An Overview of the Influence Exerted by the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (The Epistles of the Pure Brethren), with Emphasis on al-Andalus

De Callatay, Godefroid [UCL]

There is ample evidence to affirm that the influence exerted during the Middle Ages by the encyclopaedic corpus known as Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ was massive, both in the East and the West of the Dār al-Islām, and that it extended to Jewish and Christian communities as well. In this paper, I shall try to gauge this impact over the centuries, with particular emphasis on Andalusī literature. The objective pursued here is not so much to list names of authors and titles of works as to analyze the reception of the Rasā’il from a thematic perspective. This is done by trying to identify categories of people and by seeking to understand accordingly what may have prompted a given medieval scholar to read this highly unorthodox corpus in the first place, and then what may have incited him in his own work to mention it, to quote from it, or to subtly allude to it by using a more cryptic form of expression.