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Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The Ikhwan al-Safa' and their Rasa'il
An Introduction
Edited by Nader El-Bizri
324 pages
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234x156mm
978-0-19-955724-0
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Hardback
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04 December 2008
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- Inaugural volume of a landmark scholarly project
- The Epistles is a classic work of medieval Islamic learning
- Future volumes will present the first Arabic critical edition and complete annotated English translation
- Of broad interdisciplinary interest in medieval studies as well as Islamic intellectual history
- Eminent international line-up of contributors
Ikhwan al-Safa' (The Brethren of Purity) were the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity of lettered urbanites that was principally based in Basra and Baghdad. This brotherhood occupied a prominent station in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia: Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa' (The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contained fifty-two epistles that offered synoptic explications of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age. Divided into four classificatory parts, it treated themes in mathematics, logic, natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics
and theology, in addition to moral and didactic fables. The Ikhwan were learned compilers of scientific and philosophical knowledge, and their Rasa'il constituted a paradigmatic legacy in the canonization of philosophy and the sciences in mediaeval Islamic civilization.
This present volume gathers studies by leading philosophers, historians and scholars of Islamic Studies, who are also the editors and translators of the first Arabic critical editions and first complete annotated English translations of the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', which will be published in the OUP Series that this present volume initiates, as well as being members of the Editorial Board.
The chapters of this present volume explore the conceptual and historical aspects of the
philosophical and scientific contents of the Rasa'il and their classification, as well as investigating the authorship and dating of this corpus and the impact that the Ikhwan's intellectual tradition exercised in the unfolding of the history of ideas in Islam.Readership: Students and scholars in the domains of philosophy, history of science, Islamic Studies, history of ideas in Mediaeval Islamic civilization, classics, and theology.
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Edited by Nader El-Bizri, The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London Contributors:
Farhad Daftary, The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London
Nader El-Bizri, The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London
Ismail K. Poonawala, University of California
Godefroid de Callataÿ, Université Catholique de Louvain
Abbas Hamdani, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Carmela Baffioni, The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London
Ian Richard Netton, University of Leeds
Yahya J. Michot, University of Oxford
Owen Wright, School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London
Lenn E. Goodman, Vanderbilt University
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Farhad Daftary: FOREWORD
Nader El-Bizri: PROLOGUE
1: Ismail K. Poonawala: Why We Need an Arabic Critical Edition with an Annotated English Translation of the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa'
2: Godefroid de Catallay: The Classification of Knowledge in the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa'
3: Abbas Hamdani: The Arrangement of the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa' and the Problem of Interpolations [with a Postscript]
4: Carmela Baffioni: The Scope of the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa'
5: Ian Richard Netton: The Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa' in the History of Ideas in Islam
6: Yahya J. Michot: 'Misled and Misleading' ... 'Yet Central in their Intellectual Influence!' Ibn Taymiyya's Views on Ikhwan al-Safa'
7: Nader El-Bizri: Epistolary Prolegomena: On Arithmetic and Geometry
8: Owen Wright: Music and Musicology in the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa'
9: Lenn E. Goodman: Reading The Case of the Animals versus Man: Fable and Philosophy in the Essays of the Ikhwan al-Safa'
CONTRIBUTORS
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