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the occasional transposition of lines of text. Efforts have been made
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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE
FATIMID KHALIFATE
BY
DE LACY O’LEARY, D.D.
_Lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac, Bristol University
Author of “Arabic Thought and its Place in History”_
LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1923
Printed in Great Britain by
John Roberts Press Limited, London.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The following pages present a brief outline of the history of the Fatimid
Khalifs who were ruling in Egypt at the time of the First and Second
Crusades. Too often the student of European history gleans his knowledge
of the oriental powers with which the West was brought into contact by
the Crusades from western Christian writers, who do not fairly or truly
describe those powers, and do not set forth clearly the strong and weak
points which are so important in interpreting the actual forces with
which the Crusaders were brought into contact. These pages are drawn
from the Arabic and Persian historians so as to present a picture which,
though inaccurate in some points, nevertheless shows the other side not
perceived by the historians who wrote the narrative of the Crusades from
a western standpoint. Directly, therefore, they supplement the western
history, but are still more important in their indirect bearing as an
effort has been made to show the rise and development of the Fatimid
Khalifate and sect as a rival to the orthodox Abbasid Khalifate of
Baghdad, which is most essential to the right understanding of the world
into which the Crusaders penetrated, whilst at the same time it shows a
curious and important phase of Muslim tendencies which are not without a
bearing on the later history of Islam. The present essay does not claim
to be an original study in a field hitherto unexplored, but simply aims
at bringing together in an accessible form material which will be of
service to the student of mediaeval western history and to those who are
interested in the development of Islam, and to do so with such comments
as will enable it to be co-ordinated with contemporary European history.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE SHIʿITES OR SCHISMATICS OF ISLAM 1
II THE ISMAʿILIAN SECT 12
III THE QARMATIANS 39
IV THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FATIMIDS IN NORTH AFRICA 51
V THE FATIMID KHALIFS OF KAIRAWAN 74
VI THE SECOND FATIMID KHALIF, AL-QAʾIM 88
VII THE THIRD FATIMID KHALIF, AL-MANSUR 91
VIII THE FOURTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-MOʿIZZ 93
IX THE FIFTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-ʿAZIZ 115
X THE SIXTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-HAKIM 123
XI THE SEVENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AZ-ZAHIR 189
XII THE EIGHTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-MUSTANSIR 193
XIII THE NINTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-MUSTALI 211
XIV THE TENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-AMIR 218
XV THE ELEVENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-HAFIZ 222
XVI THE TWELFTH FATIMID KHALIF, AZ-ZAFIR 227
XVII THE THIRTEENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-FAʿIZ 233
XVIII THE FOURTEENTH FATIMID KHALIF, AL-ʿADID 235
XIX THE FATIMID KHALIFATE IN ITS RELATION TO GENERAL HISTORY 246
XX THE LATER HISTORY OF THE ISMAʿILIAN SECT 257
BIBLIOGRAPHY 262
INDEX 266
I
THE SHIʿITES OR SCHISMATICS OF ISLAM
Islam appears first on the page of history as a purely Arab religion:
indeed it is perfectly clear that the Prophet Mohammed, whilst intending
it to be the one and only religion of the whole Arab race, did not
contemplate its extension to foreign communities. “Throughout the land
there shall be no second creed” was the Prophet’s message from his
death-bed, and this was the guiding principle in the policy of the early
Khalifs. The Prophet died in A.H. 11, and within the next ten years the
Arabs, united under the leadership of his successors, extended their rule
over Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. To a large extent it was
merely an accident that this rapid expansion of Arab rule was associated
with the rise of Islam. The expanding movement had already commenced
before the Prophet’s ministry, and was due to purely secular causes to
the age long tendency of the Arabs,—as of every race at a similar stage
of economic and social development,—to over-spread and plunder the
cultured territories in their vicinity. The Arabs were nomadic dwellers
in a comparatively unproductive area, and had been gradually pressed back
into that area by the development of settled communities of cultivators
in the better irrigated land upon its borders. These settled communities
evolved an intensive agriculture, and thus achieved great wealth and an
advanced state of civilization which was a perpetual temptation to the
ruder nomads who, able to move over great distances with considerable
rapidity, were always inclined to make plundering incursions into the
territories of the prosperous agricultural and city states near at hand.
The only restraint on these incursions was the military power of the
settled communities which always had as its first task the raising of a
barrier against the wild men of the desert: whenever the dyke gave way,
the flood poured out. In the seventh century A.D. the restraining powers
were the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Persia, and both of these,
almost simultaneously, showed a sudden military collapse from which, in
the natural course of events they would, no doubt, have recovered after a
short interval; but the Arabs poured in at this moment of weakness, just
as the Teutonic and other groups of central Europe had broken through the
barriers of the western half of the Roman Empire; and at that moment,
in the course of their incursion, they received a new coherence by the
rise of the religion of Islam and, by the racial unity thus artificially
produced, became more formidable.
In their outspread over Egypt and Western Asia the Arabs adopted the
policy, partly deduced from the Qurʾan and partly based on the tradition
of the first Khalif’s conduct in Arabia, of uncompromising warfare
against all “polytheists,”—the creed of Islam was a pure unitarianism,
and could contemplate no toleration of polytheism,—but of accommodation
with those possessed of the divine revelation, even in the imperfect and
corrupt form known to Christians and Jews. These “People of the Book”
were not pressed to embrace Islam, but might remain as tribute-paying
subjects of the Muslim rulers, with their own rights very fully secured.
In all the conquered lands the progress of the Muslim religion was
very gradual, and in all of them Christian and Jewish communities have
maintained an independent continuous existence to the present day. Yet
for all this there were very many conversions to the religion of the
ruling race, and these were so numerous that within the first century of
the Hijra the Arabs themselves were in a numerical minority in the Church
of Islam. The alien converts, socially and intellectually developed in
the culture of the Hellenistic world or of semi-Hellenistic Persia,
were very far in advance of the ruling Arabs who were little better
than half savages at the commencement of their career of conquest:
and the unexpected inclusion of this more cultured element acted as a
leaven in the Islamic community, and forced it to a rapid and somewhat
violent evolution. It is wonderful that Islam had sufficient vigour
and elasticity to be able to absorb such fresh elements and phases of
thought, but that elasticity had its limits, and at a very early date
sects began to form whose members the orthodox felt themselves unable to
recognise as fellow Muslims.
These early sects which were generally regarded as heretical were, in
most cases, reproductions of older pre-Islamic Persian and Mesopotamian
religious systems, with a thin veneer of Muslim doctrine, and, in the
second century of the Hijra, when they became most prominent, they were
strongly tinctured with Hellenistic philosophical speculations which
had already exercised a potent influence in Mesopotamia and Persia. In
theory these sects were “legitimist” in their adherence to the principle
of hereditary descent. Orthodox Islam accepted as a constitutional
principle the leadership of an elected _khalif_ or “successor,” a natural
development of the tribal chieftainship familiar to the pre-Islamic
Arabs. Amongst them the chief was elected in a tribal council, in
which great weight was given to the tried warriors and aged men of
experience, but in which all had a voice, and choice was made on what
we should describe as democratic lines, and this remained the practice
in the earlier age of Islam. Such a constitutional theory was no great
novelty to those who had lived under the Roman Empire, but was entirely
repugnant to those educated in Persian ideas, and who had learned to
regard the kingship as hereditary in the sense that the semi-divine
kingly soul passed by transmigration at the death of one sovereign to
the body of his divinely appointed successor. This had been the Persian
belief with regard to the Sasanid kings, and the Persians fully accepted
Yazdegird, the last of these, as a re-incarnation of the princes of
the semi-mythical Kayani dynasty to which they attributed their racial
origin and their culture. Yazdegird died in A.H. 31 (= A.D. 652), and his
death terminated the male line of the Persian royal family, but it was
generally believed that his daughter, Shahr-banu, was married to Husayn,
the son of the fourth Khalif ʿAli, so that in his descendants by this
Persian princess the claims of Islam and of the ancient Persian deified
kings were combined. Historically the evidence for this marriage seems
to be questionable, but it is commonly accepted as an article of faith by
the Persian Shiʿites.
At a quite early date the house of ʿAli began to receive the devoted
adherence of the Persian converts. That ʿAli himself had been prominent
as a champion of the rights of alien converts to equality in the
brotherhood of Islam, and still more his harsh treatment by Muʿawiya, the
founder of the ʿUmayyad dynasty, caused his name to serve as a rallying
point for all those who were disaffected towards the official Khalifate.
It is now the general Shiʿite belief that ʿAli, the cousin and son-in-law
of the Prophet, was his chief companion and chosen successor, the three
preceding Khalifs being no more than usurpers who had kept him out of
his just rights, and whose wrong doing he had borne with exemplary
patience. ʿAli himself does not seem to have taken so pronounced a
view, but he certainly regarded himself as injured by his exclusion
from the Khalifate. It is not true to say with Muir (_Caliphate_, p.
301), that the idea of a divine Imamate or “leadership” was entirely the
invention of later times because, as early as A.H. 32, in the reign of
ʿUthman, the Jewish convert ʿAbdu b. Saba of Yemen,—a district which had
been conquered by the Persian king Nushirwan, and settled by Persians
for nearly a century before the coming of Islam, and so thoroughly
impregnated with Persian ideas,—preached the divine right of ʿAli. This
view he maintained afterwards when ʿAli was Khalif, in spite of ʿAli’s
own disapproval, and at ʿAli’s murder in A.H. 40, he reiterated it in a
more pronounced form: the martyred Khalif’s soul, he said, was in the
clouds, his voice was heard in the thunder, his presence was revealed
in the lightning: in due course he would descend to earth again, and
meanwhile his spirit, a divine emanation, was passed on by re-birth to
the imams his successors.
Certainly the tragedy of Kerbela, which centred in the pathetic
sufferings and death of ʿAli’s son, Husayn, as he was on his way to
claim the Khalifate, produced a tremendous wave of pro-ʿAlid feeling:
indeed a popular martyr was the one thing needed to raise devotion to
the house of ʿAli to the level of an emotional religion, though many,
no doubt, supported the ʿAlid claims simply because they formed the
most convenient pretext for opposing the official Khalifate, and yet
remaining outwardly within the fold of Islam.
After the death of Husayn there were three different lines of ʿAlids
which competed for the allegiance of the legitimist faction, those
descended from (i.) Hasan, and (ii.) Husayn, the two sons of ʿAli by his
wife Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, and both therefore representing
the next of kin to the Prophet who left no son, and (iii.) the house
of Muhammad, the son of ʿAli, by another wife known as the Hanifite.
Of these three we may disregard the descendants of (i.) Hasan, who
ultimately migrated to Maghrab (Morocco), and became the progenitors
of the Idrisid dynasty and of the Sharifs of Morocco: they formed a
very moderate branch of the Shiʿite faction, adopted many practices of
the orthodox or Sunni party, and had no part in the peculiarly Persian
developments of the Asiatic Shiʿites. The first ʿAlid faction to become
prominent was (iii.) the partisans of Muhammad, the son of the Hanifite,
who were formed into a society by Kaysan, a freedman of ʿAli, for the
purpose of avenging Hasan and Husayn. They recognised a succession of
four Imams or valid commanders, ʿAli, Hasan, Husayn, and Muhammad, the
son of the Hanifite, and maintained that, at Husayn’s death, Muhammad
became _de jure_ the Khalif and the divinely appointed head of the Church
of Islam. Muhammad himself entirely disowned these partisans, but that
was a detail to which they paid no attention. At Muhammad’s death in A.H.
81 this party, “the Kaysanites” as they were called, recognised his son
Abu Hashim as the fifth Imam until A.H. 98, when he died childless after
bequeathing his claims to Muhammad b. ʿAli b. ʿAbdullah (d. A.H. 126),
who was not of the house of ʿAli at all, and who became the founder of
the ʿAbbasid dynasty which obtained the Khalifate in A.H. 132. It was
under Abu Hashim that the party, now changed in name from Kaysanites to
Hashimites, became an admirably organised conspiracy which contributed
more than anything else to the overthrow of the ʿUmayyad Khalifs.
Throughout the Muslim dominions there was deep and ever-increasing
dissatisfaction with the ʿUmayyads, who represented an arrogant _parvenu_
Arab aristocracy, ruling over races who enjoyed an older and richer
culture, and were by no means effete. The Hashimites seized hold of this
discontent and sent out their missionaries (_daʿi_, plur. _duʿat_) in all
directions disguised as merchants and pilgrims who relied upon private
conversations and informal intercourse rather than public preaching,
and thus began that unostentatious but effective propaganda, which has
ever since been the chief missionary method of Islam. Hashimite teaching
centered in the doctrines of _tawakkuf_ or the theory of a divinely
appointed Imam, who alone was the rightful Commander of the faithful and
their authoritative teacher, of _hulul_ or the incarnation of the Divine
Spirit in the Imam, and of _tenasukhu l-Arwah_ or the transmigration of
that Spirit from each Imam to his valid successor, doctrines alien to
Islam proper. With the death of the Abu Hashim this party passed over to
the service of the ʿAbbasids to whom it was a source of great strength,
and at their accession to the Khalifate it ceased to exist as a sect.
The most important sect, or group of sects, of the Shiʿites was (ii.)
the faction which recognised Husayn as the third Imam, and his son, ʿAli
Zayn al-Abidin (d. 94 A.H.) as his successor, the son of the Imam and of
the royal princess of Persia. But at al-Abidin’s death this party split
into two, some following his son Zayd (d. 121), others his son Muhammad
al-Bakir (d. 113). The former or Zaydite party established itself for a
considerable period in North Persia, and still maintains itself in South
Arabia. Zayd himself was the friend and pupil of the Muʿtazilite or
rationalist leader Wasil ibn ʿAta, and the Zaydites have generally been
regarded as more or less free thinkers. The majority of the Shiʿites,
however, recognised Muhammad al-Bakir as the fifth Imam, and after his
death Jaʿfar as-Sadiq (d. 148) as the sixth, though here again there was
a schism, some regarding Abu Mansur, another son of Muhammad al-Bakir,
as the sixth Imam. Abu Mansur seems to have been one of the first ʿAlids
to endorse the divine rights claimed for them by their followers, and
did so in an extreme form, asserting that he had ascended to heaven
and obtained supernatural illumination. At this time all the extremer
Shiʿites regarded the Imam as an incarnation of the Divine Spirit passed
on from ʿAli, and many believed that ʿAli was the true prophet of God
whose office had been fraudulently intercepted by Muhammad.
The Mansuris, however, were a minor sect, the majority of the Shiʿites
followed Jaʿfar who was Imam at the time of the ʿAbbasid revolution.
He was one of those who were deeply influenced by the traditions of
Hellenistic philosophy and science, and was the author of works on
chemistry, augury, and omens: he is usually credited with being the
founder, or at least the chief exponent, of what are known as _batinite_
views, that is to say, the allegorical interpretation of the Qurʾan as
having an esoteric meaning, which can only be learned from the Imam who
is illuminated by divine wisdom, and who alone is able to reveal its
true sense. The inner meaning thus revealed was usually a more or less
imperfect reproduction of Aristotelian doctrine as it had been handed
down by the Syriac writers. Like his brother, Abu Mansur Jaʿfar fully
endorsed the doctrine of a divine Imamate and the transmigration of
the Divine Spirit, then tabernacled in himself, and it seems probable
that Van Vloten (_Recherches sur la domination arabe_, 1894, pp. 44-45)
is right in suggesting that the general promulgation of these beliefs
amongst the Shiʿites was largely due to the labours of the Hashimite
missionaries.
The contemporary establishment of the ʿAbbasids made a far-reaching
change in the conditions of Islam. The Arabs began to take a secondary
place, and Persian influences became predominant. In 135 the noble
Persian family of the Barmecides began to furnish _wazirs_ or Prime
Ministers to the Khalifate, and controlled its policy for a period of
fifty-four years. Nearly all important offices were given to Persians,
and a distinct anti-Arab party was formed, known as the _Shuʿubiyya_,
which produced a prolific controversial literature which expressed the
hatred stored up under generations of ʿUmayyad misrule: the Arab was held
up to derision, his pretensions to aristocratic descent were contrasted
with the much more ancient genealogies of the Persian nobles, and he was
portrayed as little better than an illiterate savage. In literature, in
science, in Muslim jurisprudence and theology, and even in the scientific
treatment of Arabic grammar, the Persians altogether surpassed the Arabs,
so that we must be careful not to talk of Arab philosophy, Arab science,
etc., in the history of Muslim civilization, but always of Arabic
philosophy, etc., remembering that it was not the science and philosophy
of the Arabs, but that of the Arabic speaking people, amongst whom only
a small minority were actually of Arab race: and this applies to the
“golden age” of Arabic literature (A.H. 132-232). On the other hand it
must be remembered that, indirectly and unintentionally, the ʿUmayyads
had helped towards this result. It was under their rule that the Arabic
language had been introduced into the public administration, and in due
course replaced Greek and Persian in all public business, so that it
became the common speech of all Western Asia, or at least a common medium
of intercourse between those who used various languages in their private
life, and thus the brilliant intellectual and literary renascence was
rendered possible by a wide exchange of thought.
We may rightly refer to this period as a renascence, for it meant
quickening into new and other life the embers of the later Hellenistic
culture, and especially of the Aristotelian philosophy and medical and
natural science, which had never quite died away in Western Asia, but had
been checked by its passage into Syriac-speaking and Persian-speaking
communities, amongst whom the language in which the original authorities
were written was only imperfectly known. Thus Hellenism suffered a
phase of provincialism, which came to an end when Arabic appeared as a
more or less cosmopolitan language, and thought began to be exchanged
by different races and social groups. Under the early ʿAbbasids, and
especially under the Khalif al-Maʾmun (A.H. 198-218), there was a vast
amount of translation from Greek into Arabic until the greater part of
Aristotle, of the neo-Platonic commentators on Aristotle, of Galen, some
parts of Plato, and other material, were freely accessible to the Muslim
world: whilst at the same time translations were made from Indian writers
on mathematics, medicine, and astronomy, some directly from the Sanskrit,
and others from old Persian versions.
As a result the philosophical speculations of the Greeks began to act
as a solvent upon Islamic theology, and from this doctrinal discussions
and controversies arose which, on the one side, produced a series of
rationalistic heresies, and on the other side laid the foundations of an
orthodox Muslim scholasticism. Long before this Hellenistic influences
had permeated Persia and Mesopotamia, and these now revived and resulted
in a philosophical presentation of religion which, under the veil of
allegorical explanations of the Qurʾan, was really undermining orthodox
doctrine, and heading towards either pantheism or simple agnosticism.
With these tendencies the pro-Persian party was particularly associated.
The Khalifs who, in spite of Arab birth, were most devoted to Persian
ideas, largely because the Persians were subtle courtiers and were the
champions of absolutism, were amongst those most ardent in promoting the
study of Greek philosophy; and the Imams, such as Jaʿfar and his brother
Zayd, were even more devotedly attached to this type of philosophical
speculation which was acting as a powerful solvent on the traditional
beliefs of orthodox Islam.
At Jaʿfar’s death another schism took place, indeed the perpetual
sub-division into new sects has always been a salient characteristic
of the Shiʿiya. Jaʿfar had nominated his son Ismaʿil as his successor,
but afterwards disinherited him because he had been found in a state
of intoxication and chose as heir his second son, Musa al-Qazam. There
were some, however, who still adhered to Ismaʿil, and refused to admit
that his father had power to transfer the divinely ordained succession
at will; they asserted indeed that the son’s drunkenness was itself
a sign of his superior illumination as showing that he knew that the
ritual laws of the Qurʾan were not to be taken literally, but had an
esoteric meaning which did not appear on the surface. Musa, the seventh
Imam as generally reckoned, and his son, ʿAli ar-Rida (p. 202), the “two
patient ones,” suffered harsh treatment at the hands of the contemporary
ʿAbbasid rulers; they were brought from Madina by Harun ar-Rashid so as
to be under the observation of the court, and in 148 Musa was poisoned
by the wazir Ibn Khalid. His son ʿAli married the daughter of the Khalif
Maʾmun, and was intended to be the heir to the throne. But Maʾmun very
nearly provoked civil war by his strong Shiʿite sympathies, and when
he perceived how dangerous a storm the projected accession of ʿAli
was beginning to arouse, he extricated himself from the difficulty by
procuring the Imam’s death. ʿAli al-Qazim was usually reckoned as the
eighth Imam, the ninth was Muhammad al-Jawad (d. 220), the tenth ʿAli
al-Hadi (d. 254), and the eleventh al-Hasan (d. 260), these two latter
being buried at Samarra, which replaced Baghdad as the ʿAbbasid capital
from A.H. 222 to 279. The town afterwards fell into decay, but has been
colonised by Shiʿites, and is one of the places of Shiʿite pilgrimage.
The twelfth Imam was Muhammad al-Muntazir, who in A.H. 260 “disappeared.”
The mosque at Samarra is said to cover an underground vault into which
he went and was no more seen. The “twelvers,” or _Ithna ʿashariya_,
who to-day form the main body of the Shiʿites, and whose belief is the
official religion of modern Persia, suppose that he is still living, and
the place where he is to re-appear when he emerges from concealment is
one of the sacred spots visited by the Shiʿites.
But, as we have already noted, some of the Shiʿites did not accept
Jaʿfar’s transference of the Imamate from his son Ismaʿil to his second
son Musa, but recognised Ismaʿil still as heir. Ismaʿil died in 145
whilst his father was still alive, leaving a son named Muhammad. Although
Ismaʿil’s body was publicly shown before its burial at al-Bakiʿ, many
persisted in believing that he was not dead, and asserted that he had
been seen in Basra after his supposed funeral; others admitted his
death, but believed that his Imamate had passed to his son Muhammad;
others again believed that his soul had migrated to Muhammad, so that
they were in reality one person. These adherents of Ismaʿil, or of his
son Muhammad, or of Ismaʿil-Muhammad, formed the sect known as the
Ismaʿilians or the _Sabʿiya_, i.e., “seveners,” accepting the six Imams
to Jaʿfar as-Sadiq, and adding his son or grandson as the seventh and
last.
These “seveners” seem to have been a comparatively minor sect of the
extremer Shiʿites. Some members of the sect are still to be found in the
neighbourhood of Bombay and Surat. But, about 250 this comparatively
obscure sect was taken in hand and organised by a singularly able leader,
and became for a time one of the most powerful forces in Islam.
GENEALOGY OF THE FAMILY OF ʿALI
(1) ʿAli d. 41.
+-----------------------------+
| |
marr. (i) Fatima (ii) al-Hanifiya
+---------------------+ |
| | |
(3) Hasan d. 50. (3) Husayn d. 61. Muhammad
| |
Hasan |
+-------------+ |
| | |
Muhammad Abd Allah (4) ʿAli Zayn d. 94.
| | +-------------------+
| | | |
(Sherifs of Idris Zayd (5) Muhammad
Morocco) | | al-Bakir d. 113.
(Idrisids (Zaydites |
of N. Africa) of N. Persia (6) Jaʿfar as-Sadiq
and S. Arabia) d. 148.
+------------------+
| |
(7)* Ismaʿil (7) Musa
| d. 183.
Muhammad |
| (8) ʿAli ar-Rida
(alleged d. 202.
descent of |
Fatimids) (9) Muhammad al-Jawad
d. 220.
(10) ʿAli al-Hadi
d. 254.
(11) al Hasan al
Askari d. 260.
|
(12) Muhammad
al-Muntazar
“disappeared”
A. H. 260.
II
THE ISMAʿILIAN SECT
From the beginning the neo-Ismaʿilian sect showed all the characteristics
of the ultra Shiʿite bodies: it accepted the _ʿalim l-batin_, or the
principle of allegorical interpretation which is especially associated
with Jaʿfar as-Sadiq, the doctrine of incarnation, and of the
transmigration of the Imam’s soul. But underneath all this, borrowed from
current Shiʿite ideas, it had a strong element of agnosticism, a heritage
of the philosophical ideas borrowed from Greek scientists, and developed
in certain directions by the Muʿtazilites. As organised by its leader,
whose name was Abdullah b. Maymun, it was arranged in seven grades to
which members were admitted by successive initiations, and which diverged
more and more from orthodox Islam until its final and highest stages
were simply agnostic. According to Stanley Lane-Poole “in its inner
essence Shiʿism, the religion of the Fatimids is not Mohammedanism at
all. It merely took advantage of an old schism in Islam to graft upon
it a totally new and largely political movement” (Lane-Poole: _Story
of Cairo_, Lond., 1906, p. 113). In this passage “Shiʿism” is taken as
denoting the sect of the “Seveners,” and the “political movement” is
simply disaffection towards the Khalifate. Similarly Prof. Nicholson
considers that “Filled with a fierce contempt of the Arabs and with a
free-thinker’s contempt for Islam, Abdullah b. Maymun conceived the
idea of a vast secret society which should be all things to all men,
and which, by playing on the strongest passions and tempting the inmost
weaknesses of human nature, should unite malcontents of every description
in a conspiracy to overthrow the existing _régime_” (Nicholson: _Literary
History of the Arabs_, pp. 271-272).
Undoubtedly the ideas involved in the Ismaʿilian doctrines were
totally subversive of the teachings of Islam, but so were those of
the “philosophers,” and in exactly the same way. The views of Ibn
Tufayl (d. 531 A.H.) and of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595 A.H.) were
purely Aristotelian in basis, and on this foundation was built up an
agnostic-pantheistic superstructure. Ibn Tufayl particularly makes it
quite clear that his teaching is not consistent with the Qurʾan which
he treats as setting forth a system of doctrines and ritual precepts
suitable for the unlearned who ought not to be disturbed in their
simple faith, but quite inadequate for the satisfaction of the more
intelligent: the mysteries of the universe, revealed through Aristotle
and his followers, furnish a sounder religion, but it is expedient
that this be reserved for the enlightened and not divulged to the
illiterate who are unable to appreciate or understand its bearing. Such
teaching is subversive of orthodox Islam, and consciously so: in the
case of ʿAbdullah it may, perhaps, be described as a conspiracy against
religion. In one sense it was the final product of the rationalism of the
Muʿtazilites.
Admittedly the Ismaʿiliya worked as a political conspiracy against
the ʿAbbasids, but this was true of every Shiʿite sect: the ʿAbbasids
had used the Shiʿites in seating themselves on the throne, and then
discarded them. Still it seems that we have no reason to question the
perfect sincerity of the Ismaʿilians in their agnostic principles:
those principles were the product of the solvent influence of Greek
philosophy upon the religion of Islam: Islamic thought was too simple and
primitive to be able to adapt itself to that philosophy in its entirety,
hence some such position as that of Ibn Tufayl, or of Ibn Rushd, or
of the Ismaʿilians, was inevitable. It was equally a necessary result
of the time and circumstances that these rationalists tended towards
the Shiʿites. In spite of weird superstitions, especially current in
Khurasan, the Shiʿites represent the Muslim element most kindly disposed
towards freedom of thought. This seems a bold statement to those familiar
with Shiʿites of the present day, but it must be noted that the Shiʿites
whom the European most frequently meets are either the devotees who have
settled in places like Samarra, or those who seem to be more exclusive
than the orthodox Muslims, chiefly because they have as yet had much
less intercourse with foreigners. In 2-3rd cent. Islam it was the
Shiʿite princes who invariably did their best to foster philosophical
and scientific research, whilst, after A.H. 232, the orthodox party, as
it gets in the ascendent, becomes distinctly reactionary, and tends to
repressive persecution.
The most difficult task for us is to appreciate the strong appeal which
the doctrines of incarnation and transmigration made to the Persian
and Mesopotamian mind. Both these doctrines had figured prominently
in pre-Islamic religions in Western Asia; and both recur in most
religious movements from the coming of Islam to the present day in that
particular area. We may note a few instances to illustrate this, and show
incidentally the strong attraction these doctrines had for the Persian
mind.
Abu Muslim was the general who more than any other helped to seat the
ʿAbbasids on the throne, and suffered death at the hands of the first
ʿAbbasid Khalif, who was jealous,—with good cause, it would appear,—of
his excessive power. But Abu Muslim had exercised an extraordinary
influence over men during life, and was treated as a quasi-divine hero
after death, his admirers regarding him as not really dead but as
having passed into “concealment,” some other having been miraculously
substituted for him at the moment of execution. This resembles the theory
which the pre-Islamic Persian teacher Mani held as to Christ. Mani fully
accepted Christ as a religious teacher, side by side with Zoroaster and
Buddha, but he could not admit the reality of his death, for a material
body capable of death was in his view unworthy of one purely good. He
supposed, therefore, that at the crucifixion Simon of Cyrene was at the
last moment substituted for Christ, and this Persian idea has actually
obtained a place in the Qurʾan (cf. Sura 4, 156).
Not long after Abu Muslim we hear of a pseudo-prophet named Bih-afaridh,
a Zoroastrian who had travelled in the far East, and afterwards accepted
Islam at the hands of two _duʿat_ who were preaching the cult of Abu
Muslim. Very little is known of his teaching, but he certainly maintained
the doctrine that the Imam is an incarnation of the Deity, and seems to
have attached a particularly sacred signification to the numeral seven.
This superstitious reverence for particular numbers was a common feature
in the pre-Islamic religions of Mesopotamia, and we shall meet it again
in the doctrines of the Ismaʿilians.
Another sect, of similarly pre-Islamic origin, was that known as the
_Rawandiyya_ from its origin at Rawand near Isfahan. Its members were
king-worshippers in the old Persian sense, and a body of them travelled
to Hashimiyya, where the Khalifs then had their residence, and tried
to acclaim the Khalif al-Mansur as a god. He not only rejected the
proffered adoration, but cast the leaders into prison. This was followed
by an attempt to attack the palace, the Rawandis considering that, as
the prince had disclaimed deity, he could be no valid ruler. For some
centuries the sect, strongly disaffected towards the Khalifate, lingered
on in Persia and had many sympathisers.
Under the next Khalif al-Mahdi, came the still more serious rebellion
of _al-Muqannaʿ_, the “veiled prophet of Khurasan,” who asserted his
own deity. He was killed in A.H. 169, but his followers, as usual,
believed that he had not really suffered in person, but had passed into
concealment and would in due course return again: they continued to form
a distinct sect for some three hundred years.
Another pseudo-prophet of the same type was _Babak al-Khurrami_, who
was executed in A.H. 222 or 223. He also declared himself to be an
incarnation of the Divine Spirit, and asserted that the soul within him
had already dwelt in his master Jawidan.
We might continue to extend the series very considerably by enumerating
the various prophets and sects which reproduce these same general
characteristics. The latest example occurs in the Babi movement, which
still flourishes and has many converts in this country and in America.
The first teacher of the Babists, Mirza ʿAli Muhammad (A.D. 1820-1851)
claimed only to be a Mahdi or fore-runner of One who was to come, but
his successor, Mirza Husayn ʿAli, declared himself to be the expected
One, the incarnation of the Divine Spirit, which is an emanation of the
Deity and is fairly equivalent to the Reason, Word, or Spirit of the
Plotinian philosophy. In later times this doctrine has rather fallen
into the background, perhaps as the result of western influences, but the
earlier phase shows a repetition of the traditional Persian position.
All these sects show common matter in the doctrines of incarnation, of
transmigration, and of an esoteric teaching to be revealed only to the
elect. Such were the extremer Shiʿite sects of mediaeval times, and such
are their descendants of modern times. Even in Persia to-day, side by
side with the more orthodox “Twelvers” of the state church and off-shoots
such as the Babists, the latest of a long series of mystical developments
from the Shiʿite stock, are the ʿAli Allahis who believe in the deity
of the Imam ʿAli, and combine with this belief many elements from the
ancient Zoroastrian religion, a survival of the older mediaeval Shiʿism
which caused so much trouble to the Khalifate of Baghdad.
In the teaching of most of the Shiʿites it is believed that some deceased
Imam was an incarnation of deity, and it is he who, not really dead as
men suppose, has passed into concealment, to return again in the fulness
of time, when this evil age in which the true Khalifate no longer exists
has passed away. Meanwhile there is no valid Khalif or Imam upon earth,
but only some Shah or king who acts as vicegerent of the hidden Imam
until his return.
This digression serves to show us how strongly Persian thought always
has inclined towards the idea of a divine incarnation in the honoured
religious teacher, and towards that of transmigration of the soul
from one such teacher to his successor. In the 3rd century A.H.
probably no sect which did not hold such theories could have obtained
a favourable hearing amongst the Persians who found Islam of the Arab
type unsatisfying, and every radical religious movement was necessarily
compelled to assume at least the externals of Shiʿism.
The Shiʿite party organised by ʿAbdullah is known by various names. It
is called _Ismaʿilian_ as representing the party adhering to Ismaʿil,
the son of Jaʿfar as-Sadiq, and his son Muhammad, as against those who
continued the succession of the Imamate through Musa; but the name is not
strictly accurate as it seems that there was an Ismaʿilian sect proper
existing before ʿAbdullah, and that his re-organisation was so drastic
that we may regard the continuity as being severed; and it seems certain
that some part of the earlier sect continued to exist independent of his
reforms. It was, no doubt, its attachment to a deceased or “hidden” Imam
which made it a more promising field for the advocates of a speculative
philosophy than any sect whose Imam was living and might dissociate
himself from the doctrines held. It was also called the _Sabʿiya_ or
“Seveners” because it accepted seven Imams, and also because it attached
a sacred significance to the numeral seven; there were seven prophets,
seven Imams, seven Mahdis, seven grades of initiation (afterwards changed
to nine), etc. In many respects _Sabʿiya_ is the most accurate name, but
it is open to the same objection as Ismaʿilian. More commonly its members
are called _Fatimites_ as recognising Fatimid Imams who claimed descent
from ʿAli and Fatima: but this, although convenient because of its
frequent use amongst mediaeval Arabic writers, is peculiarly inaccurate.
The Ithna ʿashariya or sect of “Twelvers” was equally Fatimite, and so
were the Zaydites, indeed these last were the true Fatimites as holding
that _any_ person descended from ʿAli and Fatima might be a valid Imam:
but common usage allows the use of “Fatimites” for the sect organised by
ʿAbdullah. Another name is _Batinites_ or advocates of an allegorical
interpretation, but this also applies to other Shiʿite groups. Sometimes
they are called _Qarmatians_, but this name is only applicable to one
branch of the sect which originated in the district of Sawad between
Basra and Kufa, and should be reserved for that branch which at a later
period became alienated from the main Ismaʿilian body.
The new sect carried out its propaganda by means of missionaries (_daʿi_)
on the lines developed by the Hashimites. In this, as in most of its
external features, it reproduces the characteristics usual amongst the
mediaeval Shiʿites.
The organiser of the sect or masonic fraternity was ʿAbdullah, who
is stated to have been the son of one Maymun. Sometimes ʿAbdullah is
surnamed _al-laddah_ (“the oculist”), as is done by Abu l-Feda, but more
often this surname is given to his father Maymun. Maqrizi, referring
to the Fatimids, says, “this family was traced to al-Husayn, the
son of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, but men are divided in the matter between
two opinions: some treat it as true, but others deny that they are
descendants of the Prophet and treat them as pretenders descended from
Daysan the Dualist, who has given his name to the Dualists, and (say)
that Daysan had a son whose name was Maymun al-Qaddah, and that he had a
sect of extreme views. And Maymun had a son ʿAbdullah, and ʿAbdullah was
learned in all the canon law and customs and sects” (_Maqrizi_, i. 348).
The reference to “Daysan the Dualist” is pure fable. This Daysan appears
frequently in Arabic history as the legendary founder of the _Zindiqs_, a
name given to the followers of the pre-Islamic cults of Mesopotamia and
Persia, who found it convenient to make external profession of Islam.
Thus Masʿudi (_Muruj adh-Dhahab_, viii. 293) says that “many heresies
arose after the publication of the books of Mani, Ibn Daysan, and
Marcion, translated from Persian and Pahlawi by ʿAbdullah ibn al-Muqaffaʿ
and others.” Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was a converted Zoroastrian who took a
leading part in translating Persian and Syrian works into Arabic under
the first two ʿAbbasids, and was generally regarded as privately adhering
to his earlier religious views.
It will be noted that Zindiqism is mentioned as propagated by Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ, and is traced to Ibn Daysan amongst others, and this
is precisely the same as the one whom Maqrizi names as the reputed
progenitor of Maymun. Evidently the charge which lay at the bottom of
this latter statement originally meant that Maymun was a Zindiq, and so
could be described as a follower of Ibn Daysan, not that he actually was
Ibn Daysan’s son, which would be an absurd anachronism. For the name
Ibn Daysan refers to a perfectly genuine historical person: the Ibn
Daysan of the Arabic writers was the Bar Daisan of Syriac literature, a
convert from paganism to Christianity who died about A.D. 222, and whose
followers formed an important sect at Edessa for several centuries,
though in Muslim times he appears as a semi-legendary character. We
possess a work probably written by one of his pupils called “A treatise
on Fate” in the Christian writers, from which two lengthy extracts
appear in Eusebius: _Praep. Evangel._ vi. 9, one of which is cited
also in _Clementine Recognitions_ ix., but is headed “Book of the Laws
of Countries” in the Syriac text discovered by Cureton, and published
by him in 1855. Various references are made to Bar Daisan in Euschius,
Epiphanius, and other Church Fathers, as well as in the dialogues
ascribed to Adamantius, but our best information as to his teaching is to
be obtained from Moses bar Kepha (_Patrol. Syr._, I., ii. 513-5), whose
summary is fully endorsed by the controversial essays of St. Ephraim, who
settled at Edessa in 363 when the Bar-daisanites were a real force there.
Bar Daisan’s doctrine, which is a kind of Christianized Zoroastrianism,
is described by Prof. Burkitt in his introduction to Mitchell’s edition
of St. Ephraim’s _Prose Refutations_.
Marcion represents an earlier and more definitely Christian system which
at one time had a very wide extension, and probably was the medium
through which Bar Daisan learned Christianity. It was a kind of dualistic
system with two powers, the Good God and the Evil One. The Evil One was
the creator whom the Jews worshipped as God, and the Good God sent his
Son on earth to save men from this delusion: as in Zoroastrianism the two
rival powers maintain an unceasing strife until the day of judgment when
the good God will be finally victorious. From St. Ephraim we learn that
the Marcionites long retained their hold in Northern Mesopotamia side by
side with the Bar-daisanites.
Mani shows very much these same views in a Zoroastrian setting, but
with a strong element of Marcionite Christianity. Mani’s work came some
twenty years later than Bar Daisan, and he, in his early days, had been a
disciple of the Mandeans, the Gnostic sect which Justin Martyr calls “the
baptists” βαπτισταί (_Justin M. Dial._ 80) from their frequent ablutions,
who were settled in the marsh land between Basra and Wasit on the lower
Euphrates. All three, Bar Daisan, Marcion, and Mani, draw largely from
the same source the eclectic mixture of old Babylonian religion, of
Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Christianity, which developed in the lower
Euphrates valley, though Marcion claimed to be, and no doubt believed
himself, an orthodox member of the Catholic Church, whilst Mani was no
less confident in regarding himself as a Zoroastrian. The whole of the
different religious ideas of the Euphrates valley were welded together by
an element of Greek philosophy of the neo-Pythagorean type, which seems
to have filtered in through the Jews who were settled there in force, and
had shared in the common life of the Hellenistic world at the time when
the neo-Pythagorean school was taking form, and showing marked sympathy
towards the various forms of Eastern religious speculation. All this
kind of eclectic speculation, half religious and half philosophical,
lived on, and was still alive in the third cent. of the Hijra; indeed,
it had spread and formed a new centre at Harran, quite distinct in its
character, but obviously drawing from the same sources, and, moreover, it
quickened into new life when the speculations of the neo-Platonic school
were introduced through a Syriac medium. Traditionally all this type of
thought prevalent in Mesopotamia was connected with the names of Marcion,
Mani, and Bar Daisan, though probably very few Muslims had any clear idea
of the respective parts these three characters had played, but simply
cited them as heresiarchs of exceptional notoriety.