Walāyah in the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī Tradition

Elizabeth R. Alexandrin

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781438466286
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des Nahen Ostens

In this original study, Elizabeth R. Alexandrin examines the complex relationships that can be inscribed between medieval Ism?'?l? thought as an intellectual tradition with a devotional practice of reliance on the im?m, and as a politico-esoteric system that redefined governance during the F??imid caliphate in the eleventh century. Alexandrin's work is a departure from recent Western scholarship that focuses on similarities among early Islamic traditions. She argues instead that, under the guidance of the F??imid Ism?'?l? chief missionary al-Mu'ayyad f? al-D?n al-Sh?r?z? (d. 1078 CE), the concept of wal?yah (divine guidance) became closely associated with religio-political authority, on the one hand, and the perfection of the individual human being, on the other. By signaling and affirming how the F??imid caliph- im?m s were the heirs of wal?yah and by proposing new definitions of the "seal of God's friends" ( kh?tim al-awliy?' All?h ), al- Mu'ayyad broadened the contexts of making esoteric knowledge public and shifted the apocalyptic frameworks of Islamic messianism.

1

Walāyah in Practice

God has a secret; if He were to make it manifest, the divine providence would be rendered null.

The prophets have a secret; if they were to make it manifest, prophethood would be rendered null.

The learned have a secret; if they were to make it manifest, knowledge would be rendered null.1

In the Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī tradition, the teachings and practices that constitute the open secret of walāyah are made manifest in the course of prophetic history. How can a secret, however, be shown as a “secret,” “revealing itself as a secret, but sealing while (by, through) unsealing itself”?2 The issue that then concerns us here is how does the secret as a “secret” elide dualities, or multiply them, in terms of the eschatological registers of disclosure and hiddenness, that is, whether or not a “limited secrecy” or an “absolute secrecy” is implied by the open secret of walāyah.3

Between the remembrance of the past and in expectation of the future, the centrality of the imām is another distinctive feature of 10th–11th-century Ismā‘īlī works. The Ismā‘īlī imām is the divinely appointed guide, serving as the repository of ta’wīl for the community of believers. Both the historical and doctrinal discussions of the imām present an ideal depiction of the Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī da‘wah, in which the scholarly imām is surrounded by the learned members of his da‘wah and where he imparts the esoteric knowledge of ta’wīl to his community of believers. On the one hand, the concealment and revelation of knowledge is linked to the movement of walāyah through history: to keep it safeguarded as the divine trust of amānah (Q 33: 72) and preserve it in the treasure chambers (khazā’in) of the friends of God in each epoch but, as well, to disclose it to those who are “preferred” (tafḍīl). On the other, the mid-11th-century Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī da‘wah concerted its efforts to signal its politico-esoteric sovereignty and to make public and affirm publicly how the Fāṭimid caliph-imāms were the heirs of walāyah. The Fāṭimid da‘wah, under the guidance of al-Mu’ayyad and the ruling elite, consolidated the Fāṭimid claim to the caliphate as an imamate. The mid-11th-century Fāṭimid da‘wah broadened the contexts in which walāyah as a pillar of practice functioned, through setting the parameters of individual initiatory experience within the cumulative soteriological and eschatological province of the Qā’im, that is, within the apocalyptic spacing of the cycles of the prophets and the imāms (adwār) that mark the completion of walāyah.

This chapter introduces the principles of walāyah in practice. In defining the eschatological registers of walāyah, Ismā‘īlī authors framed the sources of religious authority. This chapter provides background to the history of walāyah and the seal of God’s friends through considering the responses of Sufi and Ismā‘īlī authors to a set of issues related to prophetic inheritance and initiatory knowledge, thereby situating the concept’s currency in medieval Islamic intellectual history as well as al-Mu’ayyad’s thought in relation to his near-contemporaries in the Ismā‘īlī da‘wah. Another area of discussion concerns how 10th–11th-century Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī “protocol” or etiquette (adab) incorporated devotional aspects of walāyah. This feature of historical texts and contexts is clearly apparent in the 10th–11th-century Fāṭimid sīrah and majālis literature. In what I term the post-Kirmānī and proto-Nizārī period of Ismā‘īlī thought, which circumscribes al-Mu’ayyad’s career in the Fāṭimid da‘wah and his turbulent rise to the position of Fāṭimid chief missionary, the usefulness of this twofold approach lies in then considering historically the movement toward an established record of da‘wah teachings, where collections of lectures used to instruct missionaries and members of the Fāṭimid da‘wah gained widespread circulation by the mid-11th century. This approach makes it possible to indicate the topical progression of da‘wah teachings as well as the flexible “valence” of da‘wah teachings on walāyah in response to the needs of the Fāṭimid da‘wah and the Fāṭimid ruling elite.4

The Cycles of Prophecy

How does time shape religion, from the beginning, and in terms of religion’s end? Expressions of messianism and apocalyptic teachings have engaged and haunted the imaginations of countless authors and audiences. In Ismā‘īlī thought, the concept of time sets up the constructs of eschatology and messianism. It traces the future horizon of the Qā’im’s appearance. But, as Ebstein, Halm, Hollenberg, and Walker have shown, in the long history of the Ismā‘īlī tradition, 10th-century Ismā‘īlī authors in particular advanced different doctrinal expositions that integrated Neoplatonism as well as enstructured Qur’ānic cosmologies with respect to other philosophical sources and ancient wisdom literatures. Past scholarship has provided detailed studies on the rise of the Fāṭimids as well as early Ismā‘īlī thought. Since this is the case, this section takes as its starting point the concept of time to then consider the prophetic cycles in Ismā‘īlī thought, the transmission of knowledge, and prophetic inheritances.

With respect to Ismā‘īlī texts, a set terminology stands in construct with the development of both the doctrines of the imamate and walāyah. Some of the terminology of Ismā‘īlī texts, to be discussed later, is ubiquitous throughout the different historical periods of Ismā‘īlī thought. Many complex relationships can be inscribed between Ismā‘īlī thought as an intellectual tradition, with its devotional practice of reliance on the imām, and building politico-esoteric sovereignties, which redefined governance and yet provided the eschatological registers for eruptions of messianic expectations. Contextualizing walāyah in the Ismā‘īlī tradition necessitates considering the employment of Neoplatonist elements, a Neoplatonism permeated by the transmission of “Hermetic” knowledge as well as theories of knowing. At certain historical junctures in the 10th century CE, these extra-Qur’ānic theories of knowing were intercut with the continued evolvement of da‘wah teachings in response to the deferral of the Qā’im’s advent. The models for mapping esoteric knowledge proliferated within Ismā‘īlī intellectual circles, where the markers of making “obscure” by the elite and for the elite drew on strong and multifaceted links to alchemy, astrology, the natural sciences, and various aspects of philosophy. It can be said that the theories of the esoteric constructed by Islamic, Jewish, and Byzantine cultures not only built on one another but also supported this approach to secret knowledge as cultural capital.5

In early Ismā‘īlī thought, the contexts of transmitting esoteric knowledge were inclusively framed yet discussions of walāyah were displaced—rather than deployed—in favor of ancient inheritances and prophetic inheritances.6 The loyalties of “ancient friendships” were the communal bonds and spiritual lineages formed within those older, secret communities and intellectual circles of practitioners, ritual experts, and philosophers. In the older, secret communities the configurations of ideas, doctrines, and practices drew upon and reworked the inheritances of prophets of the past and covenants of knowledge from ancient times (i.e., Hermetic knowledge, “Gnostic” anthropologies, Pythagorean theories, Greek wisdom literature, and Greek philosophy).

The introduction of Neoplatonist elements and extra-Qur’ānic sources into Ismā‘īlī teachings constituted a major shift in the Ismā‘īlī tradition, but there would be others, foremost related to reconfiguring messianic expectations, and as this study maintains, the eschatological registers specific to da‘wah teachings on the Qā’im. In terms of the broad view, this questioning of the apparition of the Qā’im became synchronized and correlated with new valences of da‘wah teachings on walāyah. As shall be seen, by the mid-11th century, the Majālis al-Mu’ayyadiyyah proposes that “the sphere of walāyah” shapes the mesocosm that mediates in between two abodes, this world (dār al-dunyā) and the Afterlife (dār al-ākhirah).7 The mediation and transmission of prophetic knowledge from Adam to the Qā’im serves to complete and perfect the cycles of prophecy as well as seal them, where the bloodlines of the Qā’im and genealogies of the form of the Qā’im stand paramount as central questions and concerns.

Regarding shared terminology, in early Ismā‘īlī thought, the cycles of the prophets include cycles of the imāms, followed by cycles of the members of the da‘wah. The significance and meaning of the different narrations of prophetic history as heilsgeschichte is also accentuated by the role of ta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Transliteration
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Walāyah in Practice
• Chapter 2 The Majālis al-Mu’ayyadiyyah
• Chapter 3 The “Sphere of Walāyah”
• Chapter 4 Sealing Walāyah and Spiritual Resurrection
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index of People and Places
• Index of Qur’ānic Citations
• General Index
• Back Cover