THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND the Pronouncement of a Heresy

CHAPTER ONE

THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND

The pronouncement of a heresy charge (takfīr) against Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī from about 1822, and the subsequent rejection of the Shaykhi school—despite vigorous declarations by its various leaders as to its absolute orthodoxy—by the mainstream of Twelver Shiʿism, have tended to obscure the originally close links of Shaykh Aḥmad with the repre- sentatives of Shiʿi orthodoxy and the early development of his school as a major element in the resurgent Shiʿism of the early Qajar period. Although the French scholar Henry Corbin went to considerable pains to demonstrate the position of Shaykhism as the latest and, for him, profoundest development of the metaphysical tradition within Iranian Islam,1 his emphasis on the theosophical elements of the school and its association with what has always been at best a suspect yet toler- ated strand in Shiʿi thought has again clouded both the real reasons for al-Aḥsāʾī’s “excommunication” and the place of his thought within the orthodox development of Shiʿism in the first years of the Qajar restoration. More seriously, perhaps, Corbin’s attempt to portray the Shaykhi school as a consistent and homogeneous movement from the time of al-Aḥsāʾī to that of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Riḍāʾ Khān Ibrāhīmī [died 1979, ed.], the last Kirmānī head of the school, has concealed several important shifts in doctrine and avoided the problem of changing relationships between the Shaykhi community and the main body of Shiʿism, as well as the influence of these fluctuations on the expression of doctrine in the literature of the school. Not only Shaykh Aḥmad and his successor Sayyid Kāziṃ Rashtī, but also Sayyid ʿAlī-Muḥammad Shīrāzī, the Bāb (1819–1850), in many of his early works, specifically and categorically condemned as unbelievers

1 See Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien (Paris: Gallimard, 1971–2), vol. 4, pp. 205–300; idem, Terre céleste et corps de resurrection de l’Iran mazdéen à l’Iran shîʾite (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1960), pp. 183–7, 281–401; idem, “L’École Shaykie en Théologie Shîʾite,” Annuaire—École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section—Sciences Religieuses (Paris) (1960–61), pp. 1–59. In Terre céleste (p. 183), Corbin observes of the Shaykhi school “qu’elle marque une revivification puissante de la gnose shîʾite primitive et des enseignements contenus dans les traditions remontant aux saints Imâms.” 10 chapter one

Sūfīs,̣ philosophers (ḥukamāʾ), “Platonists” (ishrāqiyūn), and others,2 while all three laid much emphasis on the ‘orthodox’ nature of their doctrines. As we shall see, the Babis at the inception of the sect were almost as notable for their rigorous orthodoxy and orthopraxy as they were later to become known for their extreme heterodoxy. Later writers, concentrating on the “heretical” elements in Shaykhi and Babi teaching, have lost sight of the powerful bond that existed in both cases with traditional Twelver Shiʿi teaching, and have failed to explore the relationship between the Shaykhi and Babi movements on the one hand and orthodox Shiʿism on the other. The tendency of later writers to ignore or play down the significance of Shaykhism and Babism has likewise helped draw attention away from the fact that both movements were an integral feature of the development of Shiʿism in Iran during the Qajar period, and that the shaping and exposition of Shaykhi and Babi doctrine owed as much to the general conditions of the period as did the molding of what was considered as orthodox thinking. Before attempting to consider Shaykhism and Babism as separate phenomena, therefore, it will be essential first to survey briefly the religious background against which they developed. Although the main area of investigation for our present purposes will be the developments in Shiʿi thought in Arab Iraq and Iran in the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, it seems to me both practical and theoretically sound to begin with a discussion of certain earlier, more general developments in Shiʿism. To be specific, I propose to reconsider briefly the religious history of Shiʿism in the period following the “occultation” of the twelfth Imām in 260/872 in terms of charismatic and legal authority and the rou- tinization of charisma. I intend to make such a reappraisal, not in the hope of contributing anything original to the discussion of Weberian

2 “He [Shaykh Aḥmad] opposed the Platonists, the Stoics, and the Aristotelians (ḥukamā-yi ishrāqīyīn wa rawāqīyīn wa mashāʾīn) on most questions, and insisted on refuting them and demonstrating the falsity of their arguments”, (Sayyid Kāziṃ Rashtī, Dalīl al-mutaḥayyirīn ([s.l.: s.n.], 1276 [1859]), p. 21; cf. ibid., pp. 39, 50–2.) See also Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, Sharḥ al-ziyāra al-jāmiʿa al-kabīra (Tehran, 1267 [1850]), part 1, pp. 24, 70; Sayyid Kāziṃ Rashtī, introduction to his translation of the Ḥ ayāt al-nafs by Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, 2nd ed. (Kirman, 1353 Sh [1974]), pp. 5, 10–11; idem, Risāla-yi usūḷ al-ʿaqāʾid, vol. 4, Iran National Bahaʾi Manuscript Collec- tion (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Milli-yi Matbụ̄ ʿāt-i Amrī, [c. 1977]), pp. 10, 13, 61–2, 63–4, 202; Ḥ ājj Muḥammad Bāqir Hamadānī, Kitāb al-Ijtināb ([s.l.: s.n.], 1308 [1890]), pp. 113–4. For the views of the Bāb on these groups, see various khutuḅ in Iran National Bahaʾi Archives (INBA) 5006 C, pp. 317–35, 339–40, 354–63.