reversals. From the short-run perspective of the late 1900s, we are used to
seeing the ShiÀites as archconservatives. In medieval Islam they were the radi-
cals and the intellectual cosmopolitans. In Figure 8.1, at the time of al-Naw-
bakhti we see the network of Baghdad Imamites casting around for allies,
including both MuÀtazilites and the famous mathematician Thabit ibn Qurra,
a Sabian star worshipper. In the late 900s, as the empire disintegrated, the
vizier (140 in Figure 8.2) of the provincial court at Rayy (near modern Tehran)
patronized both MuÀtazilites and Imamites, as well as a collection of scientists
and logicians. In this generation are clusters at Rayy, Baghdad, and Basra: an
interconnection of all the heterodox non-Sunni groups. The most famous
among them was al-Sijistani, a logician at the center of a literary discussion
circle at Baghdad; he was a pupil of Yahia ibn ÀAdi, and in the midst of the
Christian logicians. His protégé al-Tawhidi (153 in Figure 8.2) was an eclectic
popularizer of heterodox positions, who acquired a reputation as the “arch-
heretic of Islam.” Al-Sijistani was the reputed leader of a mysterious under-
ground group at Basra, the “Brethren of Purity.”
The Brethren’s position was an eclectic synthesis of non-Sunni heterodoxy.
It asserted an allegorical interpretation of the QurÁan, combined with Neopla-
tonist emanation of souls and forms from God, and the Hermetic astrology of
the Sabians (the line of Thabit ibn Qurra, friend of the earlier Imamites). They
held that the series of emanations reascends through minerals, plants, animals,
and humans, the description of which gave the Brethren opportunity to show
off their scientific knowledge. All worldly things are ruled by particular num-
bers, according to the system of Neo-Pythagorean numerology which describes
occult correspondences among the levels. Astrology is given great significance;
the planets not only foretell the future but also determine when each Imam
passes from concealment to open rule, and when comes the periodic destruction
of the world at the end of a cycle of 7,000 years. Human souls are arranged
in a hierarchy of ignorance, and are reincarnated Hindu-fashion, except for
those who are enlightened, who permanently ascend to the higher level of the
Intellect. The Imam is the highest human, the point of contact with the Divine.
He rules a hierarchy of initiates, divided into four levels, according to their
knowledge of the sciences.
Organizationally, the Brethren’s secret society appears to have had some
real success in the underground of ShiÀite missionaries and conspirators; nu-
merous copies of their encyclopedic “Epistles” are found across many centu-
ries. Their doctrine is eclectic and inconsistent among its various strands, and
its appeal seems to have been more to the general populace than to intellectuals.
It represents the last gasp of the old Basra-Baghdad cosmopolitans, huddled
together in a defensive coalition while shifting to new social-religious bases of
support.
416 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths