Proofs of Prophecy and the Refutation of the Ismā‘īliyya : The Kitāb Ithbāt Nubuwwat al-Nabī by the Zaydī al-Mu’ayyad bi-llāh al-Hārūnī

340 Pages·2017·12.4 MB·English

by  Eva-Maria Lika

Eva-Maria Lika
Proofs of Prophecy and the Refutation of the Ismāʿīliyya
Worlds of Islam –
Welten des Islams –
Mondes de l’Islam
Im Auftrag der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft –
On behalf of the Swiss Asia Society –
Au nom de la Société Suisse-Asie
Edited by
Bettina Dennerlein
Anke von Kügelgen
Silvia Naef
Maurus Reinkowski
Ulrich Rudolph
Volume 9
Eva-Maria Lika
Proofs of Prophecy
and the Refutation of
the Ismāʿīliyya
The Kitāb Ithbāt nubuwwat al-nabī by the Zaydī
al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh al-Hārūnī (d. 411/1020)
Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde vom Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften der
Freien Universität Berlin im Herbstsemester 2014 auf Antrag von Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmidtke als
Dissertation angenommen.
This publication was made possible due to the support of Swiss Academy of Humanities and
Social Sciences (SAGW).
ISBN 978-3-11-053976-9
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-054179-3
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-053988-2
ISSN 1661-6278
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Cover image: Title page of al-Muʾayyad billāh’s Ithbāt nubuwwat al-nabī, Ms Berlin, Landberg
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements   VII
I Introduction   1
II Description of the Manuscripts and the Principles of Edition   6
1 Description of the Manuscripts   6
1.1 Ms Cairo, Dār al-Kutub al-miṣriyya, ʿilm al-kalām 1567 (ق)   6
1.2 Ms Vatican, Vat. ar. 1019/2 (ف)   8
1.3 Ms Tehran, Majlis 4247/1, p. 1–151 (م)   10
1.4 Ms Tehran, Dānishgāh Mishkāt 927 (د)   11
1.5 Ms Berlin, Landberg 437 (ب)   12
2 Principles of Edition   13
III The Historical Context   15
1 The Ismāʿīlī Presence in Tabaristan   15
2 A Brief Biography of Imām al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh
(333/944-411/1020)   20
3 Al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh and the Ismāʿīliyya   30
3.1 Al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh's Knowledge about the Ismāʿīliyya   30
3.2 Al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh and Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī   32
3.3 Al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh's Efforts Against the Ismāʿīliyya   36
IV Intellectual Defence 1: Criticism of the Ismāʿīliyya   38
1 Earlier Refutations of the Ismāʿīliyya   38
1.1 Earlier Refutations of the Ismāʿīliyya Cited in the
Ithbāt   38
1.2 Other Anti-Ismāʿīlī Texts and References   45
1.3 Ibn Rizām's Anti-Ismāʿīlī Polemic   48
1.4 The Anti-Ismāʿīlī Forgery al-Kitāb al-Balāgh   57
1.5 Summary   66
2 Criticisms of Ismāʿīlī Doctrines   67
2.1 Overview   67
2.2 The Negation of God (Through Taʿṭīl)   69
2.2.1 The Ismāʿīlī Concept of the Twofold Negative Theology   69
2.3 The Negation of Prophecy (Through Taʾyīd) and the Negation of the
Law (Through Taʾwīl)   74
2.3.1 The Ismāʿīlī Concept of Revelation   74
VI   Table of Contents
2.3.2 The Ismāʿīlī Concept of Prophets (Nuṭaqāʾ) and the Sacred Law
(Sharīʿa)   80
2.3.3 The Ismāʿīlī Concept of the Qāʾim and Resurrection   87
2.4 Conclusion   89
V Intellectual Defence 2: Prophetology   92
1 Introduction   92
2 Al-Jāḥiẓ: Kitāb al-Ḥujaj fī tathbīt al-nubuwwa   93
3 Ibn al-Rāwandī   96
3.1 Introduction   96
3.2 Al-Tāj – The Creation of the World Contested   98
3.3 Al-Zumurrud – Prophecy Denied   100
3.4 Al-Dāmigh – Critique of the Qurʾān   104
3.5 Al-Farīd – Distinguishing Between a Genius and a Prophet   107
3.6 Conclusion: Sources and Function   111
4 Other Prophetological Texts   112
4.1 Ibn Kallād's Kitāb al-Uṣūl and Its Reception in the Zaydī
Community   113
4.2 ʿAbd al-Jabbār's Kitāb al-Usūl al-khamsa and Its Zaydī
Commentaries   116
4.3 Al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh's Reception   117
4.4 Texts on Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān focusing on the linguistic rationale   118
5 Prophetological Arguments in the Ithbāt   120
5.1 Introduction   120
5.2 Argument 1: The History of the Prophets and Their Signs   122
5.3 Argument 2: The Transmission of the Taḥaddī Verses   126
5.4 Argument 3: Alleged Imitations of the Qurʾān   134
5.4.1 Introduction   134
5.4.2 Musaylima   137
5.4.3 Ṭulayḥa al-Asadī   146
5.4.4 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ   147
5.4.5 Summary: Pseudo-Qurʾāns in the Argument for Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān   151
5.5 Conclusion   152
VI Conclusion   154
Bibliography   157
Index   169
Critical Edition of the Ithbāt nubuwwat al-nabī by al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh al-Hārūnī
Introduction and Chapter One   ۱
Index   ۱٤٤
Acknowledgements
The present study is a revised version of my dissertation, defended at the Free
University of Berlin on 15 July 2014. It is a pleasant task to thank those people
whose support contributed much to the appearance of the study. First I would
like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Sabine Schmidtke, for her
longstanding support. With her immense knowledge, experience and academic
advice she has constantly promoted the development of my work. I am also
grateful to my colleagues at the Research Unit Intellectual History of the Islam-
icate World for many insightful discussions and the mutual exchange of man-
uscripts and literature including unpublished or difficult to obtain material.
Special thanks go to Dr. Hassan Ansari for his extraordinary encouragement. He
generously shared his infinite knowledge, never got tired of discussing barely
legible notes in the manuscripts and corrected parts of the edition. I thank Dr. Jan
Thiele for his helpful support, both regarding issues of Zaydi theology as well as
various IT-problems. My sincere thanks are owed to my friend Nasser Dumairieh,
on whose advice especially concerning questions on the Arabic language I could
always rely. Furthermore I am indebted to Dr. Mareike Koertner, Siobhan O‘Leary,
Dr. Arzina Lalani and Dr. Ghassan El-Masri for their valuable comments on earlier
drafts of the thesis. I would like to thank my second referee Prof. Axel Havemann
and the other members of my thesis committee: Prof. Lukas Mühlethaler, Prof.
Michael Bongardt and Dr. Reza Pourjavady. Finally my sincere thanks go to the
following institutions and their teams. The Cusanuswerk awarded me with a grad-
uate scholarship and financed numerous research trips. Likewise the European
Research Council sponsored research abroad. I enjoyed excellent working con-
ditions at the British Library, the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and kind
hospitality at the Institut Dominicain d‘Etudes Orientales in Cairo. Thanks to Prof.
Khaled El-Rouayheb I could work as a Research Assistant at the Harvard Divinity
School. During my stay in Sanaa, I was generously supported by Abd al-Salam
al-Wajih and Muhammad al-Shamiry at the Imam Zayd bin Ali Cultural Founda-
tion. In particular, I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my teacher Fadl al-Qa-
semi at the Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies, who introduced me to the
universe of Zaydi kalām and inspired me with his curiosity and passion for theo-
logical thinking. Last but not least, I wish to thank my parents for their love and
unfailing encouragement.

I Introduction
The French Orientalist Louis Massignon (1883–1962) referred to the 4th/10th
century as “the Ismāʿīlī century in the history of Islam”.1 At the height of their
power, the Ismāʿīlīs not only challenged the political status-quo, heretofore con-
trolled by the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, but also posed a considerable threat to many
religious communities. As a result, Islamic scholars from a variety of denomina-
tional backgrounds engaged in intellectual battles with the Ismāʿīliyya. With a
pointed pen they composed refutations of what they considered to be the hereti-
cal teachings of this community and fought their ideas with the ultimate power
of rational arguments.
One of the texts that emerged in this context is the Kitāb Ithbāt nubu-
wwat al-nabī, written by Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh al-Hārūnī (333/944–
411/1020). Al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh al-Hārūnī was an important scholar and imam of
the Zaydī community in Tabaristan, a region south of the Caspian sea in mod-
ern-day northern Iran, where the Ismāʿīlī movement spread continuously. As its
title indicates, al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh’s text belongs to the genre known as “proofs of
prophecy”, which by then had become a classical theme in Islamic theology. But
the text also incorporates a refutation of Ismāʿīlī doctrines. The present disserta-
tion is dedicated to the study of these anti-Ismaʿīlī statements and their contextu-
alisation within the larger prophetological argument.
Ismāʿīlī history has received increased attention in scholarly research over the
past few decades.2 In particular, a number of critical editions of authentic Ismaʿīlī
texts have established the foundation for a better understanding of the develop-
ment of Ismāʿīlī theology. Ismāʿīlī scholars who were active as missionaries in
Eastern Persia, particularly in Khurasan, around the 4th/10th century, developed
a tradition of philosophical Ismāʿīlism by integrating Shīʿī theology with Neopla-
tonic philosophy, which came to be known as the “Iranian school”. Many of their
extant writings are now available for modern scholarship.3 In contrast, research
1 Louis Massignon, “Mutanabbî devant le siècle ismaëlien de l’Islam”, in: Régis Blanchère (Ed.),
Al-Mutanabbî: recueil publié à l’occasion de son millénaire, Beirut 1936, p. 1.
2 The pioneers of Ismāʿīlī studies, such as Samuel M. Stern and Wladimir Ivanow were followed
by today’s leading figures of the discipline, including Wilferd Madelung, Heinz Halm, Farhad
Daftary, Paul E. Walker and Daniel de Smet. For an overview of the progress that has been made
in the study of Ismāʿīlism, see Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs. Their History and Doctrines. Second
Edition, Cambridge 2007, pp. 30–33.
3 Cf. Farhad Daftary, “The Medieval Ismaʿīlīs of the Iranian Lands”, in: Carole Hillenbrand (Ed.),
Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth. Volume II: The Sultan’s Turret: Studies in Persian
2   Introduction
on the intellectual history of the Zaydiyya in northern Iran is still in its infancy.4
But important advances in the study of the Yemeni Zaydiyya – that offered new
insights into the history of the Zaydiyya as a whole – have been made in recent
decades. Two expeditions conducted by Egyptian scholars in 1951/1952 and 1964
led to a new awareness of the rich manuscript collections in Yemen. Important
codices were catalogued, microfilmed and edited in the following years.5 Since
the 1970s especially Yemeni scholars contributed significantly to the exploration
of the Zaydī intellectual history. A considerable amount of bio-bibliographical
surveys and studies has been published and many manuscripts from private and
public libraries in Yemen – which consitute a very important source also for the
Zaydī scholarly tradition of Northern Iran – have been made accessible. In par-
ticular the members of the Imam Zayd bin Ali Cultural Foundation/Muʾassasat
al-Imām Zayd b. ʿAlī al-thaqāfiyya should be mentioned for their efforts in pub-
lishing catalogues, handbooks and textual editions.6 Groundbreaking research
and Turkish Culture, Leiden 2000, pp. 49–57. For an overview of extant texts and editions, see
Farhad Daftary, Ismaili Literature. A Bibliography of Sources and Studies, London 2004.
4 See the seminal studies and editions by Wilferd Madelung: Der Imam al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm und
die Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen, Berlin 1965; “Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī on the Alids of Tabaristān and
Gīlān”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 26/1 (1967); “The Alid rulers of Ṭabaristān, Daylamān and
Gīlān”, in: Atti del terzo congresso di studi arabi e islamici, Napoli 1967; Arabic Texts Concerning
the History of the Zaydī Imāms of Ṭabaristān, Daylamān and Gīlān, Beirut 1987; and Religious
Trends in Early Islamic Iran, Albany, New York 1988. Furthermore, important primary sources
were recently made accessible, such as Abū l-Qāsim al-Bustī, Kitāb al-Baḥth ʿan adillat al-takfīr
wa-l-tafsīq (Investigation of the evidence for charging with kufr and fisq), eds. Wilferd Madelung &
Sabine Schmidtke, Tehran 2003, Yaḥya b. al-Ḥusayn Abū Ṭālib al-Nāṭiq, Ziyādāt Sharḥ al-uṣūl, in:
Baṣran Muʿtazilite Theology: Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad b. Khallād’s Kitāb al-Uṣūl and its Reception. A
Critical Edition of the Ziyādāt Sharḥ al-uṣūl by the Zaydī Imām al-Nāṭiq bi-l-ḥaqq Abū Ṭālib Yaḥya
b. al-Ḥusayn b. Harūn al-Buthānī (d. 424/1033), eds. Camilla Adang, Wilferd Madelung & Sabine
Schmidtke, Leiden 2011, or An Anonymous Commentary on Kitāb al-Tadhkira by Ibn Mattawayh.
Facsimile Edition of Mahdāvī Codex 514 (6th/12th Century), Introduction and Indices by Sabine
Schmidtke, Tehran 2006. See also Gregor Schwarb, Handbook of Muʿtazilite Works and Manu-
scripts, Leiden (forthcoming). See also the ongoing research projects of Hassan Ansari and Sa-
bine Schmidtke, referred to in the following articles: “The Zaydī reception of Ibn Khallād’s Kitāb
al-Uṣūl: The taʿlīq of Abū Ṭāhir b. ʿAlī al-Ṣaffār”, Journal Asiatique, 298/1 (2010); “Muʿtazilism
after ʿAbd al-Jabbār: Abū Rashīd al-Nīsābūrī’s Kitāb Masāʾil al-khalīf fī l-uṣūl”, Studia Iranica,
39 (2010); and “Brief communication. Iranian Zaydism during the 7th/13th century: Abū l-Faḍl
b. Shahrdawīr al-Daylamī al-Jīlānī and his commentary on the Qurʾān”, Journal Asiatique, 299/1
(2011).
5 See Sabine Schmidtke, “The History of Zaydī Studies. An Introduction”, Arabica, 59 (2012),
p. 191.
6 In particular ʿAbd al-Salām b. ʿAbbās al-Wajīh with his handbook Aʿlām al-muʾallifīn al-zay-
diyya, Beirut, Muʾassasat al-Imām Zayd b. ʿAlī al-thaqāfiyya, 1999, his catalogue Maṣādir al-