IKHSHIDIDS
The Ikhshidids were a short-lived Turkish
dynasty that ruled Egypt and Syria from 935 to 966. The dynasty originally
claimed power as the representatives of the ‘Abbasid caliph, much like the
Tulunids before them. However, with the occupation of Baghdad by the Shi‘i Buyids in 945, they
styled themselves as independent Sunni rulers.
The founder of this dynasty, Muhammad b. Tughj b. Juff al-Ikhshid, belonged to a
military family that served the caliphal government over three generations and
was sometimes embroiled in its internecine conflicts. Muhammad grew up in
Tulunid Syria and was briefly jailed, along with his father and brother, after
the ‘Abbasid reconquest. He later received appointment as governor of Egypt.
After turning back a Fatimid invasion at Alexandria in 936, he repelled the
forces of the ‘Abbasids’ chief general (amir
l-umara), Ibn Ra’iq, in Syria, who wished to check his growing power.
The caliph al-Radi invested Muhammad with the title of al-Ikhshid at the latter’s
request in 939. This marked a significant concession by the caliph. The title
derives from a word for king or ruler in Old Persian and was originally claimed
by pre-Islamic rulers of Soghdia and Ferghana.
Muhammad’s success relied on his military
prowess and practical nature. In addition to the Fatimids and Ibn Ra’iq, he
defeated the Hamdanids in Syria in 942 and 945. He did not, however, exploit
these victories to his full advantage. He preferred to negotiate settlements in
their aftermath to secure the peace.
Political interests tempered Muhammad’s
profession of support for the ‘Abbasids. During his conflict with Ibn Ra’iq, he
considered recognizing the Fatimid imam in the Friday prayer and marrying his
daughter to the imam’s son. Although he offered sanctuary to the caliph
al-Muttaqi in 944, he presumably intended to use his presence to bolster his
legitimacy. The caliph declined his invitation .
Muhammad sought to ensure the succession of
his family, which proved a difficult task. His authority rested on his personal
prestige. He and his family did not have an ethnic or religious following. The
deterioration of ‘Abbasid fortunes, however, aided his plans. During a campaign
to Damascus in 942, he had his troops swear fealty to his son Abu ’l-Qasim Unujur.
In 944, he secured a thirty-year claim to govern Egypt and Syria from the
caliph al-Muttaqqi for himself and his descendants while this caliph fended off
dire threats from the East.
Although succeeded by his son Unujur,
Muhammad’s principal military commander and black eunuch, Kafur, assumed effective
control after his death in 946. Kafur had been purchased from Nubia and enjoyed
Muhammad’s confidence. He participated in important military engagements such
as the campaign against the Hamdanids in 945. He was also entrusted with the
education of Muhammad’s two sons.
Kafur earned distinction as a capable chief
minister and later ruler in his own right despite facing numerous crises. He
guaranteed the succession of Unujur in 946 and ‘Ali in 961. He finally declared
himself ruler upon ‘Ali’s death in 966. ‘Ali’s son Ahmad was a minor and
therefore ineligible to succeed. The ‘Abbasid caliph granted Kafur a diploma of
investiture, though he seems to have refrained from inscribing his name on his
coinage. Kafur guided Egypt and Syria through recurrent famine, a destructive
fire in Fustat, and an earthquake, in addition to revolts and external military
threats from the Fatimids and Hamdanids. He built palaces, mosques, a hospital,
and the capital’s Kafuriyya gardens, but no trace of these monuments survives.
The Ikhshidids presented a Sunni bulwark
against a rising tide of Shi‘i domination in the Near East. The occupation of
Baghdad by the Buyids in 945 left them as nearly the only significant Sunni
power. Their demise allowed the Fatimids to conquer Egypt and Syria.
Primary Sources
Ibn Sa‘ıˆd
al-Andalusıˆ. Kitaˆb al-Mughrib fıˆı `ulaˆ al-Maghrib. Edited by K. L.
Tallquist. Leiden, 1899.
Ibn
al-‘Adıˆm.Zubdat al-ı`alab min taˆrıˆkh I`alab. Edited by SaˆmıˆDahhaˆn.
Damascus, 1951.
Taghrıˆbirdıˆ.
al-Nujuˆm al-œaˆhira fıˆmuluˆk Miær wa-l-Qaˆhira. Cairo, Daˆr al-Kutub, n.d.
Further Reading
Bacharach,
Jere L. Tughj. ‘‘The Career of al-Ikhshıˆd, a Tenth Century Governor of
Egypt.’’Speculum1 (1975), 86–612.
———.
‘‘Muı`ammad b. Tughj al-Ikhshıˆd.’’ InThe Encyclopedia of Islam. 2d ed,. vol.
VII. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991, 411.
Ehrenkreutz,
Andrew S. ‘‘Kaˆfu ˆr.’’ InThe Encyclopedia of Islam. 2d ed, vol. IV. Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1974, 418–419. Kaˆshif, S.I.Miær fıˆ‘aær al-Ikhshı ˆdıˆyıˆn. Cairo,
1970.
ILKHANIDS (1258–1335)
Bowing to the request and entreaties of an
envoy from the northern Persian city of Qazvin, the Great Khan Mo¨ngke (1251–1259),
grandson of Genghis Khan, assigned his brother, Hu¨legu ¨ Khan, to march
westward toward the Islamic heartlands. The Iranian Qadi (chief justice) had
been explicit in his audience with Mo¨ngke Khan. Mongol military rule in Iran
was corrupt, brutal, and inefficient. The Assassins or Ismailis, considered
heretics and terrorists by most Iranians, were undermining the social fabric of
Persian society and terrorizing its citizens and indeed had probably even infiltrated
the court of the Great Khan himself. The Iranians wanted the Great Khan to
extend his justice and rule into the west and end the anarchy that prevailed
there. When Mo¨ngke discovered that Ismaili assassins had indeed infiltrated
his court, he instructed Hu ¨legu ¨ to march on Iran, rid the country of the ‘‘heretical’’
Ismailis, seek the submission of the caliph of Baghdad, and extend the rule of his
justice and glory from the banks of the Oxus to the sands of Egypt.
Hu¨legu ¨ razed Alamut, the headquarters of
the Ismaili Assassins, to the ground in 1256. For Juwayni, the historian and Hu
¨legu ¨’s governor of Baghdad, the annihilation of Alamut justified and
explained God’s purpose in sending the Mongols to the lands of Islam. In 1258, the caliph of Islam, heeding
the self-serving intrigues at his court, foolishly rebuffed Hu ¨legu ¨’s calls to
peacefully submit and defied the gathering Mongol forces. Advised by his Muslim
aides and assisted by local armies of Muslim, Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish
troops, Hu¨legu ¨ destroyed Baghdad, though many including Shi‘is, clerics, and
Christians were given safe conduct from the city. After the battle the caliph
was executed, and it is probable that the libraries and treasures of the city
found their way to the first Ilkhanid capital, Maragheh (Azerbaijan,
northwestern Iran) where Hu ¨legu ¨built an observatory and university for his
court favorite, Shaykh Nassir al-Din Tusi.
Both Hu¨legu ¨ (d. 1265) and his son, Abaqa (r.
1265–1282), the first Ilkhans of Iran, were renowned for their wisdom and
justice, and Iran experienced for the first time in many decades a period of
security, peace, and prosperity. Maragheh, and later Tabriz, became prosperous
hubs of international commerce and cultural exchange. Italian traders, Armenian
merchants, Uighur middlemen, Persian poets, Chinese astrologers, Arab mathematicians,
and intellectuals, scientists, agronomists, and scholars from east and west
mingled in the halls and chambers and crowded bazaars of the Ilkhanid capitals.
The city–states of Yazd, Kirman, Shiraz, and Herat all pledged allegiance to
the Ilkhan and thrived under Mongol rule.
Ghazan Khan (1295–1304) converted to Islam probably
more from political astuteness than from conviction, and Islam became the
official religion of the state. However, ties with the Yuan dynasty of China
continued to strengthen in all spheres bolstered by the personal ties between
the ‘‘renaissance men,’’ Bolad Chinksank, a Mongol, and Rashid al-Dın, the Persian
wazir. Both Iran and China thrived economically, culturally, and socially under
the relatively enlightened administration of their Mongol rulers and there was
mutual benefit from the close ties they maintained. The Ilkhanate did not
decline but simply disappeared. The last Ilkhan, Abu Sa‘id (r. 1316– 1335), died
without an heir, and it was at its peak that the Ilkhanate ceased. In its wake
it left a stateroughly corresponding to the modern state of Iran, and its
legacy was a rebirth of the Iranian sense of
statehood and national identity.
Further Reading
Allsen,
Thomas.Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Mongke 1251–1259. Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.
———.
‘‘Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners 1200–1260.’’ Asia Major. 3rd
series. Vol. II. Part 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
———.Commodity
and Exchange in the Mongol Empire. A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
———.Culture
and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2001.
Amitai-Preiss,
R.Mongols and Mamluks. CUP, 1995
———. ‘‘The
Conversion of Tegu¨der Ilkhan to Islam.’’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
Islam25 (2001): 15–43.
———. ‘‘Sufis
and Shamans: Some Remarks on the Islamisation of the Mongols of the Ilkhanate.’’
JESHO17, no. 1, 1999.
Browne,
E.G.Literary History of Persia. Vol. III. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,
1997.
Komaroff,
Linda, and Stefano Carboni (Eds).The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and
Culture in Western Asia 1256-1353. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.,2002.
Lambton,
A.K.S.Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia. Aspects of
Administrative,Economic, Social History in 11th–14th Century Persia. London: I.
B. Taurus. 1988. Lane, George,Early Mongol Rule in 13th Century Iran.
London: RoutledgeCurzon,
2003
———.Genghis
Khan and Mongol Rule. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
———.Daily
Life in the Mongol Empire. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. [forthcoming]
———.
‘‘Arghun Aqa: Mongol Bureaucrat?’’Iranian Studies 32, no.4, 2000.
———. ‘‘An
Account of Bar Hebraeus Abu al-Faraj and His Relations with the Mongols of
Persia.’’Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies2, no. 2, July 1999.
Lewis,
Bernard.The Assassins. A Radical Sect in Islam. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1968.
Lewis,
Franklin.Rumi: Past and Present, East and West. Oxford: Oneworld, 2000.
Melville,
Charles. ‘‘Padishah-i-Islam: The Conversion of Sultan Mahmud Ghazan
Khan.’’Pembroke Papers I, 1990.
Morgan,
David.The Mongols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
———.Medieval
Persia, 1040–1797. London and New York: Longman. 1988.
———.
‘‘Rashı¯d al-Dı¯n and Gazan Khan.’’Bibliotheque Iranienne45, 1998.
Rashiduddin
Fazlullah.Jami’u’t-Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles, a History of the
Mongols. Translated by Wheeler Thackston. 3 vols. Harvard University, 1999
ILLUMINATIONISM
Derived from ‘‘illumination,’’ a conventional
translation of the Arabic term ishraq
(lit. radiance, shining of the rising sun), ‘‘illuminationism’’ refers to the
doctrine of the Ishraqiyyun, a school
of philosophical and mystical thought of various Graeco-Oriental roots whose
principles were propounded as an ancient ‘‘science of lights’’ (‘ilm al-anwar) by Shihab al-Din Yaþya
al-Suhrawardi in his Kitab hikmat
al-ishraq, a fundamental work completed in AH 582/1186 CE. The author—not
to be confused with the wellknown Sufi Shaykh Shihab al-Do˜n ‘Umar
al-Suhrawardi (d. 632/1234)—was an original thinker in the tradition of
Avicenna and, like the latter, a prolific writer of Arabic and Persian philosophical
treatises, as well as a number of tales of a more mystical and allusive nature.
Born probably around 550/1155 in Suhraward, a village near Zanjan (Iranian
Azerbayjan), he is said to have studied philosophy and Shafi‘i law in Maragha,
according to some accounts also in Isfahan. Some time later, he must have moved
for an extended period within the upper Mesopotamian region of Mardin, Diyarbakir, and Kharput, where the Artuqid
prince ‘Imad al-Din Abu Bakr b. Qara Arslan (r. AH 581–600/1185–1204 CE) became
his patron. It was to this ‘Imad al-Din that he dedicated one of his
characteristic writings,Al-Alwah al-‘Imadiyya, a work of mixed philosophical
and Sufi content ending up with a fervent glorification of the mythical Iranian
kings Faridun and Kay Khusraw. He finally settled in Aleppo, where his ideas
evidently met with the displeasure of the established religious authorities.
He was executed on charges of heresy in 587/1191
or thereabouts by order of the famous sultan Saladin (hence his bynameal-maqtul,‘‘executed
one’’).
Skeptical of the formalized structures of
Avicennian metaphysics and epistemology in which he himself had been raised,
Suhrawardi made an attempt to work out an alternative approach to reality.
Based on visionary experience and the recognition of a separate world of
images, he envisioned a dynamic world of multiple irradiations originating with
the distant ‘‘light of lights’’ (nur
al-anwar, the ishraqi equivalent of the Avicennian ‘‘necessary of
existence,’’ that is, God) and falling in various ways and degrees of intensity
on obscure matter. In technical language his approach came to be known later as
the doctrine of the primary reality of quiddities (asalat almmahiyya), as opposed to the primary reality of existence
(asalat al-wujud). According to
Suhrawardi, the human soul is a luminous substance, namely, the ‘‘regent
light’’ (al-nur al-mudabbiroral-nur
al-isfahbudin ishraqi terminology perhaps a reminiscence of the Stoichegemonikon),knows
whatever it does really know through a direct encounter with the illumined
object (muqabalat al-mustanir) rather
than by way of abstraction in terms of Aristotelian species and genera. The
discovery of this type of knowledge, called presential knowledge (al-‘ilm al-huduri),is regarded as one
of Suhrawardi’s lasting contributions in the history of Islamic thought.
There can be no doubt that Suhrawardi was
intimately familiar with Sufi traditions and spiritual practices such as dhikr (remembering or memorizing God) and
sama‘(listening to music), but he
does not seem to have been part of the established Sufi organizations of his
time, which generally rather enjoyed the favors of Saladin. In his ‘‘tales of
initiation,’’ the luminous guiding principle is frequently encountered as a
cosmic Intellect, a figure of angelic or otherwise mythical qualities (such as
the bird Simurgh), sometimes with the attributes of a Sufi Shaykh, or simply as
the ‘‘Teacher.’’ Suhrawardi makes it clear that he considered classical Sufi
saints rather than the falasifa as
the true philosophers of the present (Islamic) era, and also hints that the
ancient wisdom had reached him through mysterious Sufi channels, but he
associates his science of lights principally with the names of Plato, Hermes, Empedokles,
Pythagoras, and the ‘‘Oriental principle (qa‘idat
al-sharq) concerning light and darkness’’ of the Sages of ancient Iran. In effect,
he created a new school of Neoplatonic thought of a distinctly Iranian flavor,
which to some extent paralleled earlier developments in Fatimid Ismaili
thought. This, together with his ambiguous allusions to the ‘‘time deprived of
divine administration,’’ when the ‘‘powers of darkness take over’’ and the
rightful ‘‘representative of God’’(khalifat
Allah) or ‘‘divinely inspired leader’’(al-imam
al-muta’allih) is hidden, may well have been enough to provoke his enemies
among the‘ulama’ and to eventually lead to his execution.
His ideas were nevertheless taken up and
elaborated one or two generations later by philosophers such as Ibn Kamm.na (d.
683/1284), Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Shahrazuri (d. after 687/1288), and Qutb
al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 710/1311 or 716/1316), and were at that time well-known
among philosophical Sufis (such as ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Qashani, d. 736/ 1335) as
a distinct ishraqi tradition. They
continued to exercise considerable influence on later intellectual developments
in Persia, especially in the philosophical schools of Shiraz (fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries) and Isfahan (seventeenth century) with Mir Damad and Mulla
Sadra. They were also influential in Moghul India (notably in mixed Sufi and
Zoroastrian milieux at the court of the emperor Akbar) and in Ottoman Turkey, where
they appear to have found their way into more orthodox Sufi circles (for
example, Isma‘il Ankaravi, d. 1041/1631). However, it should be noted that the
occurrence of the term ishraq in Sufi texts does not necessarily indicate an
influence of illuminationism as understood by Suhrawardi. The North African
Sufi treatise titled Qawanin hikam alishraq by Abu l-Mawahib al-Tunisi
al-Shadhili (d. 882/1477) and published in English as Illumination in Islamic Mysticism (translated by E.J. Jurji,
Princeton, 1938) has little more in common with Suhrawardi’s principal work
than a similar title.
On the other hand, Suhrawardi’s Ishraqiyyun were by no means unknown in
fourteenth-century Muslim Spain, as is evident from the excellent summary of ‘‘the
views of the followers of [the doctrine
of] the lights among the Ancients’’ given by Lisan al-Din Ibn al-Khatib al-Gharnati
(d. 776/1374) in his Rawdat al ta‘rif bi
l-hubb al-sharif (edited by M. al-Kattani, Beirut, 1970, II, 564–574); and
it is worth noting that this author clearly distinguishes them from ‘‘the views
of the philosophers naturalized among the Muslims’’ on one hand, that is, the
Aristotelian tradition ending up with Averroes, and from Sufism on the other.
Primary Sources
Kitab hikmat
al-ishraq: Shihabiddub Yahya Sohravardi Shaykh al-Ishraq, Le Livre de la
sagesse orientale[Annotated French translation of part II of Kitab hikmat
alishraqplus commentaries by Q. Shirazi and Mulla Sadra by Henry Corbin],
edited and intro. by Christian Jambet. Lagrasse: Verdier, 1986.
Shihaboddin
Yahya Sohravardi Shaykh al-Ishraq.
L’Archange
empourpre: Quinze traites et recits mystiques [annotated French translation of
15 treatises and mystical tales by Henry Corbin]. Paris: Fayard, 1976.
Shihabuddin
Yahya Suhrawardi.The Philosophical Allegories and Mystical Treatises. A
parallel Persian–English text edited and translated with an introduction by Wheeler
McIntosh Thackston. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999.
Sohravardi.
The Book of Radiance. A parallel English Persian text edited and translated,
with an introduction by Hossein Ziai. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998.
Suhrawardi.The
Philosophy of Illumination. A new critical edition of the text of Hikmat
al-Ishraq, with English translation, notes, commentary and introduction by John
Walbridge and Hossein Ziai. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1999.
Suhrawardi.Hayakil
al-nur [see entry by B. Kuspinar].
Further Reading
Aminrazavi,
M.Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination. London: Curzon, 1996.
Corbin, H.En
Islam iranien Sohravardi et les platoniciens de Perse. 4 vols, vol. 2.Paris:
Gallimard, 1971.
Kuspinar,
B.Isma‘il Ankaravi on the Illuminative Philosophy. Kuala Lumpur: Istac, 1996
[contains English trans. of Suhrawardi’sHayakil al-nur].
Landolt, H.
‘‘Suhrawardi’s ‘Tales of Initiation.’’’ Review article.Journal of the American
Oriental Society107.3 (1987): 475–486.
Marcotte,
R.Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and His Interpretation of Avicenna’s (d. 1037) Philosophical
Anthropology. Ph.D. thesis. McGill University, 2000 (accessible online at: www.collectionscanada.ca).
Pourjavady
[Purjawadi], N.Ishraq wa ‘irfan[important collection of articles, text editions,
and reviews, in Persian]. Tehran: University Press, 1380/2001–2002.
Schmidtke,
S. ‘‘The Doctrine of the Transmigration of the Soul According to Shihab al-Din
al-Suhrawardi (Killed 587/1191) and His Followers.’’ Studia Iranica 28.2 (1999): 237–254.
Walbridge,
J.The Leaven of the Ancients: Suhrawardi and the Heritage of the Greeks.
Albany: SUNYP, 2000.
———.The
Wisdom of the Mystic East: Suhrawardi and Platonic Orientalism. Albany: SUNYP,
2001.
Ziai, H.
‘‘Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi: Founder of the Illuminationist School.’’ InHistory
of Islamic Philosophy, edited by S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman, 434–464. London: Routledge,
1996.
———. ‘‘The
Illuminationist Tradition.’’ InHistory of Islamic Philosophy, edited by S. H.
Nasr and O. Leaman, part I, 465–496. London: Routledge, 1996.
INDIA
The earliest Muslims came to the Indian
subcontinent to earn a living, to conquer, to teach religion, and to seek
refuge. The first immigrants were Arab traders who, as early as the eighth
century, settled in many of the seaports along the western and southern coasts
of India. Later, their descendants moved to major cities inland, as well as
farther south to Sri Lanka. In 711, a small Arab expedition, under the command
of a seventeen-year-old general, Muhammad ibn Qasim, was sent to subjugate
pirates who had been pillaging Arab ships. The expedition conquered parts of
Sind and, with the assistance of local allies, founded a state that survived
for nearly three centuries. These early Arab mercantile and political
connections laid the basis for the strong affinity of later Muslim communities
in southern and southwestern India with the Arab world and Arabian culture. In
contrast, in northern and northwestern regions of the subcontinent, the first
immigrants were from Central Asia, mostly consisting of Turks and Afghans who
had been culturally Persianized. As a result of political turmoil in Central Asia
in the tenth century, these groups crossed the Himalayas and entered India. Initially
they were interested in acquiring booty rather than settling in the region. The
most prominent of these invaders was Mahmud (d. 1030), ruler of the kingdom of
Ghazna (now in Afghanistan) who, from 1000 CE onward, invaded India seventeen
times. His looting of a famous temple in Somnath in Kathiawar in 1026 has
earned him a reputation of the quintessential Muslim archenemy among Hindu
nationalistic circles in contemporary India. The most remarkable legacy of
Mahmud’s invasions is the Kitab al-Hind,
the earliest Arabic account of the life, thought, and culture of India, written
by al-Biruni, a scholar of Central Asian origin attached to Mahmud’s court.
After Mahmud’s death, the Ghaznavid empire
expanded into India, with the city of Lahore becoming its capital. Over the next
several centuries, dynasties such as the ‘‘Slave Kings’’ established a state
centered at Delhi, while other Afghans and Central Asians established kingdoms
in Bengal, the Deccan, and western India. The most famous of these Central Asian
dynasties were the Mughals, founded in 1526 by the emperor Babur. With the
support of local Hindu allies such as the Rajputs, the Mughals consolidated
control over a vast portion of India, creating an empire under whose auspices
there was a veritable renaissance in Indo-Muslim culture.
The growth of sultanates resulted in an
influx of Central Asian Turks, Iranians, and Afghans into India. Some sought administrative
positions in the state bureaucracies. Poets and artists came in search of royal
patronage while religious scholars (ulama) and Sufishaykhs looked for new
opportunities. Although immigrants were significant to the establishment of a
Muslim presence in India, they eventually constituted a minority within the
total Muslim population. Ethnically, the vast majority of Muslims in the region
are of indigenous origin. We are only now beginning to understand the complex
processes by which they became Muslim.
Further Reading
Schimmel,
Annemarie.Islam in the Indian Subcontinent. Leiden-Koln: E.J. Brill, 1980.
IRANIAN LANGUAGES
Iranian languages is the name given to a
large grouping of languages, ancient and modern, within the Indo-Iranian branch
of the Indo-European language family. Iranian languages and dialects are
classified as Old, Middle, or New, and by region of origin, especially
‘‘western’’ and ‘‘eastern,’’ and sometimes also ‘‘northern’’ and ‘‘southern.’’
The oldest stage of linguistic development is represented by Old Persian (the
language of the Achaemenids, 559–330 BCE) and the language of the Avesta; the
middle stage by Middle Persian, Parthian, Soghdian, and Khvarazmian, all
written in the Aramaic script, Bactrian, written in the Greek alphabet, and
Khotanese, most writings in which appeared after the fall of the Sasanians (226–651
CE); and the latest stage by (New) Persian (Parsi, Farsi) and its close
relatives Dari (spoken in parts of present-day Afghanistan) and Tajiki (spoken in
present-day Tajikistan and adjoining areas), together with other languages of
the western group, such as Kurdish, Gurani and Zaza, Baluchi, Tati, Taleshi,
Azari, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Luri, Laristani, and Bakhtiyari, as well as the
eastern Iranian languages of Pashto, Ossetic, Yaghnobi, the Shughni group,
Wakhi, Munji and Yidgha, Parachi, and Ormuri, among others. The ‘‘eastern’’ or
‘‘western’’ origin of an Iranian language does not always coincide with the region
where it came to be spoken; for example, Ossetic, a language belonging to the eastern
branch, is spoken in the Caucasus, whereas Baluchi, a member of the western
branch, is spoken in modern-day Baluchistan, in southern Pakistan.
Among the most authoritative sources of
information regarding the linguistic geography of late Sasanian and early
Islamic Iran is the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim, who records a notice from Ibn
al-Muqaffa‘ (d. ca. 759), the Persian man of letters noted for his translations
from Middle Persian into Arabic, as well as for his erudition in the latter
language. According to Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, the ‘‘languages of Persian’’ (lughat al-farisiyya) were five:
Pahlavi, Dari, Parsi (Ar. farisiyya, Farsi), Khuzi, and Suryani (Ibn
alNadim,Fihrist, Cairo, 1991, I: 23). Of these five languages the first three
are Iranian, and the shifting uses and connotations of Pahlavi, Dari, and
Parsi, as Gilbert Lazard has demonstrated, reflect important linguistic and cultural
developments in the early centuries of the Islamic period. Pahlavi referred to the
Middle Iranian language of Parthian and to the dialects that grew out of that
language. Parthian had originated in the eastern regions of Iran but was also
adopted as an imperial language, written in the Aramaic script, in the west
when the Arsacids (247 BCE–224 CE) made their capital there. Parsi, or literary
Middle Persian, also written in Aramaic, was the imperial language of the
Sasanians who succeeded the Arsacids, and of the Zoroastrian religious
tradition. At the beginning of the Sasanian era, two imperial languages, both
written in Aramaic, were in use; however, Parsi eventually displaced Pahlavi,
and by the close of the Sasanian era, Parsi was the sole official and written
language. Dari was the name given to the vernacular language derived from
literary Middle Persian. By the end of the Sasanian period, Dari was spoken not
only at the court, from which its name derived (P.dar, door, gate, or court),
but also probably in much of the empire, and certainly in Khurasan. It seems
that in the course of the Sasanian period the vernacular had diverged from the
written language to a considerable degree, and had thus acquired a distinct
name.
The meanings of Pahlavi, Parsi, and Dari
underwent considerable change both during the Sasanian period and after the
beginning of the Islamic era in Iran. While the usage of ‘‘Parsi’’ to designate
literary Middle Persian is attested to in the works of Ibn alMuqaffa‘ and other writers in Arabic,
with the advent of Islamic rule it became customary to refer to literary Middle
Persian as ‘‘Pahlavi.’’ This development reflects the changing context for the
use of Iranian languages. Following the conquests, the most striking linguistic
contrast was no longer that between Parsi (Middle Persian) and Pahlavi
(Parthian), but that between Arabic and any form of Persian, that is, any
language or dialect spoken by the Persians(alFurs).Accordingly, the term
Parsior (in Arabic) Farsicame increasingly to denote both the common spoken
vernacular and the literary language of Islamic Iran. As Parsi acquired this
broader use, it became synonymous with Dari, which name, rendered superfluous,
gradually fell out of use in most regions. In the Islamic period, Middle
Persian continued to be used among Zoroastrians. Indeed, most of the extant
literature was committed to writing by priests in the AH third/ninth CE
century; it was also used by Manichaeans in Central Asia until the
seventh/thirteenth century. Over time, however, the language fell into disuse,
such that by the second half of the fourth / tenth century, the script was little
known even among Zoroastrians (it is
striking that the Zoroastrian Kayka’us, writing in Rayy before 978, composed
his Zaratushtnama not in Middle
Persian but in New Persian).
The major developments in the use of Iranian
languages during the early and medieval periods of Islamic history are (1) the
gradual spread of one Iranian language, known as Dari or Parsi (Persian), as a
spoken language throughout the eastern Islamic world, often at the expense of
other Iranian languages, which in turn influenced the various forms of Persian
that developed in different regions; (2) the related emergence of literary New
Persian, which would develop into a second official and cultural language
alongside Arabic, and as such would extend the range of Persian and Perso-Islamic
culture well beyond the areas in which Iranian languages were used in daily
communication; and (3) the survival and cultivation of other Iranian languages
and dialects (the distinction is not always easily drawn) long after the
ascendancy of Persian as a literary and official lingua franca.
Spread of Dari as a Spoken
Language
In the early centuries of the Islamic period,
the use of Dari as a spoken language gradually decreased in Iraq, but
elsewhere, especially in the east, it spread considerably. In Khurasan, Dari
had largely superceded Parthian during the Sasanian period, and it continued
its eastward expansion as Transoxiana and the present-day Afghanistan became
integrated into the Islamic world. While numerous languages and dialects remained
in use, Persian served as a means of verbal communication among members of different
linguistic groups, including Arabs who had settled in the eastern regions. Thus
long before the emergence of literary New Persian in Transoxiana and Khurasan,
Dari, or Persian, had come to constitute the common language in these regions.
The spread of Islam facilitated the linguistic integration of much of the
Iranian world in a process similar to that associated with the spread of Arabic
in the Western territories.
The variety within Dari is evident from prose
works written in the fourth/tenth and fifth / eleventh centuries. The Dari used
in the Southwest, known in particular through a number of Judeo-Persian texts, remained
relatively close to Middle Persian, which had itself originated in the
southwestern regions of Fars and Khuzistan; by contrast, the Dari spoken in Khurasan
had diverged much further from its Middle Persian forebear and was
characterized by elements found in other Iranian languages and dialects,
especially Parthian. It was this latter form of
Dari that spread into the neighboring regions of Afghanistan and
Transoxiana, where it also acquired a number of Soghdian words and evolved into
the languages known today as Dari and Tajiki. At the same time, the
southwestern form of Persian spread across the South as far as Sistan, as
attested by a translation of the Qur’an produced in that region in the eleventh
century or perhaps even later.
Emergence of Literary New
Persian
Given the predominance of Dari as the lingua
franca of the eastern regions of Iran and Transoxiana, it is more readily
understandable that it was there, under the Samanids (819–1005) or perhaps the
Saffarids (861–1003), that the language subsequently known as Farsi or (New) Persian
would first find literary form. While the phonetic and grammatical shifts from
Middle to New Persian are relatively slight, the new language, sometimes
referred to as parsi-yi dari, marks a significant break with the past in its adoption
of the Arabic script and, as previously noted, in its assimilation of vocabulary
from Parthian, Soghdian, and, increasingly, from Arabic. Literary New Persian first
appears as a medium for poetic expression, the earliest samples of which date
from the middle of the third/ninth century; the earliest surviving prose texts date
from a century later. Literary composition in Persian gradually spread to the
west, and, in the course of the fifth/eleventh century, Persian emerged as the
primary literary language throughout Iran, although several authors continued
to write in Arabic as well, especially
in the religious sciences.
Additionally, Persian replaced Arabic in
official contexts in many of the eastern regions. After the advent of Islamic
rule, Middle Persian continued to be used for administrative purposes in
western Iran until 78/697–698 and in Khurasan until 124/741–742, when it was
replaced by Arabic. In the fourth/tenth century, Arabic gradually ceded its
role as the principal official language to Persian, which would become the
administrative language of states not only in Iran and present-day Afghanistan
but also in Central Asia, Anatolia, and India, most notably under the Mughals (1526–1858);
furthermore, courts in these regions often provided generous patronage for
Persian poetry and literature.
Continuance of Regional
Languages and Dialects
Just as in Sasanian times, local dialects had
coexisted with Middle Persian and with Dari, numerous (non-Persian) Iranian languages
and dialects, several of which have persisted to the present day and have, like
Persian, assumed written form, are recorded by the geographers and historians
of the early and medieval Islamic periods. Al-Mas‘udi (d. 956) mentions Azari alongside Dari and Pahlavi; in the
Caspian regions a number of languages persisted, including Daylami and Tabari,
the latter of which also emerged as a literary language in about the
fourth/tenth century; Khvarazmian, written in a modified Arabic script, is
found from the fifth/eleventh to the eighth/fourteenth centuries. Several
regions, including Kirman, Makran, Ushrusana, Gharjistan, and Ghur, were characterized
by distinctive dialects, and according to al-Muqaddasi, who wrote in the second
half of the fourth/tenth century, the spoken idiom in almost every Khurasanian
town differed from the common language, Dari. Pahlavi also survived, especially
in its oral literature. It gave its name to the quatrains and other poems in dialect
known as the fahlaviyyat; indeed, as
knowledge of both Middle Persian and Parthian receded, the termPahlaviwas
occasionally used to describe poetry in other dialects, as long as they were
distinct from poetry in Persian. Kurdish flourished as a spoken language with
several dialects and a rich oral literature; it was written in the Arabic and
in other scripts. Pashto was similarly distinguished by many dialects and a
written literature.
Further Reading
Lazard,
Gilbert. ‘‘Pahlavi, Paˆrsi, Dari: les langues de l’Iran d’apre`s Ibn
al-Muqaffa‘.’’ InIran and Islam. In Memory of the Late V. Minorsky, edited by
C.E. Bosworth. Edinburgh, 1971.
———.
‘‘Paˆrsietdari; nouvelles remarques.’’ In Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New
Series, 4, Aspects of Iranian Culture. In Honor of R. N. Frye. 1990, 239–244.
———.
‘‘Lumie`res nouvelles sur la formation de la langue persane: une traduction du
Coran en persan dialectal et ses affinite´s avec le jude´o-persan.’’
Irano-Judaica II (1990): 184–198.
Schmitt,
Ru¨diger (Ed).Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag,
1989.
———.Die
iranischen Sprachen in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag,
2000. Tafazzoli, A.‘‘Fahlaviyat.’’ InEncyclopaedia IranicaIX (1999): 158–162.
ISFAHAN
Situated at the geographical center of modern
Iran, the founding of the city of Isfahan dates to well before the arrival of
Muslims in the seventh century. Its origins rest in twin cities of Yahudiyya
and Jayy, at a short distance from one another on the plain north of the Zayanda
River. The Jewish town of Yahudiyya, traced by one tradition to
Nebuchadnezzar’s time, flourished in the first centuries of Islam to
become the hub of Isfahan. According to another tradition, Yahudiyya was
founded on the request of the Jewish wife of the Sasanian king Yazdgird (r.
459–483 CE), who also established Jayy to the southeast of Yahudiyya as an
administrative center, a function that it continued to serve well into the medieval
period. Early Arab geographers and travelers referred to these as madinatayn,
the twin cities of Isfahan.
Since the merging of the twin cities and
their satellite villages into the early Islamic metropolis, Isfahan by virtue
of its geographical location, temperate climate, and fertile soil has occupied
a prominent place in the history of Islamic Iran. Twice it has served as the
political and cultural center of the Persianate world: during the reign of the
Seljuks (1038–1194) and that of the Safavids (1501–1722). It has also been
subjected to the vicissitudes and vagaries of conquest and expansion by nearly
every conqueror and ruler whose net has been cast over these lands.
In its early Islamic history, Isfahan changed
hands from the Umayyad governors of Basra to a rebel devotee of ‘Ali to the
‘Abbasid governors in the eighth and ninth centuries. During this early period,
urban development seems to have largely focused around the Yahudiyya quarter
where the ‘Abbasid constructions merged Yahudiyya and its satellite villages,
initiated the city’s first congregational mosque, the nucleus of the famed
Seljuk Masjid-i Jum‘a, and its marketplace in the vicinity of the mosque.
With the rise to military power in 945 CE of
the Iraq branch of the Persian Buyids, under whose tutelage the ‘Abbasid caliphs
were placed for more than a century, Isfahan received considerable attention
leading to further expansions and its flourishing. Buyid emirs and their
viziers oversaw the building of a defensive wall with twelve gates that encased
the urban growth around the congregational mosque and the marketplace. They also
constructed a citadel, Qal‘a Tabarak,
in the newly walled city. Although the knowledge of the pre-Buyid city depends
entirely on descriptions by geographers and travelers, some of the arterial
patterns of the Buyid city remain traceable in modern Isfahan, along with a few
remnants of their expansion of the congregational mosque and an elaborately
carved doorway from the Buyid Jurjir mosque.
Medieval Isfahan gained its lustre and world
renown during the reign of the Great Seljuks. Tughril, the founder of the dynasty,
is recorded to have been so fond of the city that he moved his seat of rule to Isfahan.
Under the patronage of the Seljuk Malikshah (r. 1072–1092) and his viziers,
Nizam al-Mulk and Taj al-Mulk, Isfahan grew, according to Nasir-i Khosraw and
other travelers, into one of the most populous and prosperous cities in the
medieval world, becoming famous for its fine crafts and industries. The
Masjid-i Jum‘a, already twice enlarged, was completely redesigned into the
Persianate mosque type that is associated with this central region of Iran and
the Seljuk period. The Arab hypostyle (a covered sanctuary roof atop rows of
pillars and an adjacent courtyard) was transformed, between the 1070s and
1120s, into a four-iwan (vaulted space open to one side), courtyard-centered
mosque with a Domed mihrab (prayer
niche) chamber. Two domed chambers—a massive one over the mihrab sponsored by Nizam al-Mulk, the other on the opposite, north
side of the mosque sponsored by the rival vizier Taj al-Mulk—vaulted roofs of
the sanctuary spaces on all four sides of the vast courtyard, and the four massiveiwans
on each side of the courtyard; these Seljuk architectural interventions
represent Isfahan’s Masjid-i Jum‘a as the blueprint for all aspects of design,
as well as technologies and materials for building and decorating in Persian
architecture of the medieval period.
Some of its architectural features, namely
the placement of a domed chamber on the north side opposite themihrabchamber,
are unique to Isfahan’s mosque both in terms of its very inclusion and, more important,
of its superb mastery of design and execution in plain brick. This little building’s
fame derives from the complex mathematics of its geometric patterns in the
inner face of the dome and the way in which architectural and decorative forms
are manipulated to create exciting visual transitions from the sidewalls into
the dome. It has been suggested that the mathematician, astronomer, and poet
‘Umar Khayyam may have had a hand in the conception of this masterpiece. He is
recorded to have played a leading role in the Seljuk reformation of the Persian
calendar and in the construction of an observatory in Isfahan.
The centrality of the Masjid-i Jum‘a in the
urban life of Seljuk Isfahan is attested to by the fact that a major public
square known as Maydan-i Kuhna, bazaars,
and the royal residence and administrative quarters were all further developed
in the vicinity of this venerable mosque. Indeed, the mosque continued to serve
as the site for royal patronage throughout its subsequent history when rulers
and conquerors left traces of their dominion through such architectural marks
as the magnificent carved stucco mihrab in the winter prayer hall (by the Ilkhanid
O¨ljeitu ¨), or the gorgeously tiled facades of the courtyard and its fouriwans
(by the Safavid Shah Tahmasb and later).
Mongol invasions reached Isfahan when, in 1240–1241,
the city was delivered by some of its own denizens into the hands of the
Mongols whose heavy taxation led to the city’s decline. In 1387, Tamerlane (Timur)
besieged the city and was provoked into massacring some seventy thousand of its
inhabitants, thus laying Isfahan to waste and making her vulnerable to further
plunders for another century to come. The sixteenth-century phase of the
Safavids did not substantially alter the peripheral role of Isfahan in comparison
to the capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin.
In the course of the closing years of the
sixteenth century, the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas (r. 1588–1629) embarked on a vast
reconstruction of the urban environment in anticipation of the official
transfer of his capital from Qazvin to Isfahan in 1598. The transfer of the
capital also signaled Shah ‘Abbas’s success in the Safavid quest for
centralization of the imperial enterprise and the promulgation of Shi‘ism in
Iran, of which the Safavids were the most powerful exponents in Iranian
history. Thus the new urban center was conceived on a level of architectural
complexity and scale more appropriately early modern than medieval in its representation
of the increasingly centralized and sedentarized Safavids.
During this last decade of the century the
architectural armature of the new capital city was established in the form of
two urban foci: a vast public square, the Maydan-i
Naqsh-i Jahan (Image of the World), measuring 510 meters by 165 meters and
located to the southwest of the Seljuk urban hub; and a treelined promenade, the
Chahar Bagh (Four Gardens) of more
than one and a half kilometers long that ran on a north–south axis linking
through a bridge the Safavid capital to new suburbs south of the Zayanda River.
The completion of nearly all the constituent parts of this grand urban plan
fell in the seventeenth century.
The Maydan, with double rows of shops lining
its peripheral walls, and with the strategic and symbolic positioning of a
ceremonial palace and administrative building on its western side, a private
royal chapel on the eastern flank, a large congregational mosque on the south,
and the royal bazaar entrance on its north side was conceived as the new
commercial, political, and religious center of the Safavid capital. This new
Maydan was connected through a complex intertwining of bazaar arteries to the Maydan-i Kuhna and the Masjid-i Jum‘a, rivaling the medieval city
and in time succeeding in shifting the urban hub to the new imperial city.
Further Reading
Frye, R.N.
(Ed).The Cambridge History of Iran. 7 volumes. The Period from the Arab Invasion
to the Seljuqs. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Golombek,
Lisa. ‘‘Urban Patterna in Pre-Safavid Isfahan.’’ InStudies on
Isfahan[Proceedings of the Isfahan Colloquium],Iranian StudiesVII, Pt. I,
18–44. Grabar, Oleg.The Great Mosque of Isfahan. New York: New York University
Press, 1990.
Holod,
Renata (Ed).Studies on Isfahan[Proceedings of the Isfahan Colloquium],Iranian
StudiesVII, Pts. I and II. Jackson, Peter, and Laurence Lockhart (Eds). The
Cambridge History of Iran. 7 vols. The Timurid and Safavid Periods. Vol. 6. Cambridge,
London, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986
ISFAHANI, AL-, ABU NU‘AYM
Al-Isfahani Abu Nu‘aym Ahmad b. ‘Abdallah,
was born in Isfahan in around AH 336/948 CE. Although he wrote exclusively in
Arabic, he was of Persian origin. His second/eighth century ancestor, Mihran, appears
to have been the first to have converted to Islam. His most famous ancestor was
his maternal grandfather, Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Ma‘dan alBanna’ (d. 365/976),
who was the leader of a school of Sufism in Isfahan, which was still
flourishing in Abu Nu‘aym’s lifetime.
Abu Nu‘aym’s three major works, all of which have
been published, are: (1) hismagnum opus,the Hilyat
al-awliya’ wa-tabaqat al-asfiya’, which is a voluminous collection of
biographies of Sufis and other early Muslim religious leaders; (2) Dhikr akhbar Isfahan, a biographical
dictionary of the prominent scholars of his native Isfahan; and (3) Dala’il alnubuwwa, a biography of the
Prophet Muhammad s.a.w, which focuses in particular on the evident signs of his
status. These three works demonstrate Abu Nu‘aym’s interest in collecting and
compiling hadiths and biographical reports about important religious leaders. Like
other such traditionist historians preoccupied with seeking knowledge, he would
have traveled widely to collect his material. Abu Nu‘aym makes specific reference
to travels for this purpose to the Hijaz, Iraq, Syria, and Khurasan. In turn,
Abu Nu‘aym himself attracted traditionists from distant origins who wished to
hear his material, the most famous of whom was probably al-Khatib al-Baghdadi,
the compiler of Ta’rikh Baghdad.
Abu Nu‘aym’s most influential work by far,
his Hilyat al-awliya’ (The Ornament
of the Saints),consists of 689 biographies in ten volumes (amounting to
approximately four thousand pages of twenty-five lines each in the printed
edition). He cast a wide net in his selection of religious figures to represent
in this work. They include, in roughly chronological order: the first
generations of the Prophet’s religious successors according to Sunnism (al-salaf al-salih), the first six
individual successors of the Prophet, or Imams, according to Shi‘ism, the
eponymous founders of three of the four major Sunni schools of jurisprudence (see
later in the paragraph in regard to the notable omission), scholastic theologians,
ascetics, pietists, and mystics. However, in spite of its broad sweep the Hilyat al-awliya’is certainly not
all-inclusive; Abu Nu‘aym appears to have deliberately omitted a number of
individuals for polemical reasons, including most conspicuously: Abu Hanifa,
the eponym of the Hanafite legal school; and al-Hallaj, the outspoken mystic
whose execution in Baghdad in 922 is traditionally seen as a major turning
point in the history of Sufism.
Like many other such vast works written in
the same period, theHilyat al-awliya’shows signs that it was not under the
control of a single author. While its colophon gives the date of completion of
the work as AH 422 (1030 CE), and its list of biographies ends with his own
contemporaries from among the successors of Ibn Ma‘dan al-Banna’, a number of the chains of
transmission, orisnads, within the text include Abu Nu‘aym himself, and not
simply as the immediate source. Like many other works of Islamic scholarship in
the early centuries, the Hilyat al-awliya’appears to have been compiled by the
students of the author to whom it is attributed, probably for the most part under
his direction. The history of the text of the Hilyat al-awliya’explains why its
biographies appear to have been ordered in various parts according to a number
of competing principles (such as chronology, geography, affiliation,
alphabetically by name), as well as why certain biographies have been repeated.
Abu Nu‘aym’s fame rests primarily on the Hilyat al-awliya’, which has been used
as a vast mine of biographical data by later Muslim historians, as well as some
modern academics. The fact that its biographies are invariably much longer than
those found in comparable biographical dictionaries of the period has made it
especially attractive for this purpose. Abu Nu‘aym is rarely recalled as a Sufi
authority in Sufi biography collections. He is celebrated as a past hero in the
later biographical dictionaries of the Shafi‘i school of jurisprudence more
than any other, where he is depicted as a staunch defender of this school
during disputes with the rival Hanbali school of jurisprudence in Isfahan at
the turn of the eleventh century, as a result of which he was expelled from the
city. Some Hanbali sources also include Abu Nu‘aym among their number. Due to
the fact that the prominent Safavid al-Majlisi family considered themselves to
have been his descendants, Abu Nu‘aym is also portrayed in late medieval Shi‘i
literature as a sympathizer, and sometimes even as a crypto-Shi‘i.
Further Reading
al-Isfahani,
Abu Nu‘aym.Geschichte Isbahans. Translated by S. Dedering. Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1931–1934.
———.Hilyat
al-awliya. 10 vols Cairo, 1032–1038.
———.Dala’il
al-nubuwwa. Hyderabad, 1950.
Studies Khoury,
R.G. ‘‘Importance et authenticite´ de textes de Hilyat al-awliya’.’’ Studia
Islamica, 46 (1977): 73–113.
Mojaddedi,
Jawid.The Biographical Tradition in Sufism:The Tabaqat Genre from al-Sulami to
Jami. Richmond: Routledge Curzon, 2001.
ISHAQ IBN IBRAHIM
A member of the Tahirid family, Ishaq ibn
Ibrahim al-Mus‘abi held a prominent place serving the ‘Abbasids. After a long
career he died in 850 CE. All that is known of his early background is that he was
a cousin of Abdallah ibn Tahir and that he was possibly born in 793. He first
appears in 821, when he was appointed by Abdallah as the chief of police in Baghdad.
For the next twenty-nine years he served as the caliphal enforcer of policy,
mostly in Baghdad. Given this information, it is striking that we know so little
about him. We are forced to infer based on the record in the chronicles of his
activities. In 829 or 830, he served as governor of Aleppo, ‘Awasim, and the Thughur.
In 830, al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833) made him his deputy in Baghdad while he was on
campaign against the Byzantines. In 831, al-Ma’mun ordered him to make the
soldiers in Baghdad say the takbir
(Allah Akbar, God is most great) as part of their prayers. Al-Ma’mun began the Mihna (the Inquisition of 833–848 or
851) with a series of letters to Ishaq, instructing him to question all of the
judges and hadith transmitters about their position on the createdness of the
Qur’an. He was to inform them that the caliph held that it was created. He was
the primary questioner of Ibn Hanbal, a role that he reprised in many cases as
the caliphal enforcer of the Mihna in Baghdad. When al-Ma’mun died, his will advised
al-Mu‘tasim (r. 833–842) to take him into his confidence. He was responsible
for bringing the Khurramiyya to heel in 833 on the orders of alMu‘tasim. He is
mentioned, among the most powerful figures in the caliphate, as one of the few
witnesses to the trial of the disgraced general al-Afshin in 841. When al-Mu‘tasim
died, Ishaq was responsible for administering in Baghdad the oath of loyalty to
the next caliph, al-Wathiq (r. 842–847). Al-Wathiq relied on him to deliberate
the cases against the secretaries in 844. Interestingly, he was not part of the
group that placed al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861) upon the throne. However, he was
one of the primary individuals that al-Mutawakkil relied on to strengthen his
hold on power. In 850, on al-Mutawakkil’s order, he arrested the Turkish general,
Itakh, who had been lured to Baghdad by an elaborate ruse. Al-Tabari states
quite explicitly that this took place in Baghdad because Itakh was too powerful
to be accosted in Samarra. Itakh was killed in Ishaq’s house. What becomes
clear from this account of his activities is that he served a pivotal role for the
post-Ma’mun caliphs. He was their enforcer in Baghdad. The continuity of his
position in what still was the most important city in the caliphate
economically and culturally argues for his power and influence. It also
highlights his surprising loyalty to the office of caliph. He does not make a
bid for independence or independent power. He was seemingly content with
serving at the will of the sitting caliph.
Further Reading
Ka‘bi,
al-Munji.Les Tahirides : Etude historico-litte´raire de la dynastie des Banu
Tahir b. al-Husayn au Hurasan et en Iraq au IIIe`me s. de l’He´gire/IXe`me s.
J.-C. Paris: Universite´ de Paris-Sorbonne, Faculte´ des lettres et sciences humaines,
1983.
Primary Sources
Tabari, Abu
Ja‘far.The Crisis of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate. Translated by G. Saliba. Vol. 35.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.
———.The
Reunification of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate. Translated by C.E. Bosworth. Vol. 32.
Albany: SUNY Press, 1987.
———.Incipient
Decline. Translated by J. L. Kraemer. Vol. 34. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989
———.Storm
and Stress along the Northern Frontiers of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate. Translated
by C.E. Bosworth. Vol. 33. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991.
ISMAILIS
The second most important Shi‘i community
after the ithna‘asharis or Twelvers,
Ismailis have subdivided into a number
of major branches and minor groups in the course of their long and complex
history dating back to the middle of the AHsecond/eighth CEcentury.
Early and Fatimid Periods
until 487/1094
In 148/765, on the death of Ja‘far al-Sadiq,
who had consolidated Imami Shi‘ism, the majority of his followers recognized
his son Musa al-Kazim as their new imam. However, other Imami Shi‘i groups
acknowledged the imamate of Musa’s older half-brother, Isma‘il, the eponym of
the Isma‘iliyya, or Isma‘il’s son
Muhammad. Little is known about the life and career of Muhammad ibn Isma‘il,
who went into hiding, marking the initiation of thedawr al-satr, or period of
concealment, in early Ismailism which lasted until the foundation of the
Fatimid state when the Ismaili imams emerged openly as Fatimid caliphs.
On the death of Muhammad ibn Isma‘il, not
long after 179/795, his followers, who were at the time evidently known as Mubarakiyya,
split into two groups. A majority refused to accept his death; they recognized
him as their seventh and last imam and awaited his return as the Mahdi, the
restorer of justice and true Islam. A second, smaller group acknowledged Muhammad’s
death and traced the imamaten his progeny. Almost nothing is known about the
subsequent history of these earliest Ismaili groups until shortly after the
middle of the third/ ninth century.
It is certain that for almost a century after
Muhammad ibn Isma‘il, a group of his descendants worked secretly for the creation
of a revolutionary movement against the ‘Abbasids.
The aim of this religiopolitical movement was to install the Ismaili imam
belonging to the Prophet Muhammad’s s.a.w family(ahl al-bayt) to a new caliphate ruling over the entire Muslim
community; and the message of the movement was disseminated by a network
ofda‘is, summoners or religiopolitical propagandists. Observing taqiyya, or precautionary dissimulation,
these central leaders concealed their true identities in order to escape ‘Abbasid
persecution. ‘Abdullah, the first of these leaders, had organized his da‘wa
(mission) around the doctrine of the majority of the earliest Ismailis, namely,
the Mahdiship of Muhammad ibn Isma‘il. ‘Abdullah eventually settled in
Salamiyya, central Syria, which served as the secret headquarters of the Ismaili
da‘wa for some time. The efforts of
‘Abdullah and his successors bore results in the 260s/870s, when numerous da‘is appeared in southern Iraq and
adjacent regions under the leadership of Hamdan Qarmat and his chief assistant
‘Abdan. The Ismailis now referred to their movement simply asal-da‘wa, the
mission, or al-da‘wa al-hadiya, the rightly guiding mission. Soon, the Ismailida‘waappeared
in numerous other regions, notably Yaman, where Ibn Hawshab Mansur al-Yaman (d.
302/914) acted as the chief da‘i, Egypt, Bahrayn, Persia, Transoxiana, and
Sind, as well as remoter regions in North Africa.
By the early 280s/890s, a unified Ismaili
movement had replaced the earlier splinter groups. However, in 286/899, soon
after ‘Abdullah al-Mahdi, the future Fatimid caliph, had succeeded to
leadership in Salamiyya, Ismailism was rent by a major schism. ‘Abdullah
claimed the Ismaili imamate openly for himself and his ancestors who had
organized the early Ismaili da‘wa, also explaining the various forms of guises
adopted by the earlier central Ismaili leaders who had preferred to assume the
rank of hujja (proof or full representative)
of the hidden Imam Muhammad ibn Isma‘il. The doctrinal reform of ‘Abdullah
al-Mahdi split the Ismaili movement into two rival factions. A loyalist
faction, comprised mainly of the Ismailis of Yaman, Egypt, North Africa, and Sind,
did recognize continuity in the imamate, acknowledging ‘Abdullah and his ‘Alid
ancestors as their imams. On the other hand, a dissident faction, originally
led by Hamdan Qarmat, retained their original belief in the Mahdiship of
Muhammad ibn Isma‘il. Henceforth, the term Qarmaticame to be applied
specifically to the dissidents who did not acknowledge ‘Abdullah al-Mahdi, as
well as his predecessors and successors to the Fatimid caliphate, as their
imams. The dissident Qarmatis acquired their most important stronghold in the
Qarmati state of Bahrayn, founded in 286/899 by theda‘iAbu Sa‘id al-Jannabi.
The Qarmati state of Bahrayn eventually collapsed in 470/1077.
The early Ismailis elaborated a distinctive
gnostic system of religious thought, which was further developed or modified in
the Fatimid period. Central to this system was a fundamental distinction
between the exoteric (zahir) and
esoteric(batin)aspects of the sacred scriptures, as well as religious
commandments and prohibitions. They further held that the religious laws,
representing thezahirof religion, enunciated by prophets, underwent periodical
changes while the batin, containing the spiritual truths (haqa’iq) remained immutable and unchanged. These truths, forming
a gnostic system of thought, were explained through ta’wil, esoteric exegesis, which
became the hallmark of Ismaili thought. The two main components of this system
were a cyclical history of revelations and a cosmological doctrine.
The early success of the Ismaili movement
culminated in the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa, where theda‘iAbu
‘Abdullah al-Shi‘i (d. 298/911) had spread theda‘waamong the Berbers of the
Maghrib. The new dynasty, established in 297/909, was named Fatimid (Fatimiyyun) after the Prophet Muhammad’s
s.a.w daughter Fatima, to whom the Fatimid caliphs traced their ‘Alid ancestry.
‘Abdullah alMahdi (d. 322/934), the first Fatimid caliph–imam, and his
successors ruled over an important state that soon grew into an empire
stretching from North Africa to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The Fatimid period
was also the ‘‘golden age’’ of Ismailism when Ismaili thought and literature
and da‘wa activities attained their summit and Ismailis made important contributions
to Islamic civilization, especially after the seat of the Fatimid caliphate was
transferred to Cairo, itself founded in 358/969 by the Fatimids.
The Ismaili da‘wa of the Fatimid times achieved its greatest successes,
however, outside the Fatimid dominions, especially in Yaman, where the Ismaili Sulayhids
ruled as vassals of the Fatimids, Persia, and Central Asia. The da‘is of the
Iranian lands, such as Abu Ya‘qub al-Sijistani, Hamid al-Din alKirmani, and
Nasir-i Khusraw, also elaborated complex metaphysical systems of thought with a
distinct emanational cosmology. The Fatimidda‘wawas particularly concerned with
educating the new converts in Ismaili doctrine, known as the hikma(wisdom); and
a variety of lectures, generally designated as sessions of wisdom (majalis al-hikma), were organized for
this purpose. Ismaili law was also codified mainly through the efforts of
al-Qadi al-Nu‘man (d. 363/ 974), the foremost jurist of the Fatimid period.
Ismaili law accorded special importance to the Shi‘i doctrine of the imamate.
The Isma‘ilis experienced a major schism in 487/1094,
on the death of al-Mustansir, the eighth Fatimid caliph and the eighteenth
Ismaili imam. AlMustansir’s succession was disputed by his sons Nizar, the
original heir designate, and al-Musta‘li, who was installed to the Fatimid
caliphate by the allpowerful vizier al-Afdal. As a result, the unified Ismaili da‘waand
community were split into rival branches, designated later as Nizari and
Musta‘li (or Musta‘-lawi). The
da‘waorganization in Cairo, as well as the Ismaili communities of Egypt, Yaman,
and western India, also recognized al-Musta‘li as his father’s successor to the
imamate. On the other hand, the Ismailis of Persia and adjacent lands supported
the succession right of Nizar and recognized his imamate. Nizar himself
revolted against al-Musta‘li (d. 495/1101), but he was defeated and killed in
488/1095. Henceforth, the Ismaili imamate was handed down in two parallel lines
among the descendants of al-Mustansir.
Musta‘li Ismailis
On the death of al-Musta‘li’s son and
successor al-Amir in 524/1130, the Musta‘li Ismailis split into Hafizi and
Tayyibi branches. The Musta‘li da‘wa headquarters
in Cairo endorsed the imamate of al-Amir’s cousin and successor to the Fatimid throne,
al-Hafiz. As a result, his imamate was also acknowledged by the Musta‘li
Ismailis of Egypt and Syria, as well as
a portion of the Musta‘lis of Yaman. These Ismailis, who recognized al-Hafiz
(d. 544/1149) and the later Fatimid caliphs as their imams, became known as
Hafizis. The Musta‘li Ismailis of the Sulayhid state in Yaman, as well as those
of Gujarat, recognized the imamate of al-Amir’s son, al-Tayyib, and they became
known as Tayyibis. Hafizi Ismailism disappeared completely soon after the
collapse of the Fatimid dynasty in 567/1171. Thereafter, Musta‘li Ismailism
survived only in its Tayyibi form with permanent strongholds in Yaman.
The Tayyibi imams have remained in
concealment since the time of al-Tayyib himself, who disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. In the absence of their imams, the affairs of the
Tayyibi da‘wa and community have been administered by da‘i mutlaqs, that is, supremeda‘iswith full authority. In the
doctrinal field, the Tayyibis maintained the Fatimid traditions and preserved a
substantial portion of the Ismaili texts of the Fatimid period. Building
particularly on Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani’s metaphysical system, they elaborated
their own esoteric system of religious thought with its distinctive
eschatological themes. The Tayyibida‘waspread successfully in the Haraz region
of Yaman, as well as in Gujarat. By the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, the
Tayyibi Ismailis split into Da’udi and Sulaymani branches over the question of
the succession to their twenty-sixth da‘i mutlaq, Da’ud ibn ‘Ajabshah (d.
997/1589). By that time the Tayyibis of India, known locally as Bohras, greatly
outnumbered their Yamani coreligionists. Henceforth, the Da’udi and Sulaymani
Tayyibis, concentrated in South Asia and Yaman, respectively, followed
different lines of da‘is. Da’udi Bohras have subdivided into several groupings,
with the largest numbering around eight hundred thousand. Since the 1920s,
Bombay has served as the permanent administrative seat of the Da’udi da‘i mutlaq. The leadership of
the Sulaymani Tayyibis has remained hereditary in the Makrami family with their
headquarters in Najran, in northeastern Yaman. At present the Sulaymani
Tayyibis number around seventy thousand in Yaman, with an additional few
thousand in India.
Nizari Ismailis
In al-Mustansir’s time, the da‘i Hasan-i Sabbah
succeeded ‘Abd al-Malik ibn ‘Attash as the leader of the Isma‘ili da‘wa within
the Saljuq dominions in Persia. His seizure of the fortress of Alamut in 483/ 1090
had, in fact, marked the effective foundation of what became the Nizari Ismaili
state of Persia with a subsidiary in
Syria. In al-Mustansir’s succession dispute, Hasan supported Nizar’s cause and
severed his relations with the da‘waheadquarters in Cairo. By this decision,
Hasan-i Sabbah also founded the Nizari da‘wa independently of the Fatimid
regime. The Nizaris acquired political prominence under Hasan-i Sabbah (d.
518/1124) and his seven successors at Alamut. Hasan’s armed revolt against the
Saljuq Turks, whose alien rule was detested by the Persians, did not succeed;
and the Saljuqs, despite their superior military power, failed to destroy the
Nizari fortress communities. In effect, a stalemate developed between the Nizaris
and their various enemies until their state in Persia was destroyed by the Mongols
in 654/1256. The Nizaris of Syria, who had numerous encounters with the
Crusaders and reached the peak of their fame under theda‘iRashid al-Din
al-Sinan (d. 589/1193), were eventually subdued by the Mamluks. The Nizaris
elaborated their own teachings, initially revolving around the Shi‘i doctrine
of ta‘lim or authoritative guidance by the imam of the time. The Nizari imams,
who had remained in hiding since Nizar, emerged openly at Alamut in 559/1164.
Disorganized and deprived of any central
leadership, the Nizari Ismailis survived the Mongol destruction of their state.
For about two centuries, while the imams remained inaccessible, various Nizari
communities developed independently, also adopting Sunni and Sufi guises to
safeguard themselves against persecution. By the middle of the ninth/fifteenth
century, the Nizari imams emerged in the village of Anjudan, in central Persia,
initiating a revival in the da‘wa and literary activities of their community.
The Nizari da‘wa became particularly successful in Central Asia and India,
where the Hindu converts were known as Khojas. The Nizari Khojas developed an
indigenous religious tradition designated as Satpanth or the ‘‘true path,’’ as
well as a devotional literature known as the ginans. With the advent of the
Safavids, who adopted Twelver Shi‘ism as the religion of their state in 907/ 1501,
the Nizaris of Persia also practicedt aqiyya as Twelvers. The Nizaris of
Badakhshan, now divided between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, have preserved numerous
Persian Ismaili texts of the Alamut and later periods. The Nizari Khojas,
together with the Tayyibi Bohras, were among the earliest Asian communities to settle
during the nineteenth century in East Africa. In the 1970s, the bulk of the
East African Ismailis were obliged to immigrate to the west. Under the
leadership of their last two imams, Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III
(1885–1957) and his grandson, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the current forty-ninth
imam, the Nizari Ismailis have emerged as a progressive Muslim minority with
high standards of education and well-being. Numbering several millions, they
are scattered in more than twenty-five countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa,
Europe, and North America.
Further Reading
Corbin,
Henry.Cyclical Time and Ismaili GnosisTranslated by R. Manheim and J.W. Morris.
London, 1983.
Daftary,
F.The Isma‘ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge, 1990 (with full
references to the sources).
———.A Short
History of the Ismailis. Edinburgh, 1998.
———.Ismaili
Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies. London, 2004.
Halm,
Heinz.The Fatimids and Their Traditions of Learning. London, 1997.
Hodgson,
Marshall G.S.The Order of Assassins. The Hague, 1955.
Madelung,
Wilferd. ‘‘Das Imamat in der fru¨hen ismailitischen Lehre.’’Der Islam,
37(1961): 43–135.
Walker, Paul
E.Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abu Ya‘qub al-
Sijistani. Cambridge, 1993.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar