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Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity

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The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (also variously known as the Epistles of the Brethren of Sincerity, the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity or Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Loyal Friends; Arabic:رسائل أخوان الصفا و خلان الوفا Rasa'il ikhwan as-safa' wa khillan al-wafa) was a large encyclopedia in 52 treatises (or "rasa'il") written by the mysterious Brethren of Purity of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 900s CE (or possibly later, in the 1000s). 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 (Spain). The Encyclopedia was (among other works) also responsible for bringing and legitimating Platonism to the Arabic world.

The identity and period of the authors of the Encyclopedia have not been conclusively established, though the work has been linked with as varied groups as the Isma'ili, Sufi, Sunni, Mu'tazili, Nusairi, Rosicrucians, etc.

Authorship

Authorship of the Encyclopedia is usually ascribed to the mysterious "Brethren of Purity" (Arabic: Ikhwan al-Safa), a group of Arab 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" (al-Risalat al-Jami'a) is uncertain; it has been ascribed to the later Majriti but this has been disproven by Yves Marquet (see the Risalat al-Jami'a section).

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 (for example, in Epistle 44, "The Doctrine of the Sincere Brethren"). 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 (and especially the dialectical reasoning and logic of Aristotelianism) 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:

...to shun no science, scorn any book, or to cling fanatically to no single creed. For [their] own creed encompasses all the others and comprehends all the sciences generally. This creed is the consideration of all existing things, both sensible and intelligible, from beginning to end, whether hidden or overt, manifest or obscure . . . in so far as they all derive from a single principle, a single cause, a single world, and a single Soul." - (from the Ikhwan al-Safa, or Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity; Rasa'il IV, pg 52)

In total, they cover most of the areas an educated person was expected to understand in that era. The epistles (or "rasa'il") 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 (indeed, some complete editions of the Encyclopedia are in four volumes); 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 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10; numbers themselves were broken down into four orders of magnitude: the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands; there were four winds from the four directions (north, south, east, west); medicine concerned itself with the four humours, and natural philosophers with the four elements of Empedocles. The number of rasa'il was 51 (4 * 12; 12 itself can be seen as 4 * 3 - the last one on talismans and magic probably was somewhat of an after-thought).

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 (identified with the god Hermes, to whom the number four was sacred); that hermetic tradition's magical lore was the main subject of the 51st rasa'il.

Netton mentions that there are suggestions that the 52nd rasa'il is a later addition to the Encyclopedia, because of intertextual evidence: a number of the rasa'ils claim that the total of rasa'ils is 51. However, the 52nd rasa'il 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 (or 17 times 3; there were 17 rasa'ils on natural sciences) is responsible for the confusion. Seyyed Hossein Nasr suggests that the origin of the preference for 17 stemmed from the alchemist Jabir b. Hayyan'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" (Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa') which exists in two versions. The Summary, interestingly enough, has been claimed to have been the work of Majriti (d. circa 1008), although Netton states Majriti could not have composed it, and that Yves Marquet concludes from a philological analysis of the vocabulary and style in hisLa Philosophie des Ihwan al-Safa (1975) 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 Koran, 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" (embedded within the 22nd rasa'il, titled "On How The Animals and their Kinds are Formed"), 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 (or Shah) 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 Koran that supported them also promised them hellfire should they mistreat their animals.

Philosophy

More metaphysical were the four ranks (or "spiritual principles"), which apparently were an elaboration of Plotinus' triad of Thought, Soul, and the One, known to the Brethren through the Theologia of Aristotle (a version of Plotinus' Enneads in Arabic, modified with changes and paraphrases, and attributed to Aristotle) ; first, the Creator (al-Bārī) emanated down to Universal Intellect (al-'Aql al-Kullī), then to Universal Soul (al-Nafs), and through Prime Matter (al-Hayūlā al-Ūlā), which emanated still further down through (and creating) the mundane hierarchy. The mundane hierarchy consisted of Nature (al-Tabī'a), the Absolute Body (al-Jism al-Mutlaq), the Sphere (al-Falak), the Four Elements (al-Arkān), and the Beings of this world (al-Muwalladāt) 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.

The Absolute Body is also a form in Prime Matter as we explained in the Chapter on Matter. Prime Matter is a spiritual form which emanated from the Universal Soul. The Universal Soul also is a spiritual form which emanated from the Universal Intellect which is the first thing the Creator Created."

Not all Pythagorean doctrines were followed, however. The Brethren argued strenuously against transmigration of the soul. Since they refused to accept transmigration, then the Platonic idea that all learning is "remembrance" and that man can never attain to complete knowledge whilst shackled in his body must be false; the Brethren's stance was rather that a person could potentially learn everything worth knowing and avoid the snares and delusion of this sinful world, eventually attaining to Paradise, Allah, and salvation, but unless they studied wise men and wise books - like their encyclopedia, whose sole purpose was to entice men to learn its knowledge and possibly be saved - that possibility would never become an actuality. As Netton writes, "The magpie eclecticism with which they surveyed and utilized elements from the philosophies of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, and religions such as Nestorian Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, was not an early attempt at ecumenism or interfaith dialogue. Their accumulation of knowledge was ordered towards the sublime goal of salvation. To use their own image, they perceived their Brotherhood, to which they invited others, as a "Ship of Salvation" that would float free from the sea of matter; the Ikhwan, with their doctrines of mutual cooperation, asceticism, and righteous living, would reach the gates of Paradise in its care.

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:

Know, O brother, that the scholars have said that all things are of two types, substances and accidents, and that all substances are of one kind and self-existent, while accidents are of nine kinds, present in the substances, and they are attributes of them. But the Creator may not be described as either accident or substance, for He is their Creator and efficient cause.

The first thing which the Creator produced and called into existence is a simple, spiritual, extremely perfect and excellent substance in which the form of all things is contained. This substance is called the Intellect. From this substance proceeds a second one which in hierarchy is below the first and is called the Universal Soul (al-nafs al-kullīyah). From the Universal Soul proceeds another substance which is below the Soul and which is called Original Matter. The latter is transformed into the Absolute Body, that is, into Secondary Matter which has length, width and depth."''

The 14th edition (EB-2:187a; 14th Ed., 1930) of the Encyclopædia Britannica described the mingling of Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism this way:

The materials of the work come chiefly from Aristotle, but they are conceived of in a Platonizing spirit, which places as the bond of all things a universal soul of the world with its partial or fragmentary souls."

Evolution

Muhammad Hamidullah describes the ideas on evolution found in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (The Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa) as follows:

Eloise Hart also describes the evolutionary thought in the work 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.

Translations

The Encyclopedia has been widely translated, appearing not merely in its original Arabic, but in German, English, Persian, Turkish, and Hindustani. Although portions of the Encyclopedia were translated into English as early as 1812, with the Rev. T. Thomason's prose English introduction to Shaikh Ahmad b. Muhammed Shurwan's Arabic edition of the "Debate of Animals" published in Calcutta translated excerpt, a complete translation of the Encyclopedia into English does not exist as of 2006, although Friedrich Dieterici (Professor of Arabic in Berlin) translated the first 40 of the epistles into German; presumably, the remainder have since been translated. The "Island of Animals" have been translated several times in differing completion; the fifth rasa'il, on music, has been translated into English as have the 43rd through the 47th epistles .

See also

  • The Koran - (in most studies and this article, the Greek base of the Encyclopedia is emphasized; but the foundation of the Brethren's beliefs and writings is still fundamentally Islamic and deeply Koranic)
  • Magic squares - (apparently within the Ikhwan was recorded the first nine magic squares, including the first known example of a 6 by 6 magic square)
  • Socrates - (The Brethren venerated Socrates' stoic self-sacrifice)

References