Twelve Infallible Men

Twelve Infallible Men Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:06PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:06PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Twelve Infallible Men Th e Imams and the Making of Shiʿism Matthew Pierce Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts ■ London, Eng land 2016 Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:06PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Copyright © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Pierce, Matthew, author. Title: Twelve infallible men : the imams and the making of shi‘ism / Matthew Pierce. Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2015040452 | ISBN 9780674737075 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Islamic hagiography. | Imams (Shiites)— Biography— History and criticism. | Shi‘ah. | Identifi cation (Religion) Classifi cation: LCC BP189.43 .P54 2016 | DDC 297.8/20922— dc23 LC rec ord available at http:// lccn . loc . gov / 2015040452 Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:06PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library For Ramona and Mae Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:06PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:06PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Contents Note on Dates and Transliteration ix Prologue 1 1 Setting the Stage 11 2 Consolation for a Community 42 3 Betrayal and the Bound aries of Faithfulness 68 4 Vulnerable Bodies and Masculine Ideals 94 5 Entering the Cosmos 127 Epilogue 147 Appendix 1 Th e Fourteen Infallibles: A Quick Guide 155 Appendix 2 Collective Biographies of the Imams: 159 A Genre Survey Abbreviations 163 Notes 165 Select Bibliography 229 Acknowl edgments 245 Index 247 Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:21PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:21PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Note on Dates and Transliteration Following standard practice in Islamic Studies, I provide the death dates of individuals in both the Islamic (hijri) and Gregorian calendars in parentheses aft er their names. All other dates are simply given in the Gregorian calendar. In further eff orts to remove unnecessary distractions to nonspecialist readers, I have refrained from using any diacritical marks in transliteration of Arabic or Persian words in the body of the book. I kept only the standard symbols for ʿayn and hamza. However, in the appen- dixes, bibliography, and endnotes, which I assume will be of greater interest to specialists, I have used the system of transliteration adopted by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress (ALA- LC). Words that have now become common in En glish, such as Islam or Sunni, are not given diacritical marks. My sole departure from the ALA- LC system is that I only render the ta barbuta into English when it is in the construct state (in which case it is a “t”). I have also used Shiʿa consistently in the nominative grammatical form rather than shift ing it to Shiʿi to reflect Arabic usage. Where En glish translations exist, I have sought to quote from those translations (most notably I. K. A. Howard’s transla- tion of Th e Book of Guidance), as indicated in the notes. Other wise, all translations are my own. ix Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:36PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:36PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Twelve Infallible Men Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:36PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:36PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Prologue n 2003 I took up residence in the shrine city of Qum, Iran, a center of IShiʿa learning rivaled only by Najaf.1 One of the most striking aspects of the popu lar religious life I encountered was the love people expressed for the imams— the twelve pure and infallible fi gures believed to have inherited the knowledge and wisdom of the Prophet Muhammad. Teachers, friends, and neighbors recounted stories of the imams’ remarkable achievements and tales of the suff ering and oppression they endured. Many of these stories were set in the distant past, drawn from books about the imams’ lives or recalled from preachers’ sermons. More striking, however, were the stories of the imams as actors in our pres ent- day world, as arbiters of divine favor in the daily lives of believers. Some people encountered imams in their dreams; others were blessed during pilgrim- ages to shrines. I came away from these encounters with a profound sense that the imams who walked the earth over a thousand years ago remain pres ent to the faithful who love them, who mourn their suff ering, and who seek their guidance with confi dence and devotion. Interestingly, the stories that I heard were not exclusively, or even primarily, focused on the most famous imams, like ʿAli or al- Husayn. Several of the imams about whom I knew little at the time, and whose historical roles seemed insig- nifi cant to outsiders, also appeared regularly in inspirational accounts. Alongside the con temporary oral culture of stories of the imams, countless books on the holy fi gures’ lives are found in Shiʿa shrines, 1 Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:46PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library 2 ■ twelve infallible men mosques, and bookstores. Ranging from small leafl ets to multivolume compendiums, these texts help sustain and authenticate popu lar concep- tions of the nature of the imams and their role in the history of Islam. But oral and written accounts propagated today do much more than doc- ument the historical lives of the imams; they also provide a framework for meaningful devotion and a system of piety rooted in the communal re- membrance of the Prophet Muhammad and his progeny. Th is system of piety is the subject of this book. Rather than seeking to recover the historical Shiʿa imams, though that may also be an impor tant task, this study explores how those imams have been remembered by the Shiʿa communities who love them. More specifi cally, Twelve Infallible Men is an analysis of a subgenre of Islamic hagiography: works containing the life stories of all twelve Shiʿa imams. Th ese collective biographies played a signifi cant role in the formation of Twelver Shiʿa identity and religious orientation from the tenth to today. Th e earliest collective biographies, and the later works that followed their example, are connected not only by a common subject matter, but by recurring themes and motifs that can help increase our understanding of the development of Shiʿism. Stories of saints off er us a win dow through which we can view the cul- tures in which the narratives are meaningful. Such stories help illumi- nate the concerns and perspectives of the religious communities in which they have been composed and transmitted, revealing the deep desires of those who tell them. As Elizabeth Castelli shows in her study of early Christian martyrdom accounts, these narratives refl ected and shaped broader Christian notions of martyrdom and its meaning in late antiquity, providing a platform through which early Christian identity was ar- ticulated. Drawing upon studies of social memory, she illustrates how these accounts functioned as loci of communal refl ection from antiquity until today.2 Th ough my proj ect focuses on Shiʿa rather than Christian martyrdom accounts, Castelli’s research has shaped my own reading of early Muslim narratives, pointing as it does to the ways that Shiʿa communities made sense of their past through vivid narratives of the suff ering of revered members of Muhammad’s family. Th e insights of another scholar of early Chris tian ity, Averil Cameron, have also sharp- ened my perspective. As she points out, Christian ity was able to “create Matthew Pierce - 9780674969087 Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/01/2016 02:03:46PM via New York University Bobst Library Technical Services and New York Medical Center Library Prologue ■ 3 its own intellectual and imaginative universe” in the context of a changing Roman Empire in part by telling the stories of the lives and deaths of Chris- tian saints. Such stories were central to the development of a “totalizing discourse” resilient enough to create an enduring universe of Christian myth.3 Th ough the early Christian context is signifi cantly diff er ent from the ʿAbbasid-era Islamic setting, Shiʿa Muslims also formulated an understanding of their community on the basis of a shared memory of former suff ering.

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