Following the Steps of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ in the Ottoman Word I: Insights from Three Universal Histories
(2023) Journal of Islamic Studies — Vol. 34, n° 3, p. 1-31 (2023)
Files
Erylimaz-deCallataÿ-Following1ThreeHistories.pdf
Preprint
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 674.52 KB
Details
- Authors
- et. al.
- Abstract
- This article is planned as the first step of an ongoing examination of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ wa Khullān al-Wafā’ (The Brethren of Purity and the Friends of Loyalty) and its influence in the Ottoman world. As such, it reflects our desire to cultivate discussion in this burgeoning sub-field of intellectual history. We argue that at least from the end of the fourteenth century until well into the second half of the sixteenth century, the knowledge formulated in the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, the encyclopedia of the Brethren, constituted a conspicuous and significant scholarly source for the Ottoman cultural milieu that was especially associated with the dynastic court and played an important role in forming their epistemological perspective. For our argument here, our references come from three universal histories. The first is İskendernāme (Book of Alexander) that Taceddin İbrahim İbn Hızır Ahmedi (d. 1413) wrote in Turkish in the period between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the first quarter of the fifteenth. The second, Naẓm al-sulūk fī musāmarat al-mulūk (The Ordering of Ways for the Conversation of Kings), is the work of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī (d. 1454), a prominent intellectual figure and expert in occult sciences protected by Sultan Murad II (r. 1421–44, 1446–51), and is written in Arabic. The third is the first volume of Shāhnāmā-yi Āl-i ʿUsmān (The Book of Kings of the House of ʿUsmān) written in Persian by the Sufi intellectual and litterateur Fethullah Çelebi (d. 1561/62), better known by his pen-name ʿArif. One of our principal reasons for choosing these three histories is to mark the temporal frame of our project, pushing the dates associated with the Brethren’s influence at both ends further than is accepted in present scholarship. At the same time, these three histories help us draw attention to the proximity of the cultural milieu attuned to the Brethren’s work to the Ottoman dynasty and highlight the relationship between history and knowledge, a relation which was central both for the texts under study here and the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ.
- Affiliations
Citations
de Callatay, G., Eryilmaz Unsal, F. S., & et al. (2023). Following the Steps of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ in the Ottoman Word I: Insights from Three Universal Histories. Journal of Islamic Studies, 34(3), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etad001 (Original work published 2023)