The Epistles of Wisdom (Arabic: رَسَائِل ٱلْحِكْمَة, romanized: Rasāʾil al-Ḥikma) is a corpus of sacred texts and pastoral letters by teachers of the Druze faith native to the Levant, which has currently close to a million practitioners.
[1] The text revolves around the acknowledgement and worship of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah as the last and definite incarnation of the One God, a belief which Druze define as 'Monotheism' (Arabic: Tawhid).
[9] Druze manuscripts are generally written in a language, grammar, and diction that to the uninitiated is hard to understand and includes ambiguous words and highly obscure and cryptic phrases, in addition to the extensive usage of symbology and numerology in much of the writings.
Such restrictions aimed to prevent possible damage to the individual and community if the writings were interpreted incorrectly, since the study of the Epistles of Wisdom is better accompanied by commentary texts and guidance from the higher ranking Druze Uqqal ("Knowledgeable Ones").
[12][13] The texts provide insight into Druze beliefs about the incorporation of the Universal Intellect and the soul of the world in 11th century Egypt, when the deity showed itself to men through Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim and his doctrines.
These display a notable form of Arabic Neoplatonism blended with Ismailism and adopted Christian elements of great interest for the philosophy and history of religions.
Local disturbances such as the invasion of Ibrahim Pasha between 1831 and 1838, along with the 1860 Lebanon conflict caused some of these texts to fall into the hands of academics.
[15][16] Another edition of the Rasa'il al-hikma was published by pseudonymous writers in Lebanon in 1986 as part of the highly controversial "The Hard Truth" series which included several anti-Druze, anti-Alawite and anti-Islamic books and was banned by the authorities for containing misleading information and hate speech, also an unpublished dissertation by David Bryer was prepared on the first two volumes.