Sources on the North Indian Shiʿi Hierocracy VI: Tarājim mashāhīr ʿulamāʾ al-Hind

Like the Warathat al-anbiyāʾ of Sayyid Aḥmad al-Hindī (d. 1947, discussed in the first of this series of blogposts), this text written by his kinsman Sayyid ʿAlī Naqī Naqavī (d. 1988), known as Naqqan ṣāḥib, in Najaf is a useful source for the ʿulamāʾ of North Indian not least from three lineages that I have already discussed on my blog in the context of the ʿulamāʾ of Avadh - the family of Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī (d. 1820), the lineage of Mīr Ḥāmid Ḥusayn Mūsawī (d. 1888), and the family of Muftī Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAbbās Shushtarī (d. 1889).  

I had been trying to get a hold of the text for some time so it was a matter of serendipity that I came across a reference to its publication in Karbala a few years ago via a survey of recent articles in a journal printed by the shrine of Ḥażrat ʿAbbās. I am grateful to my friend Mehdi Hamza for sourcing a copy for me. 

Naqqan ṣāḥib is a well known figure for those familiar with Shiʿi Islam in North India, the subject of a Virginia PhD dissertation in 2011 by Rizwan Zamir and a recent article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society by Justin Jones. 

He was also a well known khaṭīb during the Muḥarram season. Here is a video from among the many of his speeches. 

[Most of these videos have been ripped from old VHS tapes and hence are rather poor in quality - 40 years old...]

The text in question was completed in Najaf on 17 Shaʿbān 1347/29 January 1929 and contains notices on 32 ʿulamāʾ divided into six successive generations from Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī to the time of the author. The first and longest entry is on his illustrious ancestor Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī. Other important entries include Mīrzā Muḥammad 'Kāmil' Dihlavī (d. 1235/1820) the first Shiʿi polemicist to respond to the Tuḥfa-yi isnāʿashariyya of Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and Sayyid ʿAlī al-Ḥāʾirī, the exegete who settled in Lahore. The editors - who are not named - do a useful job of supplementing material by cross-referring to other accounts of these ʿulamāʾ. Compared to other works, it has a far more extensive discussion and listing of the scholarly works of these ʿulamāʾ and of their connections to the hierocracy in Najaf and Karbala. The editors also provide a very lengthy introduction to the author - far longer than the text itself as well as detailed appendices and a facsimile of some pages of the lithograph of the text that first appeared in 1350/1932 in Najaf (which actually mentions 53 figures discussed in the text). 

The Multicultural Middle Ages?

Not just a genuflection to contemporary identity, what can we mean by a multicultural middle ages and in particular multicultural medieval philosophy (or philosophies)? Clearly this volume is trying to do something beyond the classic reader for students wanting some background in medieval thought before they move onto the more serious (!) work of Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant - and beyond to the questions that we ask. On the one hand, the analytic tradition has become co-opted into a whiggish notion of intellectual progress, of hard won liberties, a tradition of imperial triumphalism in which the rationalities and intellectual traditions are not terribly significant. On the other hand, such a conception would be a travesty for the analytic tradition since some of the best thinkers working towards global philosophy and the dialogues between cultural traditions come from that training (one thinks of Jay Garfield, Jonardon Ganeri and others). But there is a sense of the analytic tradition that is in the background of the conception of this volume. 

What is it seeking to include and what is the very conception of philosophy at its heart? There are plenty of existing readers on medieval philosophy and for some time such works have included the Jewish and Islamic philosophical traditions (this was already the case with Hyman and Mahdi back in the 1960s). Hyman et al (currently in its third iteration) was more geared towards use in analytic departments but it still included pseudo-Dionysius. Other works have presented us with readers specifically on Islam (one thinks of Muhammad Ali Khalidi's volume for Cambridge University Press that like this volume is primarily selections from existing published translations, and the late David Reisman and Jon McGinnis' Hackett volume).  

What sets this new volume published by Bloomsbury apart from previous attempts? 

First, let us consider what the eminent specialist of Aquinas’ thought and of medieval philosophy Bernard McGinn says in his preface and Bruce Foltz, the general editor, in his introduction, and then consider the practice of the volume. 

McGinn points to three contributions of the volume. First, the ‘postmodern’ turn allows us to reconsider the significance of medieval philosophy within the history of philosophy and indeed within our contemporary philosophical concerns within a global context. Therefore, one needs to go beyond the simple confines of the Latin tradition (well represented in the historical and textual volumes of readers edited by Robert Pasnau and others for Cambridge University Press) and include the Eastern Byzantine tradition (pace Dimitri Gutas’ recent denial of any ‘actual’ philosophy in that tradition in the Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium), the Jewish and the Islamic traditions. Second, the definition of philosophy assumed takes us back to the very word and the notion – made especially popular by the late Pierre Hadot – of philosophy as ‘a way of life’ and a love of wisdom. That necessarily takes us beyond the narrowly ratiocinative and embraces the ‘mystical’. 

Third, the medieval thinkers presented are considered on their own terms embracing but modifying Neoplatonism and not just as adapters of the ancient rationalists. In this sense, one might consider much of the volume to constitute medieval Abrahamic Neoplatonisms. And it deliberately marginalises the ‘analyticisation’ of medieval philosophy – which may constitute an obstacle for some to adopt this text. While it is possible to rehabilitate Neoplatonism for analytic philosophers - one thinks of the work of Lloyd Gerson, the late Anthony Lloyd, and Christopher Martin - it seems that the conceptualisation of the volume assumes an opposition between the analytic and the Neoplatonic.  

Foltz gives the ‘innovative’ approach more precision. History is important even for philosophy and one needs to engage medieval philosophy for its philosophical questions and not as mere antiquarian artefacts. Descartes after all did not emerge ex nihilo (and his debt to Augustine in particular is well documented in an excellent monograph by Stephen Menn).  

The volume covers four traditions: the Latin West, the Greek East, the Jewish and the Islamic. The addition of the Byzantine is significant – and seen in the light of the separate embrace of it in Peter Adamson’s influential History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast timely. These traditions are considered on their own terms and not as satellites of Latin scholasticism, and hence what is important for them is paramount; for example, Ibn Rushd or Averroes is a pivotal figure for Latin Aristotelianism but not so for the Islamic medieval tradition and hence, unlike other readers, does not take up too much space. Mystics are also included – and since the sense of wisdom or its pursuit in these four traditions tends to embrace them, that is perfectly reasonable. Besides, one may already query the neat distinction that us moderns make between the rational and the mystical since what counts is the nature of discourse and argument and not merely the mode of language or particular logical form of argument. Knowledge is thus linked to spiritual exercise and practice. 

Foltz goes on to emphasise four points. First, one needs to reintegrate the religious into the philosophical. Denying religion makes it difficult to follow the motivations, contexts and even content of various types of argument. Second, theistic philosophy in the middle period followed Neoplatonisms in its pursuit of spiritual exercises and, ways of life and care of the self – Foltz explicitly cites the importance of Hadot and Foucault for this process (and one cannot help feel that McGushin’s excellent study of askesis in Foucault would be a useful prop to this point). 

Third, by multicultural the editors indicate the present context and realise that the four traditions are indeed living ones and not merely historical epochs superseded by modernist concerns. Decolonisation – not explicitly cited – seems to be part of the reason too in the general editor’s disavowal of the Western model of ‘cultural assimilation’. Or perhaps my decolonising assumption are reading too much in. What is required is position recognition without condescension and analysis of theistic thought without the secular bias. And whether one can use the colonisers' language and categories to decolonise (finding a new philosophical lexicon on the terms of the texts themselves can be a task since they already use the paradigms and concepts of the Aristotelian tradition even when avowedly anti-Aristotelian). Finally, the editors seek readers who are not just philosophers or historians of philosophy but also practitioners of the four traditions which in the light of the modern academic study of the field is realistic and preferable. After all, we tend to think about how we can take academic research beyond the narrow confines of the academy and consider carefully the identity of the ‘general reader’. In these terms, these are laudable intentions and ones that are consistent with the shift towards global philosophy that radically decentres the hegemony of the Anglo-American analytic tradition and proclaims a decolonisation of the field. 

The practice of the volume is divided into five parts. While quibbling about lacunae is not always that important, I will mention passages and works that are important for the themes outlined. The first is on the ancient with the emphasis on the ‘spiritual’ which explains the Platonic and Neoplatonic (Plotinus and Proclus). Godlikeness or theosis is a major theme and aim of philosophy but the relevant passages in the Theaetetus, Timaeusor Phaedrus are not included. Nor is the account of the doffing metaphor of Enneads IV.8.1 of Plotinus, much beloved of mystics included. Pythagoras’ Golden Verses and their commentary by Iamblichus are similarly absent (in fact any work of Iamblichus). Given the importance of the Theologia Aristotelis and Liber de Causis (from the Plotinian and Proclean corpora) in Arabic and then in Latin, the absence of any corresponding passages is somewhat unfortunate. Aristotle remains critical but De Anima III and Metaphysics Lambda (again textual pericopes with a major influence on the medieval) are similarly lacunae.  Nevertheless, the Stoic sense of the inner citadel and the practice of philosophy and the Neoplatonic metaphysics of emanation are well covered. 

Part two on the Greek Christian tradition is far more adequate and covers pretty much all that one expects – and would be well supported in a class by the volumes on early Christian philosophy by George Karamanolis and on Byzantine philosophy by Katrina Ierodiakonou. 

In particular, the passages selected demonstrate how theological language and mystical insight are significant for philosophy in that tradition. This part in itself is a major contribution to any reader in medieval philosophy. Part three on the Latin tradition is more predictable – the inclusion of Marguerite Porete, Nicholas of Cusa and Meister Eckhart essential. Perhaps some Julian of Norwich or the Cloud of Unknowing and maybe even some Pseudo-Dionisius might have been salient? Part four on the Jewish tradition adds some Talmudic, Rabbinic and Midrashic material to the standard canon: but again, no Nahmanides, no David Maimonides, no Joseph Albo and no Hasday Crescas. Furthermore, it is odd that the category of Jewish philosophy still alludes those who wrote in Arabic like the Karaite authors, Abūʾl-Barakāt al-Baghdādī and Ibn Kammūna. The final part on the Islamic tradition does exactly what it should – start with the Theologia Aristotelis and its doffing metaphor and include Ibn Ṭufayl, Ibn ʿArabī and Mullā Ṣadrā. Averroes is appropriately marginalised – although one would wish to see passages from the commentary on the Rhetoric and the Metaphysics which was salient. For Avicenna, I would have also included latter parts of Remarks and Admonitions (al-Ishārāt waʾl-tanbīhāt) often called the ‘mysticism’. The final testament of the Philosophy of Illumination (Ḥikmat al-ishrāq) of Suhrawardī similarly on the practice of following a sage and on the spiritual practice of philosophy would be essential. Since the selections are based on existing translations, some of these lacunae are understandable but that does not hold for all of them. 

The volume on the whole is to be recommended. It is reader friendly and one could easily design an undergraduate course with this as the main text – and then complement it with surveys and relevant histories. However, if one accepts the provincialisation of European cultural hegemony and even of periodisation – and reads medieval as a shorthand for the pre-modern – than maybe the absence of a more thorough going multicultural approach is telling. Why should one restrict philosophy to the Abrahamic traditions and the reception and development of ‘philosophia’ even if taken in the more expansive sense that embraces the theological and the mystical? Why not include African, Chinese, Indian and other philosophical traditions? Similarly, one wonders why a more thematic approach is not taken in order to juxtapose and bring the traditions into more of a conversation. As it stands the volume has five self-contained sections that could easily be taught in isolation, not necessarily in pursuit of comparative philosophy (which is not an avowed aim) but at least to allow us to consider how the arguments and discourse in this volume constitute the philosophical. At one level that is asking too much – and given the existing extent of translated materials unreasonable especially when it comes to Islamic thought. 

The volume that I would like to see would engage these questions – and do more than that in introducing the categories of the philosophical, the spiritual and the medieval. One also wonders whether one can have a volume that satisfies the Hadotians as well as the analytic philosophers since the material of interest to the latter is rather limited. But that is not the book before me – and this particular publication still has much to commend itself, to be read, used and enjoyed. So adopt it as a text in classes. Unless you are in an analytic department in which the selection on the whole will seem rather crazy. It seems that the culture wars on what constitutes philosophy - and even how those in related fields conceive of philosophy - will remain ongoing for the foreseeable future. 

The Fātimids again - and more material for the 'decolonising Islamic studies' dossier

The Institute of Ismaili Studies has not only developed and accelerated academic research into Ismaili studies but has also it seems perfected a way of presenting Ismaili thought in an accessible manner (no doubt partly motivated by the desire to address their confessional community). In this light, two recent works have appeared from the Institute of Ismaili Studies that bring our attention back to the Fatimids, one through a volume located within the Ismaili heritage series and the other a first volume in a new series of accessible introduction in a small paperback format. In both volumes the diversity of Islam is stressed, and it is not surprising since the modern Ismaili focus has been to stress diversity to find a place for their traditions within Islam. Nevertheless, it does indicate an important insight that all theological affiliations and confessions within Islamic history always consider themselves as definitive and constitutive of the Islamic tradition. The language of sects and sectarianism thus in that sense is terribly impoverished and inadequate because it fails to understand the way in which an interpreter and religious entrepreneur considers their own agency and activity. 

The short volume on the Fatimids by Shainool Jiwa (which is to be followed with another short introduction to the main Fatimid Imam-caliphs) is divided into five chapters that takes the story from the death of Muḥammad to the foundation of Cairo as the seat of the Fatimid caliphs. It is designed to be accessible: fluently written with copious citations of primary texts in translation, minimal endnotes, very simplified transliteration and an attempt to contextualise and link the study to its Mediterranean context and wider trends in the study of pre-modern empires (although perhaps because it is accessible, there is little consideration of the use of empire to describe the Fatimids and others). There are plenty of colour pictures of high quality which are great to see in a book that is priced also in a very accessible manner. Figures tabulate and explain relations such as the descent of the differing lines of Imams from Muḥammad, timelines and so forth. A useful glossary explains key phrases and a guide to further reading helps the potential student take their interests forward. 

In the introduction, Jiwa makes it clear how she sees the function of history: it helps us to grasp what it is that we share as part of the common human concern and it helps foster mutual understanding. This is very much history deployed for didactic and inter-subjective ethical ends. The global concern with Islam means that we need to appreciate the rich diversity of Islam of which the Fatimids were an element – a lasting empire in North Africa reaching into the Levant, at times Andalus and Sicily with a rich intellectual heritage. Chapter 1 on origins considers the narrative from the conflict at the death of Muḥammad, the development of Shiʿi lineages, the beginnings of the Ismaili mission with the grandson of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and the development of that mission among the Berbers and others in North Africa leading to the establishment of the rule of al-Mahdī at the beginning of the 10^thcentury, the so-called Shiʿi century. The next chapter looks at the Mediterranean context and the development of the new state and establishes one key feature and theme: the constant problems of rebellions and the need to establish the legitimacy and authority of those who were confessionally a small minority in the context. It also shows the universal ambitions of the Fatimids, extending their rule to Sicily and their mission to Andalus and even to Sind. Jiwa is the best authority on these developments having translated the relevant section of Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn and al-Maqrīzī’s general histories on the early establishment of the Fatimids. This chapter ends with the death of al-Mahdī in 934. Chapter 3 takes up the state in transition and the consolidation under al-Qāʾim and the key role of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān in establishing the theology and jurisprudence of the state. Chapter 4 is the intellectual core and looks at the development from al-Muʿizz, the composition of al-Īḍāḥ and Daʿāʾim al-Islām as key works of the tradition, the function of the majālis al-ḥikma to impart doctrine and spread the doctrine of the walāya of the Imam-caliphs, and the further expansions. The final chapter takes the story through to the foundation of Cairo as the centre of the empire. At each level, the relevant sources for our understanding are indicated – although perhaps the problems that one might face in analysing them elided.  The uneasy relation with the Kutama Berbers is acknowledged but the relations with non-Ismailis examined in the last chapter through the guarantee of safety after the conquest of Cairo. The question remains how the Fatimids dealt with their Sunni, other Shiʿi, Jewish, Christian and other subjects. As an accessible work, it is a successful introduction to the establishment of the Fatimids and their doctrine and public rituals. There are some indications of their role in the diversity – but not much in the main text after the introduction. 

The Jiwa and Daftary volume on the Fatimid caliphate is a collection of seven essays that originated in Fatimid panels at the annual MESA conference. As such they are loosely connected, although apart from the first chapter, they broadly concern the ways in which Fatimids engaged with others. The first chapter is a short and useful ‘official’ account of the Fatimids’ rise to power and their lineage back to the Prophet and early Islam. Jiwa’s chapter draws upon the well-known early attack on the claims to ʿAlid lineage of the Fatimids but refers to the common manifestoes of the 11^thcentury in which the ʿAbbasid authorities drew upon Sunni and Shiʿi notables in Baghdad to delegitimise the Fatimids, and in the case of al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, to balance his own claims to authority and independence from the ʿAbbasids without an element of positivity towards the Fatimids. Jiwa shows that the manifesto of 402/1011 and 444/1052 tell us more about unrest in ʿAbbasid Iraq and concern for combatting the Fatimid threat. They also indicate ways in which states attempted to begin the process of regularity claims to lineage that later results in the institutions that verified ʿAlid descent in the middle period. Walker’s piece is like a short note on the meaning of the vizierate of Badr al-Jamālī (d. 487/1094) and seems to be here primarily because of his eminence as a Fatimid specialist. Calderini examines al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s position on women leading the prayer, inspired by contemporary debates on this issue nowadays and along the way she shows how Fatimid law is related to other Muslim schools. The conclusions are not terribly exciting or unexpected and underscore the importance of the development of Fatimid in relation to Sunni schools and a shift from earlier ‘pan-Shiʿi appeals’. Fierro’s learned study of the Mālikī critique of the Fatimids’ legal thought and structures by al-Ṭurṭūshī (d. 451/1059) tells us something about the Sunnis who are often neglected in the study of the Fatimid period. Most of the paper is a study of al-Ḥawādith wa-l-bidaʿ as a ‘covert critique’ of the Fatimids. Cortese extends this by studying Sunni female scholarship, re-inscribing women into history, and their role in Alexandria and Cairo. But this piece seems to be entirely divorced from any consideration of the Fatimid context – I would have wanted to know more about the women associated with court and whether there were famous missionaries. The final chapter is Beben’s study of the modern Nizārī usage of the legacy of the Fatimids. He argues that prior to the post-Safavid Nizārī emergence (especially through Nādir Shāh’s patronage of ʿAlī Ḥasan), the Nizārī referred primarily to the Alamūt period and remained firmly in taqīya. But with the modern period, the recognition of the importance of the Imam’s followers in Khurasan and India (that prompted the transfer of the imamate to Kirmān), the Imams began to draw upon the Fatimid heritage – one could add that the modern invocation and stress upon the Fatimids by modern Nizārī institutions such as the Institute of Ismaili Studies is a continuation of that process. As such, it recalls the notion of the Fatimids as representing a pan-Shiʿism and even a sort of pan-Islamism that is strategically useful in the modern world. In this sense, the Fatimids are imagined as the primary signifiers and embracers of diversity in Islam. Beben’s recent edition and translation of ʿIbrat-afzā is an important event – although one needs to read it in terms of internal debates and critiques among followers and critics of the Agha Khan in Iran and India that so far has only really been a study of the British archive (by Teena Purohit and others), and the sources in Persian, Gujarati and other languages broadly neglected. 

These two books are quite different in their approach, presentation and content. But they both represent well the way in which modern Ismaili institutions and thought embraces and promotes the issue of diversity as a strategy for marking out a space for Ismaili activity within the context of Islam in the modern world. They demonstrate not only a strategy of survival and claims for inclusion but also the way in which different confessions make claims upon the Islamic traditions - and in that sense further the exigency to decolonise thoroughly Islamic studies. Some of the chapters of the volume may be of interest to specialists and the short introduction can be productively used in introductory courses and classes and may be of interest to the general reader. 

Early Ismaili Hermeneutics

As I try to complete an old commission editing a volume of papers on Ismaili thought and thinkers (which hopefully should appear with Tauris/Bloomsbury and the IIS in the new year), I seem to move again back to an examination of different periods in the development of Ismaili doctrine and confessions. I have also recently supervised an excellent dissertation on Qāḍī Nuʿmān's hadith methodology that throws up much interesting methodological insights on understanding the development of Fāṭimid doctrines and genres of writing. 

As most people in the study of Islam know, the Ismailis represent an esoteric approach to scripture and symbols of the faith and are particularly associated with a hermeneutics of taʾwīl par excellence as a means for establishing a dynamic and unfolding understanding of the faith. Despite this reputation, already articulated in studies by Corbin, Ivanow, and De Smet, the nature and purpose of taʾwīl as an allegoresis of scriptural exegesis is little understood and studied. Taʾwīl was essential to the early Ismaili kerygma/mission (daʿwa) and the means for the dissemination of the notion of salvation history and of salvific knowledge itself. The unconventional modes of this interpretation often led to the characterization of the Ismailis as socially radical and transgressive in their esotericism by particularly Sunni authorities such as, in perhaps the most famous case, al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) in his Calumnies of the Esotericists (Faḍāʾiḥ al-bāṭinīya). David Hollenberg's monograph Beyond the Qurʾān focuses on the early Ismaili period in which the mission was active, dynamic, militant and sectarian in a conflictual manner and perhaps by implication an interesting question is when that the mission’s approach come to an end or radically transfigure after the Fāṭimid perod into the current notions of pluralism that dominate especially the modern Nizārī tradition. He presents a tightly argued five chapters and an epilogue (in a relatively short book) that attempts to reconsider how we make sense of taʾwīlby refocusing on three themes: the sectarianism of the dynamics of the mission, the apocaplyticism of it (especially in the pre-official Fāṭimid period), and the sources of allegoresis and the objectives of the mission. The main thrust is to argue that taʾwīl constitutes a ‘cognitive re-training’ and habituation into a sectarian identity. Recent research and publication of texts has tended to focus on the Fāṭimid and post-Fāṭimid period (especially in terms of the publications of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London) and hence the early period has been somewhat neglected. Hollenberg attempts to rectify that and locates his study within the study of esotericisms and knowledge systems of hermeneutics in the study of religion in his preface; elsewhere he also draws on sociological theories. A more thorough introduction would have been useful to locate his contribution within Ismaili and Shiʿi studies more properly especially since he provides a number of correctives and objections to existing norms in Ismaili studies. 

[For other reviews of the same work, see

Khalil Andani

Lisa Alexandrin]

Chapter one on competing islands of salvation distinguishes the Fāṭimid polity’s campaign and mission from the early Ismaili mission and locates the latter in a pan-ʿAlid rhetorical strategy aimed at converts (especially from Twelver Shiʿa and from Zaydīs as we know from some early works by Ibn al-Ḥaytham, Ibn al-Ḥawshab, and Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman). In a sense this is a literature review chapter that covers the development of Ismailism and criticizes the positions of a number of experts such as Daftary and Hodgson on sectarianism, Sanders and Bierman on Fāṭimid material culture and its integration into the mission, and Brett on the role of the Imam in the mission. He begins with a consideration of what is meant by the term daʿwa and how it ought to be associated with sectarian identity and often beliefs in esotericism, imminent messianism, gnosticism, and eschatology. Hollenberg presents the mission as a new religious movement. The focus on taʾwīl and the nature of the daʿwa helps to explain the different stages of splits within the ranks and attempts to change the direction of the daʿwa first under the Fāṭimids and then later with the two new branches of the Ṭayyibī and Nizārī missions. The early daʿwa’s broader appeal and its somewhat distant relationship to the Imam gave way to a narrower sectarianism. This, however, still begs the question – which we may not be able to answer in the absence of sources – of how that mission functioned and the absence of the active role of the Imam in articulating the learned culture of the Fāṭimids does not tell us what may have been happening before then. Furthermore it would be useful to show how the sectarianism and inculcation of the mission was similar to other sectarian movements including proto-Sunnism. It would be unfortunate if some readers took away from the study the idea of a new re-entrenched idea of the Ismailis as sectarians going against some developing Sunni normativity. In that sense, the formative world of Islam was the venue for competing islands of salvation, orthodoxy and apostasy. 

Chapter two moves onto the daʿwa literature and its focus on taʾwīl. This literature is not really an esoteric hermeneutics of the Qurʾan but rather uses the scripture as a set of prompts to establish a more radical, gnostic doctrine that claims revealed status. As such taʾwīl should not – and this is contrary to the earlier work of Strothmann, Steigerwald and Bar-Asher – be assimilated into the general study of Qurʾanic exegesis or tafsīr but rather associated with the privileged knowledge of the Imams as bearers of truth, as the holders and professors of taʾwīl as opposed to the Prophet’s role as bearer of the revelation (tanzīl). It is that esoteric truth revealed by the Imams that is deployed in taʾwīl. Thus taʾwīl is not the esoteric other of tafsīr but of tanzīl and brings to mind the narration famous in Shiʿi circles in which the Prophet addressed ʿAlī stating that just as he fought for the revelation so will ʿAlī fight for the taʾwīl. It is then the role of the missionaries to use rhetoric including devices of taʾwīl to disseminate that esoteric truth. Hollenberg then considers the sources that he is using and acknowledges the problem of ascertaining authorship partly because so little is known about the authors of what the later Ṭayyibī tradition calls ḥaqāʾiq literature. His periodization into pre- and Fāṭimid works makes sense; however, it is not clear how he establishes and authenticates the attribution of a text, not least because of uncertain manuscript provenances and the relatively modern copying and survival of codices. For example, the Kitāb al-kashf and other works that are highly lettrist and occult in content are allocated to the pre-Fāṭimid period and unlike the previous specialists are anonymized and not attributed to Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr al-Yaman (although no strong reason is given for rejecting the previous attribution). What is interesting about the early taʾwīl texts is that there is a strong overlap with Nuṣayrī and similar material which begs the question of how we understand the milieu whence the Ismailis emerged. Hollenberg notes this connection but does not take it further. In that sense, it would be useful to compare his findings with recent work in that tradition by Yaron Friedman, Bella Tendler and Mushegh Asatryan. 

Chapter three examines the ways in which taʾwīl constitutes a cognitive re-training through symbols, patterns, and logics of that material. The ‘rearing’ of acolytes is through the appeal to these elements in the work of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman. This process undergoes stages: the first is the recognition of the Imam in a series of anagnorisis events (briefly studied before by Philip Kennedy with respect to the work of Ibn Ḥawshab); the second is the pledging of allegiance as the rebirth of the acolyte; the third is the imparting of the knowledge of the daʿwa; the fourth is the repetition and inculcation of that knowledge through training in the symbols; the final one is the rearing in the logic of the daʿwa. This is then followed by some examples of the prophets. One thinks of cognate examples in the exegesis of al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153) which deals with binary pairs: the one that ends this chapter is the coupling of the familiar with the obscure, that partly accounts for the early Ismaili embrace of Neoplatonism as a rhetorical strategy.  

Chapter four moves on to the practice of Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman in his taʾwīl of prophecy in the Qurʾan and beyond it. This chapters engages the enunciator prophets and the establishment of laws and religious dispensations. The difference to some other forms of esotericism in Islam is that the composition of those religious dispensations and laws is tied to the agency of the Prophet and not just something given in revelation. Hollenberg also makes an interesting observation about the incorporation of philosophical elements into the work of Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr as part of a strategy of debating in the East and critiquing some of the missionaries there who remained with the old mission (contra the Fāṭimids); the example given is the creation of Adam and its assimilation to the theory of emanation. The examples of Noah, Moses, Jesus and Muḥammad are also considered. The key point is that this articulation of the law and those who oppose it is a critique of those who failed to recognise the Fāṭimid Imam and hence rejected the previous prophets. Previous religious dispensations are abrogated and the corrupted scriptures recovered through the skill of the Imam to ascertain the esoteric truths.  The final chapter continues the examination of the hermeneutics of Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman and this time considers the Biblical and Israelite material to establish types and anti-types. What Hollenberg shows – and I would contend that this was true generally of Shiʿi strategies of the text – was that the usage of the Torah was not merely the extrapolation of Israelite materials in order to gloss and fill in the narratives of the Biblical prophets (as was often the case in Sunni exegetical contexts), but constituted an act of taʾwīl in which the Torah was used just like the Qurʾan. The notion of cyclical time and the repetition of types and anti-types suggested that in the Torah were plenty of examples that spoke to the nature of a daʿwa, the role of an enunciating Prophet and Imam and the ways in which their mission was obstructed and thwarted and even their scriptures tampered. It was the role of taʾwīl to bring out the significance of those account and ascertain the truth. As Hollenberg correctly notes, this could be possible because that strategy was already used by Imāmī authors in Kufa and elsewhere before the Fāṭimid daʿwa.

The short final epilogue raises an interesting connection between the daʿwa, apocalypticism and imperialism. He connects his findings on the Ismaili mission and its transformation from an ‘imminent’ apocalypticism to an ‘immanent’ and otherworldly (one might say routinized and institutionalized) apocolypticism to recent scholarship on the ʿAbbasids and indeed on the early modern messianic empires of the Timurids, Ottomans and Safavids. In doing so, he suggests that we need to go beyond our archetypes of scholars of the past with whom we are primarily concerned, with the jurists, the belles-lettrists, the philosophers and the Sufis and consider a critical fifth category of politically and socially active thinker and esotericist the dāʿī. 

Hollenberg presents us, in this rather brief argument, with a radically distinct approach to the Ismaili kerygma that forces us not to fall back onto platitudes such as defining it as esotericist, counter-cultural or occult but actually demands of us the need to ask: esoteric in what sense, or glossing the text in what way? That is indeed the very question - and defining the esoteric almost by definition is wrought with problems and hermeneutical problems.The absence of the texts and a clear notion of their provenance for the early period makes this difficult to understand. What is clear is that he presents us with certain starting points, and from there we need to locate this early kerygma within other esoteric and Shiʿi strategies in the early period that will help us to distinguish between Imāmīs, Ismailis and Nuṣayrīs. In that sense, Beyond the Qurʾan is really one of the best recent contributions, from the perspective of the study of religion with its strengths and weaknesses, of early Shiʿi intellectual history.