The Ikhwan al-Safa’ - the ‘‘Brethren of Purity’’ - are the authors of the most complete medieval encyclopedia of sciences, at least two centuries before the best-known encyclopedias in the Latin world by Alexander Neckham, Thomas de Cantimpre, Vincent de Beauvais, and Bartholomaeus Anglicus. It is a collection of 52 treatises or epistles in Arabic, divided into four sections - propaedeutical, natural, psycho-rational and metaphysical-theological sciences; two additional Epistles, the ‘‘Comprehensive’’ and the ‘‘Supercomprehensive’’ complete the work.
The literary scholar Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (d. 1023), following his master Abti Sulayman al-Sijistani al-Mantiqi (d. 985 c.), and the Mu'tazilite theologian ‘Abd al-Jabbar al-Hamadhani (d. 1025) identify as the authors of the encyclopedia the qadf (‘‘judge’’) Abti l-Hasan al-Zanjani and his friends Abu Sulayman al-Busti, called al-Maqdisi, Abui Ahmad al-Nahrajuiri and al-‘Awfi, all from Basra and linked to the Chancellery secretary Zayd b. Rifii‘a. According to Ignaz Goldziher, their common denomination as Ikhwan al-Safa’ could have been borrowed from the famous Indo-Persian collection of fables Kalila wa-Dimna to indicate a group of loyal friends. The most convincing hypothesis, however, relates it to the contents and goals of the encyclopedia - knowledge as a means of purification and salvation.
It is now assumed that the encyclopedia was assembled between CE 840 and about CE 980. But the questions of the identity and ideology of the Ikhwan al-Safli’ still remain unsolved. Their link with the Shi‘a is widely recognized - the history of early Islam and politics are also approached from a Shi'ite perspective - and the scholars Corbin, Marquet, and Baffioni have related them to Isma'ilism, the radical branch of Shl'ism. The tradition ascribes the Comprehensive and Supercomprehensive Epistles to Ahmad, the second of the three ‘‘veiled’’ Imams who came between Muhammad b. Isma'ili, the appointed successor of Ja‘far al-Sadiq according to the Shl‘a, and ‘Abdallah/‘Ubaydallah al-Mahdl (d. 934), the founder of the Fatimid dynasty in 909. In spite of scattered negative references to the ‘‘hidden’’ Imam (at different periods of its history, the Shl‘a introduced the idea of an Imam in concealment who, though withdrawn by God from the eyes of men, continues to live miraculously on earth to fulfil the essential functions of the Imamate), several Isma'ili elements can be found, for example the hierarchical structure of the universe and of ‘‘teaching,’’ references to septenary cycles and the distinction between the elect and the masses. But some non-Isma'ili ideas such as the invitation to celibacy proper to Sufism and the mention of feasts linked to Saibian rituals are also recognizable in the encyclopedia.
In 1150, the Sunni caliph al-Mustanjid sent the work to be burnt. Yet it survived and was translated into Persian and Turkish. Isma'ilis have quoted extensively from the encyclopedia since the twelfth century, but testimonies from the eleventh century such as that of the Persian philosopher and writer Nasir-i Khusraw, who copied large parts of the encyclopedia, have recently been identified as proof of much earlier diffusion of the work in Isma'ili circles and hence of the Isma'ili commitment of the authors.
World History
