How did the militant Kufan Shīʿī ghulāt become quietist? Docetic visions of Abū l‐Khaṭṭāb’s insurrection in a fifth/eleventh century Nuṣayrī doctrinal source (Article)
Title: How did the militant Kufan Shīʿī ghulāt become quietist? Docetic visions of Abū l‐Khaṭṭāb’s insurrection in a fifth/eleventh century Nuṣayrī doctrinal source
Author: David Hollenberg
Abstract: After reviewing scholarship on the docetic themes adopted by Abū l‐Khaṭṭāb’s successors, the following pages discuss accounts of Abū l‐Khaṭṭāb’s revolt in a newly available doctrinal source for the study of Nuṣayrism, the Manhaj al‐⁽ilm wal‐bayān wa‐nuzhat al‐samā⁽ wal‐⁽iyān, a lengthy anthology of Nuṣayrī doctrine ascribed to Ibn Kayūlakh ⁽Iṣmat al‐Dawlah (thrived mid fifth/eleventh).9 The ninth chapter of the Manhaj focuses on the role of the Bāb (gate), the third manifestation of the divine triad, and includes a series of reports on Maqtal Abū l‐Khaṭṭāb (The martyrdom of Abū l‐Khaṭṭāb). The author of the Manhaj adduces several generations of proto‐Nuṣayrī and Nuṣayrī sages from the 2nd/8th to early 5th/11th centuries. In the reports ʿIṣmat al‐Dawlah compiles, traditions related to Abū l‐Khaṭṭāb’s public declaration that Jaʿfar is God and the subsequent battle and execution demonstrate that eyewitness accounts of personages and events encode an alternative reality. Rather than purely a doctrine of God, such sources betray what Corbin referred to as a fully realized “docetic tendency,”10 a hermeneutic lens which can simultaneously sustain the premise that an event happened, and yet did not happen.
Year: 2022
Format: Other
Publisher: Brepols

Expanding orthodoxy: Nuṣayrī esoteric Qur’an exegesis in the fifth/eleventh century (Article)
Title: Expanding orthodoxy: Nuṣayrī esoteric Qur’an exegesis in the fifth/eleventh century
Author: David Hollenberg
Abstract: After providing historical background and an example of the use of the Qur’an in al- Khaṣībī’s classic treatise al-Rastbāshiyya, the following pages consider the character of Nuṣayrī Qur’an exegesis several generations after al-Khaṣībī through an analysis of a chapter devoted to tafsīr in a hitherto uninvestigated Nuṣayrī doctrinal treatise, Manhaj al-ʿilm wa’l-bayān wa nuzhat al-samaʿ wa’l-ʿiyān (“The method of knowledge and clarification and the pure joy of hearing and seeing,” hereafter: the Manhaj) by Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Kayulakh ʿIṣmat al-Dawla (thrived mid fifth/eleventh century).7 The Manhaj is an anthology that draws from two centuries of sources, from the earliest strata of ghulāt (“exaggerator” Shīʿa) from second/eighth century Kufa to the author’s own teacher, Abū l-Fatḥ al-Baghdādī (d. 408/1018).8 Its twelfth chapter, which is devoted exclusively to tafsīr (Qur’an exegesis), provides material to consider Qur’anic exegesis several generations after al-Khaṣībī. Evidence in the Manhaj suggests that in the generations following al-Khaṣībī, rather than abandoning Islamic scripture as a key source, the Nuṣayrī sages continued to turn to the Qur’an to elaborate doctrine. The Qur’an was interpreted to sanction correct doctrines on the nature of the godhead, bring sources ascribed to seminal figures such as Mufaḍḍāl b. ʿUmar (d. before 170/795–796) into accord with the mature Nuṣayrī doctrine, and censure the misbelief of cosectarians. And, contrary to recent portrayals that the period was rife with intra-sectarian conflict, the Manhaj provides evidence that during the fifth/eleventh century members of the school of al- Khaṣībī such as ʿIṣmat al-Dawla met with Isḥāqīs, the Nuṣayrīs’ chief rival. It would seem that, as in other contexts, for the Nuṣayrīs, esoteric scriptural exegesis served both as a vehicle to exclude uninitiated outsiders, as well as to forge connections across intra-sectarian divides.
Year: 2022
Format: Other
Publisher: Oxford University Press

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