fārābī’s The Virtuous City, there are noticeable similarities between the two treatises.