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"Magia en al-Andalus: Rasā’il Ijwān al-Ṣafā’, Rutbat al-Ḥakīm y Gāyat al-Ḥakīm (Picatrix)"
Full text linkThis article is concerned with the introduction of the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ to al-Andalus, and the implication this question has for the history of Arabic science and philosophy. More specifically, it focuses on the impact of the encyclopaedia of the Brethren of Purity on the Rutbat al-Hakim and the Ghayat al- Hakim, two important works of the literature of al-Andalus in the field of occult sciences. The article revisits the issue of authorship and chronology of the three works, highlighting the fact that the corpus of the Rasa’il is the product of a historically long process of composition and confirming with some new clues the identification of the author of the Rutba and the Ghaya with Maslama al-Qurtubi (d. 964). The textual comparison of these three works and, in particular, the study of the still unedited Rutba enables one to identify Maslama al-Qurtubi as the genuine transmitter of the Ikhwanian corpus to al-Andalus
Stairway to Heaven: The Alchemical Curriculum of the Rutbat al-ḥakīm
No full textIn the first Maqāla of the Rutbat al-ḥakīm, an alchemical text written, in all likelihood, by Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī in 339-342/950-953, we find a curriculum of the sciences to become a sage (ḥakīm), together with a list of books and authors to be read for each science. Being a sage implies, in the author’s view, to manage the two ‘conclusions’ (natījatān), namely alchemy (kīmiyā’) and astral magic (sīmiyā’). Knowing only one of them makes you only ‘half a sage’ (niṣf ḥakīm). Although the progression towards these two conclusions is presented from a theoretical perspective in the first place, it then turns to become a more practical issue. Alchemy and astral magic are considered by the author as arts and sciences. In fact, it appears that while describing this curriculum, the author seeks to explain the link between theory and practice (al-‘amal), and the way the apprentice should train both his mind (dhihn, representing theory) and his hand and eyes (yad, naẓar, representing practice) to understand the knowledge that the Ancients hid behind codenames (al-rumūz al-latī li-al-awā’il). In this presentation, we will explain how the author of the Rutbat al-ḥakīm considers the path to wisdom, and how he accordingly articulates theory and practice in this journey to knowledge
Encyclopaedism on the Fringe of Islamic Orthodoxy: the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’, the Rutbat al-ḥakīm and the Ghāyat al-ḥakīm on the Division of Science
No full textRecent scholarship has brought important new insights into the chronology of writing and dissemination of the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (‘Epistles of the Brethren of Purity’). This new chronological perspective prompts us also to reappraise the pioneering role of the Ikhwān with regard to the problem of classifying knowledge. The first part of this paper will be devoted to this issue. We shall re-examine the tripartite division of science as purposefully designed by the Ikhwān in Epistle 7, as well as another classification in the form of an allegorical fable as found in Epistle 26, and which the Ikhwān have derived from Persian literature. The second part of our contribution will focus on the tenfold classification put forward by Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (d. 353/964), now correctly identified as the genuine author of the Ghāyat al-ḥakīm (‘The Aim of the Sage’) and the Rutbat al-ḥakīm (‘the Scale of the Sage’) and, in all likelihood, as the scholar by which the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ were first introduced into al-Andalus.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 740618 - PhilAnd
An Arabic Version of Qusṭā B. Lūqā’s De Physicis Ligaturis?
No full textAfter the short version (52a), published in 2011, the critical edition of two other versions (52b and 52c) of the Epistle of Magic ascribed to the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ is to come out soon as part of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity series at Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Although it occupies the last position in the corpus and has sometimes been presented as the conclusion of the work as a whole, there are various reasons to assume that this epistle on magic was not part of the original plan of the Brethren and that therefore none of these three mutually exclusive versions should be regarded as integral to the Ikhwānian encyclopaedia. This paper will be concerned with one particular section of the 52b version – a version whose heterogeneity of content and intricate manuscript tradition are particularly notable. In this section, found in many authoritative manuscripts but lacking in others and not part of the Beirut edition, the author discusses the power of imagination (wahm) and the use that physicians from Greece and from India made of it to help curing some illnesses, generally by means of spells attached to parts of the body. We shall argue that this section is, if not the Arabic original itself, an early testimony in the tradition of the De Physicis Ligaturis, a work written by the Christian physician Qusṭā b. Lūqā (d. 912) and which was thus far only known through its Latin translation, presumably by Constantine the African (d. 1087)
c.r. de • Jean-Michel RENAUD, Le mythe d’Orion. Sa signification, sa place parmi les autres mythes grecs et son apport à la connaissance de la mentalité antique, Liège, C.I.P.L., 2004, in Latomus, LXVII, 2008, p. 219-220.
No full textIkhwân al-Safâ': Des Arts scientifiques et de leur objectif. Présentation et traduction de l'Epître VII des Frères de la Pureté
No full textIn the whole corpus of the Rasâ'il Ikhwân al-Safâ', Epistle VII ("The scientific Arts and their aim") could be singled out as the one most specifically devoted to the problem of organizing and classifying human knowledge. The intrinsic interest of this rather short epistle (about 20 pages in the Beirut edition) lies above all in the tripartite classification of the sciences ("propaedeutic", "religious/conventional" and "philosophical/real") as displayed by the Brethren of Purity at the end - a very original classification which is especially interesting to compare with the arrangement of the Rasâ'il as it has come down to us. The French translation to be found here - the first of the epistle into any European language - is given with notes as well as with a brief overall presentation
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