The group of philosophers called the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā' is very well known to all scholars and students of Arab intellectual history and Islamic philosophy. Their name may be translated as “Brethren of Purity” (my own preferred option) or “Brethren of Sincerity”. It is generally held that they flourished, probably in Basra, in approximately the ninth–tenth centuries ad. The 52 Rasā'il (Epistles) which they produced breathe an air of mystery, at least as far as the actual production of these texts is concerned. As Nader El-Bizri succinctly puts it in his foreword: “The exact dating of this corpus, the identity of its authors, and their doctrinal affiliation remain unsettled questions that are hitherto shrouded with mystery” (p. xviii). And while there have been a number of printed Arabic editions of these texts, the best thus far being the four-volume Beirut (Dār Ṣādir, 1957) edition, there has been no really modern translation into English of the entire corpus, and certainly no bilingual, and fully annotated, Arabic–English edition. This volume aims to be a contribution towards remedying this lacuna in part.
The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London has taken upon itself the most praiseworthy – and much-needed – task of producing an entire critical bilingual multi-volume edition of which the present work is the second to appear. An introduction to the whole series, edited by Nader El-Bizri under the title The Ikhwān al-Ṣafā' and their Rasā'il: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press), also appeared in 2008.
The present volume, carefully and judiciously edited by Carmela Baffioni, is a pleasure to read and study. It comprises a foreword, a full technical introduction, a full translation into English of Epistles 10–14, copiously footnoted, which survey the Isagoge of Porphyry (no. 10), followed by the Aristotelian Categories (no. 11), De Interpretatione (no. 12), Prior Analytics (no. 13), Posterior Analytics (no. 14), related appendixes, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, a subject index and an index locorum. All this, in turn, is followed by a critical edition of the Arabic text of the Rasā'il, Epistles 10–14, indicating copious variant readings, together with an Arabic index.
The Epistles from the first section of the Rasā'il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā' are among the most difficult and technical of the 52 produced by the Ikhwān. Baffioni, who is professor of the history of Muslim philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L'Orientale’, has put us all in her debt with a translation and an Arabic text which is clear, easy to read and carefully annotated with an abundance of textual variants. Her edition “is based on the Atif (ʿĀţif) Efendi 1681 manuscript, the oldest identified in public libraries. It dates back to 1182 (ah 578) and contains the complete text of the logical treatises. It is almost fully vocalized and provides some marginal notes with variants and corrections. The titles and the word faṣl are written in red ink” (p. 36). Baffioni has established her final text by collating this text with 13 other principal manuscripts. Her translation follows the Arabic text closely without being totally given over to formal equivalence.
It is intriguing to speculate about the sources which the Ikhwān used. Baffioni tells us in her introduction that “the Ikhwān must have had at their disposal a translation of the Isagoge, or perhaps a summary of it; comparisons with the Greek original of Aristotle's Categories shows that the Ikhwān summarize extensively from the whole work, apart perhaps from Chapters 2 and 3” (p. 21). She stresses that “judging by their selection of works by Aristotle, the Ikhwān would seem to be following the tradition that restricted research to the first books of the Organon rather than sharing the wider approach of al-Fārābī” (p. 2).
This is an attractive volume both in content and production; it augurs well for the volumes which are scheduled to follow, which, alas, have been somewhat slow to appear.
