Download PDF | Mercedes Garcia-Arenal - Messianism and Puritanical Reform (Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World) - (2006).
407 Pages
INTRODUCTION
This is a book about revolutionary movements of a messianic and millenarian character—in Islamic terms, a book about Mahdism. It is also a book which addresses the question of mediation between God and men, and the political repercussions of this question in the history of the pre-modern Muslim West. When I started laying the basis for this study many years ago, my original intention was to gather information on all those political and religious movements which had been carried out in the name of a Mahdì, or charismatic messianic leader, in the Islamic West, an area including both the Maghreb in North Africa and al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula.
I initially set myself very broad chronological limits, and intended to study Mahdìs from the century of Arab conquest right down to the colonial period. Clearly, such a broad scope would require allowance to be made for the considerable differences between the circumstances and historical contexts of all the Mahdìs concerned; it would also need to take into account variations in the historical role and ideological content of the movements themselves, as described in sources as widely different as historical chronicles, hagiographical dictionaries or mystical treatises. My main aim was to focus on the recurrence of like events in different Mahdist movements and to show the resemblances between accounts of those events. I wanted to see how people acted in the expectation of a future that never happened. I was also interested by the symbols and vocabulary used to describe Mahdist movements and, more generally, by the ways in which power perpetuates itself in society through the use of language. These, then, were my starting points.
However, I soon became aware of the need to modify my original intentions. On the one hand, I was forced to narrow my geographical focus as Mahdism revealed itself to be particularly important in al-Maghreb al-Aqßà, roughly equivalent to today’s Morocco. This area, with al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) now constitutes the main focus of attention of this book. I also decided to narrow my chronological scope and take my study only as far as the 17th century, since the pre-colonial and colonial periods would require separate studies of their own in order to be covered satisfactorily. Conversely, I realized the need to widen my general perspective as I came to see the close relationship between Mahdism and two underlying issues of fundamental importance which would have to be analysed explicitly if sense were to be made of the Mahdist movements. The first of these issues has to do with the nature of Muslim eschatological and messianic beliefs, and their relationship with the problem of mediation between God and men. In general terms, this problem has tended to take the form of a debate over the extent of separation between man and his Creator; a debate, that is to say, over prophetic ability and sainthood. Sainthood, the question of how God touches human beings, is an apparently theological problem which nonetheless has very important cultural and political dimensions, because it calls into play the very nature of knowledge and the boundaries of political authority.
Historically, there has always been tension between two main groups or factions when it comes to disputing the nature of man’s relations with his Creator. On one side are those who derive knowledge from the written word of the Qur"àn and the ˙adìth as taught and transmitted by scholars who control their study and interpretation. Such scholars interpret God and his law, but they also interpret the entire social and political order by deciding what is and what is not legitimate. On the other side are those who enjoy and advocate a different kind of knowledge, that which is inspired or achieved through direct contact, through intimacy with God. Such believers can go so far as to cast doubt on the need for initiation or instruction by a formal teacher, or on the need to study books.
Their knowledge is received by divine inspiration. Needless to say, tensions between these two groups were an important part of the general background to Mahdist movements as they developed in the pre-modern period. The second fundamental issue which affected the writing of this book is that of the relationship between Mahdism and the legitimacy of power, i.e. of the Imamate, an institution relying on the succession to the Prophet Mu˙ammad as head of the community of believers. Mahdism inspired two of the three revolutions that unified the Maghreb between the 4/10th and 6/12th centuries, those led by the Fà†imids and the Almohads. Mahdist movements raise the question of how to revolt legitimately against established authorities which have lost their legitimacy in the eyes of the rebels.
Thus the concepts of legitimacy and authority in the political and religious leadership of Muslims, together with their opposing counterparts imposture and usurpation, have come to be ever-present elements in this book. On both these counts, Mahdism features in nearly every facet of Western Islamic political and religious life, and I will try to demonstrate in this book to what extent it is a pivotal question, at the heart of the sources themselves. From the chronological starting-point of this study, in the medieval Maghreb, historical chronicles show a constant preoccupation with the problem of dynastic legitimacy: historians try to explain in the simplest possible terms difficult doctrinal questions like the legality of the conquest of power by a particular dynasty, the legitimacy of rebellion, or the perniciousness of innovation. Innovation was regarded as pernicious both because it was a threat to political and social tranquillity and because that which was ancient was regarded as sacred. The purpose of such historiography was not only to legitimise the dynasty which had sponsored the writing of such accounts, but also to free society from doctrinal disputes which were full of potential religious and social hazards.
The kind of power represented in these chronicles was portrayed in an image so successfully constructed that it hardly varied over time. In addition, hagiographical literature—which together with historical chronicles make up most of the sources upon which this book is based—disseminates paradigms of exemplary behaviour and presents notions of moral authority which remained widely spread for an extremely long period of time. These, then, were the two issues which forced me to widen the scope of the work I originally intended to carry out. Allowance for these two issues has required me to adopt methodological approaches which are outlined later in this introduction. I shall need also to distinguish between Islamic doctrine, common to the Islamic world in general, and its local application in different periods of the history of the Maghreb. This entails another of the difficulties and ambivalences I have been faced with when studying the material upon which this book is based and it is that messianism is part of a corpus of religious concepts within theology or the history of religious ideas, but must also be studied from a political and social point of view if we are to understand the effect of such movements upon the communities from which they emanate. At the same time, the strand of apocalyptic inspiration needs to be separated out from political, economic and social factors even when there is a clear and simultaneous relationship between the two.
Exactly the same kind of economic, political and social factors can be held responsible for a sudden swing to apocalyptic inspiration as might just as easily have been responsible for other equally common reactions, such as emigration, opportunism, banditry, or even a general attitude of quietism and resignation. One important fact which needs to be borne in mind is that the development of a sense of apocalyptic inspiration tends to coincide with the development of theological and mystical ideas in the highest, most inaccessible and elitist circles of society, rather than in the less favoured groups forming the popular base of a movement. This does not imply that such ideas are derived from the dominant classes and are merely handed down from those at the “top” of society. Millenarian movements involve far more complex relations than this, and one of my main preoccupations throughout the writing of this book has been to try to distinguish between the beliefs and expectations of followers of Mahdist movements and the persona and doctrinal elaboration, where it exists or when we know of it, of the “Messiah” himself.
Only by keeping this distinction in mind is it possible to analyse which aspects of an individual’s preaching and thoughts come to acquire public legitimacy, and in what ways and for what reasons, at the same time recognising that such ideas will always be transformed during that process of acceptance. Attention must therefore be paid to beliefs as the cornerstones for rebellion and resistance, but also as generators of political ideology employed by those in positions of power. This reference to the idea of popular beliefs brings me on to the concept of “popular religiosity” used to discuss religious practices which, though not necessarily heterodox, do not feature explicitly in the canon. This would include practices of a divinatory or magical character, and even the alleged miraculous properties of certain people or of certain places like graves. The notion of “popular religiosity” is related to that of “popular culture”, no longer interpreted as the delayed and degraded reception of ideas generated by the elite but, as we see from the work of Michel de Certeau, as the appropriation and transformation of ideas formulated by others. Once marked and transformed, a belief can take on a different life with a different meaning and a different significance for those who take it over.
The belief in the coming of a Saviour sent by God belongs to the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim tradition of the Messiah which made its first appearance in late Judaism and was fully developed by Christianity. Before the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. the term “messiah” had a connotation closer to its etymological sense of the “Anointed” and was an attribute of kings.
Later, as the idea of the royal persona became more closely associated with the notion of future salvation, the term “messiah”, which had never been subjected to dogmatic definition, was left open to varying interpretations. Even for Christians, who took this interpretation furthest, the term continued to retain some of its early ambiguity. In the New Testament Christ, the Anointed One, is acclaimed as King after entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and resuscitates as God on Easter Sunday. This ambiguity also pervades the term “Mahdì”. At the same time, belief in sacred history, in the unfolding of a divine plan from the moment of Creation till the End of the World, pervades the civilisations of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe from the early 4th century onwards. The sacred texts of the three Abrahamic religions all record the revelations of a series of prophets of the past predicting salvation in the future.
The millenarian tradition, so powerful and so widely studied in the history of Judaism and Christianity, has tended to develop within Islam under the label of “Mahdism”. The terms “Messiah” and “Messianism” have a specifically Judaeo-Christian ring and imply a whole series of non-Islamic doctrines and beliefs, but most scholars find it admissible to employ these terms in an Islamic context so long as one is clear about the sense in which they are being used, i.e. to convey the important idea of an eschatological figure, the Mahdì, who “will rise” to launch a great social transformation in order to restore the purity of early times and place all aspects of human life under divine guidance for a period preceding the End of Time. Like “messiah”, the term “Mahdì” moves in the same uncertainty of definition over a kingdom of this world or the next, over “a man sent from God” and a divinely guided or divine being.1 In principle, however, he is a second Mu˙ammad, a descendant of the Prophet bearing the same name, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh. As such, he embodies the aspirations of his followers for the restoration and revitalization of the purity of the Faith, creating a just social order and a world free from oppression where the renewed Islamic law will become universal.
The Mahdì is a second Mu˙ammad who will inaugurate an era of righteousness. “Messiah” is not the only term used in this book that is derived from the study of other religions and doctrines more closely studied than Islam, terms that need to be defined in order to prevent later dependence on an implicit mental model which does not necessarily coincide with Islamic doctrines. The term “eschatological”, for example, as used throughout this book applies to beliefs about what will happen when History is concluded, when the End or Eschaton comes, a time when good will be rewarded and evil punished. This Eschaton is synonymous with the Apocalypse, when what is hidden will finally be revealed, in other words, the reality of God.
This revelation will be the fulfilment of the divine purpose in history which Marjorie Reeves, in her seminal work on apocalyptic thought in the medieval Christian West, has shown to involve a different understanding of the time-process. In apocalyptic terms the moving moments of time are no longer felt as succeeding each other, but as fulfilling a divine purpose in proceeding towards a fore-ordained conclusion. This relates the present moment to a definite beginning and a definite end; it can give a sense of belonging in time and links the fleeting moment to a transcendent purpose outside time. The idea that History has a beginning and an End (Eschaton) is by no means incompatible with its interpretation in cyclical terms. Because time is imagined as cyclical, change and renewal have no limits. History is lived as a story of successive struggles to achieve paradise on earth. There are, as a result, three associated forms of belief.
The first holds that the Eschaton/Apocalypse is imminent, a catastrophic event for which the world must be ready. Such a belief has served to give people “Chiliasm”, the belief that the End will be preceded by a period of peace, harmony, equality and justice for all mankind. “Millenarianism” is understood to be characteristic of religious movements which expect imminent salvation in this world, of which there has been a wide range. Most millenarian movements are also messianic, in that their followers believe that salvation will be brought by a saviour who mediates between the human and the divine. The man who assumes such a role is naturally considered extraordinary, and blessed with supernatural powers.
On those occasions when such men reach positions of political power, they are inevitably totalitarian in their claim to obedience. In this book I will focus mainly on millenarian movements led by just such men although a further problem of terminology arises: the term “messianic” designates both belief in the messianic role of a particular leader, and also the belief that the leader himself has in his own messianic mission. There is a distinction to be made, sometimes even an opposition, between what a Mahdì says he is, and what his followers think he is. Sometimes the sources only allow us a glimpse of such distinctions, but in those cases they provide a means of evaluating the conjunction of the historical with the phenomenal, the propaganda and its reception. Another important terminological consideration is the relationship between the words “messianism” and “mysticism”. Mystical experiences derive from a close contact, sometimes described as direct contact, with God, an experience of God, which is known as hierophany. The certainty of such contact can drive some mystics, especially those of a visionary or ecstatic nature, to undertake messianic political activity within the community to which they belong.
The origins of such beliefs in Islam go back to the very beginning and have generated a great deal of controversy. The term Mahdì, or the “rightly guided”, is not used in the Qur"àn, but clearly derives from the rooth h-d-y, which does appear and generally makes some sort of allusion to divine guidance, with occasional connotations of redemption. For example: “Oh believers, look after your own souls. He who is astray cannot hurt you, if you are rightly guided (idhà ihtadaytum)”. Q5:105. It nevertheless appears as an epithet from a very early period.2 Scholars have tended to agree that the idea of final redemption was not a part of Mu˙ammad’s preachings, nor of the beliefs of his early followers, that it developed after the times of the Prophet, during and after the Civil War period, as a part of the religious controversies which accompanied the rise to power of the Umayyad dynasty in the second half of the 7th century. The term itself was first used to designate a long-awaited sovereign who would re-establish the primitive purity of Islam during the second civil war, after the death of the Caliph Mu'àwiya. Against this traditional view, a very different interpretation was first proposed in 1911 by the French orientalist Paul Casanova, who put forward the suggestive and polemical theory that belief in the imminence of the Final Hour was the prime and fundamental motif of Mu˙ammad’s preachings.
In Casanova’s view, it was not Mu˙ammad’s original intention to establish a new political and social system so much as to warn his contemporaries that the End was nigh, meaning that Muslim eschatology should rightly be considered the oldest corpus in the Tradition. It was only later, seeing that the Final Hour had not arrived and that life must go on, that the Muslim community began, prudently and progressively, to undertake the task of self-organisation. The implication of Casanova’s theory, for the notion and the term Mahdì, is that the Mahdì is the avatar of Mu˙ammad; that he is, in fact, Mu˙ammad returned. More recently, David Cook has gone a step further and has strengthened this thesis by showing the close connection between the apocalyptic traditions and jihàd during the first and second centuries of Islam, whose combination provides the necessary legitimization for the conquests.3
Apocalyptic traditions, in other words, were a major factor in the ideological preparation of war. In 1977, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone presented their own innovative and polemical vision of the origins of Islam. According to the thesis of their controversial book Hagarism, Islam did not originate in the 7th century (the period of a solely military conquest) but developed gradually over two centuries of contacts with Christians and Jews. They argue that Islam emerged from the confluence of a Jewish messianic movement and a nativistic movement of Arabian tribesmen.4 According to Cook and Crone, Islam was a messianic movement from the outset, although the concept of Messiah was gradually transferred from the movement’s founder, Mu˙ammad, to his successor 'Umar al-Fàrùq, (an epithet originating in the Syriac term for “saviour” or “redemptor”) and then applied to Jesus and later to a Mahdì whose role it was to provide the world with abstract justice without a precise historical content. For these authors, what Islam added to Jewish-origin messianism was the concept of the Imamate as an eternal high-priesthood, which derives from the Samaritans. In each case, Samaritan and Islamic, we have an office in which supreme political and religious authority are fused, and in each case the primary qualification for office is the combination of religious knowledge with a sacred genealogy. Sulayman Bashear, who has carefully analysed the term “Fàrùq”, has shown that it appears in the early documents and texts, frequently related to the ahl alkitàb, and more specifically, employed by the Jews of Jerusalem.5 More recently, Fred Donner has argued against Cook and Crone’s theory on the basis of Quranic and early documentary evidence, that the Prophet Mu˙ammad inaugurated a religious movement focused on the concept of “believers” (mu"minùn), those who accepted the idea of God’s oneness, the coming of the Last Judgment and the need to live righteously in accordance with God’s revealed law. It would be towards the end of the first century Hijra when a narrower understanding of the community of believers, identified as Muslims (submitted), marks a clearer definition which leaves Jewish and Christian believers outside the movement.6
In the beginning, therefore, the messianic elements in the early tradition could have come from the Jewish groups at first included in Mu˙ammad’s community of believers. Bashear’s and Donner’s arguments may be convincing in refuting important parts of Cook and Crone’s theory, but to my mind they strengthen and complete Casanova’s: Mu˙ammad started by warning his contemporaries about the End of Time. This was a major point in his message directed to a community of believers which had no clear boundaries, at first and for a time, separating them off from Jews and Christians. Qur"àn (54:2) says: “The Hour of doom is drawing near and the moon is cleft in two. Yet when they see a sign, the unbelievers turn their backs and say ‘the same old magic’ ”. For Peter Brown on the other hand, this sùra vividly expresses the frustration of Mu˙ammad at the end of a long tradition that prevailed in the Mediterranean, where, during Late Antiquity, certain expectations of the supernatural, or of divine power were remarkably constant.7 Mu˙ammad’s monotheistic vision defined itself in part against an older mode that saw divine power represented on earth through exceptional human agents who were either good or evil but who had a relationship with the supernatural that was personal to them and clearly perceptible to fellow believers: the frontier between the saint and the sorcerer was very thin.8 In his The Making of Late Antiquity Brown sees Mu˙ammad and the rise of Islam as giving a decisive turn to the late antique debate about the holy, separating heaven from earth and the holy from the human.
Behind all these arguments, from Cook and Crone onwards, lies the work of John Wansbrough on the Qur"àn and the early sources of Islam (Quranic Studies, 1977 and The Sectarian Milieu, 1978) in which he claimed that the literature upon which all such theories must be based is in fact an example of Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) that originated in a milieu of religious polemic with Christians and Jews, whose topoi do not allow us to use such sources as historical material. In The Sectarian Milieu, he argued that Islam was formed from a common stock of traditional Biblical motifs by means of the attribution of stories and the exegesis of texts, in a prolonged attempt to supply Islamic faith with a historical and scriptural identity different from the previous monotheistic expressions of Christianity and Judaism. In the case of Shì'ism, for example, such efforts served to identify the Imàm as the crucial figure in the conveyance of revelation from one generation to the next. It was only when the identity of the Imàm had been established according to increasingly specific Islamic criteria that the story of the designation of 'Alì as Mu˙ammad’s successor came into existence as a crucial historical fact on which the beliefs of Shì'ism rest, but upon which no reliance can be placed by the historian.
The interest of such stories for the historian is their function as components of a specialised language in which religious ideas could be expressed and developed. Wansbrough’s sectarian milieu is well illustrated by the apocalyptic and eschatological literature of the period. One of the greatest influences upon it has been that of the Danielic tradition or rather, the surviving system of representations and images which constitute the Apocalypse of Daniel.9 This Apocalypse is made up of promises whose intensity and vagueness have allowed them to be used in many different ways. Daniel’s Apocalypse seems also to be the origin for an entire corpus of Islamic (and Christian) literature, and a whole series of later literary motifs coded in the same terms.10 The Book of Daniel is also the culmination of the Biblical ideology of the Kingdom of God united to a concept of royal messianism and divine kingship, a notion which finds its most powerful expression in the poems known as the Psalms of Solomon, which describe a victorious Jewish saviour-king establishing divine, universal rule over the Gentiles.11 Christian eschatological literature is imbued with such Danielic motifs, especially in Syrian apocalypses. In Mesopotamia a tradition of messianic expectations deriving from Late Judaism survived until the end of the 7th century and it reflects the crisis brought about by the Arab conquest of Syria. The Pseudo-Methodius, which begins with a history of the temporal world from Adam to Alexander the Great, prophesies the career of the Last Roman Emperor, who will appear at the end of the Arab invasions and before the reign of the Antichrist.
This Last Emperor would be of Ethiopian origin and, after his victory over the Arabs, would reside in Jerusalem, uniting in his person all the characteristics of the Jewish Anointed King who would redeem his people.12 The hope of a Last World Emperor thus seems to have originated in a remote area of Syria threatened by Islam and under the influence of Jewish messianic sources. The Pseudo-Methodius spread very quickly throughout Byzantium and was translated into Latin in the Christian West in the early 8th century. It was known in Spain from a very early period and had a deep and widespread influence there.13 There are signs that an older version may have circulated among the Andalusian Mozarabs (Arabised Christians).14 Another important sequence of Byzantine prophecies are those known as the Oracles of Leo the Wise, which transfer the role of Last Emperor to an elected Pope, with whom true prophecy begins. Syrian and Byzantine motifs were to have a great influence on Christian apocalyptics in the medieval West, where their path can be traced from the beginning of the 8th century down to the works of Joachim of Fiore in the second half of the 12th.15 PreIslamic North Africa had also seen apocalyptic predictions and fears after the invasion of the Vandals, as is shown by the sermons of bishop Quodvultdeus of Carthage.16 Indeed, it is these types of text from Late Antiquity which provide Crone and Cook with the basis for their theory, mentioned above, that Islam originated as a Jewish messianic movement. They base their argument, firstly, on the North African Christian text of 634, Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati, which quotes an Eastern letter informing that “a prophet has appeared among the Sarracens... who proclaims the arrival of the Anointed Christ”. The Hebrew text known as Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai uses messianic terms to describe the emergence of the Arabs and the establishment of their reign.
Towards the end of the 7th century, the Syrian monk Yohanna Bar Penkayê in his book First Principles of the Temporal World points to the Islamic invasion, sent by God as a punishment for the sins of the Christians, as a precursor of the End of all Time.17 This Syrian text, which offers the first more or less detailed description of the origins of Islam, uses the term mhaddayana, close to the Arab term Mahdì, to describe the Prophet Mu˙ammad.18 The Apocalypse or “Vision” of Ba˙ìrà, the Christian monk who recognised Mu˙ammad and encouraged him to undertake his mission, composed in about 820, also refers to the Arab conquest as one of the events announcing the End of all Time, which will occur under the Seventh Imàm, and it explicitly quotes from the Pseudo-Methodius to support this idea, as well as being the first Christian apocalypse to speak of a Mahdì. 19 Ba˙ìrà’s influence can be seen in the Muslim apocalypse Kitàb al-silk al-zahìr fì 'ilm al-awwal wa-l-akhìr 20 by Ka'b al-A˙bàr.21 Regardless of whether we accept that Islam originated as a Jewish messianic movement, there is little doubt that Islamic apocalyptics were influenced by the messianism of Daniel, by Late-Jewish apocalyptic texts and by the Syrian and Byzantine motifs in turn placed in movement by the arrival of Islam.
They were also influenced by zoroastrian apocalyptic symbols and cosmological beliefs: a mixture of myths and beliefs disseminated by the spiritual revolution of the Late Antique world absorbed in a context of religious conversion and cultural translation. As a result, the apocalyptic and eschatological tradition of Islam is extraordinarily rich. Messianic influences combine with the literary genre known as isrà"iliyyàt (“stories which derive from the Israelites”), embracing various types of narrative found in the Qur"àn, the work of mystics and the compilers of edifying stories which, deriving from rabbinical and aggadic literature, were transmitted by Jews converted to Islam such as Wahb b. Munabbih and Ka'b b. A˙bàr.22 The isrà"iliyyàt are mostly stories about prophets and Biblical patriarchs (qißaß al-anbiyà") and thus cannot be considered eschatological literature as such, although they often come close: Noah (Nù˙) the first messenger (rasùl ), who warns his people of the imminent arrival of al-Dajjàl 23 or Enoch/Idrìs Elijah/Ilyàs, all well-known figures in Biblical apocalyptics, play an important role in treatises of mystical initiation and in popular beliefs such as that in supernatural beings who inspire the conviction that they can save Man from extreme situations.24 This is especially the case for the four prophets that Islamic tradition recognizes as being “alive” or “immortal”. Besides Idrìs and 'Ìsà ( Jesus), Elias is identified with al-Khi∂r (or al-Kha∂ir) a mysterious prophet-guide and immortal saint who plays an important role in popular piety and sufism. Many a mystical master, such as Ibn 'Arabì, claimed to have received the khirqa from Khi∂r.25 The Dajjàl (from the Syriac daggala) does not appear in the Qur"àn but does appear in Syriac Christian literature and presents elements to be found in the Apocalypse of St. John of Patmos as well as in the pseudo-apocalyptic literature from St. Ephraem to the revelations of Sibylla: he kills Elias and Enoch, the two witnesses put forward by God (they will come to life again) sent to denounce him. Moral apocalypses are also frequent in Jewish and Christian thinking and they have their roots in pagan Sibylline literature.
One of their most common themes is the journey to heaven and hell, which reaches its most complete form in the Apocalypse of Enoch. In the Islamic world, this kind of apocalypse is linked with the literature of the Prophet Mu˙ammad’s night journey and his ascension to the heavens, a story deriving directly from Enoch’s version.26 The theme of punishments and rewards lends a pronounced moral emphasis to all of these accounts. The so-called moral apocalypses can also be seen as related to another genre of ancient apocalyptic literature, the apocalyptic stories or literal predictions of what will occur at the end of all time.
The Islamic moral apocalypse which has a political, theological and social message, employs a form which assumes that its audience believes itself to be living through Earth’s last times. Using this assumption, the apocalyptist includes all groups, persons or activities which he wishes to condemn within this general feeling of fear of the End. This invests him with moral force and differentiates him from the religious establishment. Ultimately, the apocalyptist will attack anything considered permanent, or symptomatic of a society which does not believe in the imminence of the end of the world. The establishment thus becomes his mortal enemy: by virtue of its very name it conveys a sense of permanence which is the epitome of evil to the apocalyptist.27 It should not surprise us, therefore, that a number of these apocalyptists tend to meet with death at the hands of the authorities, such as the most famous of them all, the author of the Kitàb al-fitan Nu'aym b. Óammàd (d. 228/843), who died in prison.28
These apocalypses constitute a genre of “history of the future”29 which was particularly productive in the Umayyad and 'Abbàsid periods and which refuted the legitimacy of the dynasty and its caliphs as “tyrants” and attacked the religious authorities for their connivance with them.30 They were a sign that the Hour was near. One important feature of the Muslim apocalyptists is that they divide the rulers of the world into prophets and tyrants, until the arrival of the future Mahdì who will be sent by God.31 This kind of literature was very common and had a widespread and lasting effect on popular beliefs. It will be seen that if the ruler under attack from such sources was not a “prophet”, one way of legitimising himself and avoiding being classified as a “tyrant” was to present himself as a Mahdì. This strategy, united to the notion of a Last World Emperor, was to become a useful political manouevre for a number of different leaders. Regardless of the influence of eschatological ideas from Late Antiquity, Islamic Tradition considers each of the prophets as an axis in the spiritual history of mankind.
The great Muslim historian al-ˇabarì (d. 310/923) entitled his encyclopedic chronicle “The History of Prophets and Kings” with a view to emphasizing the prophetic quality of Islamic history. For al-ˇabarì, history is suffused with prophecy, and prophets become the special focus of human history in which the “sacred” ought not to be separated from the “profane”. The central importance of the prophetic guide in Islam can be seen in the number of traditions which claim that prophethood began with the creation of mankind. Adam is seen as the first in a long line of prophets who have been sent into the world to promote divine laws, and to guide mankind. Islam tends to consider prophets indispensable for humanity to be able to know God’s will, even with the exception of theological schools, such as the Mu'tazila who believe that humans can know God using solely their intellect, the prophets being an additional divine grace. Discussion of the issue of prophethood was common in the Islamic world from the beginning of the kalàm or scholastic theology. The issue was addressed in numerous works, which bore titles like “Signs of prophecy” (a'làm al-nubuwwa) or “Establishing prophecy” (Ithbàt al-nubuwwa). Such works sought to establish, on the one hand, the human need for prophets, and on the other, a list of characteristics which demonstrated the superiority of the Prophet Mu˙ammad over all others.32 The Qur"àn states (e.g. 10:48, 13:7, 16:36, 35:24) that no human community has ever been left without a prophet. Going further, the Sùra (14:8) claims that God has never sent a messenger who did not speak the language of the people to whom he had been sent. Nevertheless, a difference existed between a nabì or prophet able to reveal divine guidance but whose mission did not consist in transmitting a new law to the world, and a rasùl, or messenger of the new law. Mu˙ammad was not only the first prophet, and superior to all others, but was also known as khatm al-nubuwwa or khatam al-anbiyyà", expressions which both translate as “seal of the prophets” and are generally interpreted as meaning “last of the prophets”.
There is, however, no unanimous agreement about the interpretation of this phrase, at least for the first Islamic centuries. Yohannan Friedmann has suggested that the concept relates to the eschatology of the early years of Islam: if Mu˙ammad was the last of the Prophets, this is because the Hour was imminent.33 In support of his theory, this same author presents copious material demonstrating that in early Islamic times, the dogma of the finality of Prophethood was not yet established, and that the possibility of the appearance of other prophets was in fact taken for granted. Even after belief had been established, in sunnite Islam, in the finality of Mu˙ammad’s prophethood, the link with divinity and its direct guide were too important for doors not to be left open for further developments as will be seen in the chapters dedicated to sufism. On the other hand, different groups claimed for themselves the capacity of being warathat al-anbiyà", the inheritors of the prophets, the depositaries and interpreters of the message of the prophets: the caliphs, the 'ulamà" or the saints, friends of God or awliyà".
Although Wansbrough refused to speculate on the relationship between the development of doctrine and the development of the community, it is clear that both were involved in the political and religious dispute over the succession to Mu˙ammad, epitomised in the tradition that originated when, two years before his death in 11/632, Mu˙ammad made his last pilgrimage to Mecca. On this occasion, he addressed a sermon to his followers that has been widely quoted over the centuries and in which he said, according to one version: “God has given two safeguards to the world: His Book [the Qur"àn] and the Sunna [example] of his Prophet.” According to another source Mu˙ammad said “God has given two safeguards to the World: His Book and the Family of His Prophet.” Both statements are apocryphal, in that they relate to positions adopted in the 9th century; but they epitomise the opposition between Sunnism and Shì'ism, two poles of authority for the faith between which Mahdism occupied an intermediate position Sunnism, seen by its followers as the orthodox form of Islam, developed as the majority form: only about ten percent of contemporary Muslims are Shì'ites or Khàrijites, and those areas of the Muslim West where this book is set have been Sunnite for centuries. Both Sunnism and Shì'ism together with Khàrijism, are different sets of answers to three fundamental questions about leadership of the community, law, and theology. These questions can be summarised as follows: firstly, to whom should believers turn for spiritual guidance and political leadership? Expressed in more Islamic terms, this question might be put like this: who should the Imàm of the community be, and how is he to be recognised and chosen? This is a question lying at the very heart of this book which, in fact, is about one way of answering it. The second question has to do with the Law: which are the norms to be followed by believers in their relations with God and with themselves? The third question is, how should believers approach or consider God and his plans for humanity? Disputes over the first of these questions, i.e. over the nature of the Imamate, led to the forming of diverse factions in the first Islamic century (the seventh of the Christian era), when Mu˙ammad’s death in 632 created the problem of his succession as community leader. Mu˙ammad’s relatives and closest friends improvised the formation of a new institution, the Caliphate (from the Arabic term khalìfat rasùl Allàh, vicar to God’s envoy).
The first Caliphs were chosen from among the group of those who had been closest to the Prophet, but after the assassination of the third Caliph in 661, a civil war broke out between supporters of the idea that the Caliphate should be entrusted to members of the Umayyad family (a clan of Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet) and those who favoured the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mu˙ammad, 'Alì ibn Abì ˇàlib. The latter group received the name shì'at 'Alì or “party of 'Alì”. Another party which split off, or literally “came out” during this civil war period was the party of the Khàrijites, who held that the Caliph ought not to be a member of any particular lineage but should be chosen by the community itself as “the best of Muslims”. These shì'ite and Khàrijite “parties” arose from a cluster of political circumstances but each gradually developed its own corpus of beliefs. The origins of such beliefs in Islam go back to the very beginning and have generated a great deal of controversy. The current view however, is that the position now identified with Sunnism did not truly emerge until the 9th century. Even then, those who adopted the sunnite position on the Imamate were continually engaged in their own disputes over law and theology, disputes that are essential to an understanding of the early chapters of this book. Shì'ites have always held particularly intense hopes of the arrival of a restorer of justice and religion: Shì'a Islam evolved from a legitimist theory of authority of the descendents of 'Alì into a principle of salvation, turning into a fundamentally eschatological religion. By contrast with sunnism, belief in the coming of a Mahdì has been an essential article of faith in the shì'ite creed.
The shì'ite Mahdì is ma'ßùm, he who is protected from error and sin, a quality which according to sunnis is exclusive to prophets. Distinctly shì'ite is also the belief in a temporary absence or occultation of the Imàm (ghayba) the Hidden Imàm, and his eventual return in glory, his parousia or Ωuhùr before the End of Time. Whereas Ba˙ìrà used the Danielic tradition and new forms of revelation to bring the figure of the Mahdì into apocalyptic literature, the Alids, for their part, produced an entire pseudo-epigraphical literature to introduce the belief in a private revelation given to 'Alì or to one of his own and subsequently transmitted by them to mankind. This produced, among other things, the works known as the “book of Jafr”. Ibn Khaldùn dedicates an entire chapter (no. 52) of his Muqaddima to the study of these predictions and in particular of the book of Jafr, recorded according to him by one of the zaydite chiefs or perhaps by Ja'far al-Sadìq (d. 148/765). The “Great Jafr” was attributed to 'Alì himself and it brought together a series of predictions of the triumphal arrival of the Mahdì in an allegorical and arcane manner.
Like belief in the Mahdì, prophethood acquired very marked characteristics in Shì'ism. The Shì'ism of the first three Islamic centuries believes in the pre-existent entity of the Imàm, whose light, together with the Mu˙ammadan light came directly from the divine light before the creation of the world. The Imàm possesses supra-worldly knowledge and powers which make him infallible (ma'ßùm). He is the proof (˙ujja) of God for his people. In fact, we will have a major controversy to keep in mind, namely the conflict between the shì'ite idea of the infallible Imàm and the sunnite idea of the infallible Prophet. However apocalyptic the origins of Islam may have been, and however long it took for the main forms of Islam to develop, the theological corpus of what is today known as Sunnite Islam eventually came to employ the term Mahdì to denominate an eschatological figure who will arise to carry out a great social transformation and restore the pristine purity of early times by placing all human spheres under divine management.
The epithet al-Qà"im (the one who arises) was at times used as its equivalent. The Mahdì must be a member of the ahl al-bayt, or family of the Prophet, and bear the Prophet’s name, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh. He will establish a realm of justice and rule all Muslims together until the descent of Jesus ('Ìsà), the Masih or Messiah of the Christian tradition whom Islam had incorporated into its own line of prophets; when together with Jesus the Mahdì will lead them to ultimate victory before the day of Final Judgement.34 He is thus both a king of this world and a harbinger of the Apocalypse. The rise of the Mahdì to power will be preceded by a period of lawlessness when both religion and natural order will be threatened. The protagonist of this dark age is a false messiah, a personage called al-Dajjàl, the “deceiver” or Antichrist, endowed with miraculous powers, who will arrive before the end of time and for a limited time (40 days to 40 years) will let tyranny and corruption rule the world. His appearance is one of the signs (with others, like the sun rising in the West) of the end of time. He will be vanquished by the Mahdì who will bring about universal conversion to Islam and the appearance of al-Amr, the divine will of God to rule the world.
Within this basic framework, two important variants were found in Sunnite Islam. On the one hand, there was the idea that rather than a unique Mahdì who would appear before the End of Time, history would throw up at different critical periods certain “Masters of the Hour” (ßà˙ib al-sà'a) who would save the community from temporary danger. Secondly, there was the idea that these Masters of the Hour would have their own delegates to prepare the way for the reception of their message. This opens up the possibility of cyclical periods of reform which link Mahdism to the tradition of the mujaddid, or renewer, and also to the notion of tajdìd al-dìn, the renewal of religion. Thus Mahdism often became associated with reforming and revivalist movements, and in practice it is not always easy to differentiate between the various kinds of leader: to know, for example, if a man described as a ßà˙ib al-sà'a is the master of a critical moment, or of the final hour, and thus different from the mujaddid of mainly activist and reformist connotations. In the chapters which follow, I will have to bear in mind the possibility that there are differences amongst “Mahdist” movements of a restorational, revivalist or regenerationist nature, i.e. between those led by a mujaddid-like Mahdì and those of a more apocalyptic character.
The same basic framework is applicable also to Shì'ite Islam with the difference that the idea of the Mahdì is central rather than peripheral to a doctrine centred on the idea that the authority and power of the Prophet is vested in the sole person of the Imàm who is his direct descendant. Given the failure of the descendants to secure the Caliphate, the idea of a Mahdì was invoked both apocalyptically and in the millenarian sense. The Shì'ite Mahdì was commonly given the epithet Qà"im, the one who will rise and rule. It was in common use before the end of the Umayyad period and largely replaced the term Mahdì in the Imàmite tradition. He will be the lord of the sword and Jesus will pray behind him after his descent from heaven. He will force all Muslims to accept the shì'ite creed. In the doctrine of the Ismà'ìlites or Seveners (those who believe in the first seven Imàms), however, the presence of the Imàm was ensured by the Fà†imid dynasty, considered in this book (Chapter 2), whose ambition to govern, as Imàms and caliphs, over the whole of the Islamic world was paralleled by their claim to know the universal truths of revelation and reason. The propaganda of the Fà†imids was based on the initiates’ certainty of being the Imàms called by divine designation to exercise universal dominion and the temporal and spiritual management of the earth as well as feeling certain that they were the projection of divine light upon the world.
The Ismà'ìlites believed in the superhuman nature of their Imàms, earthly incarnation of the universal Intellect, and this belief goes much further than the mere legitimist restoration of the lineage of the Prophet. Such certainty was coupled with the belief in cyclical periods in the evolution of the world, and in the conjunction of heavenly bodies indicating the end of an empire and the beginning of a new era. Astrology became a source of revelation35 and this is why it acquired such an important role, and why allusion is made in political propaganda to empires which grow old and whose end has come. Such conviction turned the struggle against established dynastic powers into a veritable religious obligation. Profound doctrinal conviction was related to the real ambition to conquer the world and establish a universal monarchy.
In both his eschatological and millenarian aspects, the Islamic Messiah embodies the aspirations of his followers for the restoration of the Faith as it was lived in Earliest Times by bringing divine, uncorrupted guidance to the whole of mankind, and installing a just social order free from all oppression which will precede the End of all Time. In other words, he arises within the context of belief in a mythical past which in turn itself acquires utopian and millenarian features. Change from one originary perfection can only be decay. Salvation takes the form of a return to that infinitely pure past, and is provided by a saviour who acts as a mediator between the human and the divine. In practice it has generally been associated with the creation of an ideal politico-religious community living within the social and legal framework of Islam. Such an ideal depends to a large extent on a leader being able to guarantee the formation of such a community on the strength of divine guidance, hidàya, the root of the term mahdì.
Not only, therefore, does the Mahdì seek to restore and revitalize religion, and thus to become the one through whom the redemption of the community of believers will be achieved. He has a political mission which in the Maghreb has given him the characteristics of a puritan reformer, and also a relationship to Sufism. As we will see, there can be no complete doctrine of sainthood which avoids a definition of political legitimacy. Millenarianism and an eschatological discourse became inherent in Maghrebian Sufism from the 12th century onwards. It is probably significant that it was also during this period that sufism became in the Maghreb a vehicle for the Islamisation of rural areas.
The practice of precepts such as al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf (forbidding wrong and commanding right), known as the ˙isba, is closely associated with both ascetism and sufism and, above all, with the jihàd that the zàhid or ascetic must maintain, firstly with himself and with his human passions, and then with his immediate environment, in order to make that environment suitable for the religious norms he has imposed upon himself. An agent of divine grace, the saint is necessarily the instrument of rigour, in the form of strict adherence to the Law, and the acceptance of this role implies that he must mould the terrestrial sphere to the dictates of divine Wisdom. It is for this reason that the saint often becomes a censor and reformer of habits, bent on promoting the renewal and revitalization of the social aspects of religion and on condemning the corruption and inefficacy of political authorities. “Enlightened violence”, militancy and incorruptible moral radicalism are frequent elements in the practice of the ˙isba, which provides puritanical movements with a theoretical basis. In the medieval Maghreb, such aspects were inherent in sufi practice, despite the apparent contradiction of accommodating the fact of violent rejection of conformist attitudes within a general framework of extreme loyalty to the revitalized Tradition. Sufis make a spiritual use of apocalyptic terms such as jihàd and fitna as a fight designed to purify the believer from the evil of this world and prepare him for the world to come. In that apocalyptic tradition fitna is both the hardship the individual believer endures as a test and also the collective trials that the Muslims have to go through before the end of times (the Dajjàl is the harbinger of fitna) when the Amr or direct rule of God, will appear to all men. At the same time, reform and jihàd became the main legitimizing arguments of any dynastic power. Other terms used by sufis, such as the spiritual alienation which makes them consider themselves “strangers”, ghurabà", in a world dominated by corruption, or that of nùr, the concept of Light and Illumination, or al-Amr, Divine Authority or Will, formed a part of the theological vocabulary used by various political movements in their legitimising propaganda. The Mahdì constitutes a bridge between the past and the future, but also between the secular or political and the religious.
The precise boundaries of these dichotomies are far from clear, but I will attempt to provide them with working definitions in the case of the Muslim Maghreb, because this book necessarily deals with the question of legitimacy of political power as much as it does with the subject of messianism. By secular power I mean the power of those who govern, which is based on military power but does not depend solely on it. It is the power to order society into hierarchies, to impose taxes, to defend itself and to defend the governed. Secular power is guided by principles of efficacy and will always seek to maintain itself over time. “Religious” authority I take to mean the authority to guide and order the lives of people according to the dictates of what is thought of as divine command. Such authority is always considered as in some way “above” secular power. It relies on the ability of those who exercise it to convince others that they have special access to divine authority and that they are acting as divine agents. Their power often derives from the fact that they are thought capable of bringing blessings or curses upon part or all of society. Religious authority can derive from the knowledge and ability to interpret holy and legal texts (as in the case of the 'ulamà"), or from the ability to gain access to the divine through miraculous acts (karàmàt) as in the case of the awliyà", the “friends of God”, or it can come from direct mandate and divine guidance as in the case of the Mahdì. As is well known (and as was also the case in the Christian world at least until the Enlightenment), Islamdom has been characterised by perpetual tension between the realities of “secular” power and those claiming to possess “religious” authority.
Tensions arising in Islamic societies as a result of social difficulties and conflicts are often manifested in ambitions to assume the kind of religious authority which is over and above secular political power, or, as in the case of the Mahdì, in an effort to unify the two elements. Conflict and tension will always tend to exist between religious authorities and those who hold positions of political or secular power, but serious conflict amongst different religious groups is an almost equally important factor. Rivalries occur between groups which aspire to define and control different ideologized interpretations of the Tradition; these have political implications as such groups dispute their monopoly of Grace, or baraka. A Mahdì, for example, will claim to possess the charismatic authority required to break the existing norms, but he will always do so in the name of Tradition, since he seeks to revive a lost past. In this way the Mahdì’s “invented tradition”, to use Eric Hobsbawm’s term, will clash with the version of Tradition preached by groups like the 'ulamà" which see themselves as its guarantors. The issue has been extensively discussed in modern scholarship. According to Max Weber, there are two basic ways for power to legitimise itself in traditional or pre-modern societies: firstly, in terms of Tradition, which defines the parameters of power and the procedures for applying legal norms of an impersonal nature, and secondly, through the will of a sovereign supported by his subjects’ obedience, which is based on ties of personal loyalty. In addition, the leader may possess charismatic authority, with charisma being seen as “a particular quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated and endowed with . . . exceptional powers”. Charismatic authority is characterized by informal organization, with a lower degree of institutionalization or discipline than that associated with traditional authority, operating from within a formal system of norms. Charismatic domination is characterized by obedience, not to rules or tradition, but to a person of imputed holiness, heroism or some other extraordinary quality.
Whereas legal and traditional authority implies stable, continuing relationships, “pure” charisma is short-lived: “In its pure form charismatic authority may be said to exist only in the process of originating. It cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized or rationalized or a combination of both.” This is Weber’s so-called “routinization of charisma” when after its initial success it serves to legitimate the institutionalised regime it has created. It is in this process that charisma can become hereditary. Weber’s ideas offer insights when brought to bear on Maghrebi historiographical texts, but as will be seen, the sources which I use often show traditional and charismatic varieties of power acting in a complementary, not an oppositional, way. Thus Clifford Geertz considers charismatic power, or baraka, to be the main leitmotif of Moroccan political life. But at the same time he shows that Moroccan political power as personified by the sultan unites two principles which are opposed to one another in the rest of the Muslim world: the principle that the Imàm is the Imàm because he possesses supernatural, i.e. charismatic, characteristics; and the principle that the Imàm is the Imàm because the qualified spokesmen of the community (the 'ulamà") accept him as such. The relationship between charisma and legalism in the history of the Moroccan state was viewed rather differently by Ernst Gellner, who claimed that Moroccan history before the 20th century had witnessed the periodic emergence of puritanical reformist movements which called for a return to the pristine Islam of the Qur"àn and the Sunna.
These reformist movements had their origin in the famous and controversial dichotomy proposed by Gellner between the orthodox, puritanical, and scripturalist Islam of the cities and popular Islam, which bordered on the heterodox, anthropolatrous and ritualistic, and required the mediation of saints and religious figures. But by appealing across the social divide they provoked a series of revolutions that brought new dynasties to power before the pendulum swung back and the tribesmen returned to their popular Islam. For Abdellah Hammoudi, on the other hand, the dichotomy is not nearly so straightforward. At the heart of popular Islam is Sufism in the paradigmatic relationship between master and disciple. That in turn encapsulates the relationship between the Moroccan sultan and his people. The terror of his arms is inseparable from the divine grace by which he rules, so much so that one can be inferred from the other. Beneath his sanctified figure, the power at his command is symbolic of his legitimacy. However, in the manner of Geertz, the monopoly of control, in which grace and violence (and therefore fear) are indistinguishable, is not exercised freely or without consultation. The sovereign, who holds power, needs the opinions and advice of representatives of the population, notables, 'ulamà" and saints whose role as mediators between the people and the centres of power depends upon their position within society. All these ideas are suggestive, despite their disagreement.
As the typologies of sociologists, however, they cannot be imposed by the historian upon the very materials from which they are derived even when, as Mohamed Kably has shown, the medieval chronicles offer their support. This is also the case when considering a number of the rebellious movements described in the first part of this book which could perhaps best be considered examples of what Linton has defined as “nativistic movements”. As explained in Linton’s studies of modern peoples faced with processes of European colonization, “nativistic movements” tend to be attempts organized by certain sectors of a society to preserve elements of a previous culture which thereby acquire some kind of symbolic value. “Nativistic” movements are very similar to “messianic” movements in that they usually come about when an individual assumes the role of prophet and is accepted by his people as such. According to Linton, this often happens at times when one culture becomes especially self-conscious as it is confronted by the imposed culture of a dominant group or force: “Nativistic movements tend to arise only when the members of the subject society find that their assumption of the culture of the dominant group is being effectively opposed by it or that it is not improving their social position.
These movements are a response to frustration rather than hardship and would not arise if the higher group were willing to assimilate the older one.”37 Although Linton’s typology fails to take into account the sort of conflicts which arise from the existence of different ethnic groups within a subject society, it is perfectly possible to find examples of messianic movements which fit at least partially his description, i.e. those carried out in the name of what Arab sources call the Berber “false prophets” in the times of the Maghreb conversion to Islam. One might also include movements like that led by Ibn Óafßùn or those of the Cordoban Mozarabs. Such movements have obvious parallels in the kinds of process taking place in modern societies brought into contact with, or subjugated to, Western colonial powers, as will be seen in the chapter about Ibn Abì Ma˙allì or the Granadan Moriscos. In the last two chapters, the presence of Portuguese and Spaniards in the Maghreb is bitterly resented as is the Christian conquest of the Kingdom of Granada.
As Linton points out, the tendency towards sacrifice and self-immolation are often outstanding characteristics of participants in such movements. Other concepts which looked promising in principle have raised their own methodological problems. One example is the concept of “collective memory”. The sources which I have used as the basis of this study, i.e. historical chronicles (ta"rìkh) and hagiographies (manàqib) are highly codified literary genres. Both genres record memory, but in accordance with their own norms of composition. In them, memory is structured, selected, and oriented in many important ways. The charismatic message, according to Weber, must be expressed in terms which are readily familiar and intelligible to the disciples who support the charismatic leader, so that charisma can be largely a matter of the reinterpretation of known facts and traditional ideas. It is certainly the case, as I will try to show in the chapters that follow, that the texts constituting what we might call the “Mahdist corpus”, in all its repertoire, are known and interiorized by the masses, and that well-codified rituals recur across the centuries and are even “staged” by people with no previous experience of the appearance of a Mahdì. A messianic cycle does not end with the disappearance of a messiah. However, it is difficult for me to see any real difference between the notions of “collective memory” and tradition, or even culture.
In tradition, as in the “collective memory”, but above all in millenarian tradition, history is both present and absent, used and refused, invoked and revoked. History is used to support a movement and then repudiated in an attempt to bring it to an end. As Michel de Certeau has proposed, the past which returns to the present disturbs the structures of hierarchical order. In hagiography and accounts of miracles there is a repeated resort to the other world, from which the coup that will change the established order of things may, and must, come. Memory becomes an instrument for the transformation of present places.38 Maurice Halbwachs has insisted that even individual memory is structured through the social framework of memory (“les cadres sociaux de la mémoire”), and that collective memory is not a metaphor but a social reality transmitted and upheld by conscious efforts and by the group’s institutions, an idea which does not seem very distant from that of a voluntarily recreated tradition. There are different versions of this “invented” tradition, depending on the elites who elaborate and spread them. The question which I ask myself and find particularly interesting is the following: if we accept that they are social fictions, why is it that some fictions are so successful over time whilst others are not? Why do people believe these fictions?
What is the context which permits the mahdist propaganda to be understood and accepted? As Carlo Ginzburg says: “In societies founded on oral tradition, the memory of the community involuntarily tends to mask and reabsorb changes. To the relative flexibility of material life there corresponds an accentuated immobility of the image of the past. Things have always been like this; the world is what it is. Only in periods of acute social change does an image emerge, generally a mythical one, of a different and better past—a model of perfection in the light of which the present appears to be a deterioration, a degeneration . . . The struggle to transform the social order then becomes a conscious attempt to return to this mythical past.”39 Ginzburg’s paragraph is more analytically operative for me, as a historian, than the anthropological theories mentioned above.
In a sense, Ginzburg implies something which I would particularly like to emphasize, and that is the two ways of attending to and understanding the Tradition: one that we could describe as mere conservatism, i.e. the more or less spontaneous way of doing things as one believes they have always been done, or of believing things one thinks have always been believed, and another that is a conscious, reflexive and ideologized attempt to impose an invented or voluntarily recreated Tradition at a critical moment. My interest is therefore focused on the issue of the possible link between anthropological invariants and historical variations. I have attempted to order these historical variations chronologically: The first chapter describes “The Time of the Prophets”, people who claim to be prophets (or whom others accuse of such a claim) and use this claim to rebel against authority. It is the period of the installation of Islam and of the revolt against its mainly Arab establishment by people who were excluded from the benefits of the Islamic Empire. The fact that they had converted to Islam made them expect to share in its benefits. Different rebellions were carried out in the name of specific, possibly heterodox, forms of Islam in which prophethood seems to have played a fundamental role. Chapter 2 is about the rise of the Fà†imid dynasty and discusses the place of the Fà†imids in the general messianism of the Islamic world circa 900. Chapter 3 deals with al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) where rebels against power, such as 'Umar Ibn Óafßùn have messianic tones and striking similarities with the Fà†imid Mahdì.
In the “Sectarian milieu” of Spain after the Muslim conquest, I deal here with the influence of Jewish and Christian messianism on Islam, and I trace the trajectory, on both sides of the Mediterranean, of beliefs such as the Last Emperor who will unify humanity under the same creed. Chapters 4 and 5 analyze the rise of Sufism and trace its contribution to Mahdism in the Maghreb mainly to the debate over community leadership with its ideas about prophethood. This presentation of the contribution of Sufism is organised around two key concepts in Maghrebian Sufism: grace and rigour. Chapter 4, “Rigour” centers on legalism and proceeds from a general discussion of the ˙isba to recount its development in the West becoming the basis for “enlightened violence”. It includes the rise of the Almoravid dynasty considered as a movement of reaction promoted by màlikite scholars against Shì'ism. Chapter 5 deals with the concept of “Grace”, from a general discussion of the Imamate, through al-Ghazàlì’s doctrine of dhawq, to al-Suhrawardì followed by an account of the development of illuminationist Sufism in the West from Ibn Masarra to Ibn al-'Arabì. In conclusion to both chapters, I provide an account of Sufi figures who combined both grace and rigour in their attitude to authority. Chapter 6 is about the Mahdì Ibn Tùmart: in the first half of the chapter I try to reconstruct his career, in the second half his doctrine. In this way I place him in practice (i.e. politically) as the last and the greatest of the prophets of the Berbers and in principle (i.e. religiously) as the locus for all the different strands that have been discussed in the previous two chapters: rigour, grace, illuminationism.
Chapter 7 is dedicated to the rebellious Mahdìs of the Almohad and post-Almohad periods who embody the failure of the Almohads both politically and doctrinally. Chapter 8 covers the 13th century, the rise of the shurafà" (people who claim to be descendants of the Prophet, members of the ahl al-bayt) as a hegemonic group in the Maghreb and the developments which make it convergent with Sufism; the Marìnid dynasty’s attempt to capitalize on this rise is described. Chapter 9 covers the arrival of the Sa'adian dynasty and its rise as a Mahdist movement uniting both sufism and sharìfism. Chapter 10 deals with A˙mad al-Manßùr (d. 1603), the most important Sa'adian sultan, who turned Mahdism into a kind of state doctrine and imperial legitimization, using it as a means of propaganda. Chapter 11 discusses the Moriscos (the last Muslims of Spain, forcibly converted to Christianity after the conquest of Granada), their apocalyptic and messianic beliefs. As in Chapter 3, I deal here with a Sectarian Milieu in which Messianism is used in a polemical way amongst religions in conflict. I show how apocalyptic and messianic ideas are used in common by the three religions (Chistianity, Judaism, Islam) to construct an ideology of exclusion. Chapter 12 is about Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, who rebelled against the Sa'adian dynasty in 1610 and is the last Maghrebi Mahdì to have taken power.
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