A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is

by John McHugo

  The era of the Assassins was over, but their descendants still live around Masyaf and some of their other castles in the coastal mountains of Syria, as an Ismaili sect. Their practice of political assassinations ended, and they became tolerated, after a fashion, and were even recognised by the Ottoman Empire, which taxed them. Other followers of the line of Nizar remained in Iran. Their imam became known as the Agha Khan, but he and his followers fled to Afghanistan after an unsuccessful rebellion in 1842. Shortly afterwards, they went to India and made Bombay their centre. Today the peaceful Ismailism of the Agha Khan and his followers has spread around the world.

  V

  The division between Twelvers and Ismailis is not the only ancient split among mainstream Shi‘is that survives to this day. An even earlier split occurred when Zayd, the son of Ali Zayn al-Abidin (the Fourth Imam) and half brother of Muhammad al-Baqir (the Fifth Imam), rose in rebellion in Kufa in 739 and was killed fighting against the Umayyad governor’s forces in the streets of the city. We have already noted how Zayd’s action contrasted with the quietism of the other imams after the events of Karbala. In time, his followers developed their own, distinctive legal tradition and also evolved their own theology of the imam. It is the latter that sets the Zaydis apart from other Shi‘is and leads them to a very different world-view.

  The theory of Zaydism is that any descendant of Ali is eligible to be the imam. The true imam will be the descendant of Ali who takes up his sword and establishes the imamate in battle. The Zaydis reject the notion of taqiyya, and believe that Muhammad al-Baqir, Ja‘far al-Sadiq, and the other figures revered by the Twelvers as the imams, disqualified themselves by qu‘ud, quietism or inactivity (literally, ‘sitting’). Several consequences flow from this theory. There is no Hidden Imam, and therefore the whole edifice of Twelver dialectic about what the source of authority should be for Muslims during his absence falls to the ground. This is also the case with regard to the concept of the return of the imam as the Mahdi to usher in an era of justice during the End Times. The Zaydi imam is not infallible, cannot work miracles, and cannot be a child. In practice, therefore, Zaydism is much closer to Sunni Islam than any other Shi‘i group.

  There have been two successful Zaydi kingdoms. One was set up in Tabaristan, south of the Caspian Sea, during the late ninth century. This kingdom was the background to the emergence of the Buyid family of warrior princes, whose origins were probably Zaydi. The kingdom survived in various forms into the twelfth century. The last Zaydi communities in Tabaristan seem to have accepted the Twelver Shi‘ism of the Safavid dynasty in the sixteenth century.

  The other Zaydi kingdom was in Yemen and dated back to the end of the ninth century. Zaydism took deep root in the Yemeni mountains and the country was ruled by a Zaydi imam until 1962, when the last imam was overthrown in a military coup. Over its many centuries of existence, the Zaydi imamate of Yemen was contested by local Sunni forces, as well as by foreign dynasties and states, the last of which was the Ottoman Empire. Although the Ottomans repeatedly defeated Zaydi rulers, the Zaydi conception of the imamate meant that defeating, imprisoning or executing an imam could never be decisive; another imam would invariably appear in the mountains, unsheath his sword and summon his followers to battle against the invaders. It is by no means impossible that another Zaydi imam may yet proclaim himself in Yemen. Zaydis are a minority in Yemen: a little over a third of the population of the modern Yemeni republic is Zaydi, the remainder belonging to the Shafi‘i doctrinal law school of Sunnism. Sectarianism has traditionally been absent from Yemen until now, the twenty-first century, when it has begun to spread.5

  VI

  There were other groups that were associated, sometimes unfairly, with Shi‘ism and which can be traced back to the decades following the original Arab conquest of Iraq in the 630s. They were known collectively as the ghulat (singular: ghali), the ‘exaggerators’, or ‘extremists’, to give them the labels attached to them by their opponents. These groups were firmly rejected by the Shi‘i mainstream for their unacceptable views, but the historian Moojan Momen (a specialist in Shi‘ism and Baha’i studies) refers to them as ‘Gnostic Shi‘is’ and this is the term we will use here.6 They were often considered to have gone beyond the fringes of Islam. They were more of a tradition than a sect, although sects sprang from that tradition. They seem to have taken some of the metaphysical and cosmological ideas that were swirling around in the intellectual world of late Antiquity, and recast them in an Islamised form.

  The tradition seems to begin with an obscure figure called Abdullah ibn Saba’, who approached Ali in Kufa and worshipped him as God, much to the latter’s horror and revulsion. This idea of hulul, by which God inhabits the body of a human figure who then makes utterances that actually come from God, would resurface from time to time during the Abbasid period and later. In particular, Gnostic Shi‘is would often paint the imams as divine figures. Rather than being human, the imams were actually veils through which God appears to humanity. The Neo-platonic and possibly Manichaean background to such ideas is striking. The author of the ninth-century Kitab al-Azilla, ‘The Book of Shadows’, which allegedly contained the secret revelations of Ja‘far al-Sadiq, wrote in the introduction that the soul is a divine spark imprisoned in the body. Later in the work, he proceeds to teach that Hussein did not die at Karbala. Instead, he went behind a veil and into occultation.7

  Other ideas that reoccur in Gnostic Shi‘ism are the transmigration of souls and antinomianism: the belief that the Sharia has a spiritual meaning, and that therefore there is no need to follow its precepts literally. We have already seen an example of a teaching that owed something to this in the proclamation by the Assassins that the Sharia had become redundant and should actually be proscribed. One common feature of Gnostic Shi‘ism was that its truths were known only to a spiritual elect, and should not be imparted to ordinary believers who would be incapable of grasping them.

  Two points should be made when we consider Gnostic Shi‘ism. The first is that, because of the principle of taqiyya, it is difficult to know how widely such ‘secret teachings’ and Gnostic Shi‘i ideas spread. The other is that the idea of a secret teaching was not confined to Gnostic Shi‘is. There is no doubt that the Ismailis of the Fatimid Caliphate saw themselves as an initiated elect, and described themselves as the awliya, or ‘friends’, of God. To their enemies, such as the great Sunni polymath Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) who achieved a synthesis between Sunnism and Sufism, the Fatimid Caliph and his followers were the batinis or ‘interiorists’ who taught a pernicious, secret doctrine. Al-Ghazali may have been the arch opponent of the batinis; but he himself, from the pinnacle of his immense prestige as a mainstream Sunni religious scholar, taught some religious teachings were just for the elect, and too dangerous to impart to ordinary believers.8

  We will come across Gnostic Shi‘ism again, but there is a small Shi‘i sect from a Gnostic background that is very much alive today. These are the Alawis, who used to be more commonly called the Nusayris. Alawism still preserves elements of an unbroken tradition of the Gnostic Shi‘i trend. Alawi religious scholars still read, for instance, the Book of Shadows.9 The sect can be traced back to the historical period when the split into Twelver and Ismaili branches occurred. Their beliefs stem from the teaching of Ibn Nusayr, who was (or claimed to be) a pupil of the Eleventh Imam, al-Hasan al-Askari, and based his doctrines on revelations which he said al-Hasan al-Askari imparted to him. These teachings were propagated by Abu Abdallah al-Khasibi, who lived in the Shi‘i centre of Karkh in Buyid Baghdad, where he was a court poet and presumably taught his doctrine for a while. He subsequently became an itinerant preacher, passing through Mosul and ending up in Aleppo, where he died in 969.

  At that time Aleppo was under the Hamdanid dynasty, who were Shi‘i and to whose ruler, Sayf al-Dawla, al-Khasibi dedicated his ‘Book of the Great Guidance’ (Kitab al-Hidaya al-Kubra). His grandson Abu Said al-Tabarani moved to Lattakia in 1032, which was then temporaril
y part of the Byzantine Empire. He and his followers succeeded in converting many of the people in the coastal mountains of Syria, where Alawism survives and thrives to this day – as it does in some parts of the nearby Orontes valley. This was despite later attempts to convert them to Sunnism by Egyptian Mamluk sultans (rulers who were selected by a self-perpetuating caste of slave soldiers) such as Baybars, who finally drove the Crusaders from their last possessions in Greater Syria. Since the thirteenth century, they have also faced a fatwa by the famous Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, who described them as more heretical than idolaters, and authorised jihad against them.10 The Ottomans, however, recognised them as a separate group with their own legal practices. With typical Ottoman pragmatism, they also taxed them and conscripted them into the army.

  Alawis practise taqiyya when expedient and do not disseminate their beliefs beyond circles of sheikhs who are the repositories of the sect’s truths – even though among these sheikhs, too, there are gradations in knowledge. A word of caution is therefore necessary before mentioning their secret teaching. Yet it seems that they believe that there have been seven cycles of eras of humanity, in each of which God has made Himself manifest in human form and through two persons who emanate from Him. In the last such era, Ali represents God (the ma’na, or ‘meaning’), Muhammad is the divine name (ism) or veil (hijab), and Salman al-Farisi (one of Muhammad’s Companions) is the gate (bab) through which believers may reach the divine essence. Subsequently, God also revealed himself through al-Hasan al-Askari (the Eleventh Imam of the Twelvers), for whom Ibn Nusayr was the bab.11

  VII

  It will have been noted that most of the Shi‘i sects described in this chapter share the idea of a secret, esoteric teaching – which was part and parcel of the interiorisation of the spiritual life – that is known only to an elect among the believers. There was one other trend in the early centuries of Islam where similar ideas appeared. This was in the pious movement we call Sufism. It is not a simple matter to characterise Sufism, but it must be stressed that it is not a sect. Although it is generally seen as part of Sunni Islam, it straddles both the Sunni and Shi‘i traditions and could be a vehicle for Muslims to move away from one sect towards the other, or even to join the other sect. Sufism often transcended sectarian divides, and brought people from different traditions together. It is therefore unsurprising that Sufis have converted many non-Muslims to Islam across all the centuries of Islamic history and in most (if not all) parts of the Muslim world. They often allowed the new converts to retain old customs and elements of their former beliefs, which were recast in an Islamic guise. They have therefore tended to be very tolerant of diversity.

  There is something mysterious about the origins of Sufism, which scholars have never completely explained, although it has unquestionably always been a movement among devout Muslims who deepened their religious experience through meditation on the Qur’an and following the example of the Prophet. The Arabic word sufi is generally accepted to come from suf, meaning wool, but sufi is perhaps a rather unusual-looking word in Arabic, and its etymology was a topic for discussion among Sufis at an early date. Sufis frequently wore wool, possibly in emulation of the Christian monks and ascetics of the Fertile Crescent with whom they discussed spiritual matters and for whom they frequently had a profound respect. Although the earliest figures actually called Sufis date from the eighth century, they trace their spiritual lineages back to the Prophet. The movement seems to have started as a reaction to the worldliness of the Umayyad polity. The words ‘dervish’ and ‘fakir’, which literally mean ‘poor’ in Persian and Arabic respectively, are synonyms for ‘Sufi’.

  Muhammad was seen by Sufis as having imparted esoteric wisdom to Ali, while other members of the Prophet’s family were believed to have been endowed with mystical insights and to have pursued mystical practices – something that is reminiscent of Shi‘ism.12 The undeniable closeness between Muhammad and Ali is reflected in some Sufi ideas that could easily act as a door to Shi‘ism, although not everyone who reflected on that closeness and was inspired by it went through that door. Veneration of Ali and the Prophet’s family, and feelings of tenderness towards them, were widespread among all Muslims, and certainly not confined to Shi‘is.

  Some key Sufi ideas have been traced back to Ja‘far al-Sadiq, whose commentary on the Qur’an teaches that there are four levels of understanding of the sacred text. These comprise a hierarchy: the level of the common people who understand only its literal meaning; the elite who can interpret it on a metaphorical level; the saints who are inspired with insights which come as flashes of grace; and the prophets who comprehend the reality. Such ideas would be developed in parallel by Shi‘is and Sufis, who would sometimes cross-fertilise.13 Later, as Sufism was systematised by writers such as Abu Nasr al-Sarraj (d. 988), Abu Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 1072), and perhaps most of all by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), it continued to spread and to penetrate more deeply right across Muslim society. One effect of this was the appearance of the Sufi ‘brotherhoods’ or ‘orders’ that emerged in the early twelfth century, although their origins were earlier and they claimed to trace their spiritual lineages back to the Prophet. Annemarie Schimmel, a prominent scholar of Sufism, suggested that the phenomenon of the Sufi brotherhoods may have been linked to the struggle between Sunni Islam and the batinis:

  Gradually, the preaching of the Sufis began to attract wider groups of people. The basic rules of mystical education were elaborated during the eleventh century, and in a comparatively short period of time – beginning in the early twelfth century – mystical fraternities that included adepts from all strata of society were emerging. How the crystallization process itself worked is difficult to explain; it must have been a response to the inner need of the community that was not being met by the scholasticism of orthodox theologians; people craved a more intimate and personal relationship with God and with the Prophet. One cannot exclude the possibility that the orders came into existence as a movement to counter the strong Ismaili-Batini influence against which Ghazzali had fought so relentlessly. The esoteric interpretation of Islam, which threatened its very structure, was, thus, replaced by the interiorization of orthodox Muslim teaching.14

  An example of how in later centuries Sufism could seem to come remarkably close to Shi‘ism, while technically remaining Sunni, can be seen in the Bektashi order. Its founder, Hajji Bektash, was said to have been born in eastern Iran in 1247 and to have travelled to Anatolia. The order would become very influential among the crack Janissary troops of the Ottoman Empire, the most feared warriors in the service of the great Sunni sultan, but its teachings were full of Gnostic Shi‘i ideas. Bektashi poetry celebrates Ali and the other Twelver Imams alongside the Prophet. God, Muhammad and Ali are also linked together in a way reminiscent of the Christian trinity, while Bektashis consider the Iranian ruler Shah Ismail (who made Iran a Twelver Shi‘i country, and whom we will encounter in the next chapter) to be one of their greatest poets.15

  CHAPTER SIX

  How Iran Became Shi‘i

  I

  The sack of Baghdad in 1258 by Hulegu the Mongol is one of those world-shattering events that are used to define the end of a period of history and the beginning of a new one. Yet dig a little deeper and a slightly different picture emerges. The event was certainly devastating for Sunni Muslims, but as the marker of the end of an era it was in many ways symbolic rather than causative.

  As we have seen, the Abbasid Caliph had conferred legitimacy on many Sunni rulers. Yet even if his religious claim to be the leader of the Muslim community was absolute, it was contested. Apart from the opposition from the various Shi‘i groups (and the Kharijis), there had already been rival Sunni caliphates that had existed simultaneously with the Abbasids in Baghdad. Both the Spanish Umayyads of Cordoba (929–1031) and the Almohads of North Africa (1130–1269) had established a caliphate within the geographical areas they aspired to control. Although they did not assert a putative jurisdiction over a
ll Muslims in the manner of the Abbasids, their description of themselves as caliphs was a denial of the universality of the caliph in Baghdad.

  On a practical level, the extinction of the Baghdad Caliphate made little if any difference for Sunni Muslims when it came to the formulation of the rules of the Sharia or the doctrines of Muslim religious belief. As we have seen, whatever authority the caliphs may have had to define these had long since ended. Yet the concept of the caliphate would live on among Sunnis, since it was still useful as a tool for legitimacy. The Mamluk rulers in Cairo were sultans, that is to say rulers who swore to uphold the Sharia within their dominions and consequently claimed a God-given right to rule. They appointed a member of the Abbasid family to adorn their court as a puppet or shadow caliph, and he would be wheeled out for public relations purposes when appropriate. His authority was solemnly exploited to invest every new sultan, and he would sometimes accompany the sultan on campaigns. Occasionally, distant Sunni rulers would send gifts and request a letter of investiture from the caliph in Cairo, as Muhammad bin Tughluq, the sultan of Delhi, did in the first half of the fourteenth century. But, at the same time, other rulers such as the Tunisian Hafsid dynasty would claim the title of caliph for themselves. The Ottomans will be discussed in the next chapter, but the Ottoman sultan Murad I (r. 1360–89) would also assert that he was caliph. Despite this, the title was not used systematically by his successors until the late eighteenth century. Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in 1453, seems never to have used it. For the Ottomans, who will be discussed in the following chapter, the status of sultan was always what really mattered. This was also the case with most other Sunni rulers.