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. (shrink)

Conceptins of nature and methods used for its study by the Ikwan al-Safa; al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina. Bibliography: p. 287.308. Includes index.

al-Mujallad al-awwal. Fī al-manṭiq -- al-mujallad al-thānī. Fī al-ṭabīʻīyāt -- al-mujallad al-thālith. Fī al-Ilāhīyāt.

Ibn al-Fārid, Muqadimāt fī al-taṣawwuf.--2. Abū al-ʻAlāʼ al-Maʻarrī fī Luzūmiyyātih.--3. Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldūn.--4. al-Ghazālī. 2 v.--5. Ibn Ṭufayl.--6. Ibn Rushd. 2 v.--7. Ikhwān al-Safāʼ--8. al-Kindī.--9. al-Farābī. 2 v.--10. Ibn Sīnā. 2 v.

Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ; philosophy, Islamic.

Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ's Rasāʼil; criticism and interpretation.

Islamic philosophy; Ismailites; doctrines.

Young readers can explore the changing earth they inhabit with this question-and-answer formatted book. In simple conversational style, the Bergers answer question about how rocks are formed, what makes a volcano erupt, and explain that mountains cannot only grow taller, but shorter as well.

Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ ; Islamic philosophy ; Islam -- Doctrines.