CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Bayram, Rana |
|---|---|
| Title | Sounds, Music and Knowledge in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity |
| Summary | This thesis examines the perceptions of music in the work of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (“Brethren of Purity” as it is commonly translated), a group of dissentient philosophers thought to have lived in ninth- or tenth-century Basra (nowadays Iraq). Their identities are still contested, as well as their exact political orientation. However, what is well known about them is that they wrote what we might call a proto-encyclopedic work named The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ), encompassing various philosophical, scientific and metaphysical topics. Employing new perspectives from the recent field of sound studies, the research will look into how the Ikhwān situated music and sound within an epistemological framework informed by Neoplatonizing hierarchies and processes of concept-formation. The research especially uses Steven Feld’s concept of “acoustemology” as its main framework for understanding how “knowing through sound” features in medieval Islamicate literature en large as a significant modality of knowing through relational ontologies. For the Ikhwān, in particular, music (defined as well-composed sounds) had the function of revealing higher realities, thus enabling humans to transcend existing ontological hierarchies. |
| Supervisor | Gereby, György; al-Bagdadi, Nadia |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/bayram_rana.pdf |
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