Z A N D A Q
A
زندقه
The
Cosmology of the Pre-Fatimid Ismailis
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UNTIL WELL into the twentieth century, the religious ideas and doctrines of the Ismailis were obscured by misunderstandings, speculations and wilful calumnies on the part of the sect's Muslim opponents. Even modern research has long let itself be misled by hostile propaganda, the more so since the original literature of the Isma'ilis was for the most part inaccessible. The pendulum swung in the other direction when Stanislas Guyard published his Fragments relatifs à la doctrine des Ismaélis in 1874. Recognizing the Neoplatonic character of some of the texts he had published, Guyard drew the conclusion that the doctrines of the Isma'ilis were based on Greek philosophy. He considered the alleged founder of the Ismailiyya, 'Abd Allah b. Maymün al-Qaddah, as the person responsible for acquainting the Shi'i sect with Greek thought. Guyard sought to corroborate his theory by referring to an early witness. In his well-known verdict (fatwa) against the Nusayri sect, the orthodox Sunni theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) had already maintained that the doctrine of the Ismailis was identical with that of the 'Brethren of Purity" (Ikhwan al-Şafa) of Başra, who had indeed drawn on the philosophy of late classical antiquity to elaborate the treatises of their great encyclopaedia (Rasail). When in 1898, Paul Casanova proved in the light of a manuscript from Masyäf in Syria that the Rasail had in fact been highly esteemed by the Isma'ili 'Assassins', who quoted them in their own writings, Ibn Taymiyya's statements appeared to be confirmed. Later editions of Ismaili texts pointed to the same direction. The theological treatises of the Tayyibi Ismailis of the Yemen contain ample quotations from the Rasa il Ikhwan al-Şafa, and in the "Uyun al-akhbar by the Yemenite da'i Idris 'Imad al-Din (d. 872/1468), Ahmad b. 'Abd Allah b. Muhammad b. Isma'il b. Ja'far al-Sadiq, the ninth imam and the second of the leaders of the Isma'ili da'wa residing in Salamiyya, is explicitly named as the author of the Rasail. Certain passages in the Rasa il at least in some critical editions of the text are indeed highly reminiscent of Isma ili doctrines. As late as 1933, Wladimir Ivanow still presented the Rasail as an Ismaili work in his A Guide to Ismaili Literature, though assuming that they were 'most probably... produced some time near the end of the fourth/tenth century (after the seizure of Egypt), under the patronage of the early Fatimides. So it is understandable that even today, scholars like Yves Marquet still believe that the doctrines of the 'Brethren of Purity' represent the original, unadulterated teachings of the Ismā'īliyya. Doubts about this opinion were, however, soon expressed by Ivanow himself, who was the first European to gain access to original Isma'ili literature in India. He found out that the work of Hamid al-Din al-Kirmānī, the most important theologian of the early Fatimid period, did not mention a word about the Rasa il or even make any recognizable allusions to them. Yet the Neoplatonic character of numerous works of the Fatimid period grew more and more obvious in the course of Ivanow's research. It soon became apparent, however, that Neoplatonic philosophy was not the root of the Ismaili doctrine, but a secondary stage in its evolution. In his Alleged Founder of Ismailism, Ivanow states that neither the earliest known treatises of the Ismailis from the time prior to the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate, nor the works of the Qādī al-Nu'man (d. 363/974) contain any trace of Neoplatonic influence. Ivanow, therefore, arrived at the conclusion that Neoplatonism was merely a later, secondary layer of the dogmatic development of the sect. What, then, had there been before? Though the earlier writings, such as the Kitab al-'alim wal-ghulam, the Kitab al-rushd wa'l-hidaya or the six treatises of the Kitab al-kashf, admittedly offer insights into the imamate doctrine, the mission practices and the technique of the ta wil, they do not provide any systematic picture of the entire doctrinal framework of the early Ismailiyya.. Some intriguing information by non-Isma ili authors led the scholars to the right track. A Yemenite poet, al-Tamīmī, a contemporary of the earliest Isma'ili mission in the Yemen, refers to the Isma'ilis in three separately transmitted verses and says: "They make Qadar a god, and Kūnī its creator, who provided subsistence and then veiled himself; They consider as gods Qadar and Künī, together with al-Jadd which is joined to al-Khayal and al-Istiftäh What an abberation! The Zaydi historian al-Hamdānī (4th/10th century), who handed down these curious verses, makes the following comments about them: There are seven gods (aliha), one in each heaven. The first and highest one, who dwells in the seventh and highest heaven, is called Kūnī. Küni created Qadar, who dwells in the second heaven. Qadar created the gods who are beneath him, viz., al-Jadd, al-Istiftäh, and al-Khayal, and the other creatures. But they now call that which they used to call Kūnī 'the preceding one' (al-sabiq), and they now call Qadar 'the following one' (al-tali)... They also call these two 'the first two principles', and they say that they are the intellect (al-'aql) and the soul (al-nafs), and that al-Jadd, al-Fath and al-Khayal have, as it were, emanated from them (ka'l-inbi āthāt). Al-Hamdani's commentary on al-Tamīmī's verses already reflects the later development of the Isma ili doctrine: what was previously called Kūnī and Qadar is now called 'intellect' and 'soul', and these do not 'create' al-Jadd, al-Fath and al-Khayal, but the latter three 'emanate' from the two 'principles'. The 'Neoplatonization' of the earlier doctrine is carried out simply in a few words The fact that al-Tamimi's three verses indeed reveal the central dogmas of the earliest Ismā'īliyya could easily be proved in the light of original Isma'ili literature of later times, for even such Neoplatonic authors as al-Sijistānī (d. between 386/996 and 393/1003) and al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1020) often mention the names Kūnī, Qadar, al-Jadd, al-Fath and al-Khayal, and 'Neoplatonize' them in exactly the same way as al-Hamdani does in his commentary. However, the part they played in the original system of the earliest Ismā'īliyya could not be discovered from these isolated references. The puzzle was successfully solved by Samuel Miklos Stern, who had already identified the authors of the Rasa il Ikhwan al-Şafa in 1946. In a manuscript of some Ismaili writings which the Indian Isma'ili scholar, Professor Asaf A. A. Fyzee, had placed at his disposal from his private library, Stern accidentally discovered a treatise which used the same names and terminology as the Yemenite poet and his commentator, but this time in an original Isma'ili text of some length (the treatise consists of sixteen manuscript pages). Stern's edition of the text appeared posthumously, together with a partial translation and a commentary, under the title The Earliest Cosmological Doctrines of Ismailism. The original author of the treatise is named right at the beginning as with them the very things they signify come into being. There must be a very similar idea, reminiscent of the Jewish Cabbala, behind the statement in the treatise of Abū Isä al-Murshid that Kūnī and Qadar are composed of seven characters: they form the original heptad out of which all other names emerge.  As indicated above, the error of the first creature, Kūnī, who regarded himself as God, is of special significance to the Ismaʻili cosmogony. Kūnī's error, his presumption and hubris, causes God the Creator to intervene; this is what sets in motion the process of creation. Time and again the text quotes several verses from the Qur'an in order to 'prove' that the latter contains cryptic allusions to the processes illustrated, and although the names Kūnī and Qadar can themselves be derived from the Qur'an, it is apparent, not only from the names of some of the Cherubs and Spiritual Beings but from the entire narrative as such, that we are dealing here also with ideas and motifs borrowed from a foreign realm. This would hardly upset a faithful Ismaili, for according to his conviction, the Islamic revelation was in fact the last manifestation of an age-old eternal truth. The cosmogony of Abū 'Isa's treatise represents a type that is familiar to us from the Gnosis of late antiquity. This spiritual movement, which penetrated not only the ancient mystery cults, but also Judaism and Christianity, and even gave rise to the world religion of Manichaeism, had its apogee between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, but its after-effect lasted much longer. Manichaeism did not disappear until the 11th century AD, and the Gnostic Baptist sect of the Mandaeans has survived to this day in southern Iraq. With the Manichaeans and Mandaeans we already have two Gnostic religions that arose in Iraq, which is precisely where the Ismaili mission (da'wa) also appeared in the middle of the 3rd/9th century. But while we are quite well informed about the numerous Gnostic sects of Egypt and their literature through the manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi, we are completely in the dark about the Gnostic milieu of pre-Islamic Mesopotamia and know next to nothing about the sources that inspired the Islamic Gnosis in general or the Isma'ili Gnosis in particular. The source could not have been Manichaeism, however, for there is no evidence of any specific Manichaean ideas and concepts in Isma'ili teachings. Nor is there any need to associate the Ismailiyya with a particular pre-Islamic Gnostic sect. If we qualify the cosmogonical myth of the Isma'ilis, as handed down to us in the treatise of Abū 'Isā al-Murshid, as 'gnostic', we merely have in mind certain fundamental characteristics which we encounter repeatedly in a similar form in the cosmogonies of very different Gnostics of late antiquity Ophites and Valentinians, Barbelo-Gnostics and Manichaeans. The most striking characteristic here is the belief that the creation of the universe is the result of a Fall, not the Fall of a terrestrial man, but that of the non-material first creature. This first creature is deluded into believing that it is God, since it does not recognize its hidden Creator. This Fall is the cause of the emergence of the cosmos, consisting at first of a 'higher' spiritual world with its multiple degrees which the Gnostics of late antiquity called 'fullness' (pleroma) and later of the material cosmos with its seven heavenly spheres and the sublunar, terrestrial world. As a result, man, who appears at the end of this process, is far from his origin; he is literally worlds apart from his Creator. The sense of Gnostic religiosity is to explain man's distance from God and to show a way to abolish this distance, and this way is precisely the 'knowledge' (Greek, gnosis) which man is not capable of acquiring on his own, but which has to be communicated to him from above. When man has come to recognize his origin and the causes for his distance from God, he will also have achieved salvation. Cosmology and soteriology are, therefore, closely connected in this system." The cosmology of Abū Isa's treatise contains all these essential Gnostic characteristics. In the system of the ancient Gnostics, the first of God's creatures who rebels and succumbs to hubris is usually of the female sex (sopbia). The Isma'ili myth preserves a reflection of this idea by transforming the Qur'anic creation command lean into the feminine form of the imperative, kūnī. The progressive development first of the non-material, and then of the material world, man's distance from God, his illumination and salvation through knowledge (ilm or hikma gnosis), which is communicated to him by messengers sent by God - all these separate characteristics justify qualifying the Ismaili doctrine as 'gnostic'. Since the Ismaili mission (da'wa) started in southern Mesopotamia in the middle of the 3rd/9th century, we may assume that the Gnostic pattern which provides its basis is of Mesopotamian origin. More cannot be said, however, since we only know the Mesopotamian Gnosis in its Manichaean and Mandaean forms. We must, nevertheless, assume that there were a great number of Gnostic sects and circles in pre-Islamic Iraq - as there were in Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor which never appeared in the public eye and did not leave the slightest trace. Like Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, Islam was affected by this important spiritual movement. The pre-Fatimid Ismaili cosmogony is not the only Gnostic myth in Islamic garb known to us. About a century older is the Umm al-kitab, the 'Original Book', an apocalypse initially written in Arabic which is now extant only in a (subsequently enlarged) Persian translation handed down by Ismaʻili communities in the Pamir and Karakorum regions, and which has nothing to do with the doctrines of the Ismailiyya." This curious book is apparently traceable to the Iraqi sectarians belonging to the circle of the Shi'i heresiarch Abu'l-Khattab. Here, creation is set in motion through the hubris of an angelic being called 'Azāzi'īl. Closely akin to the cosmogony of the Umm al-kitab is that of another apocalypse belonging to the same tradition, the 'Book of Shadows' (Kitāb al-azilla).10 This book, in its turn, forms the basis of the cosmogonical myth of the Syrian sect of the Nusayrīs or 'Alawīs, known to us mainly by the written disclosures of the Nuşayrī renegade Sulayman Effendi al-Adhanī in the year 1864.11 The closely related cosmogonies of the Umm al-kitab, the Kitab al-azilla and the Nusayrīs are distinctly different from the cosmogony of the early Isma'ilis. We are dealing with two totally different religions. Although they are based on a similar Gnostic pattern, they have nothing to do with one another. They represent two completely independent, autonomous traditions. The former is the tradition of the so-called 'exaggerators' (ghulāt), which had its roots in Madā'in (Ctesiphon) and Küfa and which can be traced back to the dawn of Shi'ism; the Isma'ili doctrine, on the other hand, is a more recent, independent product of the 3rd/9th century. Its inventor was presumably the founder of the Ismaili da'wa, 'Abd Allah the Elder (al-Akbar), the ancestor of the Fatimids, who started his activity in his native town of 'Askar Mukram in Khūzistan, and then in Başra, and who subsequently settled in Salamiyya in Syria. If this assumption is true, 'Abd Allah al-Akbar was the founder of a gnostic tradition on a par with the well-known creators of earlier Gnostic systems such as Simon Magus, Valentinian, or Mani. NOTES The editor would like to express his gratitude to Madam Azizeh Azodi for her masterful translation of this chapter from German into English. 1 Idris 'Imad al-Din, 'Uyün al-akhbar wa-funün al-athär, vol. 4, ed. M. Ghalib (Beirut, 1973), pp. 367 ff. W. Ivanow, A Guide to Ismaili Literature (London, 1933), pp. 30 ff. 2 3 W. Ivanow, The Alleged Founder of Ismailism (Bombay, 1946), pp. 145 ff. 4 Quoted from C. van Arendonk, Les débuts de l'Imamat Zaidite au Yémen, tr. J. Ryckmans (Leiden, 1960), p. 333; see also S. M. Stern, Studies in Early Ismailism (Jerusalem-Leiden, 1983), pp. 3 ff. Included in Stern's Studies in Early Ismailism, pp. 3-29. 6 Ja'far b. Manşür al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, ed. R. Strothmann (London, etc., 1952), pp. 48 ff.; ed. M. Ghalib (Beirut, 1984), pp. 54 ff. For the German translation of the passage in question, see H. Halm, Kosmologie und Heilslebre der historischen Ismäʻilīya: Eine Studie zur historischen Gnosis (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 39-42. 7 See Halm, Kosmologie und Heilslehre der historischen Ismailiya. 8 Umm al-kitab, ed. W. Ivanow, in Der Islam, 23 (1936), pp. 1-132; Italian translation, Ummul-Kitab, tr. P. Filippani-Ronconi (Naples, 1966). 9 See H. Halm, Die historischen Gnosis: Die extrem Schia und die 'Alawiten (Zurich-Munich, 1982), pp. 113 ff; also containing a partial German translation of the Umm al-kitab 10 Ibid., pp. 240 ff. 11 Ibid., pp. 298 ff |
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