Download PDF | The Ismailis In The Middle Ages A History Of Survival, A Search For Salvation Oxford University Press, USA (2007)
322 Pages
Many people have given generously of their time, their resources and their wisdom to assist me in the writing of this book. In the initial stages, when the foundations were being laid, Roy Mottahedeh shared his wisdom about how to approach history, Robert Wisnovsky spoke at length with me about philosophical considerations, Wheeler Thackston motivated me with his learned opinions about literature, and Ahmad Mahdavi-Damghani assisted me with numerous intricacies in medieval texts. I must thank Ali Asani, in particular, for his constant support, his precious advice on the writing process, and for reading the initial drafts with such a keen eye.
During the course of my research, I spent a memorable year at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. I would like to thank Azim Nanji, the director, for facilitating my stay and making my residence so pleasant. I am indebted to the librarians at the Institute without whose help much of my research would have remained unfinished. Duncan Haldane was never too busy to help in locating obscure resources, Alnoor Merchant’s wide knowledge of the Institute’s collection was essential in procuring manuscript works, and whenever I was tired of poring over the manuscripts I would discover that a cup of hot tea and a plate of cookies had been prepared for me by Khadija Lalani, who always made the library a wonderful environment in which to work. The librarians at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and at Zayed University in the UAE, particularly those working with interlibrary loans, were wonderful. I would like to thank Bonnie Burns of Harvard University, and Andrew Nicholson, Gerald Romme and Magda Biesiada of the University of Toronto, who inducted me into the world of geographic information systems. Without their help, I would not have been able to design the maps included in this book.
This book has benefited from the sage advice and valuable information provided by many leading scholars in the field, including Aziz Esmail and Jalal Badakhchani. Farhad Daftary, Hermann Landolt, Wilferd Madelung, and Paul Walker took time from their busy schedules and read the penultimate draft of the book, providing me with the benefit of their immense erudition and incisive judgment. Through the years, I have always admired their superior scholarship, and am indebted to them for their guidance and observations. I must, in particular, single out Faquir M. Hunzai and Mrs. Rashida Hunzai who, from the very outset, bent over backward to assist me. Despite the demands of their own work, they were always eager to help with their characteristic selflessness. With his vast knowledge and expertise, Hunzai was able to decipher some of the most obscure and puzzling passages in the manuscripts I was dealing with and Mrs. Hunzai’s vigilance saved me from many infelicities of expression. Both of them welcomed me with immense love and warmth, and I can never fully express my gratitude to them. In addition, my friends Hussein Rashid, Syed Akbar Hyder, and Sunil Sharma were sources of immense support and advice.
Iam particularly indebted to my parents, my sister and my brother, who have always stood by me, unwavering in their encouragement and support. Never a day goes by when I don’t remember how lucky I am to have them.
I’m grateful to the Journal of the American Oriental Society, which permitted me to use parts of my article “The Eagle Returns: Evidence of Continued Isma‘ili Activity at Alamiut and in the South Caspian Region following the Mongol Conquests,”’ JAOS 123 (2003): 351-370, in chapter 2 of this book.
Lastly, I'd like to acknowledge the Government of Iran Ministry of Culture, the Iran Heritage Foundation, the Institute of Ismaili Studies, the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award of the Middle East Studies Association, the Foundation for Iranian Studies, the Harvard University Ilse Lichtenstadter Memorial Publication Prize, and the Whiting Foundation for their support, financial or otherwise, which made the publication of this book possible.
Note on ie Teut
Charles Lamb (d. 1834), the English author most famous for his collection Essays of Elia, writes in that anthology, “J can read anything which I call a book.” However, he laments that there are many things that appear in the shape of books, but are no such thing, for they are quite unreadable. Among these he included scientific treatises, almanacs and the writings of Hume and Robertson. These he dubbed biblia a-biblia, “books that are not books.” They were volumes “no gentleman’s library should be without,” yet tomes hardly anyone would actually wish to read.'
I wanted The Ismailis in the Middle Ages to be a book that people would enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing. At the same time, an academic book must maintain certain standards of scholarship that are absolutely sacrosanct. No such volume, particularly in a largely untouched field, can do without exhaustive documentation. Yet the general reader is unlikely ever to venture into the forbidding wilderness of documentary notes that authors of such books so painstakingly prepare. Specialist readers, however, cannot forgo consulting such apparatus, the very stock of their craft. Creative solutions in other areas, however, can greatly enhance the reading experience of the lay reader, without compromising scholarly fidelity.
NAMES AND TITLES Ter
The title of Juwayni’s famous work on the Mongol conquests, Tarikh-i Jahangushay, while simple enough for the specialist, is nothing but an unpronounceable combination of letters for many casual readers. I have therefore opted to provide English designations for most works, in the case of Juwayni’s opus, the one it was conferred by its able translator, John Andrew Boyle, who dubbed it History of the World Conqueror. Such titles will have greater relevance to the average reader. Meanwhile, for the benefit of specialists and curious generalists, the original titles are referenced in parentheses on their first (and occasionally subsequent) appearance. Along the same lines, I have also provided English equivalents for a number of technical terms. However, as many of these have no real equivalent in English, this has not always been possible. For the purposes of English grammar, occasionally the original word provided in parentheses will be in the plural, though it is singular in the source, or vice versa. The faint of heart turn pale when they have to read names such as Abi “Amr Minhaj al-Din “Uthman b. Siraj al-Din Juzjani, and so Ihave spared them by trying to maintain the simplest form of such names wherever possible, hence Juzjani, while preserving the full forms in the index for those who are interested.
Computer software has made great strides in being able to accommodate languages in non-Roman scripts. Nevertheless, there are still many areas that need further development. The bibliographical software used for this book assumes that authors are identified by given name and surname. Traditional Eastern culture, however, knows no such convention, as authors may be identified according to any part of their name, not necessarily the last. The curious may therefore have to search a bit to find references to such sources in the bibliography, and may notice unconventional citations of figures in the notes, who may be better known by other names.
TRANSLITERATION Tew
We are told in the Bible of humankind’s arrogance in attempting to reach God by building the Tower of Babel. The Creator’s punishment was swift and unequivocal. Henceforth, the peoples of the earth would speak a medley of mutually unintelligible tongues. This retribution falls particularly heavy on the shoulders of scholars of world religions, histories, and cultures, who bear the burden not only of making sense of the Babelian cacophony of their sources, but of trying to convey this intelligibly to their readers. Any work that draws upon sources written in languages and scripts as diverse as Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Gujarati, Hindi, Sindhi, Punjabi, Siraiki, and Khojki faces the perplexing question of what system of transliteration to adopt. No one solution can hope to satisfy everybody and it is difficult to decide whether to include a bewildering array of diacritics thereby sacrificing readability, or to oversimplify matters and thus sacrifice accuracy.
While the heaps of “‘dots and lines” (ahem, macrons) are a bugbear to many readers, these symbols of transliteration are actually of tremendous value, as they help us to know how a word is spelled and pronounced in its original language; otherwise, how would one distinguish between the names Nasir-i Khusraw (in which Nasir is pronounced with a long
ses 1
“a” and a short “i’”) and Nasir al-Din Tusi (in which Nasir is pronounced with a short “‘a”
and a long “i”)? Even with a fully transliterated text, though, many readers may remain blissfully unaware of such distinctions. The best compromise, I thought, was to correctly transliterate all foreign words, but to remove the macrons and subscript dots in the main text, while maintaining them in the notes, index, glossary, this note on the text, quotations and wherever such words or phrases would benefit from being fully transcribed, such as when incorporated within parentheses. In this manner, generalist readers are spared the confusion of muddling through symbols they may not fully understand, adventurous gen-eralists (and I hope there are many such people) can learn the correct pronunciations of foreign words by referring to the glossary, and specialists can access the fully transliterated forms of non-English expressions quite easily. Other authors have opted for similar solutions, and in this I follow in their footsteps.
I have adopted a version of the Arabic transliteration system of the American Language Association (ALA) and Library of Congress (LC) for all Arabic script languages, with the usual additional characters for Persian, Urdu, etc., and the ALA-LC’s Gujarati transliteration system for all South Asian languages not written in Arabic script, as these roughly fall into the paradigm of standard Devanagari. The following are the main modifications: For Arabic script languages, the ta marbuta (3) is not represented by an h, the alif magsura is represented by 4 rather than 4, iyy and uww are preferred to ty and tw, and the prime symbol (“‘) is never used. For Devanagari, 7 and ¢% (and their equivalents in related scripts) are transcribed as “cha” and “chha” respectively, rather than as “ca” and “cha,” both 8T and Y (and their equivalents in related scripts) are transcribed as “sha,” word final “a” is not retained unless the word ends in a conjunct syllable, and a distinction is not always made between short and long “i” and “u’” sounds, particularly when transcribing from the Khojki script. Other minor modifications will be readily recognized by the specialist. The system adopted here does not solve all difficulties. For example, the Devanagari letter & and the Arabic letter 4. are both transcribed as “t”’even though their phonetic values are quite different. The Devanagari and Arabic characters (in order of appearance) are as follows: Fe &—T Os Lb.
However, the context in which the letter appears should make it clear which sound is intended. A problem that is not easily resolved without resorting to an extremely convoluted system is that phonemes such as the Sindhi implosives (whether in Arabic script or Khojki) are not distinguished. Another unavoidable idiosyncrasy that results from transcribing several languages is that words and phrases that are precisely the same vary in pronunciation and spelling from one language to the next and are thus transcribed differently in English. For example, what would be wali and Sadr al-Din when transcribed from Arabic script (i.e., Arabic, Persian, Urdu or standard Sindhi) may become vali and Sadaradin or even Sadharadhin when transcribed from Gujarati, Hindi or Khojki script.
Foreign words that occur commonly in the text of the book, such as da‘wa and taqiyya, are not italicized. Moreover, the anglicized forms of foreign names and terms are preferred when these are well known: hence Tamerlane rather than Timutr-i Lang or, reproducing the elaborate vowel systems of Turkish and Mongolian, Temiir. Similarly, the name of the city of western Afghanistan is spelled Herat rather than Harat, but the name of a resident of that city remains, for example, Khayrkhwah Harati. Persian compound words, such as the name of the well-known opus The Fire Temple of the litterateur Adhar, are written without a hyphen, hence Atishkada rather than Atish-kada. Along similar lines, Persianate compound names are written as one word, hence Islamshah rather than Islam Shah or Islam-shah. It is common for Arabic loanwords in Persian to have more than one accepted spelling; for example both hujja and hujjat are to be found. In such cases I have adopted what appeared more common and used that spelling in transliteration throughout, in this case hujjat. Occasionally, in transcribing from languages using Devanagari and related scripts, postpositions are written separately from the word that precedes them, though they are attached in the original text.
CALENDAR SYSTEMS Tew
Not only are a plethora of languages represented in this book, but a number of calendar systems as well. Most common is the Islamic lunar calendar, commonly abbreviated with the Latin AH (= Anno Hegirae). This will generally be followed by the corresponding date in the Gregorian Christian calendar, now often abbreviated CE (= Christian or Common Era). In addition to both of these, in bibliographical references the reader will occasionally come across the Islamic solar calendar, adopted in modern Iran in 1925, abbreviated in this book as HS (= Hijri solar or Hijri Shamsi), and the Vikrama Samvat era, commonly used in South Asia and abbreviated here as VS. For conversion from lunar to solar dates the algorithms developed by John Walker and available at the following website were used: http://www.calendarhome.com/converter/. Approximations of other dates were calculated simply by subtracting 621 years from the Christian Era in the case of the Islamic solar calendar, and by adding either fifty-six or fifty-seven years in the case of the Vikrama Samvat era. Date conversions already provided in the sources are given as they were calculated by the composers of those sources. The abbreviations for the calendar will only be provided where ambiguity may arise. In most cases, the dates of only two calendar systems are shown, the first being the lunar Islamic and the second being the Gregorian. For simplicity’s sake, where a date has only been provided for purposes of contextualization, it is given in the Gregorian system.
MAPS crew
This book is filled with the names of places, some famous, others not so familiar, and a few that have disappeared without a trace with the passage of time. Tremendous efforts have been made to determine most of the locations mentioned and to document their coordinates on the maps that have been included. To this end, the archives of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online, countless gazetteers and maps, and even reminiscences in travelogues have been sifted for information. On occasion, the data in different sources was contradictory. In such cases I have endeavored to select the most likely coordinates.
ABBREVIATIONS AND OTHER CONVENTIONS
trae Some of the common abbreviations that have been adopted include b. for ibn and
bint, meaning ‘“‘son of” and “daughter of” respectively, ca. for circa, meaning an approximate date, d. for died, fl. for flourished, r. for reigned, f. or ff. for folio(s), v. or vv. for verse(s), c. or cc. for canto(s), n or nn for note(s) vol., for volume, ed. for edition, edited by or editor, trans. for translation, translated by or translator, q.v. for quod vide (to crossreference within the glossary), sv for sub voce or “‘see under,” nd for no date, and np for no page number(s) available. The abbreviation # refers to the Ginan number in an anthology. Many of the Khojki Ginan books referred to are exceedingly rare and different editions do not generally maintain the same page numbers, while the Ginan numbers often (though not always) remain the same. This method has been adopted so as to assist scholars who may have different editions of the text. A list of abbreviations used in the notes and bibliography of works cited may be found at the beginning of that section.
It is common, in English, to capitalize pronouns referring to God. As Arabic, Persian and most of the other source languages for this book do not have a system of capital letters, this practice is foreign to them and is not consistently followed here, except in quotations of authors writing in Western languages who have used that system. At times, despite the fact that there is an existing translation of a particular text, I have furnished my own translation, often providing a reference to the earlier translation in the notes. In all cases, I am indebted to the earlier translators whose work has facilitated my task greatly.
During the course of writing this book, I have tried, wherever possible, to maintain consistency of the sources cited. However, frequent relocations in North America, Europe and the Middle East have meant that I have had to depend on the resources of a large number of libraries. Therefore the reader will occasionally find different editions of the same work being referred to. This will not even be noticed by the general reader, but can be a hindrance for specialists, who will, I hope, be understanding.
With regard to the manner of writing, I am inspired by the words of James Bissett Pratt, most famous for his work, The Religious Consciousness. He observed, “It would be possible to write a learned book on Buddhism which should recite the various facts with scholarly exactness, yet leave the reader at the end wondering how intelligent and spiritual men and women of our day could really be Buddhists.”” He contended that to give the true feelings of a religion, “One must catch its emotional undertone, enter sympathetically into its sentiment, feel one’s way into its symbols, its cult, its art, and then seek to impart these not merely by scientific exposition but in all sorts of indirect ways.”” In these pages, too, I have sought to bring to life the subject at hand, so that in the citations of religious poetry the readers can feel the palpitations of piety and earnestness, in the quotations from polemical sources, the vim and venom of the attackers, and in the personal reminiscences of academics, the trials, tribulations and adventures of the scholarly endeavor. In this manner, I hope that the volume in your hands will not remain, in the words of Lamb, a book that is not a book, a thing in book’s clothing. The Ismailis in the Middle Ages is about a subject that held ever greater fascination for me the more I researched and wrote about it. I hope that in the pages that follow I will be able to convey something of this captivation to my readers.
ee oe
None of that people should be spared, not even the babe in its cradle. Tew
Edict of Genghis Khan as recorded in History of the World Conqueror
The savagery of the Mongol invasions has perhaps no parallel in the history of humankind. Genghis Khan perpetrated more massacres, destroyed more states, reduced to rubble more monuments, razed more cities, and ruined more fields than any previous conqueror. The number of his victims ran into the millions. “My greatest joy,” he is remembered for saying, “is to shed my enemies’ blood, wring tears from their womenfolk, and take their daughters for bedding.” ! “1” he vaunted, “‘am the scourge of God!’”?
E. G. Browne described the invasions as
a catastrophe which, though probably quite unforeseen, even on the very eve of its incidence, changed the face of the world, set in motion forces which are still effective, and inflicted more suffering on the human race than any other event in the world’s history of which records are preserved to us....In its suddenness, its devastating destruction, its appalling ferocity, its passionless and purposeless cruelty, its irresistible though short-lived violence, this outburst of savage nomads hitherto hardly known by name even to their neighbours, resembles rather some brute cataclysm of the blind forces of nature than a phenomenon of human history. The details of massacre, outrage, spoliation, and destruction wrought by these hateful hordes of barbarians, who, in the space of a few years, swept the world from Japan to Germany, would, as d’Ohsson observes, be incredible were they not confirmed from so many different quarters.”
The naked horror of the thirteenth-century Mongol irruption into the heart of the Muslim world caused devastation of disastrous proportions. Baghdad, the capital itself, was sacked, and its caliph was murdered. “Ata-Malik Juwayni’s eyewitness account, however, does not describe this as the pinnacle of Mongol conquest. Rather, for this Sunni historian, the Mongol invasions culminated in the remotest reaches of the Alburz mountains with the obliteration of the mini-state of the Shi‘i Ismailis, centered at the fortress of Alamut. In one of his imperial edicts, Genghis Khan had ordained that the Ismailis were to be annihilated: ‘““None of that people should be spared,” he decreed, “not even the babe in its cradle.”* These chilling words heralded one of history’s most lurid examples of mass extermination.” It is to this singular event that Juwayni dedicated the concluding one-third of his History of the World Conqueror.® The prominence given to this particular triumph reflects the enormous role played by the Ismailis in Muslim consciousness, belying their minority status. Contemporary Persian historians believed that the utter devastation of Alamut tolled their death knell. They celebrated the collapse of this center, home to a powerful voice of Shi‘i Islam, which had intellectually and politically challenged the reigning authorities.
The beginnings of Shi‘i Islam are connected with events surrounding the death of the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet’s family did not approve of Abu Bakr’s assumption of the leadership of the Muslim community, and even withheld allegiance for a period of six months.’ Many Muslims believed that the Prophet had, by divine decree, explicitly designated his cousin and son-in-law ‘Ali b. Abi Talib as his successor. The group acknowledged “Ali as its leader, or Imam, and thus became known as the shi‘at ‘Ali, the party of ‘Ali. It is widely narrated that at a place known as Ghadir Khumm the Prophet had declared, ““Ali is the lord (mawla) of those whose lord I am.” Shi‘i authors have always been keen to point out the ubiquity of this narration not only in their own books, but in those of the Sunnis.® “Ali’s supporters thus tended to view the caliphs who were not members of the Prophet’s immediate family (ahl al-bayt) as illegitimate usurpers.”
Quarrels came to a head in the reign of the third caliph, “Uthman (d. 35/656), who distributed the governorships of all the major provinces as well as the important garrison towns to members of his own family, the powerful Banu Umayya.'° Discontent with Umayyad hegemony gave rise to opposition movements in Kufa, Basra, and Egypt. It also instilled renewed vigor in the supporters of the Prophet’s family. The malcontents soon broke out in open rebellion. “Ali, despite his own reservations about the legitimacy of “Uthman’s leadership, had placed his sons al-Hasan and al-Husayn at the caliph’s service to protect him against the mob.'' However, the ensuing chaos culminated in ‘Uthman’s murder.
In the midst of these trying circumstances, ‘Ali was acclaimed caliph in Medina, twenty-four years after the Prophet’s death. His rule was almost immediately challenged by the Umayyads and their supporters, who wanted him to find the culprits and seek vengeance for ‘Uthman’s blood.'” Within five years, ‘Ali was murdered in the mosque of Kufa, and effective power passed into the hands of “Uthman’s kinsman, Mu‘awiya. Henceforth, the Shi‘a and the Prophet’s family were to be severely persecuted and to suffer a number of indignities, not least of which was the ritual cursing of ‘Ali from the pulpits after the congregational prayers on Friday, a practice introduced during the rule of Mu‘awiya.'*
Over time, revolts by supporters of the Prophet’s kinsfolk became ubiquitous, coloring the pages of early Islamic history. By 132/750, a Shi‘a-led revolution, with the support of a large cross-section of dissatisfied elements, managed to topple the Umayyad dynasty. They did not reveal who their leader was, naming him simply “the chosen one from Muhammad’s family” (al-rida min Al Muhammaa). With the defeat of the Umayyads in Iraq, Abu Salama al-Khallal, the “vizier of Muhammad’s family” (wazir Al Muhammad), was called upon to take power and disclose the name of the awaited “chosen one.” He favored installing one of “Ali’s descendants, but his advances were rebuffed by both Ja‘far al-Sadiq'* (a descendant of “Ali’s son al-Husayn) and “Abd Allah al-Mahd (a descendant of ‘Ali’s son al-Hasan), 'S the two most prominent members of the family. After two months, the “Abbasids, descendants of the Prophet’s paternal uncle al-“Abbas, managed to orchestrate a takeover of the rebellion, in which they had played a pivotal role, and succeeded in installing Abu al-‘Abbas al-Saffah as the first “Abbasid caliph. Abu Salama was compelled to carry on as vizier for a time but was soon executed, almost certainly because of his ‘Alid sympathies.'® The ‘Alid Shi‘i aspirations that had stirred the opposition to action were now crushed. Distancing themselves from those who had propelled them to power, the “Abbasids, particularly al-Mansur, the successor of Abu al-‘Abbas, soon set out on a campaign of persecution against their “Alid cousins and supporters of the “Alid cause.
The aforementioned Ja‘far al-Sadiq remained politically uninvolved.'’ While he had his own coterie of adherents who looked upon him as his father’s successor and the sole legitimate source of religious authority, he also instructed a wider circle, which included, among other outstanding personalities, Abu Hanifa (d. 150/ 767) and Malik b. Anas (d. 179/796), the eponymous founders of two schools of law within what would later come to be known as Sunni Islam. Elaborating on the teachings of his father, Ja‘far bequeathed to Imami Shi‘ism a comprehensive enunciation of the doctrine of imamate.'* This fundamental tenet was explained as the eternal need for a divinely appointed (mansiis) and infallible (ma‘sum) guide to instruct mankind by means of his sapiential knowledge (‘ilm).'° Ja‘far’s quiescent policy and refusal to take up arms against the caliphate distressed a number of the Shi‘a. This activist branch soon joined in the “Alid revolts of personalities such as Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya and his brother Ibrahim, sons of the aforementioned “Abd Allah al-Mahd.”°
Following Jafar al-Sadiq’s death, amid confusion about his successor, the Imami Shi‘a split. Among other groups, one faction held to Ja‘far’s original designation (nass) in favor of his son Isma‘il al-Mubarak, while another eventually came to recognize the imamate of a younger son, Musa al-Kazim.”! In the course of time, the adherents of the elder line came to be designated as al-Isma‘iliyya, while the younger line eventually became the Ithna ‘ashariyya, or Twelver Shi‘a, after the disappearance of their twelfth Imam.*”
The Ismaili Imams went into concealment (satr), away from the long arm of their enemies, the ‘Abbasids. Meanwhile, the Imams of the line of Musa were kept under the watchful eye of the government authorities and, according to Twelver tradition, were poisoned, one after the other, the eleventh Imam dying in 260/874. The Twelver Shi‘a affirm that this Imam had left behind a child, the twelfth and final Imam, whom they believe to have disappeared into a cave in Samarra, finally entering what later came to be known as the “greater occultation” in 329/940. Meanwhile, the Ismailis had prepared the ground for a revolution, which culminated when their Imam, ‘Abd Allah al-Mahdi, emerged in the Maghrib and established the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909, a direct challenge to the “Abbasids of Baghdad.** The Fatimid caliphate was the apogee of Ismaili political successes. At the height of power, the “Alid caliph eclipsed his “Abbasid and Umayyad rivals, claiming dominion over all of North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, the Red Sea coast of Africa, Yemen, Syria, Palestine, and the Hijaz with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Yet, despite their political power, the Ismailis always remained a minority, even within their own realms. There was no attempt at mass conversion. Significantly, however, the Fatimid Imams had supporters even within the territories of their rivals. In fact, it was one such adherent, the Turkish general alBasasiri, who succeeded in capturing Baghdad itself, the very seat of the “Abbasid caliphs, albeit only for a short time in 450/1058.7*
The political successes of the Fatimids alarmed their rivals, and the “Abbasids reacted fiercely, encouraging and commissioning numerous defamatory polemical works. The panic caused by the triumphs of the Shiii Ismailis can be gauged by the tone of some of the barbs directed against them. The Ash‘arite theologian, al-Baghdadi (d. 429/1037), excitedly charges:
The damage caused by the Batiniyya [i.e., the Ismailis] to the Muslim sects is greater than the damage caused them by the Jews, Christians and Magians; nay, graver than the injury inflicted on them by the Materialists and other non-believing sects; nay, graver than the injury resulting to them from the Antichrist [Dajjal] who will appear at the end of time. For those who, as a result of the missionary activities of the Batiniyya, have been led astray ever since the inception of the mission up to the present time are more numerous than those who will be led astray by the Antichrist when he appears, since the duration of the sedition of the Antichrist will not exceed forty days. But the vices of the Batiniyya are more numerous than the sand-grains or the raindrops.*°
Following the death of the Caliph-Imam al-Mustansir in 487/1094, there was a succession struggle between two of his sons, Abu Mansur Nizar and Abu al-Qasim Ahmad, known as al-Musta‘li bi’llah. Though Nizar was apparently captured and killed in the ensuing struggle, he was survived by a number of sons. The Ismailis were now divided into two factions, the Nizaris and the Musta‘lians.
In 483/1090, shortly before this split, Hasan-i Sabbah, one of al-Mustansir’s most senior dignitaries,”° had successfully acquired the fortress of Alamut, which was to become the headquarters of the Nizaris. His remarkable organizational skills were indispensable in consolidating the Nizari community, and his writings, notably those on the concept of “‘spiritual edification” (taTim), proved instrumental in attracting wide support. Under the able leadership of Hasan and his successors, Ismailism spread throughout the domains of its sworn enemies, the Turkish Saljuqs. The Saljuqs ruled in the name and with the blessings of the “Abbasid caliphs, who were now largely reduced to being the titular heads of Sunni Islam. Ismaili communities living within Saljuq territory were subjected to repeated massacres, but their dispersal across a number of fortresses made actions against them more difficult. Unable to confront the empire’s massive military superiority head-on, they managed to defend themselves by identifying and assassinating those figures who led or encouraged the massacres against them. The Ismaili combination of both propagation and assassination yielded some astonishing results. According to Ibn al-Athir, whose work is considered the epitome of Muslim historical annals, so many of the Saljuq Sultan Barkiyaruq’s (d. 498/1105) courtiers and soldiers had become Ismailis that some of his officers requested his permission to appear before him in armor lest they be attacked, even in his very presence.*’ Despite the adverse circumstances of the times, the literary output of the Nizaris of Alamut seems to have been considerable. As even their inveterate detractors have noted, the library of Alamut was famous for its holdings.”* However, only a handful of Ismaili works have survived from this period.
Despite the ferocity of Saljuq actions against the Ismailis, an adversary of incomparably greater destructive abilities was on the horizon—the Mongols. We hear an ominous foreboding of the coming genocide from William of Rubruck, a Franciscan friar at the court of King Louis IX of France, who was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Great Khan Mongke. He tells that the Great Khan had sent his brother Hulagu to the lands of the Ismailis with an army, “and he ordered him to put them all to death.” The explicit targeting of the members of this minority group by the Great Khan betrays their influence in the region. When the fortress of Alamut was subjugated by the Mongols in 654/1256, “Ata-Malik Juwayni, Hulagu’s attendant and historian, requested permission to visit the celebrated library, “the fame of which had spread throughout the world.”*° There he found multitudes of books relating to the religion of the Ismailis, which he condemned to be burned, saving only copies of the Quran and a few other treatises.*' Consigned to a fate similar to that of their religious books, the Ismailis themselves were hunted down and slaughtered indiscriminately. Henceforth, it would seem that they had simply ceased to exist, disappearing from the pages of history. Juwayni’s account perhaps best describes what was believed to be the final destruction and ultimate annihilation of the community. It is so vivid that it is quoted here in extenso:
And in that abode where monstrous innovations flourished, with the pen of violence the Artist of Eternity wrote upon the portico of each one’s dwelling the verse: These their houses are empty ruins (27:53). And in the marketplace of the kingdom of those wretches the muezzin Destiny has announced, Away then with the wicked people (23:43)! Their luckless womenfolk, like their empty religion, have been utterly destroyed. The gold of those crazy, double-dealing counterfeiters, which appeared to be unalloyed, has proven to be base lead. Today, thanks to the glorious fortune of the World-Illuminating King, if an assassin still lingers in a corner he plies a woman’s trade; wherever there is a da‘i there is an announcer of death; and every Ismaili comrade has become a thrall. The propagators of Ismailism have fallen victims to the swordsmen of Islam. Their Mawlana, to whom they addressed the words: “O God, our Protector,’ —dust in their mouths!—(and yet the infidels have no protector (47:12)) has become the serf of bastards. Their wise Imam, nay their lord of this world, of whom they believed that every day doth some new work employ him (55:29), is fallen like game into the net of Predestination. Their governors have lost their power and their rulers their honor. The greatest among them have become as vile as dogs. Every commander of a fortress has been deemed fit for the gallows and every warden of a castle has forfeited his head and his mace. They have been degraded amongst mankind like the Jews, and like the highways, are level with the dust. God Almighty hath said: Vileness and poverty were stamped upon them (13:25). These, a curse awaiteth them (2:58). The kings of the Greeks and Franks, who turned pale for fear of these accursed ones, and paid them tribute, and were not ashamed of that ignominy, now enjoy sweet slumber. And all the inhabitants of the world, and in particular the Faithful, have been relieved of their evil machinations and unclean beliefs. Nay, the whole of mankind, high and low, noble and base, share in this rejoicing. And compared with these histories that of Rustam, the son of Dastan, has become but an ancient fable. The perception of all ideas is through this manifest victory, and the light of the world-illuminating day is adorned thereby. And the uttermost part of that impious people was cut off. All praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds (6:45)!°"
EMERGING FROM OBSCURITY Tew
The volume in your hands is not about the massacres that occurred. While there are numerous instances recorded in these pages of persecution and killings, particularly in the South Caspian region and Khurasan, this book instead seeks to identify and understand how the Ismailis managed to survive such circumstances, and how their religious doctrines and worldview helped them do this.
Juwayni had declared, “He [the Imam Rukn al-Din Khwurshah] and his followers were kicked to a pulp and then put to the sword; and of him and his stock no trace was left, and he and his kindred became but a tale on men’s lips and a tradition in the world.”*? In the light of such unequivocal declarations, triumphantly announcing the complete and total annihilation of the Imam and his community, the extermination of the Ismailis in the face of the Mongol behemoth was accepted as fact in Western scholarship for centuries. This began to change about two hundred years ago.
One of the first people to draw attention in orientalist circles to the continued existence of the community as well as to their local traditions and literature was Jean Baptiste L. J. Rousseau (d. 1831), who was the French consul-general in Aleppo from 1809 to 1816 and a longtime resident of the Near East. He came across the Nizaris in Syria and highlighted their sorry plight after their 1809 massacre at the hands of the Nusayris, another sect of the region. When he participated in an official French mission at the court of the Persian monarch Fath “Alishah (d. 1834), he was taken aback to find that the community flourished in Iran as well. He wrote a letter about his findings to the famous Parisian scholar Sylvestre de Sacy, who quoted it at the end of his pivotal study “Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins, et sur l’étymologie de leur Nom.” The letter was dated Tehran, June 1, 1808:
I have collected some fairly exact notions about the Batinis or Isma‘ilis commonly called Melahédehs, a sect which still survives and is widespread and tolerated, like many others, in the provinces of Persia and in the Sind. As I have very little free time, please excuse my putting off the task of going into a detailed discussion until some other time. Meanwhile, it may be useful to tell you that the Méelahédehs even today have their imam or pontiff, descending, as they claim, from Ja‘far Sadiq, the chief of their sect, and residing at Kehek, a village in the district
of Qom. He is called Sheikh Khalil Allah and succeeded in the imamate to his uncle, Mirza Abu’1-Hasan, who played a great part under the reign of the Zends.** The Persian government does not bother him. On the contrary, he receives annual revenues from it. This person, whom his people grace with the pompous title of caliph, enjoys a great reputation and is considered to have the gift of performing miracles. They assure me that the Muslim Indians regularly come from the banks of the Indus to receive his blessings in exchange for the rich and pious offerings they bring him. He is more specifically known to the Persians by the name of Seid Keheki.*°
Although this information was scarcely noted in orientalist circles at the time, shortly thereafter, the continued existence of the community was becoming apparent to the British government, which sought the help of the Imam, Aga Khan I, to secure the lines of communication in Sindh. General Sir Charles Napier, in his diary entry of February 29, 1843, wrote:
I have sent the Persian Prince Aga Khan to Jarrack, on the right bank of the Indus. His influence is great, and he will with his own followers secure our communication with Karachi. He is the lineal chief of the Ismailians, who still exist as a sect and are spread over all the interior of Asia. They have great influence, though no longer dreaded as in the days of yore. He will protect our line along which many of our people have been murdered by the Baloochis.*°
By the early 1900s, there was a flurry of notices on the Ismailis of South Asia and greater Badakhshan, where the community was particularly prominent.*” It was with the pioneering efforts of Wladimir Ivanow, though, that the Ismailis made substantial strides in their emergence from academic obscurity. This Russian scholar picturesquely describes his first encounter with them and the amazement his discovery elicited among his peers:
I came in touch with the Ismailis for the first time in Persia, in February 1912. The world was quite different then. No one imagined that the Great War, with all its misery and suffering, was just around the corner. Persia was still living in her ancestral mediaeval style, and her affairs were largely going on in their traditional ways, as they were going on for centuries.
I was riding from Mashhad to Birjand, in Eastern Persia; travelling
by day and taking shelter at night in the villages that were situated along the road. Icy winds blow in that part of the country in winter, raising clouds of dust and sand which make the journey a real torture. Tired and hungry, I arrived at the village of Sedeh, and was very glad to take shelter in the hut of a peasant. I sat warming myself by the side of a fire awaiting food which was being prepared for me. A man entered, conveying to me the invitation of the local landlord to shift to his house and accept his hospitality. It was, indeed, very kind of him, but, unfortunately, his invitation came a bit too late. ...I therefore declined the invitation with thanks, promising that after a rest I would personally
go to see the landlord and convey my thanks to him. This I did later on, and enjoyed a very interesting and instructive talk.
Already in Mashhad I had often heard about these localities being populated by a “strange sect.”” My inquiries could not elicit any reliable information. Some people told me that the “‘strange sect’’ were the Ismailis, but I disbelieved it, having been brought up on the idea, universally accepted by Oriental scholars in Europe, that all traces of Ismailism in Persia were swept away by the brutal Mongols. And here, taking the opportunity of a conversation with the landlord on the spot, I tried to ascertain the truth. To my surprise, he confirmed what I had heard before, stating that the people really were Ismailis, and that the locality was not the only seat of the followers of the community but there were other places too in Persia in which they were found....
My learned friends in Europe plainly disbelieved me when I wrote about the community to them. It appeared to them quite unbelievable that the most brutal persecution, wholesale slaughter, age-long hostility and suppression were unable to annihilate the community.*®
It is thus only in recent times that the continued survival of the Ismailis has become apparent in Western scholarship. Today, they exist as a dynamic and thriving community established in over twenty-five countries.°?
However, despite their newfound celebrity, the intervening centuries between what appeared to have been their total annihilation in 654/1256, and their modern, seemingly phoenix-like renaissance, remain shrouded in mystery. The destruction of the Ismaili mini-state centered at Alamut ushered in a period so dim and indistinct that the first half a millennium after the Mongol conquest has had to be classified by researchers under the amorphous title of “post-Alamut history.”*° In his monumental work, The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines, Farhad Daftary echoes the sentiments of over a century of previous scholarship in bemoaning this period as “the darkest phase” in the annals of the community.*! He further writes, “Under the circumstances, modern scholars, including the specialists in Isma‘ili studies, have not so far produced major studies dealing with this phase of Nizari Isma‘ilism.”*?
The Ismailis in the Middle Ages is an inquiry into the most obscure portion of this period, beginning with the aftermath of the Mongol invasions and continuing until the eve of the Safawid revolution, that is, from the mid-thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth century. While the historical investigation is largely circumscribed by these dates, the analysis of thought and doctrine spans a much wider compass, drawing on sources from over a millennium of Ismaili history to elucidate and shed light on the particular precepts and beliefs expressed in the works of this epoch. During the course of research, I discovered numerous previously unknown sources from many areas of Ismaili habitation, including documents in Arabic, Persian, Sindhi, Siraiki, Hindustani, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Latin, that help reconstruct Ismaili history and thought in this period. Most of these sources are still in manuscript form and uncatalogued. The significance of these newly recovered works is considerable and would more than double the number of entries for the Nizari Ismaili authors of this period recorded in the bibliographies of I. K. Poonawala and W. Ivanow, the most important scholarly references for primary sources on Ismailism.*? These writings help us identify several hitherto unknown Ismaili authors, forcing us to reassess earlier judgments concerning the literature of this period. Many other works, some known only by name, others little-studied, have also been considered, often necessitating a revision of previously accepted theories or providing documentary support for ideas that have been conjectured by earlier scholars.
The book pieces together the existing fragments of information in order to reconstruct the history of how the community survived its political devastation. While it focuses chiefly on developments in the Iranian region, which was the primary home of the Nizari Imams throughout these two and a half centuries, it also touches on the existence of Ismaili enclaves in many other areas of the Near East. The book explains how three aspects of Ismaili thought were crucial to the community’s survival: taqiyya (precautionary dissimulation), the Ismaili da‘wa, which literally means “summons” or, as it has sometimes been translated into English, “mission”; and the soteriological dimension of the imamate and, in particular, of the role of the Imam of one’s time in leading the adept to salvation and a mystical recognition of God.
SIGNPOSTS FOR THE WAY Tew
History is intimately connected with thought and doctrine. They are mutually entwined, each influencing the other. For this reason, in the pages that follow, analysis of the Ismaili belief system is often interwoven with historical narrative, as the history could not have unfolded as it did had its actors not conducted themselves according to a worldview inspired by their religious convictions. In some ways, the structure of the book mirrors the method of Ismaili pedagogy. The earlier chapters focus more on the exoteric, historical aspects of Ismailism. As the book progresses, however, greater emphasis is placed on the esoteric, on the system of thought that animated and gave life to the community. At the outset, the note on the text explained some of the nuts and bolts of the book, including the transliteration system, the calendars used, abbreviations and other conventions. The introduction that you are currently reading sets the stage by providing a background to Ismailism and an insight into the ravaging of the community by the Mongol hordes. The first chapter, “Recovering a Lost History,” probes the meaning of history and the significance of historical information. It provides a bird’s eye view of the sources used in this study. Chapter 2, “The Eagle Returns,” explores the surprising tenacity of the Ismailis in the South Caspian regions of Gilan, Daylam and Mazandaran, including at the fort of Alamut itself, even after the Mongol devastation. The third chapter, “Veiling the Sun,” is about the first Ismaili Imam of the post-invasion period, Shams al-Din Muhammad, as well as his disciple, the poet Nizari Quhistani, both of whose lives typify the practice of taqiyya and help introduce this fundamental concept. Chapter 4, “Summoning to the Truth,” investigates the purport and structure of the Ismaili da‘wa, the biography of the successor of Shams al-Din Muhammad, known as Qasimshah, as well as his family, and the identity and writings of an Ismaili luminary by the name of Qasim Tushtari, who may have been a contemporary of the Imam Qasimshah. In addition to taqiyya and the Ismaili da‘wa, the concept of imamate was fundamental to the survival of the community. This concept is introduced in the fifth chapter, “‘Possessors of the Command,” which examines the lives of the successors of the Imam Qasimshah, known as Islamshah and Muhammad b. Islamshah. It also assays the situation of the non-Iranian Ismaili communities in this period and contrasts the modes of taqiyya in Quhistan and Syria. Chapter 6, “Qibla of the World,” considers the transference of the seat of imamate to Anjudan, the lives of the Imams Mustansir bi’llah, “Abd al-Salam and Gharib Mirza, and the vitae and writings of Ismaili luminaries contemporary with these three Imams. It further discusses the notion of the Imam as the spiritual gibla. The penultimate chapter, “The Way of the Seeker,” continues by probing Ismaili thought in greater depth. It is about taqiyya and da‘wa, the latter viewed primarily through the eyes of Bu Ishaq Quhistani, a contemporary of the Imam Mustansir bi’ lah, who has left for posterity an invaluable account of his search for truth, his acceptance of Ismailism, and his progress in the Ismaili spiritual hierarchy. “Salvation and Imamate,”’ the final chapter, delves into the central Ismaili belief in the eternal soteriological necessity for a present and living Imam to lead the adepts to gnosis and knowledge of God. This conviction was essential to the community’s survival. The afterword is a reflection on some of the findings of this study.
It is a truism, but it bears repeating, that those who do not hold political power rarely write their own histories. Indeed, while we know of Ismaili chroniclers in the times when the community ruled Egypt and later administered a state from Alamut, no evidence exists that any Ismaili wrote a history of the Imams in the two and a half centuries following the Mongol invasion.“ Not only was the community not in power, it was also a persecuted minority and therefore would have wished to avoid anything that could have drawn attention to its continued existence. However, there is also a more subtle reason for this lack of historical documentation that is connected with the spiritualized conception of imamate. To focus one’s attention on the corporeal aspect of the Imam was to degrade him and to degrade one’s own spirituality. The Imam’s esoteric reality is consistently emphasized in Ismaili works of this and succeeding periods, with an equal emphasis on not focusing one’s mind on his physical person. This is dramatically illustrated in a poem recording the journey of a certain Khwaja “Abd al-Ma‘sum to deliver the religious dues of the Ismailis of Badakhshan to the Imam Dhu al-Fagar ‘Ali (d. 1043/ 1634).*° The Khwaja was granted an audience and received the beatific vision (didar) of the Imam. Excitedly, others gathered around him:
Men and women, young and old, all fell at his feet, saying, “He has returned from the holy family (of the Prophet)!” Taking him aside they pleaded, “tell us what you beheld
in that assembly!’’He avidly began to relate to them his experience, “When the exalted lord mounted the throne, before him the rest of creation was of no account....”
His narrative, however, was interrupted:
A man, some fool, then asked him, “Is he old? A youth? Tell us!
Perchance he’s a babe in his cradle. Has he a wife and children at home?”
Distracted from his narrative and focusing on the physical aspect of his encounter, the traveler mused:
“His age must have been twenty years or so....” The composer of the poem then relates:
All the foolish men and women there were abustle, saying oh and ah!
What do such people, material by nature, know of the essence of the Imam?
There was a man in that assembly—a sage. When he heard this babbling he reproached them, saying, ““O worthless nightingale, practice not your idolatry with the unique, the sublime!”
The wise sage then continued by quoting the Quran, drawing the questioners away from wondering about such mundane matters as the Imam’s age and family and leading them to an understanding of his sublime nature and esoteric reality.
The poem is illustrative of the Ismaili attitude toward the Imam and gives a greater understanding of the reason histories that recounted facts about the earthly, and hence less important, aspects of the Imams’ lives, would not have been valued nearly as much as treatises on matters of spirituality, which abound in the manuscripts containing works of this period. Hence, the annals of the community must be drawn from sources whose intention was not primarily historical but which, nevertheless, contain historical information. These include verses of poetry, epigraphs, and doctrinal works.
Without a state of their own in this period, the Ismailis did not have the luxury of grand libraries or professional scribes. Pious individuals, who may not always have been equal to the task, therefore took it upon themselves to copy religious works. Much of what we possess today of Persian Ismaili manuscripts originates from the region broadly termed Badakhshan, where Persian is not even a first language. Wladimir Ivanow frequently expressed his exasperation of working with these texts, passages of which had often been corrupted beyond recognition. He described working with the inferior copies as ‘“‘a thankless task.” “°
Ivanow’s annoyance became vividly apparent to me when I was poring over a Badakhshani manuscript at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, that had earlier been in the possession of the Ismaili Society, Mumbai. Portions of this manuscript had been used by Ivanow for his edition of The Works of Khayrkhwah of Herat (Tasnifat-i Khayrkhwah Harati).*’ At the top of page 136, in the unmistakable hand of the learned orientalist, were the words, ‘‘Horrible! The copyist was an idiot.”
After studying hundreds of manuscripts, some rendered incomprehensible at the hands of copyists, I can certainly sympathize with Ivanow’s sentiments, amusing as they may be to modern-day readers. However, despite struggling over the often-impenetrable gobbledygook of errors arising from the haplography, dittography, homceoteleuton, and all the other malfeasances of the much-maligned scribes, I must admit that my reaction is completely different. Rather than the disgust that was felt by the Russian scholar, I feel a deep sense of admiration for the people, many of whom were not native speakers of Persian, who tried their best to preserve their religious heritage in the most adverse, and often hostile, circumstances. Were it not for these scribes, however humble, even the meager remnants of a literary tradition that today have found their way into the possession of both academic institutions and private holdings would have perished without a trace.
With regard to the dizzying number of variants in the manuscripts I have used, I find comfort in the words of Saint Jerome (d. 420), who faced much the same quandary with the texts from which he was translating to produce his Latin Vulgate. In reply to Pope Damasus, who had enquired as to their reliability, the most learned of Christian fathers was obliged to confess: Pius labor, sed periculosa praesumptio. ...Si enim Latinis exemplaribus fides est adhibenda, respondeant quibus: tot sunt paene quot codices, “The labor is one of love, but at the same time both perilous and presumptuous. ... For if we are to pin our faith on the Latin texts, it is for our opponents to tell us which; for there are almost as many variants in the texts as there are copies.” *®
A particularly poignant example of a scribe’s acknowledgement of his limitations is that contained in manuscript RK 51 at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, entitled A Bouquet of Poems by the Late Raqqami of Dizbad, Khurasan (Gulchini az ashar-i marhium Raqqami-yi Dizbadi Khurasani). Expressing his motivation for compiling the book, the scribe, a certain “Aliquli b. Rajab‘ali b. Imamquli, in tropes familiar to copyists, writes of his fear that the religious tradition preserved with such care by his forefathers would be snuffed out if it were not safeguarded. He thus took it upon himself, despite his own shortcomings, of which he was painfully aware, to recopy the work:
Thanks be to our most exalted lord for giving such a helpless servant the strength and ability to complete this book. ...This humble slave feared lest the lamp lit by our ancestors with such care be extinguished. .. . Thus, I withdrew my hand from the occupations of the world and with immense difficulty sat alone [to copy this book]. The entire book is cluttered, disorderly, in the language of the commoners and in the jumbled handwriting of this unworthy servant....As this servant lacks elegant style and correct orthography, the writing of this book too lacks elegant style and correct orthography . . . transcribed by the most humble [of devotees], “Aliquli b. Rajab‘ali b. Imamquli.
One cannot help being moved by the apology of such a scribe to his future readers. Ivanow had described the task of using such inferior copies as ‘“‘thankless.” Granted, reading the exquisitely calligraphed and beautifully illuminated manuscripts of the royal courts, penned by richly rewarded and professional scribes, is a great pleasure. But there is a different type of pleasure to be gained from reading, often struggling over, the manuscripts penned by humble devotees who sought no reward from any earthly king for their labors. Far from “thankless,” I have found the perusal of the texts used in this study to be, yes, difficult, extremely trying at times, but yet immensely edifying and truly inspirational.
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