Brethren of Purity’s Use of the Qurʾān for Physical and Spiritual Liberation

Unlike their philosophical contemporaries, the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’) (hereon the Brethren) cites the Qurʾān directly in almost every other paragraph of their fifty-one treatises. They were a ninth-tenth century Shīʾite philosophical movement from Baṣra, Iraq. Little is known about the actual group or its members, and their only remains are fifty-one treatises with two summaries. This paper argues that one of the reasons the Brethren employs the Qurʾān is to show how it can be used for theurgical purposes to physically free the body from pains. Following Gregory Shaw, Christian H. Bull, Brian Copenhaver, I argue that theurgy (literally Divine Acts) are “ritual elements that combines intellection (noêsis) that produces union with the divine.”[1] These ritual elements and actions can consist of magic, numerology, talismans, invocations, and prayers.