The Formation of the Ikhwānian Corpus: A Philological Study of the Epistles and Two Summaries Attributed to the Brethren of Purity

The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (9th-10th cent.) constitute one of the most enigmatic works in the history of Islamic philosophy. This book presents an in-depth study of the Epistles and its two summaries. Mattila argues that the Ikhwānian corpus evolved from a mainly philosophical encyclopedia of the Epistles to the largely religious treatises of its summaries. Based on philological analysis, the book’s first part shows the gradual transformation of the contents of the Epistles. The second part demonstrates that the Comprehensive Epistle was not composed by the same authors but instead represents an Ismāʿīlī adaptation of the encyclopedia.

Janne Mattila, Ph.D. (2011), is a research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He has published extensively on the history philosophy in the Islamic world, including the monograph, The Eudaimonist Ethics of al-Fārābī and Avicenna (Brill, 2022).