TEHRAN -- A complete Persian translation of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, one of the most ambitious intellectual works of the medieval Islamic world, has been published in a four-volume edition by Moli Publications, bringing together the full 52-epistle collection for Persian-language readers.
Translated by Muhammad Ali Asgari, the edition includes an introduction by Egyptian intellectual and literary figure Taha Hussein and a foreword by Seyyed Hussein Nasr. The publication is presented as the first complete Persian translation of the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa, the Arabic title of a work whose authorship and intellectual affiliations have remained the subject of scholarly debate.
The Ikhwan al-Safa, or Brethren of Purity, were an anonymous group of thinkers associated with Iraq in the fourth/tenth century. Their identities have never been established with certainty, while the relationship between the group and Ismaili thought has been extensively discussed by scholars.
The 52 epistles are traditionally organized into four broad sections covering different fields of knowledge. Fourteen treat mathematical sciences, 17 natural sciences, 10 psychological and rational sciences, and 11 theological sciences.
The collection ranges across subjects including arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, geography, music, logic, the natural world, plants and animals, the human body and soul, ethics, politics, religion and the structure of the cosmos. Its breadth has led scholars to regard the epistles as an important example of the encyclopedic ambitions of medieval Islamic intellectual culture.
Rather than confining knowledge to a single discipline, the authors sought to examine the relationship between different branches of learning, moving from mathematical