The consolation of theology: Absence of the Imam and transition from chiliasm to law in Shi'ism

Journal of Religion

Volumn 76, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 548-571

  Arjomand, Saïd Amir ^a  

^a STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 43849099174     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/489853     Document Type: Review

References (61)

1. The important works that touch on the issue, however, are 'A. Iqbal, Khāndān-e Nawbakhli (Tehran, 1932/1311);
2. M. G. S. Hodgson, "How Did the Early Shi'a Become Sectarian?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 75 (1955) (hereafter cited as "Early Shi'a");
3. E. Kohlberg, "From Imamiyya to Ithnā-'asharīyya," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 39 (1976);
4. H. Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shi'ite Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1993);
5. M. A. Amir-Moezzi, Le guide divin dans Ie Shi'isme originel (Paris: Verdier, 1992).
6. The last work is now available in English translation as Divine Guide in Early Shi'bm (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
7. Henri Corbin, "L'Imâm caché et la rénovation de l'homme en théologie shi'ite," Eranos Jahrbuch, vol. 28 (1959)
8. "Pour une morphologie de la spiritualité shi'ite," Eranos Jahrbuch, vol. 29 (1960)
9. and En Islam iranien, 4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1971-72).
10. S. A. Arjomand, "Crisis of the Imamate and the Institution of Occultation in Twelver Shi'ism: A Sociohistorical Perspective," International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 28, no. 4 (1996).
11. Sa'd ibn 'Abd Allah al-Ash'ari al-Qummi, Kitāb al-Maqālat wa'l-Firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkur (Tehran, 1963), p. 102.
12. The term used by S. Wasserstrom, "The Moving Finger Writes: Mughira b. Sa'id's Islamic Gnosis and the Myths of Its Rejection," History of Religions 25, no. 1 (1985): 27.
13. Wasserstrom, pp. 4-5, 8-11. This picture of the social background of the early extremist Shi'ite sects emerges clearly from the articles by W. F. Tucker, notably, "Rebels and Gnostics; al-Mugira ibn Sa'id and the Mugiriyya," Arabica 22, no. 1 (1975): 33-47
14. "Bayan b. Sam'an and the Bayaniyya: Shi'ite Extremists of Umayyad Iraq," Muslim World 65, no. 4 (1975): 241-53, and
15. "Abu Mansur al-'Ijli and the Mansuriyya: A Study in Medieval Terrorism," Der Islam 54 (1977): 66-76.
16. Modarressi, chap. 2. The terminology of the careful description of the delegationist tendency in Qummi, Maqālāt, pp. 60-61
17. (German trans. with commentary in H. Halm, Die islamische Gnosis [Zurich and Munich: Artemis, 1982], pp. 231-32)
18. suggests the influence of the gnostic neo-Platonic idea of the Word of God as a second creator or Demiurge (I. Friedlaender, 'Jewish-Arabic Studies. 3," Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 8 [1912-13]: 254-56). The nameless Eternal One delegates the creation and management of the world to a single person who is incarnated in Muhammad, 'Ali, and the Imams to whom the divine names pertain. For the parallel Jewish delegationism, where the role of the Demiurge is played by the chief angel Metatron, "the lesser YHWH,"
19. see P. Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God, trans. A. Pomerance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 132-34.
20. Hodgson, "Early Shi'a."
21. S. A. Arjomand, "Imam Absconditus and the Beginnings of a Theology of Occultation: Imami Shi'ism around 900 CE/280-290 AH,"'Journal ofthe American Oriental Society (in press).
22. It was the fruit of Kulayni's studies with the traditionists of the region of Qumm and Rayy but was committed to writing during Kulayni's residence in Baghdad and fell flat in the rationalist circles of the Caliphal capital (W. Madelung, "KULAYNI," Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed. [Leiden: Brill, 1986], 5:362-63).
23. For details, see Amir-Moezzi.
24. U. Rubin, "Prophets and Progenitors in the Early Shi'a Tradition," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1 (1979): 54.
25. For this hypothesis, see Modarressi, pp. 100-103.
26. Muhammad b. Ibrahim b. Ja'far, Ibn Abi Zaynab al-Nu'mani, Kitāb al-ghayba (Beirut, 1983), p. 14. The words are attributed to the sixth Imam.
27. The expression "the Shi'i Century" is Hodgson's. See his Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 2:36-39.
28. Strictly speaking, the Talibid estate-that is, the descendants of Abu Talib, 'Ali's father and Muhammad's uncle. Rukn al-Dawla's Mu'tazilite viziers, 'Abbad ibn al-'Abbas and his famous son Sahib ibn al-'Abbad, were favorably disposed toward the 'Alids and appointed descendants of a son of the ninth Imam, Musa ibn Muhammad al-Mubarqa', as their aldermen in Qumm; see A.-A. Faqihi's Tārīkh-i Qumm (Qumm: Hikmat, [1972/1350]), pp. 106-7, 139
29. and his Al-i Buya (Tehran: Saba, 1978/1357), pp. 376-79.
30. Ahmad b. 'Ali al-Najashi, Rijāl al-Najāshī (1407; Qumm, 1986-87), pp. 384-85.
31. For the subsequent development of the political ethic of the era of occultation, see W. Madelung, "A Treatise of the Sharif al-Murtada on the Legality of Working for Government (mas'ala ft'l-'amal ma'a-l sultan)," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43, pt. 1 (1980): 18-31;
32. S. A. Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 62-65.
33. A. A. A. Fyzee, A Shi'ite Creed (Oxford, 1942), p. 85; Amir-Moezzi, p. 222.
34. Ibn Babuya, Muhammad ibn 'Ali, al-Saduq, Kamāl al-dīn wa tamām al-ni'ma fī ithbāt alghayba wa kashf al-hayra, ed. 'A. A. Ghaffari (Tehran, 1970/1390)
35. Furthermore, "as is customary practice when a king appoints an oppressor, one can infer the oppression of the appointer from that of his appointee, and when [the appointee] is just, one can infer from his justice the justice of the appointer. It is therefore established that the viceroyalty of God (khilāfat allāh) requires infallibility, and the viceroy (khalifa) can only be infallible.... The case with the viceroy [of God] remains until the Day of Resurrection" (Ibn Babuya, Kamāl, pp. 5-6).
36. The moral drawn from this life is that the Buddha as the king was often absent from his kingdom and eventually took off garments of kingship and handed them to his vizier in order to devote himself to teaching his subjects the wisdom of God, to awakening their minds to differentiating between truth and error, and to guiding them to the true religion revealed by God's prophets and messengers (ibid., pp. 636-37). The legend of the Buddha had been translated from Middle Persian into Arabic, presumably in the early 'Abbasid period, and thence, via a Georgian rendition, into the Greek as the story of Barlaam and Joasaph. Ibn Babuya's version contains three stories not found elsewhere. These additional stories have been published, with an English translation, by S. M. Stern and S. Walzer as Three Unknown Buddhist Stories in an Arabic Version (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971).
37. W. Madelung, "MUFID," Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 7:312.
38. J. L. Kraemer, Humanism in lhe Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age (Leiden: Brill, 1986).
39. Faqihi, Āl-i Būya, p. 306.
40. Muhammad b. Ya'qub al-Kulayni, Usūl al Kāfī, ed. J. Mustafavi (Tehran: 'Ilmiyya Islamiyya, n.d.), 2:469.
41. Ibn Babuya similarly refers to the hidden Imam as "the twelfth Qa'im among the Imams" (Kamāl, p. 639).
42. Muhammad b. Muhammad b. al-Nu'man, al-Shaykh al-Mufid, al-Irshād (Qumm: Basirati, n.d.), pp. 220, 288, 304, 334.
43. trans. pp. 524-25 modified. On the two occultations
44. Irshād, p. 347; cf. faulty translation, pp. 525-26.
45. M. J. McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 413/1022) (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1978), pp. 130-31;
46. (A. Sachedina, "A Treatise on the Occultation of the Twelfth Imamite Imam," Studia Islamica 48 [1978]: 117).
47. Shaykh al-Mufid, Musannafāt al-shaykh al-mufid (1413; Tehran, 1992), vol. 4, Nukat al-I'tiqādiyya, p. 35.
48. [hereafter cited as Ghayba]). Elsewhere, Mufid elaborates the argument that the believers are dependent on the Imam of every age in matters of the Sacred Law. His presence is therefore needed "for establishing such obligations as prayer, almsgiving, hajj, and holy war - in all these God would be morally obliging them to do what they cannot fulfill." And it is impossible for God the Merciful to command the impossible (McDermott, p. 121).
49. trans. McDermott, Theology, p. 125, somewhat modified.
50. R. Brunschvig, "Les usūl al-fiqh imâmite à leur stade ancien (Xe et XIe siècle),"
51. reprinted in Études d'Islamologie (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1976), 2:323-34.
52. Shaykh al-Ta'ifa Ali Ja'far al-Tusi, Talkhīs al-Shāfī, ed. H. Bahr al-'Ulum (1383; Najaf, 1963) (hereafter cited as Shaft). The treatise was a rebuttal to Qadi 'Abd al-Jabbar's (died 1025) Mu'tazilite critique of the Shi'ite theory of Imamate.
53. Shaft, 1:59.
54. Shāfī, 1:11-12.
55. Ghayba, p. 3; emphasis added.
56. For a revealing instance, see Ghayba, p. 139.
57. Ghayba, p. 72.
58. M. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), chap. 6, as compared to pp. 24-26 and chap. 8.
59. Some of the consequences of this dialogue are explicitly termed "rationalization." See esp. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 1:169-75, 230-35, 253.
60. citing Mufid's Au'ā'il al-maqālāt.
61. S. A. Arjomand, "Religion, Political Action and Legitimate Domination in Shi'ite Iran," Archives européennes de sociologie 20 (1979): 106-9.