Chapter 2 of this study is dedicated to the interpretation of a typescript entitled “1001 Nights.” The transcript contains detailed notes on many of the stories included in the Calcutta II version of the Arabian Nights. For several generations, scholars of the Arabian Nights have directed their attention mainly toward questions regarding the sources and origins of the stories included in the Arabian Nights, as well as the study of their strictly formal characteristics. When not engaged exclusively with the literary study of the Arabian Nights, most scholars tend to read this remarkable document of Arabic thought to obtain information about the common mentalities and beliefs of the medieval and early modern Islamic societies. Unlike many of these studies, Strauss has offered a remarkable theologico-political interpretation of this famous Arabic text. In his notes, composed sometime after 1959, Strauss concentrates exclusively on the teachings of the stories included in the Arabian Nights, and reads the text as a coherent, carefully crafted whole rather than as an anthology of unconnected tales.

A detailed analysis of Strauss’s first substantial commentary on a writing of Alfarabi, titled “Fârâbî’s Plato,” is provided in Chapter 3. This rather obscure, yet fundamental writing of Strauss contains some of his most important ideas about Alfarabi, his relationship with Plato’s philosophy and religion, Alfarabi’s view on esotericism, and what he later calls zetetic philosophy.

The Introduction provides a panoramic view of Strauss’s thought, with a special emphasis on his interest in Islamic political thought. This summary presentation will focus on what I call the four pillars of Strauss’s intellectual project: (1) Reason and Revelation; (2) Ancients and Moderns; (3) The Theologico-Political Problem; (4) Esotericism. All these themes have a direct relationship to Strauss’s writings on Islamic thought and his biographically documented interest in the writings of the Falāsifa. This summary presentation is followed by a critical assessment of previous studies on Strauss’s interest in Islamic thought. The objective of this critical assessment is, first of all, to discuss some of the common misconceptions regarding Strauss’s writings on Islamic philosophy in those writings which are mainly critical of his scholarship. The second objective is to show that, despite some very important studies on Strauss’s scholarship on Islamic thought, there is a significant gap existing in the scholarship.

A detailed examination of Strauss’s interpretation of Alfarabi’s summary of Plato’s Laws is the subject of Chapter 4. Strauss’s complex article on Alfarabi’s summary, which complements his earlier “Fârâbî’s Plato,” has received minimal attention. The original manuscript of Strauss’s article, found among the Leo Strauss Papers, can substantially improve our understanding of this text and provide the opportunity for a more detailed commentary: The paragraphs of this manuscript are numbered, and contain headings which are absent in the published version of the article. My interpretation of this article will take these aspects of the original manuscript, as well as Strauss’s other writings and correspondence on Alfarabi and his course transcripts, into account.

Chapter 1 is dedicated to the interpretation of a recently discovered, unpublished typescript by Strauss on Averroes’s commentary on Plato’s Republic. In this transcript, available as Appendix A and composed sometime after 1956, Strauss underscores the conflict between philosophy and Islam in Averroes’s commentary on Plato’s Republic. The transcript consists only of short notes and therefore, to reveal its message, it needs to be interpreted in the context of Strauss’s other writings. Strauss’s interpretation of Averroes is based on the idea that Averroes must have been aware of the incompatibility of Islamic revelation with the best regime of Plato. Unlike other scholars, who are mainly preoccupied with Averroes’s access or lack thereof to a reliable translation of Plato’s Republic, Strauss argues that the deficiencies of Averroes’s commentary do not mean that Averroes did not have access to Plato’s Republic; he claims that such apparent deficiencies might be intentional and significant for understanding Averroes’s views.