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

De Callatay, Godefroid [UCL]

Recent 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)