One of the most often mentioned groups throughout the fifty-one treatises of the Brethren of Purity is the Sabeans (or Mandaean) of Ḥarrān. They are mentioned about a dozen times throughout the treatises and the Brethren dedicate an entire section of their fifty-first treatise on magic to them. The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’) 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. However, their works played an influential role in various intellectual trajectories throughout Islamic and Jewish philosophical history. This paper argues that the Brethren’s philosophical and religious conception of the Intellect stands in between that of the Sabian-Mandaean, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Shīʾite Islamic thought.
While the relationship between the Sabians of Ḥarrān and the Mandaeans remain unclear, there are certain philosophical elements that are shared between them. These philosophical elements are borrowed from Neoplatonism and Hermeticism. The use of philosophical motifs demonstrates how textured these religious entities are with these late antique traditions. The most important similarity lies in the primacy of the divine intellect.
The Mandaean Book of John begins by invoking the “Great Life whose Sublime Light be Magnified.” Within the first few lines, after offering salutations to Adam and Eve, it then describes how Intellect [was roused] from its place?[1] and how several beings would bring an “incense holder, before Intellect?[2]” Similarly, the Brethren often cite two statement of the Prophet Muḥammad (ḥadīth) with respect to the importance of the intellect. The first is “the first creation of God is the Intellect.”[3] The second is “When God created the Intellect (al-`Aql), He examined it. Thereupon He said to it: `Come forward!' It came forward. Then He said: `Go back!' It went back. Thereupon He said: `By My power and majesty, I did not create any creature dearer to me than thee! I will not make thee perfect except in one whom I love. Indeed, to thee are My orders and-prohibitions addressed. And for you are My rewards and retributions reserved.” A very similar passage from the Mandaean Book of John seems to complement the ḥadīth above:
A voice from on high cried out to us. It chose Intellect. It sent Intellect to us, from the everlasting abode. Intellect goes forth and comes to those who know him and believe in him, and those who know his acquaintances. They shook off their white garments, their white garments they shook off, and adjusted splendid wreaths. They set them on their heads, and went out towards the Intellect. They knelt down and bowed before him, and stretched out their bodies. They say to him, “Whence comes your date palm? Whence comes your roots and your date palm? Whence comes the one who planted you?” The gentle Intellect replied to those who know me, saying, “My roots are from Life, and my date palm is from light’s place.[4]
In this statement, it would seem that God is calling and choosing the Intellect from a heavenly abode. The call and creation of the Intellect here is similar to the emanation of the Intellect from the One in Neoplatonic thought. The Chaldean Oracles, which was treasured by later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus and Proclus, possess similar statements to that found above. For example, it states that “Power is with him, but Intellect is from him.”[5] Like the author of the Corpus Hermeticum, these later Neoplatonists interpreted this power of the Intellect as life. The Mandaean and Islamic conceptions of the intellect are similar in that they are early creations of God that is cherised by the Divine. Similarly in the Greek tradition, Plato (and the Pythagoreans) conceived of a benevolent craftsman (δημιουργός) that created the world by the use of the intelligibles forms. Later Platonists, such as Numenius (d. cir. 2nd century CE) and Plotinus (d. 270) would transform the craftsman into a hypostatic Intellect which contained all the Platonic Forms. The Corpus Hermeticum, an esoteric philosophical work compiled in scriptural language in the second common century, begins with Poimandres (who is seen as the Intellect of the godhead) saying “Intellect, the father of all, who is life and light, gave birth to a man like himself whom he loved as his own child.”[6]
In all these traditions, the Divine Intellect is not a static repository of the Platonic Forms. It is an animated, living reality, that contains all potentialities for that which will manifest in the world. Furthermore, it plays an active role in the metaphysical and physical universe.
[1]Charles Häberl and James F. McGrath, The Mandaean Book of John: Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 12 [open access edition].
[2]Häberl and James F. McGrath, 22–23.
[3]Brethren of Purity, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. On Companionship and Belief: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 43-45, ed. Samer F. Traboulsi, trans. Toby Mayer and Ian Richard Netton, First edition, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 80.
[4]Häberl and James F. McGrath, The Mandaean Book of John, 187.
[5] Chaldean Oracles, 49. Ruth Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 9.
[6]Brian P Copenhaver, ed., Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius: In a New Translation, with Notes and Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 4.
One of the most often mentioned groups throughout the fifty-one treatises of the Brethren of Purity is the Sabeans (or Mandaean) of Ḥarrān. They are mentioned about a dozen times throughout the treatises and the Brethren dedicate an entire section of their fifty-first treatise on magic to them. The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’) 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. However, their works played an influential role in various intellectual trajectories throughout Islamic and Jewish philosophical history. This paper argues that the Brethren’s philosophical and religious conception of the Intellect stands in between that of the Sabian-Mandaean, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Shīʾite Islamic thought.