Download PDF | Farhad Daftary - Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies_ A Historical Introduction to an Islamic Community (Ismaili Heritage) (2006).
272 Pages
Preface
My interest in Ismaili studies dates back to the mid-960s when I was studying for my doctorate at the University of California in Berkeley. It was Wladimir Ivanow (886–970), the Russian pioneer in modern Ismaili studies, who encouraged me to choose Ismailism as a field of study. More than a decade later, after I had conducted much research in this field and in the turbulent years following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 979, I started to write a comprehensive Ismaili history, which at the time still did not exist.
It took me another decade to complete that book which was subsequently published as The Ismaʿilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 990) with a Foreword by Professor W. Madelung who closely followed the progress of this research project. Meanwhile, in 988 I had joined The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, whose library possesses the largest collection of Ismaili manuscripts in the West, and where I have acted as general editor of two major series of publications in Ismaili studies, namely ‘Ismaili Heritage Series’ and ‘Ismaili Texts and Translations Series’, whilst also responsible for other academic activities. In 998, I published another book, A Short History of the Ismailis (Edinburgh, 998), reflecting a further attempt to synthesize the results of modern scholarship in Ismaili studies focusing on a number of major topical themes, institutions and intellectual traditions in Ismaili history. This book has been translated into numerous European languages as well as Arabic, Persian, Gujarati and Urdu.
The progress in modern Ismaili studies, commenced in the 930s, has been truly astonishing. Numerous Ismaili texts have now been edited, analysed and published and some three generations of scholars have made original contributions to this relatively new field of Islamic studies. I attempted to take stock of the various aspects of modern scholarship in Ismailism in my recently published Ismaili Literature (London, 2004). At any rate, fact is increasingly replacing fiction in our perception and understanding of Ismailism, that for a millennium had provided a fertile ground for fanciful myths rooted in hostility or ignorance. This volume brings together, and makes more readily accessible, a collection of ten studies on Ismaili history and thought which I published previously, between 992 and 200, in various academic journals or collective volumes. The chapter ‘Ismailis and Ismaili Studies’ appears here for the first time. Another article relevant to the subject matter of this volume, ‘The Earliest Ismaʿilis’, Arabica, 38 (99), pp. 24–245, was not included here, since it has already been reprinted in E. Kohlberg, ed., Shiʿism (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 235–266. However, that article and all other chapters of this volume have also appeared in Russian translation in a volume entitled Traditsii ismailitov v srednie veka [The Ismaili Traditions in Medieval Times] (Moscow, 2005). I would like to express my gratitude to Kutub Kassam for his editorial work and to Nadia Holmes for meticulously preparing the earlier drafts of this volume. F.D. March 2005
Diversity in Islam
Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad after a brief illness in the year 632, the nascent Islamic community (umma) was confronted with its first major crisis over the succession to the Prophet.* As a result, the hitherto unified Muslim community was soon split into its two major divisions or distinct communities of interpretation, designated subsequently as Sunni and Shiʿa. In time, the Sunnis and Shiʿis themselves were subdivided into a number of smaller communities and groupings with particular theological and legal doctrines that evolved gradually over several centuries. In addition to the Sunnis and the Shiʿa, other communities of interpretation in the form of religio-political movements or schools of thought began to appear among the early Muslims during this formative period. Most of these early movements proved short-lived, although several of them left lasting influences on the teachings of the surviving communities and shaped important aspects of Islamic thought. The Kharijis or Khawarij, a religio-political community of the first Islamic century who were opposed to both the Shiʿa and the Sunnis, have survived to the present times, and as such they are generally considered as Islam’s third major division. Other important movements of the early Islamic times, such as the Murjiʾa who originated in response to the harsh stances of the Khawarij and who adopted a more compromising position regarding other Muslim communities, did not survive long under their own names. There were other more famous contemporary theological schools, such as the Muʿtazila and Maturidism, which disappeared in medieval times after leaving permanent imprints on aspects of Shiʿi and Sunni theology.
Modern scholarship indicates that the early Muslims lived, especially during the first three centuries of their history, in an intellectually dynamic milieu characterized by a multiplicity of communities, schools of thought and stances on major religio-political issues of the time. On a political level, which remained closely linked to religious perspectives and theological considerations, the diversity in early Islam ranged widely from the viewpoints of those (later designated as Sunnis) who endorsed the historical caliphate to the various oppositional groups (notably the Shiʿa and the Khawarij) who aspired toward the establishment of new orders. In this fluid and intellectually effervescent atmosphere in which ordinary individuals as well as scholars and theorists often moved freely among different communities, Muslims engaged in lively discourses revolving around a host of issues that were of vital significance to the emerging Muslim umma. At the time, the Muslims were confronted by many gaps in their religious knowledge and teachings related to issues such as the attributes of God, the source and nature of authority, and the definitions of true believers and sinners. It was under such circumstances that different religious communities and schools of thought formulated their doctrines in stages and acquired their own identities as well as designations that often encapsulated central aspects of their beliefs and practices. The Sunni Muslims of medieval times, or more specifically their religious scholars (ʿulama), painted a normative picture of early Islam that is at variance with the findings of modern scholarship on the subject. According to the Sunnis, who have always regarded themselves as the true custodians and interpreters of the faith, Islam from early on represented a monolithic community with a well-established doctrinal basis from which various groups then deviated and went astray. Sunni Islam was thus portrayed by its adherents as the ‘true Islam’, while all non-Sunni communities of the Muslims, especially the Shiʿa among them who had allegedly deviated from the right path, were accused of ‘heresy’ (ilhad) or even irreligiosity. It is interesting to note that the same highly distorted perceptions and biased classifications came to be adopted in the nineteenth century by the European orientalists who had then begun their ‘scientific’ study of Islam on the basis of Muslim sources of different genres produced mainly by Sunni authors. Consequently, they too endorsed the normativeness of Sunnism and distinguished it from Shiʿism, or any non-Sunni interpretation of Islam, with the use of terms such as ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heterodoxy’, terms grounded in the Christian experience and inappropriate in an Islamic context.
The Shiʿa, too, presented their own idealized model of the ‘true Islam’ based on a particular interpretation of early Islamic history and a distinctive conception of religious authority vested in the Prophet’s family (ahl al-bayt). The Shiʿa, whose medieval scholars (like the Sunni ones) did not generally recognize the process of doctrinal evolution, have also disagreed among themselves regarding the identity of the rightful imams or spiritual leaders of the community. As a result, the Shiʿi Muslims themselves have in the course of their history subdivided into a number of major communities and minor groupings, each possessing an idealized self-image and rationalizing its own legitimacy to the exclusion of other communities. In short, almost every Muslim community, major or minor in terms of the size of its membership, has developed its own self-image and retrospective perceptions of its earlier history. In such a milieu, characterized by diversity and competing communal claims and interpretations, the idea of ‘true Islam’ defied a universally acceptable definition, although the designation of ‘heresy’ was utilized more readily in reference to certain minority groups. Such definitions were usually adopted by the religious scholars of particular states, scholars who performed the important function of legitimizing the established regimes and refuting their political opponents in return for enjoying privileged social positions among the elite of the society. This is why the perception of ‘true Islam’ depicted as ‘official Islam’ and the ‘law of the land’ has varied so widely over time and space, and manifested itself in the various schools of Sunnism of the Abbasid caliphate, Kharijism of the North African states and ʿUman, Ismaili Shiʿism of the Fatimid caliphate, Nizari Ismaili Shiʿism of the Alamut state, Mustaʿlian Ismaili Shiʿism of the Sulayhid state in Yaman, Zaydi Shiʿism of the territorial states in Yaman and northern Iran, and the Ithnaʿashari or Twelver Shiʿism of Safawid and post-Safawid Iran. Several versions of the so-called ‘true Islam’ existed concurrently in different regions of the Muslim world for about two centuries when the Shiʿi Fatimids and the Sunni Abbasids, each ruling over vast territories, were diligently competing with one another for winning the allegiance of the Muslims at large. Under such circumstances, different communities were singled out in different states for the status of ‘heterodoxy’ or ‘heresy’ depending on the religious toleration of the various regimes as well as the religio-political strengths and prospects of the communities not associated with the ruling regime and its legitimizing ʿulama of jurists and theologians. It is important to emphasize at this juncture that many of the fundamental disagreements between Sunnis, Shiʿis and other Muslims, as well as the less pronounced differences among the factions of any particular Muslim community, will probably never be satisfactorily explained by modern scholarship because of a lack of reliable sources, especially from early Islam. As is well known, extensive written records dealing with these issues among Muslims have not survived from the first two centuries of Islam, while the later writings produced by historians, theologians and others display their own ‘sectarian’ biases. Any critical study of the formative period of Islam and its tradition of diversity would be severely hampered by important gaps in our knowledge of early Islam and the biases of the available literature produced later by different Muslim communities. Diversity in Islam is abundantly attested to in the heresiographical literature of the Muslims. The authors of such heresiographies, which were supposedly written to explain the internal divisions of Islam, had one major preoccupation: to prove the legitimacy of the particular community to which the author belonged while refuting and condemning other communities as heretical. However, the heresiographers used the term firqa (plural, firaq), meaning sect, rather loosely and indiscriminately in reference to a major community, a smaller independent group, a sub-group, a school of thought, or even a minor doctrinal position. As a result, heresiographers, who in a sense gave wide currency to the notion of ‘sectarianism’, exaggerated the number of Islamic ‘sects’ in their writings. This may have partly resulted from their misinterpretation of a hadith or Tradition reported from the Prophet. According to this hadith, the Prophet had said that ‘the Jews are divided into 7 sects, and the Christians are divided into 72 sects; and my people will be divided into 73 sects; all of them are destined to hellfire except one, and these are the true believers.’ This hadith, as first pointed out by the famous orientalist I. Goldziher (850–92), had evidently come into existence as a result of a misunderstanding of a somewhat similar saying, which is included in the major compendia of the Prophetic Traditions. Ultimately, most heresiographers have arranged their accounts of the Muslim sects so as to adhere to a paradigmatic scheme of some 72 heretical sects, with the author’s community depicted as the ‘saved sect.’ At any rate, the famous Muslim heresiographers of the medieval times, such as al-Ashʿari (d. 935–36), al-Baghdadi (d. 037), and Ibn Hazm (d. 064), who were devout Sunnis, and al-Shahrastani (d. 53), the Ashʿari theologian who may have been an Ismaili, as well as the earliest Shiʿi heresiographers al-Nawbakhti (d. after 92) and al-Qummi (died 93–4), were much better informed about the teachings of different Muslim communities, which they aimed to refute. As a result, despite their shortcomings and distortions, these heresiographies continue to provide an important source of information for the study of diversity in medieval Islam. It is within such a frame of reference that we shall now present an overview of the major Muslim communities, especially those appearing during the formative period of Islam. The origins of Sunnism and Shiʿism may be traced to the crisis of succession in the Islamic community, then centred in Medina, following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. In accordance with the message of Islam that Muhammad was the Seal of the Prophets (khatim al-anbiya), he could not be succeeded by another prophet. However, a successor was needed to assume Muhammad’s functions as leader of the Islamic community and state, ensuring the continued unity of the Muslims under a single leader. According to the Sunni view, the Prophet had not designated a successor, and so this important appointment had to be made. After some heated debate among the leading Muslim groups, including the Companions of the Prophet from among the Meccan Emigrants (Muhajirun) and his Medinese Helpers (Ansar), the communal choice fell upon Abu Bakr, who became khalifat rasul Allah, Successor to the Messenger of Allah. This title was soon simplified to khalifa, from which the word caliph in Western languages originates. By electing the first successor to the Prophet, the Muslims had founded the unique Islamic institution of the caliphate. The precise nature of the authority of Abu Bakr and his immediate successors during the earliest decades of Islamic history remains obscure, and modern scholarship is just beginning to take a more analytical look at the nature of caliphal authority in early Islam. It is clear, however, that from its inception the historical caliphate embodied not only aspects of the political but also the religious leadership of the community, while different groups gradually formulated various conceptions of the caliph’s religio-political authority and his moral responsibility toward the community. Abu Bakr led the Muslims for just over two years (632–634,); and the next two heads of the Muslim community, ʿUmar (634–644) and ʿUthman (644–656), were also installed to the caliphate by various elective procedures. These three early caliphs all belonged to the influential Meccan tribe of Quraysh and they were also among the early converts to Islam and the Companions of the Prophet who had accompanied Muhammad on his historic journey from Mecca to Medina in 622. Only the fourth caliph, ʿAli b. Abi Talib (656–66), who occupies a unique position in the annals of Shiʿism, belonged to the Banu Hashim, the Prophet’s own clan of Quraysh. ʿAli b. Abi Talib was also closely related to the Prophet, being his cousin and son-inlaw, and bound by marriage to the Prophet’s daughter Fatima.
The Early Shiʿa
Upon the death of the Prophet there appeared a small group in Medina who believed that ʿAli was better qualified than any other candidate to succeed the Prophet. This minority group, originally comprised of some of ʿAli’s friends and supporters, in time expanded and came to be generally designated as the shiʿat ʿAli, Party of ʿAli, or simply as the Shiʿa. It is the fundamental belief of the Shiʿa, including the major communities of Ithnaʿashariyya, Ismaʿiliyya and Zaydiyya, that the Prophet had designated a successor or an imam as the Shiʿa have preferred to call the leader of the Muslim community. On the basis of specific Qurʾanic verses and certain hadiths, the Shiʿa have maintained that the Prophet designated ʿAli as his successor; a designation or nass that had been instituted through divine revelation. ʿAli himself was firmly convinced of the legitimacy of his own claim to Muhammad’s succession based on his close kinship and association with him, his intimate knowledge of Islam as well as his early merits in the cause of Islam. Thus, from early on the Shiʿa believed that the succession to the Prophet was the legitimate right of ʿAli. This contention was, however, not accepted by the Muslim majority who supported the caliphate of Abu Bakr and refused to concede that the Prophet had designated a successor. In fact, they had chosen to refer the decision of the caliphate to the ijmaʿ or consensus of the community. ʿAli’s partisans were obliged to protest against the act of choosing the Prophet’s successor through elective methods. According to the Shiʿa, it was this very protest that separated them from the rest of the Muslims. Indeed, the Shiʿa came to hold a particular conception of religious authority that was eventually developed in terms of the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate. According to the Shiʿi sources, the followers of ʿAli believed that the most important issue facing the Muslim community after the Prophet’s death was the elucidation of Islamic teachings. This was because they were aware that the Qurʾan and the revealed law of Islam (shariʿa) had emanated from sources beyond the comprehension of ordinary men. Hence, they believed the Islamic message contained inner truths that could not be understood directly through human reason. In order to understand the true meaning of the Islamic revelation, the Shiʿa had recognized the need for a religiously authoritative teacher and guide, the imam. According to this view, the possibility of a Shiʿi interpretation existed within the very message of Islam, and this possibility was merely actualized in Shiʿism. The Shiʿa, then, adhered to their own distinctive conception of authority and leadership in the community. While the majority who endorsed the historical caliphate came to consider the caliph as the administrator and guardian of the shariʿa and leader of the community, the Shiʿa, in addition, saw in the succession to the Prophet an important spiritual function. As a result, the successor also had to possess legitimate authority for elucidating the teachings of Islam and for providing spiritual guidance for the Muslims. According to the Shiʿa, a person with such qualifications could belong only to the ahl al-bayt, eventually defined to include only certain members of the Prophet’s immediate family, notably ʿAli and Fatima and their progeny. It seems that ʿAli was from the beginning considered by his devoted partisans as the most prominent member of the Prophet’s family, and as such, he was believed to have inherited the true understanding of the Prophet’s teachings and religious knowledge or ʿilm. According to the Shiʿa, ʿAli’s unique qualifications as successor to the Prophet held another dimension in that he was believed to have been designated by divine command. This meant that ʿAli was also divinely inspired and immune from error and sin (maʿsum), making him infallible both in his knowledge and as an authoritative teacher or imam after the Prophet. In sum, it was the Shiʿi view that the two ends of governing the community and exercising religious authority could be discharged only by ʿAli. This Shiʿi point of view on the origins of Shiʿism contains some elements that cannot be entirely attributed to the early Shiʿa, especially the original partisans of ʿAli. At any rate, emphasizing hereditary attributes of the individuals and the imam’s kinship to the Prophet as a prerequisite for possessing the required religious knowledge, the Shiʿa later also held that after ʿAli, the leadership of the Muslim community was the exclusive right of certain direct descendants of ʿAli, the ʿAlids, who belonged to the ahl al-bayt and possessed the required religious authority. The earliest Shiʿi currents of thought developed gradually, finding their full formulation and consolidation in the doctrine of the imamate, expounded in its fundamental form at the time of Imam Jaʿfar al-Sadiq (d. 765). Pro-ʿAlid sentiments and Shiʿism remained in a more or less dormant state during the earliest Islamic decades. But Shiʿi aspirations were revived during the caliphate of ʿUthman, which initiated a period of strife and civil war in the community. Diverse grievances against ʿUthman’s policies finally erupted into open rebellion, culminating in the murder of the caliph in Medina in 656 at the hands of rebel contingents from the provinces. In the aftermath of this murder, the Islamic community became divided over the question of ʿUthman’s behaviour as a basis for justification of the rebels’ action, and soon the disagreements found expression in terms of broad theoretical discussions revolving around the question of the rightful leadership, caliphate or imamate, in the Muslim community. Matters came to a head in the caliphate of ʿAli, who had succeeded ʿUthman. ʿAli’s caliphal authority was challenged by Muʿawiya, the powerful governor of Syria and leader of a pro-ʿUthman party. As a member of the influential Banu Umayya and a relative of ʿUthman, Muʿawiya found the call for avenging the slain caliph a suitable pretext for establishing Umayyad rule. It was under such circumstances that the forces of ʿAli and Muʿawiya met at Siffin on the upper Euphrates in the spring of 657. The events of Siffin, the most controversial battle in early Islam, in which ʿAli’s forces seemed to prevail, was followed by a Syrian arbitration proposal. ʿAli’s acceptance of it and the resulting arbitration verdict issued sometime later, all had critical consequences for the early Muslim community. It was also during this prolonged conflict that different groups seceded from ʿAli’s forces, the seceders being subsequently designated as the Khawarij or Kharijis. During the last two years of the civil war, ʿAli rapidly lost political ground to Muʿawiya. Soon after ʿAli’s murder, at the hand of a Khariji in 66, Muʿawiya was recognized as the new de-facto caliph by the majority of the Muslims, except for the Shiʿa and the Khawarij. Muʿawiya also succeeded in founding the Umayyad caliphate that ruled the Islamic state on a dynastic basis for nearly a century (66–750). The Muslims emerged from their first civil war severely tested and split into factions or parties that differed in their interpretation of the rightful leadership of the community and the caliph’s moral responsibility. These factions, which began to acquire definite shape in the aftermath of the murder of ʿUthman and the battle of Siffin, gradually developed their doctrinal positions and acquired distinct identities as differing communities of interpretation. They also continued to confront each other in theological discourses as well as on the battlefield throughout the Umayyad dynasty and later times. These parties acquired denominations that revealed their personal loyalties. The upholders of ʿUthman as a just caliph, commonly designated as ʿUthmaniyya, had accepted the verdict of the arbitrators appointed at Siffin and held that ʿUthman had been murdered unjustly. Consequently, they repudiated the rebellion against ʿUthman and the resulting caliphate of ʿAli. In addition to the partisans of Muʿawiya, the ʿUthmaniyya included the upholders of the principles of the early caliphate, namely the rights of the non-Hashimid early Companions of the Prophet to the caliphate. The partisans of ʿAli, the shiʿat ʿAli, who now also referred to themselves as the shiʿat ahl al-bayt or its equivalent shiʿat al Muhammad (Party of the Prophet’s Household), upheld the justice of the rebellion against ʿUthman who, according to them, had invalidated his rule by his unjust acts. Repudiating the claims of Muʿawiya to leadership as the avenger of ʿUthman, they now aimed to re-establish rightful leadership or imamate in the community through the Hashimids, members of the Prophet’s clan of Banu Hashim, and notably through ʿAli’s sons. However, the support of the ahl al-bayt by the Shiʿa at this time did not as yet imply a repudiation of the first two caliphs.
The Khawarij
The Khawarij, who originally seceded in different waves from Ali’s Kufan army in opposition to his arbitration agreement with Muʿawiya after the battle of Siffin, shared the view of the Shiʿa concerning ʿUthman and the rebellion against him. They upheld the initial legitimacy of ʿAli’s caliphate but repudiated him from the time of his agreeing to the arbitration of his conflict with Muʿawiya. They also repudiated Muʿawiya for having rebelled against ʿAli when his caliphate was still legitimate. The Khawarij were strictly uncompromising in their interpretation of the theocratic principle of Islam expressed in their slogan ‘judgement belongs to God alone’. Even caliphs, according to them, were to submit unconditionally to this principle as embodied in the Qurʾan. If caliphs failed to observe this rule, then they were to repent or be removed from the caliphate by force despite any valuable services they might have rendered to Islam. This is why they equally condemned ʿUthman and ʿAli, and also dissociated themselves from Muʿawiya who had unjustly challenged ʿAli’s legitimate caliphate. The Khawarij posed fundamental questions concerning the definitions of a true believer, the Muslim community, its rightful leader and the basis for the leader’s authority. As a result, they contributed significantly to doctrinal disputations in the Muslim community. The Khawarij adhered to strict Islamic egalitarianism, maintaining that every meritorious Muslim of any ethnic origin, Arab or non-Arab, could be chosen through popular election as the legitimate leader of the community. They aimed to establish a form of ‘Islamic democracy’ in which leadership and authority could not be based on tribal and hereditary considerations, or on any other attributes of individuals other than religious piety. They also had a strong communal spirit, regarding their community as the only ‘saved community’. However, it was not mere membership in the Khariji community but strict adherence to religious tenets and conduct, covering both faith and works, that defined the status of a believer and guaranteed his salvation. Rejecting the doctrine of justification by faith without works propounded later by other Muslim communities, the Khawarij professed a form of radical puritanism or moral austerity and readily considered anyone, even the caliph, as an apostate, if in their view he had slightly deviated from the right conduct. By committing a minor sin, a believer could thus become irrevocably an unbeliever deserving of dissociation and even execution. The Khariji insistence on right conduct, and the lack of any institutional form of authority among them, proved highly detrimental to the unity of their movement, characterized from early on by extreme factionalism. Heresiographers name a multitude of Khariji ‘sects’, most of which were continuously engaged in insurrectionary activities, especially in the eastern provinces of Islam where they controlled extensive territories in Iran for long periods. The Azariqa represented the most radical community among the Khawarij. They considered as polytheists (mushrikun) and infidels (kuffar) all non-Kharijis and even those Kharijis who had not joined their camp. They held the killing of these ‘sinners’, who could never re-enter the faith, along with their wives and children, licit. The Azariqa established several communities in different parts of Iran. Later, Ibn ʿAjarrad, who may have been from Balkh, founded the ʿAjarida branch of Kharijism. Heresiographers name some fifteen groups of the ʿAjarida who were specific to eastern Iran and were more moderate in their views and policies than the Azariqa. The most moderate Khariji community was represented by the Ibadiyya, today the sole survivors of the Khawarij. The Ibadis considered the non-Ibadi Muslims, as well as the sinners of their own community, not as polytheists but merely as ‘infidels by ingratitude’, and, as such, it was forbidden to kill or capture them in peacetime. In general, the Ibadis were more reluctant than other Kharijis to take up arms against other Muslims. In contrast, they were deeply engaged in the study of religious sciences and made important early contributions to the elaboration of legal and theological doctrines in Islam.
The Emergence of Early Shiʿi Communities: The Kaysaniyya and the Imamiyya
The early Shiʿa, a small and zealous opposition party centred in Kufa in southern Iraq, survived ʿAli’s murder and numerous subsequent tragic events during the Umayyad period. Upon ʿAli’s death, the Shiʿa recognized his eldest son al-Hasan as their new imam. Meanwhile, al-Hasan had also been acclaimed as caliph in succession to ʿAli in Kufa, ʿAli’s former capital. However, Muʿawiya speedily succeeded in compelling al-Hasan to abdicate from the caliphate. Shiʿism remained subdued under al-Hasan who refrained from any political activity. On al-Hasan’s death in 669, the Shiʿa revived their aspirations for restoring the caliphate to the ʿAlids, now headed by their next imam, al-Husayn, the second son of ʿAli and Fatima. The Shiʿa persistently invited al-Husayn to their midst in Kufa to launch a rising against the Umayyads, who were considered by them as usurpers of the caliphate. The tragic martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, al-Husayn, and his small band of relatives and companions at Karbala, near Kufa, where they were brutally massacred by an Umayyad army in 680, played an important role in the consolidation of the Shiʿi ethos, leading to the formation of radical trends among the partisans of ʿAli and the ahl al-bayt. The earliest of such radical trends, which left lasting marks on Shiʿism, became manifest a few years later in the movement of al-Mukhtar. Al-Mukhtar organized his own Shiʿi movement with a general call for avenging al-Husayn’s murder in the name of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya, ʿAli’s third son and al-Husayn’s half-brother. Of much greater significance was al-Mukhtar’s proclamation of this Muhammad as the Mahdi, ‘the divinely guided one’, the messianic saviour-imam and the restorer of true Islam who would establish justice on earth and deliver the oppressed from tyranny. This new eschatological concept of the Imam-Mahdi was a very important doctrinal innovation, proving particularly appealing to the mawali, the non-Arab converts to Islam who, under the Umayyads, represented a large intermediary class between the Arab Muslims and the non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state. The mawali, comprised of Aramean, Persian and other non-Arab Muslims, constituted second-class citizens in comparison to Arab Muslims. As a large and underprivileged social class concentrated in urban milieus and aspiring for the establishment of a state and society that would observe the egalitarian teachings of Islam, the mawali provided a valuable recruiting ground for any movement opposed to the exclusively Arab hegemony of the Umayyads. The mawali did, in fact, join the Khawarij and participated in many Khariji revolts. Above all, they became involved in Shiʿism, starting with the movement of al-Mukhtar. By attempting to remove their grievances and through the appeal of the idea of the Mahdi, al-Mukhtar easily succeeded in drawing the mawali to his movement. They now began to call themselves the shiʿat al-mahdi, ‘Party of the Mahdi’. Al-Mukhtar speedily won control of Kufa in an open revolt in 685. The success of al-Mukhtar proved short-lived, but his movement survived his demise in 687 and Muhammad b. alHanafiyya’s death in 700, and it continued under the general name of Kaysaniyya. This name, like many other community names, was coined by the heresiographers. The Kaysaniyya elaborated some of the doctrines that came to distinguish the radical wing of Shiʿism. For instance, they condemned the first three caliphs before ʿAli as illegitimate usurpers and also held that the community had gone astray by accepting their rule. They considered ʿAli and his three sons, al-Hasan, al-Husayn and Muhammad, as their four imams, successors to the Prophet, who had been divinely appointed and were endowed with supernatural attributes. Many such ideas, first developed by different Kaysani groups, were subsequently adopted by other Shiʿi communities. This explains why most Shiʿi groups in time came to accuse the majority of the early Companions of the Prophet of apostasy, which also led to the general Shiʿi vilification (sabb) of the first three caliphs. Meanwhile, the ʿUthmaniyya had adopted their own anti-Shiʿa policies, such as the cursing of ʿAli from the pulpits after Friday prayers, a policy instituted by Muʿawiya. Many of the ʿAlids and their partisans from different Shiʿi groups were also continuously persecuted on the orders of the Umayyads and their officials in Iraq and elsewhere. It was in the aftermath of the Shiʿi revolt of al-Mukhtar that the religio-political movement known as Murjiʾa appeared in Kufa, advocating a return to unity among the Muslims by refuting all extreme partisan views concerning the caliphate.
The early Murjiʾa held that judgement of the conduct of ʿUthman and ʿAli should be deferred (irjaʾ) to Allah, while the caliphates of Abu Bakr and ʿUmar deserved praise and emulation. The early Murjiʾa thus distanced themselves from the radical Shiʿis, who now repudiated the first three caliphs, from the Khawarij who condemned both ʿUthman and ʿAli, and from the ʿUthmaniyya who condemned ʿAli. In general, the Murjiʾa held that Muslims should not fight one another except in self-defence. The sources name Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya’s son al-Hasan as the original author of the doctrine of irjaʾ, a Qurʾanic term meaning ‘to defer judgement.’ The movement of the Murjiʾa soon spread to Khurasan and Transoxania, where it became particularly identified with the cause of the mawali. The Murjiʾa campaigned for the equality of the Arab and non-Arab Muslims, and the exemption from paying the special poll tax (jizya) levied on non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state. In that context, the Murjiʾa advocated the identity of faith (iman) with belief and confession of Islam to the exclusion of obligatory acts, namely the performance of the ritual and legal obligations of Islam. This meant that the legal status of a Muslim and of a true believer could not be denied to those new, non-Arab converts on the pretext that they ignored or failed to perform some of the essential duties of the Muslims. In time, the Murjiʾa, too, split into several groups, some developing close relations with certain Sunni schools of law and theology. From the time of al-Mukhtar’s movement, different Shiʿi communities and groups, consisting of Arabs and mawali, had come to coexist, each one having its own imam and developing its own teachings, and individuals moved rather freely from one Shiʿi community to another.
Furthermore, the Shiʿi imams now issued not only from the three major branches of the extended ʿAlid family – the Husaynids (descendants of al-Husayn b. ʿAli), the Hanafids (descendants of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya) and, later, the Hasanids (descendants of al-Hasan b. ʿAli) – but also from other branches of the Prophet’s clan of Banu Hashim, such as the Abbasids. This was because the Prophet’s family, whose sanctity was supreme for the Shiʿa, was then still defined broadly in its old tribal sense. It was later, after the accession of the Abbasids, that the Shiʿa began to define the ahl al-bayt more restrictively to include only the descendants of the Prophet through Fatima and ʿAli, known as the Fatimids (covering both the Hasanid and the Husaynid ʿAlids), while the bulk of the non-Zaydi Shiʿis came to acknowledge a particular Husaynid line of imams. At any rate, during this second phase in the formative period of Shiʿism, the Shiʿa did not accord general recognition to any single line of imams, from which various dissident groups would diverge in favour of alternative claimants to the imamate. In this fluid and confusing setting, Shiʿism developed in terms of two main branches or trends. Later, another ʿAlid movement led to the formation of yet another Shiʿi community known as the Zaydiyya. A radical branch, in terms of both doctrine and policy, evolved out of al-Mukhtar’s movement and accounted for the allegiance of the bulk of the Shiʿa until shortly after the Abbasid revolution.
This branch, breaking away from the religiously moderate attitudes of the early Kufan Shiʿa and generally designated as the Kaysaniyya by the heresiographers, was comprised of a number of interrelated groups recognizing various Hanafid ʿAlids and other Hashimids as their imams. By the end of the Umayyad period, the majority body of the Kaysaniyya, namely the Hashimiyya, transferred their allegiance to the Abbasid family. With this transference, the Abbasids also inherited the party and the daʿwa or missionary organization, which became the main instruments for the eventual success of the Abbasid revolution. The various Kaysani communities drew mainly on the support of the superficially Islamicized mawali in southern Iraq and elsewhere. The mawali, drawing on diverse pre-Islamic traditions, played an important part in transforming Shiʿism from an Arab party of limited size and doctrinal basis to a dynamic movement. The Kaysani Shiʿis elaborated some of the beliefs that came to characterize the radical branch of Shiʿism. Many of the Kaysani doctrines were propounded by the so-called ghulat, ‘exaggerators’, who were accused by the more moderate Shiʿis of later times of exaggeration (ghuluww) in religious matters. In addition to their condemnation of the early caliphs preceding ʿAli, the most common feature of the earliest ideas propagated by the Shiʿi ghulat was the attribution of superhuman qualities to the imams. The early ghulat speculated rather freely on a host of issues and they were responsible for many doctrinal innovations, including the spiritual interpretations of the Day of Judgement, Resurrection, Paradise and Hell. They also held a cyclical view of the religious history of mankind in terms of eras initiated by different prophets. The Shiʿi ghulat speculated on the nature of God, often with tendencies toward anthropomorphism (tashbih). Many of them believed in the independence of the soul from the body, allowing for tanasukh or transmigration of the soul from one body to another. The Shiʿi ghulat, like other contemporary Muslims, also concerned themselves with the status of the true believer. Emphasizing the acknowledgement of and the obedience to the rightful Shiʿi imam of the time as the most essential religious obligation of the true believer, the role of the developing shariʿa became less important for these radical Shiʿis. These ghulat seem to have regarded the particular details and ritual prescriptions of the religious law, such as prayer and fasting, as not binding on those who knew and were devoted to the true imam from the ahl al-bayt. Consequently, they were often accused of advocating that faith alone was necessary for salvation, and of tolerating libertinism. Much of the intellectual heritage of the Kaysaniyya was later absorbed into the teachings of the main Shiʿi communities of the early Abbasid times. Politically, too, the Kaysaniyya pursued an activist policy, condemning Abu Bakr, ʿUmar and ʿUthman as well as the Umayyads as usurpers of the rights of ʿAli and his descendants, aiming to restore the caliphate to the ʿAlids. As a result, several Kaysani groups, led by their various ghulat theorists, engaged in revolutionary activities against the Umayyad regime, especially in or around Kufa, the cradle of Shiʿism. However, as all these Shiʿi revolts were poorly organized and their scenes were too close to the centres of caliphal power, they proved abortive. In the meantime, there had appeared a second major branch or wing of Shiʿism, later designated as the Imamiyya. This branch, with its limited initial following, remained completely removed from any anti-regime political activity. The Imami Shiʿis, who, like other Shiʿis of the time, were centred in Kufa, recognized a line of ʿAlid imams after ʿAli, al-Hasan and al-Husayn, tracing the imamate through al-Husayn’s sole surviving son ʿAli b. al-Husayn, who received the honorific epithet of Zayn al-ʿAbidin, ‘the Ornament of the Pious.’ It was through Zayn al-ʿAbidin’s son and successor as imam, Muhammad al-Baqir, that the Husaynid imams and Imami community began to acquire their particular identity and prominence within Shiʿism. Al-Baqir refrained from any political activity and concerned himself solely with the religious aspects of his authority, developing the rudiments of some of the ideas that were to become the legitimist principles of the Imamiyya. Above all, he seems to have concerned himself with explaining the functions and attributes of the imams. During the final Umayyad decades, with the rise of different theological and legal schools upholding conflicting views, many Shiʿis sought the guidance of their imams as an authoritative teacher. Al-Baqir was the first imam of the Husaynid line to openly perform this role, and he acquired an increasing number of followers who regarded him as the sole legitimate religious authority of the time. In line with his quiescent policy, al-Baqir is also credited with introducing the important Shiʿi principle of taqiyya, precautionary disguising of one’s true religious belief in the face of danger. This principle was later adopted by the Ithnaʿashari and Ismaili Shiʿi communities, and it particularly served to save the Ismailis from much persecution throughout their history. It may be pointed out at this juncture that al-Baqir’s imamate also coincided with the initial stages of the Islamic science of jurisprudence (ʿilm al-fiqh). It was, however, in the final decades of the second Islamic century that the old Arabian concept of sunna, the normative custom of the community that had reasserted itself under Islam, came to be explicitly identified with the sunna of the Prophet. This identification necessitated the collection of hadiths or Traditions, claimed reports of the sayings and actions of the Prophet, transmitted orally through an uninterrupted chain of trustworthy authorities. The activity of collecting and studying hadith for citing the authority of the Prophet to determine proper legal practices soon became a major field of Islamic learning, complementing the science of Islamic jurisprudence. In this formative period of the Islamic religious sciences, al-Baqir has been mentioned as a reporter of hadith, particularly of those supporting the Shiʿi cause and derived from ʿAli. However, the imam al-Baqir and his successor Jaʿfar al-Sadiq interpreted the law mostly on their own authority without much recourse to hadith from earlier authorities. It should be added that in Shiʿism, hadith is reported on the authority of the imams and it includes their sayings in addition to the Prophetic Traditions. Having laid the foundations of the Imami branch of Shiʿism, the common heritage of the Shiʿi communities of Ithnaʿashariyya and Ismaʿiliyya, Imam Muhammad al-Baqir died around 732, a century after the death of the Prophet. It was during the long imamate of al-Baqir’s son and successor Jaʿfar al-Sadiq that the Shiʿi movement of his uncle Zayd b. ʿAli unfolded, leading eventually to the separate Zaydi community of Shiʿism.
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