Plato seems to have been more an icon and an inspiration than an
authentic source for Islamic philosophers. So far as is known,
the only works available to them in Arabic translation were the
Laws, the Sophist, the Timaeus and the Republic. His name was
often invoked as a sage and an exemplar of that wisdom available
to humankind among the Greeks before the revelation of the
Qur'an. This in itself could represent a kind of affront to
orthodox Islam, which tended to view the human situation before
the Qur'an's 'coming down' as one of pervasive ignorance
(jahaliyya). However, the rise of humanist culture in Baghdad
during the ninth and tenth centuries ad, which involved Syriac
Christian translators, presupposed a gradual acceptance of Greek
wisdom in which Plato figured paradigmatically, even though far
fewer of his works were made available in translation than those
of Aristotle. Plato's influence on Islamic philosophy can be
observed most clearly in ethics and political philosophy, given
the works available t