The silent Quran and the speaking Quran

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/19585705-12341283

Studia Islamica 108 (2013) 143-174 brill.com/si

The Silent Qur’an and the Speaking Qur’an: History and Scriptures through the Study of Some Ancient Texts*

Mohammad Ali Amir-MoezziÉcole Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne)

I. Addressing the Issues: Violence and Scriptures in Early Islam

During the last two decades, within the framework of my courses at the Sorbonne, I have dedicated many years to the study of some ancient Shi’i works: their historical and religious context, their authors, their structure and content, the intellectual and spiritual movements in which they came into being etc . . . Delving into the history of these texts has led me pro-gressively to a series of issues that, despite their obviousness, had not been sufficiently studied: the connection between the development of Islam’s scriptural sources, namely the Qur’an and the Ḥadīth, and the fratricidal violence and civil wars that have marked the first centuries of that same religion; two major facts indissolubly related that determined the historical and spiritual evolutions of Islam even to this very day.

As far as scriptural sources are concerned it all occurred quite straight-forwardly according to Sunni tradition that came to be known as the “ortho-dox” one. The divine revelations, gathered faithfully and in their entirety by the two first caliphs Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, were collected in a single Qur’an by a commission of scholars during the rule of the third caliph ʿUthmān (r. 23/644 to 35/656), that is less than thirty years after the death of prophet Muḥammad (d. 11/632).1 Parallel Qur’anic versions, deemed unworthy to

* For its most part this article presents the subject of my book Le Coran silen-cieux et le Coran parlant, Paris, CNRS Editions, 2012.

1 The bibliography regarding the information presented during this introduc-tion is plethoric. In order not to burden the notes let me to forward the readers to the usual reference works such as the Encyclopédie de l’Islam, the Encyclopaedia

144 M. A. Amir-Moezzi / Studia Islamica 108 (2013) 143-174

be trusted, were destroyed and the official version, called the ʿUthmānic codex, was soon accepted by the entire community of the faithful, except for a handful of heretics. Similarly, regarding the Ḥadīth, that is the pro-phetic traditions of which there were thousands, they were subjected to severe examination by scholars in order to identify the authentic from the fake ones; this ended up in the development of a vast reliable corpus estab-lished according to the strict rules of the criteriological science of Ḥadīth.

And yet, critical research, by submitting both Islamic and non-Islamic sources of all sorts to thorough historical and philological examination for the last 150 years, offers a far more complex and more problematic picture of the history of the composition of Islam’s holy writings. An important corpus of sayings by Muḥammad seems to have been progressively distinguished in Qur’an and Ḥadīth, that is, identified respectively as God’s words and prophetic traditions. The official Qur’an, put a posteriori under the patron-age of ʿUthmān, seems to have been established later, probably under the caliphate of the Omayyad ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 65/685 to 86/705). It also presents all the signs of a long work of composition at the hands of a team of scribes and other established scholars. Only a few decades separate the eras of both caliphs but those decades amount to many centuries given that between both periods the incalculable consequences of both incessant civil wars and the huge and lightning conquests have disrupted the history, society and mentalities of the first Muslims. In addition, even when drawn up and declared official, the state codex took many centuries in order to be accepted by all Muslims. Among the scholars and movements opposed to the Omayyad state, a great number of important personalities seemed not to have accepted the authenticity of the ʿUthmānic Qur’an and considered it to be a tampered version of the revelations that were made to the Prophet; among them the Shi’is expressed the most systematic and most numerous criticisms against the integrity of the official Qur’an. Other Qur’anic ver-sions, sometimes very different in both form and content, like the ones of ʿAlī, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet and fourth caliph, or of the companions ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd and Ubayy b. Kaʿb, continued to circulate at least until the 4th/10th century. Likewise unending discussions regarding the authenticity of ḥadīth-s opposed scholars often for centuries. And even

of the Qurʾān or l’Encyclopaedia Iranica to the entries corresponding to data sup-posed to be more or less known such as “Qurʾān”, “Ḥadīth”, “Badr”, “Muḥammad”, “Abū Bakr”, “ ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb”, “ ʿUthmān”, “ ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib”, “Fāṭima”, etc.

M. A. Amir-Moezzi / Studia Islamica 108 (2013) 143-174 145

when between the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries, the Sunnis agreed more or less to accept the corpus of what they call the Sums of Authentic Tradi-tions, the Shi’is constituted their own corpus where the very definition of the term Ḥadīth differed from that of the Sunnis. For the latter, the Ḥadīth is the whole of the traditions going back to the Prophet (and in some rare cases to some of his Companions) whereas for the Shi’is, the term refers to the traditions going back to the Prophet, his daughter Fāṭima, ʿAlī and the Imams descending from the latter.2

As for the endemic violence in which Islam was born and developed, it is enough to recall some overall recognized historical facts. Right after Hijrah, the last years in the life of the Prophet were sprinkled with many battles. Among them, the battle of Badr in the year 2/624, the first great victory for the latter over the Mekkan opponents from his own tribe, the Quraysh, seems to have left marks they were not ready to forget even after their conversion to Islam. After the death of Muḥammad—according to certain rare traditions he had been poisoned—his succession unleashed a wave of violence to which I will come back later on. Under the first caliph Abū Bakr the bloody “Wars of Apostasy” (ridda) took place through which he prevented the newly converted Arabs to go back to their ancestral reli-gion after the death of the Messenger of Allah. According to the majority of the narratives Abū Bakr died a natural death; according to others he was killed by poison. The period of the second caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb was that of the wars of the great Arab conquests. He was himself also killed, apparently by a Persian slave. The third caliph ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān was swept by what is conventionally called the first great civil war between Muslims. The short reign of the fourth caliph ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib was an uninterrupted series of civil wars: the great battle of Ṣiffīn opposed him to Muʿāwiya the head of the powerful Omayyads, his old enemies; that battle followed that of the Camel against ʿĀʾisha, widow of the Prophet allied to two Compan-ions of the latter, and preceded the battle of Nahrawān, against his former partisans who became his fiercest enemies, the Khārijis. In the end ʿAlī was assassinated by one of them. The rule of the Omayyads was a long series of abominable repressions and massacres against their opponents, in particu-lar the ʿAlids, “the people of ʿAlī”, who will end up being called the Shi’is.

2 Regarding these questions as well the sources and studies concerning them see E. Kohlberg & M.A. Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification: the Kitāb al-Qirāʾāt of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Sayyārī, Leiden, 2009, especially the introduction.


The infernal cycle of bloody repressions and of armed rebellions had thus started to last for a very long time. The most significant massacre was that of al-Ḥusayn, the beloved grandson of the Prophet and son of ʿAlī, and of almost all his family on the orders of the second Omayyad caliph Yazīd the First, only a few decades after the demise of the Prophet. The Omayyads themselves will later on be themselves overthrown by an armed revolution, that of the Abbassids. Under the caliphate of the latter, the violent repres-sion against their opponents, especially the ʿAlīds of all persuasions once again went on and off for several centuries.

The establishment of a new religion accompanied by violence, notably during the complex process of its institutionalization or of its imposition on people that profess other beliefs, is of course not peculiar to Islam; the examples of Judaism and Christianity are too well known to be retold. Nev-ertheless what seems to be specific to Islam is first of all the very nature of that violence, namely the fratricide wars that have brought about the death of a considerable number of important historical figures and then the multi-secular longevity of bloody conflicts that opposed the latter against each other.

Different constituents of the subject, the relation between the historical conflicts of early Islam and the development of its scriptural sources, have been studied on many occasions, from Frederik Schwally to Alfred-Louis de Prémare including Ignaz Goldziher, Leone Cateani, Régis Blachère, John Wansbrough, Hichem Djaït, Claude Gilliot, Harald Motzki and others. Yet almost all of these numerous investigations that have been going for the last 150 years, are almost exclusively based on Sunni sources. Shi’ism, its ancient sources and its representation of Islam’s history, studied only for a few decades by a minute number of scientific researchers, are far less exploited and remain still insufficiently known. As for the author of these lines, he modestly tries to fill that gap by adopting a new angle of approach to these issues, that is, by examining some ancient Shi’i works of great importance that have however remained neglected.

II. The Texts Studied

II.1. The Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays or the Kitāb al-Saqīfa

Let us proceed by chronological order. Our first text is the Book of Sulaym b. Qays also called the Book of Saqīfa, named after the place, according to the


Tradition, where Abū Bakr was elected to succeed the Prophet.3 Accord-ing to Shi’i tradition, this book is the work of Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī, a disciple of the first Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. It is mainly dedicated to the Shi’i perception of the events that have marked the death and succession of the Prophet Muḥammad, namely the plot skilfully instigated by certain Companions of the latter, first among them ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, in order to grab power by placing Abū Bakr on the seat of the caliphate and by remov-ing ʿAlī from what belonged to him by divine right though the will of God and his messenger. This plot thus inaugurates the corruption and violence of the new religion among the majority of its followers.

What can we know of Sulaym and the work that carries his name? The reports about him in prosopographical and bibliographical Shi’i works as well as in certain critical studies are quite numerous.4 Sulaym b. Qays Abū Ṣādiq al-Hilālī al-ʿĀmirī al-Kūfī seems to have been one of the fervent followers of ʿAlī (d. 40/660). According to traditional narratives, he had started from his early youth to record the events and dramatic conflicts that followed the death of the Prophet and that marked the history of the first caliphates, by basing himself on the narrations he collected from ʿAlī and some of his main partisans and disciples such as Salmān al-Fārisī, Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, al-Miqdād b. Aswad or other protagonists of the events.

After the assassination of ʿAlī and the setting up of the Omayyads’ vio-lent policy of anti-ʿAlīd repression, Sulaym was tracked by the cruel gov-ernor of Irak al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 95/714), who had in mind to kill him. He escaped from Irak and found refuge in southern Iran, in the small village of Nobandagān (Nawbandajān, in Arabic pronounciation), having of course taken his precious book with him, a written testimony of what he consid-ered to be the biggest treason against the Prophet and his family, narrated

3 See now M.A. Amir-Moezzi, “Note bibliographique sur le Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays. Le plus ancien ouvrage shi’ite existant”, in M.A. Amir-Moezzi, M.M. Bar-Asher & S. Hopkins (ed.), Le shīʿisme imāmite quarante ans après. Hommage à Etan Kohl-berg, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, n° 137, Turnhout (Belgium), 2009, pp. 33-48.

4 Regarding these sources see, apart from the study mentionned in the previous note C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, vol. 1, p. 199; F. Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 1, pp. 525-26 (and not 527 as indicated in the mediocre article “Sulaym b. Qays” from EI2); H. Modarressi, Tradition and Survival: A Bibliographical Survey of Early Shīʿite Literature, vol. 1, Oxford, 2003, pp. 82-86; M.B. al-Anṣārī al-Zanjānī al-Khūʾīnī, introduction to his excellent critical edition of K. Sulaym b. Qays, 3 vols., Qumm, 1426/1995.


directly by some of the protagonists themselves. In his old age, fearing the permanent loss of his manuscript, he found a trustworthy legatee in the person of the traditionist Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh (d. circa 138/755-56). Shortly after Sulaym passed away and was buried in Nobandagān, around the year 76/695-96.

The pseudo-epigraphical nature of the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays is obvious. The presence within it of data dating sometimes many centuries after the presumed author’s period, notably the many passages about the Abbassid revolution or the number of the twelve imams, do not leave any doubts to the historian regarding this issue. It is however undeniable that successive copies extending up until after the period of the historical Imams at the beginning of the 4th/10th century, developed around a very ancient early core. H. Modarressi considers that original core to be the most ancient Shi’i, even Islamic writing to have reached us and the arguments he brings for-ward based on a detailed inter-textual examination seem very relevant.5 According to him, the original text of the Book of Sulaym may have been by Ḥusaynid proto-Shi’is of Kūfa during the first years of the reign of the Omayyad Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (caliphate from 105 to 125/724-743).6 What is interesting to underline is that the authors of the ulterior additions did not deem is necessary to remove this original core whose level never-theless sometimes conflicts with these additions.

To put it briefly, the Book of Sulaym is the account of a conspiracy, pre-pared long before the Prophet’s demise, aiming at eliminating the latter and the members of his close family, denature his religion in order to grab power and seize control over the Muslims. The main protagonists of this diabolical conspiracy were ʿUmar, Abū Bakr and their accomplice Abū ʿUbayda b. al-Jarrāḥ.7 These plotters were surrounded and supported by the

5 Modarressi, Tradition and Survival, pp. 83-84.6 Modarressi, ibid., p. 83. Modarressi’s dating is corroborated to some extent

by Ibn al-Nadīm (al-Fihrist, ed. R. Tajaddud, reimp. Beirut, 1417/1996, p. 275) who considers the work to be the oldest Shi’i work. The existence of parts added later on to the very early original text according to the demands of each period is also underlined by P. Crone, “Mawālī and the Prophet’s Family: an Early Shīʿite View”, in M. Bernards and J. Nawas (eds.), Patronate and Patronage in Early and Classical Islam, Leiden-Boston, 2005, pp. 167-194. See also A. Hakim, “ ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb: l’autorité religieuse et morale”, Arabica 55/1 (2008), pp. 30-31 (the whole article pp. 1-34).

7 A famous Companion of the Prophet; see H. Lammens, “Le triumvirat Abou Bakr, ʿOmar et Abou ʿObaida”, Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale de l’Université


old enemies of the Prophet who had been crushed at Badr and had freshly and opportunely converted to the new religion, namely the powerful clans of Quraysh, notably the Banū ʿAbd Shams comprising the Banū Umayya. They managed to remove ʿAlī, the sole legitimate successor to the Prophet, as well as the other eminent members of the Prophet’s family, from power with great violence and to set up a mighty apparatus of repression and pro-paganda with the help of governors, military leaders as well as men of let-ters, judges or jurist-theologians. Thus the Book of Sulaym, depicting the opinions of a powerful ʿAlīd movement, maintains that the official Islam of the majority, imposed violently by the enemies of Muḥammad and ʿAlī, is a profoundly deformed version of the Muḥammadan religion.

II.2. The Kitāb al-Qirāʾāt or al-Tanzīl wa l-Taḥrīf of al-Sayyārī

The second work examined here is the Book of Qur’anic Recitations or the Book of Revelation and Falsification of al-Sayyārī, a traditionist about whom very little is known.8 His complete name is: Abū ʿAbdallāh Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Sayyār. A contemporary of the tenth and eleventh Imams of the Twelvers, ʿAlī al-Hādī (d. 254/868) and al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (d. 260/874), probably a native of the city of Qumm and a secretary at the court of the Ṭāhirids, he lived in the 3rd/9th century and seems to have written his work toward the end of the first half of this century.9 This book seems to be the oldest monography on the delicate question of the falsification of the ʿUthmānic codex and this is why, after the attempted rapprochement with the Sunni positions by the Imāmī doctors of the Buwayhid period, the book was considered as heterodox and labelled as extremist. Nevertheless, representing a powerful pre-Buwayhid Shi’i movement and belonging to a

Saint-Joseph de Beirut 4 (1910), pp. 113-144 (includes a number of personal positions but remains a mine of informations regarding the sources); G. Lecomte, “Sur une relation de la Saqīfa attribuée à Ibn Qutayba”, Studia Islamica 31 (1970), pp. 171-183; id., “al-Saqīfa”, EI2 (French version), vol. 8, p. 918; W. Madelung, The Succession to Muḥammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate, Cambridge, 1997, chapitre 1, pp. 28ff.

8 This work has been edited by E. Kohlberg & M.A. Amir-Moezzi (see note 2).9 On al-Sayyārī and his work apart from the study quoted in note 2, see

M.A. Amir-Moezzi & E. Kohlberg, “Révélation et falsification. Introduction à l’édi-tion du Kitāb al-Qirāʾāt d’al-Sayyārī”, Journal Asiatique 293/2 (2005), pp. 663-722 and “Remarques sur l’histoire de la rédaction du Coran. Autour du Livre des récita-tions coraniques d’al-Sayyārī”, Apocrypha 18 (2007), pp. 247-288.


large movement encompassing all kinds of tendencies protesting against the imposition of the official version of the Qur’an, it has not ceased to be quoted by some of the highest Twelver religious authorities from Ibn al-Juḥām (d. around 328/939-40) to al-Nūrī al-Tabrisī (d. 1320/1902).

The Kitāb al-Qirāʾāt is a compendium of 725 Shi’i ḥadīth-s most of which going back to the sixth Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. A great number of traditions deal with the question of the falsification of ʿUthmānic codex and pres-ent “variant readings” (one of the meanings of the word qirāʾāt) that are quite considerable in relation to it. According to those traditions, only the Qur’anic codex of ʿAlī reported the real text of the divine revelations made to Muḥammad. The work contains quotations from that version.10 A con-siderable number of quotes mention, either explicitly or indirectly, not only the saintly figures of Shi’ism but also their enemies; that is the members of the family of the Prophet, namely Muḥammad, ʿAlī (the most frequently quoted of all), Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn and the Imams among their descendants on the one hand and the three first caliphs, ʿĀʾisha, Ḥafṣa or the Omayyads on the other.

Al-Sayyārī’s collection belongs to a vast theoligico-political movement according to which one of the most immediate consequences of the usurpa-tion of power by the enemies of the Ahl al-bayt has been the falsification of the “real” Qur’an. It could not have been otherwise as the latter contained, either explicitly or by sufficiently clear allusions, the names of the family of the Prophet and its enemies now in power. These enemies were hence forced to remove these incriminating passages and to alter others in order to hide their misdeeds and to justify their actions. Thus from the 2nd/8th cen-tury onward and during the 3rd/9th century many works dedicated to this subject were complied in ʿAlīd circles. Indeed a great number of ḥadīth-s

10 Since the compilation of the ḥadīth-s of the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries, the Shi’is claimed that ʿAlī’s Qur’anic codex had been kept secretly by the subse-quent Imams and was taken in his occultation by the Hidden Imam. This Qur’an, three times bigger than the Qur’an known to all, will only be revealed at the end of time with the return of the eschatological return of the Hidden Imam. See E. Kohlberg “Some Notes on the Imamite Attitude to the Qurʾān”, in S.M. Stern et al. (ed.), Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, Essays Presented . . . to Richard Walzer . . ., Oxford, 1972, pp. 209-224; M.A. Amir-Moezzi, Le Guide divin dans le Shi’isme originel, Paris, 1992 (2e ed. 2007), pp. 220-227 (English translation: The Divine Guide in Early Shiʾism, New York, 1994); M.M. Bar-Asher, “Variant Read-ings and Additions of the Imāmī-Šīʿa to the Quran”, Israel Oriental Studies 13 (1993), pp. 39-74.


compilations bear titles in which the terms “Revelation” (tanzīl), “falsifica-tion” (taḥrīf ), “alteration” (taghyīr), “modification” (tabdīl), etc . . . are asso-ciated. Let us for example mention al-Taḥrīf wa l-tabdīl by Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Ṣayrafī,11 the Kitāb al-Tanzīl wa l-Taghyīr written by one of the masters of al-Sayyārī, namely Muḥammad b. Khālid al-Barqī;12 the Kitāb al-Tanzīl min al-Qurʾān wa l-taḥrīf of Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Faḍḍāl al-Kūfī (who lived in the first half of the 3rd/9th century)13 or also the al-Tabdīl wa l-taḥrīf of Abū l-Qāsim ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Kūfī (d. 352/963).14 All these works, contrarily to al-Sayyārī’s, seem to be lost.

Considering the official version of the Qur’an as being modified and fal-sified is far from being limited to the ʿAlīds who progressively came to be known as the Shi’is. Personalities who are highly respected by the Sunnis shared, with some variations, the same opinions and these are reported in certain Sunni sources. Let us just mention the examples of ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd according to whom the first and the two last surahs of the Qu’ran, namely al-Fātiḥa and the muʿawwidhatān, were not part of the Qur’an and were prayers recited by the Prophet; or also the two short surahs al-Khalʿ and al-Ḥafd that were part of Ubbay b. Kaʿb’s codex and were in the end not included in the state official codex. For all these reasons the official Qur’an, probably established at the end of the 1st/7th century under the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik, seems to have taken many centuries in order to be imposed to all Muslims.15

11 See al-Ṭūsī, al-Fihrist, Beirut, 1403/1983, p. 183, n° 661; al-Quhpāʾī, Majmaʿ al-rijāl, ed. al-ʿAllāma al-Iṣfahānī, Isfahan, 1384-87/1964-68, vol. 5, p. 190; al-Ṭihrānī, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-shīʿa, Téhéran-Najaf, 1353-98/1934-78, vol. 3, pp. 394-95, n° 1417; al-Khūʾī, Muʿjam rijāl al-ḥadīth, s.l., 1413/1992, vol. 16, p. 277, n° 10556 identifies this author as being a disciple from Kūfa of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (m. 148/765), men-tioned by al-Ṭūsī, Rijāl, ed. M. Āl Baḥr al-ʿulūm, Najaf, 1381/1961, p. 284, n° 58.

12 See al-Najāshī, Rijāl, ed. M.J. al-Nāʾīnī, Beirut, 1408/1988, vol. 2, p. 221; al-Quhpāʾī, vol. 5, p. 206; al-Ṭihrānī, vol. 4, p. 455, n° 2023 (where al-taʿbīr should be changed correctly to al-taghyīr).

13 See al-Najāshī, vol. 2, p. 84; al-Quhpāʾī, vol. 4, p. 182; al-Ṭihrānī, vol. 4, p. 454, n° 2022.

14 Voir al-Najāshī, vol. 2, p. 96; al-Quhpāʾī, vol. 4, p. 162; al-Ṭihrānī, vol. 3, p. 311, n° 1151.

15 H. Modarressi, “Early Debates on the Integrity of the Qurʾān. A Brief Survey”, Studia Islamica 77 (1993), pp. 5-39; Kohlberg & Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsi-fication, introduction, pp. 12-23.


II.3. The Tafsīr of al-Ḥibarī

As we have just seen, in the eyes of the Shi’is, the falsification of the Qurʾan stemmed directly from the tragic events that followed the death of the Prophet; the violent removal of ʿAlī, the only legitimate successor to the Prophet, the seizing of power through a large conspiracy by Abū Bakr, his companion ʿUmar and other Qurashi enemies of the people of the Proph-et’s family. After having betrayed Muḥammad and his wishes regarding his succession, it was necessary to falsify the Qur’an specially if it contained the names of his real faithful followers and his real enemies.

According to the first Shi’i Qur’anic commentaries, the main censured elements of the Qur’an were above all personal names, notably those of the members of the family of the Prophet and their enemies. For the advocates of the falsification thesis, these amputations of the Scripture rendered it unintelligible. What can one understand of a text specially revealed about this or the other person if one removes their names? It is presumably from the period of authors like al-Sayyārī, namely the 3rd/9th century or maybe even earlier, that the Shi’i doctrinal couple according to which the Qur’an is surely a guide but a mute, silent guide and, parallel to it, the Imam is a Qur’an, a speaking Book. Because of its falsification, the Book of God has become a silent guide, Qur’an or Book (imām, qurʾān or kitāb ṣāmit). In order to find its Voice again, it now needs the teachings of the real initiates, the Imams, whose person and /or teachings are said to be the “speaking Qur’an” (qurʾān nāṭiq).16 Both expressions thus respectively designate the Qur’an and the Ḥadīth, the two scriptural sources of Islam, by introducing in it the problem of the Scripture’s intelligibility and hence the necessity of hermeneutics as a means of understanding.17 Two traditions going back

16 H. Corbin, En Islam iranien, Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, Paris, 1971–72, index, “Qorân” and especially M. Ayoub’s monograph “The Speaking Qurʾān and the Silent Qurʾān: A Study of the Principles and Development of Imāmī Tafsīr” in A. Rippin (ed.), Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān, Oxford, 1988, pp. 177-198.

17 It goes without saying that “Ḥadīth” here stands for the exegetical Ḥadīth. It is obvious that the subjects included in the Ḥadīth in general are far broader, com-prising also numerous non Qur’anic fields. Nevertheless, according to doctrinal Shi’ism the most important role of the Ḥadīth by far is the exegesis of the Qur’an both the exoteric literal commentary (tafsīr) as well as the spiritual and esoteric commentary or hermeneutic (taʾwīl); see E. Kohlbeg, “Shīʿī Ḥadīth” in The Cam-bridge History of Arabic Literature I, Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad


to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and reported by al-Sayyārī, seem to say it very clearly: “If the Qur’an could be read as it was revealed, not even two people would have disagreed about it” and “If the Qur’an had been left as it was revealed, we would have found our names in it as the ones of those who came before us (i.e. the saintly personalities of the former religions)”.18 According to this type of traditions, it’s its very falsification that rendered the Book incom-prehensible and has hence made necessary its hermeneutic with the aim of restoring its lost meaning. In Shi’ism, the Imam is the hermeneute par excellence and his teachings, his ḥadīth-s claim to be above all the expla-nation (tafṣīl, taʿbīr), exegesis (tafsīr), hermeneutics or spiritual interpreta-tion (taʾwīl) of the Book (during the early period all these terms were more or less equivalents). It’s the Imams and their teachings that give its Voice to the Qur’an rendered mute by its tampering. With time this radical thesis, based on the falsification thesis, yielded to the doctrine according to which the Qur’an is itself, in its original version, a coded text with multiple lev-els that requires the hermeneutics of the Imam in order to be understood adequately.

After this introduction let us move on to our third text. The tradition-ist and exegete of the Qur’an al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥakam al-Ḥibarī (d. 286/899) seems to have been a native of the Iraki city of Kūfa.19 Despite some doubts raised by his biographers, it seems obvious that he was a Shi’i of the Zaydi branch. Nevertheless Twelvers do not hesitate to use him, which again demonstrates the porosity of doctrinal borders between the different Shi’i movements, especially during the early period. Two works of al-Ḥibarī have reached us: al-Musnad, a compendium of 63 traditions on various subjects20 and his Qur’anic commentary, edited at least twice.21 This commentary and

Period, Cambridge, 1983, ch. 12, pp. 299-307, especially pp. 299-300; M.ʿA. Mahdavī Rād, A. ʿĀbedī & ʿA. Rafīʿī, “Ḥadīth” in Tashayyuʿ. Seyrī dar farhang va tārīkh-e tashayyuʿ, Tehran, 1373 solar/1994, pp. 109-127, especially pp. 110-111.

18 Al-Sayyārī, K. al-Qirāʾāt (in Kohlberg & Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsifi-cation), ḥadīth-s n° 8 et 9, Arabic text, p. 8.

19 See M.A. Amir-Moezzi, “Le Tafsīr d’al-Ḥibarī (m. 286/899). Exégèse corani-que et ésotérisme shi’ite ancien”, Journal des savants, Janvier-Juin 2009, pp. 3-23.

20 Edited by al-Sayyid Muḥammad Riḍā al-Ḥusaynī in Turāthunā 32-33 (1413/1992), pp. 275-385 (on the following website: www.al-jalali.net).

21 Fist of all by al-Sayyid Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī: al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥakam al-Ḥīrī (sic), Mā nazala min al-Qurʾān fī ahl al-bayt ʿalayhim al-salām, Qumm, 1395/1975; then by al-Sayyid Muḥammad Riḍā al-Ḥusaynī: al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥakam al-Ḥibarī, Tafsīr, Beirut, 1408/1987. I use this second edition, by far the best.


its complement (mustadrak) contain 100 traditions the majority of which go back to the companion Ibn ʿAbbās and deals with presumed allusions and hidden meanings of the Qur’an regarding ʿAlī, the members of his fam-ily, his followers and enemies. From that point of view one can consider this work to be part of the asbāb al-nuzūl (“the circumstances of revela-tion”) genre,22 in a Shi’i version that hides its identity under the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, a figure highly respected by non-Shi’is and considered to be the father of Sunni Qur’anic exegesis.

In order to have a clearer idea of the Qur’anic commentary of al-Ḥibarī let us translate some excerpts:

Commentary of surah II (al-Baqara) verse 25: “Announce the good news to those who believe and do good works”. Ibn ʿ Abbās: “(this verse) is revealed regarding ʿAlī, Ḥamza (b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib), Jaʿfar (b. Abū Ṭālib) and ʿUbayda b. al-Ḥārith b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib”.23

Commentary of surah II (al-Baqara) verse 45: “Seek help through patience and prayer, since it is exacting except for the submissive”. Ibn ʿAbbās: “Submissive is the one who abases himself in prayer (in front of God) and who hastens to prayer with enthusiasm; this only concerns the Messenger of God and ʿAlī”.24

Commentary of surah II (al-Baqara) verse 81-82: “Rather anyone who commits evil will find his mistake will hem him in . . .” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This has been revealed about Abū Jahl”. “Those who believe and perform honorable deeds will be inhabitants of the Garden; they will live in it for ever”. Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was especially revealed about ʿAlī because

22 See A. Rippin, “Occasions of Revelation”, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, vol. 3, pp. 569-573; M. Yahia, “Circonstances de la révélation” in M.A. Amir-Moezzi (dir.), Dictionnaire du Coran, Paris, 2007, pp. 168-171. See also the interesting develop-ments of A. Radtke, Offenbarung zwischen Gesetz und Geschichte, Wiesbaden, 2003, pp. 39-58.

23 Al-Ḥibarī, Tafsīr, tradition n° 4, pp. 235. The characters afore mentioned belong, according to traditional accounts, to the first followers and protectors of the Prophet. They all belong to the Banū Hāshim, i.e. the immediate family of the Prophet.

24 Tradition n° 6, p. 238.


he was the first to convert (to Islam) and the first, after the Prophet, to have performed the canonical prayer”.25

Commentary of surah III (Āl ʿImrān) verse 61: “Come, let us call our children and your children, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves together; and let us engage in an ordeal (literally “a mutual imprecation”). Ibn ʿAbbās: (This verse) is revealed about the persons of the Messenger of God and ʿAlī; (the expression) “our women and your women” concerns Fāṭima; “our children and your children” that is Ḥasan and Ḥusayn (sic: both names don’t have the article)”.26

Commentary of surah IV (al-Nisā) verse 1: “Heed God through whom you hold one another responsible, as well as any ties of kinship. God is watching over you”. Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was revealed about the Mes-senger of God, the members of his family and his parents; because on the Day of Resurrection all family relationship will be void except for his”.27

It seems to me that this brief sample, with its somehow repetitive mes-sages, is sufficient to clearly illustrate the nature and content of the Tafsīr of al-Ḥibarī. Thus, the various Qur’anic verses are considered as codes desig-nating people or historical groups that are perfectly identified by personali-ties whose religious knowledge and Qur’anic science are authoritative. In this identification of “hidden” personalities under the letter of the Qu’ran, ʿAlī gets, by far, the lion’s share. The profoundly pro-ʿAlīd character of our Tafsīr leaves no doubts but everything happens as if al-Ḥibarī, using the authority of personalities that cannot be accused of Shi’i sectarianism (notably Ibn ʿAbbās), tried to prove his impartiality and his moderation on the one hand and the objective reality, since it is unbiased, of ʿAlī’s sacral-ity, and to a lesser extent that of the other members of the People of the House or the Family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt), on the other.

25 Tradition n° 8, pp. 240-241. According to tradition, Abū Jahl is one the most famous enemies of the Prophet and of Islam.

26 Tradition n° 12, p. 247. Regarding this verse see P. Ballanfat and M. Yahia, “Ordalie” in Dictionnaire du Coran, pp. 618-620; regarding this notion see S. Sch-mucker, “Mubāhala”, EI2 (French version), vol. 7, p. 278.

27 Tradition n° 18, pp. 253-254.


Al-Ḥibarī’s moderation however, is not limited to this. For him, exegesis reveals the spirit of the Qur’an, its hidden meaning, by identifying the per-sonalities about whom the Book has been revealed. Our author however never doubts the known text of the Qur’an by professing the thesis of its falsification (taḥrīf ), maybe because of his Zaydism. For other currents that support this thesis, especially the tradition that will lead to Imamism, the importance of the personalities and their roles in history also constitute the gravity centre of faith; these notions could hence not appear explicitly in the text of the Revelation. In a letter to his close disciple al-Mufaḍḍal al-Juʿfī and reported by the traditionist al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī (d. 290/902-903), the sixth Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq insists heavily on the fact that real faith consists in knowledge of the personalities (inna al-dīn huwa maʿrifat al-rijāl), that the knowledge of the personalities is the religion of God (maʿrifat al-rijāl dīn Allāh) and that these personalities are the Friends of God, notably the Prophet, the Imams and their followers on the one hand, the enemies of God, that is the enemies of the Imams and their followers, on the other. The foundation of faith therefore consists in recognizing the Allies of God and their enemies, that is the enemies of God.28 Hence the considerable impor-tance of the literary genre one could call “personalized Qur’anic commen-taries” in Shi’ism, above all in Twelver Shi’ism.29 According to the authors of these Ḥadīth compilations, the main falsification of the Qur’an, carried out by the enemies of the Family of the Prophet, consists in the suppres-sion of the names of the personalities of the text of the Revelation that thus becomes hardly intelligible. The exegetical teaching of the Imams’ main task is to restore these names, to fill in the gaps caused by the censorship with the historical personalities about whom the verses were revealed. Thus the text of the Revelation becomes understandable again.

It seems that at the time of al-Ḥibarī, Shi’i hermeneutics, seeking to reveal the hidden meaning (bāṭin) of the Qur’an, comes down to: reveal the precise historical personalities covered by the letter of censured Qur’anic letter, The “personalized commentary”, of which al-Ḥibarī’s Tafsīr is one of the most ancient attestations that has reached us, seems to illustrate the

28 Al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī, Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, ed. M. Kūchebāghī, Tabrīz, 2nd ed., s.d. (around 1960), section 10, chapter 21, n° 1, pp. 526sqq. (I shall come back to this author and his work). I have not been able to read the new edition of the book with a Persian translation by ʿA. Zakīzādeh Ranānī, Qumm, 1391solar/1433/2012.

29 On the great authors of this genre and their works from the 4th/10th to the modern period see Amir-Moezzi, “Le Tafsīr d’al-Ḥibarī . . .”, pp. 15-17.


most ancient and most elementary form of exegetical esotericism, destined to become more complex as we will see with the next work.

II.4. The Kitāb Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt of al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī

In the 3rd/9th century, during the period of intense activity by the authors of Qur’anic commentaries like al-Sayyārī and al-Ḥibarī and also ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, al-ʿAyyāshī or Furāt al-Kūfī, just to mention the most famous traditionists whose works have reached us today, a corpus of Ḥadīth of a different nature, of the Gnostic, mystical and initiatory type, is growing at the same time. This type of spiritual and intellectual tradition, was widespread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean since late Antiq-uity, has known a great fortune in many schools of thought in Islam but it seems now accepted that it has reached this religion through the different Shi’i movements some of which quite ancient.30 Our fourth and last text, the Kitāb Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt (literally “The Book of Perceptions of Degrees”) of al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī (d. 290/902-903) is no doubt, for the early period, the most important existing Shi’i source of the transmission of this type of tradition.31

What are the reasons of the development, based on ancient tradi-tions of this new type of sources that will mark the Shi’i religion so pro-foundly and enduringly that since then it has been characterised by them?32 Doctrinal development is always based on multiple and complex reasons. Those I mention here are probably the most superficial ones but they have the advantage, it seems to me, to be in immediate relation with the issues we deal with. The existence of elements of the mystical and esoteric type

30 H. Halm, Die islamische Gnosis. Die extreme Schia und die ʿAlawiten, Zürich-Münich, 1982; W. Tucker, Mahdīs and Millenarians: Shiite Extremists in Early Mus-lim Iraq, New York, 2008; D. De Smet, La philosophie ismaélienne: un ésotérisme chiite entre néoplatonisme et gnose, Paris, 2012.

31 On this author and his work see M.A. Amir-Moezzi, “Al-Ṣaffâr al-Qummî (m. 290/902-3) et son Kitâb baṣâʾir al-darajât”, Journal Asiatique 280/3-4 (1992), pp. 221-250; A.J. Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shīʿism: Ḥadīth as Dis-course Between Qum and Baghdad, Richmond, 2000, chapters 5 et 7. For an edition of the work of al-Saffār see note 28.

32 See M.A. Amir-Moezzi, Le Guide divin dans le Shi’isme originel: aux sources de l’ésotérisme en Islam, Paris, 1992 (2nd ed. 2007); id., La religion discrète: croyances et pratiques spirituelles dans l’islam Shi’i, Paris, 2006 (English translation: The Spiritu-ality of Shi’i Islam: Beliefs and Practices, London-New York, 2011).


seems very ancient in Shi’ism but it is particularly from the second half of the 3rd/9th century onward and during all the following century that a considerable literature, as rich as it is diverse, of an initiatory and gnostic nature with a strong messianic element, develops.33 During that period that literature reaches its peak with certain chapters of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Barqī’s (d. 274/887-888 or 280/893-894) Kitāb al-Maḥāsin and above all with the Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt. The blossoming of this corpus, soon reaching considerable dimensions, could be attributed to the acknowledgement of a double failure by the Shi’is. At the historical level, Shi’ism is in the minority, marginalized and often persecuted with extreme violence. Apart from a few exceptions, this assessment is verifiable throughout the rule of the Omayy-ads and the Abbassids; indeed the Omayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and the Abbassid caliphs al-Saffāḥ, al-Maʾmūn or al-Muntaṣir showed a certain tolerance toward the ʿAlīd/Shi’is and a relative respect toward the rights of the members of the Family of the Prophet but these openings, one may often qualify as being political, were short lived and apart from the 4th/10th century that was the Shi’i century of Islam, one can consider that the followers of the Imams have been permanently defeated by the follow-ers of majoritarian Islam that ended up being called Sunni.34 Then at the religious level, Shi’ism is ostracised, isolated, its doctrines neutralised by an immense and uninterrupted flow of Sunni traditions in the sense that in reaction to practically every Shi’i belief glorifying ʿAlī, his descendants and followers, traditions praising his enemies or recuperating them for themselves for their own cause are created.35 It is, in a way, a matter of the

33 H. Ansari, L’imamat et l’Occultation selon l’imamisme. Étude bibliographique et histoire des textes, doctoral thesis, École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne), Paris, 2009, especially the introduction and chapter 2.

34 A. Meshkāt Kirmānī, Tārīkh-e tashayyoʿ, Tehran, 1358 solar/1980, passim; R. Jaʿfariyān, Tārīkh-e tashayyoʿ dar īrān az āghāz tā qarn-e dahom-e hejrī, Tehran, 1375 solar/1996, in particular the first three chapters.

35 Let us stick to some well studied examples: the taking over of the expres-sion “Family of the Prophet” (ahl al-bayt) by the Ummayads (see M. Sharon, “Ahl al-Bayt—People of the House”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986), pp. 169-184.; id., “The Umayyads as ahl al-bayt”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 14 (1991), pp. 115-152; M.A. Amir-Moezzi, “Considérations sur l’expression dīn ʿAlī. Aux origines de la foi shi’ite”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesell-schaft 150/1 (2000), pp. 29-68 (included in Religion discrète, first section, chapter 1), passim; the development of the literature about the “virtues” ( faḍāʾil) of the com-panions of the Prophet, especially the first three caliphs, compared to the traditions praising the “virtues” of ʿAlī and his Family (see the works of A. Hakim “Conflict-


Sunnis’ word, enjoying the support of an often repressive political power, against that of the Shi’is, the vanquished minority. Facing this situation, the latter seem to have decided to override direct confrontation, now deemed sterile, and to develop other doctrinal aspects parallel to the demand of the rights of ʿAlī and his descendants; thus the constitution of complex eso-teric doctrines around a mysticism based on the figure of the Imam took shape. Progressively the demand of the rights of ʿAlī and his descendants as well as the denunciation of their enemies acquires a metaphysical and cos-mic perspective. The followers are hence invited to reach transformative knowledge, redemptive wisdom, by overcoming the tragedy of History. In this Gnostic religion, the historical Imam is the master of secret teachings and the spiritual cosmic Imam, the Divine Guide, the ultimate content of these teachings.36

The work of al-Ṣaffār is a perfect illustration of this evolution.37 Al-Shaykh Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al Ṣaffār al-Qummī, who died in

ing images of lawgivers: the caliph and the Prophet. Sunnat ʿUmar and sunnat Muḥammad” in H. Berg (ed.), Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, Leiden, 2003; “Frères et adversaires: Abū Bakr et ʿUmar dans les traditions sunnites et shi’ites” dans Amir-Moezzi, Bar-Asher & Hopkins (eds.), Le shīʿisme imāmite quarante ans après. Hommage à Etan Kohlberg, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études n° 137, Turnhout, 2009, pp. 237-67; “ ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, calife par la Grâce de Dieu”, Arabica 54/3 (2008), pp. 317-36; “ ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb: l’autorité religieuse et morale”, Arabica 55/1 (2008), pp. 1-34); the fabrication of traditions on the role of the companions in the narrative of the heavenly ascension (miʿrāj) of the Prophet contrasting with the Shi’i traditions stressing the ability for the Imams to ascend to heaven like Muḥammad (see F. Colby, “the Early Imami Shi’i Narratives and Contestation over Intimate Colloquy Scenes in Muḥammad’s Miʿrāj”, in Christiane Grüber & Frederick Colby (eds.), The Prophet’s Ascension: Cross-Cultural Encoun-ters with the Islamic Miʿrāj Tales, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2010, pp. 141-156.). The authors of these studies often stress the fact that the Sunni tradi-tions have been elaborated in reaction to Shi’i traditions who are consequently older. Like in other religious traditions what one often calls “orthodoxy” has been created as a reaction to older currents that progressively have been considered as “heterodox” if not “heretical”.

36 This evolution is the main subject of works of M.A. Amir-Moezzi, Guide divin; id., Religion discrète; see also id. and C. Jambet, Qu’est-ce que le Shi’isme?, Paris, 2004, the second part in particular.

37 The attribution of the K. Baṣāʾir al-darajāt to al-Ṣaffār has been questionned by my friend and colleague Dr Hassan Ansari (“Madkhal-e moṭāleʿe-yī tafṣīlī dar bāre-ye Kitāb Baṣāʾir al-darajāt va hoviyyat-e nevisande-ye ān”, on the website “Barresī-hā-ye tārīkhī”, http://ansari.kateban.com). This is probably not the place to go into the details of the discussion but I have to admit that his arguments do


290/902-903, was a “client” (freed slave) of the powerful Arab Ashʿarite clan of the Iranian city of Qumm. According to al-Ṭūsī, he was the disciple of the eleventh Imam of the Twelvers, al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (d. 260/874). According to a list established by al-Najāshī and taken up by many posterior authors, al-Ṣaffār had compiled 37 compendia of traditions most of which, as their titles indicate, were compendia of juridical traditions. Nevertheless, his only work that has reached us is the Kitāb Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt. The complete title would, according to most manuscripts, be Kitāb Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt fī ʿulūm āl Muḥammad wa mā khaṣṣahum Allāh bihi (approximately: “The Boook of the Perceptions of Degrees of Knowledge of the Descendants of Muḥammad—i.e. the Imams—and what God has exclusively reserved for them in this area”),38 better known by the shorter title Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt. This title has been used to name a good number of works of different periods.39 Meaning literally “Perceptions of Degrees”, it seems to signify “progressive comprehension” of a given theme. In the case of this work, it clearly deals with the progressive comprehension of the Initiatory Science or Knowledge (ʿilm pl. ʿulūm) of the Imams, the one they possess as well as the one about them.40

It is a voluminous compendium of 1881 ḥadīth-s making up a sort of monography about the various aspects of the Initiatory Science of the Imams—or what the compiler has consider to be as such. In order to have an idea of the content of the book, here are some titles of chapters:

“the teachings of the Imams is arduous, hard to perceive” (section I/chapter 11), “their Science is a secret wrapped in a secret” (I/12), “the Imams are the Proof of God and his Threshold, his Face and his Side, his Eye and the Treasurers of his Knowledge” (section II/chapter 3),

not seem convincing to me and do not manage to seriously cast doubt upon cen-turies of prosopographic and bibliographic traditions that support such attribu-tion. Anyway, even if one accepts H. Ansari’s hypothesis the work would have been authored by Saʿd b. ʿAbdallāh al-Ashʿarī, probably completed by Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-ʿAṭṭār, two contemporaries of al-Ṣaffār. Consequently this in no way affects the dating of my argumentation but only the identity of the author of the examined text.

38 See the list of manuscripts presented by Brockelmann, GAL, S1, p. 319 et Sezgin, GAS, vol. 1, p. 538.

39 See the indexes of Brockelmann and Sezgin.40 On the technical meaning of the term ʿilm in the early Shi’i corpus see Amir-

Moezzi, Guide divin, index s.v. and especially part III-2 (“La science sacrée”).


“what the Infallibles (i.e. the Prophet, Fāṭima and the Imams) have seen and known in the (pre-existential) worlds of the Shadows and Par-ticles” (II/14 to 16), “the Imams teaching the religion to the jinns” (II/18), “the Imams are the heirs of the Science of Adam and all the initiates of the past” (III/1), “they know the events of the heavens and the earth, those of paradise and hell, those of the past and the future until the day of resurrection” (III/6), “they hold the primordial Books and the Scrip-tures of the preceding prophets” (III/10), “they possess the secret Books of Jafr, of the Jāmiʿa, the Muṣḥaf of Fāṭima, those of the Genealogies, of the Rulers of the earth and that of the Good and Bad Fortunes” (III/14 and IV/1 and 2), “they hold the shirt of Adam, the seal of Solomon, the Ark and the Tables of Moses, the Weapon of Muḥammad” (IV/4), “the Imams know the Supreme Name of God” (IV/12), “they hear the celes-tial voices and have the vision of forms more grandiose than that of the angels Gabriel and Michael” (V/7), “they resurrect the dead, heal the lepers and the blind, visit the dead and these visit them” (VI/3 and 5), “the teaching given by the Prophet, after his death, to ʿAlī” (VI/6), “the Imams receive inspiration by the marking of the heart and the piercing of the eardrum” (VII/3), “they know the language of the birds, the wild beasts and the metamorphosed creatures” (VII/14 and 17), “the power of riding the clouds and the ascension to the heavens” (VIII/15), “the vision in the column of light” (IX/7 to 9), “the earth cannot be bare of an Imam or it would be annihilated” (X/12) . . .

The “Book of the Progressive Comprehension of the Sacred Science” is the earliest systematic exposition of the advent of gnosis in Shi’ism, maybe even in Islam in general. Even a quick reading of the table of contents shows this clearly. Indeed it contains, adapted to Shi’ism of course, practically all the features of the Gnostic doctrines coloured with neo-Platonism of late Antiquity as expertly synthesized by Kurt Rudolph:41 dualistic vision of the world, stage of the cosmic struggle between the forces of Good and Evil (the Friends of God, the initiator sages, and their followers on the one hand, their opponents on the other), Doctrine of the Emanations, giving birth to the pleroma and the hypostasis (creation of the pre-existential entities of the Imams from the Divine Light) but also to their malevolent opponents (the pre-existential entities of the forces of Ignorance). Pessimistic view of

41 K. Rudolph, Die Gnosis. Wesen und Geschichte einer spätantiken Religion, Göttingen, Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1980 (2nd edition).


the world and of man (the majority of people are, willingly or unwillingly on the side of Ignorance). Man is a hybrid being, a parcel of light trapped in the darkness of matter and can only be freed by Knowledge. This redeeming gnosis is carried and transmitted by a being of light who incarnates himself in order to save those men capable of recognizing him (Christ for the Gnos-tics, the Imam for the Shi’is). This guide, this holder of Knowledge, benefits from its results namely the thaumaturgic powers. The integral salvation is realized, in the eschatological times, when all the imprisoned parcels of light will be freed throughout the many cycles of History. Gnosis is hidden in the esoteric meaning of Scripture, covered by its literal meaning; herme-neutics is hence essential for an adequate intelligence of the sacred Book.42

The absence of a direct source dating of the first two centuries of Islam renders difficult the study of the literary filiation between the Gnostic movements and the different branches of proto-Shi’ism and Shi’ism. Nev-ertheless many studies, of which the most complete remains the already mentioned monographic work of Heinz Halm,43 were able to show that reli-gious movements of the Gnostic type, notably those influenced by or hav-ing remained loyal to Mani, Bardaisan and to Marcion, had remained active in Islamic lands until the 3rd and 4th/9th and 10th centuries, sometimes converting to the new Arab religion with all their intellectual and spiritual luggage. It is interesting to note that the favourite regions of these move-ments were almost situated in Irak (specially the cities of Kūfa, Basra and Ḥīra) that is the native land of Shi’ism.44 From what stands out in Muslim

42 In this context one can say that another great work of that period, the Kitāb al-Kāfī of al-Kulaynī, completes one of al-Ṣaffār by integrating in Shi’i doc-trine many elements drawn from neo-platonic thought; see M.A. Amir-Moezzi & H. Ansari, “Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (d. 328/939-40 or 329/940-941) et son Kitāb al-Kāfī. Une introduction”, Studia Iranica 38/2 (2009), pp. 191-247.

43 H. Halm, Die islamische Gnosis. Die extreme Schia und die ʿAlawiten.44 There is no doubt about the presence of gnostic type doctrines in a good

number of Shi’i currents. What is a matter of debate are their circles and the nature of transmission of their teachings in Islamic lands. See e.g. L. Massignon, “Die Ursprünge und die Bedeutung des Gnostizismus im Islam”, Eranos Jahrbuch 1937, pp. 55-77 (= Opera Minora, ed. Y. Moubarac, Beirut, 1963, vol. 1, pp. 499-513); H. Corbin, “De la gnose antique à la gnose ismaélienne” in Oriente e Occidente nel Medioevo. Convegno di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), Rome, 1957, pp. 105-146 (included in Temps cyclique et gnose ismaélienne, Paris, 1982, 3rd part); id., “L’idée du Paraclet en philosophie iranienne” in La Persia nel Medievo (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), Rome, 1970, pp. 37-68; U. Rubin, “Pre-existence and Light. Aspects of the Concept of Nūr Muḥammad”, Israel Orien-


heresiographical works, but also in the imāmī and ismāʿīlī corpus as well as from works from so-called “extremist” Shi’i circles (books like the Kitāb al-Haft wa l-aẓilla or the Umm al-Kitāb), we can deduce that the teachings of the Gnostic type, transmitted through an initiatory way (that is mostly oral) were present since the imamate of the Imams Muḥammad al-Bāqir and his son Jaʿfar sl-Ṣādiq, on the edge of the 1st and 2nd/7th and 8th cen-turies. The Kitāb Baṣāʾir al Darajāt seems to indicate that the written and methodical transmission of these teachings developed particularly since the second half of the 3rd/9th century.45

III. A New Reading Grid and New Frame of Theorisation

Let us go back to the issues we raised at the beginning: the connection between the development of Islam’s scriptural sources and the unending internal wars during the first centuries of that religion. As stated earlier, Shi’i sources have not been exploited as they should in this field. The main reason for this ostracism is that they have been considered as being little representative and little reliable as they come from a minority and are hence considered to be ideologically biased. A rather surprising attitude coming from scientific researchers supposed to be impartial since it has been established, in no uncertain manner, from Ignaz Goldziher to Michael Cook, through pertinent studies spread throughout more than a century,

tal Studies 5 (1975), pp. 62-119; W. al-Qāḍī, “The Development of the Term Ghulāt in Muslim Literature with Special Reference to the Kaysāniyya” in A. Dietrich (ed.), Akten des VII. Kongresses für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, Göttingen, 1976, pp. 295-319 (included in E. Kohlberg (ed.), Shīʾism, Aldershot, 2003, art. n° 8); H. Halm, Kosmologie und Heislehre der frühen Ismāʿīliyya. Eine Studie zur islami-schen Gnosis, Wiesbaden, 1978; M.M. Bar-Asher & A. Kofsky, The Nuṣayrī-ʿAlawī Religion. An Enquiry into its Theology and Liturgy, Leiden, 2002, passim.

45 L. Massignon, “Der gnostische Kult der Fatima im schiitischen Islam”, Eranos Jahrbuch 1938, pp. 161-173 (= Opera Minora, vol. 1, pp. 514-22); H. Halm, “Das ‘Buch der Schatten’. Die Mufaḍḍal-Tradition der ghulāt und die Ursprünge des Nuṣairiertums”, Der Islam 55 (1978), pp. 219-66 et 58 (1981), pp. 15-86; S.M. Wasser-strom, “The Moving Finger Writes: Mughīra b. Saʿīd’s Islamic Gnosis and the Myths of its Rejection”, History of Religions 25/1 (1985), pp. 62-90; D. De Smet, “Au-delà de l’apparent: les notions de ẓāhir et bāṭin dans l’ésotérisme musulman”, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 25 (1994), pp. 197-220; id., La philosophie ismaélienne, op. cit.; W. Tucker, Mahdīs and Millenarians: Shiite Extremists in Early Muslim Iraq, New York, 2008.


how Sunni sources can also be historically not very credible, at least in their profoundly oriented explicit discourse as they seek to establish the proofs of Sunni orthodoxy and orthopraxy. In the dialectic opposing “the right religion” to heterodoxy, Shi’i sources are at least as biased but not more: they also present the advantage of being the voice of the vanquished minority and seem, as such, to be even more precious as they often report information that has been either censored or distorted by the victors. It is hence from the comparative and simultaneous comparison of both cat-egories of sources that a glimpse of a yet enigmatic historical reality may emerge on more than one issue. Neglecting Shi’i writings seems even more regrettable when one realizes that on certain fundamental issues regarding the history of early Islam and the genesis of its scriptural sources, these writings are sometimes corroborated by a great number of modern his-torical and philological studies. Some examples: the existence of violent conflicts between the most important personalities of early Islam and their extension until the late Abbassid period.46 The particularly prob-lematic development, transmission and reception of the Qur’anic text.47 The political nature of the development of a huge part of the Ḥadīth cor-pus where each theologico-political party attempted to forge prophetic

46 E.g. J. Wellhausen, Die religiös-politischen Oppositionsparteien im alten Islam, Berlin, 1901; id., Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz, Berlin, 1902; J. Périer, Vie d’al-Hadjdjâdj ibn Yousof (41-95 de l’Hégire = 661-714 de J.-C.) d’après les sources arabes, Paris, 1904; H. Lammens, Etudes sur le règne du Calife Omaiyade Mo‘âwia 1er, Paris, 1908; id., “Le triumvirat Abou Bakr, ʿOmar et Abou ʿObaida”; L. Caetani, Annali dell’ Islam, Milan, 1905-1926; H. Djaït, La Grande Discorde, Paris, 1989; W. Madelung, The succession to Muḥammad, op. cit.

47 T. Nöldeke, F. Schwally et al., Geschichte des Qorāns, I-III, Leipzig, 1909-1938 (reprint Hildesheim-New York, 1970); A. Mingana, “The Transmission of the Koran”, Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society 5 (1915-1916), pp. 25-47 (reprint in Moslem World 7 (1917), pp. 223-232 and 402-414); E. Beck, “Die ʿuthmānische Kodex in der Koranlesung des zweiten Jahrhunderts”, Orientalia 14 (1945), pp. 355-373; id.,“ ʿArabiyya, Sunna und ʿĀmma in der Koranlesung des zweiten Jahrhunderts”, Orientalia N.S. 15 (1946), pp. 180-224; id., “Die Kodizes-varianten der Amṣār”, Orientalia N.S., 16 (1947), pp. 353-376; id., “Studien zur Geschichte der kufischen Koranlesung in den beiden ersten Jahrhunderten”, Ori-entalia 17 (1948), pp. 326-355; 19 (1950), pp. 328-350; 20 (1951), pp. 316-328; 22 (1953), pp. 59-78; J. Burton, The Collection of the Qurʾān, Cambridge, 1977; J. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, Oxford, 1977; id., The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History, Oxford, 1978; M. Cook, The Koran. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2000.


traditions justifying its own cause.48 The state censorship applied to the different religious or historiograhical corpus.49 The tight relations between Qur’anic exegesis, its genesis, its development or to the contrary its prohi-bition and impoverishment with the political history of caliphal power.50 Finally it is significant to notice that a certain number of data recognized as being typically Shi’i and dangerously subversive for “orthodoxy” have been transmitted by prestigious Sunni authors: ʿUmar preventing the Prophet from revealing his last will, the pressures and repressions accompanying Abū Bakr’s ascension to the caliphate, the physical violence inflicted on Fāṭima by ʿUmar, the trampled rights, the repression and massacre of the members of the Prophet’s Family by the caliphate’s power, etc . . .

The negative prejudice toward early Shi’i literature could also be explained by the frequent neglect of an obvious fact: the doctrinal schools

48 A. Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Moḥammad, Berlin, 1869 (2nd edi-tion); id., “Über das Traditionswesen bei den Arabern”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 10 (1856), pp. 1-17; I. Goldziher, Muhammedani-sche Studien, Halle, 1889-1890 (2 vols) (partial translation of vol. 2 in French by L. Bercher, Paris, réimp. 1984), especially vol. 2; id., Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung, Leiden, 1920 (reed. 1952); J. Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, Oxford, 1950; M.J. Kister, Studies in Jāhiliyya and Early Islam, London, 1980; G.H.A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition. Studies in chronology, provenance and authorship of early Ḥadīth, Cambridge, 1983; id., Studies on the Origins and uses of Islamic Ḥadīth, Aldershot, 1996.

49 G. Lüling, Über den Ur-Qurʾān. Ansätze zur Rekonstruktion vorislamischer christlischer Strophenlieder im Qurʾān, Erlangen, 1974 (see the revised English edi-tion: A Challenge to Islam for Reformation. The Rediscovery of reliable Reconstruc-tion of a comprehensive pre-islamic Christian Hymnal hidden in the Koran under earliest Islamic reinterpretation, Delhi, 2002), especially the introduction; M. Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam”, Arabica 44 (1997), pp. 437-530; M.J. Kister, “Lā taqraʾū l-qurʾāna ʿalā l-muṣḥafiyyīn . . . Some Notes on the Transmission of Ḥadīth”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 22 (1998), pp. 127-162.

50 I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, vol. 2; id., Die Richtungen der isla-mischen Koranauslegung,; id., Le Dogme et la Loi de l’Islam. Histoire du développe-ment dogmatique et juridique de la religion musulmane, trans. F. Arin, Paris, 1920, passim; H. Birkeland, Old Muslim opposition against interpretation of the Koran in Avhandlinger Utgitt av det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, 1955/1, 43 p.; P. Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique, Beirut, 1970, in particular pp. 8, 317sqq, 370sqq; A. Rippin (ed.), Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān, Oxford, 1988; id., (ed.), The Qurʾān: Formative Interpretation, Aldershot, 1999; C. Gilliot, Exégèse, langue et théologie en islam. L’exégèse coranique de Tabari, Paris, 1990, in particular pp. 80sqq, 110sqq, 118, 90-98.


of thought, institutions, theologico-political divides as well as the scriptural writings of Islam have seen the light in a context of violent and unending fratricidal conflicts. Yet, the objective examination of history and the ideas of that period demands the impartial study of the sources not only from the side of the victors but also of that of the vanquished, especially when the first have almost systematically tried to hide or alter a certain number of historical facts as major and compromising for them.

For all these reasons, it seemed pertinent to me to concentrate my analy-sis on some representative Shi’i works of great schools of thought, while constantly situating them in their historical, intellectual and spiritual con-text of their period, including of course non-Shi’i works in my analysis. Thus the following works have been studied in their chronological order: the pseudoepigraphical work Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays or Kitāb al-Saqīfa whose earliest layers seem to go back to the beginning of the 2nd/8th century; the Kitāb al-Qirāʾāt or Kitāb al-Tanzīl wa l-Taḥrīf of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Sayyārī from the 3rd/9th century (probably from the first half ); the Tafsīr of al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥakam al-Ḥibarī dating as well from the 3rd/9th century (probably the second half ); finally the exact contemporary of the latter, the Kitāb Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt of al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī.51 From the study of the history of these texts and their contents emerged what one may consider to be a veritable sequence. I will here try to lay out that sequence as simply as possible:

i) The Kitāb of Sulaym is most probably one of the earliest representatives of the Iraki city of Kūfa’s Shi’i tradition that will indelibly mark a certain number of the most fundamental doctrines and historical views of Shi’ism until today. Among them is the one regarding the succession to the Prophet: immediately after the death of Muḥammad, even before his burial, the protagonists of an old conspiracy, notably the powerful men of Quraysh led by Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, seized power during the gathering of Saqīfa during carefully prepared operation qualified as a “plot”. Through ruse and violence, they removed ʿAlī from power. The latter was nevertheless the sole legitimate successor to the Prophet as he was declared as such by him

51 As I indicated at the beginning of this article, these studies are conducted in the framework of my seminaries at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne) since the 1990s. Their results have been published in many volumes of the Annuaire de l’EPHE as well as in a certain number of books and articles men-tioned in the preceding notes.


in many of his declarations and even by God in the Qur’an. Among the immediate consequences of this coup there was the death of Fāṭima, the daughter of the Prophet, following injuries caused by the violent attacks committed by ʿUmar. Other consequences farther in time, less immediate but nonetheless dramatic will be the following: the assassination of ʿAlī, rise to power of the Omayyads, for centuries enemies of Muḥammad and his family, the poisoning of al-Ḥasan, the latter’s grandson and son of ʿAlī, on the orders of the Omayyad Muʿāwiya, the assassination of al-Ḥasan’s brother, al-Ḥusayn, particularly loved by the Prophet, and almost all his family in Karbalāʾ on the orders of Yazīd, son of Muʿāwiya. Hence the Shi’i doctrine according to which the massacre of Karbalā extends its roots in the plot of Saqīfa.

ii) In order to justify these violent abuses, the caliphate’s power set up a complex system of propaganda, censorship and historical falsification. It first of all altered the Qur’anic text and forged an entire corups of traditions falsely attributed to the Prophet by using the services of men of letters, judges, jurists, preachers, historians . . . all of this in the midst of a ferocious as well as methodical policy of repression against opponents in general and ʿAlīds in particular. A great number of non-Shi’i sources more or less dis-cretely recount these facts that plethora of modern studies on these issues often confirm themselves. Thus according to this historical view of Shi’ism, official majoritarian “Islam”, the religion of power and its institutions, have been set up by the enemies of Muḥammad, his family and descendants, the sole legitimate guides of the community of believers. It is hence not Muḥammad’s religion but in fact a veritable “anti-Islam” imposed by tyr-anny and deceit.

iii) Contrary to the Qur’an known to all, the Qur’an revealed to Muḥammad explicitly mentioned the names of ʿAlī and his descendants on the one hand, and the enemies of Muḥammad on the other mentioned by name, notably the first two caliphs and certain powerful men among the Omayyads and their ancestors. When hijacking power, the opponents of Muḥammad saw themselves forced to massively intervene in the Qur’anic text in order to alter the passages that compromised them. Assisted by powerful statesmen and professional men of letters (sometimes both qualities were united in a single individual as was the case of ʿ Ubaydallāh b. Ziyād or al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf ), they developed the known official Qur’an that, after many interventions of all kinds, ended up with the known incoherent and hardly understandable aspect. The Book of Revelation and Falsification of al-Sayyārī, probably the earliest monography dedicated to this subject


to have reached us today, is part of a strong tradition of the first three or four centuries of Islam according to which the official Qur’an, known as the ʿUthmānian Vulgate, is a falsified version of the real revelation made to the Prophet. It needs to be added that this belief in the falsification thesis was also present in many non-ʿAlīd movements.

Historico-philological research on the text and history of the composition of the Qur’an has been able to establish that the final text of the Qur’an that we know seems to be most probably the result of complex collective edit-ing work. The formation of that Vulgate seems to date back to the caliph-ate of ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (65 to 86/685-705) and seems to have been carried out under his control. However, until the 3rd and 4th/9th and 10th centuries, other Qur’anic versions, sometimes very different in their form and content, circulated in the lands of Islam until the “state Qur’an” was imposed to all including the majority of the Shi’i. At that time, with the establishment of a Sunni orthodoxy under the Abbassid caliphate of which one of the main dogmas was the divine and eternal character of the official Qur’an, it became extremely dangerous to doubt its integrity. Only a minor-ity among the Shi’is continued to discretely support the thesis of falsifica-tion and this until today.

Many passages of the Qur’an are hardly understandable. Early Shi’ism explains this fact in two ways. In a stage that seems to have been the ear-liest, the obscurity of the Qur’anic text is due to its falsification. Several deletions and additions, the work of the enemies of Muḥammad and ʿAlī, have completely altered the Revelation and damaged its initial clarity. In particular the censoring of the names of historical personalities among the followers and opponents of the Prophet and his religion, personalities who were still alive during the devising of the Qur’anic text, has rendered, originally clear, almost incomprehensible. A second explanation, probably not as early as the first one, seems less radical. The text of the real Revela-tion made to Muḥammad has indeed been falsified by the “suppression” of entire passages (here, there is no more talk of “additions” otherwise one will never know what in the Qur’an is due to God or due to human inter-ventions; thus no credibility can be granted to the divine character of the official Qur’an). However, what gives God’s Book its enigmatic side is that it comprises intrinsically a manifest, literal aspect, and a hidden, esoteric aspect, in other words a letter and a spirit, if one wishes to use the famous paulinian couple. Later on, in order to further tone down the explosive


doctrine of falsification, certain Shi’i scholars said that originally the term Qur’an designated the text of the Revelation accompanied of ʿAlī’s glosses. The official codex had not been censored but the crime of the opponents of ʿAlī was to have deleted his comments, rendering the revelations made to Muḥammad difficult to understand. In any case the hermeneutics of an inspired exegete, that is an infallible Imam according to the Shi’is, is neces-sary in order to make the divine Message intelligible. Thus the Ḥadīth is said to be necessary in order to explain the Qur’an. Hence the Shi’i doctrine that presents the Qur’an as being the silent “guide” or “book” and parallel to it the Imam and/or his teaching as the “Speaking Qur’an”.52

Al-Ḥibarī’s Qur’anic commentary belongs to a whole exegetical tradition alive to this very day that I named “personalized commentaries”. Linking themselves rather to the first tradition for the explanation of the obscure character of numerous Qur’anic passages, these tafsīr-s use the Ḥadīth in order to “fill in the gaps” of the Qur’an with the names of the people about whom these passages supposed to have been revealed and that become again perfectly clear. It seems that in the very first Shi’i initiatory circles these “personalized commentaries”, that consisted in identifying the pre-cise historical personalities under the letter of the Qur’an, constituted the first form of Shi’i esotericism, that is a secret teaching dispensed only to those deemed worthy. Indeed, in the context of violent repression, identi-fying people who were for the most part still alive like the friends and ene-mies of the Prophet would have been a particularly delicate affair especially since the said enemies or their descendants were in power. The passion of the Shi’is for this type of exegesis, based on the belief of a ẓāhir and a bāṭin for the Qur’an, is doubtlessly one of the main reasons for the desire of the Omayyad power and a certain number of its ideologues to forbid any applied exegesis of the Qur’an in general or the profession of the existence

52 On this doctrine according to which the Qur’an can not be understood with-out the use of the Ḥadīth, its probable Shi’i origin and its development within Sun-nism see I. Goldziher, Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung, pp. 55-57 et 263sq.; H. Birkeland, Old Muslim opposition against interpretation of the Koran, passim; P. Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique, pp. 60-74, 110sqq (The role of the polysemy theory—wujūh—and the concordances (naẓāʾir) of the Shi’i Muqātil); A. Rippin, “The present status of Tafsīr studies”, Muslim World 42 (1982), pp. 224-38, especially pp. 226-28; C. Gilliot, “Les sept ‘Lectures’. Corps social et Ecri-ture révélée”, Studia Islamica 61 (1985), pp. 5-25 et 63 (1986), pp. 49-62, especially part II; id., Exégèse, langue et théologie en islam, the entire fifth chapter.


of two levels in the Qur’an in particular. The interpretations of the esoteric kind were systematically deemed contrary to the spirit of a certain ortho-doxy and as a threat for the unity and security of the Community. At the same time, the existence of so-called “heretical” movements, was exploited by those in power in order to legitimize orthodoxy.53

Let us recapitulate. In this phase, for the ʿAlīds, the necessity of esoteric exegesis is justified by a specific historical evolution: throughout his life the Prophet had to struggle with the adversity and hypocrisy of this Qurashī enemies. The Qur’an very often mentions these conflicts. Having opportu-nistically gone over to Islam and that only shortly, these same enemies took back through a plot, right after the death of Muḥammad, the authority and power of the latter by violently removing his legitimate successor. In these conditions, one of the first things for the power in place to do was to falsify the compromising passages of the Qur’an where the friends and enemies of the new religion were mentioned by name. Rendered thus incompre-hensible, the Qur’an demanded an exegesis, replacing these people in their initial Qur’anic context, in order to uncover the real meaning of the verses. This exegesis, repressed and forbidden by the powerful men of the new State, could only circulate but secretly among the initiates opposing the power in place.

A good number of Shi’is soon realized that frontal opposition to the caliphate’s power was a dead end.54 Most of them, appropriately qualified as quietists, were found among the followers of the Imams of the Ḥusaynid Jaʿfarid line who later on formed Twelver Imamism. Indeed, on the histori-cal level, the infernal cycle of repression and rebellion ended up in almost

53 H. Birkeland, Old Muslim opposition against interpretation of the Koran, pas-sim; P. Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique, pp. 317sqq, 370-72; C. Gilliot, Exégèse, langue et théologie en islam, pp. 80sq, 90, 186, 227-28 et 277-78. One may wonder about what kind of mecanisms the caliphal power, especially the Οmmayad one but also to some extent the Abbassid one, supported literalism (easily contro-lable in truth) and fought hermeneutics that sought to go beyond the literality of language and were hardly controlable by political power. This constitutes a huge filed of research of its own. Regarding this issue Claude Gilliot, in the study I just mentionned, proposes important documented reflections as well as research paths that are very relevant. He stresses, (op. cit. pp. 111-133 through a refined analysis of ḥadd and muṭṭalaʿ ), as Paul Nwyia had noted before him (Exégèse coranique et langage mystique, pp. 67sqq), the progressive impoverishment of non-mystical Sunni exegesis from the 4th/10th century onwards as a direct consequence of the intrusion of politics in religion.

54 Cf. I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Sudien, 2:115 (trans. Bercher, p. 139).


all cases with the victory of the Omayyad power and the bloody crushing of the ʿAlīds. The revolution of the Abbassids, a family belonging to the same hāshimite clan as the ʿAlīds, and the brutal elimination of the Omayyad caliphate made some hopes grow among the latter for a short moment. But the merciless realities of power resurfaced and, apart from some rare and short periods of calm, the same cycle start all over again. The new caliphs and their ideologues realized soon that the religious institutions and funda-mental doctrines established by their predecessors could not be modified without dangerously shaking the foundations of the empire. The idealiza-tion of the prophetic period, the canonization of Muḥammad’s Compan-ions, the recognition of the official Qur’an and almost the totality of the Ḥadīth corpus already recognized by the doctors of the past—except for explicitly pro-Omayyad traditions—were not questioned. Also on the doc-trinal level the “People of ʿAlī” were now marginalized, isolated, victims of radical ostracism; the declaration of legitimacy of ʿAlī and his descendants due to their sanctity as well as the denunciation of their enemies were now neutralized, flooded under a massive, rushing and uninterrupted flow of traditions, gathered in corpuses of ḥadīth-s and Qur’anic commentaries, praising the virtues of these opponents, now sanctified. ʿAlī was himself recuperated in thousands of ways, and in that propaganda war, the ʿAlīds were presented as fanatics, lunatics and malcontents who did not even rec-ognized by their first Imam nor the other Imams of his line. The voice of the vanquished minority found itself faced with that of the victorious majority: the result seemed obvious.

In these conditions Shi’i discourse seems to have felt the need to tran-scend this dead end by elevating to a metaphysical level the proclamation of legitimacy of ʿAlī and his descendents and the denunciation of their opponents. The resources of other monotheistic cultures of course adapted to Shi’i doctrines, were called upon especially in the field of hermeneutics. This opening seems to go well beyond a probable general influence of the Christian doctrine of the “Four Meanings” of Scriptures (literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical), itself extending the four interpretative methods of Judaism (peshat: literal exegesis, remez: implicit hidden meaning; derash: homiletic perception; sod: mystical and allegorical interpretation).55 The

55 Encyclopedia Judaica ( Jerusalem), vol. 4, pp. 889-891; M. Gertner, “Terms of Scriptural Interpretation: a Study on Hebrew Semantics”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 25 (1962), pp. 1-27; R.M. Gant, L’interprétation de la Bible des origines chrétiennes à nos jours, Paris, 1967, pp. 101-2. See also many


sacred authority reserved for “the House of David” by Jews and the “Sacred Family” of Jesus by Christians (both communities are strongly present in Islamic lands and especially in Irak, the native land of Shi’ism, during the first centuries of Islam) seems to have been transmitted to the “Familly of the Prophet’s Household” (ahl al-bayt, ahl bayt al-nabī).56 Progressively a more and more complex imamological doctrine is developed where influ-ences from the Christian traditions and the Neoplatonic Gnostics can be felt sometimes even in detail: the cosmic Guide (Imam), metaphysical arche-type of the earthly “guide”, pre-existential entity manifesting the luminous Word of God seems to find his roots among the commentators of the Gos-pel of John57 and the theologians of the logos such as Justin, Ignatius of Antioch, Tertullian or Origen. The Imam as the locus of manifestation of God, ontological intersection between the divine and humanity, presents more than one analogy with certain Christological dogmas, from Paul (e.g. Col 1,15 or 2,9) to the Commentary on John by Origen, the Thalia of Arius or the doctrines of Nestorius. The heavy weight of the divine Alliance/Friend-ship (walāya) and its main component, gnosis (ʿilm), in the sense of redeem-ing and transformative knowledge, transmitted esoterically by the initiator Guide, the role of hermeneutics as a factor of knowledge of the hidden meaning of Scriptures or the extension of the prophetic mission through the teachings of the initiated constitute the most fundamental themes of Gnostic movements. One finds them massively present in Elkasai, Marcion, Bardaisan or Mani as in the doctrine laid out in the texts of Nag Hammadi. Let us also mention the dualist vision of history of early Shi’ism and it’s threefold vision of humanity composed of the iniator Guides, the initiated disciples and the ignorant mass. These conceptions find their parallel in

contributions (such as those of J. Pépin, A. Kerrigan, R. Loewe, etc.) in the volume of Second International Conference on Patristic Studies. Oxford 1955, Berlin, 1957. On the parallelism between trends and exegetical traditions in Islam see J. van Ess, Die Gedankenwelt des Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, Bonn, 1961, pp. 210sqq; J. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, pp. 243-44.

56 M. Sharon, “Ahl al-Bayt—People of the House”, p. 173; M. Gil, “The Exilar-chate”, in D. Frank (ed.), The Jews of Medieval Islam. Community, Society and Iden-tity. Proceedings of the International Conference held by the Institute of Jewish Studies (London 1992), Leiden, 1995, pp. 63-64; M.A. Amir-Moezzi, “Fāṭema, daughter of the Prophet”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 9, pp. 400-404, passim; id., “Considérations sur l’expression dīn-ʿAlī”, op. cit. pp. 60-61.

57 Especially verses 1,15 where John the Baptist who says about Jesus: “Before me, he was”, or 8,58 where Jesus himself declares: “In truth I tell you, before Abra-ham was, I am (sic)”.


various Neoplatonistic Gonstic trends where the History of the cosmos is that of a struggle between the forces of Good/Knowledge and those of Evil/Ignorance, where humanity is divided between Pneumatics (from Greek pneuma: spirit), the real spiritual Masters whose inner divine parcel is in action; the Psychics (from psyche, “soul”), the followers whose divine spark is only in potential; the Hylics (from hyle, “flesh”) the ordinary men who only follow their lower instincts.58

Expanding more and more notably through the corpus of exegeti-cal ḥadīth-s, metaphysics and mystical gnosis also come to wrap history in order to surpass it. Ḥadīth compilations like the Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt of al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī have been major factors of this turning point which reached its peak on the edges of the 3rd and 4th/9th and 10th centuries. Doctrinal writings such as al-Īḍāḥ of al-Faḍl b. Shādhān and the Kitāb al-Maḥāsin of al-Barqī, the Qur’anic commentaries of Furāt al-Kūfī, of ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, of al-ʿAyyāshī or the Kāfī of al-Kulaynī are other deci-sive examples.

The “sequence” of the Shi’i perception of things, schematised to the extreme, would hence be the following: after the death of the Prophet, his opponents removed ʿAlī, his sole legitimate successor, and seized power. They perfidiously designed an anti-muḥammadan religion, supported by a falsified version of the Qur’an, they presented as being the official Islam. Persecuted, the Shi’i Imams (or the ḥadīth-s attributed to them) attempt, through a hermeneutical work, to save the real religion of Muḥammad, by initiating a minority of followers to the real content of the Qur’anic Revela-tion. Confronted with the violent reaction of their powerful opponents, the Guides introduce a metaphysical dimension in their claims by developing “a religion of the Imam” greatly coloured by Gnosis and Neoplatonism. This interior spirituality is no doubt one of the consequences of the crushing defeat of Shi’ism on the historical level, always in the minority and perse-cuted in Islam. This spirituality shall also be marginalised within Shi’ism

58 See the references indicated in notes 43 to 45. See also I. Goldziher, “Neupla-tonische und gnostische Elemente im Ḥadīṯ”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 22 (1909), pp. 317-344; on the decisive role played by different versions of the mystical Tafsīr attributed to Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and the reception of gnostic and neo-platonic themes in Shi’i circles thanks to that source see P. Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et lan-gage mystique, pp. 156-207 and more specifically 161-168. On different aspects of early Shi’i Imamology see M.A. Amir-Moezzi, Guide divin, passim and a series of articles dedicated to “aspects of Twelver imamology” now gathered in La Religion discrète, chapters 3 and 5 to 14.


itself with the coming to power of the Imāmī jurist-theologians of the Buwayhid period who, in order to get closer to the majority Sunnis, will tone down, sometimes even considerably, a great number of their own doc-trines. It is the beginning of a certain political instrumentalization of the religious the extensions of which reach our times.59 On the other hand, a certain victory of this spirituality is to be looked for elsewhere: it seems to have abundantly nourished mysticism, even of the Sunni obedience, which in turn quickly became a living source of hermeneutical thought and spiri-tual dynamism. But this is a different story altogether.

Translated from French by Francisco José LUIS

59 See Amir-Moezzi, Guide divin, introduction and the “Appendice”; id. & C. Jambet, Qu’est-ce que le Shi’isme?, 3rd part.

The silent Quran and the speaking Quran

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