Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: On Geography ─ An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 4

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 amongst Muslims due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa' (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). The present volume is the fourth of this definitive series consisting of the very first critical edition of theRasa'il in Arabic, complete with the first fully annotated English translation. Prepared by James Montgomery and Ignacio Sanchez, Epistle 4: 'On Geography' contains a description of the Earth and its climes of great importance to understand both the Islamic geographical tradition and the thought of the Ikhwan al-Safa'.
This epistle, which was one of the few geographical works translated into Latin in Medieval Europe, clearly shows the acquaintance of its authors with the Greek Prolemaic tradition, and allows us to trace the main sources used in its composition, namely al-Farghani and al-Khwarizmi. But it is also a propaedeutic work aimed at providing the intellectual tools needed to decipher the signs of God's Creation, and at understanding the phenomena of the sub-lunar world in the light of the cosmological order. In this regard, 'On Geography' epitomises many of the central themes in the conceptual universe of the Ikhwan al-Safa', such as the conception of science as a path towards the superior knowledge of God, and the relationship between microcosmos and macrocosmos as part of the divine design.

Ignacio Sanchez obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2011. He has worked at the Cambridge University Library during 2010-2012, as part of the he team of the Oxford and Cambridge Islamic Manuscripts Catalogue Online Project, and the Digital Library. Currently he has a postdoctoral research position at the Institute of Historical Sciences of the Humboldt University (Berlin), where he collaborates in an interdisciplinary project to write an encyclopedia of medieval endowments and charitable foundations.


J.E. Montgomery is a Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge. He studied Arabic and Ancient Greek at Glasgow University (1980-1984), spent two years at Oxford (1984-1986), where he was a Snell Exhibitioner at Balliol College before taking up a lectureship at Glasgow (1986-1992). Senior Lectureships at Oslo and Leeds preceded his move to Cambridge in 1997. His latest publication is Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).