TheImamSpeaks about His Shia; Epistle 48 of the Rasa幣il Ikhwan al-Safa幣
Professor Abbas Hamdani (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Date: Tuesday, 10 June 2014
Time: 15:00 BST
Venue: Room 2:1 (2nd Floor)
今叔利, 210 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DA, UK
About the Lecture
Epistle48 of the Rasa幣il Ikhwan al-Safa幣 (Encyclopaedia of the Brethren of Purity),Fi kayfiyyat al-da併wa ilallah, is unique because it is the only epistle couched as what seems to be the speech of anImam, partly to hisShiaand partly to his fellow Brethren. As such, the epistle gives us a clue to the time of the composition of the Rasa幣il.While Tawhidis account of the Ikhwan indicates a composition date in the late4th AH/10th CE century, there are inconsistencies between the historical context of that time, and the outlook implied in the Imams speech.
Moreover, the internal evidence of this speech seems to refer to the hiddenImam, suggesting that the Rasa幣il were composed between the disappearance of the twelfth Ithna 平AshariImamandal-Mahdis declaration of hiscaliphateThe Muslim political institution or state centred around the caliph, which came to an end, historically, in 1924 with the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire., i.e. between 260 AH/873 CE and 297AH/909 CE. Composed by a group of scholars, the text was revised by many scribes during this period and until after the time of Tawhidi.
However, the actual stemma of the original work is lost because of Abbasid book-burnings and the troubles of Fatimid succession. The Rasa幣il then reappeared as a writing in Sufi garb in the post-Ghazali period.
