Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity also variously known as the Epistles of the Brethren of Sincerity, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Loyal Friends was a large encyclopedia in 52 treatises written by the mysterious Brethren of Purity of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 10th century CE. It had a great influence on later intellectual leading lights of the Muslim world, such as Ibn Arabi, and was transmitted as far abroad within the Muslim world as Al-Andalus. The Encyclopedia contributed to the popularization and legitimization of Platonism in the Islamic world.
The identity and period of the authors of the Encyclopedia have not been conclusively established, though the work has been mostly linked with the Isma'ilis. Syedna Idris Imad al-Din, a prominent Isma'ili missionary in Yemen, credited the authorship of the encyclopedia to Ahmad b. 'Abd Allah b. Muhammad b. Ismail b. Ja'far as-Sadiq, the 9th Isma'ili imaam who lived in occultation in the era of Abbasids, at the beginning of the Islamic Golden Age. Some suggest that besides Ismailism, the Brethren of Purity also contains elements of Sufism, Mu'tazilism, Nusairism, Rosicrucianism, etc.
The subject of the work is vast and ranges from mathematics, music, astronomy, and natural sciences, to ethics, politics, religion, and magic—all compiled for one, basic purpose, that learning is training for the soul and a preparation for its eventual life once freed from the body.
Authorship
Authorship of the Encyclopedia is usually ascribed to the mysterious "Brethren of Purity" a group of Ismaili scholars placed in Basra, Iraq sometime around 10th century CE. While it is generally accepted that it was the group who authored at least the 52 rasa'il, the authorship of the "Summary" is uncertain; it has been ascribed to the later Majriti but this has been disproved by Yves Marquet.Since style of the text is plain, and there are numerous ambiguities, due to language and vocabulary, often of Persian origin, it has been suggested that the authors of the encyclopedia were of Persian descent.
Some philosophers and historians such as Tawhidi, Ibn al-Qifti, Shahrazuri disclosed the names of those allegedly involved in the development of the work: Abu Sulayma Bisti, Muqaddasi, 'Ali ibn Harun, Zanjani, Muahmmad ibn Ahmad Narhruji, 'Awfi. All these people are according to Henry Corbin, Ismailis
Further perplexities abound; the use of pronouns for the authorial "sender" of the rasa'il is not consistent, with the writer occasionally slipping from third person to first-person. This has led some to suggest that the rasa'il were not in fact written co-operatively by a group or consolidated notes from lectures and discussions, but were actually the work of a single person. Of course, if one accepts the longer time spans proposed for the composition of the Encyclopedia, or the simpler possibility that each risala was written by a separate person, sole authorship would be impossible.
Contents
The subject matter of the Rasa'il is vast and ranges from mathematics, music, logic, astronomy, the physical and natural sciences, as well as exploring the nature of the soul and investigating associated matters in ethics, revelation, and spirituality.Its philosophical outlook was Neoplatonic and it tried to integrate Greek philosophy with various astrological, Hermetic, Gnostic and Islamic schools of thought. Scholars have seen Ismaili and Sufi influences in the religious content, and Mu'tazilite acceptance of reasoning in the work. Others, however, hold the Brethren to be "free-thinkers" who transcended sectarian divisions and were not bound by the doctrines of any specific creed.
Their unabashed eclecticism is fairly unusual in this period of Arabic thought, characterised by fierce theological disputes; they refused to condemn rival schools of thought or religions, instead insisting that they be examined fairly and open-mindedly for what truth they may contain:
In total, they cover most of the areas an educated person was expected to understand in that era. The epistles generally increase in abstractness, finally dealing with the Brethren's somewhat pantheistic philosophy, in which each soul is an emanation, a fragment of a universal soul with which it will reunite at death; in turn, the universal soul will reunite with Allah on Doomsday. The epistles are intended to transmit right knowledge, leading to harmony with the universe and happiness.
Organization
Organizationally, it is divided into 52 epistles. The 52 rasa'il are subdivided into four sections, sometimes called books ; in order, they are: 14 on the Mathematical Sciences, 17 on the Natural Sciences, 10 on the Psychological and Rational Sciences, 11 on Theological Sciences.The division into four sections is no accident; the number four held great importance in Neoplatonic numerology, being the first square number and for being even. Reputedly, Pythagoras held that a man's life was divided into four sections, much like a year was divided into four seasons. The Brethren divided mathematics itself into four sections: arithmetic was Pythagoras and Nicomachus' domain; Ptolemy ruled over astronomy with his Almagest; geometry was associated with Euclid, naturally; and the fourth and last division was that of music. The fours did not cease there- the Brethren observed that four was crucial to a decimal system, as ; numbers themselves were broken down into four orders of magnitude: the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands; there were four winds from the four directions ; medicine concerned itself with the four humours, and natural philosophers with the four elements of Empedocles.
Another possibility, suggested by Netton is that the veneration for four stems instead from the Brethren's great interest in the Corpus Hermeticum of Hermes Trismegistus ; that hermetic tradition's magical lore was the main subject of the 51st rasa'il.
Netton mentions that there are suggestions that the 52nd risalah is a later addition to the Encyclopedia, because of intertextual evidence: a number of the rasa'il claim that the total of rasa'il is 51. However, the 52nd risalah itself claims to be number 51 in one area, and number 52 in another, leading to the possibility that the Brethren's attraction for the number 51 is responsible for the confusion. Seyyed Hossein Nasr suggests that the origin of the preference for 17 stemmed from the alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān's numerological symbolism.
Risalat al-Jami'a
Besides the fifty-odd epistles, there exists what claims to be overarching summary of the work, which is not counted in the 52, called "The Summary" which exists in two versions. It has been claimed to have been the work of Majriti, although Netton states Majriti could not have composed it, and that Yves Marquet concludes from a philological analysis of the vocabulary and style in his La Philosophie des Ihwan al-Safa that it had to have been composed at the same time as the main corpus.Style
Like conventional Arabic Islamic works, the Epistles have no lack of time-worn honorifics and quotations from the Qur'an, but the Encyclopedia is also famous for some of the didactic fables it sprinkled throughout the text; a particular one, the "Island of Animals" or the "Debate of Animals", is one of the most popular animal fables in Islam. The fable concerns how 70 men, nearly shipwrecked, discover an island where animals ruled, and began to settle on it. They oppressed and killed the animals, who unused to such harsh treatment, complained to the King of Djinns. The King arranged a series of debates between the humans and various representatives of the animals, such as the nightingale, the bee, and the jackal. The animals nearly defeat the humans, but an Arabian ends the series by pointing out that there was one way in which humans were superior to animals and so worthy of making animals their servants: they were the only ones Allah had offered the chance of eternal life to. The King was convinced by this argument, and granted his judgement to them, but strongly cautioned them that the same Qur'an that supported them also promised them hellfire should they mistreat their animals.Philosophy
More metaphysical were the four ranks, which apparently were an elaboration of Plotinus' triad of Thought, Soul, and the One, known to the Brethren through The Theology of Aristotle ; first, the Creator emanated down to Universal Intellect, then to Universal Soul, and through Prime Matter, which emanated still further down through the mundane hierarchy. The mundane hierarchy consisted of Nature, the Absolute Body, the Sphere, the Four Elements, and the Beings of this world in their three varieties of animals, minerals, and vegetables, for a total hierarchy of nine members. Furthermore, each member increased in subdivisions proportional to how far down in the hierarchy it was, for instance, Sphere, being number seven has the seven planets as its members.Another area in which the Brethren differed was in their conceptions of nature, in which they rejected the emanation of Forms that characterized Platonic philosophy for a quasi-Aristotelian system of substances:
The 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica described the mingling of Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism this way:
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 differently by scholars.In this document some modern day scholars note that “chain of being described by the Ikhwan possess a temporal aspect which has led certain scholars to view that the authors of the Rasai’l believed in the modern theory of evolution”. According to the Rasa’il “But individuals are in perpetual flow; they are neither definite nor preserved. The reason for the conservation of forms, genus and species in matter is fixity of their celestial cause because their efficient cause is the Universal Soul of the spheres instead of the change and continuous flux of individuals which is due to the variability of their cause”. 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 evolution. Both believe that “the time of existence of terrestrial plants precedes that of animals, minerals precede plants, and organism adapt to their environment”, but asserts that everything exists for a purpose.
Muhammad Hamidullah describes the ideas on evolution found in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity as follows:
English translations of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity were available from 1812, hence this work may have had an influence on Charles Darwin and his inception of Darwinism. However Hamidullah's "Darwin was inspired by the Epistles of the Ihkwan al-Safa" theory sounds unlikely as Charles Darwin comes from an evolutionist family with his well-known physician grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, author of the poem The Origin of Society on evolution, was one of the leading Enlightenment evolutionists.
Literature
The 48th epistle of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity features a fictional Arabic narrative. It is an anecdote 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 soul's pre-existence and return from its terrestrial ".Editions and translations
Complete editions of the encyclopedia have been printed at least three times:- Kitāb Ikhwān al-Ṣafā
' - Rasā'il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā
' - Rasā'il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā
'
The first complete Arabic critical edition and fully annotated English translation of the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ with commentaries is being published by a team of experts 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. - Additional volumes have since been published: ‘On Logic’, ‘On Music’, ‘On Magic’ ; 'On Arithmetic and Geometry' ; 'On the Natural Sciences', 'On Geography', 'On Astronomia'.