 The first new art that he calls attention to is rhetoric (khiṭāba), the art of the orator, which uses concepts in order to persuade people to do or believe certain things. The main users of this skill are political and religious leaders, who employ it in order to assert their authority. Alongside rhetoric al-Fārābī mentions the art of poetry (shi‘r), which uses concepts in order to bring people to certain states of mind. He sees this art as most useful for religious leaders. He also mentions an art which he calls the art of sophistry. This art embodies the skill of producing bad arguments from false premises. It’s hard to see what could have led him to the conclusion that there is such an art, beyond the fact that the Alexandrian syllabus contained, wedged between a book on dialectical methods and one on rhetorical methods, Aristotle’s treatise Sophistical Refutations. Aristotle’s treatise is usually understood to be teaching the art of detecting and refuting bad arguments, not that of creating them! 