Brethren of Purity

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Arabic manuscript from the 12th century for Brethren of Purity (Arabic , Ikhwan al-Safa اخوان الصفا)

The Brethren of Purity (Arabic اخوان الصفا Ikhwan al-Safa; also translated as Brethren of Sincerity) were an obscure and mysterious^[1] organization^[2] of Arab^[3] Muslim philosophers in Basra, Iraq - which was then the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate - sometime during the 10th century CE.

Their esoteric teachings and philosophy are expounded in an epistolary style in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (Arabic: Rasa'il Ikhwan al-safa'), a giant compendium of 52 epistles that would greatly influence later encyclopedias. A good deal of Muslim and Western scholarship has been spent on just pinning down the identities of the Brethren and the century they were active in.

[edit] Name

The Arabic "Ikhwan al-Safa" (short for, among many possible transcriptions, "Ikhwan al-Safa wa Khullan al-Wafa wa Ahl al-Hamd wa abna al-Majd", or the "Brethren of Purity, Loyal Friends, People worthy of praise and Sons of Glory") can be translated as either the "Brethren of Purity" or the "Brethren of Sincerity"; various scholars such as Ian Netton prefer "of Purity" because of the group's ascetic impulses towards purity and salvation.

A suggestion made by Goldziher, and later written on by Philip K. Hitti in his History of Arabs, is that the name is taken from a story in Kalilah wa-Dimnah, in which a group of animals, by acting as faithful friends (ikhwan al-safa), escape the snares of the hunter. The story concerns a ring-dove and its companions who get entangled in the net of a hunter seeking birds. Together, they leave themselves and the ensnaring net to a nearby rat, who is gracious enough to gnaw the birds free of the net; impressed by the rat's altruistic deed, a crow becomes the rat's friend. Soon a tortoise and gazelle also join the company of animals. After some time, the gazelle is trapped by another net; with the aid of the others and the good rat, the gazelle is soon freed, but the tortoise fails to leave swiftly enough and is himself captured by the hunter. In the final turn of events, the gazelle repays the tortoise by serving as a decoy and distracting the hunter while the rat and the others free the tortoise. After this, the animals are designated as the "Ikwhan al-Safa".

This story is mentioned as an exemplum when the Brethren speak of mutual aid in one rasa'il, a crucial part of their system of ethics that has been summarized thus:

In this Brotherhood, self is forgotten; all act by the help of each, all rely upon each for succour and advice, and if a Brother sees it will be good for another that he should sacrifice his life for him, he willingly gives it.^[4]

[edit] Meetings

The Brethren regularly met on a fixed schedule. The meetings apparently took place on three evenings of each month: once near the beginning, in which speeches were given, another towards the middle, apparently concerning astronomy and astrology, and the third sometime between the end of the month and the 25th of that month; during the third one, they recited hymns with philosophical content ^[5]. During their meetings and possibly also during the three feasts they held, on the dates of the sun's entry into the Zodiac signs "Ram, Cancer, and Balance"), besides the usual lectures and discussions, they would engage in some manner of liturgy reminiscent of the Harranians ^[6]

[edit] Ranks

Hierarchy was a major theme in their Encyclopedia, and unsurprisingly, the Brethren loosely divided themselves up into four ranks by age; the age guidelines would not have been firm, as for example, such an exemplar of the fourth rank as Jesus would have been too young if the age guidelines were absolute and fixed. Compare the similar division of the Encyclopedia into four sections and the Jabirite symbolism of 4. The ranks were:

1. The "Craftsmen"- a craftsman had to be at least 15 years of age; their honorific was the "pious and compassionate" (al-abrār wa 'l-ruhamā).
2. The "Political Leaders"- a political leader had to be at least 30 years of age; their honorific was the "good and excellent" (al-akhyār wa 'l-fudalā)
3. The "Kings"- a king had to be at least 40 years of age; their honorific was the "excellent and noble" (al-fudalā' al-kirām)
4. The "Prophets and Philosophers"- the most aspired-to, the final and highest rank of the Brethren; to become a Prophet or Philosopher a man had to be at least 50 years old; their honorific compared them to historical luminaries such as Jesus, Socrates, or Muhammad who were also classified as Kings; this rank was the "angelic rank" (al-martabat al-malakiyya). ^[7]

[edit] Identities

There have been a number of theories as to the authors of the Brethren. Among the Isma'ili groups and missionaries who favored the Encyclopedia (as Paul Casanova shows in his 1898 work attempting to date the Brethren), authorship was sometimes ascribed to one or another "Hidden Imam"; this theory is recounted in Ibn al-Qifti's biographical compendium of philosophers and doctors, the "Chronicle of the Learned" (Ahkbār al-Hukamā or Tabaqāt-al-Hukamā).^[8][9][10] Al-Qifti, however, denigrates this account and instead turns to a comment he discovered, written by Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī (d. 1023)^[8] in his Kitāb al-Imtā' wa'l-Mu'ānasa (written between 983 and 985), a collection of seances at the court of Ibn Sa'dān, vizier of the Buyid ruler Samsam ad-Dawla. Apparently, al-Tawhīdī was close to a certain Zaid b. Rifa'a, praising his intellect, ability and deep knowledge - indeed, he had dedicated his Kitāb as-Sadiq was-Sadaqa to Zaid - but he was disappointed that Zaid was not orthodox or consistent in his beliefs, and that he was, as Stern puts it:

...frequenting the society of the heretical authors of the Rasa'il Ikhwan as-Safa, whose names are also recorded as follows: Abu Sulaiman Muhammed b. Ma'shar al-Bisti al-Maqdisi, Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali b. Harun az-Zanjani and Abu Ahmad al-Mihrajani, and al-'Aufi. At-Tauhidi also reports in this connection the opinion expressed by Abu Sulaiman al-Mantiqi, his master, on the Rasa'il and an argument between a certain al-Hariri, another pupil of al-Mantiqi, and Abu Sulaiman al-Maqdisi about the respective roles of Revelation and Philosophy.^[11]

For many years, this was the only account of the authors' identities, but al-Tawhīdī's comments were second-hand evidence and so unsatisfactory. This situation lasted until al-Tawhīdī's Kitāb al-Imtā' wa'l-Mu'ānasa was published in 1942.^[11] This publication substantially supported al-Qifti's work, although al-Qifti apparently toned down the description and prominence of al-Tawhīdī's charges that the Brethren were Batiniyya, an esoteric Ismaili sect and thus heretics, possibly so as to not tar his friend Zaid with the same brush.

Stern derives a further result from the published text of the Kitāb al-Imtā 'wal-Muanasa, pointing out that a story al-Tawhīdī ascribes to a personal meeting with Qādī Abu'l-Hasan 'Alī b. Hārūn az-Zanjāni, the founder of the group, appears in almost identical form in one of the epistles.^[12] While neat, Stern's view of things has been challenged by Tibawi, who points out some assumptions and errors Stern has made, such as the relationship between the story in al-Tawhīdī's work and the Epistles; Tibawi points out the possibility that the story was instead taken from a third, independent and prior source.^[13]

al-Tawhīdī's testimony has also been described as thus:

The last contemporary source comes from the surviving portions of the Kitāb Siwan al-Hikma (c. 950) by Abu Sulaiman al-Mantiqi (al-Tawhīdī's teacher), which was a sort of compendium of biographies; al-Mantiqi is primarily interested in the Brethren's literary techniques of using parables and stories, and so he says only this little before proceeding to give some extracts of the Encyclopedia:

The second near-contemporary record is another comment by Shahzúry or (Shahrazūrī) as recorded in the Tawārikh al-Hukamā or alternatively, the Tawárykh al-Hokamá; specifically, it is from the Nuzhat al-arwah, which is contained in the Tawárykh, which states:

Amusingly, Aloys Sprenger mentions this in a footnote: "Since I wrote the first part of this notice I found one of the authors of these memoirs mentioned in the following terms: 'Zayd b. Rofa, one of the authors of the Ikhwan al safa, was extremely ignorant in tradition, and he was a liar without shame.'" [3]

[edit] See also

• List of Arab scientists and scholars.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• 1998 edition of the The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy; ed. Edward Craig, ISBN 0-415-18709-5
• Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1964). An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines: Conceptions of nature and methods used for its study by the Ihwan Al-Safa, Al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. LCCN 64-13430. 
• Lane-Poole, Stanley (1883). Studies in a Mosque, 1st, Khayat Book & Publishing Company S.A.L. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
• Netton, Ian Richard (1991). Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity, 1st, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0251-8. 
• "The authorship of the Epistles of the Ikhwan-as-Safa", by Samuel Miklos Stern, published by Islamic Culture of Hyderabad in 1947

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Brethren of Sincerity

• Ikhwan al-Safa entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by carmela Baffioni
• Article at the Encyclopedia Britannica
• "Ikhwanus Safa: A Rational and Liberal Approach to Islam" -(by Asghar Ali Engineer)
• Institute of Ismaili Studies article on the Brethren
• Article in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy