"The Resurgence of Apocalyptic in Modern Islam." Abbas Amanat, in Stephen J. Stein, ed. The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. III: Apocalypticism in the Modern Period and the Contemporary Age. New York: Continuum, 2000. Full article comprises pages 230-254; included below are pages 237-246.
Editor's note: The first 7 pages are devoted to modern neo-Sufi messianic movements in Africa Tijaniyya, Sanusiyya, etc. and the Sudanese Mahdi. The final sections of the
article survey the Ahmadis, "Islamic utopianism" in the thought of Iqbal, Abduh
and Rida, Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, and then the Iranian
revolution. [VB, 2002]
[page 237]
Shi`i Mahdism and the End of Time
Even in modern times expectations for the Mahdi were more prevalent in Shi`i
Islam, particularly in Iranian Shi'ism, than in the Sunni world. Deeply
ingrained in its belief systems and, in turn, into the Shi`i psyche, the
doctrine of Imamate ensured continuity of divine inspiration. As designated
descendants of the Prophet who inherited in a direct line the leadership of the
community, the Imams' continued existence was considered "proof" (
hujja)
of the continuity of divine grace toward the "guided" Shi`i community. In
Twelver Shi`ism the Mahdi is the Twelfth (and the last) Imam in the line, who
is believed to have entered in the year 260 AH/873-874 into a state of
Occultation and hence is invisible to believers through normal means. Essential
to the Shi`i apocalyptic beliefs is that the advent of the Hidden Imam
(
al-Imam al-Gha'ib) will set in motion a course of events ultimately
leading to the destruction of the world and the end of time. Though no specific
time was ever set for his advent, it was generally believed that his revolt
(
khuruj) would occur at the turn of the millennium after his
Occultation. As the Lord of Time (
al-Sahib al-Zaman) and the Riser
(
Qá'im) of the House of the Prophet, he will restore justice and
equity to the world when it is filled with evil and oppression. This sense of
restoring justice was tied in Shi`i prophecies with reinstalling the right to
political leadership of the House of the Prophet, vengeance against the
usurpers of that authority, and consequently expansion through jihad and the
Imam's world domination. This millennial scenario, elaborated and embellished
over centuries in a vast body of apocalyptic literature, presented the advent
of the Imam and his acomplishments against forces of the Dajjal, the false
Messiah, as the prelude to the resurrection and the final judgement. Contrary
to the Sunni Mahdi, whose advent was aimed to enhance the foundations of Islam
on a periodic (centennial) basis, the Shi`i Islam essen-
[page 238]
tially strived to invoke the Imamate paradigm so as to bring about the
resurrection and an end to the prevailing dispensation. The Imam's advent will
differentiate the forces of good from evil in two confronting armies and
establish the sovereignty of the House of the Prophet, but his kingdom was
predicted to be ephemeral and only a preparatory stage before the cataclysmic
end of the material world, the commencement of the day of judgement, and
thereafter the final departure of the saved to paradise and the damned to hell.
[6]
Despite this rich and dynamic apocalyptic tradition, however, during the
period of expectation (
intizar) for the Lord of Time to bring relief
from oppression, no course of action was prescribed for the believers except
vigilance and, if need be, dissimulation of true beliefs in the face of danger.
Although Shi`ism began to develop, almost immediately after the Occultation, an
elaborate body of formal religious sciences crowned by the study of
jurisprudence, the question of political leadership of the community during the
interregnum of the Imam's absence remained essentially unaddressed. A long
tradition of madrasa education, reenforced under the patronage of the Safavid
dynasty (1501-1732), led to the emergence of a community of jurists
(
mujtahids) who claimed a collective vicegerency (
niyaba) on
behalf of the Hidden Imam while condoning the shah's vague notion of political
vicegerency. Partially independent from the state, these `ulama, who assumed
for themselves the task of preserving the "essence of Islam" as experts in the
holy law and its sole implementors, became increasingly self-conscious of their
status after the fall of the Safavid state in the early eighteenth century. By
the time the Qajar dynasty (1785-1925) consolidated, the `ulama of the
predominant Usuli legal school presented a socioreligious force to be reckoned
with in the domain of the judiciary and of education. They seldom, however, in
theory or practice, laid any claim to political authority in the state beyond
occasional challenges to its conduct. The clergy-state equilibrium, a legacy of
the Safavid period, had the natural tendency to relegate the advent of the
Hidden Imam to a distant future and in turn dismiss as unorthodox, if not
heretical, all such speculations. The actual messianic aspirations were
tolerated even less, having routinely been labeled as fraudulent and heretical.
[7]
Yet Shi`ism never fully dissociated itself from messianic aspirations, even
though preoccupation with jurisprudence and supplementary sciences steered
mainstream learning in a nonmessianic direction. No less important a scholar
than Mulla Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (1628-1699), the celebrated theologian most
responsible for popularizing Shi`ism, dedicated a substantial portion of his
famous
Al-Bihar al-Anwar and a number of Persian works to the subject of
the Hidden Imam, the circumstances of his manifestation, the
[page 239]
struggle against the Dajjal, and the consequent eschatological occurrences
leading to the return (
raj`a) of the past prophets and Imams, the
raising of the dead on the Plane of Gathering, the Final Judgement, the
Heaven's bliss, and the torments of Hell. The apocalyptic literature produced
by Majlisi, and later writers up to the twentieth century, was influential not
only in keeping alive debates about the advent of the Imam in the madrasa
circles, but more significantly, in the popular imagination. Beyond the calm
and stern surface of formal Shi`ism there continued to surge a mass of
millennial yearning often with revolutionary potentials against the prevailing
religion of the `ulama and the institutions of the state (Amanat 1989, 1-47,
70-105).
Speculative Shi`ism also elaborated on Shi`i eschatology and, more
specifically, on the circumstances of resurrection. The immortality of the
soul, modes of existence in the hereafter, and, most troubling of all, the
doctrine of the corporal resurrection (
al-ma`ad al-jismani) came to
occupy such philosophers as Sadr al-Din Shirazi, better known as Mulla Sadra
(d. 1640), perhaps the greatest of Muslim philosophers of recent centuries. In
contrast to Sunni Islam's relinquishing serious philosophical discourse,
learned Shi`ism preserved a thriving and highly diverse philosophical tradition
and articulated within the framework of mystical philosophy notions of time and
modalities of being essential for innovative conceptualizations of the end.
Unlike the historically static worldview of the Shari'a-minded `ulama. Mulla
Sadra and his students, known as Muta'allahin (theosophists), envisioned a
dynamic view of time that in final analysis was at odds with the conventional
notion of the eschaton as the permanent point of termination. Sadra'ians
essentially remained loyal to a blend of Peripatetic and Neoplatonic philosophy
expounded by classical Muslim philosophers, but their notion of beings'
everlasting motion in time was a breakthrough. In what Mulla Sadra defined as
the "essential motion" (
al-haraka al-jawhariyya) of all things, the
universe "is ceaselessly being renewed and passing away, originating and
enduring." Unlike the theory of the fixed cycles or the ahistorical approach of
mainstream theology, the Sadra'ian concept of "essential motion" (or
transubstantiation) pointed to an unending spiral, if not linear, course of
humankind's spiritual and material progression. Even in its dormant
philosophical rendition, this concept challenged conventional interpretation of
the End and cast doubt on its occurrence as a providential cataclysm destined
to bring the world to a permanent end. Yet Shi`i philosophical speculations
remained essentially loyal to the doctrine of Islam's perfection and finality
(Morris 1981, 119-29).
With the emergence of the Shaykhi school and the visionary theology of its
founder, Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa'i (1756-1826), Shi`ism generated a new
[page 240]
mystical-philosophical synthesis that was highly influential in shaping later
millennial trends. A peripatetic and widely read scholar from al-Ahsa' (north
of Arabian peninsula), Ahsa'i was familiar not only with the theosophist school
of Isfahan (though he violently denounced Mulla Sadra) but also with the
speculative Sufism of Ibn `Arabi and the illuminist philosophy of Shihab al-Din
Suhrawardi, both known for their apocalyptic propensity. Ahsa'i's contribution
to the Shi`i eschatological thinking was in three areas, which corresponded to
the problematic that was long troubling Shi`i theology. Dealing with the Hidden
Imam's physical endurance in the state of Occultation, Ahsa'i proposed a
celestial visionary space, which he called
Hurqalya, where the Hidden
Imam resides until his return to the physical world. Speculating on the
metaphysical means of communicating with the Imam, Ahsa'i emphasized personal
and intuitive experiences. Furthermore, he redefined corporal resurrection
through a complex process that aimed at humankind's spiritual recreation once
the Imam returns to the physical world.
The luminous
Hurqalya, a purgatory through which all beings must pass
before being finally judged on the day of resurrection, was perceived as a
world whose "state was neither the absolutely subtle state of separate
substances nor the opaque density of the material things of our world." In this
liminal space the Imam, who endured in a refined frame, could be encountered by
the believers through intuitive visions, holy dreams, and occult sciences. The
placement of the Imam in this visionary space in effect rescued him from the
timeless, confused, and inaccessible tangle to which he was relegated by the
Shi`i prophecies and instead subjected his existence to the dictates of time
and space. Ahsa'i further maintained that so long as the Imam was in
Occultation and while the world was still undergoing pre-resurrection
preparation, only one person could acquire perfect awareness of the Imam at any
moment of time. The belief in the Perfect Shi`a (
al-Shi'a al-Kamil), the
one who can visualize the Imam in an all-embracing state of intuitive
experience, became the Fourth Principle (
al-Rukn al-Rabi') of the
Shaykhi school and the central point for its messianic speculations. Ahsa'i's
chief disciple and successor, Sayyid Kazim Rashti (d. 1844), who further
elaborated on his teacher's philosophy and created an organizational rudiment
for Shaykhism, was viewed by his followers as the Perfect Shi'a and the gate
(
bab) through which the Imam's presence could be grasped though such
identification was never made explicit beyond the circle of the adepts.
Employing the same idea of celestial conservatory, Ahsa'i conceived of a
fourfold human existence which goes through a complex process of quintessential
overhaul before being refashioned in its orig-
[page 241]
inal form at the final judgment (Amanat 1989, 48-58; Corbin 1960, 281-338;
1977, 180-221).
Under Rashti, a small but active group of Shaykhi seminarians, trained in the
madrasas of the Shi`i holy city of Karbala in Iraq, preached Shaykhism in
mostly Iranian urban and rural communities. As Shaykhism gradually evolved from
a theological school into a proto-messianic movement with followers among the
lower- and middle-rank clergy, members of the urban guilds, merchant families,
local government officials, and some peasant communities, it was increasingly
received as a threat by the higher ranks of the clerical establishment. By the
end of Rashti's time, the Shaykhis fully nurtured a sense of expectation for
some form of messianic advent, which they hoped could save them from the
harassment and denunciation of their opponents. With this sense of expectation
there also emerged among the Shaykhis a more human-like picture of the Lord of
the Age and of his mission. He no longer was perceived as a superhuman with
fantastic powers which allowed him, according to Shi`i prophecies, to survive a
thousand years; he was seen as a human being born to mortal parents. Nor was
his divine mission for universal conquest to be accomplished through a set of
bizarre and confused apocalyptic events that would ultimately lead to the
destruction of the world. His main task, to restore justice and equity, was
seen no longer as mere vengeance for the long-standing feud with the historical
enemies of his holy family but as a gradual process whose success against his
enemies depended on the support and sacrifice of his followers (Amanat 1989,
58-69).
The Babi Movement and the Bahá'í Faith
The rise of what came to be known as the Babi movement in Iran in the 1840s
and 1850s was an outgrowth of a wide range of messianic speculations of which
Shaykhism was the most prevalent. In May 1844 the founder of the new movement,
Sayyid `Ali Muhammad Shirazi (1819-1850), a self-educated young merchant with
Shaykhi leanings from Shiraz (the capital of the Fars province), declared that
he is the
bab (gate) to the Hidden Imam and the sole source of
legitimate authority. Though the Bab, as he came to be known to the general
public, employed the early Shi`i notion of "gateship" now revived by the
Shaykhis, even in his earliest declarations he was equivocal about his exact
status. To Mulla Husain Bushru'i, an ardent student of Rashti who became the
Bab's first convert, as well as a group of mostly Shaykhi clerics who
consti-
[page 242]
tuted his circle of early believers, the Bab gradually confided that he was
not merely a gate to the Hidden Imam but the manifestation of the expected
Imam, the Qá'im himself, whose appearance the Shi`is expected for a
thousand years. Preoccupied with numerology and occult sciences, the Bab drew
on the fact that his "manifestation of the [divine] cause" occurred in the year
1260 AH, a thousand years after the presumed Greater Occultation of the Twelfth
Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan al-`Askari, in the year 260 AH/873-874. He also drew
on the fact that he was a
sayyid, a descendant of the house of the
Prophet, from which the Mahdi will appear, while stressing his own intuitive
experiences and visions, his purity of character, and his ability to utter holy
verses similar to the
Qur'án. Implicitly denying the doctrine of
Occultation, he further stated that his manifestation was a symbolic return of
the Lord of the Age and not the flesh-and-blood reappearance of Muhammad ibn
Hasan al-`Askari, who had died a millennium earlier (Amanat 1989, 109-211).
What was also remarkable about the Bab's claim, as it evolved in the course
of the next five years, was that he considered his call not as a reassertion of
Islamic Shari'ah, as was the case with the Sunni Mahdis, but as the beginning
of an apocalyptic process that was destined to bring the Islamic dispensation
to its cyclical end and to inaugurate instead a new dispensation, which he
called the era of
Bayan. Relying on a hermeneutical interpretation of
the Shi`i prophecies, for the first time in the history of modern Islam, he
claimed that with his advent the age of resurrection has started and the End of
Time is to be understood as the end of the past prophetic cycle. Employing the
ancient Iranian tree metaphor and its seasonal renewal, he explained in his
major work, the Persian
Bayan (literally, explication [of the past
scriptures]) that religious dispensations come in cycles so as to renew for
humankind the "pure religion," a concept with a long history in "esoteric"
Islam. In his theory of progressive revelation he compared the successive
dispensations to the life cycle of a tree with a spring of inception and early
growth, a summer of strength and maturation, an autumn of gradual decline and
decrepitude, and a winter of barrenness and death. This key notion of
continuity in revelation not only legitimized the Bayan religion but recognized
and anticipated future prophetic occurrences after the Bab. Contrary to the
prevailing Islamic notion of a cataclysmic end, the Bab believed that the "time
cycle is in progress." [8]
Beyond the theme of progressive revelation, Babi theology, deeply rooted in
Perso-Islamic antinomian thought, brought to the surface new anthropocentric
potentials. His manifestation, the Bab asserted in the
Bayan, was not
only the fulfillment of the Shi`i expectations for the Qá'im and the
beginning of a new prophetic dispensation but also a new stage in humankind's
continuous spiritual elevation in the process of reunification with the
Creator.
[page 243]
Though wrapped in a complex and convoluted language with much neology, the
Bab's emphasis on humanity as a corporal mirror reflecting the essence of the
sun of divine truth offered a new outlook, in which the believers collectively,
rather than the sheer will of Providence, were responsible for the success or
failure of the new dispensation. This sense of collective enterprise was
apparent from the start in the nascent organization of the movement and in the
beliefs and conduct of early Babis. The Letters of the Living, as the Bab named
the inceptive Babi Unit of nineteen consisting of himself and eighteen early
believers, was at the heart of the renewed dispensation. In his conception of
the new religion, the Bab was influenced also by the story of Jesus and his
disciples as narrated in newly accessible printed translations of the New
Testament. In his religious scheme, the Bab constituted the Primal Point
(
Nuqta-yi Ula) of a scriptural universe in which each convert was
considered a building block, a symbolic point, in the
Bayan's book,
which was uttered not only in letters and words but in their human equivalents
of the sacred text of the physical world. At the same time the Bab's assumed
epithet to be the Sublime Lord (
Rabb-i A'la) was close to the Christian
characterization of Jesus, Son of God and the Savior, whose account of life and
sufferings was appreciated by the Bab.
In the Bab's scripture-oriented worldview, the Europeans, whose increasing
presence was felt in Iran around the middle of the nineteenth century, were
recognized as the "letters of the Gospel." They were praised for their material
advances and their savvy but were frowned upon for their unsavory intrusion
into the land of the believers - a reflection, one may surmise, of the growing
European commercial and diplomatic dominance. Indeed, the Bab, himself from the
ancient province of Fars, expressed in his writings a nascent national
awareness exemplified not only by his ban on Christian intrusion in the land of
Bayan but also by the use of Persian (along with Arabic) as a scriptural
language. His fierce criticism of conventional Islamic madrasa scholarship of
his time, which was exclusively in Arabic, brought him to the point of banning
the study of jurisprudence and scholastic philosophy and calling for burning
all books that were contrary to the essence of the
Bayan. He also
adopted a new solar calendar (in part based on ancient Iranian time reckoning)
in place of the Islamic lunar calendar and marked the date of his own
manifestation as a beginning of a novel (
badi') era. [9]
Yet the new Babi identity still carried a powerful Shi`i component that was
best discernible in the reenactment of the Shi`ite apocalyptic paradigm. Based
on the sufferings of the Shi`ite saints of the early Islamic period and aimed
at redressing them, the apocalyptic myth was invoked as the Babis faced
harassment and persecution. Following the arrest and incarceration of
[page 244]
the founder of the movement and experiencing a number of humiliating episodes,
the initial Jesus-like program for peaceful propagation was surpassed by the
ever-present Husain paradigm of martyrdom in the battlefield. In this shift of
paradigms the Bab saw his own fate as identical to the fate of the Lord of the
Age as foretold by prophecies. He was to be killed at the hand of the Dajjal of
his time in the same way that the Third Imam, Husain ibn `Ali, was martyred at
the hand of his Umayyad adversaries in the battle of Karbala.
The Babis, too, reflected this convergence of the Persian and Shi`i
identities. The sociogeographic composition of the Babi movement revealed
national characteristics consonant with the Babi beliefs but in contrast to the
compartmentalized structure of the society in which it appeared. Babism was the
first movement in the modern Middle East that brought together a wider spectrum
of converts from different walks of life and throughout a vast geographical
span. Confrontations with the forces of opposition, first the Shi`i clerical
establishment and later the Qajar state, further reenforced this national
fusion. In the siege of Tabarsi in Mazandaran province in northern Iran, when
in 1848-1849 the Babis put up a stiff and bloody resistance against the
government forces and their clerical allies, there came together converts from
all over Iran, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, of different social classes
with diverse occupational backgrounds, education, and religious leanings. The
Tabarsi resistance, like a number of other Babi armed struggles around the same
time in Zanjan and Nayriz, embodied the anticlerical and antistate sentiments
that were combined at times with indigenous communistic proclivities, giving
expression to urban and rural grievances and ethnic strife (Amanat 1989,
260-94, 332-71).
In addition to lower ranks of the clergy and members of the bazaar guilds, a
number of women also joined the movement. Most notable among them was Zarrin
Taj Baraghani (1814-1852), better known by her titles Qurrat al-`Ayn (the
Solace of the Eye) and later, Tahira (the Pure). An ardent Shaykhi scholar and
orator from a well-known clerical family, she probably was the first Muslim
woman in modern times to remove her facial veil in public, reportedly while
preaching to a male audience. A mystic and a poet, she highlighted the
independent nature of the Babi dispensation in the gathering of Badasht in
1848. She held that the ongoing age of resurrection has put an end to the
Islamic Shari'a and that during the interregnum between the old religion and
the birth of the new one, such obligations as prayers and fasting and even
institutions of marriage and divorce are abolished. Her very act of removing
her facial veil was as much an expression of protest against women's inferior
position as it was a symbolic declaration of the age of apocalypse and
[page 245]
the occurrence of the sedition (
fitna). She declared that the age of
"delivering the word" has only brought abuse and persecution and that the only
option open to the Babis was resort to the sword (Amanat 1989, 295-332, and
sources cited there).
By 1848, as the Babi armed resistance culminated, the government's attitude
hardened toward the Babis. The new premier, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir, who
viewed the movement as a revolutionary threat to the very survival of the
state, with much trouble managed to suppress the revolts, and subsequently, in
1850, he executed the Bab in Tabriz. The leadership of the movement suffered
badly, and large numbers of Babis were killed in action and massacred and their
families enslaved. Two years later the remnant of the movement's elite was
executed or lynched in the aftermath of a Babi assassination plot against the
new shah, Nasir al-Din Qajar (1848-1896). Only a few of the leaders, most
significantly Mirza Husain `Ali Nuri, better known as Bahá'ullah (1817-1892),
were sent to exile to the Ottoman Iraq. Suppression of the Babi millennialism
at the hands of the reform-minded premier, with the full blessing of the
`ulama, was symptomatic of the triumph of one vision of change over another,
namely, that of the state-sponsored secular modernism over an indigenous
messianic revolution. The Babi movement, perhaps the most intensive example of
apocalyptic aspirations in the modern Middle East, was thus militarily defeated
and driven underground.
Disillusioned and persecuted, Babism nevertheless survived and even thrived
in the following decades as a force of religious and political dissent. Despite
horrifying mistreatment at the hand of the government officials, the fierce
animosity of the `ulama, and frequent mob attacks and scenes of gruesome
lynching, known as
Babi-kush, and despite internecine conflicts and
ideological divisions within the exiled leadership, the Babis continued to
attract converts from discontented elements of all ranks. Bahá'ullah, who led
the Babi-Bahá'í majority faction from exile in Baghdad, then Ederna, and later
Akka in Palestine, was supported by converts from among the petty merchants and
other sectors of the middle classes. A member of the bureaucratic elite,
Bahá'ullah renounced the Babi militant stance against the state in favor of a
pacifist approach based on a moral reassessment of the Babi principles. The
minority Babi-Azali faction, on the other hand, remained theoretically loyal to
the Babi revolt against the state and the `ulama and refused redefinition of
the Babi scripture (Amanat 1989, 372-416).
The emerging Babi-Bahá'í faith represented a religious outlook based on
Bayani religion but in many respects, particularly its socio-moral message,
distinct from it. Bahá'ullah, who first claimed in 1864 to be "He whom God
[page 246]
shall manifest," the awaited savior of the Bayani dispensation, combined in
his teachings aspects of mysticism with utopian discourse of possible European
origin while preserving the Babi messianic outlook and communal vigor. In the
spirit of the Babi theophany, he claimed to be the manifestation of the divine
word uttered in the day of the encounter with God. His ecumenical call drew
upon Islam as well as Judaism and Christianity as he claimed to be the
messianic fulfillment of all monotheistic religions, a manifestation aimed at
elevating humankind to the status of cognition while Bahá'ullah himself was to
be the ultimate pinnacle of this divine manifestation. Bahá'ullah viewed the
arrival of this apocalyptic moment, God's Day, as a sign of maturation of human
moral and civil potentials. The call for the "unity of humankind," the ultimate
goal of the anticipated "universal peace," reflected the Bahá'í wish to break
with the ethnic, racial, and gender norms and loyalties prevalent at the time.
Bahá'ullah's later writing emphasized racial and gender equality, economic
harmony, constitutional monarchy, and religious toleration. His independent
investigation of truth as the guiding principle for personal enlightenment and
for the community's intellectual life also dismissed religious conviction on
the basis of ancestral, communal, or scriptural identities and instead
underscored a shade of modern individuality. "Universal maturation" was thus
viewed as the prelude to a new age of cognition, rather than abiding dogma, and
individual responsibility, rather than collective ritualism. The Babi teachings
were further modified so as to remove the relics of the Islamic past in the
areas of devotional acts, legalistic provenance of the `ulama, women's
segregation, strictures in dealing with nonbelievers, and dietary rules. More
importantly, as a post-apocalyptic faith, Bahá'ísm sought to disengage from
Islam's preoccupation with the hereafter, at least in its heaven-hell
dichotomy, and to highlight instead the gradual elevation of human soul in the
afterlife. [10]
The unfolding of millenarian potentials of Iranian Shi`ism in the Babi
movement, and its later Bahá'í and Azali manifestations, occurred at a critical
juncture when Islamic societies had begun to encounter the threatening and yet
luring West. The Babi movement thus represented a novel answer to the question
of religious modernization by breaking with Islam while preserving the
continuity of the Middle East's prophetic tradition.
Notes
- On Shi'i Mahdism and the Occultation, see
M. A. Amir-Moezzi, Divine Guide in Early Shi'ism (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1994); S. A. Arjomand, "The Crisis of the Imamate
and the Institution of Occultation in Twelver Shi'ism: A Sociohistorical
Perspective," International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996):
491-515; H. Modarresi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of
Shi'ite Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993), 53-105; Sachedina,
Islamic Messianism, 78-183.
- For Shi'i messianism in the early modern period, see S. A. Arjomand,
The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order and
Societal Change in Shi'ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984), 66-104; H. Halm, Shiism (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1991), 71-91. See also A. Amanat, "The Nuqtawi
Movement of Mahmud Pisikhani and His Persian Cycle of Mystical-Materialism,"
Mediaeval Isma'ili History and Thought, ed. F. Daftary (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 281-98.
- Bayan (Tehran, n.d.), 2:7 (pp. 30-33) and 3:13 (93-97); cf.
Le Beyan Persan, trans. A.L.M. Nicolas (Paris: Librairie Paul Geuthner,
1911), 68-73, 50-58. For other pertinent references, see E. G. Browne's "Index
of chief contents of the Persian Bayan," in his edition of Hajji Mirza Jani of
Kashan, Kitab-i Nuqtatul'-Kaf (Leyden: E.J. Brill/London: Luzac &
Co., 1910), under "Resurrection" (p. lxxxvii), "Revelation" (p. 1xxxvii), and
"Zuhur" (p. xciv).
- For a summary of the Babi doctrine, see E. G. Browne, "The Babis of
Persia: II, Their Literature and Doctrines," Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society 21 (1889): 881-933 reprinted in Selections from the Writings of
E.G. Browne on the Babi and the Bahá'í Religions, ed. M. Momen (Oxford:
George Ronals, 1987), 187-239.
- For the Babi-Bahá'í fulfillment of past prophecies, see Bahá'ullah,
Kitab-i Iqan (Cairo, n.d.), trans. Shoghi Effendi as Kitab-i Iqan,
the Book of Certitude (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publications Committee,
1931). On the Bahá'í faith, see J. R. I. Cole, Modernity and the Millennium:
The Genesis of the Bahá'í Faith in the Nineteenth Century Middle East (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1998); P. Smith, The Babi-Bahá'í Religions:
From Messianic Shi'ism to a World Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987).
Works cited in the excerpt
Amanat, A. 1989.
Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement
in Iran, 1844-1850. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Corbin, H. 1960.
Terre celeste et corps de résurrection de l'iran
mazdeen à l'iran shi'ite. Paris. Eng. trans. below.
Corbin H. 1977.
Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth from Mazdean Iran to
Shi'ite Iran Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Other passing mentions of the Bahá'í Faith in the rest of the article [not
included]
p. 247f. - "For the Ahmadiyya hereafter was meant to be a continuous journey of
the soul toward spiritual perfection, an interpretation distinct from the
literal Qur'anic rendition of heaven and hell but close to the Sufi, and the
later Bahá'í view."
p. 252 - the first paragraph of the section titled "Modern Shi'ism and the
Islamic Revolution" ends with this sentence: "This new tendency may be detected
first in polemical responses to Marxists, secularists, and Bahá'í critics who
raised questions about doctrines of Occultation, corporal resurrection, and the
last judgment."
p. 255 - the "Islamic utopianism" of Murtaza Mutahhari is described as follows:
"Though wrapped in an Islamic guise, such utopian Mahdism was a far cry from
the customary Shi'i view of Mahdi's return and in some respects close to the
Babi-Bahá'í ideals a century earlier as well as to the very Marxist utopianism
against which he proposed his "Islamic ideology."
p. 256 - mention of Khomeini's paranoia about "anti-Islamic propaganda by the
Bahá'ís and the Chrisitian missionaries"
p. 257 - Shaykh Mahmud Halabi is called "an old preacher and an extreme
anti-Bahá'í activist".
