Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi'ism (Library of Modern Religion)

305 Pages·2009·3.39 MB·English

by  Abbas Amanat

IBT008 - Apocalyptic islam 26/1/09 16:52 Page i
ABBAS AMANATis Professor of History at Yale University. He is the
author of Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the
Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896 and of Imagining the End: Visions of
Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, both
published by I.B.Tauris.
“Abbas Amanat is among the brightest stars in the firmament of histo-
rians who have treated Shi'i millenarian movements in depth. He always
avoids the easy temptation to dismiss them as outbursts of irrational
fanaticism, instead patiently tracing their roots in social discontent and
teasing out the significance of their often recondite writings. Any histo-
rian can mine the British archives for imperial reactions to such popular
manifestations; but Amanat is among the few with the linguistic and
historiographic skills to be able to offer us the inside story, full of drama,
texture and immense local significance. Those who wish to understand
the Iranian Shi'i tradition must come to terms with this essential aspect
of it. No better guide than the magisterial Amanat could be found.”
– Juan R. I. Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of
History, University of Michigan
“In these important essays, written in the two decades since the publi-
cation of his definitive study of the Babi movement, Resurrection and
Renewal (1989), Abbas Amanat firmly places the apocalyptic aspects of
Shi'ism on the map of modern scholarship, ending the book with a fasci-
nating chapter on their current manifestations in post-revolutionary Iran.”
– Saïd Amir Arjomand, Distinguished Service Professor,
State University of New York, Stony Brook;
Director of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies; and
President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies
“Abbas Amanat’s penetrating and insightful studies of the inter-rela-
tionship of Shi'ism and messianism in modern Iran will set the agenda
for future scholarship in this area. His conclusions are thoughtful,
measured and compelling in equal measure. This is a book of mature
scholarship, free of histrionics, and establishes a new benchmark for
the study of apocalyptic theologies in modern Islam generally, and in
Iranian Shi'ism in particular. It should be required reading for all who
wish to understand the place of religion in Iranian politics and society
and move beyond current facile and hackneyed media analyses.”
– Robert Gleave, Professor of Arabic Studies, University of Exeter
IBT008 - Apocalyptic islam 26/1/09 16:52 Page ii
LIBRARY OF MODERN RELIGION
1. Returning to Religion: Why a Secular Age is Haunted by Faith
Jonathan Benthall
978 1 84511 718 4
2. Knowing the Unknowable: Science and Religions on God and the Universe
John Bowker [Ed]
978 1 84511 757 3
3. Sufism Today: Heritage and Tradition in the Global Community
Catharina Raudvere & Leif Stenberg [Eds.]
978 1 84511 762 7
4. Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi'ism
Abbas Amanat
978 1 84511 124 3
5. Global Pentecostalism: Encounters with Other Religious Traditions
David Westerlund
978 1 84511 877 8
6. Dying for Faith: Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World
Madawi Al-Rasheed & Marat Shterin [Eds.]
978 1 84511 686 6
7. The Hindu Erotic: Exploring Hinduism and Sexuality
David Smith
978 1 84511 361 2
8. The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies
Hugh B. Urban
978 1 84511 873 0
9. Jewish Identities in Iran:
Resistance and Conversion to Islam and the Baha'i Faith
Mehrdad Amanat
978 1 84511 891 4
10. Islamic Reform and Conservatism:
Al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam
Indira Falk Gesink
978 1 84511 936 2
11. Muslim Women’s Rituals: Authority and Gender in the Islamic World
Catharina Raudvere and Margaret Rausch
978 1 84511 643 9
12. Lonesome: The Spiritual Meanings of American Solitude
Kevin Lewis
978 1 84885 075 0
IBT008 - Apocalyptic islam 23/1/09 16:20 Page iii
Apocalyptic Islam
and Iranian Shi'ism
A B B A S A M A N AT
IBT008 - Apocalyptic islam 23/1/09 16:20 Page iv
Published in 2009by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © Abbas Amanat, 2009
The right of Abbas Amanat to be identified as the author of
this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book,
or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Library of Modern Religion, Vol. 4
ISBN: 978 1 84511 124 3 (HB)
ISBN: 978 1 84511 981 2 (PB)
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset in Sabon by Ellipsis Books Limited, Glasgow
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham
IBT008 - Apocalyptic islam 23/1/09 16:20 Page v
contents
Preface vii
List of Illustrations xiv
Acknowledgment and Citations xv
Note on Transliteration and Style xvii
Introduction 1
PART I
Apocalypticism in the Islamic Middle East
1. Apocalyptic Anxieties and Millennial Hopes
in the Salvation Religions of the Middle East 19
2. The Resurgence of Apocalyptic in Modern Islam 41
PART 2
Millennial Cycles and Commemorating Martyrs
3. The Nuqtavi Movement of Mahmud Pasikhani
and his Persian Cycle of Mystical Materialism 73
4. Meadow of the Martyrs:
Kashifi’s Persianization of the Shi'i Martyrdom
Narrative in Late Timurid Herat 91
5. The Persian Bayan and the Shaping
of the Babi Renewal in Iran 111
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PART 3
Clerical Encounters with Modernity
6. Mujtahids and Missionaries:
Shi'i Responses to Christian Polemics
in the Early Qajar Period 127
7. In-Between the Madrasa and the Marketplace:
The Designation of Clerical Leadership
in Modern Shi'ism 149
8. From ijtihad to wilayat-i faqih:
The Evolving of the Shi'i Legal Authority
into Political Power 179
PART 4
Satan and Salvation in the Islamic Revolution
9. Khomeini’s Great Satan: Demonizing the
American Other in the Islamic Revolution in Iran 199
10. Messianic Aspirations in Contemporary Iran 221
Notes 253
Index 281
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Preface
In the summer of 2005 I visited the ancient city of Kashan, my
ancestral homeland. An old center of Shi'ism on the edge of the
Iranian central desert, Kashan was known in the geographical nomen-
clature of the pre-twentieth century as the “abode of the faith” (Dar
al-Iman), and it is not an exaggeration to suggest that the city has
remained loyal to its old epithet up to this day. This is evident, at
least in appearance, if we judge the religiosity of the inhabitants by
the numerous signs of Muharram, “mourning associations” (hay'at-
i 'azadaran)in every quarter of the city, vast numbers of black banners
with sentimental messages hanging across the city’s thoroughfares
commemorating previously obscure events of the Shi'i calendar –
and by their sheer signs of piety. The face of the city betrayed a mix
of old Shi'i loyalties and, perhaps, forced conformity.
Seeking relief from the offensive heat of mid-afternoon in the
back alleys of a half-ruined old neighborhood, I came across a reli-
gious structure in a state of surprisingly good repair. The tilework
at the top of the portal read “Sadra Husayniya; Center for the
Husayni Mourning Society” (Husayniya-Sadra, Markaz-i Hay'at-i
Husayni). The date of the repair underneath was 1356 in the Persian
solar calendar (1977); a year before the Islamic Revolution. As a
forum for performing the Muharram ceremonies, this Husayniya,
presumably a Qajar s tructure, was still undergoing new repairs. The
interior archway leading to the central platform was adorned with
typical blue tilework – for which Kashan is known – quoting a
hadith in praise of the House of the Prophet (Ahl al-Bayt). Their
names were followed on the edge of the archway by the name of
seventy-two martyrs of the battle of Karbala. In the center of the
domed platform there was a huge nakhl (literally: palm tree); a
massive wooden heart-shaped structure covered with black cloth
and with verses embroidered around a central medallion in praise
of Imam Husayn ibn 'Ali, the Third Shi'i Imam and the Lord of
the Martyrs (Sayyid al-Shuhada). The verse in the center of the
medallion read: “Salute to Husayn the Martyr.” Each year on the
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viii abbas amanat
10th of Muharram during the Ashura procession the nakhl, symbol-
izing the coffin of Imam Husayn, is brought out of the Husayniya
on the shoulders of the mourners and carried in the heart of the
procession.
Everything in the Husayniya seemed familiar in a typical Shi'i
Muharram surrounding. But when I walked closer to the nakhl,
a small graffiti caught my attention on the base of the large struc-
ture, written with a felt pen and in a coarse hand. It read: “Yearning
is our faith” (entezar mazhab-i mast). The message took me by
surprise. As a student of messianic Shi'ism who for more than
thirty years was engaged with its diverse expressions, this was an
unexpected revelation. Some quarter of a century after the victory
of the Islamic Revolution, and sixteen years after the death of its
leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, the messianic imam of that revolu-
tion, here I was encountering an almost subversive messianic
message of eternal yearning for the return of a savior, and of all
places on the base of a symbolic edifice commemorating the “Lord
of the Martyrs,” whose tragic fall in the battle of Karbala virtu-
ally defined Shi'ism. According to Shi'i traditions, the Mahdi’s
revenge of Husayn’s blood will initiate an apocalyptic battle of
cosmic proportion that precedes the Day of Resurrection and the
End of Time.
The message made me think about the person who must have
written the subversive message, possibly in haste; a message that
resonated deeply and recurred repeatedly in this ancient land.
Thinking of Kashan’s messianic past, I later recalled the wonderful
inscription that was glazed inside a fourteenth-century hoof-shaped
ceramic bowl describing a holy dream by a faithful Shi'i Kashani
who saw the First Imam, 'Ali ibn Abi-Talib, leading him into a tent
where he was received by a young man with a glowing counten -
ance. He was none other than the Mahdi himself. The dream narra-
tive that led to the construction of yet another “stepping site”
(qadamgah), highlights the undercurrent of messianic aspirations in
Iran’s popular piety, something virtually parallel to the cult of
Jamkaran in today’s Iran, celebrated regularly near Qom and not
far away from Kashan.1
The recitation of the sufferings of Karbala and the House of
Husayn, a staple of the mourning sessions known as rawza-khani
in all Shi'i centers, also reminded me of the origins of the tradition.
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Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi'ism ix
Significantly, works such as Mulla Husayn Kashifi’s Rawdat al-
shuhada (Meadow of the Martyrs) has a sentimental undertone
parallel to the tone of today’s messianic narrative.2
Thinking of subversive messianism outside the narrative of Karbala
and martyrdom but still in the Shi'i context, one can think of the
support for the remarkable Nuqtavi movement in Kashan and its
vicinity. It was in Nasrabad, northwest of Kashan and one of the
centers of Nuqtavis, for instance, that in 1592 the Safavid ruler
Shah 'Abbas I struck the first blow against the movement by slaying
a number of Nuqtavis supporters of Isma'ili background. They were
accused of sedition and heresy. The Nuqtavis were expecting that
the turn of the Islamic millennium would end the old order and
initiate a new Persian prophetic cycle.3Two hundred and fifty years
later, near the ‘Attarha city gate in Kashan, Hajji Mirza Jani, a
merchant and later the first historian of the Babi movement,
welcomed Sayyid 'Ali Muhammad Shirazi the Bab, the founder of
the Babi movement. Captivated with the impending advent of the
Imam of the Age, Jani’s encounter with the Bab came in the wake
of a holy dream that made him believe he would soon encounter
the Mahdi. He was one of the first Babis of Kashan.4In the following
decades, and for more than a century, Kashan and its surrounding
hinterland became a thriving center for the Babi and then the Baha'i
community which survived in a semi-clandestine state despite many
difficulties. Their “cause”(amr), like the Nuqtavis’, centered on the
idea that the Islamic revelation cycle had come to its natural end
and a new prophetic cycle, complementary to the revelations of the
past but suitable to the advancing needs of humanity, had arrived.
The Muslims and the Babis (later Baha'is), the extinct Nuqtavis,
the commemoration associations of today’s Kashan, and the
Husayniyas and theta'ziyas, are to me facades of a religious tradition
that resonates with modern Iranians today. Kashan indeed is a micro-
cosm of the Iranian religious complexity and a window into how
it has evolved over time, and especially over the past two centuries.
As Iran became more Shi'i than ever in its history, very few Baha'is,
or indeed any other religious minority, survived in Kashan and in
the surrounding villages.5 The greater Shi'itization of Kashan is a
microcosm of Iranian demographics and Iran’s collective psyche. A
homogenized majority devoid of diversity could become more
obsessed with ideological or religious convictions; and in the Iranian