Discourse Analysis of Ikhwan al-Safa in the Story of Animal's Litigation about Human's Tyranny

The Islamic civilization in the 4th century hejri reached to its peak prosperity with flourishing scientific، philosophical and literary activities in the east of the Islamic World. One of the samples of this prosperity is the appearance of Ikhwan al-Safa، a secrect society of unknown philosophers in the cities of Basra and Baghdad. They believed that the Islamic principles must be combined with the Greek philosophy in order to purify Islam from ignorance and adulteration. They came up with a great encyclopedia that included 52 chapters and hence، explained their beliefs and teachings. Some times they used fiction to explain their beliefs. The story of the animal's litigation about human's tyranny is one such fiction that is included in the twenty second chapter. In this article، authors try to analyze the discourse of Ikhwan al-Safa in this story. The study shows that the discourse is a critical one that includes the layer of Abbasid era. There is rationalism، idealism، criticism of some of the social trends during Abbasid as well as political criticism of authoritative governance of that time.