This book is a study of the Shiite Saba'iyya, known in the Muslim tradition as one of the first sects in Islam, and as the origin of all Shiite belief or the earliest manifestation of Shiite extremism or ghuluww. The study is also concerned with the alleged founder of the sect ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saba’ and the legends surrounding this personality. It is relevant to the problems of early Islamic historiography and to the origins of Shiism.
The general historical tradition remembers an Ibn Saba' as one of ʿAlī's supporters and army leaders. In the early heresiographical tradition he is said to have been a Jewish convert to Islam and is credited with being the originator of a number of Shiite beliefs, including the idea that ʿAlī to Muḥammad was like Joshua was to Moses (the waṣiyya doctrine), the rejection of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar and ʿUthmān (the doctrine of rafḍ) and, most famously, that he refused to accept ʿAlī's death and believed in his messianic return (the ghayba and rajʾa doctrine). As for the Saba'iyya, they appear in the historical sources during the rebellion of al-Mukhtār as his South Arabian and extremist Shiite followers.
Anthony devotes the first three chapters to examining the corpus of the pro-ʿUthmān Kūfan akhbārī Sayf ibn ʿUmar al-Tamīmī (d. c. 180/796), in which accounts of Ibn Saba’ and the Saba'iyya occupy a large space. In a thoroughgoing analysis Anthony argues convincingly that Sayf's reporting on Ibn Saba' and his followers is in many respects unique and largely unhistorical, his material being intrusive to the narrative and having the polemical aim of showing that the man was insincere as a Muslim, conspiratorial, and intent on creating discord in the nascent Muslim community.
In chapters 4 and 5 Anthony examines descriptions of Ibn Saba' in the heresiographical tradition, with the aim of tracing the origin and evolution of his persona. He suggests that both Sayf and the Imāmī ps.-Hishām, our earliest heresiographical author and Sayf's contemporary, drew on a common corpus of traditions including anti-Shiite material, and that ps.-Hishām had relied on such reports without attempting to transform them into accounts more suited to an Imāmī perspective. The problem here is with the assumption that classical Imāmī ḥadīth and doctrine could be used as evidence for Imāmism in the second half of the second/eighth century. Thus, for example, Anthony argues that the waṣiyya doctrine was crucial to early Imāmism and, hence, that ps.-Hishām himself could not have ascribed it to an arch-heretic. He does not consider evidence suggesing that, in ps.-Hishām's view, waṣiyya and the related ʿAlī-Joshua analogy were messianist and antithetical to true Imāmism (with its doctrine of naṣṣ and its view of ʿAlī in the role of Aaron).
When tracing the origin and evolution of the tradition regarding Ibn Saba’'s deification of ʿAlī and his execution by the latter, Anthony's analysis is quite plausible when it comes to the later stages of its development. Regarding the earlier stages, he argues that deification begins to be ascribed to Ibn Saba’ and the Saba'iyya only in the late second/eighth century and he relates this to new criteria of ghuluww becoming relevant around that time. If he is saying that newer esoteric forms of ghuluww were a recent development in late second-/eighth-century Shiism, requiring that ʿAlī's authority be invoked against them, then this reviewer would have no problem with it. But Anthony seems to envisage that esoteric deification doctrines had existed for about a century but were not linked to Ibn Saba’ until the late second because by then the ghayba and rajʿa of an imām, previously regarded as ghuluww, had become “normalized” in Imāmī thought. The notion that the ghayba doctrine had become “normalized” at any time before the adoption of the ghayba of the twelfth imām is speculative and counterintuitive.
In chapter 6 Anthony tries to establish if the belief in the rajʿa of ʿAlī has a basis in historical reality. Unembellished akhbār, which appear to be casual and incidental, are deemed to be very early. The fact that Rushayd al-Hajarī, another disciple of ʿAlī who is also identified as a Saba’ī who refused to accept ʿAlī's death, is associated with other messianic beliefs concerning ʿAlī in other seemingly independent reports is deemed to be strong evidence supporting the historicity of the belief. Anthony also adduces the existence of widespread apocalyptic expectations in early Islam and the similarities between the themes and symbols of the Ibn Saba’ tradition and those of late antique Jewish and Christian messianism. However, none of this evidence can be securely dated, and the possibility that the Ibn Saba' tradition originated much later than the events it purports to describe, and to serve anti-messianist and other heresiological purposes is, unfortunately, not considered.
In the final chapter Anthony argues that the Saba'iyya continued as a sectarian movement, upholding its messianic beliefs regarding ʿAlī, appearing as a core group in Mukhtār's revolt and exerting ideological influence over it. One of the main pieces of evidence that he adduces is the chair of ʿAlī, which Mukhtār is said to have paraded as a relic of the ahl al-bayt and compared to the Ark of the Israelites. As Anthony himself notes, in these accounts there are no references to ʿAlī's messianic role, and the term Saba'iyya is variously used in the sense of Shia, ghulāt, or Yamanī tribesmen. Despite these and other difficulties with the available evidence, Anthony is inclined to postulate a real existence for upholders of ʿAlī's messianic role in the movement of al-Mukhtār.
The work is impressive in its scope and in much of its analysis. It is not, however, convincing in its attempt to present a new picture of Shiite origins.
