Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity

The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (Arabic: sions, but were actually the work of a single person.[19]
) also variously known as the Epistles Of course, if one accepts the longer time spans proposed
of the Brethren of Sincerity, Epistles of the Brethren for the composition of the Encyclopedia, or the simpler
of Purity and Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and possibility that each risala was written by a separate per-
Loyal Friends was a large encyclopedia[1] in 52 treatises son, sole authorship would be impossible.
(ras'il) written by the mysterious[2] Brethren of Purity
of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 10th
century CE (or possibly later, in the 11th century). It
had a great inuence on later intellectual leading lights
2 Contents
of the Muslim world, such as Ibn Arabi,[3][4] and was
transmitted as far abroad within the Muslim world as Al- The subject matter of the Rasa'il is vast and ranges from
Andalus.[5][6] The Encyclopedia contributed to the popu- mathematics, music, logic, astronomy, the physical and
larization and legitimization of Platonism in the Islamic natural sciences, as well as exploring the nature of the soul
world.[7] and investigating associated matters in ethics, revelation,
and spirituality.[9][20]
The identity and period of the authors of the Encyclopedia
have not been conclusively established,[8] though the work Its philosophical outlook was Neoplatonic and it tried to
has been linked with as varied groups as the Isma'ili, Su, integrate Greek philosophy (and especially the dialectical
Sunni, Mu'tazili, Nusairi, Rosicrucians, etc.[9][10][11] reasoning and logic of Aristotelianism) with various
astrological, Hermetic, Gnostic and Islamic schools of
The subject of the work is vast and ranges from mathe- thought. Scholars have seen Ismaili[21] and Su inu-
matics, music, astronomy, and natural sciences, to ethics, ences in the religious content, and Mu'tazilite acceptance
politics, religion, and magicall compiled for one, basic of reasoning in the work.[10] Others, however, hold the
purpose, that learning is training for the soul and a prepa- Brethren to be free-thinkers who transcended sectarian
ration for its eventual life once freed from the body.[12] divisions and were not bound by the doctrines of any spe-
cic creed.[9]
Their unabashed eclecticism[22] is fairly unusual in this
1 Authorship period of Arabic thought, characterised by erce theo-
logical disputes; they refused to condemn rival schools
Main article: Brethren of Purity Identities of thought or religions, instead insisting that they be ex-
amined fairly and open-mindedly for what truth they may
contain:
Authorship of the Encyclopedia is usually ascribed to
the mysterious "Brethren of Purity" a group of schol- In total, they cover most of the areas an educated person
ars placed in Basra, Iraq sometime around 10th century was expected to understand in that era. The epistles (or
CE.[14][15] While it is generally accepted that it was the rasa'il) generally increase in abstractness, nally deal-
group who authored at least the 52 rasa'il,[16] the author- ing with the Brethrens somewhat pantheistic philosophy,
ship of the Summary (al-Risalat al-Jami'a) is uncertain; in which each soul is an emanation, a fragment of a uni-
it has been ascribed to the later Majriti but this has been versal soul with which it will reunite at death;[23] in turn,
disproved by Yves Marquet (see the Risalat al-Jami'a sec- the universal soul will reunite with Allah on Doomsday.
tion). Since style of the text is plain, and there are numer- The epistles are intended to transmit right knowledge,
ous ambiguities, due to language and vocabulary, often of leading to harmony with the universe and happiness.
Persian origin, it has been suggested that the authors of
the encyclopedia were of Persian descent.[17]
Further perplexities abound; the use of pronouns for the
2.1 Organization
authorial sender of the rasa'il is not consistent, with
the writer occasionally slipping from third person to rst- Further information: List of rasa'il in the Encyclopedia
person (for example, in Epistle 44, The Doctrine of the of the Brethren of Purity
Sincere Brethren).[18] This has led some to suggest that
the rasa'il were not in fact written co-operatively by a Organizationally, it is divided into 52 epistles. The 52
group or consolidated notes from lectures and discus- rasa'il are subdivided into four sections, sometimes called

1
2 3 PHILOSOPHY

books (indeed, some complete editions of the Encyclope- 2.2 Style

dia are in four volumes); in order, they are: 14 on the
Mathematical Sciences, 17 on the Natural Sciences, 10 Like conventional Arabic Islamic works, the Epistles
on the Psychological and Rational Sciences, 11 on Theo- have no lack of time-worn honorics and quotations from
logical Sciences.[20] the Qur'an,[24] but the Encyclopedia is also famous for
The division into four sections is no accident; the number some of the didactic fables it sprinkled throughout the
four held great importance in Neoplatonic numerology, text; a particular one, the Island of Animals or the De-
being the rst square number and for being even. Reput- bate of Animals (embedded within the 22nd rasa'il, ti-
edly, Pythagoras held that a mans life was divided into tled On How The Animals and their Kinds are Formed),
four sections, much like a year was divided into four sea- is one of the most popular animal fables in Islam. The fa-
sons. The Brethren divided mathematics itself into four ble concerns how 70 men, nearly shipwrecked, discover
sections: arithmetic was Pythagoras and Nicomachus' do- an island where animals ruled, and began to settle on it.
main; Ptolemy ruled over astronomy with his Almagest; They oppressed and killed the animals, who unused to
geometry was associated with Euclid, naturally; and the such harsh treatment, complained to the King (or Shah)
fourth and last division was that of music. The fours did of Djinns. The King arranged a series of debates between
not cease there- the Brethren observed that four was cru- the humans and various representatives of the animals,
cial to a decimal system, as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 ; numbers such as the nightingale, the bee, and the jackal. The an-
themselves were broken down into four orders of mag- imals nearly defeat the humans, but an Arabian ends the
nitude: the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands; there series by pointing out that there was one way in which hu-
were four winds from the four directions (north, south, mans were superior to animals and so worthy of making
east, west); medicine concerned itself with the four hu- animals their servants: they were the only ones Allah had
mours, and natural philosophers with the four elements oered the chance of eternal life to. The King was con-
of Empedocles. vinced by this argument, and granted his judgement to
them, but strongly cautioned them that the same Qur'an
Another possibility, suggested by Netton is that the ven- that supported them also promised them hellre should
eration for four stems instead from the Brethrens great they mistreat their animals.
interest in the Corpus Hermeticum of Hermes Trismegis-
tus (identied with the god Hermes, to whom the number
four was sacred); that hermetic traditions magical lore
was the main subject of the 51st rasa'il.
3 Philosophy
Netton mentions that there are suggestions that the 52nd
risalah (on talismans and magic) is a later addition to the
More metaphysical were the four ranks (or spiritual
Encyclopedia, because of intertextual evidence: a number
principles), which apparently were an elaboration of
of the rasa'il claim that the total of rasa'il is 51. However,
Plotinus' triad of Thought, Soul, and the One, known to
the 52nd risalah itself claims to be number 51 in one area,
the Brethren through the Theologia of Aristotle (a version
and number 52 in another, leading to the possibility that
of Plotinus Enneads in Arabic, modied with changes
the Brethrens attraction for the number 51 (or 17 times 3;
and paraphrases, and attributed to Aristotle);[25] rst, the
there were 17 rasa'il on natural sciences) is responsible for
Creator (al-Br ) emanated down to Universal Intellect
the confusion. Seyyed Hossein Nasr suggests that the ori-
(al-'Aql al-Kull ), then to Universal Soul (al-Nafs), and
gin of the preference for 17 stemmed from the alchemist
through Prime Matter (al-Hayl al-l), which em-
Jbir ibn Hayyn's numerological symbolism.
anated still further down through (and creating) the mun-
dane hierarchy. The mundane hierarchy consisted of Na-
ture (al-Tab'a), the Absolute Body (al-Jism al-Mutlaq),
the Sphere (al-Falak), the Four Elements (al-Arkn), and
2.1.1 Risalat al-Jami'a the Beings of this world (al-Muwalladt) in their three
varieties of animals, minerals, and vegetables, for a total
hierarchy of nine members. Furthermore, each member
Besides the fty-odd epistles, there exists what claims increased in subdivisions proportional to how far down in
to be overarching summary of the work, which is not the hierarchy it was, for instance, Sphere, being number
counted in the 52, called The Summary (al-Risalat al- seven has the seven planets as its members.
Jami'a) which exists in two versions. The Summary, in-
terestingly enough, has been claimed to have been the Another area in which the Brethren diered was in their
work of Majriti (d. circa 1008), although Netton states conceptions of nature, in which they rejected the emana-
Majriti could not have composed it, and that Yves Mar- tion of Forms that characterized Platonic philosophy for
quet concludes from a philological analysis of the vocab- a quasi-Aristotelian system of substances:
ulary and style in his La Philosophie des Ihwan al-Safa The 14th edition (EB-2:187a; 14th Ed., 1930) of the
(1975) that it had to have been composed at the same Encyclopdia Britannica described the mingling of Neo-
time as the main corpus. platonism and Aristotelianism this way:

3.1 Evolution
The text in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
describes biological diversity in a manner similar to the
modern day theory of evolution. The contexts of such
passages are interpreted dierently by scholars.
In this document some modern day scholars note that
chain of being described by the Ikhwan possess a tempo-
ral aspect which has led certain scholars to view that the
authors of the Rasail believed in the modern theory of
evolution.[30] According to the Rasail But individuals
are in perpetual ow; they are neither denite nor pre-
served. The reason for the conservation of forms, genus
and species in matter is xity of their celestial cause be-
cause their ecient cause is the Universal Soul of the
spheres instead of the change and continuous ux of indi-
viduals which is due to the variability of their cause.[31]
This statement is supporting the concept that species and
individuals are not static, and that when they change it
is due to a new purpose given. In the Ikhwan doctrine
there are similarities between that and the theory of evo-
lution. Both believe that the time of existence of ter-
restrial plants precedes that of animals, minerals precede
plants, and organism adapt to their environment,[32] but
asserts that everything exists for a purpose.
Muhammad Hamidullah describes the ideas on evolution 5 Editions and translations
found in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (The
Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa) as follows: Complete editions of the encyclopedia have been printed
at least three times:[36]
"[These books] state that God rst created
matter and invested it with energy for develop-
ment. Matter, therefore, adopted the form of
vapour which assumed the shape of water in
due time. The next stage of development was
mineral life. Dierent kinds of stones devel-
oped in course of time. Their highest form be-
ing mirjan (coral). It is a stone which has in it
branches like those of a tree. After mineral life
evolves vegetation. The evolution of vegetation
culminates with a tree which bears the quali-
ties of an animal. This is the date-palm. It has
male and female genders. It does not wither if
all its branches are chopped but it dies when the
head is cut o. The date-palm is therefore con-
sidered the highest among the trees and resem-
bles the lowest among animals. Then is born
the lowest of animals. It evolves into an ape.
This is not the statement of Darwin. This is
what Ibn Maskawayh states and this is precisely
what is written in the Epistles of Ikhwan al-
Safa. The Muslim thinkers state that ape then
evolved into a lower kind of a barbarian man.
He then became a superior human being. Man
becomes a saint, a prophet. He evolves into a
higher stage and becomes an angel. The one
higher to angels is indeed none but God. Ev-
erything begins from Him and everything re-
3
turns to Him.[33]
English translations of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren
of Purity were available from 1812, hence this work may
have had an inuence on Charles Darwin and his incep-
tion of Darwinism.[33] However Hamidullahs Darwin
was inspired by the Epistles of the Ihkwan al-Safa theory
sounds unlikely as Charles Darwin comes from an evolu-
tionist family with his well known physician grandfather,
Erasmus Darwin, author of the poem The Origin of So-
ciey on evolution, was one of the leading Enlightenment
evolutionists.[34]
4 Literature
The 48th epistle of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of
Purity features a ctional Arabic narrative. It is an anec-
dote of a prince who strays from his palace during his
wedding feast and, drunk, spends the night in a cemetery,
confusing a corpse with his bride. The story is used as
a gnostic parable of the souls pre-existence and return
from its terrestrial sojourn".[35]
1. Kitb Ikhwn al-af' (edited by Wilayat Husayn,
Bombay 1888)
2. Ras'il Ikhwn al-af' (edited by Khayr al-din al-
Zarkali with introductions by Tha usayn and A-
mad Zak Pasha, in 4 volumes, Cairo 1928)
3. Ras'il Ikhwn al-af' (4 volumes, Beirut: Dr
dir 1957)
The Encyclopedia has been widely translated, appearing
not merely in its original Arabic, but in German, English,
Persian, Turkish, and Hindustani.[4] Although portions of
the Encyclopedia were translated into English as early as
1812, with the Rev. T. Thomasons prose English in-
troduction to Shaikh Ahmad b. Muhammed Shurwan's
Arabic edition of the Debate of Animals published in
Calcutta,[19] a complete translation of the Encyclopedia
into English does not exist as of 2006, although Friedrich
Dieterici (Professor of Arabic in Berlin) translated the
rst 40 of the epistles into German;[37] presumably, the
remainder have since been translated. The Island of
Animals have been translated several times in diering
completion;[38] the fth risalah, on music, has been trans-
lated into English[39] as have the 43rd through the 47th
epistles.[40]
The rst complete Arabic critical edition and fully an-
notated English translation of the Rasail Ikhwan al-Safa
4 7 NOTES
with commentaries is being published by a team of ex-
perts as editors, translators and scholars. This constitutes
a philosophy bi-lingual book series that is published by
Oxford University Press in association with the Institute
of Ismaili Studies in London; and this large scale project
is chaired by the series General Editor Nader El-Bizri.
This book series was initiated by an introductory volume
of studies edited by Nader El-Bizri, which was published
by Oxford University Press in 2008, and followed in 2009
by the voluminous Arabic critical edition and annotated
English translation with commentaries of The Case of the
Animals Versus Man Before the King of the Jinn (Epistle
22). - Additional volumes have since been published: On
Logic (Eps. 10-14; 2010), On Music (Ep. 5; 2010), On
Magic (Ep. 52a; 2011); 'On Arithmetic and Geometry'
(Eps. 1-2; 2012); 'On the Natural Sciences (Eps. 15-21;
2013), 'On Geography' (Ep. 4; 2014), 'On Astronomia'
(Ep. 3; 2015).
6 See also
Magic squares
Socrates
7 Notes
[1] The work only professes to be an epitome, an outline;
its authors lay claim to no originality, they only summa-
rize what others have thought and discovered. What they
do lay claim to is system and completeness. The work
does profess to contain a systematized, harmonious and
co-ordinated view of the universe and life, its origin and
destiny, formed out of many discordant, incoherent views;
and it does claim to be a 'complete account of all things
- to contain, in epitome, all that was known at the time it
was written.
Main article: Ikhwan al-Safa
It refers to more profound and special treatises for fuller
information on the several sciences it touches upon, but
it does claim to touch on all sciences, all departments of
knowledge, and to set forth their leading results. In eect,
it is, by its own showing, a 'hand-encyclopedia of Arabian
philosophy in the tenth century'. It is not easy to exagger-
ate the importance of this encyclopedia. Its value lies in its
completeness, in its systematizing of the results of Persian
study. Stanley Lane-Poole (1883), pages 190, 191.
[2] Having been hidden within the cloak of secrecy from
its very inception, the Rasa'il have provided many points
of contention and have been a constant source of dispute
among both Muslim and Western scholars. The identica-
tion of the authors, or possibly one author, the place and
time of writing and propagation of their works, the na-
ture of the secret brotherhood the outer manifestation of
which comprises the Rasa'il - these and many secondary
questions have remained without answer. Nasr (1964),
pg 25.
[3] It is probable that they have inuenced some of the
most prominent thinkers of Islam, such as al-Ghazzali (d.
1111A.D.) and Ibn al'Arabi (d. 1240 A.D.). van Reijn
(1995), pg. v.
[4] The Rasa'il were widely read by most learned men of
later periods, including Ibn Sina and al-Ghazzali, have
continued to be read up to our own times, and have been
translated into Persian, Turkish, and Hindustani. From
the number of manuscripts present in various libraries in
the Muslim world, it must be considered among the most
popular of Islamic works on learning. Nasr (1964), pg.
36
[5] Van Reijn (1945), pg v
[6] But they produced this enormous encyclopaedia, and um,
everybody read it and we know that it was widely read by
mathematicians in Spain, and by philosophers in Spain.
Most crucially of all, it was read by Muhyi-I-din - ibn-
al-Arabi, er, the most famous Su that Spain produced,
or indeed one of the most famous Sus in the history of
Islamic mysticism - er, he died in 1240. Er, he absorbed a
lot of their ideas and he was in turn read by these ministers
of the Nasrid monarch ibn-al-Khratib, and ibn-al-Zamrak,
both of whom had strong, mystical tendencies. Robert
Irwin; In the Footsteps of Muhammad, transcript of a
BBC program
[7] George Sales observes that this uncreated Qur'an is noth-
ing but its idea or Platonic archetype; it is likely that
al-Ghazali used the idea of archetypes, communicated
to Islam by the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
and by Avicenna to justify the notion of the Mother of
the Book. From On the Cult of Books, Selected Non-
Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges; ed. Eliot Weinberger, trans.
Ester Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Eliot Weinberger;
1999. ISBN 0-670-84947-2. See: Origin and develop-
ment of the Qur'an#"Created vs. uncreated Qur'an for
the concept of the uncreated Qur'an.
[8] Ikhwan as-Safa'. (2007). In Encyclopdia Britannica.
Retrieved April 25, 2007, from Encyclopdia Britannica
Online
[9] Brethren of Purity, Nader El-Bizri, an article in Medieval
Islamic Civilization, an Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 118-119,
Routledge (New York-London, 2006). Retrieved from .
[10] Ibn al-Qifti, giving his own view, considers the Ikhwan as
followers of the school of the Mu'tazilah...Ibn Tamiyah,
the Hanbali jurist, on the other hand, tends towards the
other extreme in relating the Ikhwan to the Nusairis, who
are as far removed from the rationalists as any group to be
found in Islam. Nasr (1964), pg 26.
[11] Isma'ili, Yezidi, Su. The Brethren Of Purity. Re-
trieved 2006-05-17.
[12] Walker, Paul E. EWN AL-AF". In Encyclopdia
Iranica. December 15, 1998.
[13] Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', 4 volumes (Beirut, Dar Sadir,
1957). A complete untranslated edition of the 52 rasa'il.
[14] Ikhwan al-Safa', Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

[15] Not everyone accepts the contemporary evidence that
gives the Brethren as inhabitants of Basra. V. A. Ivanov,
in The Alleged Founders of Ismailism (Bombay, 1946),
says that I would be inclined to think that this was a kind
of camouage story being circulated by the Ismailis to
avoid the book being used as a proof of their orthodoxy.
[sic]". As quoted by Nasr (1964), pg 29.
[16] Unsurprisingly, other authors have been proposed: Be-
tween these two extremes there have been the views ex-
pressed over the centuries that the Rasa'il were written by
'Ali ibn Abi Talib, al-Ghazzali, Hallaj, Imam Ja'far al-
Sadiq, or various Isma'ili da'is, or missionaries." Nasr
(1964), pg 26
[17] Baoni, Carmela. Ikhwn al-Saf", The Stanford Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), First published April 22, 2008; Retrieved
May 12, 2012.
[18] The Prophets and those of the Philosophers who have the
right view...maintain that the body is only a prison of the
soul, or a veil, an intermediary path or an isthmus...The
sages of India called Brahmins cremate the bodies of the
dead, but ignorant and cunning as they are, they do not do
it for the reasons I have given. It would be proper to say
that the term sages applies to only a few among them.
van Reijn (1995), pages 24-25.
[19] Ikhwan as-Safa and their Rasa'il: A Critical Review of
a Century and a Half of Research, by A. L. Tibawi, as
published in volume 2 of The Islamic Quarterly in 1955;
pgs. 28-46
[20] From the introduction of Muslim Neoplatonists: An In-
troduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity, Ian
Richard Netton, 1991. Edinburgh University Press, ISBN
0-7486-0251-8
[21] Some have claimed that the Brethren were Ismaili, though
this may be unlikely because of their very lukewarm em-
brace of the Imamate and other aspects of Ismailian the-
ology, in addition to the lack of solid evidence in favor of
such a hypothesis.
This is not to say that there aren't some sugges-
tive links between the Brethren and the Isma'ili.
Heinz Halm notes in his The cosmology of the pre-
Fatimid Isma'iliyya (as printed in Medieval Isma'ili
History and Thought, ed. Farhad Daftary, 1996,
ISBN 0-521-45140-X) that the Sunni theologian
Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) asserted that the doctrines
of the Brethren were exactly identical to the Is-
mailis in one of his fatwas. Halm further notes
that Paul Casanova had shown that the infamous
Hashshashin had approved of the Encyclopedia and
that their missionaries in Yemen even made use
of it. Other sects apparently drew upon the Ency-
clopedia as well: The theological treatises of the
Tayyibi Ismailis of the Yemen contain ample quo-
tations from the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', and in the
'Uyun al-akhbar by the Yemenite da'i Idris 'Imad
al-Din (d. 1468), Ahmad b. 'Abd Allah b. Muham-
mad b. Isma'il b. Ja'far al-Sadiq, the ninth imam
and the second of the leaders of the Isma'ili da'wa
5
residing in Salamiyya, is explicitly named as the au-
thor as the Rasa'il. (pg 76) Indeed, the respect of
some Ismaili was great indeed, some referring to it
as a Quran after the Quran (Nasr, 1964, pg. 26).
V. A. Ivanov remarks in his The Alleged Founders
of Ismailism (Bombay, 1946), that the work is ac-
cepted by the Isma'ili as belonging to their religion,
and is still regarded as esoteric...
But there are more reasons to reject an identi-
cation of the Brethren with Isma'ili, such as the
failure of Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, an extremely
important Islamic theologian, to make any men-
tion of them. And other authors agree with this:
"...the well-known modern Isma'ili scholar, H. F. al-
Hamdani, although emphasizing the importance of
the Rasa'il in the Isma'ili mission in the Yemen, dis-
claims Isma'ili authorship of the work and instead
attributes the treatises to the 'Alids. (Amusingly,
V. A. Ivanov attributes sponsorship of the work to
the 'Alids enemies, the Fatimids, instead, in his A
Guide to Ismaili Literature, London 1933) From pg
26-27 of Nasr (1964).
From pg 8 of Tibawi: There is sucient evi-
dence in the tracts themselves to prove Isma'ili sym-
pathies. Indeed, such sympathies have long been
pointed out by Muslim authors, medieval and mod-
ern, who tried to turn sympathy into actual rela-
tionship. However, the balance of evidence tends
to show that such relationship was a later develop-
ment. There is as yet no proof that the formation of
Ikhwan as-Safa and the publication of their Rasa'il
was an Isma'ili movement, or even a movement con-
certed with any of the contemporary agitation of
the Shi'a. From page 9: A glaring example of
the Ikhwans independence is their advocacy of the
principle that the oce of imam need not be hered-
itary, for they argue that if the desired good quali-
ties are not found in one single person but scattered
among a group, then the group and not the individ-
ual should be 'the lord of the time and the imam.
More surprising still is the denouncement of the be-
lief in a concealed imam as painful to those who
hold it and the discredit of the signicance of 'num-
ber seven' and those who believe in it as contrary to
the Ikhwans creed.
Compare this extract from one of the later rasa'il
Netton provides on pg 102 of his Muslim Neopla-
tonists: Know, O Brother, that if these qualities are
united simultaneously in one human being, during
one of the cycles of astral conjunctions, then that
person is the Delegate (al-Mab'uth) and the Master
of the Age (Sahib al-Zaman) and the Imam for the
people as long as he lives, If he fullls his mission
and accomplishes his allotted task, advises the com-
munity and records the revelation, codies its inter-
pretation and consolidates the holy law, claries its
method and implements the traditional procedures
and welds the community into one; if he does all that
and then dies and passes away, those qualities will
remain in the community as its heritage. If those
qualities, or most of them, are united in one in his
community, then he is the man suited to be his suc-
cessor in his community after his death. But if it
6 8
does not happen that those qualities are united in
one man, but are scattered among all its members,
and they speak with one voice and their hearts are
united in love for each other, and they cooperate
in supporting the faith, preserving the law and im-
plementing the sunna, and bearing the community
along the path of religion, then their dynasty will
endure in this world and the outcome will be happy
for them in the next.
[22] No one system satised these Brethren. They were too
well acquainted with other creeds, and too well trained in
the logical use of thought, to accept the common ortho-
dox Islam which had contented the desert Arabs. Yet all
other creeds and systems equally appeared open to doubt
or refutation. In this confusion they found their satisfac-
tion in an eclectic theory. All these conicting views, they
said, must be only dierent ways of looking at the same
thing... or These fragments of truth were to be found in
every system of faith and every method of philosophy; if
men failed to detect them, the fault lay in their own imper-
fect intelligence - it was only the skill to read between the
lines that was wanted to build up a harmonious whole out
of the fragments of truth scattered about in sacred books
and the writings of wise men and the mystic doctrines of
saints. Stanley Lane-Poole (1883), pgs. 189, 190.
[23] The world in relation to Allah is like the word in rela-
tion to him who speaks it, like light, or heat or numbers
to the lantern, sun, hearth or the number One. The word,
light, heat and number exist by their respective sources,
but without the sources could neither exist nor persist in
being. The existence of the world is thus determined by
that of Allah... Nasr (1964), pg 54-55 (based on Di-
eterici, Die Lehre von der Weltseele, R., III, 319.)
[24] But in spite of the anthropomorphic image of a Creator
sitting on his Throne and looking down on his creation, the
thought of the Sincere Brethren repeatedly breaks through
the structures of traditional Islamic theology- a fact the nu-
merous Qur'anic quotations (sometimes quite unrelated to
the subject under discussion) barely disguise.... van Reijn
(1945), pg vii
[25] Isma'ilism developed a complex and rich theosophy
which owed a great deal to Neoplatonism. In the 9th
century, Greek-to-Arabic translations proliferated, rst
by the intermediary of Syriac then directly. The version
of Plotinus Enneads possessed by Muslims was modied
with changes and paraphrases; it was wrongly attributed to
Aristotle and called Theologia of Aristotle, since Plotinus
(Flutinus) remained mostly unknown to the Muslims by
name. This latter work played a signicant role in the de-
velopment of Ismailism. From the article at the Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[26] pg 234-235 of vol. 3, Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', 4 volumes
(Beirut, Dar Sadir, 1957)
[27] volume 4, pg 685-688 of the 1998 edition of the The
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy; ed. Edward Craig,
ISBN 0-415-18709-5
[28] pg 41 of vol 1, Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', 4 volumes (Beirut,
Dar Sadir, 1957)
REFERENCES
[29] from page 52 (whose translation is based on Dieterici,
Die Lehre von der Weltseele, p. 15. R., II 4f) of Nasr
(1964).
[30] Nasr (1992) p71: Der Darwinisimuseim X and XI
Jarhhundert (Leipzig, 1878)
[31] See Nasr (1992) p72 wherein the text has been quoted
from Carra
[32] Iqbal, Muzaar Islam and Science (Great Britain: MPG
Books Ltd, 1988) 117
[33] Muhammad Hamidullah and Afzal Iqbal (1993), The
Emergence of Islam: Lectures on the Development of Is-
lamic World-view, Intellectual Tradition and Polity, p.
143-144. Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad.
[34] Zirkle, Conway (April 25, 1941). Natural Selection be-
fore the 'Origin of Species". Proceedings of the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society.
[35] Hamori, Andras (1971), An Allegory from the Arabian
Nights: The City of Brass, Bulletin of the School of Ori-
ental and African Studies, Cambridge University Press, 34
(1): 919 [18], doi:10.1017/S0041977X00141540
[36] 345, Hamdani
[37] Die Philosophie der Araber im zehnten Jahrhundert, F. Di-
eterici, published in Berlin and Leipzig between 1865 and
1872; bibliographic information courtesy of The Epistles
of the Sincere Brethren, by Eric Van Reijn, 1945, Minerva
Press, ISBN 1-85863-418-0
[38] Such as L. E. Goodmans The Case of the Animals Versus
Man Before the King of The Jinn, in Boston 1978
[39] van Reijn (1945) - The epistle on music of the Ikhwan al-
Safa, Amnon Shiloah. Published by Tel-Aviv University,
1978
[40] van Reijn (1995)
8 References
Lane-Poole, Stanley (1883, 1966), Studies in a
Mosque (1st ed.), Beirut (1966): Khayat Book &
Publishing Company S.A.L Check date values in:
|date= (help); based on Dietericis outline and trans-
lations.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1964), An Introduction to Is-
lamic Cosmological Doctrines: Conceptions of nature
and methods used for its study by the Ihwan Al-Safa,
Al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina, Boston, Massachusetts:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, LCCN
64-13430
Van Reijn, Eric (1995), The Epistles of the Sincere
Brethren: an annotated translation of Epistles 43-47,
1 (1st ed.), Minerva Press, ISBN 1-85863-418-0; a
partial translation
 7

Netton, Ian Richard (1991), Muslim Neoplatonists:
An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of
Purity, 1 (1st ed.), Edinburgh, England: Edinburgh
University Press, ISBN 0-7486-0251-8
Ivanov, Valdimir Alekseevich (1946), The Alleged
Founder of Ismailism., The Ismaili Society series,;
no. 1; Variation: Ismaili Society, Bombay.; Ismaili
Society series ;; no. 1., Bombay, Pub. for the Is-
maili Society by Thacker, p. 197, LCCN: 48-3517;
OCLC: 385503
Ikhwan as-Safa and their Rasa'il: A Critical Re-
view of a Century and a Half of Research, by A. L.
Tibawi, published in volume 2 of The Islamic Quar-
terly in 1955
Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', 4, Beirut: Dar Sadir
Johnson-Davies, Denys (1994), The Island of Ani-
mals / Khemir, Sabiha, ; (Illustrator - Ill.), Austin:
University of Texas Press, p. 76, ISBN 0-292-
74035-2
The Institute of Ismaili Studies article on the
Brethren, by Nader El-Bizri
The Institute of Ismaili Studies gallery of images of
manuscripts of the Rasail of the Ikhwan al-Safa
Beastly Colloquies: Of Plagiarism and Pluralism in
Two Medieval Disputations Between Animals and
Men -(by Lourdes Mara Alvarez; a discussion of
the animal fables and later imitators; PDF le)
Pages of Medieval Mideastern History - (by Eloise
Hart; covers various small scholarly groups inuen-
tial in the Arabic world)
Ikhwanus Safa: A Rational and Liberal Approach
to Islam - (by Asghar Ali Engineer)
Mark Swaney on the History of Magic Squares -
(includes a discussion of magic squares and the En-
cyclopedia)

Notices of some copies of the Arabic work enti-

tled Rasyil Ikhwm al-caf"", written by Aloys
Sprenger, originally published by the Journal of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal (in Calcutta) in 1848

Ab ayyan Al-Tawd and The Brethren of Pu-

rity, Abbas Hamdani. International Journal Middle
East Studies, 9 (1978), 345-353

9 Further reading
(French) La philosophie des Ihwan al-Safa' (The
philosophy of the Brethren of Purity), Yves Mar-
quet, 1975. Published in Algiers by the Socit Na-
tionale d'dition et de Diusion

10 External links
Article at Encyclopdia Britannica

Ikhwan al-Safa'". Internet Encyclopedia of Philos-

ophy.

Ikhwn al-Saf - (general encyclopedia-style article)

The Rasail Ikhwan as-Safa

Ikhwan al-Safa by Omar A. Farrukh from A His-

tory of Muslim Philosophy

Review of Yves Marquets La philosophie des Ihwan

al-Safa': de Dieu a l'homme by F. W. Zimmermann

The Classication of the Sciences according to the

Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa'" by Godefroid de Callata
8 11 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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