The Epistles of Wisdom, Rasâ'il al-Hikma, volume I, part 1, - Lot 171

The Epistles of Wisdom, Rasâ'il al-Hikma, volume I, part 1, letters 1 to 14, Ottoman Levant, probably Mount Lebanon, undated Manuscript on laid paper, 15 lines of text per page in naskhi Arabic in brown ink, with a few terms in red ink like the discs that punctuate the text. The text begins with the first letter and ends with letter 14, the last two letters fragmentary and incomplete. Each epistle is introduced by a title illuminated with polychrome inks in a cartouche decorated with plant motifs. On the back of the first page, a collector's label featuring a fish framed by alpha and omega in a blue medallion and accompanied by the pencilled initials K - B. 21 x 16 cm As is, mutilated and incomplete manuscript, stains, foxing and wetness, folds, folios detached, folios glued together, folios cut out and fragments of folios, binding missing. The Epistles of Wisdom, Rasâ'il al-Hikma, represent the canon of the most sacred texts and the main source of the Druze religion. This collection comprises 111 letters attributed to early 11th-century authors Hamza ibn 'Ali ibn Ahmad (985-1021) and Isma'il at-Tamimi, then compiled into six books in the 15th century by Jamal al-Din Abdallah al-Tanukhi (1417-1479). Filled with symbolism and rigorously written, they address the themes of monotheism, the soul, knowledge, creation and cosmology... Born in 11th-century Fatimid Egypt around the teachings of the Caliph al-Hakim, the Druze religion stems from Ismaili Shiism. Its esoteric doctrine is based on the principle of Divine Oneness (Tawhid) and is strongly influenced by Arab Neoplatonism. Handwritten copies of the Epistles of Wisdom are rare and often incomplete, due to the division of these writings into several volumes. Moreover, their attribution is not easy. In fact, information on the context in which they were copied is generally lacking, as the copyists, out of religious conviction, do not indicate their names and rarely the date of the copy.