Ad. Carson et Nm. Altai, 1000 YEARS BEFORE PARSONS - VOCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN CLASSICAL ISLAM, The Career development quarterly, 43(2), 1994, pp. 197-206
One characteristic of professionals is that they reflect on the nature
of their discipline; attention to the history of one's discipline is
an important way of doing this. Efforts to trace the historical roots
of vocational theory have been successful only as far back as late Ren
aissance Spain and southern Europe, notably in Chabassus and Zytowski'
s (1987) discussion of Sanchez de Arevalo's (1468) Speculum Vitae Huma
nae (Mirror of Human Life). We locate some recognizably modern concept
s in a 10th-century Iraqi text, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa wa-Khillan
al-Wafa, or Treatises of the Brothers of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa, 955/1
928).