Prophecy, Imamate, and Political Rule among the Ikhwan al-Safa’

Abstract

To the best of my knowledge, the political ideas of the Ikhwan al-Safa’ (the Pure Brethren) have not been extensively discussed in scholarly literature, except when they have been considered as a political movement.¹ The reason for this neglect could be that the “Pure Brethren” are contrasted with “philosophers,” who were understood to have taken an alien position with regard to the political expectations of the society they lived in, thanks to their evaluation of Plato’s Republic.² This chapter continues the discussion of a topic I have addressed several times in recent years, aiming to demonstrate that the Ikhwan al-Safa’ do not fail to approach policy from a theoretical standpoint and that the philosophical doctrines developed in their “encyclopedia of sciences” titled al-Rasa’il (Epistles) can be understood to be a functional element of their political vision.