The Risāla al-Jāmiʿa (‘The Comprehensive Epistle’), attributed to the anonymous Ikhwān al-ṢafāʾFrom Arabic, lit. ‘Brethren of Purity’, a group of learned scholars who were based in Basra and Baghdad around the last quarter of the t10th century CE. It is more…, is an important document in the history of philosophy, sciences, and religious thought in medieval Islamic civilization. Also known as ‘The Crown of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity’, it represents the culmination of those 52 Epistles which constitute the oldest mediaeval encyclopaedia of sciences, thought to date from the 10th century. Yet, while following the main themes and four classificatory sections of the Rasāʾil, the Jāmiʿa distils rather than summarizes the content, delving further into esoteric topics and adopting a more distinctly Ismaili position. In support of their doctrine, the Ikhwān marshal rational and textual evidence based on the Qurʾan and scripture on the one hand and the works of Hellenic as well as Islamic philosophers on the other.
The present volume consists of Chapters 1–63 of the first half of the Jāmiʿa, covering mainly the first section of the Rasāʾil (Riyāḍiyya taʿlīmiyya, Propaedeutical–mathematical sciences) and including also an extended discussion on good and evil. This new critical edition draws on 20 manuscripts to establish a more reliable edition of the Arabic text. Translated here for the first time into English and copiously annotated, the work is elucidated by technical and analytical introductions.
Foreword, Nader El-Bizri
Introductions and Translation
Editor’s Introduction, Mourad Kacimi
Technical Introduction, Mourad Kacimi
General Introduction, Carmela Baffioni
The Comprehensive Epistle, Chapters 1-63, tr. Carmela Baffioni
Bibliography
Index of Qur’anic citations
Index of Epistles
Subject Index
Arabic Part
al-Risāla al-Jāmiʿa, Chapters 1–63, ed. Mourad Kacimi
Index of Qur’anic citations
Carmela Baffioni is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, having previously been Professor of the History of Islamic Philosophy and Professor of the History of Muslim Philosophies and Sciences at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ until 2012. Professor Baffioni is also a member of the Academia Europaea, the Accademia Ambrosiana, the Academie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences and the Accademia dei Lincei.
Mourad Kacimi is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication at the University of Valencia. He was awarded a doctorate in Arab and Islamic Studies from the University of Alicante in 2015. In 2012, he published the first monograph on the medieval Catalan novel Història de Jacob Xalabín. He is the author of studies and translations of Arabic historical, literary, and philosophical texts, which span Islamic thought and science, Arab-Islamic cultural traditions, medieval Arab-Islamic history, and Arabic literature (medieval and contemporary). He has also published various articles and book chapters on his current area of focus, the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ).