Locating Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw
This undated treatise with no information of authorship or provenance is a rare and unique witness to a factional group of early Nizari Ismailis known only through brief mentions in the Ilkhanid (654–735/1256–1335) chronicles. To locate it historically and within the Nizari Ismaili daʿwa literature, passages from the treatise have been mapped to Nizari doctrinal works and known chronologies from the chronicles to elucidate the authorial purposes, the functions of the text, its possible understandings within the community in which it was produced, and the relevance of this text to the study of early Nizari Ismailism. This paper begins with a brief outline of how reliance on specific historical sources has influenced phases of modern scholarship, followed by the historical background of the succession crisis that led to the establishment of Nizari Ismailism. The description of the text is followed by historical and theoretical analyses to locate and date the writing and to identify doctrinal factionalism among the early Nizaris revealed by the text.
Modern study of early Nizari Ismailism can be divided into three phases correlated to the sources used by the scholars. The first phase began with nineteenth and early twentieth-century studies.Footnote 1 Scholars in this period predominantly relied on the polemical Jamāʿī-Sunni–centric histories of Muḥammad b. Khwāndshāh Mīrkhwānd, Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī Qazwīnī, and ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā Malik Juwaynī (hereafter Juwaynī).Footnote 2 As a result, these studies construed Ismailism as an extreme Shiʿi heresy that sought the destruction of Islam from within or imported an array of un-Islamic doctrines and practices from ancient Iranian religious traditions.Footnote 3 The second phase began in the twentieth century with the pioneering work of Wladimir Ivanow, followed by Henry Corbin, Samuel Stern, Marshall Hodgson, Bernard Lewis, Wilferd Madelung, Christian Jambet, Delia Cortese, Farhad Daftary, and Seyyed Jalal Badakhchani.Footnote 4 Their studies were facilitated by increasing reliance on the account of the Nizari polity in the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles) compiled under the aegis of the Ilkhanid wazir Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlallāh (hereafter Rashīd al-Dīn) and, more importantly, as a result of access to Nizari doctrinal texts.Footnote 5 The edition, translation, and publications of the meager collection of surviving Nizari daʿwa literature begun by Ivanow has been consolidated into five volumes through the efforts of Jalal Badakhchani. In common with the study of premodern periods in other areas, the thoughts and actions of high functionaries—the imams and dāʿīs—dominate understandings of the emergence and early development of Nizari Ismailism; the chronicles focus on accounts of rulers, great leaders, and the powerful elite. The analyses of this rare treatise, the Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw, are part of the beginning of a new phase of Ismaili studies in which scholarship also must focus on the beliefs, actions, and agency of nonelite marginal and marginalized constituencies. The subdued voices and neglected perspectives of the populace that are rarely recorded in premodern sources also need to be retrieved and refracted alongside the thoughts and actions of the leaders so as not to treat the emergence and development of religious movements, in this case of Nizari Ismailism, simply as monolithic endeavors of religious leadership and the elites. To place this text in its context we begin by detailing the historical background of the emergence of early Nizari Ismailism.
Background
Just as the Fatimid Empire reached its territorial zenith in the reign of the imam-caliph al-Mustanṣir (r. 427–487/1036–1095), his death precipitated a succession crisis. The powerful wazir and de facto ruler of the empire, al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī (d. 515/1121) enthroned the youngest prince, his brother-in-law, with the regnal title al-Mustaʿlī (r. 487–495/1095–1101).Footnote 6 Al-Mustanṣir's eldest son, Nizār (r. 487–488/1095) claimed to have received the naṣṣ (specific designation) from his father and rejected the purported deathbed designation of his youngest brother. He, himself, was proclaimed imam-caliph in Alexandria.Footnote 7 A year later, Nizār was captured, taken to Cairo, and killed.Footnote 8 The Ismailis loyal to the polity in Iran (483–654/1090–1256), founded and ruled by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (r. 483–518/1090–1124), awaited the manifestation (kashf, zuḥūr) of the imam in the line of Nizār. On 17 Ramaḍān 559/August 15, 1164, Ḥasan (r. 557–561/1162–1166), the fourth ruler of the polity, declared the Qiyāmat-i buzurg (the Great Resurrection) and was subsequently recognized as the imam descended from Nizār, bringing an end to the era of satr (concealment).Footnote 9 This castellan polity which linked over a hundred and fifty installations was annihilated by the Mongols in 654/1256, and the library of their legendary fortress of Alamūt was burned.
Daʿwa (proselytic summons) literature plundered from this library was used by Ilkhanid era author-historians, with avowed antipathies toward the Ismailis, to write the dynastic history (taʾrīkh) of the Nizari Ismaili polity. Only six Nizari doctrinal treatises from the seventy-year foundational period before the declaration of the Qiyāma have been retrieved and brought to publication.Footnote 10 The Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw (Story of Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw), analyzed here, despite several anachronisms and doctrinal quandaries, allows a rare window into the beliefs of this group of ẓuhūrists (those who sought the urgent manifestation of the imam)Footnote 11 that was persecuted by the Nizari daʿwa hierarchy for their agitation to end the era of concealment (satr) and bring about the manifestation (ẓuhūr) of their imam. In the text we find, perhaps, the earliest example of the appropriation by the Nizaris of the Central Asian poet, philosopher and Fatimid Ismaili dāʿī Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 465/1072–73). We also find the author's explanation of the transference of the imamate from Egypt to Iran. Textual and narrative analyses suggest that the Ḥikāyat was written between 541/1147 and 557/1162 and might even have been an unattributed ultimate source, in part, for the Ilkhanid chronicle accounts of the Nizari polity in Iran.
Witnesses of the Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw
The translation and critical edition based on three witnesses of this undated treatise has recently been published.Footnote 12 In the early twentieth century, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ghufrānī copied the text as part of a majmūʿa (compilation) of some 62 treatises labeled Persian MS 5 ff. 114b–118b in the Institute of Ismaili Studies collection (siglum: IIS5).Footnote 13 Another witness is located in a majmūʿa in the Wazīrī collection at Tehran University listed as Tehran-Markazī MS-F 2835 (siglum: TU2835).Footnote 14 In this witness, the title is given as Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw, raḥmatʾllāh ʿalaihi (The Story of Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw, God have mercy on him), and the colophon written perpendicular to the main text on f. 92b named a certain Shāh Murād b. Muḥammad as the copyist.Footnote 15 Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh located a third “witness” at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a manuscript he listed as MS-M140/1 (siglum: UCLA140). He believed this manuscript to be a copy of TU2385. Dānishpazhūh was searching for the Sarguẕasht-i Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (Biography of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ). He referenced Poonawala's catalog, which successively lists the Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw and the Sarguẕasht-i Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ in TU2385. Dānishpazhūh noted,
In the majmuʿa of Āqā-i Ḥasan-i Āmūzgārī-yi Riḍawī, the microfilm of which is housed at [Tehran] University (2835/9s835:1), the late scholar Riḍawī, in the biography of [Naṣīr al-Dīn] Ṭūsī, has mentioned what appeared to be both biographical accounts [of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ]; however, at present, we do not see the Sarguẕasht-i Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (Biography of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ) in the film. From the listing of UCLA MSS (Publication of the University Press 739: 11 and 12) in MS-M140/1, I found, possibly, that very biography (bāyad hamīn Sarguẕasht bāshad). I believe this to be the MS of Āmūzgārī-yi Riḍawī.Footnote 16
The Sarguẕasht also was not among the scanned folios of the TU2385 made available to me. In his search for the Sarguẕasht, it appears, Dānishpazhūh overlooked the Hikāyat in TU2385. The titles, colophons, and several features of the Hikāyat in TU2385 and UCLA140 are identical and therefore corroborate his surmise that the UCLA140 may be a copy of TU2385. He edited the treatise based only on UCLA140 in his introduction to the second edition of Qāshānī's Zubdat al-tawārīkh; however, he erroneously posited that this text may, in fact, be the Sarguẕasht-i Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ.Footnote 17 Let us now turn to the text.
Content of the Ḥikāyat
The Ḥikāyat does not conform to the structures and contents typical of Ismaili daʿwa literature. It does not begin with an invocation of God or with praise and prayers in the name of the prophet and imams, and it does not quote or discuss doctrinal material from the Qurʾan, aḥādith (reports of prophetic sayings and actions), or akhbār (accounts) of the imams found in Ismaili daʿwa literature. Doctrines and theology are only tangentially alluded to in the narrative. The Ḥikāyat reads like a dramatic script with a series of analepses and prolepses, and the prominent characters enter and exit the stage with the progression of the narrative. I have divided the text into twenty-one paragraphs and sixteen episodes, which will be examined in greater detail below. The events in the text, if tied to historical chronology, would have taken place in 440/1048–49 (episodes 1–2; paras. 1–4); in the next five episodes (paras. 5–9) the time-scale shifts to 487–488/1095, with a terminus ad quem of 557/1162 for the remainder of the text (episodes 8–16; paras. 10–20).
Outline of the Ḥikāyat
[paras. 1–4] The first two episodes are narrated in Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's voice as he recounts to the Rafīqān (friends, comrades, a term used for Nizari Ismailis), the ḥikāyat (story) from Nāṣir-i Khusraw of how al-Mustanṣir appointed him to carry out the daʿwa in Balkh, Kabul, and Badakhshan. Nāṣir leaves the stage and the narrator and audience become anonymous.
[ep. 3–4; paras. 5–6] In the next episode the aging al-Mustanṣir divided the Fatimid realm between his sons Nizār and al-Mustaʿlī. After their father's death, al-Mustaʿlī moved to push aside his brother.
[ep. 5; para. 7] Nizār sought out Ḥasan-i Saʿīd, a slave of al-Mustanṣir, and asked for the letter given to him by al-Mustanṣir. This letter in the imam-caliph's own hand affirmed Nizār as his designated successor (farzand-i manṣūṣ).
[ep. 6; para. 8] Nizār set out from Cairo with his two sons and Ḥasan-i Saʿīd. They stopped for some days at the home of a hermit who had received an iqṭāʿ (tax farm) from al-Mustanṣir and had been ordered to expect the party on that specific day and time. The hermit affirmed Nizār's status and offered his services as commanded by al-Mustanṣir.
[ep. 7; para. 9] Al-Mustaʿlī discovered that Nizār and his companions had moved to Baghdad so he sent threatening demands to the ʿAbbasid caliph for their return. Nizār secretly sent his designated successor along with Ḥasan-i Saʿīd to Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ at Alamūt and himself returned to Cairo where he was killed.
The remaining episodes of the story take place at Alamūt:
[ep. 8–11; paras. 10–14] The true identity of the imams descended from Nizār (Hādī, Muhtadī, and Qāhir) was known only to rulers of the Nizari polity, namely, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and after him Buzurg Ummīd (r. 518–532/1124–1138). The imams wrote treatises and covertly directed the daʿwa, to the extent that Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ executed his own four sons based on a conversation with the imam in which he understood that the sons would turn out to be seditious.
[ep. 12; para. 15] The third ruler of the polity Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, unaware of and opposed to the imamate, killed the imam, Qāhir, and his eighteen companions. He took the imam's pregnant wife into his residence ordering that if the child were male, he would be killed. Miraculously, his own pregnant wife gave birth to a daughter on the same day as the imam's wife birthed her son.
[ep. 13; para. 16] The former substituted her daughter in place of the imam's son, saving the child's life.
[ep. 14–16; paras. 17–21] As time went on, Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd noticed that two of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's three prognostications about the Qāʾim had become manifest in his purported son. As he discussed this with the Rafīqān, the third prognostication came true. The narrative culminates with the son crushing the head of the ruler of the Nizari polity. He was then acknowledged as the manifest imam (ẓuhūr-i khudāwand), and the Rafīqān organized a celebratory feast.
The lack of introductions of key individuals and events of the narrative to exemplify their significances and import, as well as the absence of features typical of Ismaili daʿwa literature, suggests its previous orality within the ḥikayāt and dāstān (story) traditions in which the audience might have been familiar with the contexts, events, and individuals.Footnote 18 The narrator would draw his listeners into the story by embellishing related narratives, adding pious invocations and commentary and teaching doctrine. Factuality was secondary to “tellability.”Footnote 19 Commitment to writing suggests that the author wished to extend the reach of the ideas beyond the immediate groups of listeners to the oral narrations—at distances of both space and time.
In the next section, we will examine a number of historical anomalies and doctrinal issues, correlating episodes of the Ḥikāyat with the three Ilkhanid chronicle accounts of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā-Malik b. Muḥammad Juwaynī (d. 681/1283), Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh (d. 718/1318), and Abū al-Qāsim Qāshānī (d. after 738/1337) to date the text.
Analyses of the Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid-i Nāṣir-i Khusraw
The chronicles used writings housed at the most eminent of Nizari libraries that may have constituted “authorized” texts to write their histories.Footnote 20 In 654/1256, as the Mongols dismantled the defenses of the soon to be decapitated Nizari polity, Juwaynī was given permission by Hūlāgū b. Tuluy b. Chingiz Khān (r. 654–663/1256–1265) to plunder the library and treasury of Alamūt. He took some texts for the Ilkhanid treasury and torched the library.Footnote 21 He used these texts to write the earliest, most complete available account of the Nizari polity.Footnote 22 Rashīd al-Dīn, the Ilkhanid wazir who was born in a Nizari fortress, followed the paradigm set by Juwaynī.Footnote 23 Abū al-Qāsim Qāshānī, who was part of Rashīd al-Dīn's team, wrote a work similar if not more detailed than Rashīd al-Dīn, yet the tenor was closer to that of Juwayni's treatment of the Nizaris.Footnote 24 Rashīd al-Dīn and Qāshānī indicated their sources for each of the regnal accounts of the Nizari rulers; however, neither mentioned Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw. This early Nizari Ismaili text, as the analyses will show, belonged to a silenced subaltern voice that resonated far beyond its marginality at the time.
The episodes in the Ḥikāyat do not match historical accounts. Nāṣir-i Khusraw and Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ never met; the Fatimid realm was never divided by al-Mustanṣir between Nizār and Mustaʿlī; there is no evidence of Nizār going to Baghdad, and Mustaʿlī's threat to the ʿAbbāsid caliph is fanciful. Based on the Sarguẕasht-i Sayyidnā (Biography of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ), the Ilkhanid chronicles report that he executed two sons, not four, and the circumstances of their killings are very differently recorded. Also, in the Ḥikāyat, why was the third ruler of the Nizari polity in Iran, Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd (r. 532–557/1138–1162), not entrusted with the secret of the concealed imam? This question is pertinent to the accounts of the latter's succession in the Ilkhanid chronicles. The text enumerates two of the three reports in the Ilkhanid chronicles of how the imam ended up in the household of the ruler of Alamūt—namely, the role of Ḥasan-i Saʿīd in conveying the putative imam to Alamūt and then, decades later, a substitution of the descendent of the imam for a child of the dāʿī.Footnote 25
Interleaving segments from the Ḥikāyat and the three Ilkhanid chronicles, I examine several questions: As the meeting between Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and Nāṣir Khusraw is ahistorical, why does the text mention Nāṣir-i Khusraw? Why is Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, the third dāʿī-ruler of the Nizari polity, cast as a negative character? What theological questions does the text illuminate, and what understandings of postprophetic authority and imamate does it reveal among the early Nizari Ismaili communities? Who was the audience for the text? What was the function of the text? When might the Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw have been written?
Nāṣir-i Khusraw and Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ
The first episode of the Ḥikāyat establishes linkages between Nāṣir-i Khusraw and Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ [paras. 1–4]. Ḥasan retold a story (ḥikāyat) told to him by Nāṣir-i Khusraw. Nāṣir told him “I had been in Egypt for six months but had not been able to see Mustanṣir biʾllāh”.Footnote 26 A friendly shopkeeper told him that the imam-caliph was more approachable during the festival of Nawrūz. He waited two months and tried to catch a glimpse of the imam-caliph at the procession. He was apprehended by Fatimid officials, and when he was brought to al-Mustanṣir he observed a self-anointment by the imam-caliph.
Mawlānā Mustanṣir, peace on his mention, arrived; he seemed to me tired of the duties of sultanate and kingship. He went to the door of the shop of an oil-seller (rafīq-i rawgangar). Stretched out on the horse he ordered the rafīq: “Bring me a container of oil” . . . He poured that container of oil on the blessed head, and the royal robes he had worn for Nawrūz were covered in oil; the riders and people who were in the procession were covered in oil. Most of the army withdrew from him, and the hypocrites called him mad (dīwāna). After that, when he came to the house, he called for, praised, and gave an edict (manshūr) for this servant, Nāṣir, to carry out the daʿwa in the regions of Balkh, Kabul, and Badakhshan. [paras. 3–4]
Historically, after three years in Cairo, Nāṣir returned to Central Asia. Many sources suggest that he was appointed ḥujja (proof).Footnote 27 There is no mention of this in the Ḥikāyat. His elevation, in the text, took place some eight months after his arrival in Cairo, which does not accord with Nāṣir's biography. Other than Sayyid, no honorifics or eulogies, common in Badakhshani Ismaili writings, are attached to his name;Footnote 28 however, this is consonant with several mentions of him by Rashīd al-Dīn and Qāshānī in the accounts of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, which were based on the latter's biography, the Sarguẕasht-i Sayyidnā. Footnote 29 UCLA140 and the copyist of TU2385, who, given his name, Shāh Murād b. Muḥammad, may have been from Central Asia, simply appended the pious supplication “may God have mercy on him” (raḥmatuʾllāh ʿalaihi) to Nāṣir-i Khusraw's name in the title. Nāṣir's invocation without elaborate eulogization suggests that the text was written within the community of followers of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ. Although the text's audience already would have been familiar with the memory of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the juxtaposition with Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ elides both their sanctities and legacies for the communities of followers.Footnote 30
Fatimid and Nizari Continuities
The text also intimates Fatimid and Nizari continuities between the imams: al-Mustanṣir, Nizār, and his successors, whom it places in Iran [paras. 5–14]. In the text, Nizār's succession was legitimized by the letter in al-Mustanṣir's hand given to Ḥasan-i Saʿīd.
Mawlanā Nizār went home and called Ḥasan-i Saʿīd who was a royal slave (āz khādimān-i khāṣṣ) of Mawlānā Mustanṣir, peace be on his mention, and was now in his service. He asked: “Mawlānā Mustanṣir, peace be on his mention, on a certain date and day had written a letter, put his seal on it and had given it to you. Do you have it?” He replied: “Yes.” He (Nizār) commanded: “Bring it.” Ḥasan-i Saʿīd brought the letter to Mawlānā Nizār. He (Nizār) tore open the letter and gave it back. Mawlānā Mustanṣir, peace be on his mention, had written in his own blessed hand: “My designated son (farzand-i manṣūṣ) is Nizār. Whoever wishes for the path of Truth (rāh-i Ḥaqq) should obey him.” Ḥasan-i Saʿīd prostrated before him and said: “I obey and am at your command in whatever you order.” [para. 7]
Nizār's position was also affirmed by a hermit.
His Lordship along with his two sons and Ḥasan departed from Cairo toward the Nile and arrived at the house of a hermit (rāhib). The hermit came out and said: “Are you Mawlānā Nizār?” He replied: “Yes.” The hermit asked: “With two children?” He replied: “Yes.” The hermit said: “Is Ḥasan-i Saʿīd with you?” He replied: “Yes.”
The hermit went into the house; [Nizār] asked him: “How did you come to know that I am Nizār with my children?” The hermit replied: “Mawlānā Mustanṣir had given part of this district as an iqṭāʿ (tax farm) to me and had instructed me that: ‘On a certain night Mawlānā Nizār with his children and Ḥasan-i Saʿīd will come to your place; do not hesitate in obeying him!’ I have been waiting this evening to this hour. If you had not come, I would have become suspicious. Now whatever you command I will obey.” [para. 8]Footnote 31
The Dustūr al-munajjimīn (Canon of the Astronomers), written at Alamūt in Arabic during the lifetime and reign of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, between 488/1095 and 512/1118, records Nizār's meeting with a hermit. The Dustūr contains nine chapters dealing with astronomy and astrology and a lengthy historiographic chapter divided into tables containing brief biographic notes on each imam. The table on Nizār is the last of these and the very brief notes contain a reference to his encounter with a hermit.Footnote 32 In the Dustūr, the hermit regularly visited a particular monastery at a specific time awaiting Nizār, and rather than confirming the latter's designation by al-Mustanṣir he was converted to Islam by the imam. The passage reads:
The story of the hermit (al-rāhib) with whom he (Nizār) stayed on the day of his flight (yawm al-hijrat) is well known; as well as the conversation he had with him, peace be upon him. It is related from our elders (aslāfnā) that the son of the Greek (Ibn al-Rūmīya) would go down to a particular a monastery, on a particular day, at a particular time, and that he was of such and such a character. Then [after meeting Nizār] he professed Islam by his (Nizār's) hand (aslāmahu ʿala yadihi) and bore witness to him during the battle, God have mercy on him.Footnote 33
Although some elements—the hermit, his anticipation of Nizār's arrival—are similar, the thrust of the episode is different here, which suggests that the Dustūr and the Ḥikāyat drew from different versions of oral hagiographic narratives of Nizār.
Nizār's departure from and fatal return to Cairo in the Ḥikāyat echoes his departure from the enthronement of al-Mustaʿlī in Mamluk era chronicles. He left the enthronement of al-Mustaʿlī to retrieve the letter from his father in which he claimed that he had been designated as the legitimate successor.Footnote 34 Al-Mustaʿlī discovered that Nizār had fled to Baghdad and demanded that the ʿAbbāsid caliph return him to Cairo. Nizār “sent Mawlānā Hādī, who was his actual son (farzand-i ḥaqīqī), with Ḥasan-i Saʿid, who accompanied him to the fortress of Alamūt to Sayyidnā, God sanctify his soul, and himself went to Cairo” [paras. 8–9]. The events and timeline suggest that the author of the Ḥikāyat was heedless of the chronology, contexts, and even geography—Nizār's return from Baghdad is construed through Khūzistān, a province in Iran. The paramount focus of the text was to explain the transference of the progeny of Nizār to Iran.
The three Ilkhanid chronicles also record the role of Ḥasan-i Saʿīd in secretly conveying a descendant of Nizār to Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ at Alamūt in 488/1095.Footnote 35 However, their explanations of how the imam from the line of Nizār ended up in the ruling house at Alamūt are bewildering and warrant careful unpacking. Juwaynī, discussing the lineage of the imam, Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām, states that the grandson of Nizār who came from Egypt or
his son who was born in the neighborhood of Alamut—for they [the Nizaris] are not informed of the truth of the matter—committed adultery with the wife of Muhammad, the son of Buzurg-Umid, and she became pregnant with Hasan by the Imam. And when his ill-omened birth occurred in the house of Muhammad, the son of Buzurg-Umid, both Muhammad himself and his followers thought him to be Muhammad's son, whereas he was actually an Imam and the son of an Imam.Footnote 36
Rashīd al-Dīn did not include this salacious story; instead he recounted that the belief of the people of the region of Alamūt was that
Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, at the castle of Alamūt, had a child. On that very day, Ḥasan was given birth by his mother, [the wife of] the supposed imam in the village at the foot of Alamūt. After three days a woman went up to the castle of Alamūt and into the house (sarāy) of Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd. She had something hidden under [her clothing]. She came to the place where the child of Muḥammad Buzurg Ummīd was sleeping; at that hour by the command of Divine Wisdom (ba-ḥukm-i ḥikmat-i Ilahī) no one else was present. This woman put the son of the imam in the place and took away the child of Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd under her mantle (chādar).Footnote 37
Juwaynī also recorded this narrative but ironically found the explanation to be “even more discreditable than the first—that a strange woman should enter a king's palace, where there was no one about the king's child.”Footnote 38 The fortress of Alamūt could, at most, accommodate a population of about three hundred people, and at the time these events might have occurred Buzurg Ummīd (r. 518–532/1124–1138) was the ruler and not his son. Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd's quarters would have been more accessible than Juwaynī suggested. Following these earlier patterns, half a century later, Qāshānī reported both the adultery and substitution narratives. Uncharacteristically, he stated that “according to the disdainful thought of the Sunnis (zaʿm-i anūf-i ahl-i sunnat wa jamāʿat),” it was the grandson of Nizār who committed adultery with the dāʿī's wife.Footnote 39
The Ḥikāyat explains that Ḥasan-i Saʿīd brought Hādī the son of Nizār to Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ [paras. 10–11] and after him, his son, Muhtadī, and grandson, Qāhir, clandestinely lived at the foot of Alamūt and administered the daʿwa. Only the rulers of the polity, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, and after him Buzurg Ummīd, were aware of the imam's true identity [paras. 10–14]. Unfathomably, Buzurg Ummīd's son and successor was not apprised of this secret. The text construes Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd as not only ignorant about but also opposed to the imamate; so much so that he killed the imam, Qāhir, and his eighteen companions.
Some of the Rafīqān knew that the imam was Mawlānā Qāhir. Kiyā Muḥammad had not heard this matter (maʿnī) such that he was ignorant of him. He was by nature opposed to the essence of the imam (ẕāt-i imām). He was suspicious of the imam such that one day, when Mawlānā with eighteen companions came out of the valley, that unfortunate, along with a group of the accursed (malāʿīn), pursued and martyred His Majesty and the eighteen companions who were with him. [para. 15]
He took the dead imam's pregnant wife into his own household and ordered that if her child was male, he was to be killed.
The Lady of the Qiyāmat (Khātūn-i Qiyāmat) was pregnant at the time; that unfortunate (badbakht) took the Lady to his own house and said: “When the pregnant Lady delivers if the child is male he is to be killed.”Footnote 40 In that house, his own wife was also pregnant. By destiny and Divine decree (qaḍā wa chunīn taqdīr shud) the pregnant Lady and his wife both gave birth at the same time. The pregnant Lady carried that very Lord (ham-ān khudāvand) who became manifest (ki ẓuhūr farmūdand) and the wife of that unfortunate had a daughter. Because she was a believer, she brought her own daughter and gave her to (lit. placed her next to) the Lady, and His Majesty was given to the woman. That unfortunate was informed that the Lady gave birth to a girl and His Majesty was portrayed as his own son. [para. 16]
Here, the Ḥikāyat introduces what may, in all probability, be the original substitution narrative preserved in the Ilkhanid chronicles. The dāʿī's wife and the imam's wife both gave birth at the same time. Being a believer, the dāʿī's wife substituted her daughter for the imam's son, saving the child's life, and placed the future imam in the ruling house [para 16]. Juwaynī reported that
After the birth of the child, Muhammad, the son of Buzurg Umid, realized that it was not his and that the person whom this misguided sect supposed to be the Imam had committed adultery with his wife; and he secretly put that person to death on this supposition. Muhammad, the son of Buzurg-Umid, killed the Imam.Footnote 41
A century later, how could Juwaynī have come to know of such a secret liaison and killing? Did Juwaynī, in his antipathy toward the Ismailis, adulterate the narrative he found in the Ḥikāyat? Was his twisted version the disdainful Sunni thought Qāshānī referred to?
As a thought exercise some of these elements in the Ḥikāyat may be construed within remote bounds of historicity by very cautiously correlating the narrative to historical chronology. At the time of Ḥasan's birth, which according to the Ilkhanid chronicles occurred in the year 520/1126–27, the secret of the imamate would have been known only to the ruler, Buzurg Ummīd. His son would not have had any knowledge of the imam Qāhir's identity. In this context, is it logical that the amir, Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, would have sought to eliminate the challenge of a man living below the main fortress of the polity who was gaining a following and acclaimed to be the Nizari imam? The growing popular followership, of course, contradicts the notion of secrecy of the identity of that imam. However, had such a killing taken place, the Nizari daʿwa literature would have recorded it and its consequences, and this would have carried through into the Ilkhanid chronicles, as was the case with the reports of several other controversial incidents. There is no evidence that Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd killed the Nizari imam, so why is the dāʿī-ruler portrayed negatively in the Ḥikāyat?
Negative Portrayal of Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd
The seven-decade-long realm of the dāʿīs (483–559/1090–1164) established by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, and after him ruled by Buzurg Ummīd and his son Muḥammad, struggled to maintain doctrinal unity as the Nizaris differentiated from Fatimid Ismailism and countered the ideological attacks from the Sunni ulama. Even the Ilkhanid chroniclers, based on Nizari sources, acknowledged that these three rulers maintained strict enforcement of adherence to the sharia—central to the Ismaili precepts of Islam. In part, this was to distinguish what the chroniclers would call the commencement of heresy in the subsequent reign of Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām.Footnote 42 According to the chronicles, the dāʿī-rulers maintained constant vigilance against religiopolitical threats to their polity and ruthlessly suppressed doctrinal opposition. The execution of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's two sons is indicative of such challenges to the authority of their father, and perhaps their opposition to his doctrines.Footnote 43 The Ḥikāyat claims that Ḥasan executed four of his sons based on an admonition of the imam, Hādī b. Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir. In both the Ḥikāyat and the Ilkhanid chronicles, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ proudly declared his filicide to be an act of loyalty to the concealed Nizari imam!
Similarly, the Ilkhanid chroniclers enumerate harsh treatment of other doctrinal opponents. In 526/1131, Buzurg Ummīd's forces defeated Bā Hāshim ʿAlawī, a Zaydī who proclaimed himself as the imam in the Caspian region and Khurāsān. When they captured him, “they produced much proof against him and burnt him.”Footnote 44 This movement persisted into the reign of Muḥammad; in 526/1131, Kiyā Hādī b. Bā Hāshim ʿAlawī, was captured and taken to Alamūt.Footnote 45 In the same year, there was a plot to betray the Nizaris in the village of Sarim in Daylamān; two amirs (military commanders) and their three coconspirators were made to confess their error and imprisoned.Footnote 46 Eight years later, according to the chronicles, the Nizaris attacked Rayy and captured ʿAbd al-Malik Qaṣrānī, the chief (raʾīs) of the city and his son, and there “was another group who lived in hypocrisy and subterfuge. They captured all of them and killed them after they had admitted their crimes and offenses.”Footnote 47
During the reign of Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, Rashīd al-Dīn recorded a lengthy account of a Mazdakī revolt among the people who called themselves Pārsīs. The Nizari dāʿī-author through the screen of the Ilkhanid chronicles recounted their beginnings in the teachings of Mani (216–276 CE) and then Mazdak (d. ca. 528 CE), who along with his followers was killed by the Sassanid ruler, Anushīrwān (r. 531–579 CE).Footnote 48 Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had sent a dāʿī, Dihkhudā Kaykhusraw, to these Pārsīs, and after he died in 530/1135 his sons ʿAbu al-ʿAlāʾ and Yūsuf succeeded him. Rashīd al-Dīn recounted that when Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ passed away,
A man named Jūlāhi-yi Badīl in Aẕarbāyjān proselytized the Pārsīs and said: “God (Ḥaqq) is with the Pārsīs and the Ismailis are ẓāhirīs (exoterists) and the bāṭin (esoteric) is that Abū al-ʿAlāʾ and Yūsuf are in place of Muḥammad and ʿAlī. Muḥammad, ʿAlī, and Salmān, all three are divine; at one time they manifest in one person, sometimes two and sometimes three. The laws of the sharia are for the ẓāhirīs and they (the Pārsīs) do not have to comply with the permitted and forbidden, and the establishment of prayer and fasting should be removed. He said that for Bu al-ʿAlāʾ, all that is forbidden is permitted. Women are reservoirs of water, whoever is thirsty can drink; what then are the dowry and marriage? Girls are permissible to their fathers and brothers. In short, everything that is forbidden he made permissible. They said: “Heaven and hell are here not elsewhere; and whoever knows Abū al-ʿAlāʾ and Yūsuf as god, through metempsychosis (tanāsukh) will return in the human form, otherwise when they die, they will return in the form of beasts (sabuʿ).Footnote 49
In 537/1142 the leaders of the movement were arrested and tortured, and Abū al-ʿAlāʾ and Yūsuf were killed and burnt for their “heresy”; for a year their followers were hunted down. Five years later, Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd secretly ordered the killing of “the chief (rāʿis) of Hamadan, Dihkhudā [Abū al-Faḍl Burujirdī] who was the dāʿī of Hamadan and that region.”Footnote 50
What this scan of events indicates is that during the period of satr (concealment) of the imams, several individuals led movements antithetical to the Nizari daʿwa. Each of these agitators challenged the authority of the dāʿī-rulers of the Nizari polity in favor of Zaydī, neo-Mazdakī, and other claims of religious authority, some seeking urgent manifestation of their soteriological savior. In addition to eradicating these divergent movements, Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd also had to suppress the followers of his own son, Ḥasan. According to Rashīd al-Dīn, the Rafīqān began to think that Ḥasan, who was knowledgeable, eloquent, and charismatic, was the imam promised by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ. Muḥammad said to these people: “Ḥasan is my son and I am not an imam; in fact I am a dāʿī from among the dāʿīs of the imam. Whoever listens to and affirms other than these words is an infidel and irreligious.” He punished those accused of believing in the imamate of his son and “on one occasion he put two hundred and fifty of them to death at Alamūt and bound their corpses to the backs of two hundred and fifty others who were implicated in this way and evicted them from the castle.”Footnote 51 Qāshānī added that “Kiyā Muḥammad placed his own son, Ḥasan, in prison to remain there till his death. Ḥasan pled his innocence from this accusation and resorted to tricks of diplomacy until his father put aside such thoughts.”Footnote 52 In contrast, when Ḥasan was twenty-years old, Rashīd al-Dīn reported that
On 7 Ramaḍān [5]41/17 February, 1147, Kiyā Muḥammad [b. Buzurg-Ummīd] appointed his son Ḥasan as his deputy at Alamūt and himself went to Lār and came to Alamūt. At the beginning of Shawwāl/March he went in the direction of Daylamān by way of Filāmrūd and from there he came to Daylamān and built the fort of Alīkā.Footnote 53
Such an important deputization would not be placed on someone accused of heresy.
In the Ḥikāyat, Muḥammad recounted to a gathering of Rafīqān that he had seen two of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's prognostications of the Qāʾim (the Eschatological Redeemer) in his son. Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, according to the Ḥikāyat, had foretold that
By order and direction of Mawlānā, I have heard that I must appoint Kiyā Buzurg Ummīd in my place; however, I will give you indications of who the Qāʾim is. First, when he will enter the library, he will urinate (chūn ba kitābkhāna dar āyad zahrāb pāshad). Second, during a hunt he will split two animals in half with a single stroke of a sword. Third, during the controversy of Kiyā Muḥammad (dar ḥāl-i nizāʿ-yi Kiyā Muḥammad) he will be wearing boots and have an orange in his hand and will be throwing the orange from one hand to the other. [paras. 17–18]
Muḥammad told a gathering of the Rafīqān that, at the age of ten, his son came into the library and urinated on the books; two years later he killed two animals with one stroke of a sword—his quarry was a pregnant onager. The Rafīqān retorted: “This was not your son!” At that very moment, the young boy entered wearing boots and throwing an orange from one hand to the other. Seeing this, the third prognostication, come true, Muḥammad realized that this was the imam (har chi hast ishānand). He fell to the boy's feet and asked for mercy. Because he had killed the previous imam, the boy's father in actuality, the boy crushed Muḥammad's head with his booted foot. According to the text, the boy would have been around twelve years old [ep. 14–15].
The Ilkhanid chronicles give the date of Muḥammad's death as Tuesday 4 Rabīʿ al-awwal 557/28 February, 1162. Rashīd al-Dīn wrote that “Kiyā Buzurg Muḥammad [b. Buzurg Ummīd] passed from this world. He governed for 25 years; during his reign, they (the Rafīqān) had many attainments and erected many forts. Previously he had designated Kiyā Buzurg Ḥasan as his successor (qāʾim-i maqāmī) and heir (walī ʿahd).”Footnote 54 Ḥasan would have been thirty-five years old at the time. Again, the Ḥikāyat does not correlate with historical chronology. In the next section, from passages of the Ḥikāyat correlated with known chronologies from the chronicles, we propose possible dating of the treatise.
Dating the Ḥikāyat
Is it possible that, sometime after 541/1147, the clamor grew around Ḥasan, so much so that Muḥammad had to take drastic repressive actions against those who believed his son was the imam? Even if the numbers were exaggerated fivefold, the execution and banishment of such large numbers would have been extreme. There are no reports of this purge in contemporary non-Nizari sources. This information was recorded by the Nizari author and preserved in the Ilkhanid chronicles.
Was the Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw penned by and for victims of this persecution and violent repression? Was the text a manifesto to reconstitute the faction after many of their number had been killed and exiled from the Rūdbār region? Did this group coalesce in eastern Iran where the Ismaili followers of Nāṣir-i Khusraw might have been more numerous? Was the Ḥikāyat part of an effort to consolidate this marginal faction and draw more Ismailis into their ẓuhūrist circle? Mindful of the perils of argumentum ex silentio, tentative positive answers to these questions open vantages onto a subaltern Nizari community. There would be no reason for later Nizaris to construe a leader of the daʿwa, the head of the polity, in such negative terms. This group wished Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd dead. He had not only anathematized their hopes and beliefs but had massacred and exiled many of this group of believers. If the text was authored by this marginalized and persecuted community, the earliest possible date for the Ḥikāyat would be after 541/1147, when Ḥasan's father deputized him to govern Alamūt. What was the function of the narratives in the Ḥikāyat, and for whom?
Doctrine and Theology in the Ḥikāyat
The author, probably an educated person, did not write a theological tract. Doctrines and theology are only tangentially alluded to in the narrative. With the exception of Ḥasan Saʾīd and Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, there is no introductory information about any protagonists, and there is a marked absence of explanation of the significance of events. This suggests that the immediate audience might have been aware of the personalities in the narratives and familiar with the meanings attached to the events in the story. In the following sections, the conceptions of the doctrines of naṣṣ (specific designation), taʿlīm (authoritative teaching of the imam), satr (concealment), and kashf (manifestation) of the imam and eschatology are extracted from the Ḥikāyat.
Naṣṣ (Specific Designation of Succession)
The Ḥikāyat alludes to the doctrine of naṣṣ in calling Nizār the designated son of al-Mustanṣir (farzand-i manṣūṣ) [paras. 5 and 7]. This first instance is a declarative statement in the narrative during the lifetime of al-Mustanṣir, and the second is an affirmation of Nizār's designation by the latter in a handwritten note that the imam had given to his servant for safekeeping. The encounter with the hermit similarly reveals that Nizār was the designated successor of al-Mustanṣir. In both cases the guardians of the naṣṣ were unaware of the nature of the trust they guarded.Footnote 55 The agency for bringing the naṣṣ to light fell to the designee, and then only the protagonists and the audience of the Ḥikāyat were privy to the designation of Nizār. The doctrine is referenced again in the discussion of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's filicide [para 12]. The Ilkhanid chronicles documented that Ḥasan executed two of his sons, the first based on an accusation of killing a leading dāʿī,Footnote 56 and the second for consuming alcohol.Footnote 57 I have argued that these executions should be read as responses to threats against the authority of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and possibly his doctrine.Footnote 58 The Ḥikāyat's portrayal of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's execution of his four sons, acting on a conversation with the imam, points specifically to the doctrine of naṣṣ. Ḥasan called on the Nizaris to look to “the son of Mawlānā who is the true imam (imām-i ḥaqq) and should not go astray” [para. 12].
Taʿlīm (Authoritative Teaching of the Imam)
The doctrine of taʿlīm (authoritative teaching of the imam) is also referenced in several passages. When Hādī b. Nizār arrived at Alamūt, the text states that “Sayyidnā acted in accord with his commands and decrees (amr wa farmān)” [para. 11]. In turn, the Nizaris acted in accord with Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's teaching. Ḥasan without hesitation or question followed the imam's teaching to the extent that he executed his own sons [para. 12]. The populace was told that the imams, clandestinely living near Alamūt, were teachers: Hādī had proclaimed “I have come to instruct Sayyidnā”; his successor, Muhtadī said, “I am a teacher,” and wrote treatises to guide the functionaries of the daʿwa. The text states that Qāhir declared “I am the ḥujja of the imam” [para. 14].Footnote 59
Taʿlīm, and specifically the ʿilm (knowledge) of the imam, also are symbolized in Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's prognostication of the Qāʾim. This consisted of three elements; the first was that when the Qāʾim “will enter the library, he will urinate (chun ba kitābkhāna dar āyad zahrāb pāshad),” and the second that “during a hunt he will split two animals in half with a single stroke of a sword” [para. 17]. A possible exegesis of these metaphors is that the young son's urination on books symbolizes the rejection of book-learning and the splitting of two animals symbolizes the imam's capacity to dissect both the material and spiritual realms, in which the pregnant animal represents the manifest (ẓāhir) and the fetus the inner (bāṭin). Symbolically then, it is the imam's ʿilm and taʿlīm that transcend book-learning and the exoteric and esoteric understandings of the revelation and the world that lead to ḥaqīqa (truth).
Imamate: satr (concealment) and kashf (manifestation)
The central Shiʿi concept of the imamate permeates the entire text, from the claimed rightful designation of Nizār to the culmination in the ẓuhūr of the unnamed Qāʾim. In addition to the doctrines of imamate, naṣṣ, and taʿlīm, there are a number of important historical and doctrinal details in the text that are worthy of note. First, the Ḥikāyat states that after the killing of Nizār, factions appeared in Cairo (which also resonates with Maqrīzī's account, mentioned above).Footnote 60 The Ḥikāyat calls these supporters of Nizār “the just for the right of the family (ʿādil-i ḥaqq al-āhl)” [para. 9]. For half a century, these factions and some of the populace in Egypt rose up against the Fatimid caliphate in the name of Nizār.
Second, in the reported speech of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, no honorifics or pious invocations are attached to the two mentions of the imam-caliph, al-Mustanṣir biʾllāh; thereafter Mawlānā (our Lord) precedes the regnal title, and in several instances it is followed by the pious invocation “peace on his mention” (li-dhikrihiʾl-salām). The mentions of Nizār are preceded by Mawlānā; in four instances are followed by “peace be on his mention”; and in three instances of direct speech the name is unadorned. The Fatimid imam-caliph al-Ḥākim and the Nizari imams, Hādī, Muhtadī, and Qāhir's names are preceded by Mawlānā; the first of the two mentions of the latter are also followed by “peace be on his mention,” and the third calls him “His Majesty” (ḥaḍrat). Ḥasan ʿalāʾ dhikrihiʾl-salām (r. 557–561/1162–1166), the imam of the Qiyāma, is not mentioned by name; he is referred to as the Qāʾim in Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's prediction [para. 17]; as “Lord” (Khudāvand) [paras. 16, 19, 20], His Majesty [paras. 16, 18]; imam [para. 19]; and our Lord (Mawlānā) [paras. 18, 19].
Third, there is no satisfactory explanation in the Ḥikāyat nor in other texts of Nizari daʿwa literature as to why the imams of this period had to be concealed when they settled in Iran. Granted that Alamūt and other Nizari fortresses were under Saljūq attack; however, from the latter part of the Sultan Bark-yāruq b. Malikshāh's tumultuous reign (487–498/1094–1105), especially given his positive inclination toward the Nizaris, they had secured many fortresses and their polity had become formidable.Footnote 61
Fourth, the secrecy around the identity of the imam, who was not known to Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, the head of the polity, but had acquired a large following, is not credulous. Furthermore, Muḥammad's killing of Qāhir would have amounted to regicide, coming close even to deicide in Nizari thought of the time. Such an act could not have been suppressed in Nizari writing, and his subsequent vilification would have been sensationalized in the Ilkhanid chronicles, as in the case of the killing of the imam ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan (r. 618–653/1221–1255) attributed, in the chronicles, to his son Rukn al-Dīn Khūrshāh (r. 653–657/1255–1257).Footnote 62 Because there is no evidence for the killing of the imam by Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd, the Ḥikāyat and its functions have warranted this careful analysis of the narrative.
Fifth, another major incongruity in the text is the substitution narrative. It makes no sense that Muḥammad killed the imam, Qāhir, and then hesitated to kill his pregnant wife. If, as the Ḥikāyat claims, he was opposed to the imamate, a swift action would have been to wipe out the entire family and lineage. Moreover, Shiʿi thought has adhered to the notion that the world can not exist without an imam, and particularly since the occultation (ghayba) in 260/874 of the twelfth imam of the Ithnāʿasharī Shīʿī community, the Ismailis have held that the imam must be present (ḥāḍir) and living, in normal human life cycles.Footnote 63 The narrative of the Ḥikāyat breaches this doctrine in that, after the purported killing of Qāhir, his son, the future imam, existed, for a time, only as a fetus in the mother's womb.
Eschatology
In their understandings of history, the Ismailis construed heptadic helical eras of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the last most complete and perfect one of Muḥammad and Islam. At the culmination of each cycle a messenger (nāṭiq, enunciator) would enunciate another cycle and bring a new sharia, abrogating or transcending the previous dispensation. Each of these law-giving prophets was succeeded by his waṣī (legatee) and his explicitly designated (manṣūṣ) descendants as imams (referred to as ṣāmit, silent), until the seventh would rise up as the new nāṭiq. Prophet Muḥammad had proclaimed that after him there would be no further messenger, and therefore the next nāṭiq would bring a culmination in the Qiyāma. To this effect, Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām taught that
In the era of the sharia, if a person did not obey and worship, but complied with the commands of the Resurrection, that is he did not consider obedience and worship as spiritual, that person was chastised, punished, tormented, and stoned; if in the period of the Resurrection a person complied with the commands of the sharia and was meticulous in worship and material practice, it would be licit to chastise, torment, stone, and execute that person.Footnote 64
Eras of concealment and manifestation (dawr-i satr and dawr-i kashf) of the imams are central to Ismaili theology and the conceptions of prophetology, imamate, sacred history, and time. The eras of satr were periods of uncertainties when the daʿwa was clandestine and the safety and security of the imamate and its communities of followers were tenuous.
The dawr-i satr that began at the death of the imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (r. 114–148/732–765) gave rise to a number of communities that sought the manifestation of the Mahdī (salvific redeemer)—this imam would establish justice and equality in place of the injustice and inequity of the world and, as the Eschaton, would perfect the world to its end. Several dāʿīs made predictions of the emergence of such an imam. Failed predictions of the emergence of the Mahdī resulted in untoward consequences from the rulers and local populace against the Ismailis, especially the dāʿīs. Often, the daʿwa dissipated and turned back to covert activities among clandestine communities. The manifestation (ẓuhūr) of the imam ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī (r. ca. 268–322/ca. 881–934) and the precipitation of the Ismailis out of taqiyya (dissimulation) in the Fatimid realm was cast as an event of cosmological proportions.Footnote 65 Similarly, the period after the death of Nizār also was construed as a dawr-i satr, with some marked differences. For the most part, the communities of Nizari Ismailis, living in or near their fortresses, were overt in their religious affiliation; however, for seven decades, it was the imams who were in concealment. The Ḥikāyat is a manifesto of a ẓuhūrist movement that vied for the manifestation of its candidate for the Nizari imamate.
Conclusions
In 1945 a shepherd discovered some thirteen codices buried in a sealed jar near the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. For fifteen hundred years, these Coptic tracts had been known mostly through the refutations of the Church fathers. These texts revealed Gnostic communities that espoused alternate Christianities. The Gospel of Thomas, for instance, dated as early as 80 CE, preserves “wisdom sayings (proverbs), parables, eschatological sayings (prophecies), and rules for the community,” but does not mention the death and resurrection of Jesus.Footnote 66 The people who buried the codices at Nag Hammadi were never able to return to retrieve what they had hidden. As a result of impositions of orthodoxy, these communities no longer exist. The significance of the Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw, in many ways, is comparable to that of the Nag Hammadi Library. The Ḥikāyat gives rare insights into a previously unknown marginalized premodern collective. Traces of this community may be found in the Ilkhanid chronicles. The Ismailis, generally, have been written about and treated as subalterns in Islamicate historiography; however, the Ḥikāyat was a product of a factional group within this marginalized community. The author from this group, persecuted and exiled by the Nizari Ismaili daʿwa hierarchy founded by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, formulated continuities between the latter and Nāṣir-i Khusraw, perhaps to attract adherents of the Central Asian Fatimid dāʿī. In addition to eliding their sanctities, legacies, and communities, the mention of Nāṣir-i Khusraw served the purpose of recalling the Fatimid past and the succession of al-Mustanṣir. In the text, this imam was construed as burdened by duties of kingship and in his sacral state—after he anointed himself—the hypocrites thought him mad. As he departed from the stage, his son al-Mustaʿlī usurped the throne and killed the rightful imam, Nizār, whose legitimacy was affirmed by letters of al-Mustanṣir in the custody of Hasan-i Saʿīd and the hermit. The function of each of the dramatis personae was to set the scene and explain the transference of the imamate from Egypt to Iran.
Aligning the text with the Ilkhanid chronicles, I have shown that the Hikāyat does not conform nor purport to be a synchronic account of past actuality. It operates within a paradigm of Persian historical writing Ehsan Yarshater described, in which “no distinction was made between the factual, the legendary, and the mythical. All three are blended in a unified whole and presented as a continuous narrative of events.”Footnote 67 The paramount objectives of this manifesto of the ẓuhūr were to explain how the imamate transferred from Egypt to Iran and that the era of concealment (dawr-i satr) must end with the manifestation of the Qāʾim. Its purpose does not appear to be to win over new converts; rather its functions appear to be homiletic and didactic, for kindred collectives the author was trying to reach and to which they may have belonged.
Although Nāṣir-i Khusraw is mentioned without honorifics and eulogies, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ is revered as a sacred authority who prophesied the nature of the Qāʾim. This is consonant with the tangential mentions of Nāṣir-i Khusraw in the Ilkhanid chronicle accounts, which were sourced from Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's hagiographic biography the Sarguẕasht-i Sayyidnā.Footnote 68 This text written by a follower of the daʿwa of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ is, perhaps, one of the earliest exemplars of the Nizari appropriation of Fatimid dāʿī Nāṣir-i Khusraw and his teachings.
In the period when the imams descended from Nizār were believed to be in concealment (satr), many groups of Ismailis agitated to bring about the manifestation (ẓuhūr) of their imam. During Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's reign the ẓuhūrists were insignificant and brushed aside or dissipated by the removal of their leaders. Half a century later, their numbers grew. Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd tried to stem the tide, going even so far as imprisoning his own son and persecuting his followers. The writers of the Ḥikāyat and its audience, like many other beleaguered movements in history, in their narratives construed an ultimate apocalyptic victory. This manifesto of ẓuhūr cast the dāʿī-leader of the daʿwa of satr as the enemy. Their victory would come about when the imam put an end to the life of this archenemy and manifested his full glory in the era of kashf. Several tracts from later Badakhshānī Ismaili daʿwa literature contain segments and, in one case, almost the complete narrative of the Ḥikāyat.Footnote 69 The negative constructions of Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd in these treatises stem from the historic events detailed here. There would be no logical cause for defamation of early Nizari leadership in later times.
This evidence we have examined allows the writing of the Ḥikāyat to be placed between 541/1147, when Ḥasan was deputized by his father to govern Alamūt, after which their relations declined, and before 557/1162, when Ḥasan, himself, became the ruler of the polity. No reference is made in the Ḥikāyat to the Qiyāma other than in the name, Lady of the Qiyāma (Khātūn-i Qiyāmat), the mother of the imam [para. 16], and in Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's prognostication of the Qāʾim [para 17]. The text does not name the Qāʾim, the imam who brought about the end of the era of concealment, and is silent about the momentous events of the declaration of Qiyāmat-i buzurg.Footnote 70 This suggests that the Ḥikāyat was written before the declaration of the Qiyāmat-i buzurg in 559/1164, after which Ḥasan ʿalāʾ dhikrihiʾl-salām began to be recognized as the imam.
The analogous account of the hermit found in the Dustūr al-munajjimīn that has been dated to Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ's reign attests to the existence of episodes of the Ḥikāyat among early Nizari Ismaili communities. In its assertion of the legitimacy of Nizār as successor to al-Mustanṣir, the Ḥikāyat is the earliest known text that enumerates the line of imams in later Nizari reckoning. The lineage in the text, the Qāʾim (Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām) b. Qāhir b. Muhtadī b. Hādī b. Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir, connects the Nizari daʿwa and imamate to Fatimid origins. Most significantly, the treatise illustrates the elevation of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ to the sanctified forebear of early Nizari Ismailism.
The author's primary aim was to explain how the young child, who was construed to be the imam, came to be in the household of the archenemy of the community of the text [paras. 15–19]. The substitution narrative was probably created to dissociate the dāʿī from the putative imam. The literary device enabled the young boy to be genealogically differentiated from dāʿī-ruler Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd.Footnote 71 The narrative read without these analytic lenses raises glaring doctrinal problems. As suggested above, Juwaynī did just that and used his quill to turn the literary device of the substitution into a salacious narrative of an adulterous liaison.Footnote 72 Juwaynī's renditions suggest that he may have read the narrative in the Ḥikāyat and twisted it, and that the Ḥikāyat may be an unattributed source of the Ilkhanid chronicle accounts of the Nizaris.Footnote 73 The possibility that Juwaynī used the Ḥikāyat becomes further apparent in his writing that Muḥammad, the dāʿī-ruler, killed the imam for the illicit liaison with his wife. He expounds,
As we have previously mentioned Muhammad had tightened the belt of rigor and severity in enforcing the customs of Islam and applying the principles of the Shariʿat to the creed of Hasan-i-Sabbah, which is the essence of ignominy. [On this account] they (the Nizaris) were ill disposed toward him and most of them cursed him; and they would allow no pilgrimage to his grave, which lay next to those of Hasan-i-Sabbah, Buzurg Umid, and Bu-ʿAli of Ardistan.Footnote 74
Juwaynī emphasized that Ḥasan, who declared the Qiyāma and was recognized as the imam, “in actual fact was the son of Muhammad, the son of Buzurg-Umid, because on the gates of their castles and fortresses, in the inscriptions on the walls, and in the titles of his writings he everywhere used to write: ‘Hasan, son of Muhammad, son of Buzurg-Umid.’”Footnote 75
Later Nizari writings intimate that two different Ḥasans existed, each from the lines of the imams and the dāʿīs, and assert that Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām was the son of the previous imam.Footnote 76 Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib observed that in an epistle (faṣl) from Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām,
addressed to Amīr Ḥaydar Masʿūd, may God grant him peace and Paradise, he [Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām] says: “One should consider the story of the son of Muḥammad in the same manner because, he, may God be pleased with him, was the deputy and judge (qāʾim maqām wa qāḍī) of my religion, and so was his son Ḥasan after him.” And this is a secret which cannot be divulged at this time. Exoterically (bi-ḥukm-i ẓāhir), the pure birth of the lord (khudāwand) Ḥasan, may his name be sanctified, happened a number of years after this.Footnote 77
The Haft Bāb (Seven Chapters) completed in 596/1200 construed Muḥammad b. Buzurg Ummīd and his son Ḥasan as the qāʾim maqām and qāḍī successively, in service of the imam, Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām. These variant narratives explain how Ismailis of Iran sought to explain the relocation of the imamate from Cairo to Alamūt and fitted the imams of the second dawr-i satr (period of concealment) into the line of the Ismaili imamate. In the genealogy of the imam Rukn al-Dīn Khūrshāh (r. 653–655/1255–1257), the final ruler of the Nizari polity in Iran, Rashīd al-Dīn placed the sequence of imams between Nizār and Ḥasan ʿalāʾ dhikrihiʾl-salām, found in the Ḥikāyat, in the genealogy of imams linked back to the first imam-caliph, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib:
He was Rukn al-Dīn al-Ḥasan known as Khūrshāh b. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Jalāl al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. Nūr al-Dīn known as ʿAlā dhikrihiʾl-salām b. al-Qāhir bi-Quwat Allāh b. al-Muhtadī Billāh b. al-Hādī Ilā Allāh b. al-Muṣṭafā li-Dīn Allāh Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir Billāh b. al-Ẓāhir li-Iʿzāz Dīn Allāh b. al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh b. al-ʿAzīz Billāh [b. al-Muʿizz Billāh] b. al-Manṣur bi-Nuṣrat Allāh b. al-Qāʾim bi-Amr Allāh b. al-Mahdī Billāh b. al-Taqī b. al-Naqī b. al-Raḍī b. Muḥammad al-Sābaʿ b. Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq b. Muḥammad al-Bāqir b. ʿAlī Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn b. al-Ḥusayn al-Shahīd b. Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, peace be upon them, b. ʿAbd al-Muṭālib.Footnote 78
This genealogical line—distinct from the line of imams—is remarkable because it connects the generations in continuity across six centuries back to the imam-caliph, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib's grandfather.
The early Christian communities who produced and buried the Nag Hammadi texts in the fifth century CE no longer exist; however, the community of the Ḥikāyat prevailed. Two years after becoming the ruler of the Nizari polity in Iran, Ḥasan declared the Qiyāmat-i buzurg. Rashīd al-Dīn wrote that on 17 Ramaḍān 559/August 15, 1164, Ḥasan
mounted the minbar that was facing the qibla. To the Rafīqān it seemed that from the leader, that is the supposed imam, whose whereabouts were unknown, someone had arrived in secret. He had brought a khuṭba to explain to them the manner of their traditional belief. Atop the minbar he delivered an eloquent and rhetorical oration and at the end of the khuṭba said: “The imam of the time sends you greetings and mercy; and has summoned you his exceptional chosen servants and has removed the toil of the sharia from you and has delivered you to the Qiyāma (Resurrection).”Footnote 79
The khuṭba not only named Ḥasan as the imam's dāʿī, ḥujja (proof), and khalīfa (deputy), but said he was to be followed in all spiritual and temporal matters, and his word was that of the imam's. Subsequently, Ḥasan, himself, was regarded as the imam descended from Nizār b. Mustanṣir, and the messianic epithet ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām (peace be on his mention) was attached to his name. The desideratum of the Ḥikāyat was attained. The Qāʾim of the Qiyāma was manifested.
The majority of available Nizari writings about the Qiyāma date from the seventh/thirteenth century onward. Most of them date after the reign of the imam Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan (r. 607–618/1210–1221), who declared himself to be a Sunni.Footnote 80 The writings of Ḥasan-i Ṣalāḥ-i Munshī and Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) advocated for the restitution of the teaching and doctrine of the Qiyāma.Footnote 81 Daftary has lamented that “no contemporary Nizārī sources have survived from that period, [and] it is very difficult to know precisely how the qiyāma was actually perceived by the rank and file of the Nizārī community, who were scattered in remote areas with diverse socio-economic and cultural as well as rural-urban characteristics.”Footnote 82
If the dating of the Ḥikāyat proposed here is valid, then we have in our hands the writing and kernels of the thought of a subaltern Nizari community. In Islamicate historiography, as in all premodern world historical writing, factional voices have been silenced in time by the hegemony of authorized doctrinal literatures and accounts of past actualities. The Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw is a rare witness of nonelite beliefs and voices of some early Nizari Ismailis. Unlike the communities of the Nag Hammadi texts, the author of the Ḥikāyat and his audience were persecuted and marginalized by the daʿwa establishment. Yet after the declaration of the Qiyāma, their aspirations became dominant. The era of satr was brought to an end and Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām was regarded as the eschatological redeemer. In time, the narrative of this Ḥikāyat was eclipsed by the literature produced by luminaries of the daʿwa who elaborated the teachings of the Qiyāma and sought their restitution. Despite its many incongruities, it has survived because scribes, over the centuries, continued to copy it, because it evoked the sanctified memories of the poet, philosopher, and Fatimid dāʿī, Nāṣir-i Khusraw, and of the founder of Nizari Ismailism, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, as well as of the imam of the Qiyāma, Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām. This newly uncovered subaltern text opens doors for greater understanding of the sociopolitical and religious discourses not just of authorized texts of the powerful, but also of subdued voices and wider factional collectives in Nizari, Ismaili, Shīʿī, Islamicate, and Persianate histories. The text speaks for itself; we have ventured to locate it in its context by these analyses of its narrative.
Acknowledgments
Several esteemed colleagues have generously read this research at different stages. I am grateful to Ali Asani, Delia Cortese, Karim Karim, Hermann Landolt, Shafique Virani, Paul Walker, and John Woods for their valuable comments and suggestions. I presented different stages of this research at the Institute of Ismaili Studies Doctoral Students Seminar, the Alwaleed bin Talal Seminar at Harvard University, and the Transcendence and Transformation Seminar at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions. Vibrant discussions and suggestions from the many colleagues have been invaluable. Thanks also to Nasrin Rahimieh, editor of Iranian Studies, for resending this paper for peer review and to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.
