Magia en al-Andalus: Rasā’il ijwān al-Ṣafā’, Rutbat al-ḥakīm y Gāyat al-ḥakīm (Picatrix)

Abstract

This article is concerned with the introduction of the Rasā’il ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ to al-Andalus, and the implication this question has for the history of Arabic science and philosophy. More specifically, it focuses on the impact of the encyclopaedia of the Brethren of Purity on the Rutbat al-ḥakīm and the Gāyat al-ḥakīm, two important works of the literature of al-Andalus in the field of occult sciences. The article revisits the issue of authorship and chronology of the three works, highlighting the fact that the corpus of the Rasā’il is the product of a historically long process of composition and confirming with some new clues the identification of the author of the Rutba and the Ghāya with Maslama al-Qurṭubī (d. 964). The textual comparison of these three works and, in particular, the study of the still unedited Rutba enables one to identify Maslama al-Qurṭubī as the genuine transmitter of the Ikhwānian corpus to al-Andalus.