Download PDF | Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi - The Divine Guide in Early Shi'ism_ The Sources of Esotericism in Islam- (1994).
297 Pages
Preface
Between I. Goldziher's studies (Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte der Shi'a * und der sunnitischen Polemik, Vienna, 1874) and H. Halm's work (Die Schia, Darmstadt, 1988), more than a century was dedicated to scholarly study of Shî'ism* in general and of Imamism in particular. A number of Islamic scholars and orientalists have been interested in this most important "branch" of Islam, and the number of articles, works and monographs dedicated to the subject is impressive.
Nevertheless, when it comes to early Imamism, that is, the doctrine supposedly professed by the historical imams of Shî'ism, later called Twelver Shî'ism, we must surprisingly admit that we still have no clear idea that has been corroborated by a coherent body of historical data. There is still no systematic, exhaustive study of this formative and early phase of the doctrine. What most characterizes studies dedicated to Imamism is the constant confusion between the teachings of the imams reported by the oldest compilations of Imamite traditions and the ideas professed by later Imamite thinkers and scholars, not to mention the sudden historical and doctrinal evolution that Imamism has known since the occultation of the twelfth imam. We will certainly return to this confusion, which makes a clear understanding of early Imamism so difficult, as well as to the important evolution that Imamism has undergone. The image, or rather the images, of Imamism reflected through these studies, once they are juxtaposed with the oldest texts, appear fragmentary, confused, even contradictory: ideological coherence and doctrinal logic are completely lacking. On closer examination, it appears impossible to have a global, synthetic understanding of the doctrine, an understanding indispensable for an analytic study of precise and fundamental details of early Imamism.
Is it a revolutionary political-religious movement? Is it a mystical anthropomorphist doctrine? Is it a precocious political philosophy at the heart of Islam? Could it be a rationalizing theology of the Mu'tazilite* kind, magnified by the irrational cult of the imams? Were the imams jurist theologians respectful of the sunna and respected by the entire Community? Were they frustrated men of ambition who developed messianic speculations? Were they enthusuastic individuals who justified their contradictions with the help of a body of incoherent and heretical ideas? Were they mystical philosophers who received their missions from the universe of archetypes? The reason for such disparate images is at the same time both complex and simple.
It is complex because the early corpus of the imams constitutes a colossal survey of works in which cohesive logic and the normal order of discourse are often lacking. Some of this lack may have been voluntary, because of reasons inherent in a number of traditions which characterize themselves as esoteric. Restoring the doctrine to what was probably its original coherence entails a systematic examination of all available parts of this corpus. This has never been done, and such a lacuna has led to a simple problem that, despite its being apparent, has curiously escaped specialists in the field: we do not yet know the Weltanschauung of early Imamism. We know nothing, or next to nothing, about the vision that the imams had (and that they imparted to others) of the world, man, and history. In other words, Imamite cosmology, anthropology, and soteriology in their early phase have remained insufficiently studied and explored areas. Since we do not understand, or even know, what the "world vision" of the imams was, both general descriptions of it and analysis of its specific traits remain incomplete and fragmentary, if not also unintelligible. Given this, we might divide the works dedicated to Imamism into four broad groups.
Through this division, we are attempting only to underscore the insufficiency of these works to clarify a coherent historical and global vision of early Imamism: 1. Studies that are too "synthetic," since they are too general. These are general works about Shî'ism * or Imamism. Because of their naturemost of them including fourteen centuries of historythese studies present one and the same doctrine regardless the time or the place. Doctrinal evolution, clashes of ideas, or semantic changes in technical terminology are often disregarded, to the benefit of that current that did not become dominant until after the occultation, and to the disadvantage of knowledge of the original teaching that became a minority view. Other works, besides their general nature, are marred by hurried overviews and hasty editing, primarily due to interest which arose from the Iranian revolution and recent events in Lebanon. 2. Studies that are too "analytic." These are works dedicated to precise points or particular aspects of Imamism. As a result of not being sufficiently precise about the "sense" of the early doctrine (that is, its direction, its purpose, as much as its deep meaning), these specific aspects are often considered outside the bounds of their global ideological context. This methodological shortcoming, combined with the confusion referred to above between the teachings of and the teachings of the theologians, ends up in extrapolations and contradictions. An analysis driven by parts of doctrine without taking into consideration the doctrine in its totality at a given point in time can result only in theses founded on part of the whole. These theses thus run the risk of being separated from other aspects of the doctrine, which remain forgotten or unnoticed. In order to arrive at a full understanding of fundamental details of doctrine, both their place and their interconnection must be analyzed. At the same time it must be recognized that in these details lies a whole which must be understood prior to understanding its constituent elements. 3. Studies that are too ''exoteric."
These are works that reduce Imamism to its sociopolitical or theological-judicial dimensions, and even these are not always defined or presented in accord with fundamental texts. Imamism is here frequently presented as a contentious political-religious "party" or a theological and judicial "school"; all dogmatic traits, all technical terms and ideas are seen through these lenses. This presentation is based on reductionist points of view, which, properly speaking, sidestep doctrine; without synthetic knowledge, understanding of historical events and theological characteristics can only remain partialin both senses of the word. 4. Studies that are too "philosophical," where historical inquiry and critical study allow themselves to become absorbed in and annihilated by a certain philosophical vision that sees itself as beyond history.
In this case we are faced with works written on the early texts, but whose reasoning and philosophical interpretations are justified only on the basis of hermeneutics from a much later time period. Among this last group of studies the original historical doctrine and its early "sense"where "theosophy" is omnipresent and "philosophy" is nearly nonexistentare almost completely absent.
The question thus remains open: what did the imams of the Twelvers profess? What was their teaching, not as it appears through the work of theologians, mystics, or Imamite philosophers, but in its original form that logically ought to be researched in the context of the entire early corpus, as it was collected in the very first compilations of Imamite traditions? It is only through a systematic examination and critical analysis of this corpus that the early doctrine of the imams has the possibility of being defined in a coherent and synthetic manner. This doctrine presents itself, as the imams proclaimed, as a "true religion" (al-dîn al-haqq) or a "solid religion" (al-dîn al-qayyim); it shows itself to be complex, polyvalent, and presenting numerous interconnected and interdependent aspects. In this work it has been our attempt to discover a way to begin to untangle, albeit only a beginning, this bundle of ideas and Through our research, we have become aware that what has been called the Imamite "world vision" could be considered as the "center of emanation" from which the dark recesses of this labyrinthine doctrine might be clarified, and its goal and meaning understood.
The true axis around which this world vision turns is the person of the Perfect Guide (the imam) in his ontological dimension (in this acceptation, it will be written with a capital "i": the Imam) as well as in his historical dimension (where "imam" will be written with a lowercase ''i"). The two dimensions are inextricably bound to one another. Imamism's cosmology-cosmogony, its anthropology, its soteriology, and its eschatology all gravitate around its Imamology; these fields remain, as we have said, insufficiently studied and analyzed. This is why the essential part of our methodological procedure consists in separating out all the definitions and descriptions of the Imam given by the imams themselves through their voluminous corpus of works.
The territory remains unexplored especially as regards a global definition of early Imamism through its world vision; only this definition can lead to a clear understanding of the structure. The definition should furnish us with a mode of understanding doctrinal traits as well as historical facts, if not also with some kind of satisfactory means of interpreting these facts and traits. The doctrinal history of early Imamism remains to be written; given the almost unknown character of the subject, our procedure voluntarily strays from being an erudite work, and attempts rather to work out a theoretical framework.
Throughout our research, the admirable lines of Josef Van Ess have served as a guide: "Given the state of underdevelopment that our research is in, it seems to me that taqlîd can only be disastrous, even more than normal. What we must do is proceed toward a critical analysis of all the information that the sources offer, an analysis accompanied by an imaginitive understanding of a time and problems which are not ours. To arrive at the reality of the events it is essential that we first destroy the interpretations to which the past has been subjected.
We are aware that there is a danger of our doing nothing more than replacing one interpretation with another; but even failure is better than repetition" (Une lecture à rebours de l'histoire du mu'tazilisme, Avant propos). We believe strongly that a failure that opens perspectives for fruitful research is worth more than the repetition of the misinterpretations of the past. Our plan for the present study is thus to examine the data available and to form hypotheses based on these data; to outline the essential structures of early Imamism; to spend time with the fundamental, that is, with the unifying threads, with an aim to understanding both the unified and what is accessory to it; and to arrive as clearly as possible at the vision that the imams and, after them, a certain number of faithful Imamites had, and still have, of their own religious universe.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق