Ismailism
Chaper in Islamic Spirituality: Foundations, Ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1987, pp. 179-198.
Abstract
This overview article on Ismailism focuses on some of the key concepts, underlying the Ismaili interpretation of Islam governing Ismaili beliefs. The article starts off with a brief historical background. It touches upon the da’wa activities and some of the challenging circumstances under which it operated.
The early literature of the Ismailis is preserved in Arabic and then Persian languages. Some of the major works of the more prominent dai’s such as Abu Ya’qub al-Sijistani, al-Mu’ayyad fi’l-din Shirazi and Nasir Khusraw are discussed in the article.
Ismailism is a part of the Shi’ite branch of Islam whose adherents constitute at present a small minority within the wider Muslim ummah. They live in over twenty-five different countries, including Afghanistan, East Africa, India, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, the United Kingdom, North America, and also parts of China and the Soviet Union.
Historical Background
(continues from Part I , Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V & Part VI)
Sacred History and Human Destiny
In the view of the cosmos described above, history unfolds as a “sacred” series of events imbued with Divine Purpose. This unfolding is seen in cyclical terms based on the ta’wil of creation in the following Quranic verse:
God who created the heavens and the earth in six days (VII, 54).
Al-Mu’ayyad fi’l-din Sh-irazi (d. 470/1077) in his interpretation of the verse starts by demonstrating that the reference to days bears no relation to the conception of a day measured with the rising and setting of the sun.11 Since there was no sun before creation, it would be absurd, he argues, to suppose such a measure of time in relation to God’s creative power. He then refers to other Quranic references where God is said to create faster than the twinkling of an eye, and he concludes that the references to heaven and earth have in reality nothing to do with the heaven, earth, and days as conceived in terms of man’s measure of space and time. The true ta’wil of the verse reveals a sacred history, connoting the six cycles of prophecy, each an event of cosmic significance. The prophets and the time-cycles they represent are Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the Prophet Muhammad.
Each prophetic mission inaugurates a Shari’ah, a revealed pattern of life to ensure that society accords with the Divine Will. Each prophet, however, is succeeded by the wasi, who, while preserving and consolidating the Shari’ah, also has the role of interpreting and communicating the inner meaning of the Revelation and the legal prescriptions. The completion of the sixth cycle also marks the onset of a seventh era, in which the Imam assumes his role and thereby completes a process referred to in the Quran’s climactic verse:
Today I have perfected your religion for you, and I have completed My blessing upon you, and I have approved Islam for your religion. (V, 4)
This fulfils the goals embodied in the missions of the six prophets, which like the “six days” do not originate to oppose one another, but rather to succeed one another. Such an interpretation of creation carries with it a sense of the sacredness of history, where the most significant occurrences turn on the prophetic missions and their fulfilment, which leads ultimately to the salvation of humankind. Time, in this sacred framework, returns to its source, and the whole “movement” finally culminates in the Quranic qiyamah, the Great Resurrection, a resurrection of all souls to the esoteric garden of pre-eternal times.
The Ten Intellects
This cyclical concept of history is in turn linked to the notion of human destiny and is best illustrated in the interpretation of the Quranic account of the fall of Adam. This drama in heaven, as explicated in the writing of al-Hamidi (d. 595/1199) and others,12 regards the story of Adam in the garden, his temptation by Satan and his subsequent fall, as having taken place on a cosmic plane, in the pre-existing non-material world of ‘alam al-ibda’. Adam, the human being, is called Adam ruhani, spiritual Adam. Using the cosmological system of the ten intellects already expounded by Kirmani, this account represents Adam as having originally the status of the third intellect in rank. The good aspect of the “tree” in the “garden” which he was forbidden to approach is the status of the first universal intellect. Iblis, who is Satan, is the representation of Adam’s own desire not to accept the status accorded to him. This caused him to commit the sin of wrongful ambition, of desiring to attain equality of rank with those above. The subsequent punishment and expulsion from the garden mark the loss of both his rank and his pre-eminence over other intellects below him. He becomes the tenth intellect, but seeks through repentance to regain his original status. It is by returning through the intellects above him that Adam, now in the sense that he symbolises humankind, reverts to his original status. It is also for this reason that the Universe of Intellects has as its counterpart on the earth the hierarchy of faith. Collectively this hierarchy represents the da’wa, the call, returning the fallen to the true path and representing a step in the process of “ascent.” The fall is not the prelude to the idea of “original sin,” but rather the characterisation of the cosmic process in which the cycles of prophecy and their subsequent consummation restore the true order of things. The role of the hierarchy is to designate for Adam, as for all humankind, the path that must be traversed, the steps they must ascend, in order to reach the Universal Intellect. Such a return represents the potential goal that each human being can attain and through which comes the proper recognition of God’s Unity and the wisdom of the creative process. The return is to that state wherein Adam was endowed with knowledge that constituted an awareness of what the Quran calls “the names, all of them” (II, 31), which in Ismaili thought are no less than the haqa’iq, the universal truths.
From the Institute of Ismaili Studies
Ismailimail 