Civic Friendship and Cosmopolitan Friendship: two narratives about relationship between city and friendship in the Islamic political philosophy

Friendship has been discussed in the doctrinal writings from a long time ago. But the first philosophical statements of friendship belong to the Greek philosophers and the best compiled narrative of friendship has been raised in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle had a civic conception of friendship and based his narrative on public interests of polis residents and civic relations. We can call this narrative the civic narrative of friendship. In the Islamic philosophy, although some Mashaie (Peripatetic) philosophers have dealt with civic friendship, another narrative could be found in the thoughts of late sages who propound friendship not within the framework of city but in the hierarchy of being. We call this narrative the cosmopolitan friendship. Hence the question of this article is: What are the features of friendship patterns in the Islamic philosophy. In the Islamic philosophy, although the friendship pattern is influenced by Aristotle’s philosophy, Muslim sages have distanced from civic friendship pattern, particularly after the emergence of Eshraqi philosophy, cosmopolitan friendship replaced. In this article, we discuss civic friendship pattern, particularly in Mashaie sages such as Farabi and Moskuye Razi’s thoughts. Then we examine cosmopolitan friendship in Shahabadin Sohrevardi and his followers. In the conclusion we will try to compare these two patterns.