Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The Ikhwan Al-Safa' and Their Rasa'il

Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The Ikhwan Al-Safa' and Their Rasa'il PDF Author: Nader El-Bizri
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This is the introductory volume for a new critical edition of The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, an encyclopedic philosophical and scientific work of the 10th century produced by an esoteric fraternity based in Baghdad and Basra. Specially written essays explore its authorship and dating, its intellectual content and influence.

Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The Ikhwan Al-Safa' and Their Rasa'il

Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The Ikhwan Al-Safa' and Their Rasa'il PDF Author: Nader El-Bizri
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This is the introductory volume for a new critical edition of The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, an encyclopedic philosophical and scientific work of the 10th century produced by an esoteric fraternity based in Baghdad and Basra. Specially written essays explore its authorship and dating, its intellectual content and influence.

Gulf in World History

Gulf in World History PDF Author: Allen James Fromherz
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474430686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
Analyses of Ranciere's philosophy and its potential for understanding the conversation between contemporary politics and art cinema

Classical Arabic Stories

Classical Arabic Stories PDF Author: Salma Khadra Jayyusi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231149239
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Short fiction was an immensely innovative art in the medieval Arab world and speaks to the urbanization of the Arab domain after Islam. It reflects the bustling life of Muslim Arabs and Islamized Persians and the sure stamp of an urbanity that had settled very staunchly after big conquests. Reading these texts today illuminates the wide spectrum of early Arab life and the influences and innovations that flourished so vibrantly in medieval Arab society. Classical Arabic Stories selects from an impressive corpus, including excerpts from seven seminal works: Ibn Tufail's novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan; Kalila wa Dimna by Ibn al-Muqaffa; The Misers by al-Jahiz; The Brethren of Purity's The Protest of Animals Against Man; Al-Maqamat (The Assemblies) by al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri; Epistle of Forgiveness by al-Ma'arri; and the epic romance, Sayf Bin Dhi Yazan. Organized thematically, the volume begins with pre-Islamic tales, stories of rulers and other notables, and thrilling narratives of danger and warfare. It follows with tales of love, religion, comedy, and the strange and the supernatural.

Muslim Neoplatonists

Muslim Neoplatonists PDF Author: Ian Richard Netton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136853839
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
The tenth or eleventh century group of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al Safa) are as well known in the Arab world as Darwin, Marx and Freud in the west. Designed as an introduction to their ideas, this book concentrates on the Brethren's writings, analyzing the impact on them of thinkers such as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Ian Netton traces the influences of Judaism and Christianity, and controversially this book argues that the Brethren of Purity did not belong to the Ismaili branch of Islam as is generally believed.

The Epistle of Salim Ibn Dhakwan

The Epistle of Salim Ibn Dhakwan PDF Author: Salim Ibn Dhakwan
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191590150
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
The epistle ascribed to Salim Ibn Dhakwan is a tract against 'wrong' doctrines regarding the classification and treatment of opponents. Written by an Ibadi before AD 800 and taking issue with both Kharijite extremists and Murji'ites, it was brought to the attention of Western Islamicists in the early 1970s by Amr Khalifa Ennami, and is here edited, translated, and discussed in full for the first time. The early centuries of Islamic religious thought have become a dynamic field in the last few years, and there is renewed interest in the attempt to use the early literature of the Muslim sects as windows onto the wider scene of doctrinal discussion in the period before the mainstream tradition becomes plentiful. In addition to making available a new source, this study seeks to open up the Ibadi tradition for future research on early Islamic thought, partly by making heavy use of Ibadi sources in its interpretation of Salim's epistle and by partly by offering systematic information about the Ibadi figures and literary works involved in the appendices and bibliography.

The Topkapi Scroll

The Topkapi Scroll PDF Author: Gülru Necipoğlu
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 0892363355
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.

Organizing Knowledge

Organizing Knowledge PDF Author: Gerhard Endress
Publisher: Islamic Philosophy, Theology a
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The contributions in this volume offer the first comprehensive effort to describe and analyse the collection, classification, presentation and methodology of information in the knowledge society of mediæval Islam in the disciplines of religious and legal learning, as well as the rational sciences of Hellenistic origin philosophy, mathematical and medical sciences. The volume begins with a general discussion of the concept of encyclopædia. Successive chapters explore the bases of authority in the institutions of religion and law; biographical literature and handbooks of law; compendia of scientific and philosophical learning based on Iranian and Greek sources; and the more specialised expositions of mathematics and philosophy. The special character of Muslim institutions, their teaching traditions and syllabi is also put into perspective.This is a reference work for the principal genres of enyclopædic outlines and manuals biography, legal handbooks, historiography of knowledge transmission, cosmography, and the philosophical sciences and a major contribution to the literary and intellectual history of scholarly writing in the pre-modern Islamic world.

The Heart of Islamic Philosophy

The Heart of Islamic Philosophy PDF Author: William C. Chittick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198031866
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
This book introduces the work of an important medieval Islamic philosopher who is little known outside the Persian world. Afdal al-Din Kashani was a contemporary of a number of important Muslim thinkers, including Averroes and Ibn al-Arabi. Kashani did not write for advanced students of philosophy but rather for beginners. In the main body of his work, he offers especially clear and insightful expositions of various philosophical positions, making him an invaluable resource for those who would like to learn the basic principles and arguments of this philosophical tradition but do not have a strong background in philosophy. Here, Chittick uses Kashani and his work to introduce the basic issues and arguments of Islamic philosophy to modern readers.

Colour, Light and Wonder in Islamic Art

Colour, Light and Wonder in Islamic Art PDF Author: Idries Trevathan
Publisher: Saqi Books
ISBN: 086356190X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A unique investigation into the aesthetics of colour in Islamic art revealing its deeper symbolic and mystical meanings. The experience of colour in Islamic visual culture has historically been overlooked. In this new approach, Idries Trevathan examines the language of colour in Islamic art and architecture in dialogue with its aesthetic contexts, offering insights into the pre-modern Muslim experience of interpreting colour. The seventeenth-century Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, represents one of the finest examples of colour-use on a grand scale. Here, Trevathan examines the philosophical and mystical traditions that formed the mosque's backdrop. He shows how careful combinations of colour and design proportions in Islamic patterns expresses knowledge beyond that experienced in the corporeal world, offering another language with which to know and experience God. Colour thus becomes a spiritual language, calling for a re-consideration of how we read Islamic aesthetics.

The Call to God

The Call to God PDF Author: Abbas Hamdani
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780198838982
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
The Brethren of Purity, the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Epistles of the Brethrenof Purity. This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, logic, natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didacticfables. Epistle 48 belongs to the fourth part dealing with Divine-Legal matters. It deals specifically with methods that should be employed in advocating for the cause of the fraternity, and in calling different segments of society to join its ranks. The targeted segments include philosophers, kings,Shi'is, and administrators. Special templates for preachers engaging with these particular categories are provided throughout. It also addresses issues of governance and the ideal city, while emphasizing again the primacy of the soul over the body, and the need for followers to know themselves. TheEpistle ends with a story based on the famous Bilawhar wa-Budhasaf, given as an illustration of a successful mission. Epistle 48 reveals, more than any other epistle, the political nature of the fraternity and its mission, being, as the editors argue, part of the Fatimid missionary efforts in theperiod preceding the establishment of the Fatimid Dynasty.