The Silent Qur'an and the Speaking Qur'an

Scriptural Sources of Islam Between History and Fervor

Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Eric Ormsby

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231540650
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia islamica

Two major events occurred in the early centuries of Islam that determined its historical and spiritual development in the centuries that followed: the formation of the sacred scriptures, namely the Qur'an and the Hadith, and the chronic violence that surrounded the succession of the Prophet, manifesting in repression, revolution, massacre, and civil war.

This is the first book to evaluate the writing of Islam's major scriptural sources within the context of these bloody, brutal conflicts. Conducting a philological and historical study of little-known though significant ancient texts, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi rebuilds a Shi'ite understanding of Islam's early history and the genesis of its holy scriptures. At the same time, he proposes a fresh interpretative framework and a new data set for theorizing the early history of Islam, isolating the contradictions between Shi'ite and Sunni sources and their contribution to the tensions that rile these groups today.

Violence and Scripture in the Book of Sulaym Ibn Qays

The Book of Sulaym the son of Qays—Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays—also known as the Book of the Saqīfa (Kitāb al-Saqīfa), contains, at least in its earliest stratum, the oldest depiction of the Shi’ite perception of the violent events that marked the death and the succession of the Prophet.¹ Extremely popular from the Middle Ages up to our own day—the large number of manuscripts and its countless printings appear to indicate this—the work has at the same time been both the reflection and the instigator of the most basic theological and political concepts of Shi’ism. Setting aside its contents, despite their capital importance, its considerable antiquity, partly authentic and partly presumed, since it is made up of several layers from different periods, has counted for much.

Early Shi’ite literature is still not sufficiently well known. By that I designate those writings prior to the great corpus of Shi’ite Hadith elaborated for the most part between the beginning of the third and the start of the fourth centuries AH (roughly 850 to 950 CE), the corpus formed by the compilations of the great traditionists such as al-Sayyārī, al-Ḥibarī, al-Barqī, al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī, Furāt al-Kūfī, al-ʿAyyāshī, al-Kulaynī, and a few others.² Put another way, our knowledge of the sources on which these authors drew is still quite incomplete. Up until now, a few rare scholars have embarked on a critical examination of this immense and unexplored field of research: Etan Kohlberg, in his fundamental article on the “four hundred original writings” (al-uṣūl al-arbaʿu mi’a) drew the attention of the Western scholarly world to these older works, most of which are lost and have been attributed, at least in the case of most of them, to the immediate disciples of historical imams.³ Moreover, in his work on Ibn Ṭāwūs, henceforth indispensable for any study of classical Shi’ism, Kohlberg presents and studies a large number of writings, many of which are quite early.⁴ Then there is Hossein Modarressi, whose recent, and magisterial, book provides a first finely documented overview of Shi’ite writings deemed to have been written during the first three centuries after the Hijra.⁵ This same scholar had earlier examined the question in his bibliographical work on the textual tradition in Shi’ite jurisprudence.⁶ Lastly, Hassan Ansari has devoted several articles in Persian, as rich in suggestions for further research as they are pertinent, to the very oldest Shi’ite literature; articles that have appeared in Iranian publications—unfortunately, little known to Western scholars—or on the Internet.⁷ These pioneering studies afford scholars numerous areas of investigation into the earliest written sources of Shi’ism. In just the same way, the present study also endeavors to make a modest contribution with some brief bibliographical and historical notes, together with translated and annotated excerpts from a major work of nascent Shi’ism which has, however, remained almost totally unknown.

The Work and Its Putative Author

According to Shi’ite tradition, the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays, also called Aṣl Sulaym b. Qays,⁸ or even Kitāb al-saqīfa,⁹ is the work of Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī, the disciple of the first imam, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, and accordingly one of the very first Shi’ite, if not Islamic, writings. In the main it is devoted to a Shi’ite perception of the events which marked the death and succession of the Prophet Muḥammad, and specifically the “conspiracy” cunningly stirred up by certain of the Prophet’s companions, particularly ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, in order to seize power by installing Abū Bakr on the caliphal throne and shunting ʿAlī aside from what belonged to him by divine right, by the will of God and His Messenger. This conspiracy thus initiates the corruption and violence of the new religion for most of its faithful.

These contents, to which we shall return when we translate several representative passages, together with the presumed antiquity of the work, accord it a particular significance in the Shi’ite view. A hadith ascribed to the sixth imam of the Twelvers, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, illustrates this prestige: “He among our partisans [literally: our Shīʿites] and those who love us who does not have the Book of Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī, is tantamount to one who has no share in our cause and who knows nothing of the basis of our doctrines [literally: “our foundations”]. This book forms the alphabet of Shi’ism and is one of the supreme secrets of the descendants of Muḥammad.”¹⁰ Certain early sources record a tradition going back to the fourth imam, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, who supposedly said, after hearing a disciple recite the Book of Sulaym to him, “Everything that Sulaym says is truthful, may God have mercy on him. All of this forms a part of our teaching (i.e., we imams) and we recognize it.”¹¹

What can be known about Sulaym and the book that bears his name? The entries on him in Shi’ite prosopographical and bibliographical works, alongside certain critical studies, are numerous indeed.¹² Sulaym b. Qays Abū Ṣādiq¹³ al-Hilālī al-ʿĀmirī al-Kūfī was one of the Followers (tābiʿūn, i.e., the generation which followed that of the Prophet’s companions—ṣaḥāba). A contemporary of ʿAlī (d. 40/660), and one of his most ardent initiates, he also over the course of his long life came to know the four succeeding imams, al-Ḥasan (d. 49/669), al-Ḥusayn (d. 61/680), ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. ca. 92/711), and the infant Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. ca. 115/732). According to traditional accounts, in early youth he began composing a written record of the events and dramatic conflicts that followed the Prophet’s death and marked the history of the first caliphs, basing himself on accounts collected close to ʿAlī and several of his chief supporters and disciples, such as Salmān al-Fārisī, Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, or al-Miqdād b. Aswad, as well as yet other protagonists of these events.

After the assassination of ʿAlī and the institution of the violent anti-Alid policy of repression of the first Umayyads, Sulaym was sought by the cruel anti-Alid governor of Iraq, al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 95/714), who wanted to put him to death. He escaped from Iraq and took refuge in southern Iran, in the small village of Nobandagān (pronounced Nawbandajān in Arabic), in the province of Fārs (a village of this name still exists in this province between the cities of Dārāb and Fasā),¹⁴ bringing his precious book along with him—the written testimony of what he deemed the greatest betrayal of the Prophet and his family, as related directly by certain of the protagonists themselves. Aged and harassed, quite rightly believing that death was near and fearing the complete loss of his manuscript, he discovered a trustworthy beneficiary in the person of the adolescent “Fīrūz” Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh (d. ca. 138/755–56).¹⁵ Shortly afterward, Sulaym died and was buried at Nobandagān, around the year 76/695–96 according to most accounts, while al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf still held sway in Iraq, as the sources emphasize.

Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh in turn took the book that Sulaym had entrusted to him to several large cities, notably Baṣra, Mecca, and Medina, so as to verify its contents with scholars and experts, religious authorities, and those witnesses to events who were still living. In the last-named city he had the book read to the fourth imam, who, after hearing it all, pronounced the solemn declaration we have already mentioned. In 138/755–56 Abān in his turn entrusted the text, which by now had been certified as correct, to the Shi’ite traditionist ʿUmar b. Udhayna (d. ca. 169/785), a renowned disciple of both the sixth and seventh imams. Still in keeping with the traditional account, it was thanks to this personage that the Book of Sulaym came to be widely diffused through seven great Hadith experts in the Iraqi towns of Baṣra and Kūfa who received and then circulated it everywhere.

A Book with Multiple Strata

Notwithstanding the rich prosopographical tradition relating to our personage, Sulaym’s existence and therefore the authenticity of the attribution of his book were quickly cast into doubt, even among Shi’ites, as it appears. The first to deny Sulaym’s historical existence seems to have been the Imami savant Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Wāsiṭī (d. 411/1020).¹⁶ The information is taken up again by two authors in the seventh/thirteenth century, the Imami Ibn Dāwūd al-Ḥillī (b. 647/1249, d. after 707/1307) in his prosopographical work (where his skepticism remains utterly ambiguous) and the Muʿtazilite Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd (d. 656/1258) in his commentary on the Nahj al-balāgha.¹⁷ Among critical scholars, Modarressi also holds that Sulaym b. Qays never actually existed and was nothing more than a pen name adopted by a group of violently anti-Umayyad supporters of ʿAlī from the town of Kūfa.¹⁸ It is difficult to accept this assertion, which radically rejects a rich bibliographical and prosopographical tradition; moreover, even if the attribution is problematic, the putative author must have really existed and been respected by the Alids, otherwise what legitimacy could a writing ascribed to a fictitious person have possessed? True, many elements in the reports about Sulaym b. Qays could be coded accounts bearing a hidden symbolic meaning: Sulaym (who would have actually existed) might have served as a “cipher” to designate the Alids of Kūfa at the end of the Umayyad period. The figures of Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh and of ʿUmar b. Udhayna, both “clients” (mawālī, i.e., manumitted slaves) of the Banū ʿAbd al-Qays, could symbolize the role of “clients,” especially those of Iranian origin, in the reception and transmission of the work. In such a context, Sulaym’s flight to Iran and his taking refuge in a place called Nobandagān in particular seem to take on a singular import. The Persian toponym Nobandagān can have two meanings: either “the place of the new dam,” probably the true meaning of the toponym (the word can be broken down as follows: now/new + band/dam + the suffix indicating regional location agān), or “new servants,” perhaps the meaning that the account of the transmission of the Book of Sulaym seeks to evoke, with the sense of “new converts to Islam” (composed of now/new + banda/servant or adorer—the Persian equivalent of the Arabic ʿabd—plus the plural ending for terms ending with the vowel a, i.e., gān). In this way our text and the doctrines that it conveyed, under threat in Iraq, would have found a warm welcome in southern Iran among new Iranian converts and would have been brought by the latter and secretly diffused in Iraq and then elsewhere. Even “the seven experts” who spread the copy of ʿUmar b. Udhayna abroad could be metaphors for the Seven Climes, in other words, “the whole world.”¹⁹

Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī would also have deemed the work to be a forgery by Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh.²⁰ His exact contemporary, the renowned Imami theologian al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022), in his evocatively entitled book The Rectification of Belief, declares that some of the data in the Book of Sulaym became corrupted and should not be considered authentic.²¹ The contemporary Imami religious scholar Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shaʿrānī (d. 1393/1973) also believes that the Book of Sulaym is a forgery—an apocryphal work, to be sure—even though edited for a laudable purpose, to wit, the denunciation of the violence and injustice visited upon the Prophet’s family.²²

In the opposing camp, defenders of the historical existence of Sulaym and of the authenticity of his book are numerous, especially, as must needs be, among Imami Shi’ites. Rather than going back over the many bibliographical and prosopographical sources, which have already been mentioned, here we deem it sufficient to emphasise certain facts: from the third/ninth century onward, Sulaym is frequently cited by Shi’ite authors and particularly by the compilers of traditions.²³ A non-Shi’ite scholar as well-informed and erudite as Ibn al-Nadīm presents the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays, in the fourth/tenth century, as the very first Shi’ite book (awwalu kitābin ẓahara li’l-shīʿa).²⁴ By the Imamis the work was reckoned one of the “Four Hundred Original Works.”²⁵ Authors as early and as prestigious as al-Masʿūdī, al-Najāshī, al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, or even al-Nuʿmānī, from the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, have stated that they had the Book of Sulaym in their possession.²⁶ A single or several of the many manuscripts of the work have reached modern authors such as al-Sayyid Hāshim al-Baḥrānī (d. 1107/1695–96 or 1109/1697–98) or Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (1110/1699) by way of such medieval authors as Ibn Shahrāshūb or Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Ṭāwūs in the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries.²⁷ The systematic doubts cast by Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī, almost invariably taken seriously by other Shi’ite authors, will be refuted from the eighth/fourteenth century onward, by al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325) and later authors up to the twentieth century when the great Imami encyclopedist Āghā Bozorg al-Ṭihrānī (d. 1389/1969) went so far as to question the authenticity of the Kitāb al-rijāl/al-ḍuʿafā’ of Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī—and to do so in a well-documented way—as it in fact contains a good number of elements contrary to Shi’ite beliefs. In fact, Āghā Bozorg presents this book as a work edited by an opponent of Shi’ites and ascribed to a Shi’ite scholar in order to undermine their credibility in general and Sulaym and his book in particular.²⁸

Even so, the pseudographical character of the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays is obvious. The presence in its midst of data at times originating several centuries later than the period of its presumed author—and especially the many passages on the Abbasid Revolution or even the number twelve of the Imams—permits the historian no doubt in this regard. Even so, it is undeniable that successive redactions, extending until after the period of the historical imams at the beginning of the fourth/tenth century, developed around a very early primitive kernel. Modarressi believes that this original kernel is the oldest Shi’ite writing that has come down to us, and the arguments he puts forward, based on a meticulous i...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• A Word to the Reader
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Violence and Scripture in the Book of Sulaym ibn Qays
• 2. Qur’anic Recensions and Political Tendencies: Al-Sayyārī and His Book of Revelation and Falsification
• 3. The Necessity of Hermeneutics: On the Qur’anic Commentary of al-Ḥibarī
• 4. The Emergence of Gnosis: A Monograph on Knowledge Compiled by al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī
• 5. Perfecting a Religion: Remarks on al-Kulaynī and His Summa of Traditions
• Epilogue
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index