|
The Brethren of Purity ((アラビア語:اخوانالصفا) ; also The Brethren of Sincerity) were a secret society〔They are generally considered a secret society because of their closed & private meetings every 12 days, as mentioned in the ''Rasa'il''.〕 of Muslim philosophers in As salamieh, Syria, or in Bosra, Syria, in the 8th or 10th century CE. The structure of this mysterious organization and the identities of its members have never been clear.〔"Having been hidden within the cloak of secrecy from its very inception, the ''Rasa'il'' have provided many points of contention and have been a constant source of dispute among both Muslim and Western scholars. The identification of the authors, or possibly one author, the place and time of writing and propagation of their works, the nature of the secret brotherhood, the outer manifestation of which comprises the ''Rasa'il'' – these and many secondary questions have remained without answer." pg 25, Nasr (1964)〕〔William Bayne Fisher, Richard Nelson Frye, John Andrew Boyle, ''The Cambridge History of Iran'', Published by Cambridge University Press, 1975, ISBN 0-521-20093-8, p. 428〕 Their esoteric teachings and philosophy are expounded in an epistolary style in the ''Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity'' (''Rasa'il Ikhwan al-safa' ==Name== The Arabic phrase ''Ikhwan al-Safa'' (short for, among many possible transcriptions, ', meaning "Brethren of Purity, Loyal Friends, People worthy of praise and Sons of Glory") can be translated as either the "Brethren of Purity" or the "Brethren of Sincerity"; various scholars such as Ian Netton prefer "of Purity" because of the group's ascetic impulses towards purity and salvation. A suggestion made by Goldziher, and later written about by Philip K. Hitti in his ''History of Arabs'', is that the name is taken from a story in ''Kalilah wa-Dimnah'', in which a group of animals, by acting as faithful friends (''ikhwan al-safa''), escape the snares of the hunter. The story concerns a ring-dove and its companions who get entangled in the net of a hunter seeking birds. Together, they leave themselves and the ensnaring net to a nearby rat, who is gracious enough to gnaw the birds free of the net; impressed by the rat's altruistic deed, a crow becomes the rat's friend. Soon a tortoise and gazelle also join the company of animals. After some time, the gazelle is trapped by another net; with the aid of the others and the good rat, the gazelle is soon freed, but the tortoise fails to leave swiftly enough and is himself captured by the hunter. In the final turn of events, the gazelle repays the tortoise by serving as a decoy and distracting the hunter while the rat and the others free the tortoise. After this, the animals are designated as the "Ikwhan al-Safa". This story is mentioned as an exemplum when the Brethren speak of mutual aid in one ''rasa'il'', a crucial part of their system of ethics that has been summarized thus: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brethren of Purity」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|