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SOME NOTES on the HISTORY of the TWELVERS the “Twelvers

SOME NOTES on the HISTORY of the TWELVERS the “Twelvers

SOME NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE

The “Twelvers”, called in and Persian the Ithna{ashariyya1 (an adjective which implies umma ‘community, congregation’), are so called because they follow the twelfth , ibn Îasan, whose epithet ‘al-’ indicates that his followers expect him to return incarnate to earth at the end of times to defeat the enemies of God, destroy paganism and establish God's kingdom2. Here follows a complete list of the twelve , as it is given in the textbooks of the Ithna {ashariyya scholars themselves3. 1. { ibn Abi ™alib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet of . {Ali's epithet is Abu'l A}imma ‘Father of Divine Leaders’4. With Muhammad's daughter Fa†ima he had two sons, Îasan and Îusayn, both of whom are recognized as imam by all the Shi{a. {Ali was assassi- nated in the year 40/660 by Ibn Muljam's poisoned sword. He was buried near his residence , where a new town, , grew up which became a centre of pilgrimage in the time of Harun al-Rashid; it is sur- rounded by a cemetery. 2. Îasan ibn {Ali was recognized as the second imam after Ali's death, but he had neither the power nor the will to assert his authority, as the Shi{a was still a small party in its beginning. He died in 50/670 (the date is disputed) probably poisoned by his wife Al-Ja{da, instigated, it is said, by Mu{awiya or Yazid5. Îasan, through his second son Îasan II, became ancestor of many of the rulers of Morocco, including the present royal dynasty. 3. Îasan's brother Îusayn was recognized as the Third Imam; he was undoubtedly the most loved of all the Prophet's descendants. Îusayn was killed in the battle of Kerbela}, against the soldiers of Yazid in the year 60/680. His death has been celebrated in many books and

1 See the Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. IV, sub Ithna{ashariyya. 2 See Some Notes on the Pilgrimage of the Ithna{ashari Branch of the Shi{a, in Orien- talia Lovaniensia Periodica 20, 1989, p. 250-252. (Henceforth referred to as ‘Notes’). 3 The majority of these scholars remain anonymous. See for their works the list in my Notes (see above), p. 253. 4 See the Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI), vol. I, p. 381-6. 5 See EI, vol. III, p. 240-3. For Hasan's descendents see op. cit., sub and Idrisids, and Edmund BOSWORTH, The Islamic Dynasties, Edinburgh University Press 1967, p. 20-21. 238 J. KNAPPERT poems; it is still commemorated by millions on the 10th day of the month MuÌarram ({}), as a day of mourning6. 4. The fourth imam was Îusayn's only surviving son (the others had died in the battle) {Ali Zayn al {Abidin, ‘Ornament of the Worshippers’, from whom all other imams descend in the direct male line. He was found as a sick infant on the battlefield at Kerbela} by the Syrian sol- diers, and carried to the Omayyad capital Damascus. The caliph Yazid wished to dispose of him but, according to a later legend, “God resur- rected {Ali who threatened the usurper (Yazid) to let the child go to in peace with his female relatives. Yazid, frightened, sent the entire family back to Medina”. Zayn al {Abidin died there in 95/714, after a life of scholarship and devotion7. 5. The fifth imam was his son MuÌammad Baqir ‘The one who opens the Source of Knowledge’. He too was a scholar; he died 115/7348.

6 EI, vol. III, sub Îusayn b. Ali; HEMEDI BIN ABDALLAH AL-BUHRIY, Utenzi wa Sayid- ina Husein bin Ali, Dar es Salaam 1965; ‘The Martyr of ’ by MAHMOUD AYYOUB in Alserat, Selected Articles, publ. Muhammadi Trust London 1983 p. 87-101. There are numerous Arabic booklets and pamphlets, printed in Cairo, Beyrut, Karachi and Bombay, with the title Qatl Îusayn or Maqtal Îusayn, describing the tragic events in vivid coulours, in prose and in poetry; some are in Persian, e.g. Makhzan al-Ash{ar dar Manaqib va MaÒa}ib e-A}immah al-A†har, printed in Tehran, no date, or in Urdu: QaÒa}id dar Bayan e-Shahadat ÎaÂrat Imam Îusayn (no place, no date). See also J. Knappert, Al-Husayn, the Ideal Hero in Swahili Epic, in Al-Serat Vol. V, no. 3, p. 3-13. Îusayn was married, according to the Shi{a tradition, to , daughter of Yazdigard III, last Sassanian king of , see J. Knappert, Islamic Legends, Leiden, 1985, vol. I, p. 302-306. For the massacre at Kerbela see ib. p. 284 et seq. See also the EI, vol. I, sub Ahl al-Bayt and vol. IV sub Karbala. The EI is silent regarding the celebration of {Ashura in Iran, but see SYED HUSAIN ALI JAFFRI, Muharram Celebrations in India, in Peter J. CHELKOWSKI, ed., Ta{ziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran, New York 1979, p. 223; JA{FAR SHARIF, Islam in India or the Qanoon-i-Islam, transl. G.A. Herklots, London 1972: the plate facing p. 156 shows the structure of the mausoleum which was built over Îusayn's tomb at Ker- bela, and which was later destroyed by the Ottoman sultan Suleman in 1534 as heretical. See my ‘Notes’ (see above) p. 248 for a description of the new mosque that has been built there since then by Shah Abbas of Iran when he liberated Kerbela in 1032/1623. It suf- fered very serious damage when the troops of Saddam Îusein took the town at the end of the Gulf War and killed many of the Shi{a. 7 See EI IV, p. 277 & 638; Anon. The Necessity of Imamat, publ. by Peermahomed Ebrahim Trust Karachi 1971, p. 39-40. With Ali Zayn al {Abidin the imamate becomes esoteric in the sense that there cannot have been an explicit appointment by Husayn to raise this son to the status of his successor (Khalifa), since Îusayn was killed without foreseeing it, and {Ali was only a baby, and the youngest son, not then expected to suc- ceed or even to survive. See for the imamate: EI III, p. 1163; The Necessity of Imamate (see above), p. 5; SYED HUSAIN M. JAFRI in , ed., Islamic Spiritu- ality Foundation, New York 1987, p. 165 et seq. 8 It was during his imamate that the number of followers of the Shi{a greatly increased owing to the growing corruption and worldliness of the Omayyad caliphs. Little is known THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 239

6. The sixth imam was his son Ja{far (Djaafar) aÒ-Sadiq ‘the Truth- ful’, born at Medina in 80/700; his mother was Umm Farwa. He was the last imam to be recognized by all the branches of the Shi{a; he died in Medina where he was also buried in 148/765. Ja{far contributed positively to the early doctrine of the Shi{a and was acknowledged as a philosopher and great scholar. He appointed his eldest son Isma{il as his successor, but Isma}il died while Ja{far was still alive9. Some of the followers later believed that Isma{ il was not dead but only concealed by God for the awaiting of His purpose. 7. The seventh imam, according to the Ithna{ashariyya, was Musa al-KaÂim ‘Who controls his wrath’, third son of Ja{far after his second son {Abdallah had died soon after Isma{il. By this time the Shi{a com- munity had grown into an important political party (even though it was already ramifying into three factions), so that the Abbasid caliphs, recently (133/750) established in , began to persecute the Shi{a. Musa was imprisoned in a dark prison in . He died in 183/79910. 8. {Ali ibn Musa, with the epithet al-Ri∂a (usually spelled ar-Reza) ‘God's pleasure’, was born in Medina in 153/770 or a little earlier according to others. He died in ™us in Iran in 203/818; he was known for his piety and learning. In 201/816 the Abbasid Al-Ma}mun sum- moned {Ali to Marw in what is now Turkmenia where he acknowledged {Ali as heir to the and gave him the title of al-Ri∂a. However, {Ali died soon after and was buried in ™us by the Caliph who himself recited the funeral prayers. The tomb became a centre of pilgrimage and is now known as , literally ‘place where a witness of the faith died’; the name of ™us is hardly remembered. Today in Iran, Mashhad (usually spelled Meshed) is a very important centre of the Shi{a11. about this increase since the Shi{is practised taqiyya, i.e. they had the ethical right to keep their true allegiance a complete secret. 9 See EI, sub Dja'far al-∑adiÈ in vol. II, p. 374. His mother was a great-granddaugh- ter of . During the revolution after the death of the Omayyad al-Walid in 126/744, Ja'far practised Èu{ud, i.e. he did not rise because the moment was not yet ripe. 10 See The Necessity of Imamat (see note 7 above), p. 40. 11 The Ithna{ashari historians maintain that the Caliph al-Ma}mun realized the legiti- mate claims of Ali al-Ri∂a and his family to the leadership of Islam. However, Carl BROCKELMANN in his History of the Islamic Peoples, New York 1960, p. 23, implies that al-Ma}mun, surrounded by enemies as he was, was forced to seek alliances with other par- ties who might support the Abbasids. It would follow from this that the Ithna{asharis were already powerful enough to be desirable allies. Perhaps even more important for the future was the fact that the Ithna{asharis now had a concentration point in Iran where they would one day become the rulers. Even the Buyids were already Shi{i, see EI, vol. I, sub Alids. 240 J. KNAPPERT

9. MuÌammad ibn {Ali, praise-named al-Taqi ‘God-fearing’ and al-Dhaki (Zaki) ‘Intelligent’. He received in marriage Umm al-Fa∂l (Ummu'l-Fazl), daughter of the Caliph al-Ma{mun. MuÌammad reigned as ninth imam for seventeen years, until his death in 220/835. He was famous for his hospitality, regaling his numerous guests lavishly, while he himself ate only bread and honey. He was also famous for his knowl- edge, anwering hundreds of questions on law (istifta) and . 10. His son {Ali succeedded him as the tenth imam. Ali's praise- names were: al-Naqi ‘the Pure’ and al-Hadi ‘the Guide’. Ali spent the earlier part of his life in Medina, but later he was ordered by the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (reigned 232/847-247/861) to come and live in Baghdad as a virtual prisoner. Later he was ‘allowed’ to live in in house arrest in a modest villa. The family lived there ever since. One day rumours of weapons being hidden in the imam's house occasioned Mutawakkil to have the villa ransacked, but the soldiers found only {Ali praying on the floor. He died 254/86812. 11. {Ali was succeeded by his son Îasan whose epithet was al- {Askari ‘the soldier’ (for God). He is also praise-named al-Zaki ‘the Pure’, al-)aliÒ ‘the Honest one’, al-Rafiq ‘the good companion’, al- ∑amit ‘the Taciturn’ and al-Naqi (see above). He was born in Medina in 232/847; his mother was Susan Salil. He was brought to Samarra with his father in 233/847-8, where the caliph kept both under surveillance. Îasan the eleventh imam fell ill one day in 260/873, it is said of poison, administered by the caliph's orders, and died a week later. Others main- tain that the caliph Al-Mu{tamid sent his own physician to treat the Imam Îasan, but in vain. Îasan's followers maintained that he left a son, MuÌammad, who was still an infant. The caliph sent his officers to search for the child which was believed to have been hidden in the basement of the villa, but they found the place empty. The Twelvers maintain that God had already hidden the young twelfth imam from profane eyes, but that he was alive though invisible. They believe that he is still there in the same subterranean room, behind a locked door, alive but invisible13.

12 The EI is silent about the tenth imam. He seems to have had a charming character, yet the Caliph had him tortured out of fear that he was organising a rebellion: Necessity of Imamat, p. 41. 13 EI, vol. III, p. 246-7. Dissension broke out after his death. Hasan was the first imam to employ a {gateway’ (see below) for all communications with the world, out of fear that the Caliph would arrest the imam. Gradually however, it may have been in the bab's THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 241

12. The 12th imam, MuÌammad ibn Îasan, was named after his great ancestor because it was predicted that the Mahdi (see below) would be called MuÌammad and be the spirit of the Prophet MuÌammad reap- pearing in the body which God would re-create. One might speculate that such a body will be his first, since God had made him invisible from birth. Others believe that he died in infancy so that the imamate went to his brother Ja{far. However, the Twelvers never mention Ja{far; they compare MuÌammad's birth to that of Moses who also had to be con- cealed from the eyes of the tyrant and his spies14. This first concealment of the infant MuÌammad is called the Minor , a period during which he, the imam, could still answer questions on law and doctrine for the faithful. The questions and answers were conveyed by a succession of reli- gious messengers whose title was safir ‘ambassador’, i.e. intermediary between the living imam, the deputy of the Holy Prophet on earth, and the ever increasing flock of believers, who came from all corners of the Islamic world to consult the imam on matters of daily practice and jurisprudence. In fact, this practice had already been instituted under the imamate of Imam {Ali Naqi and continued under Îasan {Askari who were both prisoners of the caliph and held in incommunicado, except for a few faithful servants who were allowed to run errands for the imam and his family. The imams were — even the caliphs had to concede that — the scions of the Holy Prophet's House, the Ahl al-Bayt, the men in whose veins prophetic blood flowed. This concept of the prophets' blood has to be taken literally: the Prophet MuÌammad is believed to descend from the prophets Abraham (Ibrahim) and his eldest son Isma{il, father of the Arabs. The imams were not idle in their isolation. They wrote many books and numerous letters to their followers on matters of theology, world philosophy and cosmology. The imams possessed jafr (see EI s.v. djafr), for which the dictionary gives ‘divination’, but which word for the Shi{a means ‘esoteric knowledge of the future’. It is believed to be based on a interest to keep the imam hidden, so that he could rule the community of his followers in his name. It is quite possible that the imam was bedridden with a prolonged illness. This would explain why we learn less and less about the imam's life, until he is completely concealed. 14 It has been argued that Îasan {Askari never had a son called MuÌammad, or that the child died in infancy. That may be the historical reality. For the Ithna{ashari it is an act of faith that Muhammad was born to be the twelfth Imam, and that God made him invisible for profane eyes. 242 J. KNAPPERT secret book written by {Ali ibn Abi ™alib, which the imams inherited from him. No other persons could understand its cryptic language15. It was believed that by means of this book the imams could predict the future and give advice to their followers regarding life and death of their loved ones, about marriage, children, sickness and health, in short, answering the questions of life. The believers paid for this consultation, receiving due to receipts signed by the imam himself; the signatures were believed to emanate baraka, blessing, causing good health. During the , Ghaybat al-∑ughra, this knowledge was channeled by the imam to his chief ambassador, titled al-Bab ‘the Gate’, through which all communication with the outside world was handled. This condition continued for 90 years, until the last known bab, {Ali ibn MuÌammad al-Samarri16, died in 329/940. It is said that the caliph of the time, al-Muttaqi, had the villa searched, including the basement, but no man was found, only the womenfolk. The imam was invisible. That time was the beginning, it is believed, of the , Ghaybat al-Kubra, which has lasted ever since, and will continue until MuÌammad is sent back to earth in visible form as al- Mahdi, the Rightly Guided One, who will end paganism and cleanse the earth of corruption and atheism before Doomsday. The disappearance of the body of the imam from the humble base- ment where he lived, is explained by some believers as follows: in one part of the basement (as in most Middle Eastern houses) there is a tank or water reservoir for drawing water, Ar. birka, also used for washing. It stood in open connection with the river Tigris, for the purpose of both

15 This secret book was ultimately based on the Book of the Prophecies of Daniel (Danil or Daniyal), see EI II, p. 377; the prophecies referred primarily to Qiyama, Resurrection, when the Ithna{ashariyya would be justified, see my ‘Notes’ p. 251, for that is when the Imam will rise. It is perhaps more probable that these statements were first made by the sixth imam, Ja'far al-∑adiÈ, who was a prolific writer, see S. HUSAIN M. JAFRI, The Origins and Early Development of Shi{a Islam, London 1979, chapter 10. These writings, perhaps only scattered notes, often in the form of fatwas, legal counsels, were collected by the sixth imam's devoted disciple, Hisham ibn al-Îakam. See the EI III, p. 496-7 and Henri Corbin, Histoire de la Philosophie Islamique, Paris Gallimard 1964, p. 54. Hisham was the first imami to compose a coherent philosophical system, which, however, dit not survive till today. He died 179/796. He was the first to insist on the necessity of the permanent presence of an infallible (ma{Òum) imam to guide the people. 16 For the term bab see the EI, vol. I, p. 832. He was the “Senior authorised disciple” of the imam who instructed him directly. {Ali al-Samarri was told by the 12th imam that no new imam must be appointed after God would make him invisible (ghayb) until shortly before Resurrection (see below). THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 243 draining and replenishing the reservoir. It is believed by some that the imam's body travelled through this channel or cave to the main river, where the imam remains to the present day, alive but not visible. It is for this reason that petitioners may leave their requests, written in the form of letters to the imam, in the river; some pilgrims pray to the river which was sacred of old. During the first centuries after the Major Occultation had commenced, the young community of the Ithna{ashariyya lived in the midst of hostile empires, first that of the Abbasids, later under the dynasty of the Turkish Sunni Seljuqs (429/1038-590/1194). After this, power in Iraq was wrested from them by the last great Abbasid, al-NaÒir, but after his death in 622/1225, further struggles lasted until the Mongols destroyed Baghdad and Iraq in 656/125817. The community of the Ithna{ashariyya, who call themselves usually the Imamiyya, needed a central divine authority to consult on matters of doctrine, law and fiqh (personal duties). The Sunna orthodoxy receive regular doctrinal and legal counsels from the jurisconsultants, a congress of scholars, majlis al-{}, whose chairman, the chief counsellor or mufti, gives advice, fatwa, whenever the state government requests this. The advice is based on the consensus of the scholars, ijma{ al-{ulama} which is in turn based on qiyas, casuistics, and sunna, and Qur'an. Such a fatwa has force of law, which even the government obeys. The Imamiyya believes that law must be divinely inspired all the time, so that law made by men is not acceptable. Yet only scholars who are at home in the Qur'an, the Sunna of MuÌammad and the writings of can be trusted to give correct advice. Such a scholar may receive , i.e. he is invested with authority in matters of law, shari{a. Over the centuries, there has arisen a whole class of such scholars who are known as the mullas or mollahs, from Ar. mawla ‘master’ and mawlana ‘our master’. The most learned of this class in any one generation is called the a{lam (aalam) ‘who knows most’. His office is called marja{ ‘centre’, but later the a{lam himself was referred to as Marja{, since he was, like the qu†b, regarded as the spiritual centre.

17 See EI, vol. I, p. 902; III, p. 569 and 1256; Bertold SPULER, The Muslim World Part II: the Mongol Period, Leiden 1969, p. 19; Carl BROCKELMANN, History of the Islamic Peoples, New York 1960, p. 250; John A. BOYLE, The Cambridge History of Iran, Cambridge University Press 1968, Vol. 5, p. 484 et seq. describing the devastating and slaughterous behaviour of the Mongols. 244 J. KNAPPERT

The first scholar to occupy the office of marja{-e-taqlid ‘centre of authority’, was MuÌammad ibn Ya{qub al-Kulayni; he was already a prominent scholar in the days when al-Samarri was still alive. He died in Baghdad in the same year, 329/940, after completing his great work {UÒul al-Kafi ‘the Roots of the (fiqh) which is sufficient’, on the fountains of jurisprudence as well as a commentary on the Qur'an. He was succeeded by Sh. Sadduq MuÌammad ibn {Ali ibn Babuwaih al-Qummi, who died in Rayy in 381/991; his tomb is still a centre of pilgrimage18. He was succeeded by Sh. Mufid MuÌammad ibn MuÌammad ibn Nawman who died in 413/1022 in KaÂimain, just north- west of Baghdad. He was succeeded by Abu'l-Qasim {Ali ibn Îusayn ibn Musa al-Musavi, {Alam al-Huda, ‘Sign for Guidance’ who died 426/1035. After him there is an unbroken series of sixty scholars fulfilling the function of marja{-e-taqlid during more than 900 years until 1979, when the famous { RuÌollah Khomeini ()umayni) took over the leadership of the Ithna{ashariyya not only in the spiritual world but also in the secular world, achieving at last the ideal of the Imamiyya: the creation of God's kingdom on earth19. It should be pointed out that these religious leaders of the Imamiyya are not themselves imams in the sense as the Shi{a explain this word. (For the Sunna the imam is simply the leader of the prayers in the mosque). These leaders do not even have to be , i.e. descendants of Îusayn, although some were. Most of them were law scholars and theologians, while some were masters of the esoteric disciplines who could divine and tell fortunes. They have written a library full of books in Arabic and Persian, which give us a clear picture of imamiy theology and cosmology. Most of them were modest scholars who lived their lives in seclusion, giving legal advice to their fellow believers, hoping not to attract the attention of the state authorities, always hostile. All this changed when in 1501 Isma{il al ∑afavi created his Shi{a state in Iran, making the Ithna{ashariyya official religion.

18 Henri CORBIN, op. cit., p. 54; Necessity of Imamat p. 129; S.H. Nasr in EI vol. IV, p. 277; A.A.A. Fyzee in EI III, p. 726-7. 19 Before 1500 A.D. the Ithna{ashariyya was a community of quietistic scholars. Only after that did they create a state for themselves in Iran, but they had to wait till 1979 before Khomeini created a true theocracy, spilling much blood of dissenters. On the pos- itive side, he compiled a code of law for his new state, entitled (in an English translation by J. Borujerdi) A Clarification of Questions, Boulder, Colorado 1984. THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 245

Since then, the power of the A{lams became comparable to that of the metropolitans in the Czarist empire. The title Ayatollah appears only in the eighteenth century; it means ‘miracle of God’, a phrase which a Sunni Muslim would denounce as idolatry, since Islam permits no man to be worshipped. Indeed in the older writings of the Imamiyya the A{lam remains a mortal man, not free from sin nor error. Even the imamzadé, the in whose veins the blood of the Holy Prophet runs, is not exempt from failure, even though he belongs to the Ahl al-Bayt, the Family of the House20.

The Imam According to the Imamiyya belief, the imam is perfect and sinless, ma{Òum, literally: ‘put apart, kept away from sin’; this means that the true imam is appointed by God and never by man. His safety is protected, mastur, which word also means ‘veiled’21, since God protects His imam by ghayba, invisibility, because the imam is His beloved, maÌbub. It is only when God decides that the Day of Resurrection is ‘nigh’, that He will make the imam ‘stand up’, qa}im, visible for all to see22. However, it may please God to make His imam visible at any time; because the imam, though usually invisible, is not absent, he is on earth, where he receives letters that are placed on a saint's tomb, and answers them. He is occasionally manifest and a few very blessed persons have seen him, they say. During the pilgrimage he is in mingling with the crowds, observing the pilgrims' true intentions (nia) in their hearts. But no one recognizes him. That will happen only when Doomsday approaches and the imam will come back as al-Mahdi. He will show miracles, mu{jizat, so that usur- pation of the title is impossible. Light will shine on the Mahdi's head, whose advent will be preceded by a meteor, shihab, as bright as the moon. At dawn an will appear on a cloud above the Mahdi's head and announce: “This is the Mahdi, the Khalifa (deputy) of God, follow

20 See EI vol. I, p. 258; Koran 33,33. 21 See HUSAIN M. JAFRI (see note 15 above), op. cit., p. 298. ‘Veiled’, muqanna{, implies protection, just as the veil protects a woman against the defiling eyes of evil spirits. The verb qn{ (2nd form) means ‘to disguise, hide a treasure’. The true imam is too precious to be shown to profane eyes. 22 Qa}im ‘standing’ is often used in Shi{i literature to denote the SaÌib al-Zaman, the ‘Lord of the Age’, i.e. the imama who reigns at a particular time of history. Shortly before Doomsday the imam Mahdi will be rising (qa{im) from the subterranean room where his spirit now dwells, and ‘rise’ (i.e. rebel) against the corrupt rulers of the then world. 246 J. KNAPPERT him”. In his hand will be seen the sword of the prophets which will destroy all doubters and unbelievers until all men will recite: ‘There is no God but and MuÌammad is His Prophet’. At that time the Imamiyya will be completed, mutamma, for the imam has come back, so that life is complete at last; there is good guidance for all men, so that the holy war, , can commence. Until that time the jihad is sus- pended, for only the imam can declare a legal jihad. All this belief explains why the Occultation is the one crucial aspect of imamiy theol- ogy: the faithful are awaiting his return23.

History of the Imamiyya after the major occultation The small and weak community of the Ithna{ashariyya might not have survived if the new dynasty of the Buyids or Buwayhids had not seized power in Iraq and occupied Baghdad in 334/945.They received honorific titles from the Caliph Al-Mustakfi, whom they recognized as the titular head of the Islamic faith. Henceforth the caliph was in no position to persecute heretics. The last of these to be executed was Îusayn al-Îallaj in 309/92224. He is often regarded as the first of the ∑ufis, but he was a follower of the Eighth Imam {Ali Reza and his school. The Buyids may well have been sympathetic towards the Ithna {ashariyya because of their Persian background, but they could never acknowledge their imam as the prince of the faithful, since their status as rulers rested on the recognition of the Abbasid caliph whose authority was real, if not his power. The Ithna {ashariyya were a peaceful community because the absence of their imam made war impossible. Their doctrine was eschatological: they taught that everyman must be prepared at all times for the arrival of the Mahdi, or else be doomed.

23 The imam Mahdi is al-MuntaÂar ‘the eagerly awaited one’; He will ride on a cloud together with the angles who helped Muhammad at the battle of Badr (Koran 3, 120-125), as well as the Ahl al-Badr, the 313 companions of the Prophet who fought the battle of Badr, whom God will call from their graves and make them the AÒÌab al-Mahdi, the Companions of the Mahdi, who is the Prophet Muhammad himself risen and returned. A select few of the faithful of later times will be raised from their sleep to fight in the Mahdi's army, the highest honour for any man. Swords will descend from heaven each with the name of a mujahid engraved on it. Each man will be sent by the Mahdi to a region of the earth where he will rule in the name of Allah and His Mahdi to eradicate all non-Muslims and will rule in immortality. See MOHAMMED ALI AMIR MOEZZI, Le Guide Divin dans le Shi'isme Originel, Paris 1992, p. 292. 24 Al-Îallaj was originally one of the missionaries of the Eighth Imam Ali Reza, see E.G. BROWN, A Literary History of Persia, Cambridge University Press 1964, I, p. 429. THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 247

This philosophy caused the imamiyya to live in expectation of the Last Day, patiently awaiting the Mahdi and so, not participating in the political strife of their time. Their ideas were propagandised by the manaqibi or manaqib-khan, a bard or a type of epic singer of whom there were a great many active in the Arabic and Persian speaking lands, singing the praises of the imams, beginning with the heroic exploits of Ali the ‘Killer of the Infidel’, followed by the sad tale of his son Îusayn's tragic death at Kerbela}. We possess no manuscripts of these songs. The best known poet whose work survived lived much later, in the 12th century: Qivami of Rayy25. Meanwhile the principles of Shi{i law were also formulated and documented26. One very important historical movement gave the Buwayhids27 a good reason to stay on good terms with the Imamiyya as well as with the Abbasids. The Fatimids, a dynasty of war leaders, traced their (disputed) descent to Isma{il, Ja{far's second son who died before his father. They maintain that Isma{il's son MuÌammad should have become imam, so that they are a branch of the large group of the Isma{ili Shi{a. They called themselves Fatimids in order to emphasize their descent from Fa†ima, the daughter of the Holy Prophet himself. The Fatimids swept through North Africa and in 358/969 their caliph Al-Mu{izz took Cairo. Soon they took Mecca as well as Medina (359/970), by means of gold rather than the sword. It was only in Syria that they were brought to a halt by the rulers who were backed by the Buwayhids. This explains why the Buwayhids had no reason to be pro-Isma{ili but tended to pro- tect the Ithna {asharis, archenemies of the Fatimids, whose propaganda was well organised throughout Islam. However, the Buyids had other concerns: the Ghaznavids, a Turkish dynasty, swept down from Central Asia and Mas{ud ibn MaÌmud took Rayy in 420/1029. However, Baghdad, in 447/1055, was taken by the Seljuq Toghril Bey, who proclaimed himself sultan of Iran. The has seldom been a quiet area! Toghril entered Baghdad with the words (according to some chroniclers) “I will deliver the Caliph of the Shi{a heresy”. This signified the end of the good times for the Ithna {ashariyya; Rayy, their revered centre of learning, was destroyed by Mas{ud. However, the cities of Iraq and Iran already contained large

25 E.G. Browne II, p. 344; for the manaqibi see A. Bausani in John Boyle (see note 17), V, 293-5. 26 S. Nasr in EI IV, p. 277. 27 For the Buwayhids see EI I, p. 1350. 248 J. KNAPPERT minorities of imamis who were well established and no longer poor; rich people are not so easy to persecute. To make matters more complicated, there were in Iraq also Bedouin tribes who acknowledged the superior claims of the Isma{ili Fatimids to the caliphate, the supreme command of Islam. However, even the mighty Fatimids had their crises of succession. When the great Fatimid caliph Al-MustanÒir died in 487/1094, he left two sons, Al-Musta{li, who succeeded as caliph in Cairo, and Nizar, who was recognized as the true imam by the Isma{ilis of Iran, who were henceforth known as the Nizaris. The Nizaris remained archenemies of the Seljuqs and when they succeeded in murdering the great Seljuq vizier (‘prime-minister’) NiÂam al-Mulk in 485/1092, it suddenly became evident that they were a political force to reckon with. This murder, which weakened the state considerably, was the first ‘assasination’ in history, since the Nizaris were also known as the Assassins, perhaps because they used Ìashish to make their fighters ‘high’ before battle, or before sending them out on a suicide mission28. While the Isma{ilis of both branches, as well as the Sunni Seljuqs, wasted their energy in furious warfare and murdering, the Ithna {asharis, following the rule of their fifth imam, had the custom to ‘work and wait for better times to come’. They built schools for their young leaders in Iraq, western and northern Iran and Kirman, and filled libraries with their books. Several imamis occupied high positions at the Seljuq court in Isfahan as well as in the caliphal palace at Baghdad. The imamis of the Shi{a practised what they called taqiya, lit. ‘fear’, here meaning ‘respectful silence, secrecy’, which meant that they told no one about their political opinions so that their superiors did not know they employed their enemies. Meanwhile, the imamis built their schools in Qumm, Qazvin and Nishapur in Iran as well as in Kashan and Rayy, where again fine scholars taught and Shi{a law was developed. Then a disaster struck Iran and Iraq which hit all the communities equally. The Mongol invasion destroyed both the Seljuq empire and the famous Nizari centre, the fortress Alamut in 655/1257. Iran was so totally destroyed that some of its finest cities were never rebuilt. The Mongols sacked Baghdad in 656/1258, a black year in the history of Islam because for the first time in 600 years, the rulers of the Middle

28 See EI I, p. 353-4; III, p. 253-4; IV, p. 201-206; John BOYLE (see note 17 & 25), Cambridge History of Iran, (5) p. 66-102; E.G. BROWNE, A Literary History of Persia II, p. 193-215; Henri Corbin (see note 15) Hist. Philos. Islam., p. 39-40. THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 249

East were anti-Islamic. The last Abbasid caliph was killed in the melee so that the caliphate of Islam ceased to exist. With it disappeared the legitimate government of the Sunni Muslims, so that all of a sudden the Shi{a gained an unexpected propaganda asset: legitimacy in the eyes of all Muslims. Muslims have never been loyal to a non-Muslim govern- ment, even when they obeyed it on the surface. The Shi{a organisation now offered them a legal framework for the war against the victorious Mongol pagans, as well as a sacred ruler who would uphold Islamic law even though he was invisible. Indeed, his invisibility is a guarantee for the sinlessness of the hidden imam, so he will always be pure and worthy to rule Islam. He rules only by the scholars' consensus. That will guarantee a modicum of democracy and high standards. The seventh ruler of the Mongol dynasty, Ghazan (1295-1304) was the first to convert to Islam, destroying his ancestors' Buddha statues; he favoured the Shi{a. His brother Uljaytu (1304-1316) was definitely a Shi{i, but his successors were Sunnis. Although the Mongols massacred entire cities in Iran so that many Sayids (descendants of Îusayn) per- ished, yet it was during their empire that, in the second half of the 7th/13th century, the doctrines and laws of the Ithna ‘ashariyya were formulated and canonized by the great NaÒir al-Din ™usi (d. 672/1274) and his disciple {Allama Îilli (d. 726/1326). The former was a philoso- pher, the latter a jurist: a perfect team. Îilli, also known as Jamaluddin Îasan Mu†ahhar, was the first scholar to be honoured with the epithet Ayatollah; he persuaded the Mongol Uljaytu to make Shi'ism the state religion by placing the imams' names on the imperial coinage29. Many early ∑ufi scholars (Ghazali and {Abd al Qadir Jilani) had lived in Baghdad and influenced those who came after them. The seventh/ thirteenth century also saw the great efflorescence of ∑ufi poetry, for which Persian became the universal vehicle; the chief poets were {A††ar (d. 618/1221), Iraqi (d. 688/1289, EI III p. 1269), (d. 672/1273) and Sa{di (d. 690/1291)30. Note that mysticism also flourished in Europe at that time, as if history had led to maturity in human thinking universally.

29 See J.T.P. de Bruijn in EI, vol. IV, p. 30; E.G. BROWNE, op. cit., vol. II p. 445; Henri CORBIN, op. cit., p. 54-5; J.A. BOYLE, Cambridge Hist. of Iran, V, p. 484 et seq.; John Norman HOLLISTER, The Shi{a of India, London 1953, p. 25; Necessity of Imam, p. 120; S.H. Nasr in EI IV,; p. 277-8. 30 EI I, p. 752-5 (by Helmut Ritter); E.G. BROWNE, op. cit. chapter IX; Arthur John ARBERRY, Classical Persian Literature, London 1953, chapters VIII & IX; Edward B. EASTWICK, The Rose-Garden of Sh. Muslihu'd-Din Sa{di of Shiraz, London 1974; AFZAL IQBAL, Life and Work of Rumi, Lahore 1974; A.J. ARBERRY, Tales from the , 2 vols., London, 1961; FARID UD-DIN ATTAR, The Conference of the Birds, Penguin 1984. 250 J. KNAPPERT

The cosmology of the Ithna{ashariyya31 has been influenced consid- erably by of this period, but in Iran the process also evolved in the other direction, as the poets were influenced by Shi{i thinking and cosmology, more than they could admit. However, during this same period, the Shi{i writings become less peaceable, more militant, partly because many of their leaders were executed by the Mongol government which considered them politically dangerous. There was, however, a deeper and more powerful cause of this transformation: Iranian history. For a century the Mongols destroyed the towns of Iran, and after each sacking they carefully slaughtered the inhabitants, often coming back suddenly when the survivors had come out of hiding, to exterminate the remaining citizens, slaves, infants and animals included. The Mongols had an insatiable bloodlust. The survivors of such genocides went through a very fine evolution- ary sieve. They had to live in caves in the mountains, only coming out at night to carve some meat from dead horses or catch a few rats in the dead cities. They never stayed in one place longer than there was food, for fear of being betrayed. As soon as they saw other people they fled, for people are the most dangerous animals. This was the life which the Shi{a had to share. No wonder Iran lost so much of its high civilization. From a peaceful scholarly community, the imamis grew into a militant organisation, its leaders preaching but never staying long in one place, ready to take action as soon as an opportunity presented itself. Thus, while the Sufis became more pacific and otherworldly, the Imamis became more thisworldly and so, necessarily, ready to defend themselves. Mon- gol rule came to an end in 740/1340, when Iran and Iraq were divided between at least four different statelets, ruled by usurpers, except per- haps the ‘republic’ of Sabzavar. Internecine wars broke out between the rival groups and many smaller warlords and landlords. All these petty kingdoms were destroyed by the invasion of Teimur Lang (Tamerlane) in 1393 conquering Iran, Iraq and Asia Minor as well as Central Asia32.

31 See for a useful summary of their thought: Twelve-Imam Shi'ism by Syed Husain M. Jafri, in S.H. NASR, ed., Islamic Spirituality, New York, 1987, vol. I, p. 160-178; EI, vol. III, p. 390 (by S.H.M. Jafri); Annemarie SCHIMMEL, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, University of North Carolina Press 1975, p. 200; Madelung and Hodgson in EI, vol. III, p. 662-3. 32 BOYLE, Cambridge History of Iran V, p. 547, 416; SPULER, The Mongol Period, Leiden, Brill 1969, p. 66 et seq. Timur's devastation and butchery was even worse than Jengiz'. Brockelmann p. 270-3; EI, I, p. 903; IV, p. 33, 102. THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 251

After his death his successors fought over the spoils until his famous son Shahrukh brought Iran, Iraq and Turkmenia plus Uzbekistan as well as Transoxania under his sceptre (1415). In Ardabil in northwestern Iran a fraternity of Azarbaijani Imamis, or at least sympathizers of the Imamis was founded by Sheikh ∑afi al-Din IÒÌaq who died there in 735/1335 as a revered religious leader. The fra- ternity survived and became solidly Ithna{ashari, until ∑afi al-Din's descendant Isma{il conquered all Iran in 1501 (907) and founded the dynasty of the sons of ∑afi, known as the Safavids, ruling Iran for two centuries and a half, making it Shiite country, the great centre of the Ithna{ashariyya that it still is, and by so doing giving Persia back its national identity and its own destiny. As so often in history and espe- cially in the history of Islam, a state was created by the luck of the battlefield. The Safavids' inclination towards Shi'ism may have been partly motivated by the wish to rally the Shi{a against the staunch Sun- nism of their most powerful enemies: the Ottomans who took Kurdistan and Baghdad, but not Azerbeijan33. Ardabil, spelled in Turkish Erdebil, is a town in Azarbeijan 210 km east of Tabriz and 70 km west of the Caspian seacoast. Its language is one of the western Turkic languages resembling but distinct from Ottoman Turkish now called Anatolian, Anadolu. Ardabil was the capital of Azarbeijan when it was still Iranian speaking34. Armenian and Kurdish were also spoken there. The invasions of the Turkic nomads usually called Türkmens, com- menced in the late 5th/11th century under Seljuk leadership. Soon the province was ruled by Turkic speaking beys (chiefs) who imposed their language as a spoken medium though the administrative language remained Persian. In 654/1256 the Mongols invaded Azerbeijan and made it their headquarters. In 780/1378 another Turkmen tribe, the fierce Oghuzz, invaded Azerbeijan. They were divided into two warring factions, the owners of the black sheep (Kara Koyunlu) and the owners of the white sheep (Ak Koyunlu)35. The latter, having finally shaken off the

33 Francis ROBINSON, Atlas of the Islamic World, Oxford 1982, p. 45; John A. BOYLE, ed., Persia: History and Heritage, London 1978, p. 36-9; Arthur John ARBERRY, The Legacy of Persia, Oxford, 1968, p. 81, 142; Richard PETERS, Geschichte der Türken, Stuttgart 1959, p. 42-49; Alessandro BAUSANI, Die Perser von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart 1962, p. 105, 124-5; EI, vol. I, p. 311. 34 EI vol. I, p. 190, 192; M.I. ISAYEV, National Languages in the USSR: Problems and Solutions, Moscow 1977, p. 87-8. 35 EI, vol. I, p. 311; C.E. BOSWORTH, The Islamic Dynasties, Edinburgh University Press 1967, p. 167-171; BROCKELMANN, History of the Islamic Peoples, p. 281 ff.; 252 J. KNAPPERT domination of the former, founded a state which reached as far as Baghdad and Herat. Their greatest ruler was Uzun Hasan ‘Long Hasan’ (871-883/ 1466-1478), son of Ali and the daughter of the Greek king of Trebizond. We have already mentioned the learned ∑afiyu'd-Din who founded a Sufi fraternity in Ardabil; he was of Persian descent. His great-grandson Junayd ibn Ibrahim succeeded his father as sheikh of the fraternity, the Safavids, in 851/144736. He was the first master to organize his murids (disciples) as an army with military discipline. He married Uzun Hasan's sister for political reasons, but his military campaigns were not success- ful. He was succeeded by his son Îaydar in 864/1460 as master of the Safavid school of Sufism. Îaydar married his cousin, Uzun Hasan's daughter, granddaughter of the Greek king Joannes of Trebizond, which fact gave his dynasty great prestige and some legitimacy. Nevertheless his military attempts at conquest were no more successful than his father's. He was killed in 893/1488 in the same place as his father. Îaydar was the designer of a new type of headdress, a crimson turban which all his men had to wear. As a result they were called Kizilbashis ‘Redheads’, and their language Kizilbashi to distinguish it from the Iran- ian Azarbeijani language. Îaydar had three sons, Ali, Ibrahim and Isma'il. Haydar also had an enemy, his full cousin and brother-in-law Ya'qub ibn Uzun Hasan. Ya'qub persuaded his nephew Rustam to capture the three young sons of Îaydar and lock them up, which he did in 894/148937. Since the youngest, Isma'il, was born only in 892/1487 he was not yet two years old when he was imprisoned. In 899/1494 Rustam had Ali, the eldest, murdered. Isma'il escaped, helped no doubt by a faithful servant or by his father's loyal followers, who kept him hidden in Iran, never for long in the same place, until 905/1499. Although he was not yet fifteen when he emerged, he had already established a net- work of relations with his father's faithful murids in many towns of Iran and Azarbeijan. He was not only an organizer but also a poet, compos- ing songs in Kizilbashi which he taught his devoted followers. By means of these songs he made successful propaganda for his cause. He assem- bled an armed force of seven thousand devotees of the Safavid fraternity and led them into battle at Shirvan, where he avenged the death of his

R.F. TAPSELL, Monarchs, Rulers, Dynasties and Kingdoms of the World, London 1987, p. 386; EI, vol. II, p. 1106 ff. 36 TAPSELL, Monarchs & c., p. 187; BOSWORTH, Islamic Dynasties, p. 172-4; EI, vol. II, p. 598; A. BAUSANI, Die Perser, p. 130 ff. 37 EI IV, p. 186. THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 253 father and grandfather. Then he turned south and decisively defeated the Ak Koyunlu army at Sharur. Suddenly, Isma'il was master of Azarbei- jan and was crowned king in Tabriz in 907/1501. Between 1501 and 1510, Isma'il, in a number of daring expeditions, forced all the Iranian provinces to bow to his authority, from eastern Iraq to Marw and Herat. Of course, the powerful Ottoman Turks could not tolerate such a vigourous young state on their eastern border, so Selim I (Yavuz ‘the Grim’) rode east and defeated Isma'il heavily in the battle of Chaldiran in 920/151438. Selim stormed Tabriz and was ready to conquer Iran, but at that moment Al-Ghuri, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, concluded an alliance with Isma'il against the Turks. Al-Ghuri feared that Selim might be tempted to invade Syria which was then an Egyptian province. Selim did just that, and in 921/1516 inflicted a decisive victory on the Mam- luks, because he had guns and they did not. In 1517 Selim took Cairo and, after that, Mecca, so that the Sunni Muslims were forced to recog- nize him as Caliph (August 1517)39. Selim died in September 1520, Isma{il in May 1524, both as creators of great Oriental empires that would last for four centuries. Selim, a staunch Sunni, forced all the adherents of the Shi{a to go underground or take refuge in Iran. It might have been expected that Isma{il and his successor Tahmasp I (1524-1574) would have rewarded the support of their religious frater- nity with some form of control in the administration, but both rulers were too astute for that. The influence of the imami leaders diminished under Tahmasp40. Nevertheless, Iran gradually became an Ithna {ashari nation. Isma{il had enjoined his subjects to pray according to the imami rules during his royal address at his enthronement41 in 1501, but the conversion from Sunnism to Shi'ism was effected by the mullahs, the numerous {ulama} of the imamiyya in their sermons to the people. The Kizilbashis were too divided among themselves, too much a military order to have much influence on the intellectual life in Iran. Moreover, they were Turkic speaking Azarbeijanis not accepted as true Persians by the majority of the population, nor was their level of education sufficiently elevated for such a task. Sunni Sufism had been dominant in Iran for at least two centuries. Now it was astonishing to see the imamis, always obstinately resistant to the authorities' attempts at

38 BROCKELMANN, op. cit., p. 288; BAUSANI, op. cit., p. 133. 39 BROCKELMANN, op. cit., p. 290; PETERS, op. cit., p. 54. 40 R.M. SAVORY in EI IV, p. 35; BAUSANI, op. cit., p. 136-7. 41 De Bruijn in EI IV, p. 49; Bausani, p. 135. 254 J. KNAPPERT converting them, now that they themselves had the power of the state behind them, diligently converting the Sunnis to their Shi{a. It is true that the imamiyya already had an organisational network (wikala) stretching as far as Azarbeijan, Qumm, Rayy (near Tehran), Khorasan and Meshed as early as c. 94042.

Appendix: The Deccan Most of the Deccan is a high plateau bordered on the northern side by the river Narmada. Along the western slopes, where the plateau gently descends to the western Indian Ocean, here called Arabian Sea, there flourished during the later Middle Ages a dynasty of rulers who are known in history as the Bahmanids with their capital at Ahsanabad- Gulbarga from 748/1347 onwards. Ahmad I Shihabu'd-Din, reigned 825/1422-839/143643, received the honorific title Al- ‘the Friend (of God)’ by Mola Qu†b al-Din of Kirman (died 1431) who converted the monarch to Shi'ism, bringing him a green crown with twelve points signifying the twelve imams. It appears that the king of Kirman at that time, Ni{mat-ullah, was widely regarded as a great sage whose reputa- tion spread all the way to India, where his Shi'i envoys were well received. Ahmad I's son and successor Ahmad II, 839/1436-862/1458, followed in his father's footsteps. Later in the 9th/15th century, the Bahmanid kingdom fell apart, like so many Islamic sultanates that were not based on a national identity like Iran and Turkey. In the Deccan, five kinglets set themselves up as inde- pendent rulers. After c. 895/1490 these five states were partly merged to form the three states of Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmadnagar. Bijapur was seized by a slave called Yusuf who styled himself Yusuf {Adil Shah. He invented a story that he was a half-brother of the Ottoman sul- tan Muhammad II who wanted to have him executed, but his, Yusuf's, mother sent him out of the country and gave the executioner a handsome Circassian boy to behead. Yusuf arrived in Ardabil among the followers of ∑afiyu'd-Din who converted him to their imami faith, after which he found his way to India somehow as a slave and was sold to a certain Mahmud Gawan, a Persian merchant, who adopted him as a son. Yusuf later said that he had seen the Prophet Muhammad in a dream, who

42 JASSIM M. HUSSAIN, The Occultation of the Twelfth Imam, London 1982, p. 95. 43 EI, vol. I, p. 923; TAPSELL, op. cit., p. 431; HOLLISTER, op. cit. (see note 29), p. 104; BOSWORTH, op. cit., p. 205-7. THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVERS 255 told him that he must establish the ‘Faith of the Twelve Imams’ in Bijapur. Yusuf said he promised the Prophet to do his bidding and so he appointed learned sheikhs of that faith to teach his subjects the Ithna{ashariyya religion. Yusuf's son, Isma{il-Shah (died 951/1534) exchanged embassadors with Isma'il I, the Shah of Iran who shared his religion and recognized him as an independent monarch of Bijapur44. As happens so often in history, important and lasting conditions, such as the arrival of a religion, are the consequences of a series of accidents, such as battles won or lost, the arrival of scholars at the crucial moment, confusion in the country so that a new ruler can take power with only a small band of followers, and many other fortuitous circumstances. That is how the Shi{a survived in Iran and India45.

Barnet, Herts. EN5 2HW (England) J. KNAPPERT 40 Fitzjohn Avenue

44 HOLLISTER, op. cit., p. 111-115; Percival SPEAR, The Oxford History of India, Oxford 1958, p. 292-302. 45 Further reading: ALI, Molvi Syed Ahmad Mohani, SaÌifa i Kamilah or the Prayers of Imam Zayn al Abidin, 2 parts, Lucknow 1931. Anon., ‘Shi'ism in the Indo- Sub-Continent’ in: Shi'ite Encyclopaedia, Beirut 1966, p. 48 ff. Anon., Al-Murajaat – The Right Path, Karachi 1972. BROWNE, Edward G., A Year amongst the Persians, Cambridge 1972. COOPER, John, ed., Alserat: Selected Articles, publ. by the Muhammadi Trust of Great Britain, London 1983. BOSWORTH, C.E. and HILLENBRAND, C. eds., Qajar Iran, 1800-1925, Edinburgh Uni- versity Press, 1984. ELWELL-SUTTON, L.P., Modern Iran, London 1941. DONALDSON, Dwight M., The Shi'ite Religion, London 1933. FYZEE, Asaf A.A., A Shi'ite Creed, Oxford University Press 1942. LEWIS, Bernard, The Assassins, London 1967. LAMBTON, A.K.S., Landlord and Peasant in Persia, London 1970. FISCHER, M.M.J., Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution, Cambridge, Mass. 1980. PELLY, Sir L., The Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain, London 1879. NASR, S.H., Spiritual Movements, Philosophy and Theology in the Safavid Period, in L. LOCKHART & P. JACKSON, ed., Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, Cambridge 1986. do. Islamic Spirituality, 2 vols., New York 1991. SAVORY, R.M., Iran under the Safavids, Cambridge Univ. Pr. 1980.

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