Ikhwan al-Safa

Who Were the Ikhwan al-Safa’?

The identity of the Ikhwan al-Safa’ remains partially mysterious — they were a secret society, and secrecy was both their method and their subject. What is known comes from the Rasa’il themselves, the biographical tradition, and historical references:

The classical attribution: The later Islamic bibliographic tradition attributes the Rasa’il to five individuals: Abu Sulayman Muhammad ibn Ma’shar al-Busti (called al-Maqidisi), Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Harun al-Zanjani, Abu Ahmad al-Mihrajani, al-‘Awfi, and Zayd ibn Rifa’a. However, the actual authorship and the connection between these names and the Rasa’il’s content remain disputed.

The Ismaili connection: The strongest scholarly consensus is that the Ikhwan al-Safa’ were connected to the Ismaili movement — possibly operating as the intellectual vanguard of the Fatimid da’wa in the 10th century. The Rasa’il’s cosmological framework, their emphasis on batin interpretation, their hierarchical structure of knowledge, and their political theology all align closely with Ismaili doctrine.

The secrecy: The Ikhwan operated under taqiyya (precautionary concealment) — their philosophical and theological positions were potentially dangerous in the Abbasid caliphate. The Rasa’il repeatedly urge the reader to share their content only with those who are ready to receive it, reflecting the esoteric da’wa’s pedagogical practice.

The date: The Rasa’il are generally dated to the second half of the 10th century CE — contemporary with the Fatimid Caliphate’s peak power (the Fatimid conquest of Egypt was in 969 CE).

The Structure of the Rasa’il

The 52 epistles (rasa’il) are organized in four groups:

Group 1: Mathematical Sciences (14 epistles)

Mathematics, geometry, astronomy, music, logic. But these are not merely technical — they are philosophical: the Ikhwan’s Pythagorean inheritance means that numbers are not merely abstract quantities but cosmic principles. The study of mathematics is the study of how the divine’s order is expressed in measurable form.

Epistle 1 (Number): Number is not merely a counting tool but the principle of all order in creation — reflecting the divine’s unity (wahid) as the source of all multiplicity.

Epistle 5 (Music): Music is the mathematical principle of harmony applied in time — and harmonious sound has direct effects on the soul. The soul’s response to music is evidence of the soul’s own mathematical (harmonic) nature.

Group 2: Natural Sciences (17 epistles)

Matter, form, meteorology, minerals, plants, animals, the human body. The natural sciences are studied not for their own sake but as revelations of the divine’s creative wisdom in the material world.

Epistle 22 (Animals): The famous “Case of the Animals versus Man” — an extended allegory in which animals take the human race to trial before a divine judge, claiming that humans treat them unjustly. The animals’ arguments against human exceptionalism are answered only when a Mu’min (a true believer) demonstrates the human’s unique spiritual capacity. This epistle is among the most celebrated in Arabic literary history.

Group 3: Psychological and Rational Sciences (10 epistles)

The soul, intellect, the prophetic tradition, cosmology, the divine’s action in creation.

Epistle 33 (The Intellect): The ‘Aql (Intellect) in its various levels — from the divine Intellect through the Universal Intellect, the Universal Soul, to the particular human intellect. This epistle is the cosmological core of the Rasa’il.

Epistle 38 (The World-Soul): The Nafs al-Kulliyya (Universal Soul) and its relationship to the cosmos — the source of all natural processes and the medium through which the divine’s creative action reaches the material world.

Group 4: Theological and Nomic Sciences (11 epistles)

Beliefs (i’tiqadat), religious practices (‘ibadat), the da’wa and its spiritual hierarchy, the nature of the soul’s return, and the divine’s absolute unity.

Epistle 52 (Magic and the Spiritual Sciences): The culminating epistle — the nature of the soul’s final return to the divine through the purification achieved by knowledge and practice.

The Cosmological Framework of the Rasa’il

The Ikhwan’s cosmology is a synthesis of Neoplatonic emanation theory and Islamic theology:

The Absolute One (al-Wahid al-Haqq): The divine’s ultimate reality — beyond all predication, all categories, all names. The divine is not “existent” in any way that applies to created things; the divine is the source of existence without itself being an instance of existence.

The First Intellect (al-‘Aql al-Awwal): The first emanation from the Absolute One — perfect, complete, the first being. Corresponds to the divine’s creative command (amr). The First Intellect contains all the forms (suwar) of what will come into existence.

The Universal Soul (al-Nafs al-Kulliyya): Emanating from the First Intellect, the Universal Soul is the principle of life, motion, and generation in the cosmos. It is the source of time, the generator of the physical cosmos.

Primary Matter and Form: From the Universal Soul’s action, prime matter and the forms that organize matter come into being — producing the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) and ultimately all physical reality.

The Human Being: The human being is the microcosm (‘alam saghir) — containing within themselves all levels of creation, from the mineral through the plant and animal to the rational soul. This makes the human being the cosmos in miniature, and knowledge of oneself is therefore knowledge of the cosmos.

“Whoever knows themselves, knows their Lord.” — The famous hadith (whose authenticity is debated) captures the Ikhwan’s principle: the human soul’s journey of self-knowledge is simultaneously the journey toward the divine.

The Ikhwan’s Educational Vision

The Rasa’il represent a specific philosophy of education:

The purification of the soul through knowledge: The Ikhwan teach that knowledge (‘ilm) purifies the soul — not any kind of knowledge, but the systematic understanding of creation from its lowest (material) to its highest (divine) levels. A person who genuinely understands the cosmos understands their place in it, understands what they must do, and understands what the divine is.

The sequence of education: The Rasa’il are arranged in a specific sequence — mathematical sciences first, then natural sciences, then psychological sciences, then theological sciences — because this is the sequence in which the soul’s capacity expands. You cannot understand the soul before understanding the body; you cannot understand cosmology before understanding the soul; you cannot understand the divine before understanding the cosmos.

The Brothers and Sisters: The Ikhwan were a network — people who had committed to the same path of philosophical purification and mutual support. They called each other “brother” and “sister” because the bond of shared knowledge was, for them, a bond closer than biological family.

The three knowledges: The Ikhwan distinguish three types of people:

Those who have knowledge of the zahir (the outer) only — the general population
Those who have knowledge of both zahir and batin — the philosophical and spiritual elite
Those who have been spiritually purified and have experienced direct knowledge (kashf) — the most advanced

This three-tier structure is recognizably the same as the zahir-batin-haqiqah structure of Ismaili theology.

The Animal Trial: A Literary Masterpiece

The 22nd epistle — “The Case of the Animals versus Man” (Risalat al-Hayawan) — is among the most widely celebrated texts in classical Arabic literature.

The premise: The animals of the world petition a divine king (malik) against the humans who have enslaved and mistreated them. The animals argue that humans, despite claiming superiority, are actually less virtuous in many respects:

Lions: “We never kill more than we need”
Bee: “We labor in perfect community without greed”
Dog: “We have more loyalty than most humans”
Donkey: “We bear burdens without complaint while being treated poorly”

The human response: A series of human representatives argue for human superiority based on reason, religion, and spiritual capacity.

The resolution: The divine judge finds in favor of the animals’ complaint — humans have indeed mistreated them — but finds in favor of the human claim to superiority based on their unique spiritual capacity: the human being is the only creature capable of genuine ta’wil, of understanding the divine’s signs, and of spiritual ascent to the divine.

The Ismaili reading: The Mu’min who finally answers the animals’ argument on behalf of humanity is specifically a mu’min — a believer with walayah. The human’s unique capacity is not mere intellect (which is also possessed in various forms by animals) but the ‘aql al-batin — the inner intellect illuminated by the Imam’s ta’wil. Without this, humans have no genuine superiority to the animals.

Influence on Ismaili and Islamic Thought

The Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ had an enormous influence on subsequent Islamic intellectual life:

Direct Ismaili influence: The Rasa’il were read and studied within the Ismaili da’wa tradition. The cosmological framework of the Rasa’il is recognizably the same as the one found in the works of Nasir-i Khusraw (11th century), the most sophisticated Ismaili philosopher-poet, whose Wajh-i Din (Face of Religion) and Jami’ al-Hikmatayn (Unification of the Two Wisdoms) draw extensively on the Rasa’il’s framework.

Broader Islamic philosophy: The Rasa’il were read by thinkers across the Islamic world — from al-Ghazali (who criticized some of their ideas) to Ibn Rushd (Averroes), from Persian Sufi thinkers to the Ottoman encyclopedists. They represent a high-water mark of what is sometimes called the “falsafa” tradition — the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Islamic theology.

Al-Kindi and al-Farabi: The Ikhwan built on the work of the earlier Islamic philosophers al-Kindi (d. 873) and al-Farabi (d. 950) in synthesizing Neoplatonism with Islamic theology.

The Rasa’il’s Ethics: What Should We Do?

The Ikhwan’s ethics flow directly from their cosmology:

The purpose of human life: The soul came from the higher world (the First Intellect’s realm of pure forms) and descended into the material world. Its purpose is to return — through knowledge, purification, and practice — to the realm it came from.

Virtues as cosmic alignments: The virtues (courage, wisdom, justice, temperance) are not arbitrary social conventions but alignments of the soul’s faculties with their proper cosmic order — the appetitive soul under the control of reason, reason under the control of the divine’s law.

The ethical community: The “brothers” of the Ikhwan are those who support each other’s ascent — who share knowledge, hold each other accountable, and build the kind of community in which spiritual progress is possible. Isolation is the enemy of ascent.

The final return: The purified soul, at death, ascends through the planetary spheres (each of which represents a level of attachment that must be shed) and returns to the First Intellect — its original home.

Ikhwan al-Safa — The Brethren of Purity