Brothers of Safa and Khalan Al-Wafa They are a group of Muslim philosophers from the people of the third century AH and the tenth century AD in Basra. They united to reconcile Islamic beliefs with the philosophical truths known in that era, so they wrote fifty articles about it, which they called “Masterpieces of the Ikhwan al-Safa.” There is another book written by the wise Al-Majriti Al-Qurtubi, who died in the year 3955 AH, which he placed on The style of the masterpiece of the Ikhwan al-Safa and he called it “Epistlees of the Ikhwan al-Safa”.
The Ikhwan al-Safa group emerged under the influence of the thought of the Ismaili school of thought in Basra in the second half of the fourth century AH. The interests of this group were diverse and extended from science and mathematics to astronomy and politics. They wrote their philosophy through 52 famous treatises that became famous even in Andalusia. Some consider these letters to be an encyclopedia of philosophical sciences. It was the goal
The Ikhwan al-Safa were influenced by Greek, Persian, and Indian philosophy, and they took from each sect to one side, but they were not influenced at all by the thought of al-Kindi. They shared with the thought of al-Farabi and the Ismailis on the point of the heavenly origin of souls and their return to God. Their idea of the origin of the universe was that it begins with God, then to the mind, then to the soul, then to matter. First, then bodies, spheres, elements, minerals, plants, and animals. The human soul – from their point of view – was part of the total soul, which in turn will return to God again on the Day of Resurrection. Death according to the Brothers of Purity is called the “lesser resurrection,” while the return of the total soul to God is called the “greater resurrection.” [2]. The Ikhwan al-Safa were convinced that the common goal between different religions and philosophies is for the soul to resemble God as much as a person is capable of.[3].
The writings of the Ikhwan al-Safa were and still are a source of disagreement among Islamic scholars. The controversy included questions about the group’s sectarian affiliation. Some considered them followers of the Mu’tazili school, others considered them a product of the mystical school, and others went so far as to describe them as atheism and heresy. [4] But the Ikhwan al-Safa themselves divided membership in their movement into 4 ranks [5]:
- Those who possess the purity of the essence of their souls, the quality of acceptance, and the speed of imagination. The member must not be less than fifteen years old. They are called the righteous and the merciful, and they belong to the class of craftsmen.
- Those who have compassion and mercy for the brothers. Its members are aged thirty and above. They are called the virtuous good people, and their class is those with policies.
- Those who have the ability to repel stubbornness and disagreement with gentleness and gentleness that lead to reforming it. These people represent the legal power that comes after a person reaches forty years of age, and they are called the Noble Virtues, and they are kings and sultans.
- The highest level is submission, acceptance of support, and witnessing the truth firsthand. It is the power of ownership that comes after reaching fifty years of age, and it is the prelude to ascension to the Kingdom of Heaven. And to it belong the prophets [5]
During the Rashidun era, the Arabs were closed off to philosophy and science, as they were concerned with invasions until the Umayyad era came. It also seems that they did not adapt to the new world, as everything that was written during their era and after them were writings between two parties, each praising itself and cursing the other, until the Abbasid era came, where They began to translate Greek books from Syriac into Arabic on medicine and philosophy, and many elements became passionate about Greek philosophy. Abu Jaafar al-Mansur sponsored a class of translators who contributed to transmitting the Greek intellectual heritage. This movement continued during the reign of Harun al-Rashid, and reached its peak during the reign of al-Ma’mun, when the House of Wisdom was established in Baghdad. As a result of this intellectual openness, in part of the Abbasid era, Muslim thinkers emerged seeking to reconcile the Islamic religion and Greek philosophy, the most famous of whom were Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Sina. These efforts in philosophical research developed into a collective development, represented by the emergence of a group known as (The Brothers of Purity and Khalan al-Wafa), which became famous for compiling a collection of treatises in various branches of philosophy and human sciences. These messages have been very popular throughout the Islamic world.
What is established is that the Ikhwan al-Safa’ appeared, as Ibn al-Taqtaqi mentions in his book (Al-Fakhri fi Al-Adab Al-Sultaniyya), when “the conditions of the caliphate were disturbed, and it had no splendor or ministry left. The Buyids took possession of it, and the ministry was theirs and the affairs were theirs,” and the Buyids who took control of Iraq were Shiites who They followed the Zaidi doctrine, and it is one of the sects closest to the views of the Sunni doctrine, because it does not believe that the imamate is limited to the lineage of Imam Hussein bin Ali, nor does it share with other Shiite sects in vilifying the caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar, and Uthman, or slandering the companions who did not pledge allegiance to the Imam. Ali to the caliphate after the death of the Prophet. For this reason, it can be said that they are Shiites, and they are either Ismailis or Twelvers, and most likely of the Zaidi school of thought, because there is a touch of Shiism in their messages, but at the same time they go outside the boundaries of all Islamic sects in thought and belief, as they have their own eclectic thought. They combine many religious beliefs and intellectual schools of thought, and their owners seek to gather the wisdom of all nations and religions. Their doctrine, according to their expression in Epistle 45 (it embraces all the doctrines, and combines all the sciences, and that is that it is looking at all of the entire beings, sensory and rational, from their beginning to their end, their apparent and their hidden, their obvious and their hidden, with the eye of truth, in that they are all one principle, and one cause, And one world). This selective, conciliatory view is particularly evident in the Ikhwan’s definition of the merits of the perfect human being, which they found in (the knowledgeable, virtuous scholar, the intelligent, discerning person, the Persian of lineage, the Arab of religion, the Hanafi school of thought, the Iraqi of manners, the Hebrew of knowledge, the Christian of method, the Levantine asceticism, the Greek of sciences, the Indian. Insight, Sufi biography as in the message.
The goal of the Ikhwan al-Safa was to bring religion and philosophy closer together, in an era in which it was believed that religion and philosophy were incompatible, as it was said (whoever makes sense has become a heretic). Therefore, they defined the philosopher as the wise, and that philosophy is imitation of God to the extent of human ability, and by citing the sayings of philosophers, such as Socrates. And Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras and others, which flow into the one flowing river of wisdom, in accordance with the sayings of all the prophets, which underestimated the matter of the body and called for the salvation of the soul from the captivity of nature and the ocean of the ocean through sciences, the first of which is man’s knowledge of himself, then his knowledge of the truths of things.
They have confirmed that their knowledge that they presented in the letters are keys to knowledge, and we should not stop there, but rather advance in the ladder of ascension to the final royal state, and this is what they say (Can you, my brother, do what the people did so that the spirit can be breathed into you, and it will go away from you?) Blame, until you see only Jesus on the right side of the throne of the Lord, as his resting place is approached, just as a father’s son is approached, or you see the onlookers around him, or are you able to emerge from the darkness of Ahriman until you see Al-Yazdan from which the light has shone in the expanse of Efrihun, or are you able to enter?
To the structure of Adimon until you see the spheres woven by Plato, but they are spiritual spheres, not what the astrologers indicate. This is because God’s knowledge is encompassed by the intelligible things that the mind contains, and the mind is surrounded by the forms that the soul contains, and the soul is surrounded by the beings that nature contains, and nature is encompassed by what it contains. The material is one of the artifacts, so it is spiritual spheres, some of which are oceans
The Brotherhood of Purity worked in secret. Perhaps Ibn al-Muqaffa was one of them. In “Kalila and Dimna,” where King Dabishlim addresses Bidba the Philosopher at the beginning of the story “The Encircled Dove,” he says to him, “…tell me, if you see, about the Brothers of Purity, how they begin to communicate and listen to each other.” “. The philosopher replies, “The wise man does not do anything justly with the brothers, for the brothers are the helpers in all good things, and the comforters when evil comes on their behalf.”
Researchers in all ages have been confused about the issue of who the Ikhwan al-Safa were, so they resorted to intuition and guesswork to find out the authors of those anonymous letters. Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi reveals the names of five of the authors of these letters in his book “Enjoyment and Sociability,” a book that includes accounts of thirty-seven nights that al-Tawhidi spent conversing with the minister, Abu Abdullah al-Arid. The mention of the Ikhwan al-Safa comes on the seventeenth night, when the vizier asks about Zaid bin Rifa’ah and his doctrine, and the writer answers.
- “There is a predominant intelligence, a guiding mind, a present alertness, vigorous wings, and breadth in the arts of poetry and prose, with skillful writing in arithmetic and eloquence, memorizing people’s days, listening to articles, insight into opinions and religions, and mastery of every art… He resided in Basra for a long time, He encountered a group of types of science and types of industry. Among them are Abu Suleiman Muhammad bin Ma’shar al-Baysti, known as al-Maqdisi, Abu al-Hasan Ali bin Harun al-Zanjani, Abu Ahmad al-Mahrajani, al-Awfi, and others. He accompanied and served them. This group had formed into a group of ten, and were united in friendship, and had united on sanctity, purity, and sincerity. They established among themselves a doctrine that they claimed brought the way closer to winning God’s pleasure and arriving at His Paradise. This was because they said: The Sharia had been defiled by ignorance and mixed with misguidance. There is no way to wash and purify it except through philosophy, because it contains doctrinal wisdom and diligent interest.”
The Ikhwan al-Safa movement was a humanitarian turning point that occurred on the land of Iraq, as despite the defeats that befell it, it was the first in the world to devise the wheel, the laws, the city government, and then the cuneiform writing, which was the first non-pictorial writing, and with it the recording of history began. In Baghdad, the first revolution in the world was in medicine. As for the Ikhwan al-Safa movement, it was an outburst of Greek philosophy and free thought. It was one of Iraq’s pushes toward history.
Several editions of the Epistles of the Brotherhood of Purity and Khalan al-Wafa were published, the first in the year 1812 in Calcutta (India), followed by important editions written in German by the orientalist Friedrich Dieterich in the period between 1861 and 1872. As for the first verified and complete copy of the Letters of the Ikhwan al-Safa’, it was printed in four volumes (Nukhbat al-Akhbar Press) from 1887 to 1889 in Bombay (India), edited by Wilayat Husayn. After that, the Cairo edition was published in 1928 (the Arab Press in Egypt), edited by Khair al-Din al-Zirkali and presented by the dean of Arabic literature: Taha Hussein, in addition to an introduction written by Ahmed Zaki Pasha.
The most widely circulated edition among specialists in studying the legacy of the Brotherhood of Purity dates back to the texts of the letters edited by Boutros Boustani and published by Sader in Beirut in the year 1957. There is also an edition edited by Arif Tamer and issued by Oweidat Publications in Beirut in the year 19955. It should also be noted in this context. All currently available editions (i.e. until late 2008) of the Ikhwan al-Safa’ messages have not been critically examined in that they do not highlight the manuscripts that were relied upon to present the contents of the text of the letters, the plurality of their meanings, and the differences in their formulations.
In view of this situation, researcher Nader Al-Bizri developed an academic project that includes a working team of professors specialized in researching the history of science and philosophy among the Arabs, in order to issue the Epistles of the Brotherhood of Purity in a critically and scientifically reviewed edition, based on a group of ancient manuscripts, most of which are preserved in the ancient libraries and museums of Istanbul.
In addition, the first complete English translation of this scientific legacy is added. This project was adopted by the prestigious publishing house of the University of Oxford (Oxford University Press) in Britain in cooperation with the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London through a scientific series (titled Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). The first volume of this series was published in the year 2008 from a rare investigation. Al-Bizri (titled The Ikhwan al-Safa’ and their Rasa’ill).
The declaration of this movement is “to come together to seek the happiness of the soul through sciences that purify the soul.” Among the famous names in this movement were Abu Suleiman Muhammad bin Mushir al-Basti, known as al-Maqdisi, and Abu al-Hasan Ali bin Harun al-Zanjani. [1].