Ministering Relationship (Estekhdam) and Enslaving Relationship (Esteebad) in City according to al-Farabi's Thoughts

The virtues political philosophy presupposes the coherence of categories like justice, cooperation, friendship, leadership for realizing the individual and civil happiness in the city. Among the Moslem philosophers, al-Farabi described the civil friendship, cooperation and justice. Analyzing the thoughts of al-Farabi shows despite the civil friendship exists in all various kind of cities, the relationship resulted by civil friendship is different in every specific virtuous and non-virtuous cities. The question of this paper is that "what is the relationship between civil friendship and the kind of relationship in each city in al-Farabi's thought?" Based on this question and with the method of philosophical content analysis of Farabi's political philosophy, it would be clear that civil friendship is the binding matter of members of city. Civil friendship shapes the form of cities, too. In fact, the knowledge which determines the happiness would appear in a friendly matter that shapes all civil affairs and cooperation. Accordingly, the most important finding of this paper is that depending to the excellent matter to be followed by people as the members of city, the excellent city will shaped and based on matters as like pleasure, joy, power, and so, the opponent of excellent city (or ignorant cities) will appeared. The relationship in the first is ESTEKHDAM (ministering), and in the latter is ESTEEBAD (enslaving). So, based on the civil friendship, the different kinds of excellent and non-excellent cities will shaped and each city requires the certain relations between leader and its members.