A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is

by John McHugo

  One branch originated in the Iraqi countryside of the Sawad near Kufa, among followers whom Abdullah the Elder had either left behind or who had been converted by da‘is he sent from Salamiyya. In 875 or 878, a da‘i won to the cause a man called Hamdan Qarmat, who gave his name to the powerful movement known as the Qaramitah, the Qarmatis (the form we will use), or even in an anglicised form as the Carmathians. Hamdan and his brother-in-law Abdan became local leaders of the movement, and spread the word among the nomadic and semi-nomadic people of the area who were soon causing havoc for the Abbasid authorities in Iraq and Syria. The word also spread among the tribes and in the oases of the southern coast of the Persian Gulf and its hinterland, where the movement was able to take control of a large area. This included the port of Qatif, which the Qarmatis took in 899.

  Quite coincidentally, 899 turned out to be a very significant year for the Ismaili movement as a whole. Abdullah the Elder’s grandson, Muhammad Abu‘l-Shalaghlagh, died. His nephew Abdullah is disparagingly known to history as Ubaydullah or ‘little Abdullah’, as he was dubbed by the movement’s opponents. Ubaydullah proclaimed himself to be a direct descendant of Muhammad bin Ismail, and despatched word to all Ismaili da‘is to inform them that he was in fact the true Mahdi. This split the Ismaili movement. The Qarmatis refused to acknowledge him, and embarked on an attempt to spread their own movement instead.

  The Qarmatis succeeded in raising support among the Bedouin of the Syrian desert; they besieged Damascus and devastated many of the cities to the north. They took the opportunity to sack Salamiyya, as well as Tiberias, before the Abbasid authorities were able to regain control. They were also active in the area south-east of Iraq, and sacked Basra in 923. The following year, as mentioned in Chapter Four, they attacked and pillaged the pilgrimage caravan to Mecca. Soon they were threatening Baghdad itself. They also committed a massive act of sacrilege in 930 when they removed the sacred black stone from the Ka‘ba and took it off in triumph to their bases in eastern Arabia.

  Soon thereafter, however, the Qarmatis started to feud among themselves. The movement appeared to have peaked, although it continued to control a large area along the Gulf coast, inland from Bahrain. It would flare into life again on several occasions later in the ninth century. Subsequently, during a period that lasted from the thirteenth century until at least the fifteenth, the Qarmatis of Greater Bahrain would convert to Twelver Shi‘ism. One factor behind this may have been that Sunnis found Twelvers less threatening.1

  II

  The Qarmatis shook the Abbasids, but a far greater threat to them would come from the other main branch of the Ismaili movement, which sprang from the activities of Abdullah the Elder at Salamiyya. This was from the dynasty known as the Fatimids, which was founded by Ubaydullah when he declared himself Mahdi in 899. Forced to flee by the Qarmatis when they rejected his claim, he went to Ifriqiya (roughly modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria) where a da‘i, Abu Abdullah al-Shi‘i, had already spread the Ismaili message among the Kutama Berbers of the Atlas to the west. Just as the Caliph Mansour had disposed of Abu Muslim, so Ubaydullah disposed of Abu Abdullah once he had taken control of Ifriqiya and established his capital at Qayrawan in 909. He claimed authority as imam over all Muslims and their lands. He supplemented the power of his Berber tribesmen with slave soldiers who were Black Africans and Europeans, and built a strong navy. A new and very powerful rival to the Abbasids had been formed. The Fatimids claimed that they were the true caliphate, that of the descendants of Ali and Fatima. The Fatimid Caliph was the imam. He had a degree of authority equal to that of the Prophet, save for the fact that he did not receive new, Qur’anic revelation. For a while it seemed that they were going to sweep all before them.

  In 969, a Fatimid army crossed the deserts of North Africa and seized Egypt. The taking of Egypt by the Fatimid general al-Jawhar, acting in the name of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mu‘iz, was largely achieved by negotiation, although force was used when required. The arrival out of the desert of a huge army composed largely of fierce Berbers would no doubt have had a salutary effect on those inclined to resist. The old administration of government seems not to have been overthrown so much as absorbed, and notable figures such as the chief judge of Fustat (then Egypt’s leading city) and the preacher at Egypt’s oldest mosque – who was even a member of the Abbasid family – were permitted to continue in their posts.2

  Jawhar established a new city which he called al-Qahira, or Cairo, less than an hour’s walk from Fustat. Initially, the new Cairo would be a city for the Fatimid elite and army, where they could worship according to the Ismaili rites at their new mosque called Al-Azhar. An implication of the construction of this shining (and well-fortified) city was that the Fatimids would keep themselves apart from the Egyptian population, both Sunni Muslims and Copts (the Copts, the Egyptian Christians, were almost certainly still a significant majority). Four years after the submission of Egypt, the Caliph Mu‘iz arrived from Ifriqiya, even bringing with him the bodies of his ancestors to be reburied in Egypt. He was forcefully making the point that Cairo, not one of the relatively remote cities of Ifriqiya, was now his capital and the centre of the true religion.

  Economically, Egypt began an era of prosperity under the Fatimids, and the gold coins minted in the name of Mu‘iz were valued everywhere for their high and reliable gold content. The trade route to India and the Far East moved southwards from the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Syria. Instead, cargoes were taken up the Red Sea to Egypt and the Mediterranean. It was around this time that Egypt displaced Iraq as the richest province in the central Islamic lands.

  Although much attention was paid to training da‘is and spreading the Ismaili message in lands which were not yet under Fatimid sway, it seems that little effort was made to convert the broad mass of people under their rule to the new creed. In fact, there is some evidence that the Fatimids were indifferent as to whether or not the ordinary people converted. This may have been a reason for their success. The most notable change was that prayers in the mosques were now said in the name of the Fatimid, not the Abbasid, Caliph. Shi‘i, rather than Sunni, law was used in the courts (although it was sometimes enforced by judges who remained Sunni). The distinctive Shi‘i call to prayer was introduced, and Shi‘i commemorations such as the day of Ghadir Khumm and the anniversary of Hussein’s martyrdom on the 10th of Muharram became public events. These changes may have caused resentment, and there were some disturbances, especially over the introduction of the Shi‘i commemorations, but they did not shake Fatimid control. Such religious strife as took place in Fatimid Egypt was largely between Christians and Muslims, rather than within the Muslim family itself.

  Now that they had absorbed Egypt, the Fatimids set out to extend their power into Greater Syria, where they soon found themselves in open warfare with both the Qarmatis and local Turkish warlords who were Sunni. Although they came to dominate the southern portions of Greater Syria, and were able to integrate some of the Turks into their own military system, Greater Syria with its many walled cities, forts, mountain ranges and deserts would prove a constant source of instability and theatre of war for them. On the other hand, in 975, Mu‘iz was acknowledged as the protector of the Hajj. Prayers were said in his name in front of the pilgrims assembled in Mecca from all over the Muslim world. The Fatimids never established direct control in the Hejaz, but they paid subsidies to the local Bedouin to make sure they left the holy cities and the pilgrims in peace. They thus displaced the Abbasids from the role which they had once played as patrons of the Hajj, and which had been hugely important to their legitimacy. This must have been a profound humiliation for the Sunni Caliphate. The Fatimids also ensured that the Qarmatis left Mecca and the pilgrims alone. Even before they took Egypt, they had successfully negotiated with the Qarmatis to return the black stone to the Ka‘ba. In 992, their caliphate was also acknowledged in Yemen. But the high watermark of their power was in 1058–59, when a soldier of fortune allied to them took Baghdad and prayers were said
in the city’s mosques in the name of the Fatimid, rather than the Abbasid, Caliph.

  The entry of the Sunni Seljuqs into Baghdad put an end to the brief period when prayers in the name of the Fatimid Caliph had been said in the city of the Abbasids. The establishment of the Seljuq Empire placed a block on expansion by the Fatimids, and the Seljuqs drove them from most of Greater Syria. Gradually, the Fatimids declined until they were only a regional power based in Egypt. Their Ismaili Caliphate was finally extinguished by Saladin the Ayyubid in 1171, a few years after he had taken control of Egypt. This was when the Friday prayers in the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo were said in the name of the Abbasid Caliph for the first time. Saladin ensured that there would never be another Fatimid imam. He had all sixty-three male members of the dynasty imprisoned for the rest of their lives, while all female members were kept captive for six months to confirm that they were not carrying a child that might have continued the line.

  III

  There was another sect that emerged from Fatimid Egypt. In 996, an eleven-year-old boy became caliph. His regnal name was Hakim. Four years later, when he was still only fifteen, he murdered the eunuch Barjuwan, who was his tutor and the person meant to supervise and, if necessary, restrain this young and inexperienced monarch. Hakim now took complete control himself. He would prove to be enigmatic and unpredictable throughout his rule. This ended when he disappeared, presumed murdered, in 1021.

  It is sometimes suggested that he was mentally unstable, possibly a sufferer from a personality disorder or a psychopath, although, as the medieval historian and Islamic specialist Hugh Kennedy has pointed out, his madness ‘was always guided by a kind of shrewdness’.3 There were no major rebellions against him, and he managed to deal effectively with external threats, such as the attempt to invade Egypt by Bedouin from Cyrenaica led by al-Walid bin Hisham, who was of Umayyad ancestry. He also managed to keep in check the latent rivalry and tensions between the Berber and Turkish soldiers of the Fatimid Empire. Hakim was certainly one of those absolute rulers to whom it is dangerous to get too close. Many of those who were his immediate subordinates were executed, often apparently on a whim. He also persecuted Christians and Jews at times. One notorious act was his order to demolish the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, an event that was a factor in sparking the wars we now call the Crusades. On the other hand, his decrees were often inconsistent and could be abruptly reversed – as when he banned Christians from showing crosses in public, then subsequently issued an abrupt order commanding them to wear crosses whenever they went out of doors.

  It is not easy to detect a religious ideology behind his decrees. Some could be construed as enforcement of the Sharia, but others suggest the reverse, or are quite unintelligible in Sharia terms. It may seem unsurprising for a caliph to ban alcohol, although the Sharia has no problem with Christians and Jews drinking it. But why ban eating watercress and fish without scales, or playing chess? Why did he issue commands that all dogs should be killed, or that the markets should open at night rather than during the day? As time went on, he became increasingly retiring and ascetic, and is rumoured to have considered himself divine. He took to wearing ragged clothes like some Sufis and to disappearing in order to wander in the rocky hills that overlook the Nile Valley to the east of Cairo. Some of his measures may have been intended to placate the Sunni majority among Egypt’s Muslims, such as forbidding the cursing of Abu Bakr and Umar. On the other hand, this could be construed as an example of the indifference he sometimes showed towards religious practice as he grew older. He also neglected the celebrations that marked the Hajj and other events in the Muslim religious calendar, and is said to have been seen eating in public during Ramadan.

  His reign ended in 1021 when he failed to return from one of his walks or rides in the Muqattam hills behind Cairo. He is generally presumed to have been murdered on the orders of his sister, Sitt al-Mulk, who became the real power behind the Fatimid throne in the years following his disappearance. In any event, his body was never found. This left it possible for followers to believe that he was still alive, or that he had gone into occultation.

  Three or four years before his disappearance a new and revolutionary idea had appeared: Hakim was, indeed, God incarnate. Although there is no firm evidence that Hakim himself believed this, he did not take action to stop it being preached. Nevertheless, one of the propagators of this idea, Muhammad bin Ismail ad-Darazi, was murdered by some outraged Turkish soldiers. The movement that ad-Darazi had been leading engaged in very active missionary work; but Hakim’s successor, Zahir, took firm action against it, and it was soon ruthlessly suppressed by the Fatimids in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt. Despite this, the movement spread into Greater Syria where it took root in some areas, especially on parts of Mount Lebanon, and has developed into what we now know as the Druze faith. Druze communities today exist in parts of Lebanon, the Hawran plateau and Golan Heights in southern Syria, a few places elsewhere in Syria, and the Galilee in northern Israel.

  The Druze teach that God had originally withdrawn from humanity after the fall of Adam, but had been reincarnated in the Fatimid caliphs up to and including Hakim. In response to humanity’s ingratitude, the Divine Presence has now withdrawn once more. A new era of God’s absence, or occultation, had begun. This was a new test (imtihan) for the faithful. The Druze divide themselves into two categories: the ‘uqqal (sing. ‘aqil) who are the religious scholars (literally: ‘the intelligent’); and the juhhal (sing. jahil), the unlearned (literally: ‘the ignorant’). Possibly reflecting the Fatimid practice that the secrets of the faith should be known only to an initiated elect, knowledge of the inner teachings of the Druze faith are restricted to the ‘uqqal, the religious scholars. To this day, not all the Druze scriptures have been published. These include many letters written by the early missionaries who spread the new faith.4 Today, the Druze do not proselytise, admit converts or marry non-Druze. They have thus, like some other small sects, developed into a quasi-tribe.

  IV

  The Fatimid Caliphate, like that of the Abbasids, is remembered today for its vanished glories. After the end of the dynasty, Ismailism seems to have disappeared in Egypt, but Ismailism itself survived.

  A feature of the Fatimid Caliphate was the fact that the succession on the death of a caliph was generally smooth – a striking contrast to succession under the Umayyads and Abbasids, which often led to prolonged periods of civil war. This was the case even when caliphs were still boys at the time they came to the throne. The eleven-year-old Hakim was not the only example of this. His successor, Zahir, was sixteen, and the latter’s successor, Mustansir, was only seven. Nevertheless, strife over the succession to the office of caliph did eventually come to the Fatimid Caliphate when Mustansir died after a long reign of nearly sixty years in 1094.

  Mustansir – as was his right – had designated his elder son, Nizar, as his successor; but the vizier and head of the army, al-Afdal bin Badr al-Jamali, instead appointed Musta‘li, Nizar’s younger brother, who happened to be al-Afdal’s son-in-law. Nizar objected and tried to start a rebellion, but was arrested and executed, together with his sons. This led to a schism. Hassan-i Sabbah, a Fatimid da‘i who had succeeded in seizing a number of castles in parts of the Elburz mountains in Iran, broke away. Hassan-i Sabbah had made his headquarters at Alamut, one of the most remote of these castles, and effectively established a small Ismaili fiefdom from which he carried out raids against the surrounding Seljuqs and the Baghdad Caliphate. In one of these raids, he had sent out an assassin dressed as a Sufi, who succeeded in approaching and killing the Seljuq vizier Nizam al-Mulk in 1092.

  When he heard of the killing of Nizar, Hassan-i Sabbah refused to offer allegiance to Musta‘li and made himself independent. He began his ‘new preaching’ (al-da‘wa al-jadida) in which he may have taught initially that Nizar was still alive, but had gone into occultation. In time, however, another idea became predominant instead. One of Nizar’s grandsons had become the imam and ha
d escaped to Alamut where he lived in hiding. In other words, he was in a state of occultation although Hassan-i Sabbah was in personal communication with him and had been entrusted with the task of keeping him safe.

  Hassan-i Sabbah’s followers have become known to history as ‘the Assassins’. Those who carried out the assassinations and other missions were called fida’is, an Arabic word that means literally ‘those who offer their lives as a ransom’. This is the same word that in its Arabic plural form, Fedayeen, has entered English, and is used by various revolutionary movements today to denote their fighters. For a while, the power and influence of the Assassins grew. The fear that they inspired gave them a power that was out of all proportion to their small numbers. Their castles were sometimes established near major trade routes, from which they could exact tolls. They also demanded protection money from rulers in exchange for leaving them alone, secretly infiltrated the armies of the Seljuqs, and could also occasionally be persuaded to carry out assassinations for a fee. During the period 1126–29, following more than two decades of activity in Aleppo and the Orontes valley, they managed to establish themselves in the coastal mountains of Syria. By agreement with the Seljuq military leaders in Damascus, they occupied the castle of Marqab and threatened the Crusader states along the coast. They soon held other castles, and struck terror into the hearts of local Muslim and Crusader rulers alike. They twice nearly succeeded in killing Saladin, but it was probably Fatimid and Abbasid caliphs who were the most prized targets for them. In 1130, the Fatimid Caliph Amir was assassinated, as were two Abbasid caliphs: Mustarshid in1135, and Rashid in 1138.

  Hassan-i Sabbah died in 1124, before these successful assassinations of caliphs. He designated another da‘i, Buzurg-Ummid, as his successor. The latter appointed his son Hasan to succeed him, effectively establishing a dynasty. Three years after his grandson Hasan II succeeded his father, he declared that the End Times had begun, since the Hidden Imam had abolished the Sharia. Up to this point, the Assassins had been scrupulous in observing the requirements of the Sharia, but now these had served their purpose. Unfortunately for Hasan, however, he did not carry all his community with him, and he was murdered. His son Muhammad succeeded to his place, and proclaimed that he and his father were, in reality, descendants of Nizar and that he was therefore the imam. When his own son, Jalal al-din Hasan III, succeeded him, he reintroduced the Sharia, and even established cordial relations with the Abbasid Caliph, allowing Sunni mosques to be constructed in his territories. It was an example of the normalisation of a charismatic, millennial sect, but it was not yet quite ready to become part of the mainstream. His own son Ala’al-din Muhammad III declared that the reintroduction of the Sharia had only been proclaimed in order to conceal the truth, and had been motivated by taqiyya (the practice permitted by the Shi‘is of denying one’s religion to escape persecution). He was to be the last ruler of the Iranian fiefdom of the Assassins. Alamut and some or their other castles negotiated their surrender to the Mongols, but Ala’ al-din resisted. After he was taken prisoner, he had the distinction of being taken to the court of Kublai Khan, the overlord of the Mongols, and was subsequently executed.