Zahl. Ding.--Über die Anfänge der Vernunft beim Beginn der Dinge.--Der Makrokosmos.--Die Vernunft und ihr Object.--Die Schwingung und Kreisung der Gestirne.--Das Wesen der Liebe.--Heimsuchung und Auferstehung. Die Art und Weise der Himmelfahrt.--Die Gattungen der Bewegung.--Ursache und Wirkung.--Definitionen und Grundzüge.

The Ikhwan al-Safa (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 Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of 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 didactic fables. Epistles 32 to 36 comprise the first five treatises in the third division of the Rasa'il, on the sciences of the soul and intellect. Combining Islamic revelation with Hellenistic philosophy, the Ikhwan delineate herein their metaphysical system. Epistles 32 and 33 present adaptations of the Pythagorean doctrines, and of Neo-Platonist leitmotifs, whereby a numerical analogy is applied to the unique and transcendent God, or the One, from whom all existence emanates. Epistle 34 takes up the pervasive theme of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, situating the human being as the central link between the celestial and terrestrial realms. In Epistle 35, we find an explanation of the intellectual faculties of the individual human soul, whose ultimate aim is ascension to the timeless reality of pure intellect. Finally, Epistle 36 presents itself as the astrological epistle par excellence of the Rasa'il; from the coming-to-be of worms, to the emergence of religions and empires, nothing in the sub-lunar sphere escapes the determining influence of the celestial cycles. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:The present article examines the utopian and theological politics of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity). I focus on the Ikhwān’s elusive “virtuous city,” a harmonious and righteous community situated on a wondrous island, where residents work in unison toward salvation by deferring to one creed. This city’s imagery is intimately tied to principal theological dimensions of their work. Through the virtuous city, the Ikhwān utilize the imagery of estrangement to elucidate their theological position on the soul’s imprisonment in the (...) body. But there is another, subtler dimension to their utopianism. I argue that the Ikhwānian utopia serves as a juxtaposition to their Muslim society, which they thought was afflicted by credal divisions. Accordingly, their utopia seam-lessly weaves together a synthetic narrative about eschatology (i.e., the afterlife) and an empirical critique of their contemporary society. Additionally, this paper contributes to the development of scholarship on medieval Islamic utopianism. (shrink)

As a continuation of previous studies about the reception of Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ in al-Andalus, this paper argues that it was common among Andalusī scholars of the Middle Ages to credit the astronomer Maslama al-Majrīṭī not only with the authorship of Rutbat al-ḥakīm and Ghāyat al-ḥakīm – now both correctly ascribed to Maslama Ibn Qāsim al-Qurṭubī – but also with the entire encyclopaedic corpus of the Rasā’il. The first part of this article seeks to explain the series of successive confusions (...) by which these three works came to be identified as forming three steps of a philosophical ladder and how this trilogy then came to be attributed to the scientist al-Majrīṭī. The second part focuses on two biographical notes found on the title pages of two manuscripts of the as-yet-unedited Rutbat al-ḥakīm. In addition to providing supplementary evidence for the spread of this misconception among medieval scholars, these documents also offer valuable and sometimes unique information about the two Maslamas, their respective writings and entourages, as well as the widespread circulation of the Rasā’il across the Peninsula. The edition, translation and commentary of these two biographical notes are here provided for the first time. (shrink)

Ikhwan-i Safa is known as a group of thinkers who wrote treatises in the style of the first scientific encyclopedia in the history of Islamic thought. Ikhwan-i Safa, which emerged in the vicinity of Basra at a time when religious and political conflicts were intense, aims to clean the religion, which they believe has moved away from its essence with false information and false thoughts, with philosophy. For this purpose, the Ikhwan's views on science and (...) wisdom, who use all kinds of religious, philosophical and scientific knowledge with an eclectic approach, are important in understanding the scientific understanding of the classical age of Islamic thought. Ikhwan-i Safa, who states that they are the heirs of every thought they find true, regardless of its source, advises its members not to be hostile to any of the sciences, not to turn their backs on any of the books, and not to be attached to any of the sects with bigotry. In this study, the approaches of İhvân-ı Safâ to the science of logic will be discussed within their understanding of science based on this broad acquis. According to Ikhwan-i Safa, who defines logic as the measure of philosophy and the instrument of the philosopher, since philosophy is the highest of human endeavours after Prophethood, logic, which is the measure of philosophy, must also be the highest of measures and instruments. In the study, it will be emphasized how the Ikhwan approached the science of logic in his treatises in the context of concept, proposition and syllogism, which are the main subjects of classical logic, and whether they made a unique contribution to this science. (shrink)

In the tenth-century Iraqi fable, The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn, the animals take the human beings to court for mistreatment. The humans ultimately win the case, but not without the animals presenting a series of arguments that continue to resonate despite the ending of the trial. The following essay provides an analysis of a number of these arguments insofar as they contest human abuses of animals within the context of enslavement. It offers (...) evidence on both philosophical and historical grounds for why we need to rethink the received interpretation of the fable’s controversial ending. (shrink)

The growing power of communication and information technologies and their reliance on systems, poses great challenges to cultural and religious diversity, and even education. Will these technological systems continue to homogenize cultures and religions? Will this process lead to increasing strife? Or is there a possibility of maintaining both identity and diversity in a peaceful manner? This paper explores an early attempt to consider this problem. It will focus on the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā and their attempt to construct an encyclopedic system (...) to coordinate knowledge during the flowering of Islamic Civilization in the tenth century. It will primarily deal with Epistle or Rasā'il twenty-two – a fable concerning a debate between the humans, the animals and the Jinn. It will discuss their debate and show how the major concern for the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā was not only to embrace the diversity of knowledge but also the need to navigate through this diversity. I would like to suggest through this analysis that a culture gains its richness and identity by recognizing perfections outside of their own identity. This is analogous to the way that the individual human being gains meaning and dignity by reaching beyond its individuality. It also shows the importance of cultural and religious diversity and how the world cannot be unified by a single all-encompassing system. This approach is important because it shows the possibility of maintaining cultural and religious identity while participating in a technological world involving the flow of information on one hand, and global cultural diversities on the other. (shrink)

This article is a first step in a project to study the influence of the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ in the Ottoman world. We argue that, at least from the end of the fourteenth century until well into the second half of the sixteenth, the knowledge presented in the encyclopedic Rasāʾil was a conspicuous scholarly source for the Ottoman cultural milieu, especially at the dynastic court, and played a significant role in forming their epistemological perspective. This argument is developed with reference (...) to three universal histories: (1) in Turkish, the İskendernāme (Book of Alexander) of Taceddin İbrahim İbn Hızır Ahmedi (d. 1413) written between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the first quarter of the fifteenth; (2) in Arabic, the Naẓm al-sulūk fī musāmarat al-mulūk (The ordering of ways for the conversation of kings) by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī (d. 1454), a prominent intellectual and expert in occult sciences, protégé of Sultan Murad II (r. 1421–44, 1446–51); (3) in Persian, the first volume of Shāhnāmā-yi Āl-i ʿUsmān (Book of kings of the house of ʿUsmān) by the Sufi intellectual and litterateur Fethullah Çelebi (d. 1561/62), better known by his pen-name ʿArif. The choice of these three histories enables us to mark the time period for the influence of the Rasāʾil, stretching it (in both directions) further than is accepted in present scholarship. These histories enable us also to draw attention to the proximity to the Ottoman dynasty of the cultural milieu attuned to the Rasāʾil, and highlight the relationship between history and knowledge that is central both for the texts under study here and the Rasāʾil. (shrink)

The article describes the fourteen passages of the encyclopaedia containing the word dawla. The Ikhwān introduce a cyclical conception of the alternation of ruling dynasties. After the dynasty of the evil reached its apex, the dynasty of the good begins when learned agree “on a unique school and a sole religion”. The Ikhwān introduce this as a wondrous event, close to become reality. This conception is linked to their vision in expectance of the legitimate rulers after the debasement of the (...) Family of the Prophet following Muḥammad’s death. The connection of these passages with the rituals described in Ep. 50 On the Various Kinds of Management (where political vision, astrology and magic are combined) might confirm the Ikhwān’s Ismā ‘īlī commitment. (shrink)

This article studies the ideological identity of the authors of the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ and addresses the question of the authorship of the other works attributed to the Brethren of Purity. Based on these theosophical works, it provides new evidence for the authors’ political stance against the Abbasid state and confirms their Shii inclination and opposition to the Abbasid caliphs of their time. These findings highlight the Ikhwān’s involvement in political activities through preaching the end of the “state of evil” (...) and the beginning of the “state of good”. It also contributes to the debate on the Ikhwān’s relation to other political opposition movements against the Abbasid reign and their links to the Shii states. (shrink)

With the mobility and ease of connection, wireless sensor networks have played a significant role in communication over the last few years, making them a significant data carrier across networks. Additional security, lower latency, and dependable standards and communication capability are required for future-generation systems such as millimeter-wave LANs, broadband wireless access schemes, and 5G/6G networks, among other things. Effectual congestion control is regarded as of the essential aspects of 5G/6G technology. It permits operators to run many network illustrations on (...) a single organization while maintaining higher service quality. A sophisticated decision-making system for arriving network traffic is necessary to confirm load balancing, limit network slice letdown, and supply alternative slices in slice letdown or congestion. Because of the massive amount of data being generated, artificial intelligence and machine learning play a vital role in reconfiguring and improving a 5G/6G wireless network. In this research work, a hybrid deep learning method is being applied to forecast optimal congestion improvement in the wireless sensors of 5G/6G IoT networks. This proposed model is applied to a training dataset to govern the congestion in a 5G/6G network. The proposed approach provided promising results, with 0.933 accuracy, and 0.067 miss rate. (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa (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 Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of 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 didactic fables. The Rasa'il constitutes a paradigmatic legacy in the canonization of philosophy and the sciences in mediaeval Islamic civilization, as well as having shown a permeating influence in Western culture. The present volume is the first of this definitive series consisting of the very first critical edition of the Rasa' il in its original Arabic, with a complete, fully annotated English translation. This epistle, The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn (Epistle 22), prepared by Professors Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor, is arguably the best known, on account of its prominent ecological fable which casts the exploited and oppressed animals pursuing a case against mankind. Perhaps yet more relevant in modern times, the Ikhwan demonstrate the arrogance of man's claim to superiority, in contrast to the animals' pious understanding of their respective roles within nature. The fable complements and expands upon the short exposition on zoology featured at the beginning of the epistle. (shrink)

In this article, we present a one-step hybrid block method for approximating the solutions of second-order fuzzy initial value problems. We prove the stability and convergence results of the method and present several examples to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method. The numerical results are compared with the existing ones in the literature.

There is no doubt that custard apple diseases are among the important reasons that destroy the Custard Apple plant and its agricultural crops. This leads to obvious damage to these plants and they become inedible. Discovering these diseases is a good step to provide the appropriate and correct treatment. Determining the treatment with high accuracy depends on the method used to correctly diagnose the disease, expert systems can greatly help in avoiding damage to these plants. The expert system correctly diagnoses (...) Custard Apple disease to make it easier for farmers to find the right treatment based on the appropriate diagnosis. Objectives: A specialized syllable language system was established for the diagnosis of Custard Apple plant disease. (shrink)

In light of the development of “CRISPR” technology, new promising advances in therapeutic and preventive approaches have become a reality. However, with it came many ethical challenges. The most recent worldwide condemnation of the first use of CRISPR to genetically modify a human embryo is the latest example of ethically questionable use of this new and emerging field. Monotheistic religions are very conservative about such changes to the human genome and can be considered an interference with God’s creation. Moreover, these (...) changes could cause perpetual changes to future generations. The Muslim scholars establish their decisions by addressing five foundations of Islamic law i.e. “maqāṣid al sharı̄`a”; the purposes of the law. These are dın̄, nafs, nasl, `aql and māl. To achieve this, the five principles should all be met before approval of an experiment like the Chinese embryo modifications; Qaṣd which is achieved in this case as it aims to protect the embryo from HIV. Yaqın̄ and Ḍarar were not satisfied as they require strong scientific certainty of the procedures, and evidence of safety. Ḍarūra by which the alternatives being compared; in this case more established and proven safe alternatives to protect the HIV transmission from the father are available, so this principle is not met. The final principle is `Urf, by which the social context of using any contemporary technology should be taken in consideration, and clearly this was not achieved. Collectively, germline changes are rejected from an Islamic perspective until the five principles are fulfilled. In the Chinese Twins gene editing case, there was clearly no justification or support for it according to the Muslim Jurisprudence laws. These laws and approaches can serve as an ethical checklist for such controversial research, especially in early stages of the research. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] handsomely produced volume is the ninth of the OUP-IIS series titled Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. Inaugurated in 2008, the series is designed in part to replace several older Arabic editions of Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ that have been published over the decades but which failed to identify their manuscript sources. Nineteen manuscripts in all were (...) used to reconstruct the basic text, with some significant variations. The fact is that the Rasāʾil enjoy no exact dating and contain internal inconsistencies. The best estimate for their initial dissemination goes as far back as the time of ʿAbbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn. Therefore, the main contribution of this series is that it puts a semblance of order to... (shrink)

AimThe aim of this study was to determine the presence of depressive symptoms and understand the potential factors associated with these symptoms among physicians in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA cross-sectional study using an online survey was conducted in between April 21 and May 10, 2020, among physicians living in Bangladesh. Participants completed a series of demographic questions, COVID-19-related questions, and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Descriptive statistics, test statistics were performed to explore the association between physicians’ experience of depression symptoms (...) and other study variables. Stepwise binary logistic regression was followed while conducting the multivariable analysis.ResultA total of 390 physicians completed the survey. Of them, 283 were found to be experiencing depressive symptoms. Predictors which were significantly associated with depressive symptoms were gender, the presence of sleep disturbance, being highly exposed to media coverage about the pandemic, and fear around COVID-19 infection, being assaulted/humiliated by regulatory forces and by the general public, while traveling to and from the hospital and treating patients during the countrywide lockdown.ConclusionThe findings of this study demonstrate that there is a high prevalence of depressive symptom among physicians especially among female physicians in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic. Immediate, adequate and effective interventions addressing gender specific needs are required amid this ongoing crisis and beyond. (shrink)

BackgroundDefensive medicine (DM) practice refers to the ordering or prescription of unnecessary treatments or tests while avoiding risky procedures for critically ill patients with the aim to alleviate the physician’s legal responsibility and preserve reputation. Although DM practice is recognized, its dimensions are still uncertain. The subject has been highly investigated in developed countries, but unfortunately, many developing countries are unable to investigate it properly. DM has many serious ramifications, exemplified by the increase in treatment costs for patients and health (...) systems, patients’ exposure to risks, and negative effects on the psychological health of both health providers and recipients. Ultimately, the most serious consequence is the ethical consequences.MethodsThis work is based on a review of the literature related to DM worldwide and a comparison with the available knowledge found in Jordan. It is qualitative with a descriptive nature, aiming to diagnose the current DM practice in Jordan.ResultsThis is the first published article that discusses DM in Jordan by diagnosing its ethical and economic consequences for the health system as well as for patients. Despite the knowledge of the reasons that support its practice, little is being done to solve this issue. The absence of agreeable medical malpractice law, the dearth of unified medical protocols, the overwhelming pressure imposed by patients on medical staff, and the deteriorating patient-physician relationship are some of the causes of DM practice. Surely, the solution to these issues is to focus on fortifying the ethical and humanitarian aspects on the side of both the physician and the patient to ensure positive collaboration. The ethical aim of the physician to treat the patient faithfully and do what is possible to help combined with the appreciation of the physician’s efforts and the choice to not take advantage of the physician through litigation could be the most reasonable solution in the near future.ConclusionJordan is suffering from DM due to the limited financial expenditure on the health sector and the impracticality of medical malpractice law. The authors highlight that the cardinal step in solving this dilemma is restoring the ethical dimension of the patient-physician relationship. (shrink)