The Ikhwān al- Ṣafā’ on Magic and the Occult (8:29)

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From the course by Universitat de Barcelona

Magic in the Middle Ages

639 ratings

Universitat de Barcelona

Magic in the Middle Ages

639 ratings

Magical thought has always attracted human imagination. In this course we will introduce you to the Middle Ages through a wide conception of magic. Students will have an approach to medieval culture, beliefs and practices from the perspective of History and History of Science. Popular magic, as well as learned magic (alchemy, geomancy and necromancy) will be addressed. Moreover, we will also deal with how eastern practices and texts influenced western culture. In July 2016, the course will contain a brand-new module devoted to astrology. Magic in the Middle Ages offers a captivating overview of medieval society and promotes reflection about certain stereotypes associated with this period. At the end of the course, the students: a) will have overcome the usual prejudices about the Middle Ages, b) will be able to analyze historical documentation from the Middle Ages and recognize the most common patterns of juridical documents regarding witchcraft, and c) will be capable of distinguishing between popular magic and the magic of the learned people; will have a notion of which spiritual practices were allowed in medieval Europe and which ones were related to the devil, and will be aware of the link between a cultural product and the society that produced it. This course is taught in English, although subtitles in English, Catalan and Spanish will also be provided. COURSE SYLLABUS Week 1. Introduction to medieval magic (Pau Castell). Week 2. Magic & Heresy (Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel). Week 3. From Magic to Witchcraft (Pau Castell). Week 4. Magic in Islam (Godefroid de Callataÿ and Sébastien Moureau). Week 5. Astrology & Geomancy (Theo Loinaz, Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel, Godefroid de Callataÿ and Blanca Villuendas). © Gemma Pellissa Prades (coord.), Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Joana Palau Mumany Magic in the Middle Ages by Gemma Pellissa Prades (coord.), Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Joana Palau Mumany is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

From the lesson

UNIT 4: MAGIC IN ISLAM

The Varieties of Magic in Islam9:46

How Was Magic Received in Islam?(8:51)8:59

The Ikhwān al- Ṣafā’ on Magic and the Occult (8:29)8:33

The Science of the Letters (10:01)10:04

Alchemy I: Arabic Alchemy8:43

Alchemy II: Arabo-Latin Alchemy (9:55)9:51

Weekly Video 4 (2015)16:13

Meet the Instructors

Godefroid de Callataÿ - University of Louvain
Professor
Oriental Institute (University of Louvain)
Dr Pau Castell Granados
Research and Teaching Scholar at University of Barcelona
Sébastien Moureau - University of Louvain
Chargé de recherches du F.R.S.-FNRS
Institut Orientaliste (CIOL)
Dr Gemma Pellissa Prades
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of the Classics, Harvard
Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel
BSc, BA, MA
Dept. of Medieval History, Palaeography & Diplomatics, Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures, University of Barcelona
Blanca Villuendas
PhD Candidate
Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

[MUSIC]

Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (or Brethren of Purity) is the name adopted by a mysterious group

of Muslim thinkers from the Middle Ages, who wrote an encyclopedia with no

equivalent during that period either within or outside the Islamic world.

This encyclopedia takes the form of a corpus of about 50 epistles,

each meant to cover a specific science or type of knowledge,

and so arranged as to enable the suitably qualified person to make

a progression through the noble sciences towards the most ineffable wisdom.

Exactly who the Ikhwān were and

where they lived has a been a matter of dispute for ages,

and the question remains debated even today.

It is usually believed that these authors were active in Iraq in the tenth century,

but, in fact, the composition of the corpus may well have extended over

various generations, and its actual inception could even have been earlier.

What is now becoming increasingly clear is that the authors were Neoplatonist

philosophers who must have had at least some affinities with Ismailism,

a particularly intellecualizing sub-branch of Shī‘ism.

In spite of its profoundly unorthodox character,

it is also becoming increasingly clear today that their work (in which an attempt

at explaining the universe around us is put forward in a very coherent manner)

never ceased to exert an important influence over the centuries, and

that this influence was far from being restricted to the world of Islam.

Like various other Muslim philosophers of their time, the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ strove hard

to reconcile the "traditional sciences," namely those sciences which could be

viewed as directly rooted in the Qur’anic revelation, with the "intellectual sciences,"

that is, those sciences which a man is able to acquire by himself,

(like logic, mathematics, the natural sciences and metaphysics)

and for which medieval Islam was so indebted to the civilizations of the past:

Ancient Greece, first and foremost, but also Egypt, Babylon, Iran, and India.

A remarkable feature of the Brethren Encyclopedia is its emphasis

on the esoteric side of knowledge and the predilection of its authors for

sciences which today would definitely be ranged among the occult sciences.

This may be inferred already from the classification of knowledge

which the Ikhwān provide in Epistle 7: 'on the scientific arts.'

This is a threefold classification of the sciences in which a group of

"propaedeutic sciences" (in other words, sciences that were created for

the happiness of man in this world) precedes the other two groups of superior

sciences whose mission is to assure man's happiness in the next world,

namely, the religious sciences on the one hand, and the rational and

philosophical sciences on the other.

This said, it appears at once that each of the three groups, as defined by

the Ikhwān, includes sciences or arts of an esoteric nature.

Thus, the group of propaedeutic sciences includes divination,

magic, enchantments, alchemy.

The group of religious sciences includes an explicit reference to the "science of

interpreting dreams."

As for the group of philosophical sciences,

it contains a section about angelology.

In fact, as was observed by Pierre Lory, the three full division of the Brethren's

overall classification fits nicely with the three different aspects of the occult

sciences as they were conceived and practiced during the Islamic Middle Ages.

First, one finds the purely utilitarian aspect of magic, which is designed for

man's comfort and which seeks to assure him health and wealth in this world.

Then, the religious life also benefits from certain "esoteric" practices,

like dream interpretation, and this is legitimized in Islam by some ḥadīth, and

even by some Qur’ānic passages such as the story of Joseph.

Now, it remains that "the great Magic," the one which the Brethren

are most concerned with, is that by whose knowledge a man is,

as it were, born to his "true" being.

The importance of magic for the Ikhwān is made especially clear from the fact that

the very last epistle of the corpus, that is Epistle 52, is entirely devoted to it.

What is more, the authors explicitly mention, in the introduction to

this treatise, that magic, and presumably the rest of the related

esoteric sciences as well, "are part of philosophy,

and that it is moreover part of the ultimate sciences of philosophy, since it

is necessary to learn the preceding sciences before it."

The manuscript tradition of this treatise has recently proven to be

more complex than previously assumed,

since at least two different versions are known to have circulated.

The shortest version, which has now been critically edited,

bears the following title: "On the quiddity of magic, incantations,

the evil eye, incitements given to animals, intuition, and spells."

Aside from magic, but obviously in close relation to it, is astrology,

a science which the authors were visibly most familiar with,

and to which they have devoted innumerable passages of their

encyclopedia,

including an entire Epistle on "cycles and revolutions."

In this treatise, that is Epistle 36, the authors review

a long list of celestial revolutions and conjunctions, and then proceed to

mention the implications that these events exert upon the world and its inhabitants.

From the coming-to-be of worms, bugs and lice,

to the emergence of new religions, and empires;

and from the replacing of man on the royal throne,

to the interchange of mainlands and seas on the whole surface of the Earth.

It would seem that absolutely nothing in this world of coming-to-be and

passing-away escapes the influence of this extreme determinism.

In this and

other epistles of the corpus, the Brethren put forward a theory according to

which the history of the world is made of a series of cycles of 7,000 years each,

and each divided into 7 millennia.

Every millennium is in turn said to be heralded by a prophet.

Now, the interesting thing to observe is that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam,

is not said to be the seventh and last one, rather he is number six,

coming after Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

As for number seven, the Brethren called him the “Qā’im of Resurrection”:

he's the Mahdi that will come at the end of time and by whom

the esoteric part of the revelation will be made plain to the whole of mankind.

Needless to say, this is the kind of theory which must have been regarded

as totally unacceptable for a wide range of readers and

which may have prompted the authors to publish their work anonymously.

[MUSIC]

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