Messianism and Puritanical Reform (Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World)

MESSIANISM AND PURITANICAL REFORM

THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN IBERIAN WORLD EDITORS

Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University)

Isidro J. Rivera (University of Kansas) Donna M. Rogers (Middlebury College) Arie Schippers (University of Amsterdam) Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen) VOLUME 29

MESSIANISM AND PURITANICAL REFORM MahdÊs of the Muslim West BY

MERCEDES GARCÍA-ARENAL

Translated from Spanish by Martin Beagles

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

Cover illustration: ‘The King visiting the Hermit’, fol. 15a of Assar, Mihr u Mushtari (Ryl Persian MS24). (Reproduced courtesy of The John Rylands University Library, Manchester.) This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data García-Arenal, Mercedes Messianism and puritanical reform : Mahdis of the Muslim west / by Mercedes García-Arenal ; [translated from the Spanish by Martin Beagles]. p. cm. -- (The medieval and early modern Iberian world, ISSN 1569-1934 ; v. 29) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-15051-X (alk. paper) 1. Muslims—Spain—History. 2. Spain—History—711-1516. 3. Mahdism. 4. Messianism—Spain—History. I. Title. II. Series. DP98.G37 2006 297.2’4—dc22 2005058261

ISSN 1569-1934 ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15051-5 ISBN-10: 90-04-15051-X © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

For Nicolás and Clara

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...................................................................... Abbreviations ..............................................................................

ix xi

Introduction ................................................................................

1

Chapter One. The Time of the Prophets. The Conversion of the Maghreb to Islam ........................................................

31

Chapter Two. The Rise of the Fà†imid Dynasty ..................

62

Chapter Three. Berber Prophets and Messianic Rebels in Muslim Spain ..........................................................................

77

Chapter Four. The Contribution of Legalism to Mahdism: Rigour, Censorship, Violence ................................................

96

Chapter Five. The Contribution of Sufism to Mahdism: Prophethood and Grace ........................................................

118

Chapter Six. The Almohad Revolution and the Mahdì Ibn Tùmart ....................................................................................

157

Chapter Seven. Mahdism after the Almohads ........................

193

Chapter Eight. The Marìnids and Sharìfism ..........................

217

Chapter Nine. The Rise of the Sa'did Dynasty ......................

246

Chapter Ten. A˙mad al-Manßùr al-Dhahabì ..........................

269

Chapter Eleven. The last Spanish Muslims: Messianic prophetism among the Moriscos ..........................................

296

Chapter Twelve. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì and his adversaries............

325

viii

contents

Concluding Remarks ..................................................................

352

Sources and Bibliography ..........................................................

357

Index ..........................................................................................

381

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has taken shape very slowly. Elements of other topics and interests on which I have worked over the years have gradually become intertwined in it, and these issues have deviated, detained and—I would like to think—enriched the text which is presented here. Over such a long period of time, I have of course accumulated a large number of debts of gratitude, participated in a large number of fruitful discussions and benefited from a large number of comments by colleagues, all of which have contributed to the development of my work. My main debt is to my colleagues in the Department of Arab Studies at the CSIC in Madrid (M. Fierro, M. Marín, C. de la Puente, F.R. Mediano, D. Serrano) with whom it is always such a privilege to work, but also to all those visiting professors who have come to work at it, and in particular Sarah Stroumssa and David Wasserstein. The list of people to whom I owe suggestions and insights is a very long one, and I will only name those who read the original ms., Maribel Fierro, Manuela Marín and Fernando R. Mediano. They made important comments, criticisms and suggestions, many of which have been incorporated in the version published here. F.R. Mediano and I have worked together in research projects in recent years: this collaboration has been very fruitful for me and is reflected in this book, which owes a lot to his generosity and intelligence. My debt to Michael Brett is immense and goes back to the distant time when he was the supervisor of my post-doctoral research project at the SOAS. His thorough reading of this book, his comments on its various sections, and his exigency and heroic generosity in reading two separate versions of it, have all contributed tremendously to its improvement. Rachid El Hour was a big help in checking footnotes and bibliography and Juan Ignacio Pérez Alcalde made the final revision and the index. The foundations of what would eventually become this book were first laid in 1988–89, during the year I spent at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study with my son and daughter who were small children at the time. It is to them, with much love, that this book is dedicated.

ABBREVIATIONS

AIEO Annales de l’Institut des Etudes Orientales BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies BLE Bulletin de Litterature Eclesiastique The Encyclopaedia of Islam. First edition EI1 2 The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New edition EI EOBA Estudios Onomásticos-Biográficos de al-Andalus IBLA Revue de l’Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes HUCA Hebrew Union College Anual JAOS Journal of American Oriental Studies JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatique Society JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam MEAH Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos MIDEO Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales RIEEI Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos REMMM Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditeranée ROMM Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditeranée ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about revolutionary movements of a messianic and millenarian character—in Islamic terms, a book about Mahdism. It is also a book which addresses the question of mediation between God and men, and the political repercussions of this question in the history of the pre-modern Muslim West. When I started laying the basis for this study many years ago, my original intention was to gather information on all those political and religious movements which had been carried out in the name of a Mahdì, or charismatic messianic leader, in the Islamic West, an area including both the Maghreb in North Africa and al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula. I initially set myself very broad chronological limits, and intended to study Mahdìs from the century of Arab conquest right down to the colonial period. Clearly, such a broad scope would require allowance to be made for the considerable differences between the circumstances and historical contexts of all the Mahdìs concerned; it would also need to take into account variations in the historical role and ideological content of the movements themselves, as described in sources as widely different as historical chronicles, hagiographical dictionaries or mystical treatises. My main aim was to focus on the recurrence of like events in different Mahdist movements and to show the resemblances between accounts of those events. I wanted to see how people acted in the expectation of a future that never happened. I was also interested by the symbols and vocabulary used to describe Mahdist movements and, more generally, by the ways in which power perpetuates itself in society through the use of language. These, then, were my starting points. However, I soon became aware of the need to modify my original intentions. On the one hand, I was forced to narrow my geographical focus as Mahdism revealed itself to be particularly important in al-Maghreb al-Aqßà, roughly equivalent to today’s Morocco. This area, with al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) now constitutes the main focus of attention of this book. I also decided to narrow my chronological scope and take my study only as far as the 17th century, since the pre-colonial and colonial periods would require separate studies of their own in order to be covered

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satisfactorily. Conversely, I realized the need to widen my general perspective as I came to see the close relationship between Mahdism and two underlying issues of fundamental importance which would have to be analysed explicitly if sense were to be made of the Mahdist movements. The first of these issues has to do with the nature of Muslim eschatological and messianic beliefs, and their relationship with the problem of mediation between God and men. In general terms, this problem has tended to take the form of a debate over the extent of separation between man and his Creator; a debate, that is to say, over prophetic ability and sainthood. Sainthood, the question of how God touches human beings, is an apparently theological problem which nonetheless has very important cultural and political dimensions, because it calls into play the very nature of knowledge and the boundaries of political authority. Historically, there has always been tension between two main groups or factions when it comes to disputing the nature of man’s relations with his Creator. On one side are those who derive knowledge from the written word of the Qur"àn and the ˙adìth as taught and transmitted by scholars who control their study and interpretation. Such scholars interpret God and his law, but they also interpret the entire social and political order by deciding what is and what is not legitimate. On the other side are those who enjoy and advocate a different kind of knowledge, that which is inspired or achieved through direct contact, through intimacy with God. Such believers can go so far as to cast doubt on the need for initiation or instruction by a formal teacher, or on the need to study books. Their knowledge is received by divine inspiration. Needless to say, tensions between these two groups were an important part of the general background to Mahdist movements as they developed in the pre-modern period. The second fundamental issue which affected the writing of this book is that of the relationship between Mahdism and the legitimacy of power, i.e. of the Imamate, an institution relying on the succession to the Prophet Mu˙ammad as head of the community of believers. Mahdism inspired two of the three revolutions that unified the Maghreb between the 4/10th and 6/12th centuries, those led by the Fà†imids and the Almohads. Mahdist movements raise the question of how to revolt legitimately against established authorities which have lost their legitimacy in the eyes of the rebels. Thus the concepts of legitimacy and authority in the political and religious leadership of Muslims, together with their opposing counterparts imposture and

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usurpation, have come to be ever-present elements in this book. On both these counts, Mahdism features in nearly every facet of Western Islamic political and religious life, and I will try to demonstrate in this book to what extent it is a pivotal question, at the heart of the sources themselves. From the chronological starting-point of this study, in the medieval Maghreb, historical chronicles show a constant preoccupation with the problem of dynastic legitimacy: historians try to explain in the simplest possible terms difficult doctrinal questions like the legality of the conquest of power by a particular dynasty, the legitimacy of rebellion, or the perniciousness of innovation. Innovation was regarded as pernicious both because it was a threat to political and social tranquillity and because that which was ancient was regarded as sacred. The purpose of such historiography was not only to legitimise the dynasty which had sponsored the writing of such accounts, but also to free society from doctrinal disputes which were full of potential religious and social hazards. The kind of power represented in these chronicles was portrayed in an image so successfully constructed that it hardly varied over time. In addition, hagiographical literature—which together with historical chronicles make up most of the sources upon which this book is based—disseminates paradigms of exemplary behaviour and presents notions of moral authority which remained widely spread for an extremely long period of time. These, then, were the two issues which forced me to widen the scope of the work I originally intended to carry out. Allowance for these two issues has required me to adopt methodological approaches which are outlined later in this introduction. I shall need also to distinguish between Islamic doctrine, common to the Islamic world in general, and its local application in different periods of the history of the Maghreb. This entails another of the difficulties and ambivalences I have been faced with when studying the material upon which this book is based and it is that messianism is part of a corpus of religious concepts within theology or the history of religious ideas, but must also be studied from a political and social point of view if we are to understand the effect of such movements upon the communities from which they emanate. At the same time, the strand of apocalyptic inspiration needs to be separated out from political, economic and social factors even when there is a clear and simultaneous relationship between the two. Exactly the same kind of economic, political and social factors can be held responsible

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for a sudden swing to apocalyptic inspiration as might just as easily have been responsible for other equally common reactions, such as emigration, opportunism, banditry, or even a general attitude of quietism and resignation. One important fact which needs to be borne in mind is that the development of a sense of apocalyptic inspiration tends to coincide with the development of theological and mystical ideas in the highest, most inaccessible and elitist circles of society, rather than in the less favoured groups forming the popular base of a movement. This does not imply that such ideas are derived from the dominant classes and are merely handed down from those at the “top” of society. Millenarian movements involve far more complex relations than this, and one of my main preoccupations throughout the writing of this book has been to try to distinguish between the beliefs and expectations of followers of Mahdist movements and the persona and doctrinal elaboration, where it exists or when we know of it, of the “Messiah” himself. Only by keeping this distinction in mind is it possible to analyse which aspects of an individual’s preaching and thoughts come to acquire public legitimacy, and in what ways and for what reasons, at the same time recognising that such ideas will always be transformed during that process of acceptance. Attention must therefore be paid to beliefs as the cornerstones for rebellion and resistance, but also as generators of political ideology employed by those in positions of power. This reference to the idea of popular beliefs brings me on to the concept of “popular religiosity” used to discuss religious practices which, though not necessarily heterodox, do not feature explicitly in the canon. This would include practices of a divinatory or magical character, and even the alleged miraculous properties of certain people or of certain places like graves. The notion of “popular religiosity” is related to that of “popular culture”, no longer interpreted as the delayed and degraded reception of ideas generated by the elite but, as we see from the work of Michel de Certeau, as the appropriation and transformation of ideas formulated by others. Once marked and transformed, a belief can take on a different life with a different meaning and a different significance for those who take it over.

I The belief in the coming of a Saviour sent by God belongs to the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim tradition of the Messiah which made its first

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appearance in late Judaism and was fully developed by Christianity. Before the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. the term “messiah” had a connotation closer to its etymological sense of the “Anointed” and was an attribute of kings. Later, as the idea of the royal persona became more closely associated with the notion of future salvation, the term “messiah”, which had never been subjected to dogmatic definition, was left open to varying interpretations. Even for Christians, who took this interpretation furthest, the term continued to retain some of its early ambiguity. In the New Testament Christ, the Anointed One, is acclaimed as King after entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and resuscitates as God on Easter Sunday. This ambiguity also pervades the term “Mahdì”. At the same time, belief in sacred history, in the unfolding of a divine plan from the moment of Creation till the End of the World, pervades the civilisations of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe from the early 4th century onwards. The sacred texts of the three Abrahamic religions all record the revelations of a series of prophets of the past predicting salvation in the future. The millenarian tradition, so powerful and so widely studied in the history of Judaism and Christianity, has tended to develop within Islam under the label of “Mahdism”. The terms “Messiah” and “Messianism” have a specifically Judaeo-Christian ring and imply a whole series of non-Islamic doctrines and beliefs, but most scholars find it admissible to employ these terms in an Islamic context so long as one is clear about the sense in which they are being used, i.e. to convey the important idea of an eschatological figure, the Mahdì, who “will rise” to launch a great social transformation in order to restore the purity of early times and place all aspects of human life under divine guidance for a period preceding the End of Time. Like “messiah”, the term “Mahdì” moves in the same uncertainty of definition over a kingdom of this world or the next, over “a man sent from God” and a divinely guided or divine being.1 In principle, however, he is a second Mu˙ammad, a descendant of the Prophet bearing the same name, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh. As such, he embodies the aspirations of his followers for the restoration and revitalization of the purity of the Faith, creating a just social order and a world free from oppression where the renewed Islamic

1 M. Brett, “Le Mahdì dans le Maghreb Médiéval”, REMMM 91–94 (2000) pp. 93–106.

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law will become universal. The Mahdì is a second Mu˙ammad who will inaugurate an era of righteousness. “Messiah” is not the only term used in this book that is derived from the study of other religions and doctrines more closely studied than Islam, terms that need to be defined in order to prevent later dependence on an implicit mental model which does not necessarily coincide with Islamic doctrines. The term “eschatological”, for example, as used throughout this book applies to beliefs about what will happen when History is concluded, when the End or Eschaton comes, a time when good will be rewarded and evil punished. This Eschaton is synonymous with the Apocalypse, when what is hidden will finally be revealed, in other words, the reality of God. This revelation will be the fulfilment of the divine purpose in history which Marjorie Reeves, in her seminal work on apocalyptic thought in the medieval Christian West, has shown to involve a different understanding of the time-process. In apocalyptic terms the moving moments of time are no longer felt as succeeding each other, but as fulfilling a divine purpose in proceeding towards a fore-ordained conclusion. This relates the present moment to a definite beginning and a definite end; it can give a sense of belonging in time and links the fleeting moment to a transcendent purpose outside time. The idea that History has a beginning and an End (Eschaton) is by no means incompatible with its interpretation in cyclical terms. Because time is imagined as cyclical, change and renewal have no limits. History is lived as a story of successive struggles to achieve paradise on earth. There are, as a result, three associated forms of belief. The first holds that the Eschaton/Apocalypse is imminent, a catastrophic event for which the world must be ready. Such a belief has served to give people “Chiliasm”, the belief that the End will be preceded by a period of peace, harmony, equality and justice for all mankind. “Millenarianism” is understood to be characteristic of religious movements which expect imminent salvation in this world, of which there has been a wide range. Most millenarian movements are also messianic, in that their followers believe that salvation will be brought by a saviour who mediates between the human and the divine. The man who assumes such a role is naturally considered extraordinary, and blessed with supernatural powers. On those occasions when such men reach positions of political power, they are inevitably totalitarian in their claim to obedience. In this book I will focus mainly on millenarian movements led by just such men although a further problem of terminology

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arises: the term “messianic” designates both belief in the messianic role of a particular leader, and also the belief that the leader himself has in his own messianic mission. There is a distinction to be made, sometimes even an opposition, between what a Mahdì says he is, and what his followers think he is. Sometimes the sources only allow us a glimpse of such distinctions, but in those cases they provide a means of evaluating the conjunction of the historical with the phenomenal, the propaganda and its reception. Another important terminological consideration is the relationship between the words “messianism” and “mysticism”. Mystical experiences derive from a close contact, sometimes described as direct contact, with God, an experience of God, which is known as hierophany. The certainty of such contact can drive some mystics, especially those of a visionary or ecstatic nature, to undertake messianic political activity within the community to which they belong.

II The origins of such beliefs in Islam go back to the very beginning and have generated a great deal of controversy. The term Mahdì, or the “rightly guided”, is not used in the Qur"àn, but clearly derives from the rooth h-d-y, which does appear and generally makes some sort of allusion to divine guidance, with occasional connotations of redemption. For example: “Oh believers, look after your own souls. He who is astray cannot hurt you, if you are rightly guided (idhà ihtadaytum)”. Q5:105. It nevertheless appears as an epithet from a very early period.2 Scholars have tended to agree that the idea of final redemption was not a part of Mu˙ammad’s preachings, nor of the beliefs of his early followers, that it developed after the times of the Prophet, during and after the Civil War period, as a part of the religious controversies which accompanied the rise to power of the Umayyad dynasty in the second half of the 7th century. The term itself was first used to designate a long-awaited sovereign who would re-establish the primitive purity of Islam during the second civil war, after the death of the Caliph Mu'àwiya. Against this traditional view, a very different interpretation was first proposed in 1911 by the

2

See the article “Mahdì” by W. Madelung in EI 2.

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French orientalist Paul Casanova, who put forward the suggestive and polemical theory that belief in the imminence of the Final Hour was the prime and fundamental motif of Mu˙ammad’s preachings. In Casanova’s view, it was not Mu˙ammad’s original intention to establish a new political and social system so much as to warn his contemporaries that the End was nigh, meaning that Muslim eschatology should rightly be considered the oldest corpus in the Tradition. It was only later, seeing that the Final Hour had not arrived and that life must go on, that the Muslim community began, prudently and progressively, to undertake the task of self-organisation. The implication of Casanova’s theory, for the notion and the term Mahdì, is that the Mahdì is the avatar of Mu˙ammad; that he is, in fact, Mu˙ammad returned. More recently, David Cook has gone a step further and has strengthened this thesis by showing the close connection between the apocalyptic traditions and jihàd during the first and second centuries of Islam, whose combination provides the necessary legitimization for the conquests.3 Apocalyptic traditions, in other words, were a major factor in the ideological preparation of war. In 1977, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone presented their own innovative and polemical vision of the origins of Islam. According to the thesis of their controversial book Hagarism, Islam did not originate in the 7th century (the period of a solely military conquest) but developed gradually over two centuries of contacts with Christians and Jews. They argue that Islam emerged from the confluence of a Jewish messianic movement and a nativistic movement of Arabian tribesmen.4 According to Cook and Crone, Islam was a messianic movement from the outset, although the concept of Messiah was gradually transferred from the movement’s founder, Mu˙ammad, to his successor 'Umar al-Fàrùq, (an epithet originating in the Syriac term for “saviour” or “redemptor”) and then applied to Jesus and later to a Mahdì whose role it was to provide the world with abstract justice without a precise historical content. For these authors, what Islam added to Jewish-origin messianism was the concept of the Imamate as an eternal high-priesthood, which derives from the Samaritans. In each case, Samaritan and Islamic, we have an office

3

D. Cook, “Muslim apocalyptic and jihàd”, JSAI 20 (1996) pp. 66–104. The argument for a nativistic Arab movement is further developed by P. Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Princeton, 1987, pp. 247 ff. 4

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in which supreme political and religious authority are fused, and in each case the primary qualification for office is the combination of religious knowledge with a sacred genealogy. Sulayman Bashear, who has carefully analysed the term “Fàrùq”, has shown that it appears in the early documents and texts, frequently related to the ahl alkitàb, and more specifically, employed by the Jews of Jerusalem.5 More recently, Fred Donner has argued against Cook and Crone’s theory on the basis of Quranic and early documentary evidence, that the Prophet Mu˙ammad inaugurated a religious movement focused on the concept of “believers” (mu"minùn), those who accepted the idea of God’s oneness, the coming of the Last Judgment and the need to live righteously in accordance with God’s revealed law. It would be towards the end of the first century Hijra when a narrower understanding of the community of believers, identified as Muslims (submitted), marks a clearer definition which leaves Jewish and Christian believers outside the movement.6 In the beginning, therefore, the messianic elements in the early tradition could have come from the Jewish groups at first included in Mu˙ammad’s community of believers. Bashear’s and Donner’s arguments may be convincing in refuting important parts of Cook and Crone’s theory, but to my mind they strengthen and complete Casanova’s: Mu˙ammad started by warning his contemporaries about the End of Time. This was a major point in his message directed to a community of believers which had no clear boundaries, at first and for a time, separating them off from Jews and Christians. Qur"àn (54:2) says: “The Hour of doom is drawing near and the moon is cleft in two. Yet when they see a sign, the unbelievers turn their backs and say ‘the same old magic’ ”. For Peter Brown on the other hand, this sùra vividly expresses the frustration of Mu˙ammad at the end of a long tradition that prevailed in the Mediterranean, where, during Late Antiquity, certain expectations of the supernatural, or of divine power were remarkably constant.7 Mu˙ammad’s monotheistic vision defined itself in part against an older mode that saw divine power represented on earth

5 S. Bashear, “The title Fàrùq and its association with 'Umar I”, Studia Islamica 72 (1990) pp. 47–70. 6 F. Donner, “From Believers to Muslims: confessional self-identity in the Early Islamic Community”, Al-Abhàth 50–51 (2002–2003) pp. 9–53. 7 P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity, Cambridge, Mss. 1978, p. 19.

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through exceptional human agents who were either good or evil but who had a relationship with the supernatural that was personal to them and clearly perceptible to fellow believers: the frontier between the saint and the sorcerer was very thin.8 In his The Making of Late Antiquity Brown sees Mu˙ammad and the rise of Islam as giving a decisive turn to the late antique debate about the holy, separating heaven from earth and the holy from the human. Behind all these arguments, from Cook and Crone onwards, lies the work of John Wansbrough on the Qur"àn and the early sources of Islam (Quranic Studies, 1977 and The Sectarian Milieu, 1978) in which he claimed that the literature upon which all such theories must be based is in fact an example of Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) that originated in a milieu of religious polemic with Christians and Jews, whose topoi do not allow us to use such sources as historical material. In The Sectarian Milieu, he argued that Islam was formed from a common stock of traditional Biblical motifs by means of the attribution of stories and the exegesis of texts, in a prolonged attempt to supply Islamic faith with a historical and scriptural identity different from the previous monotheistic expressions of Christianity and Judaism. In the case of Shì'ism, for example, such efforts served to identify the Imàm as the crucial figure in the conveyance of revelation from one generation to the next. It was only when the identity of the Imàm had been established according to increasingly specific Islamic criteria that the story of the designation of 'Alì as Mu˙ammad’s successor came into existence as a crucial historical fact on which the beliefs of Shì'ism rest, but upon which no reliance can be placed by the historian. The interest of such stories for the historian is their function as components of a specialised language in which religious ideas could be expressed and developed. Wansbrough’s sectarian milieu is well illustrated by the apocalyptic and eschatological literature of the period. One of the greatest influences upon it has been that of the Danielic tradition or rather, the surviving system of representations and images which constitute the Apocalypse of Daniel.9 This Apocalypse is made up of promises whose intensity and vagueness have allowed them to be used in many 8

P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity, pp. 12–13. A. Abel, “Changements politiques et littérature eschatologique dans le monde musulman”, Studia Islamica II (1954) pp. 23–43. 9

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different ways. Daniel’s Apocalypse seems also to be the origin for an entire corpus of Islamic (and Christian) literature, and a whole series of later literary motifs coded in the same terms.10 The Book of Daniel is also the culmination of the Biblical ideology of the Kingdom of God united to a concept of royal messianism and divine kingship, a notion which finds its most powerful expression in the poems known as the Psalms of Solomon, which describe a victorious Jewish saviour-king establishing divine, universal rule over the Gentiles.11 Christian eschatological literature is imbued with such Danielic motifs, especially in Syrian apocalypses. In Mesopotamia a tradition of messianic expectations deriving from Late Judaism survived until the end of the 7th century and it reflects the crisis brought about by the Arab conquest of Syria. The Pseudo-Methodius, which begins with a history of the temporal world from Adam to Alexander the Great, prophesies the career of the Last Roman Emperor, who will appear at the end of the Arab invasions and before the reign of the Antichrist. This Last Emperor would be of Ethiopian origin and, after his victory over the Arabs, would reside in Jerusalem, uniting in his person all the characteristics of the Jewish Anointed King who would redeem his people.12 The hope of a Last World Emperor thus seems to have originated in a remote area of Syria threatened by Islam and under the influence of Jewish messianic sources. The Pseudo-Methodius spread very quickly throughout Byzantium and was translated into Latin in the Christian West in the early 8th century. It was known in Spain from a very early period and had a deep and widespread influence there.13 There are signs that an older version may have circulated among the Andalusian Mozarabs (Arabised Christians).14 Another important sequence of Byzantine prophecies are those known as the Oracles of Leo the Wise, which transfer the role of Last Emperor to an elected Pope, with whom true prophecy begins. Syrian and Byzantine motifs were to have a great influence 10 D. Cook, “An Early Muslim Daniel Apocalypse”, Arabica XLIX (2002) pp. 55–96. 11 See for example Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew, London, 1993, pp. 124 and ff. 12 P. Alexander, “The Medieval Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and its Messianic Origin”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XLI (1978) pp. 1–15. 13 L. Vazquez de Parga, “Algunas notas sobre el Pseudo Metodio y España”, Habis 2 (1971) pp. 143–164. 14 L. Vazquez de Parga, “Algunas notas sobre el Pseudo Metodio y España”, p. 148.

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on Christian apocalyptics in the medieval West, where their path can be traced from the beginning of the 8th century down to the works of Joachim of Fiore in the second half of the 12th.15 PreIslamic North Africa had also seen apocalyptic predictions and fears after the invasion of the Vandals, as is shown by the sermons of bishop Quodvultdeus of Carthage.16 Indeed, it is these types of text from Late Antiquity which provide Crone and Cook with the basis for their theory, mentioned above, that Islam originated as a Jewish messianic movement. They base their argument, firstly, on the North African Christian text of 634, Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati, which quotes an Eastern letter informing that “a prophet has appeared among the Sarracens . . . who proclaims the arrival of the Anointed Christ”. The Hebrew text known as Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai uses messianic terms to describe the emergence of the Arabs and the establishment of their reign. Towards the end of the 7th century, the Syrian monk Yohanna Bar Penkayê in his book First Principles of the Temporal World points to the Islamic invasion, sent by God as a punishment for the sins of the Christians, as a precursor of the End of all Time.17 This Syrian text, which offers the first more or less detailed description of the origins of Islam, uses the term mhaddayana, close to the Arab term Mahdì, to describe the Prophet Mu˙ammad.18 The Apocalypse or “Vision” of Ba˙ìrà, the Christian monk who recognised Mu˙ammad and encouraged him to undertake his mission, composed in about 820, also refers to the Arab conquest as one of the events announcing the End of all Time, which will occur under the Seventh Imàm, and it explicitly quotes from the Pseudo-Methodius to support this idea, as well as being the first Christian apocalypse to speak of a Mahdì.19 Ba˙ìrà’s influence can be seen in the Muslim apocalypse

15 P. Alexander, “The Diffusion of Bizantine Apocalypses in the Medieval West and the beginnings of Joachimism” in A. Williams (ed.), Prophecy and Millenarianism, 1980, pp. 57–71, and P. Alexander, “Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Motifs”, Medievalia et Humanistica New Series II (1971) pp. 47–68. 16 R. González Salinero, Poder y conflicto religioso en el Norte de Africa: Quodvultdeus de Cartago y los Vándalos, Madrid, 2002. 17 A. Scher, “Notice sur la vie et les ouevres de Yohannan Bar Penkayê”, Journal Asiatique, dixième série, X (1907) pp. 161–178, esp. 174–175. 18 F. Donner, “La question du messianisme dans l’islam primitif ” in M. GarcíaArenal, Mahdisme et Millénarisme, REMMM 91–92–93–93 (2000) pp. 17–27. 19 A. Abel. “Changements politiques et littérature eschatologique dans le monde musulman”, Studia Islamica 2 (1954) pp. 23–43, pp. 29–30.

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Kitàb al-silk al-zahìr fì 'ilm al-awwal wa-l-akhìr20 by Ka'b al-A˙bàr.21 Regardless of whether we accept that Islam originated as a Jewish messianic movement, there is little doubt that Islamic apocalyptics were influenced by the messianism of Daniel, by Late-Jewish apocalyptic texts and by the Syrian and Byzantine motifs in turn placed in movement by the arrival of Islam. They were also influenced by zoroastrian apocalyptic symbols and cosmological beliefs: a mixture of myths and beliefs disseminated by the spiritual revolution of the Late Antique world absorbed in a context of religious conversion and cultural translation. As a result, the apocalyptic and eschatological tradition of Islam is extraordinarily rich. Messianic influences combine with the literary genre known as isrà"iliyyàt (“stories which derive from the Israelites”), embracing various types of narrative found in the Qur"àn, the work of mystics and the compilers of edifying stories which, deriving from rabbinical and aggadic literature, were transmitted by Jews converted to Islam such as Wahb b. Munabbih and Ka'b b. A˙bàr.22 The isrà"iliyyàt are mostly stories about prophets and Biblical patriarchs (qißaß al-anbiyà" ) and thus cannot be considered eschatological literature as such, although they often come close: Noah (Nù˙) the first messenger (rasùl ), who warns his people of the imminent arrival of al-Dajjàl 23 or Enoch/Idrìs Elijah/Ilyàs, all well-known figures in Biblical apocalyptics, play an important role in treatises of mystical initiation and in popular beliefs such as that in supernatural beings who inspire the conviction that they can save Man from extreme situations.24 This is especially the case for the four prophets that Islamic tradition recognizes as being “alive” or “immortal”. Besides Idrìs and 'Ìsà ( Jesus), Elias is identified with al-Khi∂r (or al-Kha∂ir) a mysterious prophet-guide and immortal saint who plays an important role in popular piety and sufism. Many a mystical master, such as Ibn 'Arabì, claimed to have received the khirqa from Khi∂r.25 The Dajjàl (from 20

A. Abel, “Changements politiques”, p. 37. B. Chapira, “Légendes bibliques attribuées à Ka'b al-A˙bàr”, Revue des Etudes Juives LXIX (1919) pp. 86–107 and LXX (1920) pp. 37–43. 22 There is a wide-ranging bibliography on this genre, from I. Goldziher, “Mélanges judéo-arabes. IX. Isrà"iliyyàt”, Revue des Etudes Juives 44 (1902) to R. Tottoli, “Origin and Use of the Term Isrà"iliyyàt in Muslim Literature”, Arabica 46 (1999) pp. 192–210. 23 G. Canova, “The Prophet Noah in Islamic Tradition”, The Arabist. Budapest Studies in Arabic 23 (2001) pp. 1–20. 24 R. Tottoli, I profeci biblici nella tradizione islamica, Brescia, 1999. 25 I. Omar, “Khidr in the Islamic Tradition”, The Muslim World 83 (1993) pp. 279–94. 21

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the Syriac daggala) does not appear in the Qur"àn but does appear in Syriac Christian literature and presents elements to be found in the Apocalypse of St. John of Patmos as well as in the pseudo-apocalyptic literature from St. Ephraem to the revelations of Sibylla: he kills Elias and Enoch, the two witnesses put forward by God (they will come to life again) sent to denounce him. Moral apocalypses are also frequent in Jewish and Christian thinking and they have their roots in pagan Sibylline literature. One of their most common themes is the journey to heaven and hell, which reaches its most complete form in the Apocalypse of Enoch. In the Islamic world, this kind of apocalypse is linked with the literature of the Prophet Mu˙ammad’s night journey and his ascension to the heavens, a story deriving directly from Enoch’s version.26 The theme of punishments and rewards lends a pronounced moral emphasis to all of these accounts. The so-called moral apocalypses can also be seen as related to another genre of ancient apocalyptic literature, the apocalyptic stories or literal predictions of what will occur at the end of all time. The Islamic moral apocalypse which has a political, theological and social message, employs a form which assumes that its audience believes itself to be living through Earth’s last times. Using this assumption, the apocalyptist includes all groups, persons or activities which he wishes to condemn within this general feeling of fear of the End. This invests him with moral force and differentiates him from the religious establishment. Ultimately, the apocalyptist will attack anything considered permanent, or symptomatic of a society which does not believe in the imminence of the end of the world. The establishment thus becomes his mortal enemy: by virtue of its very name it conveys a sense of permanence which is the epitome of evil to the apocalyptist.27 It should not surprise us, therefore, that a number of these apocalyptists tend to meet with death at the hands of the authorities, such as the most famous of them all, the author of the Kitàb al-fitan Nu'aym b. Óammàd (d. 228/843), who died in prison.28

26

H. Busse, “Jerusalem in the story of Muhammad’s night journey and ascension”, JSAI 14 (1991) pp. 1–40; M. Nisan, “Note on a possible Jewish source for Muhammad’s ‘Night Journey’ ”, Arabica XLVII (2000) pp. 274 ff. 27 To use D. Cook’s term in “Moral Apocalyptic in Islam”, Studia Islamica 86 (1997) pp. 37–70 (p. 65). 28 Nu'aym ibn Óammàd, Kitàb al-fitan, Beirut: Dàr al-Fikr, 1993.

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These apocalypses constitute a genre of “history of the future”29 which was particularly productive in the Umayyad and 'Abbàsid periods and which refuted the legitimacy of the dynasty and its caliphs as “tyrants” and attacked the religious authorities for their connivance with them.30 They were a sign that the Hour was near. One important feature of the Muslim apocalyptists is that they divide the rulers of the world into prophets and tyrants, until the arrival of the future Mahdì who will be sent by God.31 This kind of literature was very common and had a widespread and lasting effect on popular beliefs. It will be seen that if the ruler under attack from such sources was not a “prophet”, one way of legitimising himself and avoiding being classified as a “tyrant” was to present himself as a Mahdì. This strategy, united to the notion of a Last World Emperor, was to become a useful political manouevre for a number of different leaders. Regardless of the influence of eschatological ideas from Late Antiquity, Islamic Tradition considers each of the prophets as an axis in the spiritual history of mankind. The great Muslim historian al-ˇabarì (d. 310/923) entitled his encyclopedic chronicle “The History of Prophets and Kings” with a view to emphasizing the prophetic quality of Islamic history. For al-ˇabarì, history is suffused with prophecy, and prophets become the special focus of human history in which the “sacred” ought not to be separated from the “profane”. The central importance of the prophetic guide in Islam can be seen in the number of traditions which claim that prophethood began with the creation of mankind. Adam is seen as the first in a long line of prophets who have been sent into the world to promote divine laws, and to guide mankind. Islam tends to consider prophets indispensable for humanity to be able to know God’s will, even with the exception of theological schools, such as the Mu'tazila who believe that humans can know God using solely their intellect, the prophets being an additional divine grace. Discussion of the issue of prophethood was common in the Islamic world from the beginning of the kalàm or scholastic theology. The issue was addressed in numerous works, which bore titles like “Signs of prophecy” (a'làm al-nubuwwa) or “Establishing prophecy” (Ithbàt al-nubuwwa). Such works sought to 29 In the words of F. Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, Leiden, 1952, p. 23. 30 D. Cook, “Moral Apocalyptic”, pp. 53–54. 31 D. Cook, “Moral Apocalyptic”, pp. 53–54.

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establish, on the one hand, the human need for prophets, and on the other, a list of characteristics which demonstrated the superiority of the Prophet Mu˙ammad over all others.32 The Qur"àn states (e.g. 10:48, 13:7, 16:36, 35:24) that no human community has ever been left without a prophet. Going further, the Sùra (14:8) claims that God has never sent a messenger who did not speak the language of the people to whom he had been sent. Nevertheless, a difference existed between a nabì or prophet able to reveal divine guidance but whose mission did not consist in transmitting a new law to the world, and a rasùl, or messenger of the new law. Mu˙ammad was not only the first prophet, and superior to all others, but was also known as khatm al-nubuwwa or khatam al-anbiyyà", expressions which both translate as “seal of the prophets” and are generally interpreted as meaning “last of the prophets”. There is, however, no unanimous agreement about the interpretation of this phrase, at least for the first Islamic centuries. Yohannan Friedmann has suggested that the concept relates to the eschatology of the early years of Islam: if Mu˙ammad was the last of the Prophets, this is because the Hour was imminent.33 In support of his theory, this same author presents copious material demonstrating that in early Islamic times, the dogma of the finality of Prophethood was not yet established, and that the possibility of the appearance of other prophets was in fact taken for granted. Even after belief had been established, in sunnite Islam, in the finality of Mu˙ammad’s prophethood, the link with divinity and its direct guide were too important for doors not to be left open for further developments as will be seen in the chapters dedicated to sufism. On the other hand, different groups claimed for themselves the capacity of being warathat al-anbiyà", the inheritors of the prophets, the depositaries and interpreters of the message of the prophets: the caliphs, the 'ulamà" or the saints, friends of God or awliyà". Although Wansbrough refused to speculate on the relationship between the development of doctrine and the development of the community,

32 S. Stroumsa, “The signs of Prophecy: the emergence and early development of a theme in Arabic theological Literature”, Harvard Theological Review, 78: 1–2 (1985) pp. 101–114. 33 Y. Friedmann, “Finality of Prophethood in Sunni Islam”, Israel Oriental Studies 7 (1986) pp. 117–215.

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it is clear that both were involved in the political and religious dispute over the succession to Mu˙ammad, epitomised in the tradition that originated when, two years before his death in 11/632, Mu˙ammad made his last pilgrimage to Mecca. On this occasion, he addressed a sermon to his followers that has been widely quoted over the centuries and in which he said, according to one version: “God has given two safeguards to the world: His Book [the Qur"àn] and the Sunna [example] of his Prophet.” According to another source Mu˙ammad said “God has given two safeguards to the World: His Book and the Family of His Prophet.” Both statements are apocryphal, in that they relate to positions adopted in the 9th century; but they epitomise the opposition between Sunnism and Shì'ism, two poles of authority for the faith between which Mahdism occupied an intermediate position Sunnism, seen by its followers as the orthodox form of Islam, developed as the majority form: only about ten percent of contemporary Muslims are Shì'ites or Khàrijites, and those areas of the Muslim West where this book is set have been Sunnite for centuries. Both Sunnism and Shì'ism together with Khàrijism, are different sets of answers to three fundamental questions about leadership of the community, law, and theology. These questions can be summarised as follows: firstly, to whom should believers turn for spiritual guidance and political leadership? Expressed in more Islamic terms, this question might be put like this: who should the Imàm of the community be, and how is he to be recognised and chosen? This is a question lying at the very heart of this book which, in fact, is about one way of answering it. The second question has to do with the Law: which are the norms to be followed by believers in their relations with God and with themselves? The third question is, how should believers approach or consider God and his plans for humanity? Disputes over the first of these questions, i.e. over the nature of the Imamate, led to the forming of diverse factions in the first Islamic century (the seventh of the Christian era), when Mu˙ammad’s death in 632 created the problem of his succession as community leader. Mu˙ammad’s relatives and closest friends improvised the formation of a new institution, the Caliphate (from the Arabic term khalìfat rasùl Allàh, vicar to God’s envoy). The first Caliphs were chosen from among the group of those who had been closest to the Prophet, but after the assassination of the third Caliph in 661, a civil war broke out between supporters of the idea that the Caliphate should be entrusted to members of the Umayyad family (a clan of Quraysh,

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the tribe of the Prophet) and those who favoured the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mu˙ammad, 'Alì ibn Abì ˇàlib. The latter group received the name shì'at 'Alì or “party of 'Alì”. Another party which split off, or literally “came out” during this civil war period was the party of the Khàrijites, who held that the Caliph ought not to be a member of any particular lineage but should be chosen by the community itself as “the best of Muslims”. These shì'ite and Khàrijite “parties” arose from a cluster of political circumstances but each gradually developed its own corpus of beliefs. The origins of such beliefs in Islam go back to the very beginning and have generated a great deal of controversy. The current view however, is that the position now identified with Sunnism did not truly emerge until the 9th century. Even then, those who adopted the sunnite position on the Imamate were continually engaged in their own disputes over law and theology, disputes that are essential to an understanding of the early chapters of this book. Shì'ites have always held particularly intense hopes of the arrival of a restorer of justice and religion: Shì'a Islam evolved from a legitimist theory of authority of the descendents of 'Alì into a principle of salvation, turning into a fundamentally eschatological religion. By contrast with sunnism, belief in the coming of a Mahdì has been an essential article of faith in the shì'ite creed. The shì'ite Mahdì is ma 'ßùm, he who is protected from error and sin, a quality which according to sunnis is exclusive to prophets. Distinctly shì'ite is also the belief in a temporary absence or occultation of the Imàm ( ghayba) the Hidden Imàm, and his eventual return in glory, his parousia or Ωuhùr before the End of Time. Whereas Ba˙ìrà used the Danielic tradition and new forms of revelation to bring the figure of the Mahdì into apocalyptic literature, the Alids, for their part, produced an entire pseudo-epigraphical literature to introduce the belief in a private revelation given to 'Alì or to one of his own and subsequently transmitted by them to mankind. This produced, among other things, the works known as the “book of Jafr”. Ibn Khaldùn dedicates an entire chapter (no. 52) of his Muqaddima to the study of these predictions and in particular of the book of Jafr, recorded according to him by one of the zaydite chiefs or perhaps by Ja'far al-Sadìq (d. 148/765). The “Great Jafr” was attributed to 'Alì himself and it brought together a series of predictions of the triumphal arrival of the Mahdì in an allegorical and arcane manner.

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Like belief in the Mahdì, prophethood acquired very marked characteristics in Shì'ism. The Shì'ism of the first three Islamic centuries believes in the pre-existent entity of the Imàm, whose light, together with the Mu˙ammadan light came directly from the divine light before the creation of the world. The Imàm possesses supra-worldly knowledge and powers which make him infallible (ma'ßùm). He is the proof (˙ujja) of God for his people. In fact, we will have a major controversy to keep in mind, namely the conflict between the shì'ite idea of the infallible Imàm and the sunnite idea of the infallible Prophet. However apocalyptic the origins of Islam may have been, and however long it took for the main forms of Islam to develop, the theological corpus of what is today known as Sunnite Islam eventually came to employ the term Mahdì to denominate an eschatological figure who will arise to carry out a great social transformation and restore the pristine purity of early times by placing all human spheres under divine management. The epithet al-Qà"im (the one who arises) was at times used as its equivalent. The Mahdì must be a member of the ahl al-bayt, or family of the Prophet, and bear the Prophet’s name, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh. He will establish a realm of justice and rule all Muslims together until the descent of Jesus ('Ìsà), the Masih or Messiah of the Christian tradition whom Islam had incorporated into its own line of prophets; when together with Jesus the Mahdì will lead them to ultimate victory before the day of Final Judgement.34 He is thus both a king of this world and a harbinger of the Apocalypse. The rise of the Mahdì to power will be preceded by a period of lawlessness when both religion and natural order will be threatened. The protagonist of this dark age is a false messiah, a personage called al-Dajjàl, the “deceiver” or Antichrist, endowed with miraculous powers, who will arrive before the end of time and for a limited time (40 days to 40 years) will let tyranny and corruption rule the world. His appearance is one of the signs (with others, like the sun rising in the West) of the end of time. He will be vanquished by the Mahdì who will bring about universal conversion to Islam and the appearance of al-Amr, the divine will of God to rule the world.

34 G.S. Reynolds, “Jesus, the Qà"im and the End of the World”, Revista degli Studi Orientali LXXV (2001) pp. 55–86.

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Within this basic framework, two important variants were found in Sunnite Islam. On the one hand, there was the idea that rather than a unique Mahdì who would appear before the End of Time, history would throw up at different critical periods certain “Masters of the Hour” (ßà˙ib al-sà'a) who would save the community from temporary danger. Secondly, there was the idea that these Masters of the Hour would have their own delegates to prepare the way for the reception of their message. This opens up the possibility of cyclical periods of reform which link Mahdism to the tradition of the mujaddid, or renewer, and also to the notion of tajdìd al-dìn, the renewal of religion. Thus Mahdism often became associated with reforming and revivalist movements, and in practice it is not always easy to differentiate between the various kinds of leader: to know, for example, if a man described as a ßà˙ib al-sà'a is the master of a critical moment, or of the final hour, and thus different from the mujaddid of mainly activist and reformist connotations. In the chapters which follow, I will have to bear in mind the possibility that there are differences amongst “Mahdist” movements of a restorational, revivalist or regenerationist nature, i.e. between those led by a mujaddid-like Mahdì and those of a more apocalyptic character. The same basic framework is applicable also to Shì'ite Islam with the difference that the idea of the Mahdì is central rather than peripheral to a doctrine centred on the idea that the authority and power of the Prophet is vested in the sole person of the Imàm who is his direct descendant. Given the failure of the descendants to secure the Caliphate, the idea of a Mahdì was invoked both apocalyptically and in the millenarian sense. The Shì'ite Mahdì was commonly given the epithet Qà"im, the one who will rise and rule. It was in common use before the end of the Umayyad period and largely replaced the term Mahdì in the Imàmite tradition. He will be the lord of the sword and Jesus will pray behind him after his descent from heaven. He will force all Muslims to accept the shì'ite creed. In the doctrine of the Ismà'ìlites or Seveners (those who believe in the first seven Imàms), however, the presence of the Imàm was ensured by the Fà†imid dynasty, considered in this book (Chapter 2), whose ambition to govern, as Imàms and caliphs, over the whole of the Islamic world was paralleled by their claim to know the universal truths of revelation and reason. The propaganda of the Fà†imids was based on the initiates’ certainty of being the Imàms called by divine designation to exercise universal dominion and the temporal

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and spiritual management of the earth as well as feeling certain that they were the projection of divine light upon the world. The Ismà'ìlites believed in the superhuman nature of their Imàms, earthly incarnation of the universal Intellect, and this belief goes much further than the mere legitimist restoration of the lineage of the Prophet. Such certainty was coupled with the belief in cyclical periods in the evolution of the world, and in the conjunction of heavenly bodies indicating the end of an empire and the beginning of a new era. Astrology became a source of revelation35 and this is why it acquired such an important role, and why allusion is made in political propaganda to empires which grow old and whose end has come. Such conviction turned the struggle against established dynastic powers into a veritable religious obligation. Profound doctrinal conviction was related to the real ambition to conquer the world and establish a universal monarchy.36

III In both his eschatological and millenarian aspects, the Islamic Messiah embodies the aspirations of his followers for the restoration of the Faith as it was lived in Earliest Times by bringing divine, uncorrupted guidance to the whole of mankind, and installing a just social order free from all oppression which will precede the End of all Time. In other words, he arises within the context of belief in a mythical past which in turn itself acquires utopian and millenarian features. Change from one originary perfection can only be decay. Salvation takes the form of a return to that infinitely pure past, and is provided by a saviour who acts as a mediator between the human and the divine. In practice it has generally been associated with the creation of an ideal politico-religious community living within the social and legal framework of Islam. Such an ideal depends to a large extent on a leader being able to guarantee the formation of such a community on the strength of divine guidance, hidàya, the root of the term mahdì. 35

See Y. Marquet, “La révelation par l’astrologie selon Abù Ya'qùb as-Sijistànì et les Ikhwàn aß-Safà" ”, Studia Islamica 80 (1994) pp. 5–28; D. Cook, “Messianism and Astronomical events during the first four centuries of Islam” in M. GarcíaArenal (ed.), Mahdisme et millénarisme en Islam, REMMM, 2001, pp. 29–52. 36 M. Canard, “L’imperialisme des Fatimides et leur propagande”, included in his Miscellenea Orientalia, London, 1973, pp. 158–160.

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Not only, therefore, does the Mahdì seek to restore and revitalize religion, and thus to become the one through whom the redemption of the community of believers will be achieved. He has a political mission which in the Maghreb has given him the characteristics of a puritan reformer, and also a relationship to Sufism. As we will see, there can be no complete doctrine of sainthood which avoids a definition of political legitimacy. Millenarianism and an eschatological discourse became inherent in Maghrebian Sufism from the 12th century onwards. It is probably significant that it was also during this period that sufism became in the Maghreb a vehicle for the Islamisation of rural areas. The practice of precepts such as al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf (forbidding wrong and commanding right), known as the ˙isba, is closely associated with both ascetism and sufism and, above all, with the jihàd that the zàhid or ascetic must maintain, firstly with himself and with his human passions, and then with his immediate environment, in order to make that environment suitable for the religious norms he has imposed upon himself. An agent of divine grace, the saint is necessarily the instrument of rigour, in the form of strict adherence to the Law, and the acceptance of this role implies that he must mould the terrestrial sphere to the dictates of divine Wisdom. It is for this reason that the saint often becomes a censor and reformer of habits, bent on promoting the renewal and revitalization of the social aspects of religion and on condemning the corruption and inefficacy of political authorities. “Enlightened violence”, militancy and incorruptible moral radicalism are frequent elements in the practice of the ˙isba, which provides puritanical movements with a theoretical basis. In the medieval Maghreb, such aspects were inherent in sufi practice, despite the apparent contradiction of accommodating the fact of violent rejection of conformist attitudes within a general framework of extreme loyalty to the revitalized Tradition. Sufis make a spiritual use of apocalyptic terms such as jihàd and fitna as a fight designed to purify the believer from the evil of this world and prepare him for the world to come. In that apocalyptic tradition fitna is both the hardship the individual believer endures as a test and also the collective trials that the Muslims have to go through before the end of times (the Dajjàl is the harbinger of fitna) when the Amr or direct rule of God, will appear to all men. At the same time, reform and jihàd became the main legitimizing arguments of any dynastic power. Other terms used by sufis, such

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as the spiritual alienation which makes them consider themselves “strangers”, ghurabà", in a world dominated by corruption, or that of nùr, the concept of Light and Illumination, or al-Amr, Divine Authority or Will, formed a part of the theological vocabulary used by various political movements in their legitimising propaganda. The Mahdì constitutes a bridge between the past and the future, but also between the secular or political and the religious. The precise boundaries of these dichotomies are far from clear, but I will attempt to provide them with working definitions in the case of the Muslim Maghreb, because this book necessarily deals with the question of legitimacy of political power as much as it does with the subject of messianism. By secular power I mean the power of those who govern, which is based on military power but does not depend solely on it. It is the power to order society into hierarchies, to impose taxes, to defend itself and to defend the governed. Secular power is guided by principles of efficacy and will always seek to maintain itself over time. “Religious” authority I take to mean the authority to guide and order the lives of people according to the dictates of what is thought of as divine command. Such authority is always considered as in some way “above” secular power. It relies on the ability of those who exercise it to convince others that they have special access to divine authority and that they are acting as divine agents. Their power often derives from the fact that they are thought capable of bringing blessings or curses upon part or all of society. Religious authority can derive from the knowledge and ability to interpret holy and legal texts (as in the case of the 'ulamà"), or from the ability to gain access to the divine through miraculous acts (karàmàt) as in the case of the awliyà", the “friends of God”, or it can come from direct mandate and divine guidance as in the case of the Mahdì. As is well known (and as was also the case in the Christian world at least until the Enlightenment), Islamdom has been characterised by perpetual tension between the realities of “secular” power and those claiming to possess “religious” authority. Tensions arising in Islamic societies as a result of social difficulties and conflicts are often manifested in ambitions to assume the kind of religious authority which is over and above secular political power, or, as in the case of the Mahdì, in an effort to unify the two elements. Conflict and tension will always tend to exist between religious authorities and those who hold positions of political or secular power, but serious conflict amongst

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different religious groups is an almost equally important factor. Rivalries occur between groups which aspire to define and control different ideologized interpretations of the Tradition; these have political implications as such groups dispute their monopoly of Grace, or baraka. A Mahdì, for example, will claim to possess the charismatic authority required to break the existing norms, but he will always do so in the name of Tradition, since he seeks to revive a lost past. In this way the Mahdì’s “invented tradition”, to use Eric Hobsbawm’s term, will clash with the version of Tradition preached by groups like the 'ulamà" which see themselves as its guarantors. The issue has been extensively discussed in modern scholarship. According to Max Weber, there are two basic ways for power to legitimise itself in traditional or pre-modern societies: firstly, in terms of Tradition, which defines the parameters of power and the procedures for applying legal norms of an impersonal nature, and secondly, through the will of a sovereign supported by his subjects’ obedience, which is based on ties of personal loyalty. In addition, the leader may possess charismatic authority, with charisma being seen as “a particular quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated and endowed with . . . exceptional powers”. Charismatic authority is characterized by informal organization, with a lower degree of institutionalization or discipline than that associated with traditional authority, operating from within a formal system of norms. Charismatic domination is characterized by obedience, not to rules or tradition, but to a person of imputed holiness, heroism or some other extraordinary quality. Whereas legal and traditional authority implies stable, continuing relationships, “pure” charisma is short-lived: “In its pure form charismatic authority may be said to exist only in the process of originating. It cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized or rationalized or a combination of both.” This is Weber’s so-called “routinization of charisma” when after its initial success it serves to legitimate the institutionalised regime it has created. It is in this process that charisma can become hereditary. Weber’s ideas offer insights when brought to bear on Maghrebi historiographical texts, but as will be seen, the sources which I use often show traditional and charismatic varieties of power acting in a complementary, not an oppositional, way. Thus Clifford Geertz considers charismatic power, or baraka, to be the main leitmotif of Moroccan political life. But at the same time he shows that Moroccan

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political power as personified by the sultan unites two principles which are opposed to one another in the rest of the Muslim world: the principle that the Imàm is the Imàm because he possesses supernatural, i.e. charismatic, characteristics; and the principle that the Imàm is the Imàm because the qualified spokesmen of the community (the 'ulamà") accept him as such. The relationship between charisma and legalism in the history of the Moroccan state was viewed rather differently by Ernst Gellner, who claimed that Moroccan history before the 20th century had witnessed the periodic emergence of puritanical reformist movements which called for a return to the pristine Islam of the Qur"àn and the Sunna. These reformist movements had their origin in the famous and controversial dichotomy proposed by Gellner between the orthodox, puritanical, and scripturalist Islam of the cities and popular Islam, which bordered on the heterodox, anthropolatrous and ritualistic, and required the mediation of saints and religious figures. But by appealing across the social divide they provoked a series of revolutions that brought new dynasties to power before the pendulum swung back and the tribesmen returned to their popular Islam. For Abdellah Hammoudi, on the other hand, the dichotomy is not nearly so straightforward. At the heart of popular Islam is Sufism in the paradigmatic relationship between master and disciple. That in turn encapsulates the relationship between the Moroccan sultan and his people. The terror of his arms is inseparable from the divine grace by which he rules, so much so that one can be inferred from the other. Beneath his sanctified figure, the power at his command is symbolic of his legitimacy. However, in the manner of Geertz, the monopoly of control, in which grace and violence (and therefore fear) are indistinguishable, is not exercised freely or without consultation. The sovereign, who holds power, needs the opinions and advice of representatives of the population, notables, 'ulamà" and saints whose role as mediators between the people and the centres of power depends upon their position within society. All these ideas are suggestive, despite their disagreement. As the typologies of sociologists, however, they cannot be imposed by the historian upon the very materials from which they are derived even when, as Mohamed Kably has shown, the medieval chronicles offer their support. This is also the case when considering a number of the rebellious movements described in the first part of this book which could

26

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perhaps best be considered examples of what Linton has defined as “nativistic movements”. As explained in Linton’s studies of modern peoples faced with processes of European colonization, “nativistic movements” tend to be attempts organized by certain sectors of a society to preserve elements of a previous culture which thereby acquire some kind of symbolic value. “Nativistic” movements are very similar to “messianic” movements in that they usually come about when an individual assumes the role of prophet and is accepted by his people as such. According to Linton, this often happens at times when one culture becomes especially self-conscious as it is confronted by the imposed culture of a dominant group or force: “Nativistic movements tend to arise only when the members of the subject society find that their assumption of the culture of the dominant group is being effectively opposed by it or that it is not improving their social position. These movements are a response to frustration rather than hardship and would not arise if the higher group were willing to assimilate the older one.”37 Although Linton’s typology fails to take into account the sort of conflicts which arise from the existence of different ethnic groups within a subject society, it is perfectly possible to find examples of messianic movements which fit at least partially his description, i.e. those carried out in the name of what Arab sources call the Berber “false prophets” in the times of the Maghreb conversion to Islam. One might also include movements like that led by Ibn Óafßùn or those of the Cordoban Mozarabs. Such movements have obvious parallels in the kinds of process taking place in modern societies brought into contact with, or subjugated to, Western colonial powers, as will be seen in the chapter about Ibn Abì Ma˙allì or the Granadan Moriscos. In the last two chapters, the presence of Portuguese and Spaniards in the Maghreb is bitterly resented as is the Christian conquest of the Kingdom of Granada. As Linton points out, the tendency towards sacrifice and self-immolation are often outstanding characteristics of participants in such movements. Other concepts which looked promising in principle have raised their own methodological problems. One example is the concept of “collective memory”. The sources which I have used as the basis of this study, i.e. historical chronicles (ta"rìkh) and hagiographies (manàqib)

37

R. Linton, “Nativistic movements”, p. 231.

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are highly codified literary genres. Both genres record memory, but in accordance with their own norms of composition. In them, memory is structured, selected, and oriented in many important ways. The charismatic message, according to Weber, must be expressed in terms which are readily familiar and intelligible to the disciples who support the charismatic leader, so that charisma can be largely a matter of the reinterpretation of known facts and traditional ideas. It is certainly the case, as I will try to show in the chapters that follow, that the texts constituting what we might call the “Mahdist corpus”, in all its repertoire, are known and interiorized by the masses, and that well-codified rituals recur across the centuries and are even “staged” by people with no previous experience of the appearance of a Mahdì. A messianic cycle does not end with the disappearance of a messiah. However, it is difficult for me to see any real difference between the notions of “collective memory” and tradition, or even culture. In tradition, as in the “collective memory”, but above all in millenarian tradition, history is both present and absent, used and refused, invoked and revoked. History is used to support a movement and then repudiated in an attempt to bring it to an end. As Michel de Certeau has proposed, the past which returns to the present disturbs the structures of hierarchical order. In hagiography and accounts of miracles there is a repeated resort to the other world, from which the coup that will change the established order of things may, and must, come. Memory becomes an instrument for the transformation of present places.38 Maurice Halbwachs has insisted that even individual memory is structured through the social framework of memory (“les cadres sociaux de la mémoire”), and that collective memory is not a metaphor but a social reality transmitted and upheld by conscious efforts and by the group’s institutions, an idea which does not seem very distant from that of a voluntarily recreated tradition. There are different versions of this “invented” tradition, depending on the elites who elaborate and spread them. The question which I ask myself and find particularly interesting is the following: if we accept that they are social fictions, why is it that some fictions are so successful over time whilst others are not? Why do people believe these fictions?

38 Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien. 1 Arts de faire, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, chap. VI, “Le temps des Histoires”, especially pp. 130–131.

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What is the context which permits the mahdist propaganda to be understood and accepted? As Carlo Ginzburg says: “In societies founded on oral tradition, the memory of the community involuntarily tends to mask and reabsorb changes. To the relative flexibility of material life there corresponds an accentuated immobility of the image of the past. Things have always been like this; the world is what it is. Only in periods of acute social change does an image emerge, generally a mythical one, of a different and better past—a model of perfection in the light of which the present appears to be a deterioration, a degeneration . . . The struggle to transform the social order then becomes a conscious attempt to return to this mythical past.”39 Ginzburg’s paragraph is more analytically operative for me, as a historian, than the anthropological theories mentioned above. In a sense, Ginzburg implies something which I would particularly like to emphasize, and that is the two ways of attending to and understanding the Tradition: one that we could describe as mere conservatism, i.e. the more or less spontaneous way of doing things as one believes they have always been done, or of believing things one thinks have always been believed, and another that is a conscious, reflexive and ideologized attempt to impose an invented or voluntarily recreated Tradition at a critical moment. My interest is therefore focused on the issue of the possible link between anthropological invariants and historical variations. I have attempted to order these historical variations chronologically: The first chapter describes “The Time of the Prophets”, people who claim to be prophets (or whom others accuse of such a claim) and use this claim to rebel against authority. It is the period of the installation of Islam and of the revolt against its mainly Arab establishment by people who were excluded from the benefits of the Islamic Empire. The fact that they had converted to Islam made them expect to share in its benefits. Different rebellions were carried out in the name of specific, possibly heterodox, forms of Islam in which prophethood seems to have played a fundamental role. Chapter 2 is about the rise of the Fà†imid dynasty and discusses the place of the Fà†imids in the general messianism of the Islamic world

39 C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, Turin, Einaudi, 1976, Eng. trans. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press 1980, pp. 77–78.

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circa 900. Chapter 3 deals with al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) where rebels against power, such as 'Umar Ibn Óafßùn have messianic tones and striking similarities with the Fà†imid Mahdì. In the “Sectarian milieu” of Spain after the Muslim conquest, I deal here with the influence of Jewish and Christian messianism on Islam, and I trace the trajectory, on both sides of the Mediterranean, of beliefs such as the Last Emperor who will unify humanity under the same creed. Chapters 4 and 5 analyze the rise of Sufism and trace its contribution to Mahdism in the Maghreb mainly to the debate over community leadership with its ideas about prophethood. This presentation of the contribution of Sufism is organised around two key concepts in Maghrebian Sufism: grace and rigour. Chapter 4, “Rigour” centers on legalism and proceeds from a general discussion of the ˙isba to recount its development in the West becoming the basis for “enlightened violence”. It includes the rise of the Almoravid dynasty considered as a movement of reaction promoted by màlikite scholars against Shì 'ism. Chapter 5 deals with the concept of “Grace”, from a general discussion of the Imamate, through al-Ghazàlì’s doctrine of dhawq, to al-Suhrawardì followed by an account of the development of illuminationist Sufism in the West from Ibn Masarra to Ibn al-'Arabì. In conclusion to both chapters, I provide an account of Sufi figures who combined both grace and rigour in their attitude to authority. Chapter 6 is about the Mahdì Ibn Tùmart: in the first half of the chapter I try to reconstruct his career, in the second half his doctrine. In this way I place him in practice (i.e. politically) as the last and the greatest of the prophets of the Berbers and in principle (i.e. religiously) as the locus for all the different strands that have been discussed in the previous two chapters: rigour, grace, illuminationism. Chapter 7 is dedicated to the rebellious Mahdìs of the Almohad and post-Almohad periods who embody the failure of the Almohads both politically and doctrinally. Chapter 8 covers the 13th century, the rise of the shurafà" (people who claim to be descendants of the Prophet, members of the ahl al-bayt) as a hegemonic group in the Maghreb and the developments which make it convergent with Sufism; the Marìnid dynasty’s attempt to capitalize on this rise is described. Chapter 9 covers the arrival of the Sa'adian dynasty and its rise as a Mahdist movement uniting both sufism and sharìfism. Chapter 10 deals with A˙mad al-Manßùr (d. 1603), the most important Sa'adian sultan, who turned Mahdism into a kind of state doctrine and imperial legitimization, using it as a means of

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propaganda. Chapter 11 discusses the Moriscos (the last Muslims of Spain, forcibly converted to Christianity after the conquest of Granada), their apocalyptic and messianic beliefs. As in Chapter 3, I deal here with a Sectarian Milieu in which Messianism is used in a polemical way amongst religions in conflict. I show how apocalyptic and messianic ideas are used in common by the three religions (Chistianity, Judaism, Islam) to construct an ideology of exclusion. Chapter 12 is about Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, who rebelled against the Sa'adian dynasty in 1610 and is the last Maghrebi Mahdì to have taken power.

CHAPTER ONE

THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS. THE CONVERSION OF THE MAGHREB TO ISLAM

The “Age of Conversions” For a long time the traditional interpretation of Islamic history maintained that conversion to Islam took place on a massive scale during the great wave of lightning conquests that took place over the roughly 100 years following the Prophet Mu˙ammad’s death. However, since the 1960s, scholarly research centred on diverse aspects of the early Islamic world has provided the basis for a re-interpretation of the documentary sources. The result is a new consensus that this ‘age of conversions’, by the end of which the majority of the inhabitants of the territories making up the Muslim Empire had become Muslim, was somewhat longer than previously thought.1 What has been called ‘the age of conversions’ constitutes a period which we now believe encompassed the first three centuries of Islam, at the very least.2 In most areas, it appears that the rate of conversion to Islam showed its steepest growth not during the 1st/7th century, but rather in the late 3rd/9th century and all of the 4th/10th,3 and in some regions, such as al-Andalus, the process of conversion conti-nued into the beginning of the 6th/12th century.4 The new body of work on the ‘age of conversions’ was just one part of a great revisionist debate revolving around early Islam and in particular the shaping of what would later come to be recognised 1 This changing perspective can be seen from D.C. Dennet, Conversion and the poll tax in early Islam, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950, to R.W. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: an essay in quantitative history, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979. 2 M.G. Morony, “The age of conversions: a re-assessment”, in M. Gervers and R.J. Bikhazi, Conversion and continuity. Indigenous Christian communities in Islamic lands, eighth to eighteenth centuries, Toronto, 1990, pp. 135–50. 3 M. Brett, “The spread of Islam in Egypt and North Africa”, in M. Brett (ed.), Northern Africa. Islam and Modernization, London, 1973, pp. 1–12; I. Lapidus, “The conversion of Egypt to Islam”, Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972) pp. 248–62. 4 D. Wasserstein, The rise and fall of the Party Kings, Princeton, 1985, pp. 33–8.

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as sunnite Islam, a debate that has been mentioned in the Introduction. According to the new view, this formative period occupied the three centuries after the death of the Prophet, rather than just one. Naturally, this revisionist debate is not free of controversy, but Muslims and non-Muslims alike have observed that what Mu˙ammad’s followers experienced as ‘Islam’ during the actual lifetime of the Prophet and his Companions must have been quite different from the experience of being Muslim three centuries later, by which time most Muslims were the descendants of Christians (and to a much lesser extent Jews and Zoroastrians). This is because in its formative period Islam must inevitably have been affected by its assimilation of so many converts from other religions, in particular Christianity.5 The Christians of the Middle East and the Mediterranean were members of ancient communities with highly developed traditions of law, education and religious discourse. Over the centuries, Islam further developed its own traditions, and it is difficult to imagine that this process would not be affected by the assimilation of large masses of converts from these older communities. Somehow Islam had to accommodate and respond to the social and spiritual needs of these converts. Furthermore, the very nature of conversion itself must have been affected by this process of assimilation, given that Islamic dogma and law were as yet incompletely defined at this time and the concept of the ‘Believer’ was itself still in flux. The scholars who have addressed these issues have had to pose the question: At what point was a convert regarded as a Muslim and could legitimately regard himself as such? The answers to these questions varied by geographic region and according to the various stages in the evolving definition of Islam. However, the current consensus is that, at least during the earliest centuries of Islam, the first step in conversion consisted of a kind of ‘adherence’, expressed in changes in outward appearance and social behaviour, which allowed initial entry into the community of believers. Hence conversion had a gradual, progressive character that did not involve a sharp break with the past. Real religious conviction and familiarity with Islamic dogma and ritual were acquired only after the convert had been immersed in a community that was already regarded as Muslim. 5 D. Wasserstein, “Islamisation and the conversion of the Jews”, M. García-Arenal (ed.) Conversions islamiques. Identités religieuses en Islam méditerranéen, Paris, 2002, pp. 49–60.

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The appearance of sectarian movements such as the Zaydites, Ismà'ilites and Ibà∂ites also played an important role in the conversion process, since such sects showed considerably more proselytising zeal than did the armies of the initial Muslim conquerors, who were more concerned with the submission of the conquered populations to their new rulers than with their submission to a new God. Some of these sects, particularly the Khàrijites with their concept of salvation through community, practised a style of preaching that was apocalyptic or millenarianist in character and which proved eminently attractive to populations on the periphery of the new empire that were either non-Muslim or only superficially Islamicised. The reasons for conversion in the early years of Islam have also been the subject of intense debate. Some conversion seems to have been motivated by internal divisions and sectarian conflicts within the non-Muslim communities. The social restrictions, inferior legal status and heavy tax burden imposed by the Muslim rulers on their non-Muslim subjects undoubtedly also played a role.6 Many converts were attracted by the social prestige associated with belonging to the dominant elite. However, socially motivated conversion depended also—and perhaps necessarily first—on the existence of social contact between Muslims and non-Muslims. The greater the proportion of Muslims in the population, the steeper the conversion curve.7 The Islamization process required the physical presence of believers, the building of mosques and even the creation of a sense of local history, frequently by the creation of fa∂à"il traditions.8 If we accept the possibility that the Muslim armies may have been driven by a belief in the end of the world among other motivating factors,9 then the building of mosques and other permanent structures would not have been immediately promoted by the conquerors.10 Qur"àn 26:128–135 says “Do you build villas on every high place to amuse yourselves? And do you get for yourselves fine buildings in the hope

6

Lapidus, “The conversion of Egypt to Islam”, p. 260. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period. An essay in quantitative History, Cambridge, 1979, p. 31. 8 D. Cook, “Muslim Apocalyptic and Jihad”, JSAI 20 (1996) p. 80. 9 D. Cook, “Muslim Apocalyptic and Jihad”; F. Donner, “The sources of Islamic Conceptions of War” in J. Kelsay and J.T. Johnson (eds.), Just War and Jihad, New York, 1991, pp. 43–46. 10 M.J. Kister, “A booth like the booth of Moses. A study of an early ˙adìth”, BSOAS 25 (1962) pp. 150–155. 7

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of living therein (for ever)? Truly I fear for you the penalty of the Great Day ( yawm 'aΩìm)”. This chapter deals with Mahdism between the middle of the second/eighth century,—the beginning of Morocco’s political independence from the Eastern Empire—and the start of the fifth/eleventh century. A period clearly belonging to the “age of conversions”. I do not intend to outline a complete history of those centuries, but simply to point out references during this period to the existence of beliefs in a Mahdì or messianic prophet acting as community leader and place those figures in the context of the conversion process. Such references sometimes take the form of descriptions of movements of protest and revolt involving a leader who saw himself as a Mahdì, or was considered as such by his followers or detractors. At other times, they take the form of messianic or redemptionist arguments employed by those in power as a way of legitimising their own established interests. Thus, for example, the first main figure I will study is Idrìs b. 'Abd Allàh, who was descended from the Prophet Mu˙ammad through Mu˙ammad’s daughter Fà†ima and his grandson Óasan. Idrìs is generally considered in normative history books of Morocco to have been its first independent ruler and the first one to make use of the concept of the Mahdì. By laying claim to a lineage going back to Fà†ima he was also the first monarch to be described as “al-Fà†imì”, a term which, as we will see, came to be systematically used as a synonym for the word Mahdì. However, before considering Idrìs and other early Mahdìs, it is first necessary to examine some aspects of the background history of the Maghreb. I will focus in particular on what is known of the Berber populations both before and immediately after the period of the Arab conquest as a way of understanding subsequent developments.

The conversion of the Maghreb The Arabo-Islamic conquests of the first two centuries of the Hijra created an empire which stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to Central Asia. Byzantine Africa was conquered by the Arabs in a period of about fifty years (655–705), and became known as the province of Ifrìqiya, with its capital in Qayrawàn. Over the following five years, the Arabs advanced as far as Tangier and then crossed over into the Iberian Peninsula of the Visigoths, which was conquered between

the time of the prophets

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711 and 715 by troops under the command of ˇàriq ibn Ziyàd. The Atlas, Sùs, Dar'a, and Tafilelt regions remained outside the borders of the new Arabo-Islamic empire until at least the second half of the eighth century.11 Thus the Arab conquest was initially restricted to those territories which were within the limes of the old Roman Empire, i.e. the provinces of Mauritania Caesariensis and Tingitana, and expeditions to remoter regions like the Sùs were not undertaken until the decade of the 730s.12 The Arabs pursued very different policies in the territories which they conquered on either side of the Mediterranean: whereas in the Iberian Peninsula they forged alliances with groups of ruling Visigoths, their allies in North Africa were not representatives of Latin and Christian groups, but their Berber subjects, defined as “pagans” by their latest conquerors. We have already signalled the difference between the pace of the Arab military conquest, the jihàd conquest, and that of the process of Islamisation of the new territories, just as this second process should itself be distinguished from the process of elaboration of Islam which was happening at the same time. Islamisation was not simply a matter of religious conversion to a new faith, but a veritable reshaping of the pre-existing civilization under the new rubric of Islam. Nonetheless, very little is known about the Berbers before the start of this process. Mediterranean Christian converts in the period of Late Antiquity are known to have debated how much of their pagan past could be incorporated in the new religion, even focusing on the issue of how much of their past beliefs would have to be preserved for their existence to continue to make sense. For these converts, there could not be a Christian present if the pagan past were not incorporated and valued as part of their tradition. Within the Muslim world, groups like the Persians also maintained knowledge and awareness of their pre-Islamic past beyond the time of their conversion to Islam. However, no records of such debates have survived for equivalent processes in North Africa. 11 M. Brett, “The Islamisation of Morocco. From the Arabs to the Almoravids”, Morocco. The Journal of the Society for Moroccan Studies, London, II (1992) pp. 57–71. 12 Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib fì ikhtißàr akhbàr mulùk al-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib, French trans. E. Fagnan: Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne intitulée al-Bayano’l Mogrib, Algiers, 1901–1904, I, pp. 26 and 51–52. Vid. T. Lewicki, “Les origines de l’Islam dans les tribus berbères du Sahara occidental: Mùsà ibn Nußayr et 'Ubayd Allàh ibn al-Óab˙àb”, Studia Islamica 32 (1970) pp. 203–214.

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It seems acceptable to assume that the degree of Romanization and Christianization of the Berbers before the conquest must have had its influence on their subsequent adherence to Islam, but how or where this occurred is a controversial issue. There seem to have been wide differences among the Berbers, who ranged from urbandwelling, largely Romanized and Christianized groups to populations in which there had been significant resistance to assimilation during both the Roman and Byzantine periods, and where pagan practices had remained predominant. The distinction which Arab sources make between “Butr” and “Barànis” Berbers has traditionally been interpreted as relating to the extent of each group’s assimilation of Roman practices. Michael Brett, for example, points out that in the work of Ibn 'Abd al-Óakam, the term “Barànis” is generally reserved for North African populations which practised the Christian religion.13 The “Barànis” tribes, located within the Roman limes, would therefore have been the first to undergo the process of Islamisation.14 By contrast, Richard Bulliet believes that of the two groups the “Butr” would have felt the greatest loyalty to Christianity, given their way of life and their inclusion in Roman social and economic structures, which he links to the emergence of certain agricultural practices and techniques. Bulliet also claims that the Butr were strongly influenced by Jewish beliefs, and that those Butr who were Christians were Donatists.15 It is perhaps significant that Butr tribes were involved in the Khàrijite revolts of 740, discussed later in this chapter, and the Kàhina resistance to the Arab conquest. Historians have noted similarities between Khàrijite and Donatist doctrines and although a specific link between the Butr, the Donatists and the Khàrijites has yet to be proved, there is no doubt that such a link would explain a great deal.16 Mohammed Talbi has also postulated a correlation between the schismatic beliefs of new converts to Islam and their previous adherence to Manichaeism or other heterodox doctrines.17

13 M. Brett, “The Arab conquest and the rise of Islam in North Africa”, The Cambridge History of Africa, II, Cambridge, 1978. 14 E. Manzano, “Beréberes de al-Andalus: los factores de una evolución histórica”, Al-Qan†ara 11 (1990) pp. 397–428. 15 R. Bulliet, “Botr et Bèranes: hypothèses sur l’histoire des berbères”, Annales, ESC, 1 (1981) pp. 104–116. 16 Bulliet, “Botr et Bèranes”, pp. 113–114, considers, citing Ibn 'Abd al-Óakam, that there is sufficient evidence for this. 17 M. Talbi, “De l’I'tizal en Ifriqiya au IIIe/IXe siècle” and “La conversion des

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In conclusion, it can be seen that interpretation of the early years is far from simple, as indeed must be the case when the dichotomies used by Arab sources, such as Barànis/Butr, Íanhàja/Zanàta, or nomad/sedentary, are almost certainly fictitious, like all such clearcut antitheses. These dichotomies were the artificial creations of Arab conquerors who felt the need to classify in order to dominate the newly acquired territories, and too eager an acceptance of such distinctions has in the past facilitated the construction of unreliable hypotheses like that of so-called “Berber particularity” so dear to French colonial historiography.18 Muslim conquerors discriminated between “pagans” and what they called ahl al-kitàb, or “peoples of the book”, i.e. members of revealed religions (including zoroastrians). In North Africa, the term was used to describe both Christians and Jews. “People of the book” were able to adhere to the dhimma pact, which permitted them to continue practising their religion in exchange for the payment of certain taxes and the acceptance of a protective statute. This statute laid down a series of restrictions on full participation in the new society, and this meant that elite groups of Christians and Jews with previous experience of power were often among the first to convert to the new religion in order to preserve their social status. In some of those North African areas for which better records exist, such as Ifrìqiya (Tunisia), groups of ruling Christians seem to have preferred to emigrate to the northern Mediterranean.19 Small Christian redoubts are also known to have held out in North Africa until the early 12th century,20 and a considerable Jewish minority existed until contemporary times.

Berbères au Harigisme 'abadito-sufrite et la nouvelle carte politique au Maghreb au II/VIII siècle”, both in his Etudes d’histoire ifriqiyenne et de la civilisation musulmane médiévale, Tunis, 1982, pp. 379–419 and 13–80 respectively. 18 J. Wansbrough, “On recomposing the islamic history of North Africa”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 32 (1969) pp. 161–170, p. 169. 19 M. Talbi, “Le Christianisme maghrébin: de la conquête musulmane à sa disparition. Une tentative d’explication”, in M. Gervers and R. Bizaki, Conversion and Continuity. Indigenous Christian communities in Islamic lands. Eight to Eighteeth Centuries, Toronto, Ontario, 1990, pp. 313–354. 20 J. Cuocq, L’Eglise d’Afrique du Nord du II ème siècle au XII ème siècle, Paris, 1984, pp. 322 and ff., and M. de Epalza (“Falta de obispos y conversión al Islam entre los cristianos de al-Andalus”, Al-Qan†ara, 15 (1994) pp. 385–400) maintains that the lack of bishops was a fundamental factor in the formal conversion to islam of the Christian populations.

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The Berbers, however, converted to the religion of their conquerors en masse but I insist that what we can ascertain seems like submission to new rulers more than to a new God. The information concerning conversion in the Maghreb is scant. Although records for al-Andalus do not contain direct references to Christians converting to Islam until the mid-9th century, indirect references are made to the Muslim affiliations of leading Hispanic families, whose origin can be deduced from their names. In the Maghreb, the issue is complicated by the fact that not all Berbers were pagan, although Arabic sources yield very little information on such people, and because conversion did not always result in a name-change: there are references to Muslims bearing Berber names until the Late Middle Ages. To make matters even more difficult, we do not possess for the Maghreb the rich onomastic literature, in the form of bio-bibliographical dictionaries, which has proved to be so helpful in the reconstruction of the history of al-Andalus in its formative period. Very little is known, then, about this crucial phase of Islamisation of the Western territories of the Islamic Empire. One thing is nonetheless clear: it did not occur at the same speed as the process of Arabisation of these same areas, and here distinctions again have to be made between events in the Iberian peninsula and in North Africa. Berber, like Arabic, was in al-Andalus the language of the conquerors, but Arabic became predominant replacing other languages. In alAndalus, Arabic is known to have become the predominant written language by the 4th/10th century, and the main spoken language by the following century. Berber disappeared from al-Andalus as a spoken language very soon after the conquest, and subsequent emigrating waves of Berbers were arabised very rapidly.21 A totally different picture emerges in Morocco, where several Berber dialects have survived to the present day. For many years, the only Moroccan cities which were arabised were those which were occupied or founded by the Arabs, and the spread of Arabic was related to the establishment of commercial routes rather than the process of Islamisation. Indeed, before the arrival of the Ma'qil Arabs, a faction of the Banù Hilàl who were placed in rural areas by the Almohads in the 6th/12th

21 Vid. D. Wasserstein, “The language situation in al-Andalus” in M. Fierro and J. Samsó (eds.), The Formation of al-Andalus, II (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, vol. 47), Variorum, Ashgate, 1998, pp. 3–35.

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century, Arabic speakers continued to live almost exclusively in the cities.22 Given that all available Arabic sources are city-based, very little material is therefore available for the study of non-citadine groups, and other disciplines, such as archaeology, have only recently started to yield further information.23 The spread and development of Islam in the Maghreb during the early centuries was described by writers who were foreigners in time and space (i.e. Eastern authors writing several centuries after the events) and these writers had no interest in taking into account the pre-Islamic traditions of a country faced with the challenge of a new faith. Their literature, written in Arabic and strictly from the converts’ point of view, is governed by the intellectual and cultural preoccupations of the new religion and civilization to which it gave rise, and these preoccupations often obscure historical reality more than they clarify it.24 The fact that such records are always written in Arabic also brings me to address the conceptual problem of the terminology to be used in this chapter: to give one example, when an Arabic source accuses a Berber enemy of acting as a nabì, or prophet, it is difficult to know exactly how that concept would have been understood by those who followed or supported the nabì in question. What virtues would they have attributed to him, and what might they have expected from a man described in such a way? As if all these difficulties in estimating the speed and depth of Islamisation were not enough, there is one additional difficulty to which I have already made reference in the Introduction. In the first Islamic centuries, the boundaries between theological tendencies remained blurred and, more importantly, a clearly defined “orthodox” body of dogma was yet to be defined. The traditional notion of the Muslim heresiographs, unchallenged for many years by modern scholars, that the different religious movements of later Islam were already well-defined by the early period is no longer accepted by the majority of specialists. As I have explained in the Introduction, even in the East the various strands which were finally woven into the fabric of 22 Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb Occidental. Actes reunis et préparés par J. Aguadé, P. Cressier et A. Vicente, Madrid-Zaragoza, 1998. 23 M. García-Arenal and P. Cressier (eds.), La genesse de la ville islamique au Maghreb et al-Andalus médieval, Madrid, 1998. 24 M. Brett, “The Islamisation of Morocco”, pp. 57–58; R. Brunschvig, “Ibn Abdalhákam et la Conquête de l’Afrique du Nord par les Arabes”, Annales de l’Institut des Etudes Orientales IV (1942–7) pp. 108–155.

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Islamic doctrine in the 3rd/9th century have still not been satisfactorily isolated and understood. Theology and asceticism, kalàm and sufism, all emerged from the same milieu, and the terms which are used to describe this milieu and which will be used in the pages that follow (zuhhàd, mu'tazila, shì'ism) were very vaguely applied to a wide variety of attitudes and beliefs which took time to be clearly defined. It was only in a later period that these terms came to stand for more specific religious groups and movements.25 In addition, many of these early movements had some form of political participation and compromise, and some of them even identified fully with a political party. Such movements cannot be properly understood within the terms of an analysis that reduces them to the sphere of the kalàm. Religious movements, such as that of the mu'tazila, often contained political factions or forces operating alongside others which were completely apolitical. To sum up by paraphrasing the words of Wansbrough’s famous review of Talbi’s work,26 one cannot help doubting whether the history of the first Islamic centuries of the Maghreb can ever be written on the basis of the records available to us. Not only are such records written at several removes in time and even space, as I have argued. They also belong to a historiographical tradition which was far from neutral or profane in its treatment of what were considered sacred events in the history of the community of believers. Wansbrough has therefore suggested that the categories “sunnite” and “shì'ite” are anachronistic when applied in a retrospective fashion to this period. These categories were the product of an interpretation of Maghrebi history in 'Abbàsid and Eastern terms. They excluded all consideration of the period of elaboration of Islam, or of the process of Islamisation as it was then experienced in the Maghreb. Chroniclers used terms that were familiar to them to explain a process, that of the inclusion of the Maghreb in the 'Abbàsid empire, which was fraught with conflict.

25 For example see J. Van Ess, “Beginnings of Islamic Theology”, pp. 87 and ff.; S. Stroumsa, “The beginnings of the Mu'tazila reconsidered”, JSAI 13 (1990) pp. 265–293. 26 Wansbrough, “On recomposing the islamic history of North Africa”, pp. 161–170.

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The Revolt of the Berbers Throughout the first centuries, relations between Berber converts and their conquerors were difficult and unstable. In the 2nd/8th century, recently converted Berbers could at best aspire to the social status of second-class Muslims and this caused great resentment amongst the Berber population. Whenever Berber groups led revolts against the political authorities or in protest against Arab aristocratic dominance, their alleged apostasy was used as a pretext for charging tributes in the form of male and female slaves who were, in principle, Islamic converts.27 Male Berber slaves were employed in Arab armies as mawàlì or “clients” forming regiments of second-grade Muslims unentitled to an equal share of the spoils obtained.28 Such slaves were used as advance guards in military attacks, as when the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Berbers under the mawlà ˇàriq ibn Ziyàd. Khàrijite missionaries entered the Maghreb from at least 95/714,29 and it was under the banner of Khàrijism that the Berber uprisings started. One of the most significant of all the Berber revolts was that which broke out in Tangier in 122/740 and eventually spread as far as Tripoli in Libya. The revolt was triggered by the new governor of the Maghreb, 'Ubayd Allàh b. al-Óab˙àb who, in 115/734, in order to supply slaves to the Eastern parts of the Muslim Empire, captured Berbers in the Sùs region in southern Morocco. His deputy in Tangier, who applied the same policies, was assassinated in 122/740 and the whole region rebelled under the leadership of Maysara, the chief of the Khàrijite Maghràwa tribe. Maysara occupied Tangier and was killed by his own men. The rebellion continued under Khàlid al-Zanàtì who led the tribes of Northern Morocco towards the Shaliff, routing the Arab armies on his way East. In 124/742 the governor of Qayrawàn managed to rout the rebel Berbers in two battles near the city which the Arab chronicles count among the

27 M. Brett, “The Arab conquest”, pp. 506–507. A similar process in al-Andalus is described in M. Fierro, “Cuatro preguntas en torno a Ibn Óafßùn”, Al-Qan†ara 21 (1995) pp. 221–257. 28 M. Talbi, Emirat Aghlabide, Paris, 1966, pp. 25–33. 29 M. Talbi, “La conversion des berbères au Harigisme Ibâdito-sufrite et la nouvelle carte politique du Maghreb au IIº/VIIIº siècle” in Etudes d’Histoire Ifriqiyenne et de la Civilisation Musulmane Médiévale 26 (1982) pp. 13–80, pp. 31 ff.

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most decisive in the history of Islam, equal in importance to the battle of Badr in which the Prophet defeated his Meccan opponents. But the rebellion was resumed in 137/755 and one year later the Warfajjùma tribe of southern Tunisia captured Qayrawàn. The Warfajjùma belonged to the Sufrite branch of Khàrijism, one of the most extremes, and outraged Muslims by the atrocities they commited in Qayrawàn, where they entered the mosque on horseback. In Tunisia, the Berber Khàrijites were routed in the North between 155–158/ 772–775, but remained strong in the extreme south of the country. To the West of Tunis the rebels remained in control. The Banù Yifrin and Maghìla tribes, both khàrijites, held Tlemcen, and two new centres of khàrijism were established by the middle of the 8th century: Sijilmàsa, a ßufrite centre which was to be ruled by the Midrar dynasty until the end of the 10th century, and Tàhart, capital of a 'Ibà∂i state ruled by the Rustumid dynasty until its invasion by the Fà†imids in 296/909. The fact that the Berber revolt was carried out under the banner of Khàrijism, proves the frustration of 8th-century Berbers and their interest in becoming full members of the governing community of believers, and in sharing or participating in the exercise of power. The revolt was one of the many movements linked to the issue of the legitimate succession of the Prophet Mu˙ammad as head of the community; indeed, it might be said that such movements played an important role in defining and elaborating the dogma which came to be known as “orthodox”, sunnite, over the course of the first Islamic centuries. The twin issues of the legitimacy of authority and the legality of the community’s political leadership were debated at length during the early decades. Although details of these debates cannot be given here,30 they can be summarised as revolving around two conflicting principles which will recur in the chapters that follow. On the one hand was the idea that the Imàm should hold his post by public consensus and consent, and be ratified by representatives of the community (usually, the 'ulamà"). Opposed to this was the notion that the Imàm should be chosen on the basis of kinship with the Prophet, i.e. by prophetic lineage. The first of these notions succeeded with the establishment of the Màliki school of law 30 See M. Sharon, “The development of the debate around the legitimacy of authority in Early Islam”, JSAI 5 (1984) pp. 121–141.

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by the jurist Sa˙nùn (d. 240/855) at Qayrawàn in the 9th century, when it became an aspect of the Law of God as defined and elaborated by the four schools of sunnite Islam. The second succeeded with the prestige of descent from the Prophet whose origins in the Maghreb may be traced to the arrival of Idrìs in the middle of the 8th century. However, both principles were still fluid, part of the controversy over the nature of the faith engendered by the large scale process of conversion. This produced on the one hand enormous expectation and on the other, equally widespread frustration when the conversion did not bring about the total integration of the converts into the Muslim community. Two anecdotes from the 10th century emphasize on the one hand the vital question of membership of the community and on the other, the equally vital question of leadership. Both belong to the màlikite sunnite tradition established by Sa˙nùn, and are directed at the opposite position represented at the time of writing by the shì'ite Fà†imids. In the first, Sa˙nùn visited a man on the verge of death who was full of fear and doubts about his own knowledge and observance of Islam. Sa˙nùn asked the man, “Do you believe in the prophets from the first to the last, in the revelation, in the final judgement, in paradise and in hell? Do you believe that the most eminent Imàms after the Prophet were Abù Bakr and 'Umar, that the Qur"àn is the word of God and is uncreated, that God sees everything on the day of judgement and that he is seated on his throne? Have you by any chance rebelled against the Imàm, though he be unjust, with a sword in your hand?” “No”, said the agonizing man, “I believe all of this”. “Then”, said Sa˙nùn, “you may die in peace.”31 In the second, two inhabitants of Qayrawàn, Abù l-'Abbàs and Abù Mu˙riz, were speaking of a third, who was black. Abù l-'Abbàs said, “If you could only see how he leads military expeditions, then you would see something admirable.” To this Abù Mu˙riz replied, “But he does not know God”, and turning to the black man, asked him “Is Mu˙ammad the Prophet an angel or a man?” The black man answered, “He is your master and mine”. “It is God who is 31 R.H. Idrìs, “Contribution à l’histoire de l’Ifrikiya. Tableau de la vie intelectuelle et administrative à Kairouan sous les Aglabites et les Fatimites (4 premiers siècles de l’Hégire) d’après le Riyàd En Nufùs de Abù Bakr al-Màlikì”, Revue de Études Islamiques, Cahiers I (1935) pp. 105–77, pp. 125–126.

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your master”, rectified Abù Mu˙riz.32 The black man had in fact used the formula applied to the Imàm in the alternative creed of the Fà†imids.33 Both anecdotes exemplify my thesis at the beginning of this chapter, that conversion in early Islam meant above all membership of the community of the faithful whose faith was certainly in God but more importantly in the representative of God. At the same time, like all profound and radical changes, this widescale process of conversion produced enormous expectations as well as anxiety, fear and disorientation. These expectations often turned to frustration when conversion did not bring with it the desired acceptance within the dominant culture. Sociologists and anthropologists have made it clear that millenarianism is often born out of the search for a tolerably coherent system of values, a new cultural identity and a regained sense of identity and self-respect. In the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb the initial Khàrijite reaction to conquest and inclusion in the Arab world was followed after the break-up of the Arab dominion by a whole series of initiatives that ranged from the acceptance of new messages from the East to the imitation of the Prophet and his example. It began with the Idrìsids, whose message of revolt on behalf of a descendant of the Prophet was at the opposite extreme from the Khàrijite call for the best believer, “were he a black Ethiop”.

Time of the Prophets: Idrìs and the Idrìsids The history of the Idrìsid dynasty is extremely difficult to ascertain since textbooks have turned it into the “inaugural story” of Morocco, with all the features and proportions of a founding myth. In this myth, the Idrìsids are seen as responsible for the Islamisation of Morocco and the legitimisers of a sacred Moroccan geography which dates its own origins from the moment of its conversion to Islam. The fact that the Idrìsids founded the city of Fez was to give them complete retrospective political primacy after the 14th century, when Marìnid historiographers began to project the capital’s contempo-

32 33

R.H. Idrìs, “Contribution à l’histoire de l’Ifrikiya”, p. 129. M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, p. 105.

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rary splendours upon the past, and to find in Idrìsid protection a basis for their own political legitimacy.34 The 14th century also witnessed the gradual sacralisation of the figure of Idrìs, who became an inevitable reference in all hagiographical sources. From this point on there was to be no saint, founder of a †arìqa or establisher of a zàwiya who did not claim descent from the Idrìsids, and to this day every region of Morocco contains cities whose foundation is attributed to members of the dynasty. The workings of this process will be covered in my discussion of the period during which it occurred, i.e. after the rise to power of the Marìnids. Despite this subsequent emphasis on the importance of the Idrìsids, contemporary sources contain surprisingly little information on them.35 There are no complete histories of the dynasty, and only brief references in the works of Eastern and Andalusian geographers like al-Ya'qùbì or al-Bakrì. Isolated items of data can also be found in authors like al-ˇabarì. These records, though couched in the kind of doctrinally imprecise language to be expected in the second century of Islam, show that the Idrìsids were at first regarded (I would say correctly) as zaydite shì'ites. This is a view which disappears from later historiography, where they become the champions of the Sunna and the authors of Moroccan Islamisation. This interpretative shift clearly derived from an “ideological” and legitimizing use of history by the Idrìsids themselves, but it was also due to the way in which the perception of Shì'ism had altered since the 4th/10th century.36 Idrìs was the first pretender to the Moroccan throne to make use of the term Mahdì. The word had already been used in the East, although without all of the messianic connotations it was later to acquire. It was first used during the Second Civil War, after the death of Mu'àwiya, to describe the long-awaited sovereign who would restore Islam to its primitive purity. Of the Umayyad caliphs, Sulaymàn (96/715) seems to have been the first to present himself to his people as the Mahdì who would restore justice after the oppression exercised by his predecessors.37 The 'Abbàsid revolutionary movement 34

M. García-Arenal, E. Manzano, “Idrìssisme et villes idrìssides”, Studia Islamica 82 (1995) pp. 5–33. 35 Ismà'ìl al-'Arabì, Dawlat al-Adàrisa, Beirut, 1983, pp. 51 and ff. 36 As proposed by A. Laroui, L’histoire du Maroc. Un essai de synthèse, Paris, 1970, p. 99. 37 W. Madelung, art. “Mahdì” in EI 2.

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brought about the emergence, and received the full support, of messianic expectation. The black flags of the 'Abbàsids were raised in Khuràsàn in about 128/746, and this use of the black flag has been related to the messianic and eschatological prophecies and expectations which circulated among the discontented populations subject to Umayyad power, other rebels having used such flags before the 'Abbàsids.38 The 'Abbàsid caliphate in turn was forced to deal with messianic rebellions from the very beginning. A pro-Umayyad uprising occurred in Syria in 134/752, and figures within this movement started to preach the existence of a messianic figure from the old, deposed dynasty who would return to the world to establish the realm of justice on earth. During the same period, Mu˙ammad alNafs al-Zakiyya “of the Pure Soul”, who claimed descent from 'Alì, led a rebellious movement against the 'Abbàsid caliph Abù Ja'far alManßùr (145/762–63). Mu˙ammad proclaimed himself Mahdì in Jerusalem and when his movement met with failure there, repeated the attempt in Medina, where he was defeated and killed in 145/762. This is the beginning of the period described by Bernard Lewis as “The revolt of Islam”,39 which was characterised by a great variety of messianic beliefs. Such beliefs were made up of two different elements: on the one hand, there was expectation of the arrival of a second Mu˙ammad and on the other, the anticipation of a second 'Alì.40 In the case of Mu˙ammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, his revolt against the 'Abbàsids was not motivated, like that of the Khàrijites, by defiance of the principle that the caliph should descend from the Prophet, but rather by his belief that he had a better lineage than the 'Abbàsids. Al-Nafs al-Zakiyya was known as “al-Fà†imi” because, unlike the other 'Alids who constituted the Shì'a and also unlike the 'Abbàsids against whom he fought, he traced his lineage back to Fà†ima, the Prophet’s daughter, through al-Óasan, her elder son, and thus claimed the Caliphate by right of primogeniture. He was recognised as a Mahdì by his followers in Medina and he used the term to describe himself in a letter to the caliph al-Manßùr.41 D. Alexander, “The Black Flag of the 'Abbasids”, Gladius XX (2000) pp. 221–238. 39 B. Lewis, The Arabs in History, London, 1950, chap. 6. 40 M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, pp. 127 and ff. 41 R. Traini, “La corrispondenza tra al-Manßùr e Mu˙ammad an-Nafs az-zakiyya”, Annali de l’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli XIV (1964) pp. 773–798. 38

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The followers of al-Nafs al-Zakiyya were zaydites, i.e. they belonged to one of the branches of the Shì'a, whose doctrine, that the Caliphate belonged to the descendant of 'Alì who arose with the sword to claim it, had not made expectations of the appearance of a Mahdì a central part of its preaching. However, the heresiograph Abù 'Ìsà al-Warràq claimed that some zaydite groups expected al-Nafs alZakiyya to “return” and that significant Mahdist movements were carried out in his name,42 in particular that of the Zanj in Iraq (255– 270/869–883). The leader of this movement, 'Alì ibn Mu˙ammad, claimed to descend from Zayd, a grandson of al-Óusayn, and identified himself with the zaydite belief that the caliphate should belong to the descendant of 'Alì who was strong enough to take it over. This revolt seems to have been comparable to other, later movements which sought to return the privileges of Islam to those deprived of their right, as Muslims, to a share in the gains of conquest and the empire. Its leader was denounced by the 'Abbàsids as a “false prophet” who, from his new capital al-Mukhtàra, the Chosen City, proclaimed himself the Mahdì who had been sent to restore the world to its state of original justice. A hundred years earlier Idrìs had likewise established his new capital, or chosen city al-'Aliyya, the “city of 'Alì”. The leader’s complete name was Idrìs b. 'Abd Allàh b. Óasàn b. 'Alì b. Abì ˇàlib and he was a brother of al-Nafs al-Zakiyya. According to al-Ash'arì (d. 324/935),43 he reached the Maghreb before the Battle of Fakhkh, which took place in 169/786 and where Mu˙ammad’s followers were defeated by the 'Abbàsid caliph. The more generally-accepted version is that he fled to the Maghreb after defeat in the battle.44 Idrìs I’s odyssey is less well-known than that of the Fà†imid Mahdì 'Abd Allàh, known in sunnite sources as 'Ubayd Allàh and discussed in the next chapter, but it resembles it in many notable ways,45 so much that they read as a calque. It is also strikingly similar to the odyssey of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn I al-Dàkhil, the Umayyad who fled Damascus and took refuge in al-Andalus: there is clearly a well 42 For example, that of al-Óusayn al-'Iyànì in Yemen. Vid. Madelung, art. “Mahdì” in EI 2. 43 Al-Ash'arì, Maqàlàt al-islamiyyìn, Cairo, 1950, T.I. p. 145. 44 Ibn al-Athìr (d. 630/1233), Annales du Maghreb et de l’Espagne, trans. E. Fagnan, Argel, 1898, p. 133. See art. “Idrìs I” in EI 1, Eustache. 45 Al-Bakrì, Kitàb al-masàlik, 268, Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères, II, p. 559, Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib, I pp. 72 and 218.

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established topos at work. Persecuted by the 'Abbàsids, Idrìs travelled to Egypt and from there, thanks to the protection of a shì'ite named Wà∂i˙ who was a ßà˙ib al-barìd (postmaster), he managed to reach the extreme Maghreb via the Zab, travelling in disguise and assisted by the freed slave Rashìd.46 In the Maghreb, Idrìs was taken in by a mu'tazilite, Is˙àq b. Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd al-Óamìd, who was the chief of the Berber Awràba tribe which was based in Walìla (Volubilis) and whose ideas he adopted, according to al-Bakrì.47 The Awràba proclaimed as their Imàm the man now known as the founder of the Idrìsid dynasty in Morocco in the year 172/789. The ancient city of Volubilis still exercised control over the old commercial routes, and the Idrìsids were subsequently to use the network to their own advantage.48 We know very little about how the Idrìsids saw themselves. Very little can be said about the titles that they used, the way they interpreted their own origins and the meaning of their dynasty, or about the nature of their aspirations to the Imamate. At the beginning of this chapter I said that the Idrìsids were the first to be called in the Maghreb by the surname al-fà†imì or al-fà†imiyyùn, a term that we will see becoming synonymous with Mahdì, long before the appearance of the Fà†imids, the Ismà'ìlite dynasty which governed Ifrìqiya from 297/909 and moved to Egypt after its conquest in 358/969. Before this dynasty, the terms al-fà†imì or al-fà†imiyyùn were used in a pejorative sense by the 'Abbàsids to refer to those alids who claimed the Imamate for the descendants of 'Alì and Fà†ima and their followers. Mu˙ammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, as we have seen, was known by that epithet, which was probably used by his enemies—we have no evidence, in spite of the insistence of his propaganda on the name of Fà†ima, that he wished to be known by this name.49 The same can be said of his brother Idrìs and his descendants. Several geographical sources from the 4th/10th century (al-Mas'ùdì, al-I߆akhrì, Ibn Óawqal) all refer to Idrìs or his descendants as “alFà†imi”.50 Al-Muqaddasì also wrote an interesting passage which

46

Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 237/121. Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 231/118. 48 García-Arenal and Manzano, “Idrissisme et villes idrissides”. 49 M. Fierro, “On al-Fà†imì and al-fà†imiyyùn”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996) pp. 130–61. 50 M. Fierro, “On al-Fà†imì and al-fà†imiyyùn”, pp. 130–161. 47

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deserves to be considered in this context because it establishes a doctrinal link between the Idrìsids and the Fà†imids. In this passage alMuqaddasì says that the Fà†imids, who are Ismà'ìlites, agree with the mu'tazilites in many ußùl, which are also the basis of the doctrine of the Idrìsids in the Sùs. This fact makes the Idrìsids, according to al-Muqaddasì, close to the Qarma†ians.51 A later source, Ibn al-Kha†ìb (8th/14th century) continues to describe the Idrìsids as Fà†imids,52 whereas Leo Africanus, in the 16th century, describes Idrìs as a “schismatic rebel”. “Schismatic” would be a perfectly acceptable translation of any of the Arabic terms shì'ite, mu'tazilite or Khàrijite. Ibn Khaldùn53 writes that the Idrìsids of Morocco used the term Imàm to describe Idrìs I and his son and heir Idrìs II, stating that “such is the term used among the shì 'ites”. We do, however, have two contemporary sources: coins, and a Latin letter from Sicily. Coins are a good vehicle for legitimising and propaganda, and numismatic studies can say a great deal about the ideology of the rulers who minted them: an Idrìsid dirham has been conserved which was produced in the mint of ˇudgha in 790 and bears the name of 'Alì ibn Abì ˇàlib,54 in whose memory the city al-'Aliyya was named. As for Idrìs II, a coin dated 197/812 carries the inscription “Mu˙ammad is God’s envoy and the Mahdì is Idrìs b. Idrìs”.55 On the other hand, the Latin letter is a letter dated 11 November 813 informing that the patrician Gregory of Sicily had received an embassy of Muslims from the Maghreb, with whom he had concluded a ten-year truce. During negotiations with the Muslims, Gregory reproached them for recent violations of the peace in the form of attacks by pirates. The Muslim ambassadors replied that their sovereign had been a very young child when his father died and that his death had been followed by a period of anarchy for several years, but that authority had now been re-asserted. They would now be able to ensure that the pact was respected, so

51 Al-Muqaddasì, A˙san al-taqàsìm fì ma'rifat al-aqàlìm, ed. M.J. de Goeje, Leiden, Brill, 1906, p. 238; C. Pellat, Description de l’Occident musulman au IV/X siècle, Algiers, 1950, pp. 46–47. Apud Fierro, pp. 143–144. 52 Ibn al-Kha†ìb, Kitàb a'màl al-a'làm, trad. Rafaela Castrillo, Madrid, 1983, p. 115. 53 Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, trans. Slane, Paris, 1862–1868, I, p. 453 54 T.S. Noonan, “When and how dirhams first reached Russia. A numismatic critique of the Pirenne theory”, Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique XXI, 3–4 (1980) p. 453. 55 D. Eustache, Corpus des dihrams idrisites et contemporaines, Rabat, 1971–1971, p. 199.

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long as the Muslims concerned were not from al-Andalus, which had its own government and against whom the Maghrebis were prepared to form an alliance with the Sicilians. These ambassadors must therefore have been sent by Idrìs II, who acceded to the throne as a new-born child. The passage of the letter which most interests me here is the following: “Pater istius Amiralmuminin qui nunc apud nos regnare videtur, defunctus est, et iste relictus est parvulus . . .”56 This is the only evidence we have that the Idrìsids officially used the title of amir al-mu"minìn—Idrìs II’s embassy clearly did so here in what seems to be a revindication of their Fà†imid legitimacy. Idrìs’ descendants did not, however, adopt the title of “caliph” (amir almu"minìn) and in the khu†ba they were called yà bn rasùl Allàh.57 That is to say, I have found no references in contemporary Arab sources to the Idrìsids making use of the title of “caliph”, although it is perhaps also worth mentioning the existence of some satirical verses about Idrìs II reproduced by al-Bakrì (writing circa 460/1068) which accused him of wanting to be a caliph (khalìfa).58 The Caliphate is inseparable from 'Alid claims and should certainly be considered part of the original revindication of Idrìs I, if not of Idrìs II after his majority, or of his descendants. The lack of contemporary data contrasts with the extraordinary cult of Idrìs II which occurred in later times, and will be considered further on in this book. This cult was closely associated with the city of Fez, “city of cities” whose foundation is attributed to Idrìs I. Idrìs built a first nucleus in about 172/789 which was completed by his son Idrìs II, who founded a city which he called al-'Aliyya (the city of 'Alì) in what is today the district of al-Qarawiyyìn.59 From the beginnings, however, we can see that the fledgling dynasty combined the concepts of descent from the Prophet and Mahdism, both of which were destined to be of immense importance in the religious and political history of the Maghreb. There is no doubt that these two notions, together with their foundation of Fez, provided the Idrìsids with very powerful legitimizing arguments. A fre56 Apud Talbi, Emirat Aghlabide, pp. 395–396 and n. 3. The complete text of the letter can be found in C. Cenni, Monumenta dominationes pontificiae, 2 vols, Rome, 1760–61, pp. 76–80. 57 Ibn Khordâdhbeh, Kitâb al-masâlik wa-l-mamâlik, ed. de Goeje, 2nd ed., Leiden, 1967, pp. 88–89. 58 Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 239/122. 59 García-Arenal and Manzano, “Idrissisme et villes idrissides”, pp. 15 and ff.

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quently-cited prophetic tradition which is interpreted as referring to the ahl al-bayt says “Every bond of relationship and consanguinity (sabab wa-nasab) will be severed on the day of the Resurrection except mine”.60 This ˙adìth clearly reflects the attraction that the Berber tribes, in perpetual internal conflict between clans and unwilling to grant leadership to members of one clan to the detriment of others, may have felt towards choosing their leaders among members of the ahl al-bayt. But if we try to answer the question why the Awràba chose Idrìs or why they found his leadership legitimate—if, in other words, we want to know something about what sort of leadership it was—we cannot limit ourselves to supposing61 that there must have been a previous shì'ite da'wa or mission. To make such an interpretation would be to accept too literally what is described in the sources, which clearly resort to an explicative schema which later became recurrent, that of pointing to a heterodox da'wa to indicate a threat to the political order of the dàr al-islàm. In order to gain a more complete understanding, we must bear in mind the preceding and contemporary situation beginning with Mu'tazilism, the preaching that, we are led to believe, had won over the Awràba, the Berber who welcomed Idrìs.

Mu'tazilism Although the great Berber revolt of the mid-eighth century was Khàrijite in inspiration, giving rise to the first Berber states of the Muslim period, the frequent occurrence of the term mu'tazila in the sources points to the importance of this second strand of revolutionary preaching in the Maghreb. The problem is to explain its reception in the shadowy world of Islam in the Maghreb in the aftermath of the Khàrijite revolt. Ifrìqiya had been reclaimed for the empire by the 'Abbàsids, and the central Maghreb was held by the Khàrijite Ibn Rustam, while in Morocco we find not only khàrijites but mu'tazilites, occupants of a position which on the one hand resembled that of the khàrijites in its dislike of earthly authority but on the other is associated in the sources with Zaydism. Al-Ash'arì 60

Apud art. “Sharìf ” in EI 1. Talbi, Emirat Aghlabide; Laroui, Histoire du Maghreb. Un essai de synthèse, Rabat, 1977, p. 100. 61

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describes zaydism as intimately linked to mu'tazilism because of the relations between Wàßil b. 'A†à" and Zayd b. 'Alì. In the first half of the 2nd/8th century, Wàßil b. 'A†à", a disciple of Óasan al-Baßrì, founded what would grow to be one of the most important theological schools in all Islam, the mu'tazila. Very little is known of the origins and ideological content of the movement, whose doctrine was not fully developed until several decades later. In this first period, which was very different from the later period when the mu'tazila adopted mainly rationalistic theses, some mu'tazilites practised forms of extreme asceticism, and some were even prominent figures in the group known as ßùfiyyat al-Mu'tazila. The mu'tazilites belonging to this group coincided in several of their doctrinal beliefs with the khàrijites, and in particular with the Najdiyya Khàrijites, in that both believed in the dispensability of the Imamate. They did not want any political or religious authority to stand between themselves and God.62 References to their activities appear to be related to local autonomous movements, to processes of revolt against an unjust governor and to practice of the precept of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” (al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf wa-l-nahy 'an al-munkar).63 The ascetic and moralistic tendency in such movements is always of an extreme nature and it might well be that those mu'tazilites were not part of the theological sect of the same name: in the apocalyptic traditions a nonparticipant or seceder is called a mu'tazil, one who generally retreats to a desert place, far from a society which he has judged to be nonMuslim or not good enough religiously, which he must therefore abandon in order to live a life satisfactory to God.64 As far as the Islamic West is concerned, however, it is said that Wàßil sent missionaries who combined rhetoric and the practice of asceticism, in imitation of Wàßil himself, to all Islamic regions, and that they were particularly successful in the Maghreb.65 Many of them were merchants, and Ibn al-Faqìh and Ibn Khurdàdhbih wrote of their presence in Tangier and Tàhart.66 But in the 2nd/8th century 62 P. Crone, “A Statement by the Najdiyya Kharijites on the Dispensability of the Imamate”, Studia Islamica 88 (1998) pp. 55–76. 63 M. Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 196–197. 64 D. Cook, “Muslim Apocalyptic and Jihad”, pp. 80–81. 65 J. Van Ess, Une lecture à rebours de l’histoire du Mu'tazilisme, Paris, 1978, pp. 45–46. 66 Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, ed. de Goeje, Leiden, 1889, p. 88.

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both territories contained Berber groups, mostly Zanàta, who are referred to in the sources as “Wàßiliyya”, i.e. followers of the school of Wàßil ibn 'A†à".67 According to the chronicle of Abù Zakariyyà" al-Warghalànì (d. 471/1078) the “Wàßiliyya” of the Tàhart region fought bitter struggles against the Rustamids when the latter took control of the city.68 Meanwhile al-Ka'bì writes of “bearers of arms”, i.e. armed men, when he lists Wàßil’s followers in the extreme Maghreb. These were the tribes which were to welcome Idrìs.69 The first Berber regimes of the Muslim period were all khàrijite, or related to khàrijism. Once again, one has to point to the frequency with which the term mu'tazila is mentioned in the sources, which are nonetheless far from specific about what they mean when using the term. Nallino has shown the doctrinal concordances that existed between mu'tazilites (the theological sect) and khàrijites in matters such as belief in the createdness of the Qur"àn, or the metaphorical interpretation of anthropomorphist passages, and the coincidence of the previous existence of mu'tazilites in places, such as Tàhart, where khàrijite kingdoms were later established.70 Van Ess points to the great similarities that existed in particular between the Ibà∂ì current and the mu'tazila, to the extent that foreign observers concluded that there had been a complete symbiosis of the two.71 Another coincidence between khàrijism and mu'tazila seems to have resided in the ideals of extreme austerity and asceticism expected from Imàms of the community. Abù Zakariyyà" al-Warghalànì, for example, describes the extreme and repeated fasting, sleep deprivation, and constant use of prayer and recital of the Qur"àn practised by the chiefs of the Wàßiliyya groups of the Tàhart region.72 'Amr b. 'Ubayd, a brotherin-law of Wàßil, one of the first mu'tazilites and even more ascetic than Wàßil himself, was renowned for his night prayers, for wrapping

67 Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 67. For the early influence of mu'tazilite dogma and not just of dissident politics, in North Africa, see C.A. Nallino, “Sull’origine del nome dei Mu'taziliti” in Raccolta di scritti editi e inediti, vol. II, Rome 1940, pp. 167–169. 68 “La Chronique” d’Abù Zakariyyà" al-Wargalànì”, trans. R. Le Tourneau, Revue Africaine 103–104 (1959–60) pp. 145–155. 69 Ka'bì, Maqàlàt al-islamiyyìn, apud J. Van Ess, Une lecture à rebours de l’histoire du Mu'tazilisme, p. 48. 70 C.A. Nallino, “Rapporti fra la dogmatica Mu'tazilita e quella degli Ibaditi dell’Africa settentrionale” in Raccolta di scritti editi e inediti, vol II, Rome, 1940, pp. 146–169. 71 Van Ess, Une lecture à rebours, Paris, 1984, p. 48 and refs. 72 Van Ess, Une lecture à rebours, pp. 147–148.

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himself in a woollen izàr in the sufi manner, for his opposition to the permission of music, and for formulating rules of moral conduct rather than theological principles. On the only occasion when the mu'tazilites revolted against 'Abbàsid power, after the death of 'Amr b. 'Ubayd, they did so in support of Ibràhìm b. 'Abd 'Allàh and Bashìr al-Ra˙˙àl, both militant sufis with a marked tendency towards social criticism who wrapped themselves in woollen cloths.73 After they were defeated, Bashìr’s sons fled to the Maghreb where they took refuge among the mu'tazilite tribes, a fact which in Van Ess’s opinion indicates that the Maghreb was the only region where mu'tazilism remained completely alive.74 The mu'tazilite school suffered under the 'Abbàsids from a ban on the practice of their social and political ideals and in particular on practising the precept of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf wa-l-nahy 'an al-munkar, as it was interpreted by them.75 The mu'tazila seems to have provided, in the Muslim West, a series of ideological instruments which thereafter repeatedly underlie various movements of political and religious dissidence. Or conversely, it would be more accurate to say that Eastern writers tried to define trends and characteristics specific to the Maghreb by relating them to doctrinal terms which were familiar to them through widespread later use in the East.

Barghawà†a The Barghawà†a movement grew out of the great Khàrijite upheaval of the mid-8th century among the Maßmùda tribes of the Tàmesnà region, in the Atlantic plains of Morocco, where ˇarìf, a companion-in-arms of the famous Khàrijite rebel Maysara (leader of the great Berber rising which began in 122/740), founded in about 124/742 a kingdom which then evolved in a highly unusual way. It passed from the adoption of “heresy” as a catalyst for autonomous aspirations to the creation of what Arab sources, though very sparing in details, seek to define as an autonomous religion. Al-Bakrì attributes this change to Íàli˙, ˇarìf ’s son and successor.76 73

Van Ess, Une lecture à rebours, pp. 61–62. See Van Ess, Une lecture à rebours, p. 62 and ZDMG, 126 (1976) p. 50 and n. 48, p. 58 and n. 59. 75 Fa∂l al-i'tizàl, apud Van Ess, Une lecture à rebours, p. 64. 76 Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 135/260–261. 74

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Íàli˙, who had distinguished himself by his knowledge and virtue, presented himself to the Berbers as a “prophet”, preached a new doctrine to them and provided them with a Berber version of the Qur"àn. He entrusted his son Ilyàs with the task of preserving and publishing his doctrine, and with taking up arms against those who did not accept it. Before leaving for the East, he promised his followers that he would return when the seventh king ascended to the throne, and declared that he was the Mahdì (al-Mahdì al-akbar) who would appear at the end of all time to fight against al-Dajjàl. He also said that Jesus, 'Ìsà ibn Maryam, would be amongst his followers and would let him lead his prayer. His name, in Berber, would be Wuryàwirà, which al-Bakrì translates as “he after whom there is nothing”.77 Íàli˙’s fame was built, above all, on the basis of his virtue and asceticism. He was seen as possessing the character of a prophet and, also that of a shì'ite ismà'ìlite-type Imàm 78 accompanied by signs which proved his proximity to the Prophet and which were highly charged with apparent eschatological significance, such as the fact that his death occurred exactly one hundred years after that of Mu˙ammad.79 Íàli˙’s tremendous prestige was exploited in particular by his grandson Yùnus (227–271/842–884), who in turn proclaimed his own prophethood (nubuwwa). Yùnus had travelled to the East, where he studied astrology and other sciences and was said to have attained a considerable level of knowledge.80 Yùnus made this journey in the company of other notable Maghrebis whose names are given by al-Bakrì, who specifies that three of them, including Yùnus, assumed the condition of prophets.81 In order to explain how Yùnus justified using such a term, sources tell us that he predicted several eclipses which his followers later witnessed, and made other predictions which were later fulfilled: “he made for them a divine word which he composed in their language (Berber) and through which he dictated his own wishes, taking into account their traditional convictions”.82 This reference to “their traditional convictions” must be taken as a clear allusion to pre-Islamic or syncretic beliefs.

77 78 79 80 81 82

Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 136/261. Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 135; Ibn 'Idhàrì, Bayàn I, pp. 57, 224–225. Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 260/135. Ibn Óawqal, Íùrat al-ar∂, ed. M.J. de Goeje, Leiden, 1873, p. 873, 82/78. Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 264/137. Ibn Óawqal, Íùrat al-ar∂.

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Yùnus’ successor, Abù Ghufayr, who continued Yùnus’ work, also declared himself a prophet (nabì ),83 and claimed to receive divine revelations, saying that the angels transmitted their orders and God’s prohibitions to him. It was even said that prophetic ability was transmitted through the lineage of the Banù ˇarìf and that the Barghawà†a believed in the nubuwwa of Íàli˙ and all of his descendants.84 Shì'ite but also Khàrijite influences seem apparent, given that Abù Ghufayr took the ideals of austerity and deprivation inherited from khàrijism to such an extreme that he was known to fast for five, seven or nine consecutive days,85 inviting his followers to practise austerity, renounce the world, and lead a simple and ascetic life.86 The Barghawà†a played an important political role until the arrival of the Almoravids.87

Al-Bajalì Unlike Idrìs I, al-Óasan b. 'Alì b. Warsand al-Bajalì was a Berber from the Sùs in southern Morocco who lived at the same time, or very shortly after, Yùnus, in the mid-ninth century. His followers were Berbers from the tribe of the Banù Lamàs and received the name of Bajaliyya.88 Ibn Óazm89 claims that their doctrine resembled that of the rawàfi∂ shì'ites, but that they believed that the Imamate should only be exercised by a descendant of al-Óasan.90 Al-Bajalì convinced the Maßàmida of the Sùs and their chief (ßà˙ib) A˙mad b. Idrìs b. Ya˙yà b. Idrìs b. 'Abd Allàh b. al-Óasan, according to Ibn Óazm, or Idrìs Abù l-Qàsim b. Mu˙ammad b. Ja'far b. 'Abd Allàh according to al-Bakrì—an Idrìsid at all events, and thus with an interest in claiming the Imamate for the descendants of al-Óasan. Ibn Óawqal, for Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 138; Ibn Óawqal, Íùrat al-ar∂, p. 83/79. Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 138. 85 Ibn Óawqal, Íùrat al-ar∂, p. 83/79. 86 For the religion of the Barghawà†a, see, apart from Talbi, A. Bel, La religion musulmane en Bérbérie: equisse d’histoire et sociologie religieuse, Paris, 1938, pp. 170 and ff.; G. Marcy, “Le Dieu des Abadites et des Bargwata”, Hespéris 22–23 (1936) pp. 33–56. 87 Sàlim, A.A., Min jadìd ˙awla Barghawà†a, haràtiqat al-Magrib fì-l-'aßr al-islàmì, Alexandria, 1993. 88 Al-Bakrì claims that al-Bajalì settled among the Banù Lamàs before Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Shì'ì arrived in Ifrìqiyya (280/893), Masàlik, p. 161. 89 Ibn Óazm, Kitàb al-fißal wa-l-milal wa-l-a˙wà" wa-l-ni˙al, Cairo, 1347 (1928–29), IV, p. 183. 90 Ibn Óazm, apud I. Friedlaendr, “The Heterodoxies of the Shiites in the Presentation of Ibn Hazm”, JAOS, xxvii (1907) pp. 54 and ff., 75. 83 84

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example, who is followed by al-Idrìsì,91 claims that the Bajaliyya were mùsàwì shì'ites, who believed that Mùsà b. Ja'far al-KàΩim, the seventh of the twelve Imàms of the Ithnà 'Ashariyya, was the hidden and awaited Imàm, i.e. the Mahdì. The Bajaliyya were associated with the Idrìsids, and this association seems to have survived the disintegration of the Idrìsid dynasty in the first half of the 4th/10th century. However, little is known of the Bajaliyya. Al-Bakrì 92 tells us that in their call to prayers they added to the phrase “I bear witness that Mu˙ammad is the envoy of God” others which said “I bear witness that Mu˙ammad is the best of men” and “Come to the excellent work, the family of Mu˙ammad is the best that there is among creatures”, together with the shì'ite formula ˙ayya 'alà khayri l-'amal, which also corresponds to the essentially khàrijite idea of imàmat al-Fà∂il. It should be borne in mind that according to sources from Ifrìqiya, followers of 'Abd Allàh al-Fà†imì added to the call to prayers the formula “Come to the best works”. Shì'ite authorities laid down the death penalty for those muezzins who refused to use this formula.93 The Bajaliyya had numerous followers in the Sùs and their kingdom was maintained until it was destroyed by the Almoravid Ibn Yàsìn. This seems to indicate that the Sùs must have been islamised, at least partly, under the influence of tendencies which historians have considered close to the Shì'a.94 Óà-Mìm The Barghawà†a were exceptional as a successful community established by their prophet that survived for two hundred years until they were wiped out by conquest. But the sources name a great number of figures considered prophets, fortune tellers or even wizards among the Berbers, whether they were more or less islamised Muslims or not. This undoubtedly reveals something about autocthonous beliefs

91

And by W. Madelung, who adopts this version in “Some notes on non-ismà'ìlì Shiism in the Maghrib”, Studia Islamica 44 (1976) pp. 87–97, p. 96. 92 Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, pp. 304–305/161. 93 Apud Idrìs, “Contribution à l’histoire de l’Ifrikiya”, p. 145. 94 W. al-Qadi, “Al-Shì'a al-bajaliyya fi-l-Magrib al-Aqßà”, Actes du premier Congres de la Civilisation du Maghreb, Tunis, 1979, p. 167.

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before the process of Islamisation95 as well as the blurring, characteristic to the world of Late Antiquity as interpreted by Peter Brown, between the “evil” and “good” supernatural power. It would be possible to cite a very long list of the so-called “false prophets” who followed, but I will limit myself here to the case of the Ghumàra, among whom, in the words of Ibn Khaldùn, “many prophets have arisen”.96 Lewicki describes four prophets among the Ghumàra,97 of whom the most outstanding is undoubtedly Óà-Mìm (d. 315/927–28), whose case in many ways parallels that of the Barghawà†a. Óà-Mìm, a self-proclaimed prophet (rasùl wa-nabì),98 preached a new religion which mixed Muslim doctrines with older local beliefs resembling those of Íàli˙ b. ˇarìf.99 As in the case of the Barghawà†a, religious dogma and precepts were gathered together in a Berber “Qur"àn”.100 In the cases of both Barghawà†a and ÓàMìm, sources refer to prescriptions and above all food prohibitions which seem to derive from old Berber beliefs.101 The “false prophet” Óà-Mìm was acompanied by his aunt, who was a sorceress (sà˙ira), as was his sister, a woman of great beauty from whom al-Bakrì says the Berbers asked for protection and assistance when making ready for military expeditions—a reminiscent figure in some ways of the famous Kàhina, the woman leader of the Berber resistance movement against the Islamic conquest. Óà-Mìm died in 315/927–28 fighting against the Maßmùdas of the Tangier litoral. The failure of Óà-Mìm’s mission did not prevent other prophets from arising among the Ghumàra. Ibn Khaldùn describes the attempt of one 'Àßim b. Jamìl al-Yazdajùmì, who also posed as a prophet and whose adventure remained in the memory of the Ghumàra until the historian’s own times. Another such prophetic figure occurred in

95 T. Lewicki, “Prophetes, devins et magiciens chez les Berberes medievaux”, Folia Orientalia VII (1965) pp. 3–27; H. Ferhat and H. Triki, “Faux prophetes et Mahdis dans le Maroc medieval”, Hespéris-Tamuda 26–27 (1988–89) pp. 7–23. 96 Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l’Afrique seprentrinale, trans. Slane, Paris, 1925, II, p. 135 97 T. Lewicki, “Prophètes, devins et magiciens chez les berbères médiévaux”, pp. 10–12. 98 Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 101. 99 For the doctrine preached by Óà-Mìm, see A. Bel, La religion musulmane en Bérbérie, pp. 175 and ff. 100 Al-Bakrì, Masàlik, p. 198/100. 101 T. Lewicki, “Survivances chez les Berbères médiévaux d’ère musulmane de cultes anciens et de croyances paiennes”, Folia Orientalia VIII (1966) pp. 33 and ff.

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Tlemcen: this was a muezzin who declared himself a Mahdì in about 831 and received widespread support. In order to avoid falling into the hands of the governor of Tlemcen, the Mahdì was forced to flee to al-Andalus, where he also gained adepts. He preached a new interpretation of the Qur"àn and a series of prohibitions of a magical nature which involved depilation, the cutting of hair and nails, and the wearing of adornments. He was crucified in 851.102 The movements described in this chapter can, then, be included in the plethora of millenaristic and apocalyptic movements which flourished on the peripheries of the 'Abbàsid empire after the death of al-Óasan, the grandson of the Prophet Mu˙ammad, in 268/874. Eastern sources, especially al-ˇabarì, contain similar accounts of contemporaray movements in the Middle East. Of particular interest are the parallels between Barghawà†a, Bajaliyya and the Qaràmi†a or Qarma†ians, whose origins go back to 278/891–2. The Qarma†ians also sought to create an alternative to existing Islamic power in the form of a society where believers would be able to benefit from the privileges of power which as Muslims they deserved, but from which they had been progressively excluded. They used a Mahdist discourse which incited followers to fight against the injustice and iniquity of the 'Abbàsid state.103 Al-ˇabarì relates that they had their own book of commandments, perhaps an imitation of the Qur"àn like that of the Barghawà†a, and a prophet by the name of al-Faraj ibn 'Uthmàn who led a life of piety and extreme asceticism and who “preached the religion of Christ, who is Jesus, who is the Logos, who is the Messiah (Mahdì) who is A˙mad ibn Mu˙ammad ibn al-Óanafiyya, who is Gabriel. He said that Christ appeared before him in human form and told him: “You are the preacher, and you are the proof; you are the she-camel, and you are the ass; you are the Holy Spirit and you are John the Baptist (Ya˙yà ibn Zakariyyà")”.104 The same source tells us that Ya˙yà ibn Zakariyyà", the Qarma†ian leader who appeared in Syria in 289, told his followers that “the she-camel (nàqa) which he rode was divinely ordered, and if they follow her wherever

Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib fì ikhtißàr akhbàr mulùk al-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib, French trans. E. Fagnan: Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne intitulée al-Bayano’l Mogrib, Algiers, 1901–1904, pp. 146–147. 103 M. Brett, The rise of the Fatimids, p. 71. 104 Al-ˇabarì, Ta"rìkh al-rusul wa-l-mulùk, vol. XXXVII, trans. P.M. Fields, Jacob Cassner (The 'Abbasids recover), New York, 1987, p. 173. 102

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she goes they will be victorious”. These quotations seem to be related to those of Isaiah in the Bible: “and behold I see a man riding on an ass and a man riding on a camel; and one of them came forward crying and said, Babylon is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken on the ground”. The man on the camel must be identified with the Prophet Mu˙ammad, whose conquests in Mesopotamia had brought about the fall of Babylon. The man on the ass is Jesus, who rode one into Jerusalem. In early Islamic sources there are frequent references to traditions of an awaited prophet who would come riding on an ass. Some of these traditions associate Mu˙ammad with this prophet, but most of them speak of the year 100 of the Hijra as sanat al-˙imàr or sanat ßà˙ib al-˙imàr.105 Mu˙ammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya himself appeared in Medina riding an ass.106 Sulayman Bashear claims that these beliefs were of an apocalyptic character and had been inherited from pre-Islamic materials with parallels in Judaism, and cites, among other sources, the apocalypse of Deutero-Zechariah, which probably dates from the Seleucid period and which promises Jerusalem the coming of its king of salvation “riding upon an ass and upon a colt of the foal of the ass”. In Matthew, this was presented as a fulfilment of the apocalypse of Zechariah.107 We will meet more “men upon asses” in later periods. Like the Barghawà†a, the Qarma†a introduced variations in prayer rituals and food prescriptions: they allowed the consumption of wine and of animals with tusks and talons.108 The movements which have been considered in this chapter fit in the process which for the East has been called “the revolt of Islam” with its messianic tinge. In the case of the Berbers we also know of the existence among them of an extremely ancient belief that “prophetic ability” was an attribute of kings, and pre-Islamic texts show how the Berbers associated the concept of “prophet” with that of political leader in the period before the Islamic conquest.109 A prophet is not the same as a Mahdì, but previous belief in the former would 105 S. Bashear, “Riding Beasts on Divine Missions”, Journal of Semitic Studies, XXXVI, 1 (1991), p. 50 and p. 68. 106 Bashear, “Riding Beasts”, pp. 73 and ff., where later examples are also given from the II and even the IV centuries of the Hijra. 107 Bashear, “Riding Beasts”, p. 37. 108 Al-ˇabarì, Ta "rìkh al-rusul wa-l-mulùk, vol. XXXVII, pp. 174–175. 109 Apud H.T. Norris, The Berbers in Arabic Literature, London, 1982, p. 96.

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have facilitated acceptance of the latter figure. In these early centuries, prophets were charismatic and providentialist figures who displayed the most radical forms—generally nourished on syncretism—of religious as well as political opposition. They were the product of processes of conversion and acculturation and of the full inclusion of the converts in a new Islamic society. The display of extreme asceticism seems to have been another important element in the make-up of those who aspired to head the community. Ascetic heroism was undoubtedly one of the sources of their charisma, as was the very strict fulfilment of religious duties. Ideas concerning the “revitalization” of religion also seem to have circulated from an early period. It should be said that as well as expressing disdain and fear of the Berbers, early Arabic sources also contain some attempts to ennoble them. One such reference can be found in the chronicle of Abù Zakariyyà" al-Warghalànì (d. 471/1078), who relates an anecdote attributed to 'Aisha, wife of the Prophet, according to which the Archangel Gabriel presented the Berber people to Mu˙ammad as the chosen people destined “to return life to the religion of God when it has died and to renew it and revitalize it when it is worn out”.110 This is a portrayal with which the Berbers themselves would have been perfectly content; nonetheless, this idea of the revitalization of religion was to become an important legitimizing argument of those who governed them.

110 Abù Zakariyyà" al-Warghalànì, French trans. R. Le Tourneau, Revue Africaine, pp. 103–104, p. 107.

CHAPTER TWO

THE RISE OF THE FÀˇIMID DYNASTY

The accounts given of the Fà†imids by extant sources are central, from a historical point of view, to the issues considered in this book. This is so, although the territory where they took power, Ifrìqiya (modern Tunisia) is in principle outside the geographical limits that I set in the Introduction. The Fà†imids are particularly important for an understanding of the way in which the Berbers sought inclusion in the Islamic world, and more specifically, to an appreciation of the character of the two great Berber movements, to be considered later, those of the Almoravids and the Almohads. The Fà†imid, Almoravid and Almohad movements, though opposed to one another, were to lead to the unification of the Maghreb under Islam and the creation of an Islamic state in the Muslim West. In this chapter I will refer briefly to the spectrum of Mahdist movements at the time of the Fà†imids in the Mashriq before concentrating on the one hand on Abù 'Abd Allàh and his preaching of revolution to the Kutàma and on the other on the Mahdì and his concept of government by the representative of God on earth. The background to these movements is the political and religious history of the first century of 'Abbàsid rule in the Middle East, in which the dispute over the succession to the power and authority of Mu˙ammad evolved towards the radically opposed positions of Sunnism and Shì'ism. It is an evolution represented for this purpose by the terms khalìfa (caliph) and imàm. Crone and Hinds have proposed, against traditional interpretations, that the caliphal title was first formulated as Khalìfat Allàh.1 This is the term which the early Muslim community adopted to solve the problem of the continuance of prophethood. It is a controversial suggestion but reasonable, from my point of view, as a working hypothesis. Khalìfat Allàh is also the title of the Mahdì in

1 P. Crone and M. Hinds, God’s Caliph. Religious and authority in the first centuries of islam, Cambridge, 1986.

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eschatological works.2 If one accepts that Islam began as a messianic movement,3 then caliphs in the sense of institutionalised heads of state cannot have existed until the messianic adventure had ended.4 Thus it would seem that the caliphate must have originated as a form of institutionalised redemption. This would certainly explain why it appears as a redemptive institution in Umayyad court poetry.5 By the time of al-Màwardì in the 11th century, however, the Caliph was the khalìfat rasùl Allàh. Traditionally regarded as the original title, it then designated a successor to the Prophet who ruled in accordance with the law as defined by the jurists, the scholarly body of the 'ulamà", who were the recognised authorities of Sunnite Islam. The change was announced in the middle of the ninth century when the 'Abbàsids abandoned the Mi˙na or “inquisition”, the attempt to compel the jurists to subscribe to the doctrine of the created Qur"àn. This was a doctrine of the Mu'tazila, by then a respectable theological movement patronised by Baghdad. Abandoned by the 'Abbàsids, it was adopted by their Shì'ite opponents, for whom the term Imàm came to designate the representative of God on earth with supreme authority for the law, but without the power that the Umayyads and 'Abbàsids had usurped. The Shì'a, who unlike the Idrìsids, who claimed descent from Óasan, looked to the line of Óusayn (d. 61/680) for their leaders, had split into two separate movements in 148/765 after the death of Ja'far al-Íadìq, the sixth Imàm after 'Alì. Ja'far’s oldest son was Ismà'ìl, who died before his father. On Ja'far’s death, therefore, most of the Shì'a recognised his younger son Mùsà alKàΩim (d. 183/799–800) as the Seventh Imàm. Mùsà’s line continued until the death of the Eleventh Imàm, Óasan al-'Askarì, in 260/874 without an apparent heir. His death plunged the Shì'ite community into confusion. His followers held that an infant son, Mu˙ammad, was the Twelfth Imàm who had vanished into concealment, first of all on earth and after 940 in heaven. There he has remained until the present day as the expected Mahdì who in the meantime is the Hidden Imàm who guarantees the Law of Islam for the Ithnà 'Ashariyya, the Twelvers or Imàmiyya, who today form

2 P. p. 16. 3 P. 4 P. 5 P.

Crone, M. Cook, Hagarism. The making of the Islamic world, Cambridge, 1977, Crone, M. Cook, Hagarism, chap. 1. Crone, M. Cook, Hagarism, chap. 1. Crone, M. Cook, Hagarism, Chap. 3, pp. 33 ff.

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the majority of Shì'ites, notably in Iran. For them, the presence of the Imàm is metaphysical; he is the ˙ujja or proof of God and the qu†b or axis upon which the world spins, but will not assume the Caliphate or government of the community until the end of time.6 But the Seveners, now known as Ismà'ìlites, who believed in the Imamate of Ismà'ìl and his son Mu˙ammad, continued to believe in the presence of the Imàm in this world, the Imamate having passed continuously from father to son in satr or hiding until one should arise as the Mahdì to claim the Caliphate from the usurpers. The expectation of his appearance in the immediate future lay behind the revolts which broke out in the last quarter of the ninth century. The most important of these revolts was that of the Zanj, mentioned in Chapter 1, which almost brought the 'Abbàsid empire to an end. The Zanj revolt7 was shì'ite (its leader considered himself a descendant of 'Alì) and it was Mahdist because it proclaimed the restoration of the realm of justice on earth. These movements revolved around the coming of an increasingly mysterious and supernatural figure, an eschatological figure who was a second Mu˙ammad destined to complete the history of the world. Associated with the idea of a Mahdì with such characteristics, the tradition of revolt against 'Abbàsid power entered a new phase. Set apart from the juridical tradition of the scholars and opposed to the caliphal regime of the 'Abbàsids, those who prophesied an end to the time of iniquity and the start of an era of peace and plenty also promised a radical transformation of the faith.8 The other great revolt of the final decades of the ninth century was that of the Qarma†ians, who took political control of the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, from where they launched campaigns against the caliphate for more than a century without ever quite succeeding in conquering either Iraq or Syria. Both the Zanj and the Qarma†ians were eclipsed by the movement that brought the Fà†imids to power. This is the movement known today as Ismà'ìlism in which the believers in the Imamate of Ismà'ìl and his son Mu˙ammad are said to have formed a secret organization whose dà'i (plural du'àt) mis6 A.A. Sachedina, Islamic Messianism. The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi"ism, New York, 1981, pp. 17 ff. 7 A. Popovic, La révolte des esclaves en Iraq au III/IX siècle, Paris, 1976. The main source is al-ˇabarì, Annales, vols. XXXVI–VIII. 8 M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids. The world of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Tenth Century CE. Leiden, 2001, chap. 3.

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sionaries or propagandists were sent to various parts of the world, in particular to the Yemen. From there one missionary, known as the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Ían'ànì [i.e. from the city of Ían'à" inYemen] al-Shì'ì went to Ifrìqiya, the North African province that the 'Abbàsids had recovered for their empire, and which was now ruled in their name by the Aghlabids. Preaching the coming of the Mahdì, Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Ían'ànì roused the Kutàma Berbers of Eastern Algeria to revolt and after the overthrow of the Aghlabids, proclaimed the Fà†imid Mahdì 'Abdallàh, the founder of the Fà†imid dynasty. The revolt of the Kutàma is in line with the previous Berber risings discussed in the last chapter, which reveal the susceptibility of Berber tribal society to Islamic prophethood, irrespective of doctrine. The Kutàma were not khàrijites, but Muslims who had not participated in controversies of the faith or in those which had led to the elaboration of the sharì'a. More important than knowledge of Islam was the example that Islam itself had provided in the shape of the Arabs, who had conquered the world on the strength of their faith in God and his Prophet.9 An example to be imitated: with the force of God, his Book and his Prophet, the message of Islam had turned the Arabs into a community of believers and had turned that community of believers into a conquering army. Emulation of the Arabs as a “chosen people” is patent in the khàrijite revolts. The “false prophets” we have seen in the previous chapter also emulated the Arabs in the practice of their faith, and such imitators of Mu˙ammad created their own communities with their own Berber Qur"àns. The Kutàma were no exception: the message of the dà'i was a doctrinal variant of khàrijism, but it fulfilled expectations of a realm in this world and the next. It also had the extreme moral rigour and the eschatological connotations associated with khàrijite movements. The tribe of the Kutàma was another Berber people willing to turn itself into God’s chosen people, in accordance with its model and in revolt against official representatives of the state regime. To quote Wansbrough, “That the propaganda in this particular case should have been Ismà'ìlì is historically but not phenomenologically relevant”.10 But it is highly relevant to the subject of Mahdism and its 9

M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, p. 85. Wansbrough, “On recomposing the Islamic history of North Africa”, p. 168; Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, p. 86. 10

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development in the Maghreb. In that respect it is also highly problematic, illustrating the confusion within messianism between the apocalyptic and eschatological on the one hand, and the ideal of an earthly kingdom on the other. It does so within the messianic tradition of Islam where these opposing concepts are variously represented by the figures of Mu˙ammad and 'Alì. The problem is raised by Michael Brett in his recent account of the origins of the Fà†imid dynasty.11 In it Brett analyses the period immediately after the disintegration of the 'Abbàsid empire in the 4th/10th century in terms, not of dissolution and division, but of unique and unitary definition. According to Brett, this period should be seen as one in which different Islamic tendencies “coalesced”, to use his term, after previously emerging and existing separately, rather than as branching out of one common trunk. These tendencies are seen as different strands which come to be woven together. Brett rejects the conspiracy theory based on sources written after the Fà†imid dynasty took power which proposes that one original and unique movement later split into different groups, showing that the kind of evidence given by the sources takes the form of a mass of millenarianisms retrospectively united by the propaganda of one great dynasty. The Mahdì 'Abd Allàh (and not “'Ubayd Allàh”, as he is described by his sunnite adversaries) is seen as having appropriated an apocalyptic movement with vague expectations of the appearance of a messiah. This movement had developed at some time after the death of al-Óasan in 260/874 and flourished, like others, on the borders of the 'Abbàsid empire. Brett also claims that the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh knew nothing of the Mahdì or of his intentions until he met him in Sijilmàsa.12 The movement of the dà'i himself was taken over by a completely different one, that of the Mahdì, which would explain the way in which the latter had to rid himself of the former. In this view, the later account was re-elaborated around the mythical figures of this type of movement: the herald inspired by God to find or designate the one who will bring about redemption (the messiah)— figures like Moses or Joseph, John the Baptist or Jesus Christ. It is a theme as old as the very beginnings of messianism in the Jewish tradition, that of the predecessor who prepares a realm by choosing, through divine inspiration, a successor among strangers. 11 12

M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids. M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, p. 108.

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In support of his argument, Brett draws attention to the letters written in about 915 by the Mahdì 'Abd Allàh to his followers in Yemen. These letters use clearly defined messianic titles and Mahdist claims which are very different from those employed by previous apocalyptic and prophetic movements in North Africa. In them, 'Abd Allàh creates his own version of the faith, referring specifically to the sacred history of the community since its creation by Mu˙ammad. At the centre of this history is the holy family of the Prophet, back to which 'Abd Allàh traced his own origins. His main argument was thus genealogical, and his intention was that the author of his letters should be clearly identified as the sole heir to the power and the authority of the Prophet. His mission was not apocalyptical, but one which sought to unite the Imamate and the caliphate in a legitimist revindication based on genealogical claims. The contrast between the preaching of Abù 'Abd Allàh on behalf of some glorious revelation and the message of obedience proclaimed by 'Abd Allàh is one that should be emphasized with reference to the fundamental ambiguity of Mahdism itself: this world versus the next; divine or human; antinomianism versus law. Most Fà†imid sources were written during the reign of al-Mu'izz (953–975), the fourth imàm-caliph, and were influenced by the creed which was being developed in that period and which has survived to the present day under the name of Ismà'ìlism. In these sources, the events of the dynasty, dawla, which had been Fà†imid from its first appearance until the mid-10th century, are converted into the sacred history of a divine mission, da'wa, which culminates in alMu'izz’s entry in Egypt. Thus these sources, Brett suggests, record the construction of a creed based on past events and present practices at a time when the dynasty was seeking to achieve dominance throughout the Islamic world. Al-Mu'izz’s propaganda was directed at shì'ite believers in the Seven Imams, a category to which the Fà†imids themselves belonged, not because their predecessors had been the founders of the sect, but because they had decided to exploit for their own benefit existing expectations of a seventh and last prophet who was expected to emerge in the Maghreb. I intend to concentrate here on events that I have mentioned as they are described in two major sources. The first is Iftità˙ al-da'wa wa-ibtidà" al-dawla by the qà∂ì al-Nu'màn,13 a shì'ite author who was 13

I have used the Farhat Dachraoui edition, Tunis, 1975.

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not alive at the time of the events he described, but wrote in the mid-4th/10th century, and very much from the point of view of the dynasty which arose out of them. The second source is the Bayàn al-mughrib by Ibn 'Idhàrì, a sunnite Moroccan author who lived in the second half of the 7th/13th century.14 The qà∂ì al-Nu'màn describes how the Fà†imid revolution was carried out by the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh in an area extending from Yemen to Raqqàda in Tunisia, the city-palace of the Aghlabid dynasty whose end he brought about. This story is secondary by comparison with that of the Mahdì, whose journey from Salàmiyya to Sijilmàsa in south-east Morocco culminated in his meeting with the dà'i and his victorious entry into the city of Qayrawàn. The qà∂ì al-Nu'màn thus separates the story of the revolution from that of the Mahdì. The uniting link between the two journeys of the dà'i and the Mahdì is to be found in their starting-point in Yemen, a region which together with Ba˙rayn (the very large region of Eastern Arabia to be distinguished from modern Ba˙rain) had a history of involvement in shì'ite conspiracy in favour of the Hidden Imàm. The first part of the qà∂ì al-Nu'màn’s book is thus taken up by the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh’s mission after he was sent from Yemen to the tribes of the mountains of Eastern Algeria. In principle these tribes were similar to those of the mountains of Yemen, although the Yemen tribes lived on the edge of the Islamic empire whereas the Berber tribes, as we have seen, had been integrated within it. Islam justified the existence of the state at the same time that it supplied the ideological tools to rebel against the oppression it exerted. The dà'i, whose full name was Abù 'Abd Allàh Óusayn ibn A˙mad ibn Mu˙ammad ibn Zakariyyà", had been a sufi according to some sources.15 Ibn Khaldùn claimed that he had been a mu˙tasib who carried out the command to forbid wrong and command right. In the 3rd/9th century, sufism was a militant rather than mystical movement. The sufis who invoked the ˙isba in Alexandria in 201/816 to revoke the governor were puritan activists.16 I will return to this issue in chapter 4, which discusses how the puritanically zealous censor becomes the prophetic agent of the great event. 14 I have used the Levi-Provençal edition and the French translation by E. Fagnan, Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, Algiers, 1901. 15 Sìrat Ja'far, pp. 121–22, trans. p. 206. 16 Al-Kindì, Governors and Judges of Egypt or kitab el ‘Umara’ (el wulah) wa kitab el Qudah of el Kindi: together with an appendix derived mostly from raf el isr by Ibn Hajar, ed. Rhuvon Guest, Leiden, Brill, 1912, p. 162.

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Abù 'Abd Allàh and his brother, also a dà'i, met a group of Kutàma pilgrims in the Holy Places of Mecca and Medina and accepted their invitation to return with them to their land to teach them Islamic doctrine and palliate their ignorance. This was the familiar story, of which we will see further examples, of the holy man who accepts an invitation from ignorant inhabitants of a remote part of Islamdom to instruct them in the faith. Neither was it the first such example: 'Abd al-Ra˙màn ibn Rustum, founder of the Ibà∂ite khàrijite kingdom of Tàhart mentioned above, travelled there at the request of local tribes in order to instruct them in the Law, after meeting some members on the pilgrimage route. Abù 'Abd Allàh, before departing with the Kutàma, was able to inform himself about who they were and how their tribe lived. The qà∂ì al-Nu'màn includes the following dialogue in his description of these conversations: “Are you a single tribe (qàbil )?” “No, the name Kutàma is applied to all of us but we are divided into different tribes, qabà"il, clans, afhadh and families, buyùtàt.” “Do you help each other?” “No, there is not much co-operation among us.” “Are you unified?” “No, we fight each other, then we become reconciled. After the battle, we make peace with some while we make war with others, such is our custom.” “And if an enemy from outside attacks you, are you united?” “No one has ever dared attack us.” “Why?” “Because of our great number and the forbidding nature of our terrain.”

The Kutàma also explained the importance of their cavalry forces and the abundance of their arms. The questioning moved on to focus on how the tribes were governed and who they obeyed: “Each of us is his own master. There are also dignitaries (akàbir) among us, in each tribe. We also have among us people with knowledge and teachers (mu'allimùn) whom we ask for opinions on religious matters and whom we ask to arbitrate when lawsuits arise among us. Whoever is found guilty submits to this judgment of his own accord; if he deviates from this behaviour the council ( jamà'a) rises against him; as for tithes and other legal taxes . . . we give them directly to the poor.”17 17 Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, Iftità˙ al-da'wa wa-ibtidà" al-dawla, ed. Dachraoui, Tunis, 1975, pp. 37–38.

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It would be difficult to imagine a more precise description of what anthropologists call a segmentary tribal system.18 The information gleaned from this round of questioning seems to have struck the dà'i as ideal—he may have been particularly impressed by news of the great distance between the tribes and the cities under governmental control, as well as that of the differences among them or information about how widely diffused power was. He left to settle among them as a mu'allim, although his real intention was to preach to them about the arrival of the Mahdì. The history of the dà'i’s rise to power among the Kutàma is portrayed in the Iftità˙ as resembling that of Mu˙ammad in Mecca and Medina. His followers, the awliyà", resembled the salaf in their virtue,19 and his stronghold in Tàzrùt became a dàr al-Hijra to which his faithful followers were able to retire. Continuing the analogy with Mu˙ammad, the Iftità˙ compares those who responded to the call of the dà'i with those who made their pact with the Prophet, saying “Give us what is good in this world and the next” (Qur"àn II: 20).20 This reply, or pact, represented a commitment to a community of believers who would have to live in strict accordance with the Revelation, expelling all those who did not abide by it, not only from the community, but from all kinship and clan ties. In the Mahdist propaganda he used to convince the tribes to join him, the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh also referred to the well-known words of the tradition, “Islam began as a stranger and will be a stranger again as it was in the first times”. The qà∂ì al-Nu'màn explained what the Prophet meant by these words: that a time would come when the Law would fall into oblivion and the Sunna be replaced by norms which would violate divine order. In that time of iniquity God would send one of the descendants of the Prophet to restore true religion and suppress the customs which are contrary to God’s Law. The Prophet Mu˙ammad and his descendant the Mahdì, both predestined by God, are the only ones who will guarantee the integrity of divine law, which cannot be protected from corruption and oblivion other than by Mu˙ammad and his family.

18 Such as that described by E. Gellner in Saint of the Atlas. See the commentaries on this and other passages in Madeleine de Gogorza Fletcher, “The anthropological context of Almohad history”, Hespéris-Tamuda XXVI–XXVII (1988–89) pp. 25–51. 19 Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, Iftità˙, pp. 129–130. 20 Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, Iftità˙, pp. 117–118.

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All the Kutàma tribes are described as entering the da'wa with the exception of a few individuals living on the outskirts of cities. Such people were tolerated as “hypocrites” (munàfiqùn),21 just as the hypocrites of Medina were tolerated by the Prophet Mu˙ammad. The exemplary conduct of the dà'i, with its foundation in extreme severity and moral rigour, regenerated Berber Kutàma society by means of a strict observance of religious law and an even more extreme ethical severity.22 Under the guidance of the dà'i, Berber society identified itself with the Muslim community under the guidance of the Prophet.23 In this way the Kutàma returned to the original virtues of the original community to receive the call of the messenger of the Mahdì, with the aim of restoring pristine purity. Their conversion into one sole family under the authority of the dà'i was the starting-point for the imposition of a new supra-tribal order. The different clans of the Kutàma came together to form an army divided into seven sections or regiments (aßba' ) commanded by a muqaddam appointed by Abù 'Abd Allàh. Du'àt (the plural of dà'i ) were also placed in charge of each district. Muqaddams and du'àt made up the governing class of the mashàyikh in charge of community affairs, especially the collection of taxes, which included a portion for the Imàm which was set aside in expectation of the Mahdì’s arrival.24 The Bayàn also relates the meeting of the Kutàma with the dà'i at Mecca and describes how he travelled with them to Qayrawàn. After arriving, he gathered information about Berber tribes and was able to confirm that the Kutàma were the most numerous, as well as being the group which lived furthest away from the reach of the sultan’s authority.25 The dà'i rode into their territory on a white mule. When he came to one of the towns inhabited by the tribes and passed before a mosque, the Imàm, who was also a children’s schoolteacher, stared at him for a long time and claimed to recognise him as the person whose coming had been predicted by an ancient Kutàma soothsayer known as Faylaq: a man travelling from 21

Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, Iftità˙, p. 117. Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, Iftità˙, pp. 118–120. 23 Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, Iftità˙, p. 129. 24 Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, Iftità˙, pp. 124–125. 25 Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib fì ikhtißàr akhbàr mulùk al-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib, French trans. E. Fagnan: Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne intitulée al-Bayano ’l Mogrib, Algiers, 1901–1904, p. 166. 22

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the East on a white mule who would bring with him true and definitive war. This prediction benefitted Abù 'Abd Allàh, who in turn spoke to the Kutàma of augurs which forecast that they would save the family of 'Alì by sustaining and supporting with their blood the candidate for the Imamate who belonged to that family. This Imàm “will carry out the conquest of the whole world for you and you will be doubly repaid with the obtention of goods in this world and the next.”26 He also spoke to them, allegedly in their language, of the signs that the infallible Imàm from the family of 'Alì would bring with him. This is important because it relates to an issue on which Ibn 'Idhàrì’s version diverges from that of the qà∂ì al-Nu'màn: the dà'i’s eventual fall into disgrace. According to Ibn 'Idhàrì, in 298/910, Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Shì'ì at one time gathered together all the major Kutàma leaders and explained to them his doubts about 'Abd Allàh, saying that “his actions do not at all resemble those of the Mahdì in whose name I have preached and I fear that I have made a mistake in this respect just as Abraham was mistaken when he believed he had seen his lord in the first star whose light penetrated the darkness of the night. We must look on his person for the signs which the Mahdì must bear and which are known by the head of the shurafà". One of these signs is that he should bear written between his shoulderplates the words “Mahdì sent by God” in the same manner that Mu˙ammad bore the sign of prophethood, and he should also be capable of performing miracles”. All this was to occur later. Initially, the Kutàma were organised into a new order under the guidance of the dà'i and threw themselves into the conquest of the Aghlabid kingdom. The campaign began with the capture of the citadel of Mìla in 289/902 and ended with the flight of the Aghlabids in 296/909.27 After conquering Qayrawàn, Abù 'Abd Allàh left for Sijilmàsa in 296/909, following the Western route through ˇubna as far as Tàhart, the capital of the Ibà∂ite (Khàrijite) kingdom of the Rustumids. The last member of Ibn Rustum’s dynasty was executed and the capital of Maghreb khàrijism was converted to the new revolutionary movement. The dà'i came shortly afterwards to Sijilmàsa, another khàrijite city, in this case a sufrite one in the hands of the dynasty

26 27

Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib, p. 168. For a detailed account of these events, see Talbi, Emirat Aglabide, pp. 653 and ff.

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of the Banù Midràr. The governor of the city, al-Yasa' ibn Midràr, offered little resistance and the city was soon looted, al-Yasa' himself fleeing for his life. The Mahdì was then discovered, recognised and presented to the army by the dà'i as mawlànà wa-mawlakum, ayyuhà l-mu"minùn, “Our lord and your lord, oh believers”. In Sijilmàsa, the ceremony of the bay'a or oath of allegiance to the caliph, supreme head of the community of believers, was carried out. This pledge was also a pact which established the Kutàma, with the successor to the Prophet as amìr al-mu"minìn. They entered his kingdom as the chosen people, and their recognition as such inaugurated that kingdom. 'Abd Allàh was again proclaimed caliph shortly afterwards, when he entered Raqqàda, the capital of Ifrìqiya. He in turn founded his own dàr al-hijra, or capital-fortress and ideal city which received the name al-Mahdiyya, the city of the Mahdì. According to Brett,28 the choice of Ifrìqiya as the Mahdì’s base indicates the presence of divisions within the movement and reveals to what extent these divisions were the product of ignorance and the absence of a centralised head. In this view, Abù 'Abd Allàh knew nothing of the Mahdì’s intentions until he met him for the first time in Sijilmàsa. His own movement was taken over and absorbed by another very different one. In the Iftità˙, the death of the dà'i, ordered by 'Abd Allàh in 298/911, is the final act of the revolution and the last episode to be narrated in any detail. It is presented as the fall into disgrace of a servant who had been loyal up to that point but had now been corrupted by ambition. This fall began with the resentment of the Kutàma shaykhs who were forced to give the Mahdì the portion of the booty which they had saved in his name. The corruptor of the Kutàma is named as Abù Zakì, who was left in charge of the government of Qayrawàn during the dà'i’s expedition to Sijilmàsa and took such a liking to the wielding of power that he ended, according to the Iftità˙, by casting doubt upon the authenticity of the Mahdì discovered by Abù 'Abd Allàh. The shaykh of the Msalta clan, Hàrùn ibn Yùnus al-Arbàbì, even asked for proof of the Mahdì’s identity and paid for this insolence with his life.29 As I have said, the version of events contained in Ibn 'Idhàrì’s Bayàn al-Mughrib is, however,

28 29

M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, p. 108. M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, p. 109.

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somewhat different: it is Abù 'Abd Allàh himself who requests proof of the Mahdì’s authenticity.30 Both authors describe as a consequence of the execution of the dà'i the Kutàma revolt in Kabylia which was carried out in the name of the new pretender, a boy of obscure origin known as Kàdù ibn Mu'àrik, who received a new revelation and was declared a prophet by the Kutàma tribe. Kàdù recorded new dogmatic and religious precepts in a book for the Kutàma, and he came to dominate a large area of Algeria for several years. It appears that every kind of sexual licence was permitted in his name. Kadu’s revolt was eventually defeated, with some difficulty, by the son of the Mahdì, Abù l-Qàsim Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh. This son and successor to the Mahdì fulfilled the prediction that the Mahdì was to have the same name as the Prophet. He ascended to the throne in 322/934 with the eschatological epithet al-Qà"im bi 'amr Allàh, synonymous with the word Mahdì. Almost immediately afterwards, another Berber revolution was to place the existence of the dynasty in grave danger, and on this occasion the movement was carried out in the name of the most extreme form of khàrijism. Towards the end of the decade of the 930s, a Zanàta Berber by the name of Abù Yazìd Makhlad ibn Kaydàd alZanàtì, ßà˙ib al-˙imàr or Lord of the Donkey, started his preaching in Algeria. Abù Yazìd was the son of an Ibà∂ite merchant and a Sudanese slave, and came to be known also as al-Óabashì al-Aswad, or Black Ethiop. Most khàrijites believed that the Imàm should be the best of Muslims without taking his origins into account, even if he were “an Ethiopian slave”, and furthermore the appellative ˙abashì often carries apocalyptic connotations in the Islamic Tradition.31 Originally a teacher of the Qur"àn to children, Abù Yazìd started to take his neighbours to task for their actions, commanding right and forbidding wrong, and also to confront the collectors of taxes. Abù Yazìd had a mole on his shoulder, as well as other signs which marked him out as predestined for a prophetic mission. Lame, advanced in years, dressed in rags and riding upon a donkey, he was always accompanied by his blind old teacher, and began to preach the extremest forms of khàrijism. He was able to gather, among the Zanàta tribes of the Aures, a mountain range in Eastern

30 31

Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib, pp. 161–165. See Wensick art. “Óabasha” in EI 2.

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Algeria, a growing horde of followers as he advanced towards the Western borders of the Fà†imid empire.32 In 944, leaving behind him a trail of destruction wherever he went, Abù Yazìd conquered the city of Qayrawàn, and put the Fà†imid governor to death. He had coins minted in his name and proclaimed himself shaykh al-mu"minìn. In 333/945 he laid siege to the city of al-Mahdiyya itself, home to the caliph al-Qà"im, but failed in his attempt to take control of it. One year later, Ismà'ìl, son and successor of al-Qà"im, led his army towards Qayrawàn, brandishing the fabulous sword of his ancestor 'Alì, Dhù l-Faqàr. He was able to force Abù Yazìd to retire once more to the mountains from whence he had departed. Ismà'ìl pursued him, but did not defeat and capture him until 947. Abù Yazìd’s corpse was then skinned and the skin stuffed with cotton or straw and displayed by his victor Ismà'ìl after his return to Qayrawàn and al-Mahdiyya. In Fà†imid sources, the rebel Abù Yazìd assumes the apocalyptic role of al-Dajjàl, the “Antichrist” whose coming was foreordained by God and whose defeat would open the way for the final triumph of the Imàm as head of the Muslim community. Ismà'ìl, grandson of the Mahdì 'Abd Allàh and son of Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im, thus makes a glorious appearance as the son of God’s Messenger in the messianic role of Mahdì inherited from his grandfather and father, and which would be passed on to his heirs until the end of all time. It was only after defeating al-Dajjàl that Ismà'ìl took up the Imamate and caliphate under the epithet “al-Manßùr”, the victor over Abù Yazìd.33 One of the merits of Brett’s study of the Fà†imids, already mentioned on several occasions, lies in the way that he demonstrates that the Kutàma revolution was the first of three great revolutions to transform the social and political scene in the Maghreb, the second being that of the Almoravids and the third that of the Almohads. The turn to local Berber kingdoms which had marked the end of the Classical period in North Africa had been brusquely interrupted by the Arab conquest which re-established the old Roman pattern of domination of autochtonous tribal peoples by foreign conquerors. This pattern was modified, but not abolished, by the khàrijite revolt of the Berbers in the 2nd/8th century which gave rise to city-states 32 A detailed account of events and available sources in R. Le Tourneau, “La révolte d’Abu Yazid au Xème siècle”, Les Cahiers de Tunisie 2 (1953) pp. 103–125. 33 See M. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, chap. VII.

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like Tàhart or Sijilmàsa, but did not affect the principle of foreign dominance. The defeat of the Aghlabids, pillars of Arab supremacy, by the Kutàma revolt led to nothing less than the arrival of a new dynasty which also originated in the Middle East. But Arab supremacy had ended, and the Berber tribes had left the periphery to place themselves at the very centre of the political stage. The Fà†imid revolution was the first great step towards the conquest of the entire Maghreb by Berber tribal armies which in turn would produce the government of North Africa by dynasties of a Berber origin. The energies of a tribal society were thus unleashed to begin an era of “state-building” in the name of Islam.

CHAPTER THREE

BERBER PROPHETS AND MESSIANIC REBELS IN MUSLIM SPAIN

Events in North Africa before the rise of the Fà†imids are only one half of the story of the Muslim West. They were paralleled by comparable developments in Muslim Spain leading up to the rivalry in the tenth century between the Fà†imid and Umayyad Caliphates that set the scene for the future. The Muslim invasion of the Iberian pensinsula was in many ways the logical and necessary extension of the conquest of North Africa. Like some other Muslim conquests, the invasion of Spain seems to have been undertaken on local initiative without the approval of the authorities, in this case the governor of Qayrawàn Mùsà b. Nußayr or the caliph al-Walìd in Damascus. The mainly Berber army of ˇàriq b. Ziyàd, governor of Tangier, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711 and enjoyed a spectacular success which attracted the attention of his superior in Qayrawàn, Mùsà b. Nußayr, who followed him the next year with an army which was mainly composed of Arabs. The conquests and the subsequent progress of Islamisation and Arabisation produced the apocalyptic side-effects which are the subject of this chapter. The establishment of Muslim power seems to have occurred in two stages.1 The first was the take-over of the main cities and the fertile lands of the South and East, in some cases with the assistance or agreement of members of the Visigothic nobility. In the second phase the North-East was conquered, and peace agreements were made with the Visigothic lords of the Ebro valley. However, for almost a century, it was the main cities and lines of communication which were secured and conversion to Islam was limited. The beginning of the rule of 'Abd al-'Azìz ibn Mùsà b. Nußayr in 95/714 , son of the conqueror of al-Andalus, marks what is known

1 For a survey of the political history of al-Andalus, see H. Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal. A political history of al-Andalus. London-New York, 1996.

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as the period of Dependent Governors, those who were not independent of the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus, but appointed by the governors of Egypt or Ifrìqiya. Most of those governors only lasted for a very short time, because it was feared that they would gain too much power and become independent in a province which was so far from the centre of the empire. This period of the Dependent Governors, lasting about forty years up to the fall of the Umayyad state in Damascus (131/750) and the establishment of the emirate of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Dàkhil, was a period characterised by dissension and civil wars, not only between Arabs, Berbers and HispanoRoman local populations, but also between different factions and families within these groups. The Berber revolts which broke out in North Africa against Arab rule, considered in chapter 1, also reached al-Andalus in 741. The then governor of al-Andalus, 'Abd al-Malik b. al-Qa†an al-Fihrì sought the help of a Syrian army which was able to inflict successive defeats on the Berbers, after which it proclaimed their leader Balj b. Bishr as governor of al-Andalus (741–43). These events profoundly changed the political character of al-Andalus, increasing substantially the Arab (especially Syrian) element in the population. Many of these Syrians were clients (mawàlì) or had long-standing loyalties to the Umayyad family. By 757 the Muslim presence in al-Andalus had clearly become permanent. Local resistance had disappeared, a new generation of Arab and Berbers born in al-Andalus was growing up, and converts were beginning to be made amongst the indigenous population. But the new conquerors had failed to develop a viable political system: that would be the achievement of the Umayyad 'Abd al-Ra˙màn I al-Dàkhil (138/756–172/788). From 747 to 750 the 'Abbàsid revolution in the East put an end to the rule of the Muslim world by the Umayyads and its Syrian military supporters. Most of the members of the ruling family were executed, but a few managed to escape. One of those was 'Abd alRa˙màn b. Mu'àwiya, who accompanied by a few mawàlì fled to North Africa to seek refuge amongst his mother’s relations, the Berbers of the Nafza tribe. In 755 he crossed to al-Andalus where he was able to recruit an army of Umayyad mawàlì with whom he marched to Cordoba. In its mosque he was proclaimed amìr in 756. He undertook the organisation of the state and its administration. After the first year, he put an end to the practice of aknowledging the names

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of the 'Abbàsid caliphs during the Friday prayers and therefore alAndalus ceased to form part of a wider Muslim empire. He ruled for the next 33 years as someone who acknowledged no temporal superior and managed to establish in al-Andalus an independant Umayyad dynastic power. The period of the Emirate in the hands of Umayyad descendants lasted until 316/929 in which 'Abd alRa˙màn III proclaimed himself Caliph. In the second half of the ninth century, a social and political crisis enveloped the Emirate in the form of dissidence and rebellion against the amirs, but also civil war among different parties. This crisis, known as the Fitna, almost led to the complete collapse of the Emirate. The root of the problem seems to have lain in the increasing rate of conversion to Islam. On the one hand, these new converts sought to play a full role in the politics of al-Andalus as full members of the Muslim community. In doing so, they entered into conflict with established elites, mainly Arabs and Ummayad mawàlì. On the other, mass conversion undermined the fiscal basis of the Umayyad state and was the cause of administrative and military weakness. Mass conversion also provoked active reaction among the Christian population of al-Andalus, especially among its ecclesiastical elites. However, the Ummayyad emirate also had another challenge to face. On the northern side of the religious frontier, the Christian communities of territories not occupied by the Muslims had been consolidating into political units. The most important of these units was the kingdom of Asturias, an area where neither Romans nor Visigoths had been able to exercise much power. Alfonso I (739–57) was able to take advantage of political troubles in al-Andalus from 741 to establish his power in Galicia and to raid the lands of the Duero valley to the south. During the long reign of his son Alfonso II (791–842) important ideological developments took place, since this king set about restoring the institutions of the Visigoth monarchy, and proclaimed himself the inheritor of the Visigothic kings, with the implication that he was entitled to reconquer the lands of his predecessors. The troubles of the Emirate during the second half of the ninth century gave Alfonso III (866–910) the opportunity to extend the limits of the Asturian kingdoms into the plains of the northern meseta, including Zamora. The capital was transferred from Oviedo, in Asturias, to Leon after 910. These Christian kingdoms produced their own historiography, a complementary and very

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important source for our knowledge of what was happening in alAndalus. In fact, the information we possess for the first centuries of the history of al-Andalus is far richer than that which we have for the Maghreb, and includes a entire series of predictions and apocalyptic beliefs partly related to the fact of the Islamic conquest. I will thus begin by examining these predictions and considering their relation to Islamic eschatological and apocalyptic beliefs, as well as their precedents in Late Antiquity, as were described in the Introduction, before analysing those rebels against established power similar to the “false prophets” who have already been considered, or who were named al-fà†imiyyùn like the Idrìsids. Early apocalyptic Muslim materials are concerned mainly with the wars against Byzantium. The 7th and early 8th centuries saw the wide diffusion of Muslim eschatological speculations related to the taking of Constantinople and the continuous Byzantine military campaigns to reconquer Syria. At the same time, early Muslim sources for the conquest of Syria are often motivated by the later need to produce a pattern of sacred history mixed with sectarian and local tendencies.2 In the Iberian Peninsula there was a state of confrontation of Christian with Muslims which paralleled the situation in Syria. The literary genre of fa∂à"il, or local merits, transmits traditions designed to show the religious benefit of living in a territory closely contested by the Christians both in Syria and in al-Andalus. Syria was also the land in which many of the apocalyptic battles were to be fought. Not all the apocalyptic traditions of these lands in which jihàd was permanent felt that continual victory was important, but at the same time it was felt that defeat could sometimes bring the Muslim community closer to God. Nevertheless, amongst Muslims, traditions had already circulated in the 2nd/8th century predicting that their settlement in the Iberian Peninsula would be transitory and was destined to end tragically.3 Al-Andalus had also played a leading role in Muslim eschatological literature since there were traditions that

2 S. Bashear, “Apocalyptic and other materials on early Muslim. Byzantine wars: a review of the Arab sources”, JRASI 2 (1991) p. 199. 3 M. Fierro, “Le mahdì Ibn Tùmart et al-Andalus: l’élaboration de la légitimité almohade”, in M. García-Arenal (ed.), Millénarisme et Mahdisme, REMMM 91–94 (2000) pp. 107–124, p. 48.

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Constantinople would be conquered from it.4 Extant accounts of the Muslim conquest of al-Andalus are full of mythical and legendary elements:5 most of these accounts were not produced in al-Andalus itself but derived from Eastern and especially Egyptian motifs and were a response to the need to elaborate a comprehensible version of sacred history.6 One of these legends, which nevertheless does not figure in the oldest texts, claims that the conqueror ˇàriq had a hairy mole on his left shoulderplate, just like the prophet Mu˙ammad himself. This physical manifestation of prophetic ability contributed to the mythologisation of the figure of ˇàriq and served to project one of the founding paradigms of Islam upon the conquest of alAndalus. It should be remembered that it was the Christian monk Ba˙ìrà, mentioned in the Introduction, who found the sign that he expected on the child Mu˙ammad’s back after reading about it in ancient texts describing the awaited Prophet. We will meet later with further instances in which this kind of birthmark was associated with prophetic ability. The mark became a theophanic sign, i.e. the manifestation of a hidden and transcendent agenda, proof of a vocation, the legitimisation of a specific and heroic destiny.7 All of the aforementioned material constitutes a fairly coherent set of representations and beliefs which would come to fix themselves deep within the collective memory, judging by the lengthy duration of some of the motifs, as I will try to show. In practice, such beliefs were placed in circulation by a series of figures who led uprisings in al-Andalus during these first two centuries of Islam. The Iberian Peninsula, like Syria, was an area where diverse eschatological traditions were woven together. There was, in Iberia, a confluence of apocalyptic ideas coming from the North, many of them from Byzantium, and others coming from the Middle East through Muslim territories. The 8th and 9th centuries of the Christian era were times of a strong apocalyptic and messianic sentiment for all the communities inhabiting Iberia, whether Christian, Jewish or

4 M. Canard, “Les expéditions des Arabes contre Constantinople dans l’histoire et la legende”, Journal Asiatique CCVIII (1926) pp. 61–121. 5 See J. Hernández Juberías, La Península imaginaria. Mitos y leyendas sobre al-Andalus, Madrid: CSIC, 1996. 6 M. 'A. Makki, “Egipto y los orígenes de la historiografía arabigo-española”, Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos 5 (1957) pp. 157–248. 7 F. Delpech, “Du heros marqué au signe du Prophète: esquisse pour l’archéologie d’un motif chevaleresque”, Bulletin Hispanique 92 (1990) pp. 237–257.

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Muslim.8 The apocalyptic interpretation of history (i.e. the belief that history has a set duration and an end which can be determined by the interpretation of previous signs) was found throughout the Latin West from the start of the Middle Ages9 and the eschatological currents of belief which reached the Iberian Peninsula were also to be found in Italy and France, from the 6th century on.10 For the 7thcentury St. Isidore of Seville, for example, the conversion of the Visigoths, heirs of the Romans, to the Christian faith, was a sign that the Sixth Age was close at hand. But in Iberia, religious confrontation favoured the creation of an apocalyptic atmosphere and the messianic expectations of one religion contributed to the setting in motion of those of the other two. The fact that the Jewish Messiah is interpreted by Christians and Muslims as the Antichrist or the Dajjàl, or the key role of Jesus in Christian and Muslim apocalyptics, helps the fact that eschatological beliefs were easily interchangeable between communities of different religions.11 Amongst Hispanic Christians of the 8th century, a deep spiritual convulsion raised the eschatological tension to unprecedented levels of anxiety about the future. The apparently imminent end of the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula seemed to augur the final days of Christendom. Muslim assaults on Constantinople were transformed into apocalyptic material by Christians and Muslims alike.12 Islamic tradition announced that the End of all Time would not arrive until Islam had spread to the territory of the Rùm (the name used by Arab sources to describe the Byzantines, but also the Christians of Iberia) and Constantinople or, in a later tradition, until Rome itself had been conquered.13 This conquest was an indispensable condition for wiping error from the face of the 8

J. Gil, “Judíos y cristianos en Hispania (siglos VIII y IX)”, Hispania Sacra XXXI (1978–79) pp. 9–80. 9 M. Reeves, “The Development of Apocalyptic Thought: Medieval Attitudes”, The Prophetic Sense of History in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Ashgate, Variorum, 1999, Chap. 1, pp. 40–72. 10 A. Rucqoui, “Medida y fin de los tiempos. Mesianismo y milenarismo en la Edad Media” in En pos del Milenio, Salamanca, 1999, pp. 13–41. 11 J. Tolan, “Réactions chrétiennes aux conquêtes musulmanes. Etude comparée des auteurs chrétiens de Syrie et d’Espagne”, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 176 (2001) pp. 349 and ff. 12 S. Bashear, “Apocalyptic and other materials on early Muslim-Byzantine wars: a review of the Arab sources”, JRAS 1/2 (1991) pp. 173–208. 13 A. Abel, “Un ˙àdiΔ sur la prise de Rome dans la tradition eschatologique del’Islam”, Arabica V (1958) pp. 1–14.

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earth and eliminating impiety and injustice. Apocalyptic texts describe the Pope in Rome as being to the Christians what the caliph was to Muslims.14 On the Iberian Christian side, the Crónica Profética (883) reflected beliefs in the imminence of the end of the world, preceded by a final war between Christendom and Islam. This chronicle constitutes an apocalypse which was specifically tailored to meet the conditions of Hispania and the circumstances of the Asturian kingdom. Much the same can be said of the Crónica Albeldense of 880.15 It was within this febrile world, profoundly disturbed by apocalyptic forecasts, that the Leonese imperial idea emerged: the Christian king Alfonso III of Leon, seeing that the end of the world was expected in the year 900, regarded himself as the emperor of the last days, an idea which had been spread, as we have seen in the Introduction, by Byzantine apocalyptic texts.16 Byzantine influence on the Asturian-Leonese kingdom and the Pyrenaic countries was just as strong as it ever was on the kingdom of Cordoba.17 The Jews for their part, interpreting the prophecies of Daniel, expected the arrival of the Messiah in 868.18 Juan Gil has suggested that the Jewish apocalyptic movement, so intense in the second half of the 9th century, was a powerful influence on Jews and Christians in the Iberian peninsula. The persecution of Jews which took place during these years in the Byzantine territories served to encourage the further development of such beliefs. The same Jewish prophecies also predicted the end of Muslim domination, making them popular among the Mozarabs or Arabized Christians of Cordoba. These messianic expectations are likely to have contributed to the climate of religious exaltation produced by the movement of voluntary martyrs in 850 among the Christian communities of al-Andalus, which were undoubtedly propelled by social causes and, in particular by the decision of the amir Mu˙ammad to forgo the employment of

A. Abel, “Un ˙àdiΔ sur la prise de Rome”, p. 10. J. Gil, “Judíos y cristianos en Hispania”, p. 63. 16 P. Alexander, “The Medieval Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and its Messianic Origin”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XLI (1978) pp. 1–15. 17 A. Rucqoui, “El fin del milenarismo en la España de los siglos X y XI” in Milenarismos y milenaristas en la Europa medieval, Nájera, 1999, pp. 281–304; E. LeviProvençal, “Un échange d’ambassades entre Cordue et Byzance au IX siècle”, Byzantion XII (1937) pp. 1–24. 18 J. Gil, “Judíos y cristianos en Hispania”, p. 49. 14 15

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Christians in state administration unless they agreed to convert to Islam.19 Both Eulogio and Alvarus of Cordoba, two distinguished Mozarabic clerics and polemicists, saw Mu˙ammad as the precursor of the Antichrist and Islamic domination as preparation for the End. Alvarus calculated that Islamic domination would last for 245 years, making it likely that the End was then very close. He also noted with satisfaction that Mu˙ammad had died in 666, the number of the Beast in the Apocalypse.20 This information on al-Andalus leads us to ask ourselves a number of questions which cannot be answered at the current stage of our knowledge. One such question is whether Maghrebian Jews of the 9th century might also have been affected by apocalyptic predictions, and whether this would have had any influence on their Muslim neighbours, as may have been the case in al-Andalus and in other parts of the contemporary Islamic world.21 But the fact is we do not even know whether these Jewish communities had sufficient demographic or social entity to exert any sort of influence. Odd, vague items of news exist concerning Judaism in North Africa before the conquest, but most of them seem to resemble legends or “myths of origin” and are difficult to use as historical evidence.22 We also know very little about the situation of Christians in North Africa. In the Maghreb there seems to have been no religious polemic of the kind that was common in al-Andalus and also in Syria,23 and which constantly recurred to prophetic and eschatological arguments, particularly in Christian literature, thus contributing to the creation of a particular social and religious climate. Neither are there any reports of apocalyptic literature in the Maghreb, although the region does feature in several Middle Eastern eschatological traditions. For instance, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the great Berber 19

K.B. Wolf, Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain, Cambridge, 1988. M. Reeves, “The Development of Apocalyptic Thought: Medieval Attitudes”, The Prophetic Sense of History in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Ashgate, Variorum, 1999, p. 44. 21 J. Starr, “Le mouvement messianique au début du VIII siècle”, Revue des Etudes Juives II (1937) pp. 81–92. 22 N. Slousch, “Etudes sur l’histoire des Juifs au Maroc”, Archives Marocaines IV (1905) pp. 345–411; M. Simon, “Le judaisme berbère dans l’Afrique ancienne”, Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuse XXVI (1946) pp. 105–145. 23 I follow M. Talbi in Gervers and Bikhazi, Conversion and continuity. Indigenous Christian communities in Islamic Lands. Eight to Eighteenth centuries, Ontario, 1990, pp. 313–51. 20

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revolt of 123/740 may have inspired a fear which was translated into this kind of literature. Nu'aym b. Óammàd, in his Kitàb al-fitan, cites many Syrian and Egyptian traditions which predicted the fitna of the Berbers and the proclamation of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn, master of the Maghreb (ßà˙ib Maghrib), as amìr al-mu"minìn from the pulpits of Egypt. In the prophecies which circulated after the Umayyad caliphate of the East, the coming of a rebel army from the Maghreb, carrying yellow flags, became a recurrent element.24 Ibn Óabìb (d. 238/853), the first historian of al-Andalus, wrote a work (the Kitàb al-ta"rìkh, or Book of History)25 which bore certain similarities with the Syrian apocalypsis of the Pseudo-Methodius in that it was a history of the world from its creation, from Adam to Mu˙ammad, followed by the history of the caliphs and ˇàriq’s victory in al-Andalus. In the opening description of his work Ibn Óabìb wrote: “Later I will mention those who have governed it [al-Andalus] until today and who will govern it until it is destroyed, as also what will happen from the time of its destruction until the arrival of the Hour, with the traditions and signs of the End of all Time.”26 He went on to describe traditions which predicted the “turns” or “cycles” (dawla) of the Umayyads and Fà†imids, which would come to an end with the appearance of a fà†imì: “[after the turn of the Umayyads] the caliphate of the descendants of al-'Abbàs will disappear and it will pass to the sons of Abù ˇàlib where it will stay until the Dajjàl appears and the immigrant (dàkhil ) of the tribe of Quraysh of the descendants of Fà†ima enters al-Andalus.”27 Or again: “In the times of this Fà†imì, Constantinople will be conquered and the Christians of Cordoba and their region will be slaughtered by him so that not a single Christian will be left.”28 Although there do not appear to be any traditions associating the figure of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn I al-Dàkhil, the founder of the Umayyad emirate of al-Andalus, with that of the Mahdì, premonitory legends concerning his arrival in the Peninsula do nonetheless abound in an eschatological context. One of these eschatological traditions states

24

W. Madelung, “The Sufyani between tradition and history”, Studia Islamica 63 (1986) pp. 13–14 and 28. 25 I have used the edition and study by Jorge Aguadé, Madrid, 1991. 26 Apud Aguadé ed., Ibn Óabìb, Kitàb al-ta"rìkh, p. 89. 27 Ibn Óabìb, Kitàb al-ta"rìkh, ed. Aguadé, p. 89. 28 Ibn Óabìb, Kitàb al-ta"rìkh, ed. Aguadé, p. 90.

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that the government of the Umayyads will last until the appearance of al-Dajjàl.29 Ibn Óabìb believed, and wrote, that his times were those of the End (àkhir al-zamàn), just like a number of contemporary Eastern traditionists, such as Nu'aym b. Óammàd, who records ˙adìths concerning the appearance of the Mahdì in the year 200 of the Hijra. Mu˙ammad b. Wa∂∂à˙, the famous Andalusi traditionist, and a disciple of Ibn Óabìb, also seems to have believed in the proximity of the Final Hour,30 as did al-Maghàmì, another of Ibn Óabìb’s disciples: for both of them the age of the emir 'Abd Allàh (275–300/ 888–912), when Umayyad power seemed to have come to an end, could be interpreted in such a way.31 The belief is reflected in the Crónica Profética of the Northern Christians, mentioned above: “The Sarracens themselves believe that their end is nigh because of certain prodigies and signs in the stars.”32 As has been said, in the second half of the 9th century, al-Andalus was disrupted by a series of successive revolts during a period which is known as the Fitna. Fitna is also a term very frequently found in apocalyptic traditions referring to the collective trials and tribulations that the Muslim community has to go through before reaching the end of times. Ibn Óafßùn The leader of the best-known of these revolts was the muwallad 33 rebel 'Umar b. Óafßùn, who came close to ending the Umayyad emirate. Traditionally, historians have tended to see this warlord as the leader of a native Hispanic nationalist movement opposed to the AraboMuslim invader. If this had been the case, Arab domination of the Peninsula might have come to an end in the 9th century, squeezed by a “giant pair of pincers” (between the supposed nationalists of 29 M. Marín, “'Ilm al-nu[ùm e 'ilm al-˙idthàn en al-Andalus” in Actas del XII Congreso de la U.E.A.I. (Málaga, 1984), Madrid, 1986, pp. 509–35, pp. 517–519. 30 Study in edition of Ibn Wa∂∂à˙ (Kitàb al-bida', ed., trans. and estudy by M. Fierro, Madrid, 1988) p. 99. 31 For more on this, see details in Fierro, “Mahdisme et eschatologie en alAndalus” in A. Kaddouri (ed.), Mahdisme, crise et changement dans l’histoire du Maroc, Rabat, 1994, pp. 47–69; Aguadé ed., Ibn Óabìb, Kitàb al-ta"rìkh; Marín, “'Ilm alnu[ùm”. 32 Apud Gil, “Judíos y cristianos en Hispania”, p. 70. 33 A muwallad or “muladí” was a Muslim of Hispano-Roman origin.

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the South and the Christians of the North), as the Crónica Profética had joyfully predicted. In fact, Ibn Óafßùn and other rebels (e.g. Ibn Marwàn) recruited their troops from the autochtonous peasants impoverished by a run of bad harvests, plague, and an unbearable tax burden.34 Ibn Óafßùn’s most recent historian, Manuel Acién,35 interprets the Fitna as a critical period of transition caused by the violent reaction of the old feudal Visigoth aristocracy (to which Acién believes Ibn Óafßùn belonged)36 to the dismantling of their power after the end of a period characterised by a policy of pact-making. According to Acién, the high clergy of the Mozarabs should also be considered part of this Visigothic feudal aristocracy, so that the Mozarab martyrs of Cordoba, mentioned above, ought to be included in the list of rebellious movements. The new age, i.e. the end of the period still governed by the pacts made at the time of the conquest, was in this view motivated above all by the administrative reforms and fiscal measures of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn II and by the unstoppable urban growth of al-Andalus. Personally, I am more convinced by Maribel Fierro’s argument37 that Ibn Óafßùn was a muwallad rebel, i.e. an acculturated convert to Islam who had not been integrated in the system through ties of walà", at a time when the processes of conversion and arabisation were seeking to complete the previous phase of Arab predominance. This would link Ibn Óafßùn’s movement with those occurring in the Maghreb mentioned in the first chapter, and which can be considered manifestations of the frustration felt by new Muslims unable to enjoy the benefits brought about by the new Arab empire, i.e. a product of the “age of conversions”. Comparisons with his strict contemporary the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh seem especially appropiate: both were leaders of an apocalyptic movement of rebellion against Arab power, though one, Ibn Óafßùn failed to take power, while the other, Abù 'Abd Allàh handed it to the Fà†imid Mahdì and was put to death by him. A legend grew up around the

34

J. Gil, “Judíos y cristianos en Hispania”, p. 75. M. Acién, Entre el feudalismo y el Islam. 'Umar b. Óafßùn en los historiadores, en las fuentes y en la historia, Jaén, 1994. 36 Acién bases this assumption on his genealogy, which D. Wasserstein has since argued convincingly to be false, “Inventing tradition and constructing identity: the genealogy of 'Umar Ibn Óafßùn between Christianity and Islam”, Al-Qan†ara 23 (2002) pp. 269–297. 37 M. Fierro, “Cuatro preguntas en torno a Ibn Óafßùn”, Al-Qan†ara 16 (1995) pp. 221–57. 35

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figure of Ibn Óafßùn which fits the general messianic expectations of the age, and which seems to indicate that Ibn Óafßùn intended to be a religious leader as well as a political one: “anà rabbu-kum ala'là”, as Ibn Óafßùn said to his followers.38 This, at least, is the accusation made by his enemies, since this phrase reproduces the words of the Pharaoh in the Qur"àn, where the Pharaoh sought to replace God, rabb being the first name given by the Qur"àn for the Creator.39 Such accusations have much in common with Arab attacks against the “false prophets”, as well as with the accusation of the Fà†imid Mahdì 'Abd Allàh against the dà'i. Ibn Óafßùn made use of predictions and prophecies in his favour40 and although he never proclaimed himself a Mahdì, his providentialist and redemptionist characteristics were fairly plain. He came so close to bringing Umayyad power to an end that the Fitna was seen as a sign of the End of Times. When 'Abd al-Ra˙màn III finally conquered Bobastro, Ibn Óafßùn’s stronghold, he strengthened its fortifications “so that it would serve as a refuge for him and his family, because of a certain prediction that there was to be an uprising in al-Andalus whose leaders would wage crude war on its inhabitants, laying waste to whole regions, slaughtering men and capturing women and children, so that the only people who would be saved were those who remained within their forts or fled by sea. This fateful occurrence would be the precursor of the Great Catastrophe, during which there was to be no possible solution.”41 This is exactly the kind of description given by the Iftità˙ of the foundation and fortification of Mahdiyya as a refuge for the Fà†imid dynasty. Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn describes 'Abd Allàh al Mahdì using traditions which prophesied that al-Dajjàl (in his case, it was to be Abù Yazìd, to whom the so called prophecy refers post-eventum)42 could never enter it. Other figures who led uprisings in al-Andalus during these first two centuries of Islam have to be placed in relation with the Idrìsid dynasty. Ibn Óayyàn, Al-Muqtabis III, ed. M.M. Antuña, Paris, 1937, p. 118. J. Chelhod, “Note sur l’emploie du mot rabb dans le Coran”, Arabica V (1958) pp. 159–167. 40 Ibn al-Qù†iyya, Ta"rìkh iftità˙ al-Andalus, Spanish trans. J. Ribera, Madrid, 1926, pp. 91/76. 41 Akhbàr majmù'a, ed. and trans. E. Lafuente Alcántara, Madrid, 1867, p. 134. 42 Iftità˙, ed. Dachraoui, pp. 327–328. 38 39

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Shaqyà Shaqyà b. 'Abd al-Wà˙id was a Berber from the tribe of the Miknàsa who was apparently from the Western area of the Iberian Peninsula and seems to have been a mu'allim kuttàb, or schoolteacher. His revolt against the Umayyad 'Abd al-Ra˙màn I lasted from 151/768 until 160/777 in an area which extended from Merida to Santaver. His followers were mainly Berbers. Sources describe Shaqyà as “al-Fà†imì” and record that he claimed to be a descendant of the Prophet’s daughter, through Óusayn according to some sources and through al-Óasan according to others. 43 He also changed his name to Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh. Shaqyà took advantage of the shì'ite propaganda initiated after the death of Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh al-Nafs al-Zakiyya and tried to present himself as one of his descendants. Shaqyà’s case, like that of Idrìs, shows that Zaydist propaganda had reached the Berbers, creating an atmosphere which was favourable to the reception as Imams of figures descending from alNafs al-Zakiyya, or claiming such descent. It is interesting to note the references in the sources, frequent for this kind of figure, to the fact that he always travelled on an ass. Amongst such figures, we will also see several further examples of schoolteachers. It is possible that the term mu'allim has been misunderstood or mistranslated and refers to another kind of magisterial activity. In addition, there was another figure who made political use of his alleged descendance from Fà†ima during the Umayyad period. In 333/944 an unnamed man emerged in Lisbon alleging to be a prophet and claimed for himself a genealogy which went back to 'Abd al-Mu††alib, the Prophet’s uncle. Sources provide no information on his origins or that of his followers, upon whom he imposed a number of new laws and regulations.44

Ibn al-Qi†† In the late 3rd/9th century a strange and almost unknown ascete by the name of Abù 'Alì al-Sarràj was employed as a messenger between 43 M. Fierro, La heterodoxia en al-Andalus durante el periodo Omeya, Madrid, 1987, pp. 28–30. 44 Fierro, La heterodoxia en al-Andalus, pp. 128–9.

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'Umar b. Óafßùn, the famous muwallad rebel mentioned above, and the Banù Qasì. The man is described as wearing a woollen cloak and riding an ass. The Banu Qasì were an important mawàlì family which, although loyal to the Umayyads, ruled with almost total autonomy the region of the Northern frontier with the Christians, in Aragon. Al-Sarràj travelled throughout al-Andalus serving the interests of 'Umar b. Óafßùn, whose eschatological characteristics I have described, and in his later preaching, mainly among Berber populations, he announced the imminent appearance of the Mahdì and advocated jihàd against Christians. Al-Sarràj seems to have instigated the uprising which was organised by Ibn al-Qi††,45 a member of the Umayyad family who in 288/900 revolted against his powerful relative, the emir 'Abd Allàh. Ibn al-Qi†† left Cordoba and managed to obtain the support of the Berber tribes of central alAndalus as a result of the reputation he had gained from making successful predictions of future events. His preaching was based on practice of the zuhd, or ascetism, a call to wage jihàd against Christians and the ˙isba, the exercise of which constituted the “censorship of customs” embodied in the precept of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf wa-l-nahy 'an al-munkar (to command right and forbid wrong). Ibn al-Qi†† also rode a horse which was considered to have special qualities. Once he had become an established prophet and his supporters had attributed to him the ability to perform miracles, he was able to present himself to his followers as a Mahdì. Ibn al-Qi††, in his capacity as a Mahdì, seems to have preached the proximity of the Final Hour. After performing a miracle which consisted of obtaining water from some dry branches, he is said to have claimed: “This is one of the charismas which God has granted me; I will show you more in due time, if God delays the moment (in akhara Allàh al-mudda)”.46 However, his attempt to conquer Zamora ended in failure and, abandoned by his own followers, he died in battle with the Christians. The figure of Abù 'Alì al-Sarràj is usually interpreted, like that of his contemporary Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Shì'ì, in terms of an ismà'ìlite propaganda whose aim was to contribute to the weakening of the Umayyad emirate by encouraging further revolts. The ismà'ìlites sent two dà'is to al-Andalus who were reported to have made contact

45 46

Fierro, La heterodoxia en al-Andalus, pp. 106 and ff. Fierro, La heterodoxia en al-Andalus, p. 111.

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with al-qà"im 'alà Banì Umayya, i.e. Ibn Óafßùn.47 One can see in Ibn al-Qi††’s revolt a movement of shì'ite inspiration, although it is difficult to reconcile this interpretation with the fact that Ibn al-Qi†† was an Umayyad. What it does reveal is the susceptibility of the Berbers of al-Andalus, no less than the followers of Ibn Óafßùn, to the promise of Mahdist revolution, shì'ite or otherwise. On that score, they were comparable to the Kutàma, whose successful rising on behalf of the Fà†imid Mahdì has already been discussed.

Abù Rakwa A century later Abù Rakwa is a further example of the apocalyptic tradition in al-Andalus (rakwa is the leather water-jug which was part of the attire of wandering ascetes) who preached on the one hand the censorship of customs and the jihàd on the other. Like Ibn alQi††, he is said to have been a member of the Umayyad family. Ibn al-Athìr relates that Abù Rakwa left al-Andalus when he was above the age of twenty, apparently fleeing Almanzor’s persecution of relatives of Hishàm II who might aspire to take the caliphate from him. Abù Rakwa lived for some time in Egypt, where he devoted himself to the study of the ˙adìth, performed the pilgrimage, and eventually settled in the province of Barqa in Cirenaica among the Banù Qurra (a tribe of the Banù Hilàl) as a schoolteacher, another mu'allim to be counted in the list. Thus far, his career was therefore very similar to that of the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh, even down to the circumstances in which he settled in the community towards whom his preaching as a mu'allim was directed, i.e. by invitation of the ignorant tribes wishing to be properly instructed. Among the Banù Qurra, Abù Rakwa revealed himself to be a very pious ascete who carried out all religious precepts very scrupulously. He later presented himself as a reformer of customs, preaching the al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf. His next step was to explain to the Banù Qurra, amongst whom he had now gained great prestige, that he was in fact the Umayyad Imàm whose arrival had been predicted by the treatises of eschatology,

47 W. Madelung and P. Walker, The advent of the Fatimids: a contemporary Shi’i Witness, London, 2000, pp. 63–64 and P. Walker, “The identity of one of the ismà'ìlì dà'is sent by the Fatimids to Ibn Óafßùn”, Al-Qan†ara 21 (2000) pp. 387–388.

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which forecast that he was to reign in Egypt and kill the tyrants. He told them that the time for action had come, and promised them victory, saying that he was the qà"im and the awaited Imàm, i.e. the Mahdì. As such he roused both the Banù Qurra and the Zanàta Berbers of the region to invade Egypt to overthrow the Fà†imid Caliph al-Óàkim, in 395/1004–5. The regime was badly shaken but Abù Rakwa was finally defeated, captured and humiliatingly put to death by a chimpanzee.48

The Umayyad Caliphate The leaders of the movements described so far combined prophetic characteristics with ascetic ones. They were “teachers”. From the little information that we possess about doctrinal content, they all seem to have preached in favour of a life of extreme austerity and the scrupulous observance of religion. Several of them (Shaqyà, al-Sarràq, Ibn al-Qi††), in addition to wearing woollen cloaks and sandals, rode asses. Their appearance coincides with the emergence and development of ascetism in al-Andalus.49 As in the Middle East, extreme ascetism, withdrawal to the desert and the rejection of “civilization” seemed to induce their apocalyptic tendencies. There was a parallel contemporary tendency in the Christian West, as was reflected in the eschatological literature. Reeves proposes that one of the unchanging themes in that literature is that of the hermit who is sought out among the rocks under divine guidance to be made supreme leader of the renovatio mundi. This is a theme which goes back to the Oracles of Leo mentioned in the Introduction. In the Oracles, when a pope has to be elected, God’s voice directs men to the rocky retreat from which the emaciated penitent is brought forth to become the ideal pope. Popular prophecy is seen in this theme as a means of bringing an ideal nearer, and divine intervention as a method of revolutionising an institution whose authority cannot be impugned. The exaltations of the hermit amid the rocks are a medieval

48 J. Aguadé, “Abù Rakwa”, Actas del IV Coloquio Hispano-Tunecino (Palma de Mallorca, 1979), Madrid, 1983, pp. 9–27. 49 M. Marín, “The early development of zuhd in al-Andalus”, in F. De Jong (ed.), Shi’a Islam, Sects and Sufism. Historical dimensions, religious practice and methodological considerations, Utrecht, 1992, pp. 83–94.

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expression of the Magnificat theme and a striking affirmation of the belief that spiritual revolution must inevitably take place.50 But whilst apocalyptic ideals were used to oppose an authority which could not be impugned, the authorities themselves also made use of eschatological and messianic arguments to reinforce their own legitimacy. The 'Abbàsid caliphs of Baghdad resorted to legitimizing arguments of an eschatological order by calling themselves “Imams of the right guide” (al-hudà) and by using epithets like al-hàdì, or almahdì, “regnal titles with a strong redemptive overtone”.51 The caliph al-Manßùr was a Mahdì and qà"im, like his son al- Mahdì, and Hàrùn was known as rashìd wa-mahdì.52 Rivalry grew in the Maghreb between the Fà†imids and Umayyads of al-Andalus. In this competition for the caliphate, the Idrìsids became secondary figures enjoying occasional alliances with both sides and tried to defend their family dominions against the other two powers without officially staking their claim to universal domination of the umma. On the other hand, 'Abd al-Ra˙màn III, the Umayyad from al-Andalus who was proclaimed emir in 300/912 as successor to his grandfather the emir 'Abd Allàh, departed from his predecessors’ policies by proclaiming himself caliph in 319/929, at a time when all domestic revolts had been successfully crushed.53 This measure was dictated, amongst other reasons, by the need to counteract the propaganda of the Fà†imid caliphate established in Ifrìqiya since 297/909. With the assumption of the titles of caliph (khalìfa) and commander of the faithful (amìr al mu’minìn) and of the laqab “he who fights victoriously for the religion of God” (al-Nàßir lidìn Allàh), 'Abd al-Ra˙màn made it clear that he intended to reconstitute Umayyad dynastic legitimacy, faced by the double threat of the 'Abbàsids to the East and the Fà†imids in the Maghreb. In addition, 'Abd al-Ra˙màn adopted other laqabs such as that of al-qà"im 50 M. Reeves, “The Development of Apocalyptic Thought: Medieval Attitudes”, The Prophetic Sense of History in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Ashgate, Variorum, 1999,VI, p. 131. 51 P. Crone and M. Hinds, God’s caliph. Religious authority in the first centuries of Islam, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 80 and ff. 52 A.A. al-Duri, “Al-Fikra al-mahdiyya bayna al-da'wa al-abbàsiyya wa-l-'aßr al'abbàsì al-awwal”, Studia Arabica et Islamica: Festschrift for Ihsan Abbas on his sixtieth birthday, ed. W. al-Qà∂ì, Beirut, 1981, p. 130. 53 I base my discussion of these events on the article by M. Fierro, “Sobre la adopción del título califal por 'Abd al-Ra˙màn III”, Sharq al-Andalus 6 (1989) pp. 33–42.

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bi-llàh, a very similar laqab to that which had first been used by the second Fà†imid caliph, and also by the rebel Abù Rakwa. The term al-qà"im has strong messianic connotations to the extent that it often replaces the word Mahdì. It was a central concept in Fà†imid doctrine, and central also to their propaganda.54 'Abd al-Ra˙màn’s use of this epithet should be understood in the context of the great rivalry for the caliphate and the Andalusian sovereign’s need to neutralize Fà†imid propaganda, even going so far as to adopt some of its own terms. In direct opposition to the al-qà"im bi-amr Allàh awaited by the shì'ites, the sunnites of al-Andalus proposed a qà"im bi-llàh in the person of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn. His 10th-century descendant, Mu˙ammad II, had coins minted with the title al-Imàm Mu˙ammad, amìr al-mu’minìn al-Mahdì bi-llàh.55 Andalusian monarchs were greatly distanced from the Fà†imids in doctrinal terms. Their use of similar propagandistic tactics derived from their providentialism and the need for a counterbalancing answer to Fà†imid propaganda rather than coming from deep conviction or the desire to propagate an ideology which was always careful to distance itself from that of its rivals in Ifrìqiya. In sunnite Islam, the change of century was an event with eschatological resonances and was associated with the appearance of a renewer or revitalizer (mujaddid ) of religion. 'Abd al-Ra˙màn III had gained power at the beginning of the 4th century of the Hijra, and he seems to have made deliberate self-interested use of the circumstance of the new century and its related beliefs. In a letter to his North African allies recorded by Ibn Óayyàn, he defends the legitimacy of his right to exercise power in the East and his willingness to recover what was taken from his predecessors there, which was “for them a right and for him a legacy”, “hoping further that divine generosity would place in his hand the renewal ( yujaddid ) of the faith with his government, the death of heresies with his right behaviour, and the protection of the House of God whose holiness has been violated, whose territory sacked, people defeated and rites interrupted”.56 This is a reference to the sacking of Mecca in 317/929 by the Qarma†a, who carried away the Black Stone to the great consternation of the Islamic world. 'Abd al-Ra˙màn took advantage 54

See W. Madelung, art. “Mahdì” in EI 2. Dated 398, 399 and 400. See G.C. Miles, The Coinage of the Umayyads of Spain, New York, 1950, I, p. 77. 56 Ibn Óayyàn, Al-Muqtabis V. Spanish trans. M.J. Viguera and F. Corriente, Crónica del califa 'Abderra˙màn III an-Nàßir entre los años 912 y 942, Zaragoza, 1981, p. 231. 55

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of the scandal created by this profanation to insist on the decadence of the 'Abbàsid caliphate and its inability to defend the Sunna and Islamic territory, but his words could also be made to apply to the Fà†imids, whose movement, according to its sunnite opponents, derived from that of the Qarma†a. They might even apply to the Idrìsids, given that, as we saw in chapter 1, at least one source points to similarities of doctrine between them and the Qarma†ians. In defence of his right to be caliph, 'Abd al-Ra˙màn alluded to the legacy (mìràth) of his predecessors, and to his ability to defend efficiently the community of believers and to renew the faith. He even cites traditions (riwàyàt, àthàr) which were favourable to him or which could be interpreted as presenting him as their protagonist.57 Unfortunately, none of these traditions are reproduced by Ibn Óayyàn, but it is clear from the documents which he does quote that apart from speaking of his inheritance and of the defense of religion,58 'Abd al-Ra˙màn also used eschatological terminology and literature as a means of legitimising his power and his claim on the caliphate over all the Islamic umma. He promoted the idea that he, and not the Idrìsids, represented the best defence of religion against heretics and infidels. He spoke of defence of the Sunna and the imposition of màlikism as part of a legitimising arsenal of ideas used on his North African allies to counterbalance the Idrìsids and the Fà†imids. In this way, in reaction to the revolutionary Mahdist current that had threatened the very existence of the Umayyad emirate of Cordoba, 'Abd al-Ra˙màn III made his own counter claim to Mahdist authority on behalf of himself and his dynasty. If the Mahdist agitation of his opponents has to be seen in the wider context of the “revolt of Islam” as described in the first chapter, his assumption of the Caliphate has to be seen in the context of the success of revolutionary Mahdism in North Africa, in the shape of the Idrìsid dynasty and especially of the Fà†imids. The extent to which the Fà†imid revolution was crucial can be seen in the literary calques we have been mentioning in the sources, which are nonetheless difficult to interpret. The stories of Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Shì'ì and of the Mahdì 'Abd Allàh, together with the foundation of al-Mahdiyya created a literary paradigm of successful revolution that came to pervade the claims of their opponents. 57

Ibn Hayyan, Al-Muqtabis V, p. 230. M. de Epalza, “Problemas y reflexiones sobre el califato en al-Andalus”, RIEEI XXI (1981–82) pp. 59–73, puts forward the theme of “efficient defence” of Islam as the main element in the legitimization of the caliphate in al-Andalus. 58

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEGALISM TO MAHDISM: RIGOUR, CENSORSHIP, VIOLENCE

Throughout the period with which I will now be concerned, from the ending of the Mahdist Fà†imid Caliphate and the Umayyad Caliphate to the overthrow of the Almoravids (c. 1000 to 1150), two opposed though inter-related tendencies stand out, and each of them was represented by a different “type” of central figure. One type which recurred frequently was the faqìh or jurist, often also a zàhid, a deeply moralistic man of ascetic and austere religion who was strict in his observance and interpretation of the Law. The faqìh’s public activity tended to be restricted to the reformation of customs and the revitalisation of Tradition. The second “type” of figure was associated with a sufism whose doctrines regarding the themes relevant to us here (essentially, prophetology and the nature of the Imàm) had much in common with early shì'ism. This type was what I will call “the prophetic saint”, the walì who claims closeness to God and his Prophet through divine inspirations (ilhàmàt), and quasi-prophetic conversations with God (mukàlamàt). While Sufism was more closely aligned with Mahdism, it was the activism of the faqìh which brought about the next great mahdist overturn in the Maghreb, that of the Almohads in the 6th/12th century. In the interval, this activism had given rise to the Almoravids and their empire, that prepared the way for the Almohad synthesis of these two opposites, the Mahdism of the Fà†imids and the legalism of the Almoravids. In this chapter, therefore, I will concentrate on the first tendency and the first type, the rigourism of the jurist. This chapter will be dedicated to a notion which pervades the actions of many holy men: the practice of the ˙isba or the precept of commanding right and forbidding wrong.

“Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong” The practice of the Quranic precept of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” (al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf wa-l-nahy 'an al-munkar) is essential

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to an understanding of certain aspects of the implantation and development of sufism in the Maghreb. The precept is mentioned in several Quranic verses and constitutes an important element in the moral ethics and political activity of classical Islam. In a call to the unity of believers, God directs himself to them as follows: “Let there be one community of you (wa-l-takun minkum ummatun) calling to good and commanding right and forbidding wrong (wa-yamurùna bi-l-ma'rùfi wa-yanhawna 'ani l-munkar): those are the prosperers” (Qur"àn 3: 104). This precept thus formulated, i.e. uniting the order to forbid wrong and command right, appears in another seven Quranic verses, lending it a particular significance in Islamic ethical thought.1 Although the precept seems to provide the community with charismatic characteristics and redemptive capacity, it rarely appears with eschatological connotations, although there are some very early exceptions: the companion of the Prophet Ibn Mas'ad (d. 32/652) forecasts that the Hour will come when mankind is at its worst, at a time when wrong is not forbidden and right is not commanded. When believers no longer follow the precept, in other words, thus provoking divine wrath. Another companion, 'Abd Allàh ibn 'Umar (d. 73/693) held that the eschatological beast which God will cause to rise from the earth (Qur"àn 27: 82) will emerge when people have ceased to practise the prohibition of wrong.2 In Imàmite or twelver shì'ite tradition, a connection is occasionally made between the Imamate and forbiddding wrong and commanding right. For example, al-Bàqir wrote that the world would not end until God sent a member of the family of the Prophet to take action against all wrong that he found: là yarà munkaran illà ankarahu. The implication is, perhaps, that it will not be possible to right wrongs until that moment has arrived. Another tradition is attributed to the Prophet himself on the day of Ghadìr Khumm. Mu˙ammad urged believers to practise the precept of forbidding wrong and commanding right, and he ended by claiming that this precept could not be carried out without the presence of the infallible Imàm (illà ma'a Imàm ma'ßùm).3

1 This precept was recently the subject of a monumental work by Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, Cambridge, 2000. 2 M. Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong, p. 40. 3 M. Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong, p. 260.

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From a very early period we have seen that appeals to the precept of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf were frequently made in the general context of some sort of confrontation with those in power. I have already mentioned the case of the ascete Ibn al-Qi†† who, according to Ibn Óayyàn, was intensely devoted to commanding right and forbidding wrong.4 A very similar case was that of Abù Rakwa, also mentioned in Chapter 3. In the Maghreb, the earliest mention I have found of the individual practice of the ˙isba precept is that referring to Abù 'Imràn al-Fàsì (d. 430/1038), the Màliki jurist from Qayrawàn whom Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm and the Lamtùna notables asked to accompany them and act as their teacher.5 Wajjàj ibn Zalù, in the origins of the Almoravid movement, was also an active mu˙tasib in whom ascetism and the practise of the ˙isba were associated with the performance of miracles.

The Rise of the Almoravids Abù 'Imràn al-Fàsì’s importance for the rise of the Almoravids lies not only in his militant practice of the ˙isba. Through him the Almoravids were connected to the main opposition to the Fà†imids in Ifrìqiya, that which was posed by the body of Màliki jurists and scholars of Qayrawàn, who were in continual conflict with the shì'ite authorities and often suffered direct repression from them. The most rigorous form of Màlikism was responsible for the next Berber movement, that of the Almoravids or al-Muràbi†ùn. From about the year 400/1050, the Lamtùna and Ghudàla tribes at the edge of the Sahara desert started to practise holy war under the guidance of their prophet 'Abd Allàh Ibn Yàsìn. According to the main narrative of Almoravid history,6 Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm, chief of the Ghudàla tribe living on the fringes of the Sahara, went on pilgrimage to Mecca in 427/1036.7 During his return journey he stopped in Qayrawàn where he realised how deficient was the knowledge of Islam in his native land. He then asked the màlikite

4

Al-Muqtabis, ed. M.M. Antuña, p. 133. See infra. 6 Al-Bakrì, Kitàb al-masàlik, p. 165/71. 7 Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às. Histoire des souverains du Maghreb (Espagne et Maroc) et annales de la ville de Fès, ed. and trans. A. Beaumier, Paris, 1860, p. 77/237. 5

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jurist Abù 'Imràn al-Fàsì (shortly before the jurist’s death in 430/1039), to name one of his disciples who could accompany him. No one in Qayrawàn wanted to undertake this trip and so Abù 'Imràn directed Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm to his former disciple Wajjàj b. Zalù who lived in a ribà† in the Sùs, in Southern Morocco. Wajjàj chose among his own disciples one called 'Abd Allàh ibn 'Abd Allàh ibn Yàsìn, whom he considered the most suitable due to the fact that he was the son of a woman of the Jazùla tribe, also from the edge of the desert. Abù 'Imràn was one of a group of eminent Màliki scholars from Qayrawàn who in 441/1049 persuaded the Zirid governors of Ifrìqiya to abandon their vassalage to the Fà†imids, then based in Cairo, and to give allegiance to the 'Abbàsids of Baghdad instead.8 He and his disciples Wajjàj and Ibn Yàsìn represented the tradition of militancy of the Màliki school in Ifrìqiya that was the result of a long struggle for survival under the Fà†imids. Many of these Màliki fuqahà" combined the study of the Law with the practice of zuhd, ascetism. They were trained in ribà†s which had already ceased to function as military outposts to became centres of retirement and devotion dedicated to the propagation of sunnite Islam. The muràbi†ùn were militant, imbued with a mission, dedicated to jihàd. Abù 'Imràn al-Fàsì,9 was one of these rigourists, and militant fuqahà"; he practised the ˙isba i.e, he “commanded right and forbade wrong”. He was a native of Fez, who settled in Qayrawàn and was held in great esteem both by the sufis and by the fuqahà" of the extreme Maghreb in the 12th and 13th centuries.10 Ibn al-A˙mar recorded that Abù 'Imràn had been forced to leave the city of Fez, where he was born, because he “commanded right and forbade wrong and for this reason was expelled from there [Fez] by the tyrants (al-†ughàt) who governed it in name of the Magràwa”.11 In Qayrawàn, Abù 'Imràn led the group of Màliki jurists who fought to re-establish Màlikism in a province which still depended on the Fà†imid dynasty. He was chosen by

8 R.H. Idrìs “Une des phases de la lutte du malékisme contre le shi’isme sous les Zirides”, Les Cahiers de Tunisie 4 (1956) pp. 508–17. 9 See R.H. Idrìs, “Deux juristes kairouanais de l’époque ziride: Ibn Abì Zaid et al-Qabìsì (X–XI siècle)”, Annales de l’Institut de Études Orientales 12 (1954) pp. 122–98, pp. 30–60. 10 See al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf ilà rijàl al-taßawwuf, ed. A. Toufiq, Rabat, 1984, nos. 4, 5 and 6. 11 Ibn al-A˙mar, Buyùtàt Fàs al-kubrà, Rabat, 1972, p. 44.

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Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm and the Lamtùna notables to accompany them and act as their teacher in Qayrawàn after he returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca. According to Ibn al-A˙mar again, the Lamtùna chose Abù 'Imràn because they had heard in Morocco of the circumstances of his expulsion from Fez, where he had condemned the injustice and tyranny of the city’s governors.12 Approached by Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm, Abù 'Imràn subjected him to a round of close questioning about his country and its inhabitants, much as the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh had done with representatives of the Kutàma tribe. Like the Kutàma, the Lamtùna tribes (of whom the Ghudàla) lived at some distance from the governing powers, and like them they did not consent to any authority other than that of the notables of their own tribe. Abù Imràn was told of the conditions of spiritual penury in which the Lamtùna then lived: “He realised that they knew nothing, that they were ignorant of the Qur"àn and the Sunna, but that they were avid to learn, full of good intentions, firm in their religious convictions and in their faith”.13 He therefore proposed to them: “Why not study divine law from its true point of view? Why not command right and forbid wrong?”14 As we have seen, Abù 'Imràn sent Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm to one of his disciples, Wajjàj b. Zalù al-Lam†ì, who lived in a ribà† in the Sùs called Dàr al-muràbi†ìn. Wajjàj had also been a disciple of the shaykh Abù Mu˙ammad b. Tìsyìt of Aghmàt and belonged to the group of his followers who waged war on the Barghawà†a.15 The Maßmùda travelled to visit Wajjàj in his ribà† in search of enlightenment, but also to ask him to intercede at times of scarcity and drought, for as a saint Wajjàj was considered capable of making rain fall. Wajjàj himself designated 'Abd Allàh ibn Yàsìn to accompany the Lamtùna to the desert. These events constitute the very beginnings of the Almoravid movement. Arab chronicles describe Ibn Yàsìn’s arrival in Íanhàja territory commanding right and forbidding wrong, and forcing its people to follow religious legislation which differed from their previous customs. Ibn Abì Zar' described how local populations were instructed to command right and forbid wrong, and how these populations, seeing the severity with which Ibn Yàsìn insisted on a change in 12 13 14 15

Ibn al-A˙mar, Buyùtàt Fàs al-kubrà, p. 45. Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às. Al-Bakrì, Kitàb al-masàlik, p. 311/165. Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf, no. 5.

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their habits, soon distanced themselves from him and began to detest him as a bothersome figure.16 This animosity seems to have led Ibn Yàsìn and his followers to undertake a hijra and withdraw to an island of the Niger, where they devoted themselves to the study of religion and the practice of piety.17 Ibn Yàsìn combined the qualities of zuhd and fiqh. His piety and asceticism were associated with the performance of miracles, some of which were described by al-Bakrì as “proofs of Ibn Yàsìn’s sainthood which were related by his followers without the slightest sign of doubt”.18 His prestige and that of his murabi†ùn spread rapidly, and large numbers of followers travelled to join him. Written records, and especially the work of Ibn Abì Zar',19 clearly show that for Ibn Yàsìn the processes of reclamation, reconversion and purification constituted a preparatory stage for subsequent military campaigns. In other words, one sees that the jihàd against oneself and one’s carnal desires which was considered fitting for a zàhid was always a potential jihàd, first against a non-supportive environment and then against the infidel. These stages of the jihàd were enshrined in the practice of the ˙isba, i.e. the militant attempt to reform one’s surroundings according to a puritanical interpretation of the Law. Óisba and jihàd became permanently entwined concepts. In his efforts to command right and forbid wrong, Ibn Yàsìn created his own community and made of it an army for the waging of war on unbelievers and heretics (like the Barghawà†a) to the north and south of the Sahara. These wars led to the creation of a territorial base and the foundation of a state by means of which the conquered lands and peoples could be governed. In practice, then, Ibn Yàsìn’s insistence on “commanding right and forbidding wrong” began with the formation of his own community and led on to the establishment of a government, or sul†a. There are of course many differences between the manner in which Almoravid power first emerged and subsequent developments 16 Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às, p. 169. Similar news in Ibn Khaldùn, Berbéres, Slane, vol. II, pp. 68 and ff. 17 N. Levtzion, “'Abd Allàh b. Yàsìn and the Almoravids”, in J.R. Willis (ed.), Studies in West African Islamic History, London, 1979, vol. I, pp. 78–112; F. P. de Moraes Faria, “The Almoravids, some questions concerning the character of the movement during its period of closest contact with the Western Sudan”, Bulletin de l’Institut Fondamental de l’Afrique Noire 29 (1967) pp. 794–878. 18 Al-Bakrì, Kitàb al-masàlik, p. 168–9/63. 19 Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às, pp. 172 and ff.

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in the same dynasty. What needs to be highlighted is the fact that during this first period there was, at least in theory, a double leadership shared between Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm, the temporal authority in charge of military affairs, and Ibn Yàsìn, the authority in the interpretation of the Law. Ibn Abì Zar' wrote that “Ibn Yàsìn, after gathering together the notables from among the Íanhàja, gave them as an emir Ya˙yà al-Lamtùnì, to whom he granted general command. But in fact it was he who was the emir because it was he who gave the orders and who forbade ( ya"muru wa-yanhà), he who gave and he who received; in other words, Ya˙yà was no more than the lord of war, the general of the troops, and the faqìh Ibn Yàsìn the lord of religion and the law, and the collector of the taxes and the zakat.”20 Ibn Yàsìn never sought to become a Mahdì, since he headed a counter-revolution against the shì'ites, but to be the prophet of the Law, perhaps embodying the words of the Quranic sùra which bear his name, the Sùra Yà" Sìn: “By the Qur"àn that prescribes and ordains, you are one of those who are sent on a straight road, a revelation of the Mighty, the Merciful, to warn a people whose fathers were not warned, and hence are heedless and unaware.” Ibn Yàsìn also made the same call that the dà'i had made to the Kutàma, inviting a tribal people on the verges of the Islamic world to form a community that would fight for the Faith under the guidance of a religious leader. On this occasion it was a revolt against the shì'ite doctrine of the Imàm represented by the Fà†imids of Ifrìqiya, a revolt which had been brought into being by the Màliki jurists of Qayrawàn.21 The Almoravids unified the Muslim West under their rule in about half a century. They had little difficulty in occupying Southern Morocco where they established their capital, Marrakech, in 1070 and from where they conquered Fez. In 475/1082 their rule extended as far as Algiers. By then, the Muslim kingdoms in al-Andalus (the Mulùk al-ˇawà"if ) which had appeared after the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba were calling for the Almoravid armies to help them against the rising power of the Christian North. The determining factor was the Christian conquest of Toledo in 478/1085. The acceptance and support of the powerful màlikite faqìh-s of al20

Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às, p. 21. Relations between the Màliki jurists and the Almoravids are analysed in detail by A. Launois, “Influence des docteurs malékites sur le monayyage ziride de type sunnite et sur celui des Almoravides”, Arabica XI (1964) pp. 127–150. 21

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Andalus was a main factor in the success of the Almoravid conquest of the region and would have its bearing on the ideological strategies of its rulers. Even at the peak of their power they never assumed caliphal titles. The Almoravid rulers called themselves amìr al-muslimìn, a title which they were the first to use, and gave allegiance to the 'Abbàsid caliph in Baghdad. The Almoravids did not wish to arrogate themselves the title of Caliph, as the Fà†imids had done, so they established a kind of sub-caliphate with a title of their own later to be born by other independent kingdoms. The Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂ The Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂ is one of the best known figures in Western màlikism, and his life coincides almost exactly with the period of government of the Almoravid dynasty with which he was so closely linked. 'Iyà∂ was an archetypal Almoravid faqìh: strictly orthodox and rigorous in his following of the màliki madhhab, implacable in his application of the law, and a renowned enemy of the sufis. Born in Ceuta, the Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂ completed his studies in his home city before leaving for al-Andalus, where he was taught by opponents of al-Ghazàlì’s work and by a number of the Andalusian masters, particularly Abù 'Alì al-Íadafì.22 'Iyà∂ was a disciple of Ibn Óamdìn (the andalusi judge who decreed the burning of al-Ghazàlì’s books), and also of the qà∂ì Abù Bakr ibn al-'Arabì, and he received the ijàza of al-ˇur†ùshì and of al-Màzarì, a Tunisian master who had written a work refuting al-Ghazàlì’s ideas.23 As qà∂ì of Ceuta from 1121 to 1136, 'Iyà∂ was renowned for his strict application of justice. In 1136, he was appointed qà∂ì of Granada but was removed from the post a few months later by the Almoravid sultan 'Alì b. Yùsuf at the request of Tàshufìn, the Almoravid prince who was governor of Granada. Arab sources state that Tàshufìn was highly displeased with 'Iyà∂ because of the severity of his application of the law, and that 'Iyà∂ had gone so far as to preach against 22 Al-Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, Al-Gunya. Fihris shuyùkh al-qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, ed. M. Jarrar, Beirut, 1402/1982, pp. 62–65. 23 R.H. Idrìs, “L’école màlikite de Mahdia: l’imàm al-Màzarì (536/1141)”, Études d’Orientalisme dédiées à la mémoire de Lévi-Provençal, Paris, 1962, pp. 153–63.

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figures close to the sovereign himself.24 Hanna Kassis nevertheless holds the view that the difficulties in Granada were due to religious differences with Tàshufìn, who had contacts in sufi circles.25 In my opinion, it is very likely that political motives were overridingly important: sovereigns always had good reasons for mistrusting those who insisted on a strict fulfilment of the law, given that such an insistence was often a way of defying the sovereign’s authority. Sovereign rulers were wary of the symptomatic appearance of any announced intention to reform customs. In addition, 'Iyà∂ enjoyed immense popularity in Granada, where he was received on the occasion of his appointment “with such jubilation the like of which was not shown to any ruling prince”.26 A qà∂ì was the symbol of central authority and state power, and in al-Andalus, qà∂ìs frequently assumed the government of their community, i.e. they occupied the post of the Imàm.27 Only a few years later, a qà∂ì was to assume power in Cordoba, which had recently risen against the Almoravids: after a series of disturbances and riots in Cordoba against the appointment of various judges, 'Alì b. Yùsuf b. Tàshufìn allowed the ahl Qur†uba (the people of Cordoba) to choose its own judge in 536/1141. The city chose Ibn Óamdìn and in 529/1144, when Cordoba again revolted against the Almoravids, Ibn Óamdìn was proclaimed governor and took the title of amìr al-muslimìn. His period of government lasted eleven months.28 Qà∂ìs, therefore, were in al-Andalus at this moment a very plausible option as political rulers and potentially dangerous to sultans. 'Iyà∂ was relieved of his post in Granada, and was not able to occupy any other position until the death of Tàshufìn, at which point he was appointed qà∂ì of Ceuta, where he continued to be judge and governor during the collapse of the Almoravid empire. The Almohads upheld him in his post as judge after conquering the city in 1145, taking note of the fact that 'Iyà∂ had urged the population to be loyal to the Almohads before going into battle. However, the following year 'Iyà∂ headed a revolt of the city against the Especially al-Maqqarì, Azhàr al-riyà∂ fì akhbàr 'Iyà∂, Rabat, 1978–80, III, p. 11. H. Kassis, “Iyà∂’s doctrinal views and their impact on the Maghreb”, The Maghreb Review 13 (1988) pp. 49–56. 26 Al-Maqqarì, Azhàr al-riyà∂, vol. 3, p. 11. 27 See M. Fierro, “The qà∂ì as ruler”, in Saber religioso y poder político en el Islam, Madrid, 1994, pp. 71–116. 28 Fierro, “The qà∂ì as ruler”, pp. 90–92. 24

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Almohads during which the Almohad walì (governor) was killed by the populace. 'Abd al-Mu’min reconquered the city, demolished its walls and sent 'Iyà∂ into exile, where he died a year later. The Óisba in Sufism and Mahdism The Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, however, was subsequently much more famous for a work of a very different kind, one that aligns him, paradoxically, with a current of thought in strong opposition to the Almoravids. This was the Kitàb al-Shifà", an exaltation of the life and persona of the Prophet Mu˙ammad, a model for all Muslims to follow and imitate, which as such can be included in the literary genre of shamà"il and dalà"il, long established in the East.29 The book was not the genesis of veneration for the figure of Mu˙ammad and did not have an influence on the creation of this cult, but it certainly did affect its dimensions and later development. The Shifà" achieved unprecedented popularity, on the one hand as a text of the curriculum of students in the madrasas of the Marìnids and later periods, and on the other as required reading for the murìd, the sufi novice. In both cases it took its place alongside the I˙yà" ‘ulùm al-dìn of the great Eastern master al-Ghazàlì, who developed the doctrine of Mu˙ammad as the Perfect Man. Al-Ghazàlì’s doctrine of Mu˙ammad was part of a theology that not only led the Almoravids to order his books to be burnt, but was the inspiration of Ibn Tùmart, the Mahdì of the Almohads by whom the Almoravids were overthrown. Kassis is of the opinion that the Kitàb al-Shifà" was an ineffectual attempt to challenge the Almohads on their own ground. Be that as it may, it is a reminder that the ˙isba was not the exclusive preserve of the Màliki fuqahà" and their Almoravid champions. It entered into Sufism of which al-Ghazàlì was a leading exponent, where it was associated with ideas of divine enlightment and inspiration that took Mahdism forward into a new period of development. At this point I will limit myself to showing how the ˙isba, in association with Sufism, entered into the opposition to the Almoravids. In principle, there was no clear link between sufism and the precept of forbidding wrong. The precept does not occupy a prominent 29 A. Schimmel, And Muhammad is his Messenger. The veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, Chapel Hill and London, 1985, p. 32 and ff.

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place in the Eastern sufi treatises which started to appear from the end of the 3rd/9th century. When it is mentioned, it usually seems to involve a hazard for the sufi, which is that of casting him in a leading role and causing him to occupy himself excessively with worldly affairs and acquire a role in society which makes him arrogant or takes him into positions of excessive pre-eminence. One exception worth mentioning is al-Tustarì (d. 283/896), who promoted the idea of a religious leader designated by God whose functions were, among others, to forbid wrong and command right.30 The development of this precept in the Extreme West in conjunction with sufism is a significant factor which deserves to be highlighted. In the wake of the far-reaching mystical developments in al-Andalus in the second half of the 4th/10th century, the practice of al-amr bil-ma'rùf became inextricably associated with asceticism or zuhd. The zàhid who had come to be regarded as such did not limit himself to scrupulous personal fulfilment of the norms and rites associated with a rigorous following of Islam. He needed to be surrounded by others who did the same. All such figures, with the exception of those who opted for withdrawal from and abandonment of the world, were expected to practise the censorship of customs in their family and social environment: early biographical dictionaries for al-Andalus provide details of several ascetes who became staunch advocates of this precept.31 The precept had been practised since long before the 12th century, but it was at this time when al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf acquired greater significance, mainly through the influence of al-Ghazàlì’s work I˙yà" 'ulùm al-dìn and those who helped to publicise it. The beginning of the 6th/12th century saw the arrival in the Maghreb of a work recently written in the East by one of the most respected contemporary doctors, the outstanding theologian, jurist, mystic and religious reformer Abù Óàmid al-Ghazàlì (d. 505/1111). Al-Ghazàlì’s work, I˙yà" 'ulùm al-dìn, was a summa of ethical dissertations originally aimed at reforming customs which sought to revive religious sciences.This work served to catalyze an entire series of factors in the Muslim West which converged to give sufism a new political relevance. Of basic importance to this process was the Ghazalian doctrine of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf wa-lSee M. Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong, pp. 460 and ff. For several specific cases, see M. Marin, “Zuhhàd de al-Andalus (390/912–420/ 1029)”, Al-Qan†ara 12 (1991) pp. 439–69. 30 31

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nahy 'an al-munkar, perhaps the one factor most easily detected as lying behind the sudden turn of Maghreb sufism towards active participation in political life. Al-Ghazàlì’s work laid out a theoretical development of the idea of commanding right and forbidding wrong without precedent in Màlikism, and turned it into a fundamental pillar of religious interpretation. Al-Ghazàlì devoted Chapter 2 of his I˙yà" to the principle of the ˙isba, which also occupies a central place throughout the rest of the book.32 Al- Ghazàlì ranked those who practise al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf with martyrs in holy wars, and he made the practice a duty of all Muslims. He was particularly insistent on the need to rebuke the sovereign, i.e. on the individual duty of the good Muslim to criticise the behaviour of his sultan when he deserved it, even when he was obliged to pay for this action with his life, in which case he would die as a martyr. Furthermore, and I take this to be a fundamental point, al-Ghazàlì differs, though cautiously, from the màlikite doctors who had preceded him in not considering the Imàm’s authorisation indispensable in those cases where, in order to command right and forbid wrong, it is necessary to resort to coercive force. Al-Ghazàlì finishes his chapter on the ˙isba with an epigraph devoted to the issue: if the censor cannot exercise censorship himself and has to resort to people who will assist him with the force of their arms, the authorisation of the Imàm then becomes necessary for this action to be considered legitimate. But he adds that as it is allowed to particular mujàhids to get together and fight the Infidels, it is also allowed for particular mu˙tasibs to fight against corrupted people.“Whoever is able to reject a reprehensible action can do it by his hand, by his weapons, by his life and by those who help him”.33 As doctrinal speculation, this is nothing new. It should be noted that the mu'tazilites, the khàrijites and the zaydites, all considered it legitimate to resort to violence in order to implement al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf. We have already seen how, before al-Ghazàlì, rebels against established power had invoked the name of the ˙isba. Ibn Óazm (d. 456/1064) went so far

32

See H. Laoust, La politique de Gazali, Paris, 1970, pp. 128–130, whose interpretation is contradicted by the text by al-Ghazàlì from which I quote next. 33 Al-Ghazàlì, I˙yà" 'ulùm al-dìn, ed. 'Izz al-dìn al-Sayrawàn, 3rd ed., Beirut, [s.a.], pp. 304 and ff. See L. Bercher, “L’obligation d’ordonner le bien et interdire le mal selon al-Gazzali (pages de théologie musulmane). Traduction du Kitàb al-amr bi-lma'rùf wa-n-nahy 'ani l-munkar”, IBLA 18 (1959) pp. 53–91, especially pp. 320–321.

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as to regard the practice of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf as the principle which justified the people’s right to insurrection against a tyrannical or unjust prince.34 However, the effects of taking such a position in a work of the influence of the I˙yà" should not be under-estimated, especially when taken in conjunction with the sufism to which alamr bi-l-ma'rùf had become so dear. Al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf provided an anchorage for something inherent to sufi mentality in the pre-modern period: the violent rejection of any kind of conformism, together with a steadfast faithfulness to the living tradition. These two apparently contradictory elements found their theoretical basis in the ˙isba thus formulated, and this allowed them to be related to the work of moral apocalyptists. The precept became as attractive to political reformers as it was to mystics, and the two categories overlapped with increasing frequency from this time on.

The reception of al-Ghazàlì in the Western Maghreb The prohibition in Fez of al-Ghazàlì’s I˙yà" is recorded in one of the oldest Maghribian hagiographical compendia, Al-Tashawwuf ilà rijàl al-taßawwuf written by al-Tàdilì, which takes the form of a biographical dictionary of Moroccan sufis between the 5th and 8th centuries of the Hijra.35 The compendium also mentions the devotion which al-Ghazàlì’s work inspired in the sufis who studied it. One such sufi was Ibn al-Na˙wì, who after the decree against al-Ghazàlì took up his defence by writing to the sultan.36 Al-Na˙wì was one of many scholars who copied out the I˙yà" and read one of its chapters every day until they had learnt it by memory.37 Al-Na˙wì was given to frequent recital of the prayer which al-Ghazàlì had included in his chapter on the precept of “commanding right and forbidding wrong”. When Abù Mu˙ammad 'Abd Allàh al-Malìjì learned that the jurists of Marrakech had ordered all copies of the I˙yà" to be burned, he started praying for the death of one of them every day, 34 Ibn Óazm, Kitàb al-fißal wa-l-milal wa-l-a˙wà" wa-l-ni˙al, Cairo, 1347/(1928–9), IV, pp. 171 and ff.; E. Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam, Lyon, 1943, vol. II, p. 439. 35 Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf. 36 Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf, no. 9. 37 This was also the custom of 'Abd al-Salàm al-Tùnusì and Mu˙ammad alÓawwàrì, for whom see al-Tàdilì, no. 56.

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and it goes without saying that the jurists all died as a result.38 Other miraculous stories record the rejection of the Almoravids by the awliyà": Abù Zakariyyà" al-Jaràwì was visited in his refuge in the mountains of Tàdla by the Almoravid sultan and his entourage, who were en route from Marrakech to Oran. The travellers were veiled, making it impossible for the saint to see that the sultan was among them, but al-Jaràwì nonetheless recognised the sultan by miraculous means, cursed him and prophesied the imminent end of his dynasty.39 Hagiographical sources also point to the presence in Fez from the Almoravid period of an important sufi community opposed to the authorities’ ban on al-Ghazàlì’s work.40 One of these sufi masters, 'Alì b. Óirzihim,41 defied the public order forbidding the burial of another sufi master, Ibn Barrajàn, after his execution—Ibn Óirzihim recovered the corpse from the waste-heap where it had been thrown and organised the funeral honours.42 Ibn Barrajàn and Ibn Óirzihim will be considered in the next chapter, but here we need to point that 'Alì Ibn Óirzihim is known to have devoted a part of each year to reading al-Ghazàlì’s I˙yà". After years of study, however, he decided that there were parts of it with which he did not agree and that he would have to give it up. He then received a punishment in his dreams which convinced him that the entire work was good and written in accordance with the Qur"àn and the Sunna.43 He therefore played a major role in disseminating the work of al-Ghazàlì, making his students study it and ordering them to copy the whole text of the I˙yà" every year. It is also said that a young man came to Ibn Óirzihim and asked him to interpret a dream in which he saw a candle casting a bright light on the Qarawiyìn side of Fez, another over the al-Andalus side, the first light being the stronger. Ibn Óirzihim interpreted the dream saying “I am the candle (i.e. the light) you saw on the Qarawiyìn side”.44 Íàli˙ b. Óirzihim, who had been a disciple of al-Ghazàlì in the East, was the uncle of 'Alì Óirzihim, in turn a disciple of Abù Bakr 38

Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf, no. 33. Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf, no. 26. 40 According to a new manuscript containing 80 biographies, written by Mu˙ammad b. Qàßim al-Tamìmì (d. 604/1207), and analysed by M. Bencherifa in “Óawla Kitàb al-Mustafàd”, Da'wat al-Óaqq 259 (1986) pp. 26–30. 41 Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf, no. 51. 42 Ibn Qunfudh, Uns al-faqìr, ed. M. al-Fàsì y A. Favre, Rabat, 1965, pp. 147–153. 43 Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf, no. 51. 44 Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf, no. 55, pp. 133–134. 39

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Ibn al-'Arabì (the qà∂ì, and not to be confused with Mu˙yì l-dìn Ibn al-'Arabì), an extremely significant figure in the history of Maghreb sufism. Information about persecution or repression of scholars who were disciples or followers of al-Ghazàlì is not explicit (by contrast with other sources) in hagiographical compendia of biographies (manàqib) or in biographical dictionaries of 'ulamà". We find references to alGhazàlì like the ones I have mentioned, in a context of dissent or rebuke of political power. Nevertheless there are some telling silences, such as important scholars who were known disciples of al-Ghazàlì not being included in a dictionary where one would expect them to be (because they were a master of the author, for example). Other unexplained episodes in the lives of scholars who were followers of al-Ghazàlì also occur, such as abnormally short periods in the post of qà∂ì.45 Al-Ghazàlì’s influence, so strongly evident in the mission of Ibn Tùmart, seems to have been an important factor in a series of events which created a climate of religious controversy and dissent against the Almoravid authorities. These events were tinged by an intense moralistic and puritanistic activism. Let us therefore step back a little, in order to retrace the arrival and acceptance of al-Ghazàlì’s doctrinal beliefs.

Qà∂ì Abù Bakr Ibn al-'Arabì and al-ˇur†ùshì It is generally accepted that the man responsible for introducing the works of al-Ghazàlì to al-Andalus was the famous qà∂ì of Seville from 528/1134, Abù Bakr Ibn al-'Arabì.46 Ibn al-'Arabì was not a sufi as such. He belonged to an extended group of fuqahà", who gave themselves up to a life of retirement and austerity, and dedicated themselves to asceticism. Ibn al-'Arabì’s work as a qà∂ì was characterised by his severity (sarama) and his firmness and constancy in the 45 D. Serrano, “Los Almorávides y la teología a“'arí” in C. de la Puente, Identidades marginales, Madrid: CSIC, 2003, pp. 481–82. 46 The qà∂ì Ibn al-'Arabì is such a well-known figure that I do not consider it necessary to give further biographical details, which can be found in V. Lagardère, “La haute judicature à l’époque almoravide en al-Andalus”, Al-Qan†ara 7 (1986) pp. 135–228, pp. 195 and ff.; M.J. Viguera, “Las cartas de al-Gazàlì y al-ˇur†ù“ì al soberano almorávid Yùsuf b. Tà“ufìn”, Al-Andalus 42 (1972) pp. 341–373.

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practice of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf. He forged for himself the image of a man who inspired fear in his oppressors but was himself unafraid of those in power.47 Among the anecdotes that are told of him, there is one that portrays him condemning a flute-player to have holes pierced in his cheeks.48 Ibn al-'Arabì had made a journey to the East with his father, an important figure in the ˇà"ifa kingdom of Seville. Father and son are known to have started their journey in 484/1091. María Jesús Viguera has shown that they made this journey out of fear of the new sovereign, the Almoravid Yùsuf ibn Tàshufìn: after the death of his father in the East, Ibn al-'Arabì went to great lengths to gain possession of letters written by alGhazàlì and al-ˇur†ùshì which defended the legitimacy of Almoravid power before returning to the Iberian peninsula.49 These documents may have helped him to obtain the post of qà∂ì, or judge, but they must have worked against him after the years 500–510, when public burnings of al-Ghazàlì’s writings took place. Ibn ˇumlùs of Alcira (d. 620/1223) later described the persecution of Ibn al-'Arabì as follows: “This edict [to burn al-Ghazàlì’s books] was read in the pulpits and the situation which was created was extremely hateful because all who possessed one of these books were subjected to an inquisition and everyone feared that he would be accused of reading or acquiring one of them, and the punishments could not have been more grave. The most famous of those persecuted in this public commotion was Abù Bakr ibn al-'Arabì whom the aroused passion of the jurists almost destroyed. Not much time had passed after this when the Imàm the Mahdì [Ibn Tùmart] arrived, who clarified the questions which disturbed people and invited them to study the books of al-Ghazàlì, making them see that his doctrines were in agreement with his own.”50 During his journey to the East, Ibn al-'Arabì became a disciple of al-ˇur†ùshì and of al-Ghazàlì himself, and he took it upon himself to introduce al-Ghazàlì’s ideas to al-Andalus. Together with Abù 'Alì al-Íadafì (d. 514/1120) Ibn al-'Arabì was likewise responsible for promoting in the Islamic West a genre which had been developing Maqqarì, Naf˙ al-†ìb min gußn al-Andalus al-ra†ìb, ed. I. 'Abbàs, Beirut, 1968, vol. II, pp. 29–30; Azhàr al-riyà∂ fì akhbàr 'Iyàd, Rabat, 1978–80, vol. III, p. 64. 48 V. Lagardère, “La haute judicature à l’époque almoravide en al-Andalus”, p. 207. 49 M.J. Viguera, “Las cartas de al-Gazàlì”, pp. 341–373. 50 Apud M. Fletcher, “Ibn Tùmart’s teachers”, p. 315. 47

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in the East for more than a century, that of the “prayer for the Prophet”, which was encouraged and boosted by the special devotion now directed towards the figure of Mu˙ammad.51 In his work A˙kàm al-Qur"àn Ibn al-'Arabì cites, as had as his master al-ˇur†ùshì,52 the ˙adìth “bada"a l-islàm gharìban” (Islam began as a stranger), to which I alluded in previous chapters. Ibn al-'Arabì mentions it when explaining Qur"àn 5:105: “Believers you are accountable for none but yourselves; he that goes astray cannot harm you if you are on the right path”. He related this in turn to the precept of commanding right and forbidding wrong, which for Ibn al-'Arabì was the duty of every Muslim. Abù Bakr al-ˇur†ùshì, Ibn al-'Arabì’s other master in the East, was a leading intellectual figure in Màlikì law, but also a renowned authority in asceticism, mysticism, and the censorship of customs. Born in al-Andalus in 451/1059, he travelled in 476/1083 to the Middle East, where he remained until his death in Alexandria in 520/1126.53 Alexandria was at that time a border zone and a ribà†, and therefore a centre of attraction for ascetes and mystics. In later periods it was visited by Abù Madyan (d. 594/1197), who in turn received al-ˇur†ùshì’s khirqa or sufi robes. Al-Shàdhilì (d. 656/1258) also settled in the city. In Alexandria, al-ˇur†ùshì lived as an ascete and practised the censorship of customs, and this, together with the growing number of his followers and disciples, provoked first the mistrust and then the enmity of the political authorities. Al-ˇur†ùshì explicitly deals with the principle of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf in two of his most important works, the Siràj al-mulùk54 and, above all, the Kitàb al-˙awàdith wa-l-bida'.55 He expressly states that he had personal dealings with al-Ghazàlì, and there seems to be no doubt that he was at first attracted by al-Ghazàlì’s mystical doctrines. Later, however, after using and quoting from the I˙yà", al-ˇur†ùshì came to consider it hazardous to “orthodoxy”. It was at this time that he wrote his works of mu'àrada, which represented an emulation rather 51 C. de la Puente, “Vivre et mourir pour Dieu, oeuvre et héritage d’Abù 'Alì al-Íadafì”, Studia Islamica 88 (1998) pp. 77–102. 52 See M. Fierro, “Spiritual alienation”, pp. 243 and ff. 53 All details given here on al-ˇur†ùshì are taken from M. Fierro’s introductory study to her translation of the Kitàb al-˙awàdiΔ wa-l-bida' (El libro de las novedades y las innovaciones), Madrid, 1993. 54 For a Spanish translation, see M. Alarcón, Lámpara de los príncipes, Madrid, 1930, Chap. II and p. XXVIII. 55 See Fierro, introductory study to Kitàb al-˙awàdiΔ wa-l-bida'.

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than a refutation of al-Ghazàlì’s doctrines, and which were to contribute to the spread of al-Ghazàlì’s influence. His Siràj al-mulùk is, for instance, an imitation and emulation of al-Ghazàlì’s Al-Tibr al-masbùk. A similar path of initial attraction followed by eventual rejection and condemnation of certain sufi practices seems to have been taken by Ibn al-'Arabì, a disciple of both al-ˇur†ùshì and al-Ghazàlì himself. Before his death in Fez in 543/1148, al-'Arabì had passed on the khirqa which he had received from the hands of al-Ghazàlì to Abù Ya'zà (d. 572/1177) and to 'Alì b. Óirzihim, the scholar who took responsibilty for Ibn Barrajàn’s burial.56 When Ibn Qunfudh formulated the mystical isnàd of one of the disciples of Abù Madyan, that of the shaykh Bilàl, he wrote as follows: “The khirqa was placed upon me by Abù Madyan. He said: it was placed upon me by Abù l-Óasan b. Óirzihim. He said: it was placed upon me by the qà∂ì Abù Bakr b. al-'Arabì. He said: it was placed upon me by Abù Óàmid al-Ghazàlì . . .”57 Ibn al-'Arabì was the link, in other words, between al-Ghazàlì and the great sufi master Abù Madyan. All the hagiographical sources coincide in highlighting Abù Madyan’s habit of reading al-Ghazàlì’s I˙yà" 58 and his role in spreading al-Ghazàlì’s doctrines is widely recognised.59 Like others before him, Abù Madyan was unable, or unwilling, to avoid clashes with the political authorities: at one point a group of fuqahà" went to the sultan Ya'qùb al-Manßùr and denouced Abù Madyan, saying that he was a danger to the dynasty (dawla) because the shaykh resembled the al-Imàm al-Mahdì and had numerous followers in every city. These words are known to have made a deep impression on the sultan and to have troubled him greatly.60 The sources also record a prophecy: “At the end of time a man will appear by the name of Shu'ayb [Abù Madyan’s own name] whose knowledge and virtue will be infinite. It is Abù Madyan who is meant by these words.”61

56 A. Bel, “Le sufisme en Occident musulman au XII et au XIII siècle”, AIEO I (1934–35) p. 146. 57 Ibn Qunfudh, Uns al-faqìr, ed. M. al-Fàsì y A. Favre, Rabat, 1965, p. 93. 58 See, for example, Ibn Maryam, El Boustan, trans. F. Provenzali, Argel, 1910, p. 116. 59 V. Cornell, The way of Abù Madyan: Doctrinal and Poetic Works of Abù Madyan Shu'ayb ibn al-Óusayn al-Anßàrì (circa 500/1115–594/1198), Cambridge, 1996. 60 Ibn Maryam, El Boustan, trans. F. Provenzali, p. 123. 61 Ibn Maryam, El Boustan, trans. F. Provenzali, p. 122.

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The messianic aura was thus present, as was the preoccupation of the authorities concerning the possible political threat which these religious figures represented. It is clear that in this period, the boundaries between sufism, the reform of customs, millenarianism and messianism were very loosely defined. Although the qà∂ì Ibn al-'Arabì was responsible for introducing and spreading the works of al-Ghazàlì, he disagreed with a number of al-Ghazàlì’s ideas—like the Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, he was most strongly opposed to those which were closest to sufism.62 In Ibn al-'Arabì’s view, the author of the I˙yà" defended a brand of sufism which was very close to the positions associated with the “illuminationist” school which will be considered in the next chapter. Ibn al-'Arabì described followers of this school as ghulàt or extremists, and claimed that they were also influenced by the kind of Quranic exegesis practised by the Bà†inites. Ibn al-'Arabì disagreed with the position which alGhazàlì had taken over the notion of ma'rifa. In the I˙yà", al-Ghazàlì defends the superiority of the awliyà" over the 'ulamà", a position which for Ibn al-'Arabì and other contemporary jurists63 was clearly indefensible. Like his contemporary and disciple the qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, the qà∂ì Ibn al-'Arabì made no attempt to hide his misgivings about the Almohads, giving his criticism of al-Ghazàlì a political dimension. For Ibn al'Arabì, certain aspects of Ibn Tùmart’s doctrine, such as the idea of the Mahdì and his infallibility ('ißma) could be seen as dangerously identifiable with ideas which had been spread by ismà'ìlite propagandists. He believed that the religious programme of the Almohads was based to a large extent on the tradition of Bà†inite exegesis and on principles of extreme sufism which directly affected the concept of the Imàm and the leadership of the umma, principles that he considered had been strengthened by the work of al-Ghazàlì. The nature of these controversies will become apparent in the following chapter. The work of scholars of the Almoravid period on this principle continues to be relevant in Almohad times. Ibn al-'Arabì’s A˙kàm together with the commentary of Ibn 'A†iyya (d. 541/1147) Al-Mu˙arrar al-wàjiz are the models followed by Mu˙ammad b. A˙mad al-Qur†ubì 62 'Abd al-Majìd Al-Íaghìr, “Al-bu'd al-siyàsì fì naqd al-qà∂ì Ibn al-'Arabì litaßawwuf al-Ghazàlì”, in Abù Óàmid al-Ghazàlì. Diràsàt fì fikri-hi wa-'aßri-hi wa-tà"thìrihi, Rabat, 1988, pp. 173–193. 63 Such as Abù l-Walìd Ibn Rushd (d. 520/1126) Fatàwà, III, pp. 1624–29.

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(d. 671/1272–3): in his own tafsìr or commentary on the Qur"àn, al-Qur†ubì includes a long chapter on the precept of commanding right and forbidding wrong. According to him, the precept, together with prayer, are the two main duties of the believer and he praises the courage of those who practise the ˙isba even endangering their lives. Like Ibn al-'Arabì, he recommends this form of voluntary martyrdom.64 In the Almohad and post-Almohad periods, references to al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf throughout the Islamic West frequently appear in some sort of relation to sufist ideas. I will cite some of these references as examples and as a way of showing the kind of information that exists. The sufi Ibn 'Ubayd Yas al-Nafzì (d. 659/1261), from Granada, criticised the degradation of customs and abandonment of the jihàd in his work Nuzhat al-albàb.65 A similar denunciation of the degradation of customs (al-munkar) is made by Ibn Qunfudh when writing about Abù 'Alì al-Raghràghì from Fez.66 Another sufi from Granada, al-ˇabbàq, author of a work on the †arìqa of the Banù Sìd Bùna, founded by Abù A˙mad Ja'far (d. 624/1227), disciple of Abù Madyan, speaks of the theoretical importance of the precept of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf in his spiritual method.67 More clearly relevant from a political point of view are cases like that of Sa'àda (d. 705/1305), who founded a zàwiya close to Biskra (Zab) and organised a reformist movement. He preached al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf and led his followers in an uprising against the Banù Muznì, the local dynasty.68 A similar case is that of Ya'qùb b. 'Abd Allàh al-Khàqànì al-Fàsì who, seeing the reigning depravation in Fez as a consequence of the fitna of 817, started to preach al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf and gathered such a large group of followers that he was captured and executed by the governor of the city.69 64 M. Penelas, “El precepto de al-Amr bi-l-ma'rùf wa-l-nahy 'an al-munkar en el Tafsìr de al-Qur†ubì” in P. Cressier, M. Fierro, L. Molina (eds.), Los Almohades. Problemas y perspectivas, Madrid, 2006 (forthcoming). 65 M. Bencherifa, Min a'làm al-taßawwuf bi-l-Andalus fì-l-qarn al-sàbi' fì l-nah∂a wal-taràkum, Casablanca, 1986, p. 236. 66 Ibn Qunfudh, Uns al-faqìr, p. 79. 67 M. Miftah, “Al-khi†àb al-ßùfì wa-l-ta∂àmun. Namùdhaj min al-'ußùr al-wus†à”, Majallat Kulliyat al-Àdàb wa-l-'Ulùm al-Insàniyya bi-Ribà†, 14 (1988) p. 62. 68 Ibn Khaldùn, Berbères, I, pp. 81–84 and III, pp. 131–132; M. Brett, “Ibn Khaldùn and the dynastic approach to local history: the case of Biskra”, Al-Qan†ara 12 (1991) pp. 165–67. 69 Al-Sakhàwì, Al-Daw" al-làmi', ed. Maktabat al-Hayat, Beirut [s.s.], vol. X, p. 1112.

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The precept of the ˙isba became a perfectly natural element in hagiographical compendiums after this period of the 12th and 13th centuries. The Maqßad by al-Bàdisì, a compendium of biographies of saints from the Rìf who lived between the 5th/12th century and the 6th/13th, written in 711/1311–12, contains a long introduction in which al-Bàdisì creates his own typology of the holy figures described, dividing them into three types. Firstly, there are those who live among men and have a job or occupation and are able to make a living from it, without need or cares. Their lives are a model of conduct, but they are not detected and do not gain recognition as saints in the communities where they live. They are zealous and strict observers of the sunna and assiduously practise al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf.70 The second group is that of men who live alone and withdrawn from the world, or who do not have a fixed place of abode and travel from one place to another living off the alms they beg, though always within inhabited areas. The third category is that of the saint who abandons the society of men and takes solitary refuge in nature. In perfect communion with it, he becomes like a wild animal, and wild animals themselves seek his company and obey him. Having made these distinctions, al-Bàdisì makes no further mention in the individual biographies of specific instances of the practice of the ˙isba, ever-present in later compendiums, and especially in the Daw˙at al-nàshir by Ibn 'Askar (d. 986/1578), discussed later in this book. He makes mention, on the other hand, of numerous sufi shaykhs who claim a sharìfian lineage. The first mentions of this claim date from centuries back: by the middle of the 6th/11th century, the Ribà† ˇìt-n-Fi†r had come into existence on the coast of Dukkàla. The Ribà† had been founded by the Banù Amghàr, muràbi†s from the Middle East who were descended from Fà†ima through Óusayn.71 In about 475/1083, the shaykh of this Ribà† was Mu˙ammad b. Is˙àq Amghàr, widely recognised as one of the most outstanding religious figures in the Maghreb. Amghàr’s son and successor, Abù 'Abd Allàh Amghàr (d. circa 550/1152) made contact with his great sufi contemporaries, such as Abù Ya'zà and Abù Mu˙ammad Íàli˙, the founder of the ribà† of Íafì. The qà∂ì Abù Bakr Ibn al-'Arabì (who wrote for him the work 70 Al-Maqßad al-sharìf wa-l-manzi' al-la†ìf fì-l-ta 'rìf bi-ßula˙à" al-Rìf, ed. S. A'rab, Rabat, 1982. This introduction is not included in Colin’s translation. 71 V.J. Cornell, “Ribà† Tì†-n-Fi†r and the origins of Moroccan Maraboutism”, Islamic Studies 27 (1988) pp. 23–36.

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entitled Siràj al-muhtadìn fì àdàb al-ßàli˙ìn) and the qà∂ì 'Iyà∂ also came into contact with him. These first ribà†-s played an essential role in the diffusion of sufi ideas in the rural areas of Morocco and, more generally, in the process of islamisation of the territory. Another founding figure of Maghreb sufism was 'Abd al-Salàm Ibn Mashìsh, who came from the Jebel 'Alam region in northern Morocco inhabited by the Ghumàra and where, according to Ibn Khaldùn, “many prophets have shown themselves”. He lived between the 6th and 7th (12th and 13th) centuries and was the first leading sufi to boast of a sharìfian lineage through one of the sons of Idrìs. His preaching and activism brought him into conflict with the authorities, and he was executed by the Almohad governor of Ceuta in 625/1227–8.72 A spiritual disciple of Abù Madyan and Ibn Óirzihim, “the pole of the West”, Ibn Mashìsh was in turn the master of al-Shàdhilì (d. 656/1258) from Ghumàra, who founded the main Maghreb †arìqa, and through whom the Ghazalian influence was perpetuated: hagiographical sources record that the two pillars of alShàdhilì’s teaching were al-Ghazàlì’s I˙yà" and the Kitàb al-Shifà" by the Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂.73 Al-Shàdhilì also became the object of the same kinds of accusations as his masters Ibn Mashìsh and Abù Madyan before him. He was denounced by the qà∂ì of Tunis, one Abù l-Qàsim Ibn Barra, who told the sultan that “he claims to be a sharìf, gathers great crowds, claims to be the Fà†imì and perturbs your country”.74

72 For the different versions of his death, see Zakia Zouanat, Ibn Mashish, maître d’al-Shadhili, Rabat, 1998, pp. 34 and ff. 73 Al-Mannùnì, M., Waraqàt 'an l-˙adàra al-magribìyya fì l-'aßr al-Marìnì, Rabat, 1979, p. 335. 74 Al-Íabbàg, Kitàb durrat al-asràr, 1309; Nueva York, 1993 and Casablanca, 1993, p. 10.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE CONTRIBUTION OF SUFISM TO MAHDISM: PROPHETHOOD AND GRACE

During the 5th/11th century the introduction of new Islamic disciplines produced an important religious renewal in al-Andalus. Of particular relevance was the science of ußùl al-fiqh (“sources of jurisprudence”), which brought with it the introduction and study of the ˙adìth and, in general, interest in the direct access of scholars to the original sacred texts. These new disciplines were intimately related to the rise of sufism.1 In Morocco sufism spread between the late 11th and the early 12th century, mainly as a result of the work of masters from al-Andalus and Zìrid Ifrìqiya—especially the disciples of Abù 'Imràn al-Fàsì2— and it found particularly fertile territory in those areas where asceticism had flourished in the previous century.3 Its spread coincided in the Maghreb with an increased attention not only to the study of the sources of law (ußùl al-fiqh) but to the kalàm or logical theology of al-Ash'arì (d. 324/935), a discipline which had also began in Zìrid Ifrìqiya. Abù-l-Óasan 'Alì al-Ash'arì was a renowned scholar who publicly abjured mu'tazilism halfway through his career and spent the rest of his life in opposition to the ideas of his former colleagues, whilst also coming to a skilful compromise between the ideas of the Sunna and the mu'tazilites. In other words, Western sufism appears to have been stimulated by the introduction of new Islamic sciences and their gradual convergence. Ash'arites and sufis proposed identical responses to a whole series of important issues such as the reality of the vision of God in the world to come.4 1 V. Cornell, Realm of the Saint. Power and authority in Moroccan Sufism, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998, pp. 15 and ff. 2 The malikite faqìh, mentioned in chapter 4, who guided Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm alLamtùnì to his disciple Wajjàj ibn Zalù, in the origins of the Almoravid movement. 3 See M. Marín, “Zuhhàd de al-Andalus (390/912–420/1029)”, Al-Qan†ara 12 (1991) pp. 439–469. A quick glance at al-Tàdilì’s hagiographical compendium is enough to see the large number of sufis who came from al-Andalus. 4 T. Nagel, Die Festung des Glubens. Triumph und Scheitern des Islamischen Rationalismus in 11 Jahrhundert, Munich, pp. 299 and f. Cfr. M. Fierro “Spiritual alienation and political activism” pp. 243 and 247.

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Ash'arite doctrine was laid out in a Risàla written by the wellknown jurist al-Qàbisì (d. 403/1012).5 Al-Qàbisì’s famous disciple, the above mentioned Abù 'Imràn al-Fàsì, studied in Baghdad with the most prominent contemporary exponent of ash'arism, al-Baqillànì, whose teachings he in turn passed on in Qayrawàn to disciples from Fez and Ceuta.6 This parallel development of sufism and ash'arism in the Muslim West was probably significant for the success in the Maghreb of al-Ghazàlì’s work and that of the Almohad movement. As has been said in the previous chapter, the beginning of the 6th/12th century saw the arrival in the Maghreb of a work recently written in the East by one of the most respected contemporary doctors, the outstanding theologian, jurist, mystic and religious reformer Abù Óàmid al-Ghazàlì (d. 505/1111). Al-Ghazàlì’s work, I˙yà" 'ulùm al-dìn, was a summa of ethical dissertations originally aimed at reforming customs which sought to revive religious sciences. We have already seen its part dedicated to the precept of commanding right and forbidding wrong. But in a more general approach, al-Ghazàlì advocated a return to the Qur"àn and Mu˙ammad as the source of understanding. Although his was a highly intellectual programme that was not specifically sufi, al-Ghazàlì himself turned to Sufism as a form of meditation on the mystery of Revelation. His ideas therefore provided a unifying structure for sufi currents across the Muslim West, and became a crucially important stimulus to sufism. The I˙yà" was received with an attitude bordering on indifference throughout most of the Islamic world, including Ifrìqiya. It was only in al-Andalus and the extreme Maghreb, i.e. in Almoravid territory, that it provoked a veritable storm of controversy. Violently contested by Almoravid authorities such as the sultan 'Alì b. Tàshufìn, the works of al-Ghazàlì were banned, burnt in public and denied entry into places of worship and even private libraries. Al-Ghazàlì’s work contained criticism of the activity of the traditionalist faqìh-s, who were devoted to the furù' or branches of the Law to the exclusion of the original sources and in particular the Qur"àn, and whom it portrayed as incapable of interpreting them rationally. Al-Ghazàlì

5 R.H. Idrìs, “Deux juristes kairouanais de l’époque zìrìde: Ibn Abì Zaid et alQàbisì (X–XI siècle)”, AIEO 12 (1954) pp. 122–98. 6 R.H. Idrìs, “Essai sur la difusion de l’a“'arisme en Ifrìqiya”, Les Cahiers de Tunisie 1 (1953) pp. 126–40; J.M. Forneas, “Al-Tam˙ìd de al-Baqillànì y su transmisión en al-Andalus” MEAH 27–28 (1977–79) pp. 433–440 and “De la transmisión de algunas obras de tendencia a“'arí en al-Andalus”, Awràq 1 (1978) pp. 4–11.

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wrote that a renewal of religious sciences would have to be carried out in defiance of such traditionalists. The assumption is generally made that reactions to the Almoravid decree of prohibition and public burning of al-Ghazàlì’s works demonstrated the mainly sufi opposition to the Almoravids and opened up a considerable fissure in the Western Maghreb,7 but those are notions which need to be nuanced. We have seen in the case of Abù Bakr Ibn 'Arabì and 'Iyà∂ that not all the màlikite fuqahà" opposed al-Ghazàlì, and that the issues revolved around specific areas of conflict between jurists and mystics. In the same way al-Ghazàlì is a crucial figure in contrast with the Almoravids and in connection with the Almohads if we follow the Almohad and post-Almohad sources. For example, the Almohad historian 'Abd al-Wà˙id al-Marràkushì describes in his chronicle AlMu'jib fì talkhìß akhbàr al-Maghrib the burning of al-Ghazàlì’s works in the same paragraph in which he speaks of Almoravid opposition to kalàm.8 Recent studies, however, have shown that dogmatic theology was not the object of censorship by the Almoravid authorities, though part of the 'ulamà" were reticent or suspicious of it.9 Moreover, while al-Marràkushì, and other sources, imply that new Islamic disciplines, sufism and al-Ghazàlì formed a bundle which roused the enmity of the Almoravid fuqahà", not all ash'arites nor all awliyà" were followers of al-Ghazàlì. Nevertheless, the impact al-Ghazàlì had in alAndalus and the Western Maghreb underlines the whole of the previous and the present chapters. Certainly I do not intend to present here a survey of sufism in al-Andalus and the Maghreb. As in Chapter 4, I will examine the period of the 11th and 12th centuries, focusing on how two closely related phenomena, the rise of sufism and a widespread growth in veneration for the figure of the Prophet relate, in the Islamic West, to prevailing ideas about how to choose the legitimate guide or head of the community. I will follow the development of these ideas to post-Almohad times. A gnostic sense promoted by sufism that an enlightened elite had access through special knowledge to universal secrets impinged on M. Kably, “Ramz al-Ihyà" fì-l-Maghrib”, in Muràja'àt ˙awla al-mujtama' wa-l-sul†a, Rabat, 1986, pp. 21–51. 8 Al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'jib fì talkhìß akhbàr al-Maghrib, ed. R. Dozy, Amsterdam, 1968, pp. 122–124. 9 D. Serrano, “Los Almorávides y la teología a“'arí” in C. de la Puente, Identidades marginales, Madrid: CSIC, 2003, pp. 461–516. 7

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the essence of monotheistic prophecy and revelation. By being intimate with divine will the “prophetic saint” was also able to convey its nature to other believers, and was thus potentially the best man to become the right guide for the community. These attestations of divine favour attained their highest, paradigmatic rank in the figure of the Axis of the Age, the qu†b al-zamàn or “pole” of each era. The qu†b is the virtual axis of spiritual energy. A close structural relationship existed between the concept of the qu†b in his role as the highest spiritual guide for believers, and that of the Imàm in the Shì'a.10 Veneration for the Imàm and the qu†b was common to sufism and the Shì'a, which is one of the reasons why Ibn Khaldùn, in his Muqaddima, considered that certain forms of sufism ought to be rejected. For the Shì'a, he who dies without knowing the Imàm of his time dies as an infidel. A moderate sufi such as Jalaluddìn Rùmì wrote that “He who does not know the true shaykh—the Perfect Man, the qu†b of his time—is a kàfir, an infidel.”11 And as we will see further on, there is a close relationship between qu†b and Mahdì. All these concepts entered into the rise of Sufism in the Islamic West as a set of beliefs and practices which were related or fed directly into the idea of the Mahdì reinforced by the doctrine of the ˙isba discussed in the previous chapter. Although the jurist and the saint were in principle antagonistic, during this period they sometimes coincided in the same person and their doctrines and attitudes increasingly overlapped. Both types had apocalyptic characteristics which derived from their moral rigourism (often moral outrage) and imitation of the Prophet’s example. The contest between them was for religious and worldly authority. What was at stake, ultimately, was the question of how to define the legitimate Imàm. In the controversy, doctrinal works and points of view associated with these two opposed “types” showed a gradual tendency to converge, despite the fact that the figures in question polemicised with, or even fought against, one another during their own lifetimes. Examination of the most significant sufi figures of the period reveals that the controversy took place at the very highest level of doctrine, in works written by and for men in the most elevated intellectual and spiritual echelons. The success of political movements carried out in their name, however, demonstrates that there was no clear 10 11

A. Schimmel, Mystical dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill, 1975, p. 200. Apud Schimmel, Mystical dimensions of Islam, ibid.

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boundary between ideas to which in theory only the elite had access, and those of the popular classes, who seem to have been highly receptive to the new doctrines. Indeed, the direction of influence sometimes seems to have been from bottom to top rather than vice versa, and popular expectations and anxieties as reflected in ancestral beliefs provoked or stimulated some of the doctrinal elaboration carried out by elite groups. Sufi beliefs became so widespread and attractive that even non-Muslims felt the force of their persuasive power, as I will show further on. I will start by summarising ideas about prophetic illumination before the 11th and 12th centuries in order to sketch the background to those notions which were to acquire such significance in this period.

Prophethood, divine light and infallibility Discussion of the issue of prophethood was common in the Islamic world from the beginning of the kalàm or scholastic theology. Numerous works, bearing titles like “Signs of prophecy” (A'làm al-nubuwwa) or “Establishing prophecy” (Ithbàt al-nubuwwa), sought to establish, on the one hand, the human need for prophets, and on the other, a list of characteristics which demonstrated the superiority of the Prophet Mu˙ammad over all others.12 Even when belief in the end of the prophecy (khatm al-nubuwwa) came to be established, doors were left open for the communication of men with God. One of these was the belief that the will of God could be revealed in dreams.13 Another was the distinction between rasùl and nabì to which I have already referred.14 Al-Farrà", for example, writes that “the messenger is a prophet entrusted with a mission, whereas a prophet is a person who is spoken to but does not have a mission” ( fa-l-rasùl al-nabì al-mursal wa-l-nabì al-mu˙addath alladhì làm yursal ). This distinction created an affinity between prophets and the mu˙addathùn.15 Although prophethood had come to a definitive end 12 S. Stroumsa, “The signs of Prophecy: the emergence and early development of a theme in Arabic theological Literature”, Harvard Theological Review 78: 1–2 (1985) pp. 101–114. 13 L. Kinberg, “Interaction between this world and the Afterworld in the Early Islamic Tradition”, Oriens 29–30 (1986) pp. 285–308. 14 See the “Introduction”. 15 Friedmann, “Finality of prophethood in Sunni Islam”, Israel Oriental Studies 7 (1986) pp. 117–215, p. 202.

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with Mu˙ammad, some prophetic tasks could be carried out by those who were not prophets but whose wisdom or spiritual significance qualified them to lead the community in the period after Prophethood. The issue of how to identify such people led to great differences and had significant political implications. Within the sunnite tradition, one often finds the idea that the 'ulamà" were the inheritors of prophethood (al-'ulamà" warathat al-anbiyà"). Given the very high status accorded to prophethood in the Islamic world-view, the tradition also exalts certain religious achievements or kinds of behaviour which, it claimed, resembled prophethood. Some sufis claimed to have reached prophetic perfection by means of an extreme imitation of Mu˙ammad’s example. Veneration for the Prophet and interest in learning about the slightest details of his life had existed since early Islam, but tended to increase with the passing of time. There was a proliferation of the genre known as dalà"il al-nubuwwa (“Proofs of the prophecy”), which explained the physical and moral qualities of the Prophet, and defined his unique position and quality of “being protected from error or sin” ('ißma).16 In shì'ite terms, the quality of ma'ßùm, of being preserved from error or sin, was unique to the Imàm, so that every age should have its Imàm ma'ßùm. The Sunna held it to be a quality and proof of prophethood which was lacking in the Imàm. Another proof of prophethood was the ability to perform miracles (mu'jizàt). Prophets were the only individuals whom God might allow to bring about extraordinary phenomena, although saints (awliyà") could receive a divine favour granting them the ability to perform karàmàt or prodigies as a means of proving their “states” (a˙wàl ) or “stations” (maqàmàt). The question of the 'ißma of the Prophet constitutes a very important chapter in the history of Islamic prophetology.17 In Islam, sin is error and above all disobedience, and as Ibn Óazm wrote in the 11th century, “If disobedience were possible in the prophets it would be permitted to us all as well, since we have been asked to imitate their actions, and thus we would not know whether our faith were all error and infidelity and perhaps everything that the Prophet did, disobedience.”18 The kind of absolute obedience due to the Prophet only makes sense if Mu˙ammad was free of all faults and could be 16 See A. Schimmel, And Muhammad is his Messenger, Chapel Hill and London, 1985, pp. 32 and ff. 17 A. Schimmel, And Muhammad is his Messenger, pp. 56 and ff. 18 Ibn Óazm, Kitàb al-fißal wa-l-milal wa-l-a˙wà" wa-l-ni˙al, Cairo, 1347/(1928–9) pp. 4, 29, apud Schimmel, And Muhammad is his Messenger, p. 59.

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considered an immaculate model even in the most insignificant details of his life. The concept of 'ißma was thus closely linked to that of “imitatio Mu˙ammadi” or imitation of the Prophet, which has a long history in Islam but received an extraordinary boost from sufism. It became fully evident in the writings of the first mystics, as in the well-known and much-imitated Kitàb al-lumà' by the Iranian sufi al-Sarràj, who died towards the end of the 10th century.19 Al-Sarràj’s book includes a chapter on imitation of the Prophet, the uswa ˙asana or perfect example and archetype of all mankind whom sufis should imitate in every way possible and even in the slightest details, so that their natures adapted themselves as much as possible to Mu˙ammad’s example.20 Mu˙ammad is generally seen as superior to all the prophets, and is occasionally even represented as pre-dating Adam and his prophethood. However, not all Muslim theologians agree on the pre-existence of Mu˙ammad, and the controversy led to the adoption of an apparently neutral title for the primordial entity of Mu˙ammad, al-˙aqìqa al-mu˙ammadiyya, only used by those who believed in his pre-existence. This expression, “the Mu˙ammadan reality”, appears in records of debates over al-insàn al-kàmil, i.e. the perfect man, the archetype of the universe and mankind which is identified with Mu˙ammad. In these debates, frequent allusion is made to the Quranic verse of the Light (24:35), to the inaccessible mystery of divine light which is manifested in the Radiant Prophet, and to the nùr mu˙ammadì, a luminous metaphor which has constituted one of the central themes of mystical Islamic prophetology since the 9th century.21 It was the Iraqi sufi al-Tustarì (d. 283/896) who first formulated his entire vision in terms of the nùr mu˙ammadì, in pre-eternity a luminous mass of primordial adoration in the presence of God taking the form of a transparent column of divine Light, and which made Mu˙ammad God’s first creation.22 Al-Tustarì, one of the masters most often cited 19 C. Melchert, “The Transition from Asceticism to Mysticism at the Middle of the Ninth Century C.E.”, Studia Islamica 83 (1996) pp. 51–70. 20 Al-Sarràj, The Kitàb al-Luma' fi-l-taßawwuf, ed. R.A. Nicholson, Leiden, 1914; “Kitàb al-uswa wa-l-iqtidà" bi-Rasùl Allàh”, pp. 93–95. 21 For general coverage of this theme, see A. Schimmel, And Muhammad is his Messenger, pp. 123–126. 22 G. Bowering, “The Prophet of Islam: the First and the Last Prophet”, in The Message of the Prophet, Islamabad, 1979, pp. 48–60.

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by Ibn 'Arabì, recorded that he had been told by al-Kha∂ir that “God has created the Light of Mu˙ammad from his Light. This Light will remain before God for 100,000 years.”23 This Light, which in the words of Ibn 'Arabì is “like the seed (bidhr) of the human race” is also identified with the sperm substance of Mu˙ammad’s predecessors, making it possible to consider these predecessors true Muslims and even prophets.24 Shì'ites believe that the Light could be passed on to Mu˙ammad’s heirs, to 'Alì and his family. In an often quoted shì'ite tradition Mu˙ammad is said to have told 'Alì: “I and 'Alì are of a single light (nùr) and your flesh (la˙m) is my flesh and your body ( jism) is my body”, a tradition which has been used to confirm belief in the unity of being.25 But even sunnite Islam clearly implies a belief in prophethood, or the prophetic ability of Ibràhìm, the son of Mu˙ammad who died in infancy and of whom traditions claim that he would have been a prophet had he lived.26 Maghreb hagiographical compendiums record Mu˙ammad’s plea to God for an heir and descendant (Q. 19–3,5), which al-Tàdilì (d. 628/ 1231) glosses as “concede to me a son-prophet who will inherit prophetic ability from me.”27 One of the main features of early shì'ite doctrine was the cosmological status of the Imàm, a pre-existent entity and light which together with the Mu˙ammadan light came directly from divine light before the creation of the world. Mu˙ammad and the Imàms constituted the first creation of God, the first to adore him.28 After the creation of the world, God made a pact with his creatures according to which they would all obey Mu˙ammad and the Twelve Imàms. The world can never be without an Imàm, and when the Twelfth Imàm concealed himself to avoid his enemies, his life was miraculously prolonged until he was to make his appearance, just before the Day of Final Judgement. This makes identification of the Imàm with the Mahdì an explicit feature of Twelver shì'ism. For the

23 M. Chodkiewicz, Le Sceau des Saints. Prophétie et saintété dans la doctrine d’Ibn Arabì, Paris, 1986, p. 86. 24 See U. Rubin, “Pre-existence and light; aspects of the concept of Nùr Mu˙ammad”, Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975) pp. 62–119. 25 K. Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs. Cambrige, Mss. 2002, p. 68. 26 Friedmann, “Finality of prophethhod”, p. 188. 27 Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf ilà rijàl al-taßawwuf, p. 54. 28 M. Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Light in Early Shi"ism: the sources of Esotericism in Islam (translated from French), Albany, 1994.

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Seveners, the representatives of God were the Imàms and caliphs of the Fà†imid dynasty with their claim to know the universal truths of revelation and reason which justified their ambition to reign over the entire Islamic world. The Imàm’s unique position was based on these early shì'ite notions which imply two basic ideas: that the Imàm was the Prophet’s sucessor by divine designation and that he had a series of personal qualities, the most important of which was the possession of 'ilm, knowledge. The Imàm’s knowledge was essentially derived from four possible sources, all of them barred to ordinary mortals: transmission from the previous Imàm, knowledge acquired by hereditary means, knowledge acquired from books known only to Imàms, and knowledge acquired by contact with an angel. This last means of transmission was known as ilhàm or inspiration and its receiver was termed mufahham or mu˙addath. Unlike the prophets, an Imàm did not actually see the divine messenger, but heard his voice in a dream.29 We are therefore faced with a major controversy, namely the conflict between the shì'ite idea of the infallible Imàm and the sunnite idea of the infallible Prophet which culminates in the work of al-Ghazàlì.30 Sunnite theologians found it hard to refute the doctrine of the necessity of the Imàm, and the illuminationist doctrine of Mu˙ammad as the Perfect Man had to be brought to the centre of sunnite doctrine in the general process which Maribel Fierro has called “the Sunnisation of Shì'ism” in which al-Ghazàlì is of such major importance.

Al-Ghazàlì and the Light One of the arguments sustained by the opponents of the works of al-Ghazàlì in al-Andalus and the Maghreb is that he defended a branch of sufism which was very close to the positions associated with the Illuminationist (ishraqì) school and its theory of light. Its

29

E. Kohlberg, “Imam and Community in the Pre-Gayba Period” in Said Amir Arjomand (ed.), Authority and political culture in shi'ism, Albany: State University of New York, 1988, pp. 25–53, 25–27. 30 M. Brett, “The Lamp of the Almohads. Illumination as a political idea in twelfth century Morocco” in Ibn Khaldùn and the Medieval Maghrib, London, 1998, VI, pp. 4–7.

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supreme exponent, some two generations after al-Ghazàlì, was the sufi Shihàb al-Dìn al-Suhrawardì (d. 587/ 1191). The Philosophy of Illumination as described in al-Suhrawardì’s works comprises three stages in the acquisition of knowledge, followed by a fourth which describes the experience. The first stage is marked by preparatory activity. The second is the stage of illumination in which the philosopher attains visions of a “Divine Light” (al-nùr al-ilahi). The third is characterised by the acquisition of unlimited knowledge. The fourth is the written form of the visionary experience. The first stage implies a period of extreme ascesis and mystical initiation, but with the important proviso that al-Suhrawardì believes that a portion of the “light of God” resides within the philosopher, in his intuitive powers. The first stage leads to the second, in which divine light penetrates the human being. This light takes the form of a series of apocalyptic lights, al-anwàr al-sàni˙a, through which comes the knowledge which is at the heart of true knowledge, al-'ulùm al˙aqìqiyya. The end of all these phases leads to a state of union when the subject possessing wisdom enters into the realms of power ( jabarùt) and of the divine (Lahùt), and the human being attains the reality of things, converting himself into the subject who knows and creates (al-mawdu" al-mudrik al-khallaq).31 The similarity lays in al-Ghazàlì notion of ma'rìfa, or “gnosis”. For al-Ghazàlì, ma'rìfa was the result of the shining of the light of God into men’s hearts, and men did not accede to knowledge through reason but by means of a polished heart (al-qalb al-saqil ) in which truth was revealed. This meant that science ('ilm) was obtained through good actions, and al-Ghazàlì recommended the practice of absolute asceticism and renunciation of the world. In the I˙yà", he defends the superiority of the awliyyà" over the 'ulamà", a position which for the andalusi jurists32 was clearly indefensible. Al-Ghazàlì’s positions on sufism are nevertheless nuanced, for although he wrote that mystics believed that men should dominate their passions, eliminate their condemnable qualities and practise asceticism to purify their hearts and be able to receive directly the highest knowledge of God, he also stated that for most men the

31 Hossein Ziai, “Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi: founder of the Illuminationist school”, chapter 28 of the History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 32 Such as Abù l-Walìd Ibn Rushd (d. 520/1126) Fatàwà, ed. al-Mukhtàr alˇàhir al-Talìlì, Beirut, 1987, vol. III, pp. 1624–1629.

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best path to knowledge of God was undoubtedly that of science and the intellect.33 At the same time al-Ghazàlì distanced himself from the ismà'ilite doctrine of the Imamate which he refuted in a work whose aim was to delegitimise the Fà†imid dynasty, entitled Al-Munqidh min al-∂alàl. In this work, al-Ghazàlì opposed the ismà'ìlite shì'ite doctrine of the Imàm, and in particular what was known by the name of ta'lìm, “authoritative instruction” of believers by the Imàm, the supreme authority. But how was this authority to be recognised? If the Imàm is concealed and can only be recognised because someone or something marks him out, he ceases to be absolutely supreme, for his supremacy resides in the Sign or in the last instance depends on the person who has received instruction and makes judgement on the veracity of the Proof. Such a paradox can only be resolved if the Imàm is self-evident, like the sun before one’s eyes.34 Al-Ghazàlì concedes the need for an infallible instructor and the supremacy of immediate recognition, which al-Ghazàlì calls dhawq, comparing it to dreams. Dhawq denotes the direct quality of the mystic experience, his noetic intuition and insight. He found the difference with the ismà'ìlites in the instructor, who was not the Imàm but the Prophet Mu˙ammad himself, the Light of the World, but who did not need a successor to perpetuate his message, his Writings, which are self-evident and constitute infallible instruction. It is thus not necessary to do anything other than rigorously follow Mu˙ammad’s precepts and the devotions which are bound to lead to the experience of God. Thus, from the point of view of the scholars of the Law, al-Ghazàlì’s insistence on the fact that the Qur"àn and the ˙adìth were the only reliable sources represented a return to the study of ußùl al-fiqh in preference to the science which sustained their professional status, that of furù' al-fiqh or branches of law. Al-Ghazàlì attacked any intervention between the believer and the Revelation and this represented a clear threat to the principles and profession of the fuqahà".35 But his insistence on the claim that experience of God could be achieved by imitating the example of the Prophet and the strict following of his teachings and the devotions dictated to believers, brought his

33 B. Abrahamov, “Al-Ghazàlì’s supreme way to know God”, Studia Islamica 77 (1993) pp. 141–167. 34 M.G.S. Hodgson, The Order of the Assassins, The Hague, 1955, pp. 54–61. 35 M. Brett, Ibn Khaldùn and the Medieval Maghrib, London, 1998, VI, pp. 5–6.

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work closer to those who were dedicated to the knowledge and cult of the figure of Mu˙ammad, eventually making his work converge with that of the Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂. The abundance of Ghazalian material in defence of mystic experience caused his rejection by the andalusi fuqahà", for whom alGhazàlì’s self-appointed role as a “revivifier of religion” challenged the whole basis of their jurisprudence. The claim was put forward in his work Al-Munqidh min al-Îalàl, in which al-Ghazàlì describes his conversion to sufism and his withdrawal from the world, as also his later decision to take up worldly affairs again. Al-Ghazàlì cites several Quranic verses in which mention is made of other divine envoys who had been ignored by the people and had patiently to bear aggression and lack of understanding. Immediately after this, alGhazàlì writes that at one time he consulted other sufis, who recommended him to leave the zàwiya and return to the world, “to which it was necessary to add the numerous and repeated dreams of devout people who testified that that move would be the beginning of good guidance which God had decreed for the opening of that new century. In this way it was firmly decided that he (al-Ghazàlì) would have to return, and optimism predominated as a result of these testimonies, for God had promised to revivify his religion at the opening of the new century”.36 This passage suggests that alGhazàlì thought of himself as the renewer and dispenser of “right guidance” for the 6th century of the Hijra which was about to begin.

Al-Andalus In al-Andalus, the idea of Mu˙ammad’s pre-existence, and therefore of the nùr mu˙ammadì, must have appeared quite early, and it spread sufficiently for the Mozarabs (the arabized Christians) to be familiar with it. In his Memoriale Sanctorum, Eulogio of Cordoba records a belief in the revelation of Mu˙ammad’s name to Adam when Adam was still in Paradise; Eulogio attributes the account to an anonymous Muslim interlocutor with whom he proceeds to polemicise.37 Eulogio’s 36 Algacel, Confesiones (Munqidh min al-∂alàl = El Salvador del error), Spanish trans. by E. Tornero, Madrid, 1989, pp. 98–99. 37 C. Aillet, “Un élément emprunté à la tradition musulmane dans l’ouevre d’Euloge: le nom de Mahomet révelé à Adam au Paradis”, (forthcoming).

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fictitious interlocutor claims that before Adam’s creation, Mu˙ammad’s name was inscribed high in the sky, in the form of a ball of luminous clarity. Adam looked upon this ball and asked God what that light was in the centre of the universe that shone more brightly than any other. God replied, “It is the true prophet who will come to the world proceeding from your lineage. He will be called Mahomad, the same name that you see shining with amazement, the name whose merits have allowed you to survive, creature.”38 Some of the sufi masters professing extreme asceticism thought that the purified soul could receive the light of divine knowledge. In this sense, and in the general history of sufism in al-Andalus, a fundamental role seems to have been played by the doctrines of Ibn Masarra. His influence appears to have been highly significant, although it has to be said that part of his work is still unknown to us and what is known about his ideas is clouded in imprecision. This entire question is complicated further by the process in which diverse doctrines were later labelled with the accusatory denomination of masarrì.39

Ibn Masarra Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh b. Masarra was born in Cordoba in 269/ 883 and died in his hermitage in the mountains near this town, where he had retired, in 319/931. Ibn Masarra’s father, 'Abd Allàh, is said by Ibn Óayyàn and Ibn al-Fara∂ì to have professed mu'tazilism.40 The young Ibn Masarra became a disciple of his father and received both theological teaching and ascetic training from him. Ibn Masarra taught a doctrine of divine justice and the irrevocable allotment of rewards and punishments in a future life, thus denying a role to forgiveness and intercession. This teaching was clearly close to the kind of doctrine which came to be associated with “mu'tazilism”, although this term is often used as a blanket term to cover everything not fitting within the strict bounds of màlikism, making it extremely 38 Eulogio de Cordoba, Memoriale Sanctorum, ed. A. Ruiz, pp. 88–90, apud C. Aillet, “Un élément emprunté à la tradition musulmane”. 39 See Fierro, Heterodoxia, pp. 132–140. “Bà†inism in al-Andalus. Maslama b. Qàsim al-Qur†ubì (d. 353/964), author of the Rutbat al-Óakìm and the Ghàyat alÓakìm (Picatrix)”, Studia Islamica 84 (1996) pp. 87–112, p. 105. 40 According to al-Fara∂ì, Kitàb ta"rìkh 'ulamà" al-Andalus and Ibn Óayyàn, Muqtabis V, ed. P. Chalmeta, Madrid, 1979, pp. 20–24.

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difficult to arrive at an understanding of its true content.41 Ibn Masarra was accused of being a bà†inite, one of those who defended an exegesis of the sacred texts based not on their literal sense (zàhir) but on their symbollic-allegorical meaning (bà†in). The mu'tazilites adopt metaphorical methods for the exegesis and their system differed from, or even opposed the system of the bà†inites, but both were identified at times by the sunnite 'ulamà" with the ismà'ìlite Shì'a. Ibn Masarra was influenced by the mystics Sahl al-Tustarì, Dhù l-Nùn al-Mißrì and Abù Ya'qùb al-Nahrajurì, and became a mystical philosopher who taught his doctrines to his disciples in secret.42 Sa'ìd al-Andalusì, in his ˇabaqàt al-'umàm, connects Ibn Masarra’s thought with that of pseudo-Empedocles, whose philosophy is at the core of his thinking. Devotion to the philosophy of pseudo-Empedocles may be the reason why he was suspected of zandaqa.43 The caliph 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Nàßir condemned Ibn Masarra’s beliefs and decreed his persecution, ordering all Masarrites to be sought out and captured.44 One essential argument in the theology of Ibn Masarra was attributed to pseudo-Empedocles: “He was the first to apprehend the union between the meanings of the attributes of God: all led to a unique reality”.45 Like pseudo-Empedocles, Ibn Masarra claimed that the mind which inquires into philosophy is illuminated by it with a divine light. It contains a mystic conception of the truth and comes to the aid of whoever seeks to acquire it. Ibn Masarra taught that the soul can, after a series of disciplines and mortifications, reach the goal of purity, becoming at that moment comparable in perfection to the soul of the Prophet.46 This idea of equality of perfection was upheld by Ibn Masarra in an explicit and inflexible fashion. Ibn Óazm claimed to have heard disciples of Ibn Masarra attribute to their master the idea of “the possibility of men acquiring the gift of prophethood, in

41 E. Tornero, “Nota sobre el pensamiento de Abenmasarra”, Al-Qan†ara 6 (1985) pp. 503–506. 42 M., 236/49, Fierro, “Bà†inism in al-Andalus”, p. 104. 43 De Smet, Pseudo-Empedocles, Cf. Art. “Ibn Masarra” by R. Arnaldez, EI 2. 44 Ibn Óayyàn, Al-Muqtabis, V, p. 20. M. Cruz Hernández, “La persecución antimasarrí durante el reinado de 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Nàßir según Ibn Óayyàn”, AlQan†ara 2 (1981) pp. 51–76. 45 Al-Qif†ì, Inbàh al-ruwàt 'alà anbàh al-nu˙àt, ed. Mu˙ammad Abù l-Fa∂l Ibràhìm, Cairo, 1950–1955, 2 vol., p. 16; Apud art. “Ibn Masarra” by R. Arnaldez, EI 2. 46 Apud M. Asín Palacios, Ibn Masarra y su escuela. Orígenes de la filosofía hispanomusulmana, (1914), included in his Obras Escogidas, vol. I, Madrid, 1946, pp. 109 and ff.

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the sense that whoever reaches the goal of purification and spiritual cleanliness of the soul is certain to obtain his prophethood, which is not, therefore, a special gift granted freely by God to whomsoever he pleases”.47 Ibn Óazm writes in a generally polemical tone and his statements about his opponents need to be treated with particular caution. But such ideas about the possible “continuation of prophethood” through those who had reached sainthood by undergoing a previous process of purification would have been taken very seriously indeed. Similar ideas had certainly been defended by the mu'tazilites and the bà†inites (those who seek the inward meaning behind the literal wording of sacred texts), to whom Ibn Masarra is indebted48 for the idea that the Mahdì can complete or continue prophethood.49 Ibn Masarra’s doctrine on this point and others was in fact so close to that of the bà†inites that his disciples were known as ràfi∂ìs, i.e. shì'ites (more specifically, ismà'ìlites).50 Al-ˇalamankì (d. 429/1037), who had undertaken the spiritual renewal of Islam in a similar fashion to al-Ghazàlì in a later period, wrote a refutation of Ibn Masarra and the bà†inites, Radd 'alà l-bà†iniyya, in which he accused Ibn Masarra of claiming to be a prophet. He wrote that “Ibn Masarra described himself as a prophet and claimed to have received a revelation, convincing himself that it came from God”.51 In fact, it seems appropriate to describe Ibn Masarra as a bà†inite in the general sense of one who was interested in the esoteric interpretation of holy texts, but also in the sense which links him with sufism, philosophy, and ismà'ìlism.

Ibn Óazm, Fisàl, IV, p. 199. M. Asín Palacios, Ibn Masarra y su escuela, p. 110. 49 Unlike Asín Palacios, Kamal Ibràhìm Ja'far believes that it is difficult to classify Ibn Masarra as a bà†inite, though not as a mu'tazilite. See “Min mu"allafàt Ibn Masarra al-mafqùda”, Majallat Kulliyat al-Tarbiyya III (1972) pp. 27–63. More convincing, it seems to me, is the position taken by E. Tornero, who highlights the bà†inite and neo-Platonic elements in Ibn Masarra’s work, in E. Tornero, “Noticia sobre la publicación de obras inéditas de Ibn Masarra”, Al-Qan†ara 14 (1993) pp. 46–64. 50 M. Fierro, “Los màlikíes de al-Andalus y los dos árbitros: al-Óakamàn”, AlQan†ara 6 (1985) pp. 80–102, p. 92. 51 M. Fierro, “The polemic about the Karàmàt al-awliyà" and the development of Sufism in al-Andalus (Fourt/Tenth-Five/Eleventh centuries)”, BSOAS 55, part. 2 (1992) p. 247 and n. 103; and “El proceso contra Abù 'Umar al-Talamankì a través de su vida y de su obra”, Sharq al-Andalus 9 (1992) p. 113. 47 48

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A century after the death of Ibn Masarra, in the late 4th century of the Hijra, a man appeared by the name of Ismà'ìl b. 'Abd Allàh al-Ru'aynì. The only news we have of him comes to us through his contemporary Ibn Óazm. In the first years of the 5th century of the Hijra, Ismà'ìl lived in Pechina, close to Almeria, where he isolated himself from the world and devoted himself to exercises of spiritual combat and constant fasting and praying. Ismà'ìl and his relatives all followed the ideas of Ibn Masarra, and Ibn Óazm claims that his sons were also mu'tazilites. Ibn Óazm recorded the belief of Ismà'ìl’s adepts that “he knew the language of birds and was able to forecast future events, making prophecies which were later fulfilled to the letter”. His followers began to treat him not only as a shaykh but “as an Imàm to whom spiritual and temporal obedience were compulsory for all Muslims, and to whom zaqa must be paid”.52 Abù 'Umar al-ˇalamankì himself was an Andalusian polymath who travelled to the Middle East and attained a level of great knowledge of the Qur"àn and the ˙adìth, and was partly responsible for introducing the discipline of ußùl al-fiqh in al-Andalus. He settled in Cordoba, where he devoted himself to teaching the ˙adìth and commanding right and forbidding wrong (aqra"a l-nàs bi-ha mu˙tasiban). He was one of the most influential masters of the 5th/11th century. However, al-ˇalamankì’s intellectual activities, directed towards the renewal of peninsular Islam through the introduction of new disciplines, aroused the enmity of the 'ulamà" and led him eventually to be placed on trial.53 One of the charges made against him was that he had defended the existence of miracles as performed by saints, something which his opponents claimed was detrimental to the figure of the Prophet. He was also accused of moral and activist rigourism and may have proposed himself as Imàm. A group of followers ( jamà'a) gathered around al-ˇalamankì, and he was regarded as their spiritual leader (awwal al-jamà'a). Fierro has thus proposed that alˇalamankì’s movement set a precedent for the route later to be taken by Ibn Barrajàn and Ibn Qasì, whom I will discuss later.

52 Ibn Óazm apud Asín, “Ibn Masarra y su escuela: orígenes de la filosofía hispano-musulmana” in Obras Escogidas, Madrid, 1946, I, 1–126, pp. 122–128. 53 M. Fierro, “El proceso contra Abù 'Umar al-Talamankì”.

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chapter five Controversy and dissidence in the Almoravid period

Several decades ago, Asín Palacios wrote a pioneering study of the fate of the ideas of Ibn Masarra, whose most illustrious heir was Muhyì l-Dìn Ibn al-'Arabì through the murìdùn movement of Ibn Qasì and Ibn al-'Arìf. Asín Palacios considered all of these figures closely related to one another, and claimed that what he termed the “school of Almeria” was headed by Ibn al-'Arìf.54 In fact, on closer examination the members of this alleged “school” turn out to have been very different from one another, and a disciple-master relationship between the other members and Ibn al-'Arìf is not at all easy to demonstrate.55 What united them, above all, was the suspicion that they aroused among the political authorities and the fact that some of them had monistic beliefs. A little before the year 536/1141, the Almoravid sultan 'Alì ibn Yùsuf b. Tàshufìn sent an order to his agents in Seville and Almeria to arrest and send to Marrakech the leading sufi masters Mu˙ammad al-Màyurqì, Ibn al-'Arìf and Ibn Barrajàn, who had been denounced by the fuqahà" of al-Andalus. This was the same sultan who had banned the works of al-Ghazàlì and had ordered that whichever copies of it were found should be burnt. Al-Màyurqì managed to escape, but the other two masters were captured and died in obscure circumstances immediately after their arrival in Marrakech (536/1141). Ibn al-'Arìf was probably poisoned by order of the sultan. Ibn Barrajàn died in prison, and the sultan refused permission for him to be buried. Both were followers of the doctrine of al-Ghazàlì, and Ibn Barrajàn was accused of encouraging revolt against the Almoravids: he had claimed to be an Imàm and had been given the bay'a by some 130 towns and villages. He had also been accused of being a bà†inite because of the exegesis he practised in his interpretation of the Qur"àn.56 Ibn al-'Arìf had been educated in Almeria, then one of the leading centres of Andalusian sufism, where he forged an important reputation for himself by leading an exemplary life, devoted to ascesis

54

M. Asín Palacios, “Ibn Masarra y su escuela”. Against the idea of a “school of Almeria”, see C. Addas, “Andalusi mysticism and the rise of Ibn 'Arabì”. 56 D. Grill, “La ‘lecture supérieure’ du Coran selon Ibn Barrajàn”, Arabica XLVII (2002) pp. 510–522. 55

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and meditation, and surrounded by numerous disciples. Ibn al-Kha†ìb wrote that Ibn al-'Arìf was nazìruhu fi l-khulla with respect to Ibn Barrajàn, i.e. his equal in their friendship with God.57 However, the fragments of his correspondence found and published by Paul Nwiya show that Ibn al-'Arìf addressed himself to Ibn Barrajàn in terms appropriate for a disciple writing to a master. Three fragments of letters written by Ibn al-'Arìf to Ibn Barrajàn have survived, and they show the influence of Ibn Masarra.58 In them, Ibn al-'Arìf addresses his master as his shaykh, Imàm and kabìrì. Not only does he call him an imàm, but he invokes God, pleading with him: “Make of him the Imàm of those who guide the ways for the soul’s purification and of those who determine the path to salvation; bless him and bless through him others as with the blessing which starts in Mu˙ammad and finishes with him”.59 The influence of Eastern ideas on Ibn al-'Arìf has been emphasized by scholars: his work Ma˙àsin al-Majàlis owes much to the famous Eastern sufi text, Manàzil al-Sà"irìn by the Herat shaykh 'Abd Allàh al-Anßàrì (d. 481/1089).60 The originality of the Ma˙àsin lies less in its doctrine as such than in the esoteric orientation of its argument. Ibn al-'Arìf ’s work was not written for the mass of those who aspired to mystical perfection so much as for those who had already achieved union and enjoyed gnosis. This “aristocratic” attitude is adopted as an exclusive criterion throughout Ibn al-'Arìf ’s Ma˙àsin.61 In other words, Ibn al-'Arìf ’s work is not written for ordinary mortals, and al-Ghazàlì is not the only Eastern influence on Western sufism. Both Ibn Barrajàn and Ibn al-'Arìf were also clearly affected by the ideas of Ibn Masarra, the most influential figure in Andalusian sufism until the arrival of al-Ghazàlì.62 Oposition to the Màliki fuqahà" came into the open in al-Andalus with the rising of Ibn Qasì, who took advantage of the campaign of the Almohads against the Almoravids in Morocco to head the sufi movement of the Murìdùn. 57

Ibn al-Kha†ìb, Kitàb a'màl al-a'làm, ed. Levi-Provençal, Rabat, 1934, p. 286. P. Nwyia, “Note sur quelques fragments inédits de la correspondence d’Ibn al-'Arìf avec Ibn Barrajàn”, Hespéris, XLIII (1956) pp. 217–221. 59 Apud P. Nwyia, “Note sur quelques fragments inédits”, p. 220. 60 B. Halff, “Le Ma˙àsin al-Ma<àlis d’Ibn al-'Arìf et l’ouvre du soufi hanbalite alAnßarì”, Revue des Études Islamiques 39 (1971) pp. 321–335. 61 B. Halff, “Le Ma˙àsin al-Ma<àlis”, p. 322. 62 M. Asín Palacios, “El místico Abù al-'Abbàs Ibn al-'Arìf de Almería y su 'Ma˙àsin al-Mayˆàlis”, Obras escogidas, I, Madrid, 1946, pp. 220 and ff. 58

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chapter five Ibn Qasì

Little is known of Ibn Qasì’s early life, including his date of birth. He was from a family of Christian origin from Silves in the Portuguese Algarve. His venture took place between 537/1142, one year after the death of Ibn al-'Arìf and Ibn Barrajàn and the year of 546/1151, date of his assassination. As a young man, Ibn Qasì seems to have worked at administrative tasks and also to have been a mushrif, and at one stage in his life he appears to have sold all his goods, distributed the proceeds among the poor and devoted himself to wandering through the country and leading a life of asceticism. He made contact with Abù l-'Abbàs b. al-'Arìf of Almeria.63 Ibn Qasì travelled to Marrakech and then returned to al-Andalus. Once there, he founded a ràbi†a close to the village of Jilla, where he gathered a group of adepts (murìdùn) and devoted himself to studying the works of al-Ghazàlì. He preached revolt against the Almoravid establishment to the peoples of the region, and favoured revolt against all that was contrary to the right way (al-hidàya) presenting himself as an imàm. He organised an attack on the fortress of Monteagudo which failed (538/1144) so that he was himself forced to tell his followers “This was a false dawn. The true dawn will follow and the day will begin”.64 Ibn Qasì’s words indicate hope of redemption in the near future. His next attack was directed against Mértola and turned out to be victorious: the leading figures of the town and surrounding area pledged allegiance to him. In Mértola, Ibn Qasì minted coins which used the terms Imàm and Mahdì.65 Ibn al-Kha†ìb points out that Ibn Qasì “reclaimed the wilàya (leadership, govenment) and had himself called Mahdì”.66 He never claimed a lineage which connected him with the ahl al-bayt. Ibn Qasì favoured the Almohad movement, and even recognised its legitimacy during a brief period,

63 According to Asín Palacios, Ibn Qasì was taught by Ibn al-'Arìf, but this seems unlikely, as was shown by Claude Addas in “Andalusì mysticism and the rise of Ibn 'Arabì” in Salma Jayyusi (ed.), The Legacy of Muslim Spain, Leiden, 1992, pp. 909–933. 64 J. Dreher, “L’imàmat d’Ibn Qasì à Mértola (automne 1144–été 1145): Légitimité d’une domination soufie?”, MIDEO 18 (1988) pp. 195–209, p. 200. 65 The inscriptions on the coins read “Allàh rabbunà, Mu˙ammad nabìyunà, alMahdì imàmunà”, J.R. Marinho, Moedas muçulmanas de Béja e de Silves, Lisbon, 1968, p. 319. 66 Kitàb a'màl al-a'làm, ed. E. Lévi-Provençal, p. 289.

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before finally breaking off with 'Abd al-Mu"min.67 Although his government lasted for less than a year it is pertinent here, not only because of its historical and political repercussions, but also because of the nature of Ibn Qasì’s ideas about the Imamate. Ibn Qasì wrote a Kitàb khal' al-na'layn,68 the introduction to which is a long excursus on the history of revelation which allows us to draw some conclusions about its author and the place he accorded himself in that history. Like al-Ghazàlì before him, Ibn Qasì attacked the fuqahà", considered by him to be the origin of all evil passions. Against their sterile casuistry he proposed his own illumination, claiming to have received a dictate (imlà") which had enabled him to understand “the inside of things”. Illumination led to election, and for he who was thus chosen, Ibn Qasì pleaded to God: “Make of him a gift, mercy for the faithful and a protection from error ('ißma) for your pious servants, the imàm and example (qudwa) to all those who provide good guidance (al-hàdiyìn al-ràshidìn)”.69 It necessarily follows that this imàm, the protector of those who are entrusted to him, is infallible (ma'ßùm), like the Imàm of the shì'ites. This infallibility and impeccability did not derive from the Imàm’s descendancy from the Prophet, but from his qualities and his illumination, supra-worldly powers which again bring him close to the shì'ite Imàm. According to a tradition recorded by Ibn Qasì, the Prophet had promised his community that it would remain on earth for a thousand years as long as it did not stray from the right path. Since the first five hundred years had now passed, the faithful should prepare themselves for the end of the world,70 and in a similar way to that associated with the ismà'ìlites, Ibn Qasì sketched out the system within which events were to develop. Two great cycles, one from Adam to Jesus, and the other from Mu˙ammad to the End of the World, divided the history of salvation, but these two cycles were related to one another. “There is not one miracle carried out by the Prophet nor one divine friendship (walàya) received in the past 67 V. Lagardère, “La †arìqa et la révolte des Muridùn en 539 H/1144 en alAndalus”, ROMM 35 (1983) pp. 160–161. For relations between Ibn Qasì and 'Abd al-Mu"min, see al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'yˆ ib fì taljìß ajbàr al-Magrib, Lo admirable en el resumen de las noticias del Magrib, Spanish trans. A. Huici Miranda, Tetuan, 1955, pp. 150–151/172. 68 Ed. J. Dreher, Bonn, 1985. 69 Dreher, “L’imamat d’Ibn Qasì”, p. 203/209. 70 Dreher, “L’imamat d’Ibn Qasì”, p. 204/209.

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by a friend of God (walì Allàh) which does not later re-appear in his descendants and in the strangers ( ghurabà") to his community.”71 By mentioning these ghurabà" Ibn Qasì made reference to the famous tradition: “Islam began as a stranger and shall return to being a stranger just as it began. Thus, blessed be the strangers!”72 The time in which these ghurabà" 73 were to show themselves was a time of oppression by tyrannical powers, and the fact that they persevered in a disastrous age made their actions more meritorious. They would escape the fires of hell and would see the “presence” of God: “Among them are distinguished those who possess the degree of sainthood (walàya), who perform miracles (karamàt) and to whom mysteries (asràr) are revealed.”74 The glorification of strangers as it took place in the tradition of the Prophet which I have cited, was taken by Ibn Qasì to refer to himself and his circle, the murìdùn. “We are the first and the last”, said Ibn Qasì, giving the ˙adìth a clearly eschatological interpretation. This ˙adìth was widely spread in al-Andalus75 and was particularly appreciated by sufis as a way of hinting that they were an elite among Muslims, spiritually alienated by a corrupt majority. It was a ˙adìth with clear political usefulness for the non-quietist sufi. Commentaries on the Kitàb khal' al-na'layn were written by Ibn al'Arabì and Ibn Abì Wà†ìl, a disciple of Ibn Sab'ìn (d. 669/1271).76 Several passages from this last commentary were included by Ibn Khaldùn in the Muqaddima.77 In his comments on the cycles of prophecy defined by Ibn Qasì, Ibn Abì Wà†ìl wrote that the age before Islam was nothing but ignorant error and blindness. Then, thanks to Prophecy, came the turn of truth and the right guidance (hidàya). Prophecy was followed by the caliphate, and the caliphate by monarchy (mulk). This in turn led to tyranny, pride and corruption. But as there is a divine tendency to make things return to their starting point, within this theory of cycles so closely resembling that 71

Dreher, “L’imamat d’Ibn Qasì”, p. 204/209. A.J. Wenswick, Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, Leiden, 1962, vol. 4, p. 473. 73 Ibn Óazm divides into various groups those who believe in the existence of prophethood after Mu˙ammad, and the first such group is that of the Ghurabiyya. I. Friedlander, p. 65. 74 Dreher, “L’imamat d’Ibn Qasì”, p. 205/210. 75 See M. Fierro, “Spiritual alienation”, p. 246 and ff. 76 For Ibn Sab'ìn, see D. Urvoy, “Les thèmes chrétiens chez Ibn Sab'ìn et la question de la spécifité de sa pensée”, Studia Islamica 44 (1976) pp. 99–121. 77 Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, Trans. V. Monteil, Beirut, 1968, vol. II, pp. 664 and ff. 72

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of the ismà'ìlites, it necessarily follows that truth and prophecy “will be revivified by sainthood (walàya)”. This will be followed by the caliphate once more, so that walàya is considered an antecedent or new starting point for the caliphate. Later will come the turn of the Dajjàl to take power and authority, so that impiety will return to what it was before the time of the Prophet, a time of Jàhiliyya or Ignorance. According to Ibn Abì Wà†ìl, these three phases corresponded, firstly, to the sainthood of the Fà†imì who will revive prophethood and truth; then to the caliphate after the Fà†imì, and, thirdly, to the time of error, which is the time of the Dajjàl. In another passage,78 Ibn Abì Wà†ìl comments that it is said that the caliphate belongs legally to the Qurayshites according to consensus (ijmà"), and with all the more reason if the Imàm is from the family of the Prophet. This family relation can be physical but also spiritual, “in the profound sense of the word “family” (àl ) which means that at the moment when they will be present, he who is of the family will not be absent”, i.e. the Imàm will benefit from the illumination or spiritual presence of Mu˙ammad. Ibn Abì Wà†ìl also records Ibn al-'Arabì’s opinion that the awaited Imàm (al-Imàm al-muntaΩar), i.e. the Mahdì, must be a member of the family of the Prophet and a descendant of Fà†ima. “As far as the awaited saint is concerned, he who will take in hand the cause of God under the name of Mu˙ammad al- Mahdì, the Seal of Saints (Khatm al-awliyà") will not be a prophet but a saint.” His coming was predicted for the year 500/1106.79 He continues by citing al-Kindì, according to whom this saint will be the one to renew Islam and make justice triumph, conquer all the Iberian peninsula and Rome. He will then leave to conquer the East, where he will take Constantinople and become the lord of the world. Muslims will be powerful, Islam will be exalted and primitive religion (dìn al-˙anìfiyya) will return to life.

Mu˙yì al-Dìn Ibn al-'Arabì Mu˙yì al-Dìn Ibn al-'Arabì, al-shaykh al-akbar, was born in Murcia in 560/1165, and his spiritual legacy, the apex of Islamic mystical

78 79

Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, p. 664. Apud Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, p. 667.

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thought, has exerted an immeasurable influence over the centuries. Ibn al-'Arabì’s scheme of thought is complex, subtle, personal, and extremely difficult to interpret. Paradoxically, it has also had a very profound influence. His teachings have left a considerable mark on “intellectual” sufism, but also on the world of the †arìqas and brotherhoods, thus affecting the widest possible range of social classes and cultural levels.80 This may be because Ibn al-'Arabì’s work, unlike that of all those writers who preceded him (with the possible exception of al-Ghazàlì), has the advantage of providing an answer to almost everything: ontology, cosmology, prophetology, exegesis, ritual . . . His work covers every field for which the ahl al-taßawwùf is in need of a safe guide. Nevertheless, his great originality should not make us forget that Ibn al-'Arabì was also the heir and transmitter of a rich preceding tradition. The Futù˙àt Makkiyya have played the role of a Summa magna, or supreme reference in sufism. I will deal here with just a few specific aspects of his wide body of work. Ibn al-'Arabì was trained within the intellectual atmosphere of alAndalus and under the influence of some of its foremost figures in both sufism and traditional religious disciplines. Several of Ibn al'Arabì’s Andalusian teachers were directly or indirectly linked to the sufis of Almeria: the influence of Ibn al-'Arìf, termed shaykhùna by Ibn al-'Arabì, is particularly clear, and he is also known to have studied Ibn Barrajàn’s Kitàb al-˙ikma.81 Ibn al-'Arabì knew and admired the work and doctrine of Ibn Masarra, and chapter 23 of the Futù˙àt hints at its direct influence on him.82 Later authors, and especially Ibn Khaldùn, pointed to a link between Ibn al-'Arabì and the monist sufis of al-Andalus. However, of all the sufi masters, the author most frequently quoted by Ibn al-'Arabì is Abù Madyan, whom he never knew personally.83 It is difficult to judge with precision his attitude towards Ibn Qasì, whose Kitàb khal' al-na'layn he certainly knew and commented upon. Scholars have generally believed that Ibn al-'Arabì had a high opin-

80 M. Chodkiewicz, “Quelques remarques sur la diffusion de l’enseignement d’Ibn 'Arabì” in H. Elboudrari (ed.), Modes de transmission de la culture religieuse en Islam, Paris-Cairo. 1993, pp. 201–224. Above all, see A.D. Knysh, Ibn 'Arabì in the Later Islamic Tradition. The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam, New York, 1999. 81 C. Addas, Ibn 'Arabì ou la quête du Soufre Rouge, Paris, 1989, pp. 74 and ff. 82 C. Addas, “Ibn 'Arabì inteprète d’Abù Madyan”, 'Ayn al-Hayyat 2 (1996) pp. 67–89, p. 80. 83 C. Addas, “Ibn 'Arabì inteprète d’Abù Madyan”, p. 67.

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ion of Ibn Qasì’s system of thought, and he makes reference to him in an eschatological text which is, in my view, practically unintelligible, the Kitàb 'anqà" al-Mughrib, a brief esoteric manual consisting of a series of prophecies which continue to circulate in numerous popular editions even today. But Ibn al-'Arabì also wrote the Sharkh kitàb khal ' al-na'layn in which, according to Claude Addas, he passes from initial attraction towards Ibn Qasì’s work to a feeling of repulsion at his claim to have been a Mahdì. However, Ibn al-'Arabì does not make the same criticism of Ibn Barrajàn, for whom he expresses consistent admiration despite the fact that the latter also had pretensions to be an Imàm.84 In spite of Addas’ undoubtedly correct interpretation, it is clear that Ibn al-'Arabì’s ideas on sainthood had many points in common with those of Ibn Qasì. Even while still living in al-Andalus, before travelling to the Middle East, Ibn al-'Arabì wrote several brief essays containing elaborately obscure predictions about the imminent arrival of the Mahdì. Many of the brief treatises he wrote in al-Andalus were later revised and incorporated in his Futù˙àt Makkiyya. For instance, chapter 366 of the Futù˙àt covers Ibn al-'Arabì’s doctrine concerning the Mahdì. For him, the Mahdì, a descendant of al-Óasan, was the Seal of the Legatees, khatm al-awsiyà", just as Mu˙ammad had been the Seal of Prophets. The Mahdì would impose the law of Islam at sword-point and Jesus would be one of his wizarà". He would be infallible in his ijtihàd without needing to recur to juridical analogy (qiyàs). The fuqahà" would be his adversaries, whereas the sufis would be his followers and natural allies. These doctrines were developed within the circles of sufi followers around Ibn al-'Arabì. The notion of khatm al-awsiyà" is similar to that of khatm al-awliyà". The doctrine of khatm al-walàya had already appeared in Óakìm al-Tirmidhì in the 3rd/9th century, but was not made explicit in a coherent manner until the work of Ibn al-'Arabì, after whom it becomes a fundamental element in subsequent hagiology. Michel Chodkiewicz has devoted an important monograph to Ibn al-'Arabì’s theory of sainthood, which developed around this notion of the “seal of saints”85 and can be summarised as follows.

C. Addas, “Ibn 'Arabì inteprète d’Abù Madyan”, p. 78. M. Chodkiewicz, Le Sceau des Saints. Prophétie et sainteté dans la doctrine d’Ibn Arabi, Paris, 1986. 84 85

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One of the pillars of Ibn al-'Arabì’s system of thought is veneration for Mu˙ammad, who assumes for him the role of the Perfect Man, al-insàn al-kàmil.86 The imitation of this perfect man, his assumption of the paradigm of behaviour, of “living sunna”, is what gives the sufi shaykh the spiritual authority of qudwa or example. The Perfect Man is necessary to God as a means by which He shows Himself and is known. Ibn al-'Arabì believed in the pre-existence and eternity of the ˙aqìqa mu˙ammadiyya, the Muhammedan Reality—Mu˙ammad was, is and will always be pre-existent even with respect to Adam. All the prophets sent to men are no more than receptacles, at a precise moment in human history, of a portion of this Muhammedan Reality, which never ceases to travel through time and men until reaching its perfect exteriorization in the historical persona of the prophet Mu˙ammad. After Mu˙ammad’s death, the Gate of Legislating Prophethood (nubùwwàt al-tashrì ) closed definitively but sainthood (walàya) subsists and it is through the awliyà" that the ˙aqìqa mu˙ammadiyya will continue to reveal itself. Individuals (ahad al-nàs) act as deputies of God (nuwwàb Allàh) when they forbid wrong.87 All saints are heirs (wàrith) of the prophets. A prophet’s status as an heir, i.e. a saint’s relation with the prophetic model, is not one of “patronage” but is, rather, comparable to the transmission of a genetic patrimony, a blood legacy. The concept of sainthood contains and covers that of prophethood, which is one of the characteristics (ahkàm) of sainthood. Walàya covers both risàla and nubuwwa: every nabì is also a wàlì and a prophet’s standing as wàlì is superior to that of nabì. The distinction between sainthood and prophethood is thus very weak because, in addition, according to Ibn al-'Arabì, the highest grade of walàya takes the name of nubuwwa 'amma or general, not legislating, prophethood.88 Just as there is a Seal of legislating prophethood (Mu˙ammad), who closes this kind of prophethood, although not the nubuwwa 'amma, the gate to which remains open, there is also a Seal of Sainthood who will close the gate to sainthood or non-legislating prophethood. In Ibn al-'Arabì’s writings, there is much that is ambiguous and con-

86 M. Takeshita, Ibn "Arabi’s theory of the Perfect Man and its place in the History of Islamic Thought, Tokyo, 1987. 87 M. Cook, Commanding right and forbidding wrong in Islamic thought, Cambridge, 2000, p. 584. 88 M. Takeshita, Ibn "Arabi’s theory of the Perfect Man, pp. 122–123.

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tradictory about the persona of this khatm al-awliyà" (a figure with obvious eschatological connotations), to the extent that it even seems possible that the author regarded himself as being the khatm al-awliyà". Ibn al-'Arabì’s claim to be the “Seal of the Saints” who “prepares the ground for the final arrival of the Quranic Jesus”89 possesses messianic connotations which were especially irritating to contemporary and later scholars. Ibn al-'Arabì’s frequent references to his friendship with Jesus, whom he saw in many of his visions, must also have been related to this messianic feeling. Shì'ite interpreters and followers of Ibn al-'Arabì believed that the khatm al-awliyà" was the Mahdì.90 But the same could also be said of many of his sunnite followers, or of uncommitted readers. Ibn Khaldùn also makes the claim that in his Kitàb 'anqà" al-Mughrib Ibn al-'Arabì identified the Mahdì with the khatm al-awliyà".91 The notion of khatm al-awliyà" has persisted in the Maghreb. It is, for instance, used repeatedly in the Salwat al-anfàs, one of the bestknown compendiums of lives of Moroccan saints written in the 13th/19th century,92 together with other terms used by Ibn al-'Arabì to define the spiritual status of saints whose biographies are included. Ibn al-'Arabì’s influence is expressly recognised in most Maghribian †urùq. In other texts, mostly written by moderate sufis, warnings are issued against the spread of ideas originating with Ibn al-'Arabì, which might be misunderstood by those not equipped to understand them correctly, even though they were considered orthodox.93 Examples can be found in the work of the well-known 9th/15th century shaykh A˙mad Zarrùq, who takes this position in his Qawà'id al-taßawwuf,94 and in that of other shuyukh of the Shàdhiliyya.

89 Knysh, Ibn 'Arabi and the late Islamic tradition. The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam, New York, 1999, p. 15. 90 Chodkiewicz, Le Sceau des Saints, p. 173. 91 Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, trans. V. Monteil, p. 665. 92 Al-Kattànì, Salwat al-anfàs wa-mu˙àdathat al-akyàs bi-man ukbira min al-'ulamà" wal-ßula˙à" bi-Fàs, ed. lit. Fez, 1316/1898–9, vol. II, pp. 241, 288, 332–333, 340 apud Chodkiewicz, “Quelques remarques sur la difusion de l’enseignement d’Ibn 'Arabì”, in H. El Boudrari (ed.), Modes de transmission de la culture religieuse en Islam, Paris-Cairo, 1993, pp. 201–224, p. 210. 93 Ibn al-Qà∂ì, Jadhwat al-iqtibàs fì man ˙alla min al-a'làm madìnat Fàs, Rabat, 1973–74, vol. 2, p. 282. 94 A. Zarrùq, Qawà'id al-taßawwuf, Cairo, 1328/1968, pp. 35, 41, 52, 129. Apud Chodkiewicz, “Quelques remarques”, p. 205.

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In addition to the influence of the group of sufi masters from the city of Almeria which marked Andalusian sufism and provided it with a character and originality of its own, there was in the taßawwuf at this time another, more specifically Maghrebian tendency, whose main representatives were Abù Ya'za (d.572/1177), Ibn Óirzihim (d. 559/1163) and, a generation later, Abù Madyan (d.594/1197). These figures, and in particular the illiterate Berber saint Abù Ya'za,95 do not seem to have been associated with any specific or common doctrine, but sought rather to impress their followers with the force of their extraordinary personality and as miracle (karàmat) workers. Their authority has to do with charisma (baraka) presented as a natural result of spiritual perfection.96 In an edifying story recorded by alTàdilì, Abù Ya'za is branded as ignorant by one of his opponents, who miraculously loses his voice immediately after making the accusation. The saint makes his opponent’s voice return and tells him that he is right and has spoken the truth: “I know nothing but what my Lord has made known to me”. This statement paraphrases a divine command to the Prophet Mu˙ammad recorded in the Qur"àn (X: 15): “Say . . . I follow naught but what is revealed unto me”. Like the Prophet, Abù Ya'za was illiterate ('ummì ) and spoke no Arabic, and his deliberate use here of a similar figure of speech to that used in the Qur"àn hints that his own inspiration came from the same divine source and underlines the idea that his own example had much in common with that of Mu˙ammad.97 The saint’s illiteracy identified him with the Prophet and gave extra force to his prophetic inspiration. Abù Ya'za’s face was said to shine so brightly with the light of theophanic radiance that those who cast their eyes on him were prone to lose their sight. Abù Madyan himself went blind on seeing him, but miraculously recovered his sight when he rubbed his eyes on the saint’s clothing. According to al-Tàdilì, Abù Ya'za possessed knowledge of hidden destinies, and thus resembled the saint with whose long biography

95

Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf ilà rijàl al-taßawwuf, n. 77, pp. 213–222. D. Ephrat, “In quest of an ideal type of saint: some observations on the first generation of Moroccan Awliyà" Allàh in Kitàb al-tashawwuf ”, Studia Islamica 94 (2002) pp. 67–83. 97 V. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 77. 96

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he closes his book, Abù l-'Abbàs al-Sabtì (d. 601/1204), the saint from Ceuta who became the patron saint of Marrakech. Like his predecessor 'Alì b. Óirzihim of Fez, al-Sabtì openly proclaimed his sainthood, saying “I am a guide towards i˙san and an intermediary between mankind and its Creator”. He also said “I am a merchant of God among his creatures”.98 In some of al-Tàdilì’s sacred biographies ma'rifa is perceived as superior to fiqh. Such is the case of Abù Mu˙ammad 'Abd al-Khalìl al-Wayhlan (d. 541/1146) who taught fiqh to the people of Aghmàt. When his disciples dispersed after class he would say to his group of special companions (khassa aß˙abihi ) “Let us now study the ‘light of knowledge’, teaching them the secrets of al-taßawwuf.” 99

The interpretation of Ibn Khaldùn In the pages he wrote on the metaphysical doctrines of sufism in his Kitàb al-shifà" al-sà"il li-tahdhib al-masà"il,100 Ibn Khaldùn pays special attention to the extreme sufis known as “monists” who believed in the absolute oneness of the divine essence, i.e. those who considered that the divine essence could only be described as a unity and who excluded all notion of plurality and differentiation. Ibn Masarra was one such figure. The Creator was perceived by these sufis as being One with his creatures, their essence, their existence and their attributes.101 Some followers of this idea resembled the extreme shì'ites in that both groups believed that God could appear through certain privileged individuals. One of the first such “monists” was Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Shùdhì (d. circa 600/1203), a mutakallim follower of al-Ash'arì who was a qà∂ì in Seville. Al-Shùdhì’s teachings were proclaimed heretical by a number of 'ulamà" in Seville, forcing him to emigrate to Tlemcen, where he continued to preach. He is considered responsible for introducing to the Muslim West the doctrine of universal monism (wa˙dat al-wujùd ) and his ideas were propagated by Ibn A˙là,

98

Apud Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 87. Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf ilà rijàl al-taßawwuf, n. 34. 100 Ed. I.A. Khalìfa, Beirut, 1959, French trans. by R. Pérez, La Voie et la Loi ou le Maitre et le Juriste, Paris, 1991. 101 Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, Kitàb al-shifà" bi-ta'rìf ˙uqùq al-Mu߆afà, ed. Dàr al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, Beirut [s.a.], p. 50. 99

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Ibn Da˙˙àq, also known as al-Mar"a, and Ibn Sab'ìn, all of whom considered themselves his disciples. Ibn al-Zubayr (d. 708/ 1308) wrote a treatise attacking the monistic sufis, described by him as shudhiyya, and amongst whom he also includes Ibn al-'Arabì.102 Ibn Khaldùn, for his part, places special emphasis on the notion of self-manifestation or theophanic resplendence (tajallì) which he considered a crucial element in Ibn 'Arabì’s version of speculative sufism. As followers of such ideas, Ibn Khaldùn cites, among others, Ibn Barrajàn, Ibn Qasì, Ibn Sab'ìn and Ibn al-'Arabì. Despite his interest in the related questions of the aß˙àb al-wa˙da and the tajallì, Ibn Khaldùn passes quickly and impatiently over such doctrinal sophistications, his main interest lying in the social and political implications of these forms of sufism, which he considered to lie in the affinity between the walàya of the sufis and the shì'ite doctrine of the infallible Imàm.103 As he presents it, the Mahdì performed the same function in sufism and ismà'ìlism, i.e. that of instructing his followers in the esoteric and concealed sense of the Sharì'a and guiding them to salvation.104 According to Ibn Khaldùn, the maximum exponents within sufism of a doctrine of the Mahdì (or of the pole, qu†b, or axis) identical to that of the ismà'ìlite shì'a were Ibn Qasì, Ibn Sab'ìn and Ibn al-'Arabì. He also detects shì'ite influence in the sufi doctrine of the hierarchy of holy men, who were presented by these three thinkers as individual manifestations of the Muhammedan Reality, al-˙aqìqa-al-mu˙ammadiyya.105 The maximum exponent was, again, Ibn al-'Arabì. Regarding al-Ghazàlì, Ibn Khaldùn, far from expressing opposition to his ideas, recorded them and incorporated them into his own work, which is clearly influenced by the I˙ya" and includes several quotations from it. Ibn Khaldùn, following al-Ghazàlì, saw two trends in sufism.106 One was based on strict observance of the Law and demanded spiritual discipline, moral rigour, ascetic exercises and abstention from the satisfaction of carnal appetites. This trend cleansed 102 Knysh, Ibn Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, p. 168. See also A. Al-Massri, “Imagination and the Qu"ràn in the theology of “oneness of Being”, Arabica XLVII (2000) pp. 523–535. 103 Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, Beirut, 1981, trans. by F. Rosenthal, The muaqaddimah. An introduction to history, London, 1978, vol. II, pp. 187–88 and vol. III, p. 92. 104 Muqaddima, Rosenthal, vol. III, pp. 93–94. 105 Muqaddima, Rosenthal, vol. II, 187–88; Shifà", p. 52. 106 Ibn Khaldùn devoted one chapter of the Muqaddima to sufism, as well as writing a treatise entitled Kitàb al-Shifà’ al-sa’il li-tahdhib al-masà"il . . .

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the heart of “hypocrisy” and “worldliness”, as a result of which it became a polished mirror reflecting the sublime attributes of God. Ibn Khaldùn follows al-Ghazàlì in calling this the sufism of good works ('ilm al-mu'mala). A second and later trend had been worked into a complex discipline and sophisticated theory with a terminology of its own, in an attempt to achieve greater proximity to God. This second kind of sufism valued and aspired to direct vision, to the experience of God achieved by some of its leading members. Ibn Khaldùn called it 'ilm al-mukàshafa or “intuitive unveiling”, because its adepts followed the path of supersensory unveiling (kashf ). Of the two forms of sufism, the second certainly inspired least sympathy in Ibn Khaldùn. His distinctions were taken straight from al-Ghazàlì, whose presentation of 'ilm al-mukàshafa constituted another of the ideas which aroused most ire among his contemporaries.

Jewish Messianism The convergence of some of the notions discussed above with movements of a messianic nature is further put to the test by considering parallel developments in the Jewish communities of the Muslim West. We know very little about the Jewish communities during the first two centuries of al-Andalus. By adopting Arabic as the main spoken and written language, they became an integral part of the Islamic cultural world, in contact with other Jewish communities of the East from which they had previously been cut off.107 The 12th century witnessed an extraordinary number of Jewish messianic movements. The cataclysmic events of the First Crusade helped to bring about a great intensification of religious feelings in Christian and Muslim territories from the late 11th century onwards, and produced a nearuniversal messianic movement amongst all the Jewish communities of Europe and the Islamic world. J. Mann has studied eight cases in Germany, France, Spain, the Maghreb, Palestine and Kurdistan, and S.D. Goitein a particularly interesting one which took place among the Jewish community of Baghdad in 1120–21.108 107 D. Wasserstein, “Islamisation and the Conversion of the Jews” in M. GarcíaArenal (ed.) Conversions islamiques. Identités religieuses en Islam méditerranéen, Paris, 2002, pp. 49–60. 108 J. Mann, “Messianic movements during the first three Crusades” (in Hebrew),

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The year 500H and the years immediately to either side of it seem to have been charged with tremendous messianic expectations for the Jews who inhabitated the lands of the Islamic West, just as they were for Muslims in the same area. In al-Andalus, R. Abraham bar Óiyyá (d. circa 1136)109 devoted one of his most important works, the Megillat ha-megalleh,110 to the eschatological theme, studying the signs which announced imminent redemption in the struggle between the Crusaders and the Turks. He also included an apology for astrology, which he himself had employed to determine the date of the true messianic end, predicted by him for the year 1135. Abraham ibn Da"ùd wrote his Sefer ha-Qabbalah, one of whose aims was to console his people for their present troubles by announcing the imminent arrival of the Messiah. In it he combined two computations, one based on the heptadic system, which follows the Book of Daniel, and the other on that of 500-year cycles. Like most Jews living in Islamic territories, Ibn Da"ùd believed that the Messiah would appear in the 500th year of the Hijra.111 Further contributions were made by the poet Yehuda ha-Levi, whose interest in estimating the date of messianic redemption is revealed in a number of his works. HaLevi had a dream in which the year 1130 was presented to him as that of the end of Muslim domination, and upon waking he immediately put into writing what he had seen in his dreams, adorning his vision with typical images from the Book of the prophet Daniel.112 Ha-Levi’s poetry hints at a clear intensification of messianic tension: oppression by Muslims and Christians, which obsessed him, should in his view be interpreted as a characteristic feature of an age immediately preceding messianic times. It should be remembered that for both Jews and Muslims, visions in dreams were a grade of prophethood, as was explained by Abraham ibn Da"ùd himself in his Sefer ha-Emuna ha-Ramah. Maimonides also believed that the return of Hatekufa 23 (1925) pp. 243–261 and 24 (1928), pp. 335–358; S.D. Goitein, “A report on messianic troubles in Baghdad in 1120–21”, Jewish Quarterly Review, new series 43 (1952–53) pp. 57–76. 109 J.M. Millás Vallicrosa, Estudios sobre la historia de la ciencia española, Barcelona, 1949, pp. 219–226. 110 See translation and study by J.M. Millás Vallicrosa, vol. I of the Biblioteca Hebraico-Catalana, Barcelona, 1929. 111 See G.D. Cohen’s introduction to his edition and translation, Abraham Ibn Da"ùd. Sefer ha Qabbalah, Philadelphia, 1972. 112 Divan, II, 86, p. 302 apud J.M. Millás Vallicrosa, Yehuda ha-Levi como poeta y apologista, Madrid, 1947, p. 84.

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prophethood would announce the coming of a messianic age. Abraham ibn Ezra, for his part, seems to have forecast the arrival of the Messiah in the year 1174, saying that this would occur after Edom (Christendom) had confronted and humiliated the Almohad sultan.113 This prediction was made in the period after the establishment of the Almohads under the government of 'Abd al-Mu"min, who introduced unprecedentedly harsh measures against the Jews, including an organised persecution in about 1146 which brought about a wave of forced conversions to Islam.114 Two especially significant messianic movements took place in alAndalus and the Maghreb in this period. The main source of information on these movements is Maimonides. During his stay in Egypt (from 1166 until the time of his death), Maimonides was consulted by the Jewish community of Yemen about a figure in the region who had claimed to be the Messiah. The exact terms in which this consultation was expressed are unknown, but Maimonides’ reply to it has survived in his “Letter to the Jews of Yemen”,115 from which it is possible to see the Jewish community’s conviction that it had reached the peak of its troubles and was therefore living in the dawn of a messianic age. Astrological predictions seemed to support this hope, so that when a figure appeared calling himself “the Messiah of the cities of Yemen”, the Jews of these cities wrote to Maimonides in what seems to have been the secret hope that he would confirm their belief. In his reply, Maimonides speaks at length about the theme of the coming of the Messiah: he claims to understand perfectly well the anxiety with which the Jewish communities were awaiting redemption, which he himself believed to be imminent. At the beginning of his “Letter”, he expresses consternation at news of the persecution being suffered by the Jews of Yemen, which he compares with that experienced by himself and his family in the Almohad West. He also makes allusion to the situation, at the time of his visit, in the lands of Palestine as a consequence of the Crusades. Maimonides saw in this confrontation between Christians and Muslims a clear

113

Apud N. Slousch, “Etudes sur l’histoire des Juifs au Maroc”, Archives Marocaines VI (1906) pp. 132–133. 114 M. García-Arenal, “Rapports entre les groupes dans la péninsule Ibérique. La conversion des juifs à l’Islam (XII–XIII siècles)”, REMMM 63–64 (1992) pp. 91–101. 115 Edited and translated by Halkin, Jerusalem, 1979, Spanish translation by J. Targarona, Barcelona, 1987.

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sign of the coming of the Messiah: “This age was determined by the words of Daniel, Isaiah and by other sayings of our masters, blessed be their memory! According to them, the coming of the Messiah would happen after the weakening of the persecution of Edom [the Christians] and the Arabs and when their kingdom had spread across the Earth ("ares), as is now occurring.”116 Christians and Muslims had both spread across the world and were now facing one another in Jerusalem. Maimonides echoes the astrological prophecies and predictions auguring the appearance of a Messiah in contemporary times, but without ever seeming to believe in them. Not only does he qualify them as ridiculous and laughable, he also relates them to the appearance of the Mahdì Ibn Tùmart in the following way: “in the times in which it had been predicted that the Messiah would show himself, that fanatic emerged who rose in the lands of the West and decreed the religious persecution which has now reached as far as us; such is the pitiful end of those who practise that science [i.e. astrology]”.117 Nonetheless, Maimonides did not contradict the prophecies of Daniel and cited a tradition which placed the end of Captivity in about the year 1216, when Muslim domination was expected to conclude.118 Next, and to illustrate the evils which mistaken astrological calculations could bring about, Maimonides described a case in the city of Fez “about some fifty years ago”119 (i.e. between about 1122 and 1127) of “a pious and virtuous man, one of the wise men of Israel”, whose name was Moshé al-Dar"ì, who “left (Fez) to study in alAndalus”. On his return, this man had settled in Fez, where he claimed that “he was the messenger and envoy of the Messiah and claimed that the Messiah would reveal himself that year. His prophecy was not fulfilled and it was his fault when suffering re-started for Israel.” The 500th year of the Hijra (1107) was widely expected to be the year of the coming of the Messiah. Maimonides does not speak harshly of al-Dar"ì, who did not present himself as the Messiah but only his announcer, and he writes that his own father had tried, 116 Maimonides, Letter to the Jews of Yemen, ed. and trans. Halkin, Jerusalem, 1979, p. 198. 117 Maimonides, Letter to the Jews of Yemen, p. 196. 118 See J.L. Kraemer, “On Maimonides’ Messianic Posture”, Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, II, ed. Twersky, Harvard University Press, 1984. 119 Maimonides, Letter to the Jews of Yemen, p. 214. See also H.Z. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, Leiden, 1974, vol. I, pp. 120 and ff.

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in vain, to dissuade people from following al-Dar"ì. Since Maimonides’ father lived in Cordoba at the time when al-Dar"ì’s preaching took place in Fez, it seems reasonable to conclude that al-Dar"ì also had followers in al-Andalus. “Only a few took notice of my father”, writes Maimonides. Al-Dar"ì prophesied a number of events which then took place, and “since there is no doubt that prophethood will come before messianic times”, he predicted that the Messiah would come on Passover Day of that year. The Jews made preparations for this event by selling all their possessions to Muslims and contracting debts with them. When Passover passed and the Messiah still did not appear, these Jews were left in a state of economic ruin, the majority of them having given away their entire personal fortunes.120 After this, al-Dar"ì was unable to remain in “the lands of Islam” and emigrated to Palestine, but first “he prophesied all that was to occur in the Maghreb”, making references to the uprising of Ibn Tùmart and subsequent Almohad persecutions. It should be remembered that al-Dar"ì’s prophecies were made after Ibn Tùmart’s famous visit to Fez, where he disputed with the †ulabà", broke the musical instruments and wine containers in the market, and so on, making a deep impression on the local population before being expelled from the city by the local authorities. From about this time, i.e. in the years immediately before Ibn Tùmart’s self-revelation as a Mahdì, Ibn Khaldùn dates a prophecy or prediction in the form of a verse, of those known as mal "aba, attributed to a Jew from Fez, in which the author records astrological deductions made on the basis of astral conjunctions which, according to Ibn Khaldùn, concerned the appearance of the Almohad dynasty. In these verses, the unnamed Jew from Fez predicted his own execution.121 Maimonides also records another case in his “Letter to the Jews of Yemen”, which he had heard from his own father, and which had occurred a few years earlier in the city of Cordoba, in the first decade of the 12th century. A group of leading scholars and astrologers had gathered and unanimously decided that the Messiah would arrive that year (probably 500/1107). “Night after night they consulted their dreams and discovered that the Messiah was one of the men of that city. They decided upon a virtuous and important man called Ibn

120 121

Maimonides, Letter to the Jews of Yemen, p. 216. Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, Trans. V. Monteil, pp. 699–700.

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Aryeh who had been instructing the people”.122 This man began to act in the same manner as al-Dar"ì and gathered a large number of followers about him. The chiefs of the community excommunicated him and publicly rejected the idea of fining him for having allowed himself to be chosen by the group of astrologers and for consenting to be presented by them as the Messiah. The events described by Maimonides may have been related to an item of news recorded in the Arabic chronicle Al-Óulal al-Mawsiyya.123 This chronicle relates that the Almoravid emir Yùsuf b. Tàshufìn, in his fourth crossing to al-Andalus, which began in 496/1103, made a detour in order to pass through Lucena, a city entirely inhabited by Jews. His reason for doing so was that a faqìh of Cordoba, whose name is not specified, claimed to have found in a volume by Ibn Masarra a tradition from the times of the Prophet according to which the Jews had committed themselves to converting to Islam if the awaited Messiah had not arrived by the 500th year of the Hijra. The faqìh took the case to Yùsuf, the emir of the Muslims, who travelled to Lucena, allegedly in order to demand the immediate conversion of the Jews. The Jewish community paid out a large sum of money to avoid having to make such a conversion, and asked the qà∂ì of Cordoba, Ibn Óamdìn, to intercede with the emir on their behalf in order to ensure that the affair concluded with this payment, as indeed seems to have occurred. Maimonides’ tale of a search for a group of Jewish Cordoban leaders, and for a Messiah among them, in about the year 500H, may well have been related to this threat of forced conversion in exactly the same period. The importance of these Jewish movements should not be underestimated, and they should not be thought of as taking place in restricted areas reduced to their own community and sealed off from the general atmosphere created by contemporary Muslim predictions about the coming of the Mahdì. Popular expectations of redemption are, as I have said above, extremely contagious. There were close contacts between educated Jews and Muslims, and they would have enabled both sides to be well aware of current trends in thinking, especially when it came to mysticism.

122 123

N. Slousch, “Etudes sur l’histoire des Juifs au Maroc”, p. 217. Ed. Allouche, p. 65.

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From the beginning of the 3rd century/middle of the 10th, we already find a vigorous Jewish culture in al-Andalus. Only the language of liturgical poetry remained in Hebrew; in all other intellectual endeavours, Arabic became the standard language of expression for Jews. Along with the translation of the Bible into Arabic, an exegetical, theological and philosophical literature emerged. Under Islam, a new kind of Jewish thought flourished, its shape determined by Islamic thinkers, especially by Muslim scholastic theology or kalàm. The summa of Saadya Gaon, The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, closely resembles works of kalàm, although some of the terminology he uses brings him directly into the semantic field of the neo-Platonists and more specifically, the ismà'ìlites. Another precursor of Saadya, Isaac Israeli, lived at the court of the founder of the Fà†imid dynasty, and was influenced by their doctrine.124 Saadya had corresponded with Israeli and their correspondence seems to have included mention of another of Saadya’s works, his Commentary on the Book of Creation. The kalàm was not the only field of “symbiosis”, to use Goitein’s term. It is also well-established that many Jews felt a certain attraction towards sufism.125 And yet the similarities and points of contact between Muslim and Jewish mysticism remain to be fully explored, despite the fact that an understanding of historical and phenomenological aspects of either system gains greatly from knowledge of the other.126 Some outstanding examples would include, firstly, Ibn Gabirol, whose poetry and philosophy are imbued with neoplatonism. Ba˙ya b. Paquda, a leading Jewish pietist, was undoubtedly influenced by sufi writings. His book “The Director for the Duties of the Heart” (Al-Hidàya ilà farà"id al-qulùb), one of the most popular medieval Jewish spiritual texts, also contains kalamic material, making it an unusual hybrid compared to prevalent sufi literature.127 Abraham Maimuni, the son of Moshe Maimonides (1186–1237), was virtually a sufi: he admired sufis, considered them the true heirs of

124

S. Stroumsa, “The beginnings of Jewish Medieval thought under Islam”. F. Rosenthal, “A Judaeo-Arabic Work under Sufi influence”, HUCA 15 (1940) pp. 433–484; P. Fenton’s introduction to R. Abraham b. Moshe Maimonides, The Treatise of the Pool, London, 1981; J.L. Kraemer, “The Andalusian Mystic Ibn Hud and the conversion of the Jews”, Israel Oriental Studies XII (1992) pp. 59–73. 126 S. Sviri, “Spiritual trends in pre-kabbalistic Judeo-Spanish literature: the cases of Ba˙ya Ibn Pakuda and Judah Halevi”, Donaire 6 (1996) pp. 78–84. 127 S. Stroumsa, “The beginnings of Jewish Medieval Thought under Islam”. 125

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the prophets, and struggled to reform Jewish spiritual life by bringing it into line with the spirit of sufism. Ibn Sab'ìn instructed his circle of disciples to read the work of Maimonides and quotes in his writings from the Guide for the Perplexed. In this context, it is also worth remembering Ibn al-'Arabì’s meeting with Jewish scholars and his discussion with a rabbi over the esoteric significance of the letter ba.128 The works of the Jafr circulated among Muslims as well as Jews, as did other works of a magical and sibylline nature.129 Another interesting case is the work of Yehuda ha-Levi (circa 1070–1141), imbued as it was with both sufi mysticism and ismà'ìlite gnosticism. His work should be understood in the doctrinal context which arose between Ibn Masarra and Ibn Qasì, passing through Ibn al-'Arìf. His work not only reflects the spread of their ideas or the intellectual atmosphere that was created by them—Ha-Levi expressly cited the work of Ibn al-'Arìf in his writings.130 Yehuda ha-Levi resembled other contemporary Jews in expecting the arrival of the Messiah in 1130 and after the disappointment of his failure to appear, he decided to leave the Iberian peninsula and travel to Jerusalem. Ha-Levi sailed for Alexandria in 1140, and spent some time in Egypt before dying in 1141, without reaching the holy city. Ha-Levi is generally assumed to have written his Kitàb al-Khazarì between 1130 and 1140 (in Arabic), an apologetical and polemical prose work. His main thesis was that metaphysical knowledge could not be obtained by means of mental speculation and philosophical formulations, but is rather a given, innate characteristic. The Kuzari was also a work of religious polemic intended to demonstrate the supremacy of Judaism over Christianity and Islam. This supremacy was based on a Divine Influence, al-amr al-ilàhì, which according to Ha-Levi, was transmitted by genealogical inheritance. Among mankind there will always exist a small group of individuals who manage to develop spiritually to such an extent that they are able to accede to this Divine Influence. The Divine Influence was originally given to Adam, from whom it passed on through Shem, the son of Noah, to the Hebrew Patriarchs and the Prophets of Israel. Ha-Levi wrote:

C. Addas, Ibn 'Arabì ou la quête du Soufre Rouge, pp. 138–139. H. Ferhat, “Littérature eschatologique au Maroc”, Studia Islamica 80 (1994) p. 49. 130 R. Scheindlin, “Ibn Gabirol’s Religious Poetry ans Sufi Poetry”, Sefarad 54 (1994) pp. 109–142. 128 129

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“The souls [of the prophets] take their origin and development . . . from Adam. The essence and heart [of Adam] reappear in every generation and age, whilst the large mass of mankind are set aside as husks . . . The world was all but completed with the creation of a man who forms the heart of all that was created before him.”131 It was Yehuda ha-Levi’s conviction that the Divine Influence, without which a man cannot obtain divine knowledge, is given only to the Jewish nation. But if they do not keep the divine commandments, the blessing of the amr will not manifest itself. The Divine Influence has much in common with the inaccessible mystery of the divine light of Muslims as seen in the Radiant Prophet, and also with the nùr mu˙ammadì. Studies of Yehuda ha-Levi’s work have mainly focused on the shì'ite, or more specifically ismà'ìlite, influences on both his terminology and doctrine, as in the pioneering article by I. Goldhizer132 or more recently, that of S. Pines.133 In my view, his work needs to be placed in a wider, and above all, sufi context, and not an exclusively ismà'ìlite one: the accusation launched against the sufis of having made frequent approaches to shì'ism is too well-known to need repeating here. Pines examines ha-Levi’s terminology and the axial concepts of his thought: firstly, safwa, which refers to the pure, to a small nucleus (lubàb) of chosen men superior to all others, and which is a term applied by the shì'ites to prophets and Imàms; al-amr al-ilàhì, al-lahùt wa-l-nasùt, etc, all ismà'ìlite terms which were also used by the sufis. Ha-Levi wrote that “the promises held out to us consist of our conjunction (ittißàl ) with al-amr al-ilàhì by means of prophethood and of that which comes close to the latter; they assure us also of the conjunction of al-amr al-ilàhì with us through great events, karamàt wa-mu'jizàt . . .”134 This is tantamount to saying that the Divine Influence can coincide with prophethood, and with the ability to perform miracles and prodigies. Later, he wrote “[Adonai] is sometimes used to indicate the prophets (anbiyà") and the outstanding scholars ('ulamà") for they are as it were the first instruments of God’s Will 131 J. Hirschfeld, tr. Judah Halevi. The Kuzari. An Argument for the Faith of Israel, New York, 1964, p. 220. 132 I. Goldziher, “Le Amr ilâhî, hâ-'inyân há-élôhî chez Juda Halévi”, Revue des Etudes Juives 50 (1905) pp. 32–44. 133 S. Pines, “Shì'ite terms and conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 2 (1980) pp. 165–274. 134 Apud Pines, “Shì'ite terms and conceptions”, p. 173.

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(iràda); they act through his Volition and do not disobey anything in his Command. Through them wonders become manifest . . . The true reality of a man who has achieved a degree of this kind is denoted by his being called a man of God, a description which is composed of humanity and divinity (al-nasùt wa-l-lahùt)”.135 The men of God, the awliyà", are men composed of humanity and divinity, an idea which can be found in shì'ite theology, but also in the thinking of some sufis, and particularly the work of Ibn al-'Arabì. They are seen as the transmitters of God’s Will. In Pines’ view,136 there is no question that Yehuda ha-Levi uses terms which suggest a shì'ite influence when defining the features and status of the prophets. His prophets are particularly reminiscent of the shì'ite prophets and Imàms, especially in the way they combine nasùt and lahùt. In addition, the ismà'ìlite formula ittißàl amr Allah ilayhi is identical to that which appears in the Kuzari. All of these concepts serve to underline the idea of the harmonious coexistence of divinity and humanity in prophets and men of God. Pines also pays attention to Ha-Levi’s theory of cycles, and to the place of prophets in his hierarchical scale. There was an essential difference between prophets and other men, comparable to that which existed between men and animals, and between animals and plants, and between plants and minerals, as proposed in the work of the ismà'ìlite Abù Ya'qùb al-Sijistànì.137 In the last two chapters I have described two “types” of religious men, the walì who can claim divine illumination and guidance, and the faqìh, rigorous observer of the Law. Confronted with the challenge the first type represents to the second through notions and ideas which are close to shì'ism, especially the need for an Imàm (or qu†b) who has supra-worldly knowledge and can provide divinely inspired guidance, the rigorous faqìh has recourse to the enhancement of the figure of Mu˙ammad, the infallible Prophet. The two figures, best represented by Ibn Qasì and Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, converge in Ibn Tùmart, the Mahdì of the Almohads.

135 136 137

Apud Pines, “Shì'ite terms and conceptions”, pp. 192–193. Pines, “Shì'ite terms and conceptions”, p. 194. Pines, “Shì'ite terms and conceptions”, pp. 180 and ff.

CHAPTER SIX

THE ALMOHAD REVOLUTION AND THE MAHDÌ IBN TÙMART

This chapter deals with perhaps the most significant Mahdì in the history of the Muslim West: Ibn Tùmart, Mahdì of the Almohads, a man whose general importance is still in need of evaluation. The Almohad movement which Ibn Tùmart led has been the object of much scholarly writing in recent years, and an awareness has thus emerged of the truly revolutionary nature of its aims and achievements. Almohadism was a real revolution that sought absolute rupture, its followers hoping for a true, voluntary and conscious break with all ideas and practices of the past. Such a revolution not only involved overhauling doctrine and jurisprudence, but also more strictly formal aspects of social organization, as can be seen from the wideranging number of changes that came to be made:1 square coins were minted to replace traditional round ones, the writing system was reformed, the qibla of all mosques were re-oriented, Christians and Jews were forcibly converted to Islam, new ways of calling believers to prayer were employed, and non-Almohads were deprived of their status as believers.2 Above all, the Almohads brought new religious elites into being and made extraordinary efforts to reform the organization of the state, affecting such areas as the collection of taxes, the structure of the armed forces, or the ownership and division of land.3 But while there is no doubt that the Almohad revolution traced its entire basis and legitimacy to the figure and preaching of 1 T. Nagel, “La destrucción de la ciencia de la “arì'a por Mu˙ammad b. Tùmart”, Al-Qan†ara 18 (1997) pp. 245–304; M. Fierro, “The legal policies of the almohads and Ibn Rushd’s Bidàyat al-Mujtahid ”, Journal of Islamic Studies 10 (1999) pp. 226–245. 2 See, for example, the monographical issue of Al-Qan†ara, 18 (1997): S. Fontenla, “Numismática y propaganda almohade”, Al-Qan†ara 18 (1997) pp. 447–62; E. Fricaud, “Les †àlaba dans la société almohade”, Al-Qan†ara 18 (1997) pp. 331–8; M.A. Martínez Núñez, “Epigrafía y propaganda almohade”, Al-Qan†ara 18 (1997) pp. 415–446; J.P. Molenat, “Sur le rôle des almohades dans la fin du christianisme local au Maghreb et en al-Andalus”, Al-Qan†ara, 18 (1997) pp. 389–413, pp. 415–446, etc. 3 V. Aguilar, “Aportación de los árabes nómadas a la organización militar del ejército almohade”, Al-Qan†ara 14 (1993) pp. 393–415.

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Ibn Tùmart, there has been little agreement, then and now, on his character. Seven centuries after his death, the figure of Mu˙ammad Ibn Tùmart, Mahdì of the Almohads, continues to project its shadow over the Maghreb. Together with Idrìs, Ibn Tùmart is regarded as one of the key figures in Moroccan national history. His enormous symbolic significance has given him continued political relevance, as can be seen from the importance attached to the recent rebuilding of the mosque of Tìnmàl/Tìnmallal, which Ibn Tùmart’s followers first erected in the period before he took power. At the same time, scholars continue to debate the nature of his career, often arriving at new and polemical ways of interpreting his figure and ideology which differ so widely that one might almost say that every scholar produces their own Ibn Tùmart.4

Sources Such controversy is by no means restricted to secondary studies; it is also present in original sources. We are considering a movement which began with Ibn Tùmart in the 1120s, was taken over at his death in 524/1130 by his Caliph 'Abd al-Mu"min, and under his leadership went on to overthrow the Almoravids in the 1140s. By the time of his death in 558/1163 he had conquered the whole of the Maghreb as far as Tripoli. By 1172 the whole of Muslim Iberia had been incorporated into an empire ruled by the Mu"minid dynasty he founded. The claim of 'Abd al-Mu"min and his dynasty to be the sole authority for the doctrine of the Mahdì was however disputed by the Shaykhs of the movement, leading to a quarrel that culminated in 1229 in a massacre of the Shaykhs and a repudiation by the Caliph of the authority of Ibn Tùmart. Confined to Marrakech, the Mu"minids were exterminated in 1269 by the Marìnids at Fes, who deliberately championed Màlikì sunnism as self-proclaimed heirs to the Almoravids. Having like the Fà†imids thus started to impose

4 See, for example, A. Laroui, “Sur le mahdisme de Ibn Tùmart”, in A. Kaddouri (ed.), Mahdisme, crise et changement dans l’histoire du Maroc. Actes de la table ronde organisée à Marrakech para la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Rabat, 1993, Rabat, 1994, pp. 9–14 and M. Fierro, “La religión” in vol. VIII, on the Almoravids and the Almohads, of the Historia de España de Menéndez Pidal, coord. by M.J. Viguera, Madrid, 1997, pp. 437–545.

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its doctrine on the world, Almohadism survived at Tunis until it was quietly abandoned by the Óafßids. The primary literature is thus polemical, apologetic and ultimately transformative of the character and message of Ibn Tùmart, capable of giving rise to all the different interpretations of the man and his movement that we find in secondary literature. The texts written about Ibn Tùmart provide the clearest example, amongst those considered in this book, of the difficulties of discriminating between the words of the text themselves, what the author meant to say by these words and what the listener or reader understands by the same words. If the reader or listener is also a writer of chronicles dedicated to the legitimization of the Almohad dynasty or of its enemies and succesors the Marìnids it is necessary to begin by explaining what kind of sources are extant. Firstly, the contemporary sources, mainly the fragments published by E. Lévi-Provençal, which include the Memoirs of al-Baydhaq, a companion of the Mahdì, who claims to be his disciple,5 and the writings of the Mahdì himself, as well as extracts from the anonymous Kitàb al-ansàb fi ma'rifat al-aß˙àb. The book of Ibn Tùmart Kitab al-A'azz mà yu†lab has only reached us through a copy dated 579/1183–4 and we must take possible manipulations of the original text into account.6 These are to be distinguished from the later Almohad sources, since the movement evolved considerably. Of those later works, I am using Ibn Íà˙ib al-Íalàt (d. after 600/1203) Kitàb al-Mann bi-limàma,7 'Abd al-Wà˙id al-Marràkushì (d. after 621/1224) Al-Mu'jib fì talkhìß akhbàr al-Maghrib8 and, already in the 7th/13th century, Ibn al-Qa††àn NaΩm al-jumàn. Even those which are nearer in time to Ibn Tùmart, including al-Baydhaq, are more interested in 'Abd al-Mu"min than in Ibn Tùmart. In the chronicle of Ibn Íà˙ib alÍalàt the section dedicated to the earlier Almohad times is missing altogether. In Marìnid times Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-Mughrib, is less anti-almohad than Ibn Abì Zar', Al-Anìs al-Mu†rib bi-Raw∂ al-qir†às.9 When the 5

E. Lévi-Provençal, Documents inédits d’histoire almohade, Paris, 1928. M. Fletcher, “The Almohad Taw˙ìd: Theology which relies on Logic”, Numen 38 (1991) pp. 110–27. 7 Ed. A.H. al-Tazi, Beirut 3 ed. 1987. Spanish trans. A. Huici Miranda, Valencia, 1969. 8 Ed. R. Dozy, Leiden, 1847. 9 M. Shatzmiller, L’historiographie Mérinide. Ibn Khaldun et ses contemporains, Leiden, 1982. 6

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Marìnids conquered Marrakech in 668/1269 a sort of censorship fell over the long century of the Almohads which produces a “dealmohadisation” of the sources: the silence or expurgation of Almohad specificity.10 By command of the Marìnid court of Fez the official history of the Maghreb excluded almohad doctrine from the history of the Mu"minite dynasty.11 Later sources restore a “cleansed” history of Ibn Tùmart to the realm of official history. One example of this can be seen in the early chapters of Ibn Khaldùn’s Muqaddima, which present Idrìs and Ibn Tùmart as the most illustrious links in a sharìfì lineage which Ibn Khaldùn regarded as the most noble and praiseworthy. Ibn Khaldùn records a protest against those who regarded Ibn Tùmart as a charlatan moved solely by personal ambition, and claims that such criticisms were only made by fuqahà" defenders of an Almoravid regime from which such critics had received considerable rewards. In his view, their criticism was motivated by nothing more than envy and spite, and related to the loss of privileges bestowed upon them by the previous dynasty. Ibn Khaldùn makes reference to the doctrine of the taw˙ìd but not to that of Mahdism (with which he deals so harshly in other chapters of his work) nor to the notion of the imàm ma'ßùm. He presents Ibn Tùmart as a Reformer who led a life governed by his proclaimed principles of renunciation and extreme austerity, who withdrew from an enjoyment of the benefits of this world and whose Idrìsid nasab was unquestionable. Ibn Tùmart’s Almoravid rivals, whose religious simplicity (sadhàja) was well-known, are depicted as having been no match for him in the fields of science, law and religion. In modern times, the identity Ibn Tùmart has acquired as a founding hero of the Moroccan nation has made it necessary to absorb him within the sunnite orthodoxy which that nation proclaims as its own. One important issue here, already hinted at above, is that of the discrepancy between the doctrine laid down in the writings of Ibn Tùmart and that which is presented as his doctrine in historical chronicles. Two historians have formulated opposing theories to explain this discrepancy, each of them based on the influence of the

The term is E. Fricaud’s in “Les †àlaba dans la société almohade”. For this process of de-Almohadization of the sources, see M. Kably, Société, pouvoir et réligion au Maroc à la fin du Moyen Âge (XIV e–XV e siècles), Paris, 1986, Introd. p. XXVI and E. Fricaud, “Les †àlaba dans la société almohade”, Al-Qan†ara 18 (1997) pp. 331–8. 10 11

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social environment encountered by the Almohads in al-Andalus after the conquest of that territory. Madelaine Fletcher has argued that Ibn Tùmart’s profession of faith ('Aqìda) is partly apocryphal and that the modifications and interpolations to be found in it must have derived from a wish to reconcile the text with the Andalusi milieu.12 More specifically, the idea clearly expressed in the chronicles that Ibn Tùmart was the Mahdì announced by the corpus of ˙adìth-s is “edited out” of the Book of Ibn Tùmart as it has come down to us in order to make it conform to the religious and intellectual environment one generation later (in about 579/1183, when the first preserved manuscript was written) when Ibn Rushd and Ibn ˇufayl were advisers to the Almohad caliph Yùsuf b. Ya'qùb. According to Fletcher, this was an intellectual world and a power structure which would have found the extreme Mahdism of the Berbers unacceptable.13 Maribel Fierro, on the other hand, starts from a different angle and asks why it was that having embarked on remarkably similar “careers”, Ibn Tùmart ended up as a Mahdì whereas Ibn Yàsìn the Almoravid did not.14 She proposes the hypothesis that it was the politico-religious establishment that they had to challenge in alAndalus which conditioned their different strategies—Mahdism in the case of Ibn Tùmart and non-Mahdism in that of Ibn Yàsìn. The governors of the ˇà"ifas requested help from the Almoravids who thus did not need to justify going there because they had been invited, using a caliphal principle that had been accepted by the ˇà"ifas. There was, moreover, no rupture in the world of the 'ulamà" during this period, and according to Fierro this was due to the weak presence of the 'ulamà" in the Maghreb and the need for the Almoravids to resort to 'ulamà" from al-Andalus because of the “notable contrast between the highly developed world of the Andalusi 'ulamà" and the almost non-existent world of the Moroccan 'ulamà" ”. This non-existence is inferred by Fierro from the absence of biographical dictionaries, such a rich source of material for al-Andalus in the same period. However, argues Fierro, the Almoravids never achieved total control of the local Andalusi elites, not even of those who had 12

M. Fletcher, “The Almohad Taw˙ìd”. M. Fletcher, “Al-Andalus and North Africa in the Almohad ideology” in Salma Jayyusi (ed.), The Legacy of Muslim Spain, Leiden, 1992, pp. 235–258. 14 M. Fierro, “Le mahdì Ibn Tùmart et al-Andalus: l’élaboration de la légitimité almohade”, in M. García-Arenal (ed.), Millénarisme et Mahdisme, REMMM 91–94 (2000) pp. 107–124. 13

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requested their help, and this was one of the causes of their political weakness. Unlike the Almoravids, the Almohads were not asked to assist in the Iberian peninsula and they had to define their legitimacy in defiance of the existing establishment: the sufi movement of Ibn Qasì, who called himself a Mahdì, and that of the qà∂ìs who had usurped political power. Their anti-màlikism legitimized their defeat of the qà∂ìs, their Mahdism that of Ibn Qasì, and this in turn required the creation of new elites, the famous †alaba of the Almohads. I will come back to this interpretation later in this chapter.

Life of Ibn Tùmart Even the most basic biographical facts about Ibn Tùmart remain conjectural. The pages which follow do not seek to throw light on the many issues surrounding them which remain unresolved. Instead, I will focus on the development of his career as a Mahdì and the ideas on which it was based. The founder of the Almohad movement is known to have been born in the Anti-Atlas at some time between 471/1078 and 474/1081, in a clan of the Maßmùda Berbers. Before assuming power he was certainly known by the nisba “al-Sùsì”, i.e. native of the Sùs al-Aqßà. He was a Berber. The sources promoted by the Almohads, al-Baydhaq but more specifically the Kitàb al-Ansàb15 claim that the future Mahdì was a sharìf of Idrìsid origin called Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh, and a descendant of 'Ubayd Allàh b. Idrìs b. Idrìs I, an Idrìsid who had settled in the Sùs after the dispersion of the sons of Idrìs II. This is the alleged origin which became prevalent. Both the name and the lineage would become fundamental to Ibn Tùmart’s later status as a Mahdì. Very little is known about the first thirty years of Ibn Tùmart’s life.16 He is usually thought to have left his native land in 500/1106 and travelled to Cordoba, where he lived for one year and may have followed the teachings of the qà∂ì Ibn Óamdìn, at whose instigation the works of al-Ghazàlì were later to be publicly burnt, although the only author to record the information is Ibn Qa††an. 15 Included in Lévi-Provençal, Documents inédits, pp. 18 and ff. (Arabic) pp. 25 and ff. (trans.). 16 For greater biographical detail, see A. Huici Miranda, Historia política del Imperio Almohade, Tetuan, 1956–57, 2 vols., pp. 23 and ff.

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Ibn Tùmart is said to have followed the Zahirid teachings of disciples of Ibn Óazm and then embarked for the Middle East from the port of Almeria. However, there are reasons for believing that this alleged visit to al-Andalus, plus his later meeting with al-Ghazàlì, may well belong to the realms of legend: the aim of such accounts would have been to present Ibn Tùmart as profoundly related to what was then the intellectually superior world of al-Andalus. Equally, there is no certainty that Ibn Tùmart ever travelled to the Middle East. However, most accounts have him meeting Abù Bakr al-ˇur†ùshì in Alexandria and then spending a period as his disciple. Most sources also record Ibn Tùmart’s alleged meeting with al-Ghazàlì, although sometimes with a certain reticence. According to Ibn al-Qa††àn, alGhazàlì, on hearing that his new student had come to him from Cordoba, questioned him on the activities of the fuqahà" there, and asked him how his own work had been received in that part of the world.17 When Ibn Tùmart informed him of the order that had been proclaimed to burn the I˙yà" publicly in all those areas under the control of the Almoravid government, al-Ghazàlì invoked God and pleaded for his assistance in destroying Almoravid power. In reply, Ibn Tùmart is said to have exclaimed, “Imàm, plead God that this should come about by my hand”. The legendary character of this tale is all too clear, and it is in fact unlikely that the two men ever met: at the time when Ibn Tùmart is supposed to have arrived in Baghdad, al-Ghazàlì had already been living in Khuràsàn for some ten years. However, the story has a clear emblematic value and tells us something about Ibn Tùmart’s desire, or that of his followers, to stake a claim to Ghazalian teaching, and about the reverential prestige which then attached to the figure of al-Ghazàlì in the Maghreb.18 Ibn Tùmart’s alleged return to the Maghreb, which began in 510/ 1116 or 511/1117, is said to have been plagued by accidents of one kind and another. Ibn Tùmart was the cause of public rioting in several towns and cities, and he placed his own life in danger through the militancy of his intransigence regarding the fulfilment of religious obligations.19 At the same time, the force of his personality, knowledge

17

NaΩm al-jumàn, ed. M.'A. Makki, Beirut, 1990, pp. 14–18. Goldziher wrote an excellent discussion of the possible meeting between alGhazàlì and Ibn Tùmart in his introduction to Le Livre de Mohamed Ibn Toumert, Algiers, 1903, p. 51 and ff. 19 Al-Baydhaq in E. Levi Provençal, Documents inédits d’histoire almohade, 52, 60 and ff, 68. 18

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and piety seem to have made a tremendous impact wherever he went. He had already been expelled from the city of Alexandria, where he is said to have studied with al-ˇur†ùshì, for the rigourousness with which he observed the precept of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf, and during his sea-crossing from Egypt to Ifrìqiya he brought upon himself the enmity of the crew because of his insistent warning of their religious obligations. Ibn Tùmart’s return to the Maghreb is marked by a series of similar episodes. In Tripoli, carried away by his religious zeal, he recommended good and forbade evil with such ardour that he was beaten up and expelled.20 In Ma˙diyya, he continued to practise the censorship of customs, carrying out actions such as the smashing of wine-jugs, and the governor of the city was forced to recommend him to leave. In Bijàya he was again the cause of public rioting and was expelled from the city, as also occurred in Tlemcen. In Bijàya he was asked “Who has asked you to practise the ˙isba?” and gave the answer “Allah and His Prophet”.21 These anecdotes prepare the reader for what is to come: they show the future Mahdì Ibn Tùmart struggling for the establishment of a sul†a, an absolute political power capable of monopolizing the definition of Law. In the last chapter but one, we saw how the practice of al-amr bil-ma'rùf was associated with asceticism and mysticism, and was closely related to the jihàd that the zàhid has to carry out, firstly with himself and his human passions, and then with his immediate environment in order to suit it to the religious norm he has decided to fulfil in the strictest possible way. This is how the zàhid often came to be a censor and reformer of customs, and was expected to undertake the renewal and revitalization of religion in its social aspects. His radical interpretation of religious law led to the desire to shape and head his own Islamic society: we are dealing here with a character responding to the profile of a puritan reformer. Enlightened violence, militancy and radicality are frequent characteristics of such leaders. After all, the idea of puritan reform assumes the existence of a cen-

20

Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l’Afrique Septentrionale, trans. de Slane, Paris, 1925, II, p. 165. 21 Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, in E. Lévi-Provençal, Documents inédits d’histoire almohade, Paris, 1928, p. 20; Al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'jib, ed. Dozy, pp. 128–39; Ibn Abù Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às. Annales regum Mauritaniae, ed. Tornberg, Uppsala, 1843–46, vol. I, pp. 110–12.

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tralized, absolute state, and it was through that idea that the muràbi†mu˙tasib found the ideological path and the necessary legitimization to become head of that state. It was an efficient and recurrent formula. The concept of ˙isba is very closely related to that of the jihàd—it is an essential legitimizing ingredient for all those who exercised political power. The practice of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf thus became an instrument of political opposition, used for this purpose by those who assumed the role of censor and reformer of customs, and immediately recognised as such by his audience and by the political authority of the day. Ibn Tùmart’s behaviour as a censor or reformer of customs prepares the ground for his proclamation as a Mahdì, the greatest possible reformer. The importance of censorship as an ideological instrument is thus very clear in Ibn Tùmart’s career. The first signs that Ibn Tùmart intended to involve himself in direct political action appeared in the village of Mallala, close to Bijàya. According to al-Baydhaq, his da'wa started to take on a more coherent and precise form there, Ibn Tùmart placing the stress on the need for the revitalization of religious knowledge, the destruction of all religious innovation and the annihilation of all evil behaviour. This was a strongly moralistic and reformist message with obvious echoes of the teachings of al-Ghazàlì. It was also in Mallala that the first meeting took place between Ibn Tùmart and 'Abd alMu"min, the man who would become his khalìfa, in circumstances embellished in the sources by a whole series of predictions and legendary tales.22 At this stage in his career, Ibn Tùmart did not seem to be totally convinced that he was destined to be the leader of an empire, but rather saw himself as a messenger and reformer of true, correct Islamic doctrine, whose role was to seek out and indicate the person divinely ordained to lead the community. His role was thus that of the predecessor who paves the way for a new reign by choosing through divine inspiration a successor among the unknown. This was a theme, as we have seen, with a long Messianic tradition. Accompanied by 'Abd al-Mu"min and his followers, Ibn Tùmart arrived in Fez in 514/1120, where he destroyed in the souks of the city all those shops which made and sold musical instruments and

22 See A. Huici Miranda, “La leyenda y la historia en los orígenes del Imperio Almohade”, Al-Andalus XIV (1949), 339–376, 346 and ff.

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where, according to Ibn Abì Zar', he preached Ash'arite doctrine and entered into direct conflict with the Almoravid fuqahà" who immediately perceived him as a threat.23 From Fez, Ibn Tùmart and his followers went on to Marrakech where his conflicts with the authorities reached new levels of intensity. Ibn Tùmart gave classes in ußùl al-dìn and kalàm in the city mosque whilst his followers moved about the souks commanding right and forbidding wrong so rigorously that one day, the sources record, they even stoned the sultan’s sister and her entourage for not wearing a veil. Sources vary in their descriptions of the meeting between Ibn Tùmart and the Almoravid sultan 'Alì b. Yùsuf b. Tàshufìn. According to Ibn Abì Zar', Ibn Tùmart entered the city of Marrakech dressed as an ascete and walked through the souks of the city commanding right and forbidding wrong, spilling wine and breaking musical instruments without the permission of the Muslim emir or of any other authority, until the sultan 'Alì b. Yùsuf ordered Ibn Tùmart to be brought into his presence. Ibn Tùmart came before the sultan dressed in his rags, and the sultan asked him, “What do they tell me of you?” Ibn Tùmart replied, “I am just a faqìr who seeks eternal life and not this; I have no other occupation here than to command right and forbid wrong and you are the first one who should do this because you will be brought to account for this and it is your duty to revivify (i˙yà") the sunna and destroy innovation (bida' ). Reproachable things and innovations (bida' ) have spread throughout your dominions. God commands you to change this for the Sunna.”24 Ibn Tùmart’s reply illustrates a problem frequently dealt with in classical Arabic literature on the ˙isba: what course of action should the wise and pious man take against those in power who commited unjust and impious acts? Was he supposed to confront them, or resign himself to their conduct? Confrontation was represented as taking two forms: one of them, rebuke, could derive into the second, rebellion.25 Hagiographical literature is full of examples, presented as positive, of pious Muslims who harshly reprehended their governors for their evil conduct, sanctioned by a prophetic tra23

Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às, p. 173. Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às, p. 174. 25 See M. Cook, Commanding right and forbidding wrong in Islamic thought, Cambridge, 2000, Chap. 16. 24

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dition which held that the best form of holy war was to criticise the conduct of an unjust governor in his presence. According to al-Baydhaq, the sultan called up his wisest 'ulamà" to debate with Ibn Tùmart, but the latter rebutted all their arguments and reduced them to silence.26 Then one of them advised the emir, “Imprison him, amìr al-muslimìn, it is he, without doubt he is “the man of the square dirham”. Have his feet clapped in irons so that he does not make the drum sound! I say that he meets all descriptions of “the man of the square dirham””! Al-Baydhaq’s story points to the existence of popular beliefs or expectations of a prophetic nature which pre-dated Ibn Tùmart’s proclamation as Mahdì. As mentioned in the previous chapter, these were particularly strong about the year 500 H. and may be thought to have influenced the acceptance and interpretation of Ibn Tùmart’s preaching. Al-Baydhaq and Ibn Khaldùn echo the fears of many at the Almoravid court that Ibn Tùmart might turn out to be “the man with the drum” or “the man of the square dirham” described in these predictions. For their part, Ibn Tùmart and his chroniclers likewise made use of the year 500 as that in which the Mahdì was expected to show himself. The year provoked considerable eschatological tension in rural areas, but also in the towns and cities, to such an extent that even Jewish groups in the Islamic West were affected, as I have already noted. Contrasting accounts were recorded of the circumstances in which Ibn Tùmart left Marrakech and took refuge for several days in Aghmàt, as also of the subsequent discussion among the different fuqahà", some of whom showed signs of respecting Ibn Tùmart and spoke out against the need for harsher measures to be taken against him. After Aghmàt, Ibn Tùmart and his closest followers left for Ìgìllìz of the Hargha, where the Imàm sheltered in a cave. From this point on, it becomes possible to distinguish the emergence in the records of two parallel versions of Ibn Tùmart’s actions, one of which stresses sanctification by his disciples, whereas the other emphasises a process of purification of himself and his followers. This process of purification acquires, on several occasions, the characteristics of a ritual purge. In one of these versions, the peoples of the tribe of Hargha developed the habit of coming to the cave and saying to Ibn Tùmart,

26

Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, p. 109/28.

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“We have come to obtain your baraka and to ask you to invoke God in our favour”. As they said this, they would bow down to greet Ibn Tùmart, who would then pass his hand over their heads and invoke God as they had requested.27 On one occasion, he was seen preparing food for himself and the people said, “The Imàm does not eat or drink.” On hearing this, Ibn Tùmart took a small amount of food and said to them, “I eat like everybody else, I drink like everybody else, I am a man among men and what is necessary for them is necessary for me also.”28 Such words give the impression that Ibn Tùmart sought to modify an image his followers were starting to build up of him. On the other hand, there are writers, such as al-Marràkushì, who suggest that the Mahdì encouraged and used his supporters’ beliefs and built his propaganda around them. All writers agree that Ibn Tùmart’s withdrawal and ascetic reclusion constituted a process of purification and that this purification (†ahàra) was the source of the baraka which followers came to request from him, and which he dispensed through the laying on of hands, like a miracle-working prophet. However, we must remember the distinction previously made between writers who were contemporaries of the Mahdì and those who wrote in or after the 7th/13th century, who magnified certain aspects of Ibn Tùmart’s personality with a view to emphasising his links with sufism, and above all with the idea of walàya. Extreme caution needs to be exercised over the notion of Ibn Tùmart as a walì Allàh, given that this image developed in a later period. In this respect it is significant to compare the different accounts of Ibn Tùmart’s stay in Tlemcen: whereas al-Baydhaq writes that he taught a group of disciples in the house of one Ibn Íà˙ib al-Íalàt,29 alMarràkushì has him installed in the al-'Ubbad mosque on the outskirts of the city, a building which was used as a place of lodging for the ßàli˙ùn. At the time when al-Marràkushì was writing, al-'Ubbàd was home to a sufi community of some importance and had become a place of pilgrimage for devotees who travelled to visit the sanctuary of Abù Madyan. The author of the Mu'jib was probably seeking to associate the figure of the Mahdì with what was one of the main cen27 28 29

Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, p. 61. Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, p. 117. Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, p. 60/92–4.

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tres of Maghrebian sufism after the 7th/13th century. At the same time, by attributing the realisation of miraculous acts (karàma) to Ibn Tùmart, al-Marràkushì sought to associate him with the awliyà" who had by that time become the object of much popular veneration. Al-Marràkushì peppers his chronicle with descriptions of all kinds of miraculous acts, such as an anecdote about his return voyage from the East, when he infuriated the sailors on board with his constant preaching: they threw him into the sea, from where they later rescued him after observing that Ibn Tùmart had been floating in the water without drowning for one day. According to al-Marràkushì, such saintliness, coupled with asceticism and rigour, was integral to his exercise of political power. The baraka that showed itself through miracles was a source of fear as well as love, and demanded absolute obedience from his followers. Ibn Qa††àn, also writing in the 7th/13th century, agrees with al-Marràkushì in insisting on Ibn Tùmart’s vinculation with sufi circles, but does so in a way which is unmatched by any other contemporary chronicler in dedicating several pages of his work to describing the karàmàt attributed to the Mahdì.30 These sources are contemporary with the forming of the first organized sufi groups (†awà"if ), heirs to the tradition of Abù Madyan (d. 594/1197) and the generalisation of the popular cult of saints. They also correspond to the period of the rise of the Banù Marìn in which the adhesion of the sufi shuyùkh was becoming an important source of political legitimacy. More specifically, al-Marràkushì states in another passage that “As for Ibn Tùmart, he increased his asceticism (tazahhud ) and his abstinence and showed a similarity to the saints (alßàli˙ùn) which became more and more evident, as also did the intensity with which he applied legal punishments (al-˙udùd ), following the original Sunna.”31 The implementation of ˙udùd is exclusive to the sultan. The connection with saintliness is evident in the incident reported by al-Marràkushì at al-'Ubbàd when Ibn Tùmart worked a miracle by achieving the release of an imprisoned man (an action which could only be performed by a ruler), thus arousing the fervour of prisoners and jailers alike, who later fought with each other in their efforts to touch him and obtain his baraka.32 It was characteristic of Ibn Tùmart to obtain everything that he wanted, for “subjects 30 31 32

Ibn al-Qa††àn, NaΩm al-jumàn, ed. M.'A. Makki, Beirut, 1990, pp. 180–87. Al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'jib, p. 151. Al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'jib, p. 131 and ff.

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submitted themselves to him and tyrants abased themselves before his person”. According to al-Marràkushì, his path towards sainthood was parallel and simultaneous with the consolidation of his political power.33 Nearly all the sources (from Ibn Íà˙ib al-Íalàt to Ibn Abì Zar' and Ibn Khaldùn) place the proclamation of Ibn Tùmart as Imàm in Ìghìllìz, in the year 515. Only al-Baydhaq differs by recording that it took place in Tìnmallal. Al-Marràkushì described, in about 621/1224, the steps that were taken by the Mahdì towards his proclamation. Firstly, he ordered his followers to do no more than command right and forbid wrong. Then “he began to mention the Mahdì and to make the people desire him. He gathered together the traditions referring to him in books and when he had settled in their souls the merits of the Mahdì, his lineage and his qualities, he attributed all these to himself and said, “I am Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh”, and traced his lineage back to the Prophet and attributed to himself the pretension to impeccability and said that he was the impeccable Mahdì and explained many traditions relating to this until he had convinced them that he was the Mahdì. He held out his hand and they recognised him as such and he said to them, “Your recognition is like that of the companions of the Messenger of God”.34 In another version, Ibn Tùmart was acclaimed as the consequence of a long harangue in the course of which he outlined the attributes of the Mahdì. Al-Baydhaq wrote that “When the Imàm Mahdì finished his speech, 'Abd al-Mu"min said, ten men, of whom I was one, rushed towards him and I said, “These signs are only to be found in you! You are the Mahdì!” And thus we swore fidelity to him as Mahdì.” Al-Baydhaq conveys the impression that his proclamation as Mahdì was due to the expectations or even the demands of his followers. Ibn Tùmart was proclaimed beneath a tree, in a deliberately identical manner to that in which the Prophet Mu˙ammad had himself been proclaimed. The NaΩm al-jumàn of Ibn al-Qa††àn includes a summary of the speech he made on the occasion: “Praises to God who does what he desires and decrees what pleases him, noone can resist his power or postpone his sentences. The prayer of

33 See F.R. Mediano, “L’amour, la justice et la crainte dans les récit hagiographiques marocains”, Studia Islamica 90 (2000) pp. 85–104, vid. pp. 98–99. 34 Al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'jib, trad. A. Huici Miranda, Tetuan, 1955, p. 146.

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God for our lord Mu˙ammad, the envoy of God, announcer of the Imàm al- Mahdì, he who will fill the earth with equity and justice, as before it was filled with iniquity and injustice. He will be sent by God to replace falsehood with truth so that justice can replace iniquity. His place will be the extreme Maghreb, and his time the end of all time: his name, the name of the Prophet. The injustice of the emirs has shown itself and the earth has been covered with corruption. This is the end of all time: the name is the name, the lineage is the lineage, and the deed is the deed.”35 From Ìghìllìz, Ibn Tùmart made a hijra as far as Tìnmallal, where the tribe of the Hazmira had sworn obedience to him and accepted his authority. Ibn al-Qa††àn describes how Ibn Tùmart then doubted the loyalty of the Hazmìra and ordered his Almohads to annihilate them. Later the same author writes, “The Mahdì had included the jurist from Ifrìqiya among his Ten and when he killed the people of Tìnmallal, the jurist disapproved of that and was killed and crucified because he doubted the infallibility of the Imàm the Mahdì.”36 Ibn Tùmart deemed any expression of disapproval or doubt as deserving of punishment by death, and failure to recognise the Mahdì as such was a particularly grievous offence—note that this was an identical approach to that taken by 'Abd Allàh, the Mahdì of the Fà†imids. As in all religious movements of salvation, the essential sin was lack of faith in the movement’s prophet.37 Another determining feature in the Mahdì’s career was the tamyìz or purge dated to 523/1128. The texts on this tamyìz are difficult to interpret but it seems that under the guidance of Bashìr al-Wansharìsì, a key figure in the beginnings and early spread of the Almohad movement, there was a methodical and rigorous elimination of real or supposed dissidents.38 This process of elimination destroyed the power structure of the tribes which had initially formed the basis of support for the movement, and replaced it with the hierarchical structure analysed by Hopkins.39 The tamyìz strengthened the movement so much that it

Also the Óulal al-Mawsiyya, apud Huici, Kitàb al-Mu'jib, p. 63. Ibn al-Qa††àn, NaΩm al-jumàn, pp. 93–4 and 97. 37 Max Weber, Essai de sociologie des religions, Paris, 1992, Vol. I, p. 32. 38 Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, pp. 53 and ff. Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères, trans. de Slane, II, p. 72, Ibn al-Athìr, Annales du Maghreb et de l’Espagne, French trans. E. Fagnan, Argel, 1898, pp. 533–35. 39 J.F. Hopkins, “The Almohad Hierarchy”, BSOAS 16 (1954) pp. 93–112. 35 36

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gave Ibn Tùmart the confidence he needed to undertake the conquest of Marrakech. The purge to eliminate dissidence was later repeated on a larger scale by Ibn Tùmart’s successor 'Abd al-Mu"min, during the purification or i'tiràf of the tribes in 1148. Purification, which had begun as a individual process and a source of baraka, now became an imposed and collective affair, and marked a dualism characteristic of messianic movements between those who adhere absolutely and unconditionally, and those who remain on the fringes and are liable to be annihilated. At the same time it created for tribes of proven loyalty a supra-tribal power structure, in a manner very similar to the way in which the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh dealt with the tribes of the Kutàma. The community thus purified identifies itself with the first Muslim community in the times of the Prophet. The Maßmùda, like the Kutàma and the Lamtùna before them, had become God’s newly chosen people, led by their own prophet. What Ibn Tùmart himself said on the subject can be gleaned from his writings. He repeatedly cited the famous ˙adìth badà"a alislàm gharìban,40 as might be expected in one whose spiritual alienation from the world in which he lived had led him to try to bring about change, thus laying him open to the accusation of being an innovator. The ˙adìth proved that it was people like him, and not their accusers, who were the true believers. Ibn Tùmart cites it, like the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh before him, in an eschatological context: true Islam will return to being gharìb at the end of all Time, at which stage the Mahdì will arrive—fa-ja"a l-Mahdì fì zamàn al-ghurba, as Ibn Tùmart says in his chapter on the 'ilm.41 In the letters written by Ibn Tùmart and 'Abd al-Mu"min to the Almohad shaykhs, terrible threats are issued and painful punishments are promised for those who can be shown to have trusted anyone from outside the Almohad community,42 and in their support of such an attitude both men cite traditions of the Prophet such as the following: “Those who frequent their dwellings, give credence to their lies, or help them to commit injustices will not drink before me in the lake (˙aw∂ ).”43 This lake 40 Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, ed. D. Luciani, Algiers, 1903, pp. 251, 266–7, 267–70, 289, 310. Apud Fierro, “Spiritual alienation and political activism: the gurabà" in al-Andalus during the Sixth/Twelfth century”, Arabica 47 (2000) pp. 230–260, p. 246 and ff. 41 Apud Fierro, “Spiritual alienation”, p. 247. 42 Published and translated by E. Levi-Provençal, Documents inédits d’histoire almohade, Paris, 1928. 43 Levi-Provençal, Documents inédits, pp. 1–2.

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of Mu˙ammad is that which, according to Muslim eschatological tradition, will be found on the other side of the Bridge (sìrat) on the Day of Final Judgment. All those who obeyed the Almoravids were apostates who had to be annihilated wherever they were to be found, and no effort was to be made to seek among them a single companion or ally.44 No compromise or pact was possible apart from absolute adhesion to “this religion of ours which will not undergo mutation or change until the moment that the trumpet [of the Final Judgment] is blown.”45 When Ibn Tùmart addresses the Almoravids he says: amr allàhi ˙atmun yumtathal, man khalafa-hu yuqtal: “the Will of God is an obligation which must be obeyed, whomever goes against it must be killed”.46 From the amr illàh to the amr al-Mahdì, the voice of God expressed itself through his Mahdì. In his letters, Ibn Tùmart forbids obedience to the Almoravids and declares it licit to spill their blood and take possession of their belongings, saying that “whoever has dealings with them is not with me.” This extreme attitude towards non-supporters had also been upheld by some extremist Khàrijite movements, and in strikingly similar terms by Abù Yazìd, “the man of the ass”. It ensured the appearance in the Maghreb of a †à"ifa which would fight against them; Jesus would descend and the people of the Maghreb would conquer the world, kill al-Dajjàl and instal justice and truth. Just as the Prophet brought an end to the Jàhiliyya, the Mahdì would bring an end to the corruption which had taken over the world after his revelation.47 What emerges clearly from both contemporary and later sources is the idea that Ibn Tùmart made a conscious attempt to imitate and assimilate the Prophet’s example. This can be seen in the hijra he made to Tìnmallal, and also in his choice of ten disciples as the al-'ashara al-mubàshara, to whom he also gave the same personal name as the Prophet’s companions. Other deliberately similar features were the denomination of his expeditions as maghàzì, his use of the word anßàr for his companions, or his proclamation under a tree in imitation of the Bay'at al-ri∂wàn. Tìnmallal had become the new Medina, with its anßàr and its muhajirs. 44

Levi-Provençal, Documents inédits, p. 3. Levi-Provençal, Documents inédits, p. 5. 46 Letter nº 1 in A. 'Azzàwì, Rasà"il muwa˙˙idiyya: majmù'a jadìda, Kenitra: Manshùràt Kulliyat al-Àdàb wa-l-'Ulùm al-Insàniyya, vol. I, 1995; M. Vega, S. Peña, M. Feria, El mensaje de las monedas almohades. Numismática, traducción y pensamiento islámico, Cuenca, 2002, p. 158. 47 See Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, Arabic text, p. 296. 45

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Ibn Tùmart died in Tìnmallal in 524/1130, and it took his heir 'Abd al-Mu"min another fifteen years to complete the defeat of the Almoravids. In 1147, he finally conquered Marrakech and proclaimed himself khalìfa and amìr al-mu"minìn.

Ibn Tùmart’s doctrine Ibn Tùmart announced the installation of true religion by an ImàmMahdì of the Fà†imid type at the same time that, like al-Ghazàlì and unlike the Fà†imids, he preached that the Qur"àn was the unmediated source of illumination over the doctrines of the scholars. As the product of a thinker who created a true madhhab al-muwa˙˙idìn, Ibn Tùmart’s doctrine has both theological and juridical strands. As far as the theology is concerned, the central point of Almohad doctrine is the oneness of God or taw˙ìd, and opposition to a literal interpretation of the Qur"àn, which would lead to anthropomorphism. Leading experts in Ibn Tùmart’s system of thought have highlighted the elements of mu'tazilism, zahirism, shì'ism and even khàrijism within it, and the means by which they are interwoven with the ash'arite thinking which forms the basis of his dogma.48 The dogmatic is certainly ash'arite, the fiqh zahirite, the principle of taw˙ìd mu'tazilite, and the extreme ascesis and ethics khàrijite. However, all of these labels, although undoubtedly applicable to certain aspects of his thought, tend to obscure more than to clarify exactly what it is that Ibn Tùmart sought to do. At the same time, these different ingredients are often seen in studies on Ibn Tùmart as proof that his work was unoriginal or lacking in profundity and with an impact which relied on the ignorance or primitiveness of his supporters;49 on other occasions they serve an effort to identify innovatory elements in it;50 and on others as a means of defending the idea that this work was just as intellectually respectable as any other in the

48 See above all I. Goldziher, “Ibn Toumert et la théologie de l’Islam dans le Maghreb au XI e siècle” in Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, Algiers, 1903; R. Brunschvig, “Sur la doctrine du Mahdì Ibn Tùmart”, Arabica 2 (1955) pp. 137–149; V.J. Cornell, “Understanding is the Mother of Ability: Responsability and action in the Doctrine of Ibn Tùmart”, Studia Islamica 66 (1987) pp. 71–103. 49 R. Le Tourneau, The Almohad Movement in North Africa in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Princeton, 1969. 50 V.J. Cornell, “Understanding is the Mother of Ability”.

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elaboration of orthodox Islamic theology.51 Kably states categorically that “the eclectic legitimacy claimed by the [Almohad] caliphate invoked principally a Mu'tazilite Unitarianism adapted to a doctrine of Shì'i Mahdism of the most radical sort”,52 whereas Fierro describes it as a “sunnization” of shì'ism. For his part, Nagel considers that the oneness of God postulated by Ibn Tùmart cannot be identified with mu'tazilism, because that school of thought rejects the notion of all ontological contact between God and his creatures, whereas Ibn Tùmart held that there is no total separation between the created being and the Absolute Being, given that the first derives from the second. This postulate has its implications for the definition of what a Mahdì must suppose, since a world that is never totally separated from its Creator and from its divine foundations cannot fall into absolute corruption.53 There are thus several differing interpretations of Tùmartian doctrine, but there is no controversy in accepting that one fundamental point in Ibn Tùmart’s preaching that emerges clearly from his biography, the moral imperative to command right and forbid wrong: this can be seen in his personal example, from the moment he begins to form a da'wa before the period of his return to Morocco, in his 'aqìda, and so on. It is also the only explicit recommendation he makes in his letters to the Almohad chiefs.54 The same recommendation occurs in the letter by 'Abd al-Mu"min known as Risàlat al-fußùl 55 which commands, firstly, the teaching and diffusion of Ibn Tùmart’s 'aqìda, and in particular, and in express imitation of the Mahdì, a severe policing of customs, a strict vigilance of people’s private conduct, and outright war on alcoholic drinks, surviving pagan practices and the relaxation of public morality. We have already seen how Ibn Tùmart sought, as a disciple of al-ˇur†ùshì and a follower of al-Ghazàlì, to place himself under their 51 Laroui, “Sur le mahdisme de Ibn Tùmart”. See also T. Nagel, “La destrucción de la ciencia de la “arì'a”. 52 M. Kably, “Legitimacy of State Power and Socioreligious Variations in Medieval Morocco”, in R. Bourquia and S. Miller (eds.), In the Shadow of the Sultan. Culture, Power and Politics in Morocco, Cambridge, Mass., 1999, pp. 19–20. 53 T. Nagel, “Le mahdisme d’Ibn Tùmart et d’Ibn Qasì: une analyse phénoménologique” in M. García-Arenal (ed.), Mahdisme et millénarisme en Islam, REMMM 91–94 (2000) pp. 125–136. 54 E. Lévi-Provençal, Documents inédits, pp. 14–15. Rasà"il muwa˙˙idiyya, vol. I, p. 45 and passim. 55 Levi-Provençal, Documents inédits, p. 21 and ff., Arabic text, 13–17.

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ideological patronage, which in addition drew together opposition to the Almoravids. Goldziher and Cornell have highlighted the importance of the ˙isba in their studies of Ibn Tùmart’s thought and actions.56 The importance of censorship of customs as an ideological instrument later became patent in the Almohad caliphs who clung to the Tùmartian example. They made use of the precept as a pillar of their legitimacy and of their propaganda as is best shown by their use of epigraphy. In the Bàb al-Ruwà˙ of the Almohad wall of Rabat is inscribed Qur"àn 3:110: “Let there be one community of you, calling to good and commanding right and forbidding wrong; those are the prosperers”.57 The Almohad letters sent by the caliphs to governors and other authorities dependent on them include numerous exhortations to the practice of al-amr bi-l-ma'rùf.58 In these letters, the precept is no longer the engine of social reform, but acts as a mere reminder of prohibitions on wine, gambling, or musical instruments, suggesting that the ˙isba loses its radical character when it is exercised, or rather appropriated, by the powerful, although it continued to be an emblem of the Almohad movement.59 It might rather be said that the established powers seek to monopolise reference to the ˙isba as a legitimizing argument in order to prevent its potential use by opposition movements. The ˙isba becomes associated in this type of official document with the jihàd. When ˙isba and jihàd are guaranteed, God’s aid is assured, as is indicated by the abundant use in propagandistic writings of terms like aid (naßr), grace (ni'ma), assistance (tawfìq), or blessing (baraka).60 Much less clear, but vital from my point of view, is his doctrine of the Mahdì. Interpretations range from those which doubt that Ibn Tùmart ever wanted to be a Mahdì, i.e. that he ever presented himself as such (in his texts he only ever makes the claim indirectly), to those which focus on the ambiguities of the term Mahdì as used by Ibn Tùmart and seek to establish the possible differences between this usage and shì'ite usage of the same term. The caliphal letters certainly make frequent use, as a part of their legitimizing propaganda, of the formulae al-imàm al-ma 'ßùm and al-mahdì al-ma'lùm. 56

Cornell, “Understanding is the Mother of Ability”. M.A. Martínez, “Epigrafía y propaganda almohades”, p. 440. 58 A. 'Azzàwì, Rasà"il muwa˙˙idiyya, see as example vol. I 106 and 108. 59 Al-Maghràwì, M., “Mulà˙aΩàt ˙awla mas"alat al-˙isba fì-l-dawla al-muwa˙˙idiyya”, Diràsàt. Majallat Kulliyat al-Àdàb wa-l-'Ulùm al-Insàniyya, Agadir, 2 (1988) pp. 48–61. 60 M.A. Martínez Núñez, “Epigrafía y propaganda almohades”. 57

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To resolve the question, three works attributed to Ibn Tùmart’s authorship are available to us: the A'azz mà yu†lab, a series of collected opuscules of scarce internal coherence which includes the 'aqìda or profession of faith, plus two spiritual guides or murshida-s, the first of which is aimed at the ruling elites, and the second at the common people.61 Doubts have been expressed concerning the extent to which the A'azz mà yu†lab, first explicitly mentioned in 560/1164, and the first existing copy of which dates from 579/1183, can be the work of Ibn Tùmart himself. Dating is not the only problem: there appears to be little correspondence between the material gathered in this work and statements made in other sources about Ibn Tùmart’s doctrine. The impression received from reading the writings attributed to Ibn Tùmart is that a fair part of them had an essentially didactic, perhaps almost “divulgatory” aim, and this intention becomes even clearer in his letters and the 'aqìda, a book which was so widely known that even contemporary Christians felt the need to translate it.62 I intend to focus on those aspects of his preaching which on the one hand feature most prominently in it, and on the other, clashed most obviously with sunnite orthodoxy. I will begin with the latter points first, since they relate most clearly to Ibn Tùmart’s aspirations to Mahdism. The first non-Almohad writer to mention Ibn Tùmart’s doctrine, the Damascene Ibn al-Qalànisì (d. 555/1160), defines it as madhhab fikr, a school of thought dictated by a faqìh of extreme rigour and ascetic tendencies who had ended life as a rebel. According to this author, 'Abd al-Mu"min speaks of Ibn Tùmart in one of his letters as al-mahdì ilà sabìl Allàh, or he who guides believers on their path to God.63 Ibn Tùmart certainly comes across in A'azz mà yu†lab as a faqìh mujtahid whose aim was to construct the edifice of the Sharì'a on new foundations which allocated an essential role to reason and insisted on the relationship of dependence between this world and

61 M. Fierro, “Los almohades en al-Andalus: tendencias e influencias doctrinales”, Historia de España VIII**. El Retroceso territorial de al-Andalus. Almorávides y Almohades, siglo XI al XII, Historia de Menéndez Pidal, coord. M.J. Viguera, vol. VIII, Madrid, 1997, pp. 443–448. 62 M.Th. D’Alverny, and G. Vajda, “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tùmart”, Al-Andalus 16 (1951) pp. 99–140, and 259–307; XVII (1952) pp. 1–56. 63 F. Gabrieli, “Le origini del movimento almohade in una fonte storica d’oriente”, Arabica III (1956) pp. 1–7.

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the Divine. The role accorded to reason undoubtedly emerges as the leading characteristic of Almohad intellectual life, just as a renewal of the groundings of law seems to have been one of Ibn Tùmart’s main objectives.64 Ibn Tùmart left the Màliki school, which had been the most generally accepted during the Almoravid period, considering that the only sources of law which he could accept were the Qur"àn, the ˙adìth and the consensus of the Companions of the Prophet. He rejected individual judgements or opinions in juridical affairs (ra"y), as well as the authority of tradition (taqlìd ) and reasoning by analogy (qiyàs). Ibn Tùmart favoured the ijtihàd but was opposed to the doctrine by which all opinions obtained by a qualified interpreter of the law were equally valid. Following this line of thought, the Almohad caliphs were firmly opposed to the existence of differences or divergences (ikhtilàf ) in the interpretation of divine law. In this respect, M. Fierro records an anecdote featuring the Almohad caliph and the Màliki faqìh Ibn al-Jadd: when the latter tried to explain to the caliph the reasons why there were divergences among jurists, the caliph answered that there was only the Qur"àn and the Sunna on one side, and the sword on the other. The similarity of this doctrine, and even of its wording as given in this anecdote, with that professed by some sufis can be seen from the following words of Mu˙yì al-Dìn Ibn al-'Arabì: “The Mahdì will impose the law of Islam by the sword, and Jesus will be one of his wazìr-s: he will be infallible in his ijtihàd without resorting to juridical analogy (qiyàs) and the fuqahà" of the different schools will be his adversaries, whereas the sufi saints will be his natural supporters.”65 It thus fell to Ibn Tùmart and his successors, the Almohad caliphs, to indicate the right path to follow; they were the ones to interpret the message of God and of his Prophet. Fierro believes that it is in this sense that one has to understand Ibn Tùmart’s appellatives al-mahdì al-ma'lùm alimàm al-ma'ßùm.66 The anecdote can also be read in the sense that there is only revelation on the one hand, and disbelief, entailing death, on the other. The anecdote has implications for government: those in positions of power are responsible for executing the sentence of death rather than interpreting the message of revelation. 64 65 66

M. Fierro, “The legal policies”. Apud Fierro, “Le mahdì Ibn Tìmart et al-Andalus”, p. 112. Fierro, “Le mahdì Ibn Tùmart et al-Andalus”, pp. 110–113.

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The division is basically the fundamental one in sunnite Islam between the Law and the state, and the question is the extent to which the ruler has authority for the Law rather than simply for its administration. Ibn Tùmart, as the Mahdì, had dual authority in the same way as the Fà†imid Mahdì who passed it on to his succesors in the dynasty. The projection of the authority of Ibn Tùmart was claimed by 'Abd al-Mu"min and by his successors in what was to become a struggle between his dynasty and the shaykhs over his inheritance. Urvoy’s view is different. He is one of the authors who insists most strongly on the originality of Ibn Tùmart’s doctrine, and considers him a first-rate thinker and driving-force behind a rationalism which would influence the later development of Almohadism and even Andalusi thinkers such as Ibn Madà" or Ibn Rushd (Averroes) himself.67 According to Urvoy, Almohadism was based on a separation between the elite and the masses (the first group was expected to devote itself to rational speculation, the second to recital of the creed) and on the notion that a community was defined by its religious belief. This was the source of rejections of unworthy authority and accusations of polytheism directed at other forms of Islam, which legitimised the waging of war on other Muslims, who were denied the status of believers. In this view, the Almohad Imàm, though impeccable, was not like the shì'ite Imàm in having a revelatory function, but was more of a politico-religious leader to whom obedience and imitation were owed. The distinction, it seems to me, is very slight, and I am not at all sure that the majority of followers would have been able to perceive it. There is no doubt that the point on which Ibn Tùmart differs most substantially from the ash'arite doctrine which formed the basis of his system of thought is on the issue of the Imamate.68 As we have seen, Ibn Tùmart rejected the theory of the authority of the mujtahidùn, i.e. those who practise the ijtihàd or individual reasoning, in matters of the Law.69 These figures are dismissed in favour of 67 D. Urvoy, “La pensée de Ibn Tumart”, Bulletin des Etudes Orientales XXVII (1974) pp. 19–44 and Urvoy, Pensers d’al-Andalus. La vie intelectuelle à Cordoue et Séville au temps des empires berbères ( fin XI e siècle–debut XIII e siècle), Paris, 1990, especially pp. 83–86, 94–96. 68 See D. Guimaret, La Doctrine d’al-Ash"ari, pp. 548–559; H. Laoust, La politique de Gazali, p. 230 and ff. 69 I. Goldziher, Kitàb A'azz mà yu†lab (Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert. Mahdi des Almohades), Argel, 1903, arabic text, pp. 15 and ff., p. 25.

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that of the imàm ma'ßùm, the condition of ißmà" which characterizes the Imàm being defined by Ibn Tùmart in the following way: The Imàm cannot be other than free of falsehood (ma'ßuman min albà†il ) to abolish falsehood, because falsehood does not abolish falsehood, and he must be free of error (∂alàl ) because error does not destroy error, and therefore he who errs cannot abolish error, just as he who is corrupt (al-mufsid ) cannot destroy corruption, because corruption does not abolish corruption, and there is no doubt that the Imàm must be free (ma'ßùm) of these faults and ma'ßùm of tyranny ( jawr) because the tyrant cannot end tyranny but only re-affirm it, and he must be free of pernicious innovation (bida' ) because the mubtadi" cannot abolish bida' but only strengthen it, and he must be free of lies because the liar cannot end lying but only re-affirm it, and he must be free of ignorant actions (al-'amal bi-l-jahl ) because the jàhil cannot abolish ignorance. . . . Because nothing is destroyed other than by its opposite, the darkness (Ωulma) is not destroyed other than by light, and error by the good guide (al-hudà), and tyranny by justice, and disobedience by obedience, and disagreement (ikhtilàf ) by concord, and concord is not achieved other than by placing affairs in the hands of the highest in command (ùlà al-amr), who is the imàm al-ma 'ßùm min al-bà†il wa-lΩulm . . .70

The speech has a clearly redemptionist tone and is peppered with the standard vocabulary of Mahdism: darkness, error, corruption, pernicious innovation and so on,71 all of which can only be defeated by their opposites light, truth, justice etc., in strict observance of the kind of radical and illuminated dualism characteristic of messianic movements. According to this text, one could argue, like Cornell,72 that the quality of ma'sùm, unlike the infallibility of the shì'ite Imàm, is a “being preserved” “free of fault” that makes him resemble instead the qu†b of the sufis—one who is intellectually and spiritually better qualified to interpret the commandments which God has laid down for his community. This would have been an Imamate of grace (ni'ma), tied to the idea of a Óasanid lineage, so that “one sees the Almohad Mahdì claiming little more for himself than the right to successorship of the Prophet as the most sincere follower of his sunna.” In my view, the text from which I have quoted implies rather more than this. If the Imàm is ma'sùm, regardless of whether this is understood 70

Goldziher, Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, Arabic text, pp. 245–46. Such terms appear recurrently in other writings of the Mahdì, especially in his letters. See Rasà"il muwa˙˙idiyya, p. 45. 72 Cornell, “Understanding is the Mother of Ability”, p. 102. 71

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as “free of error” or “infallible”, there is no doubt that the kind of obedience due to him must be blind and unquestioning even down to the slightest of details. The manner in which the arguments are expressed and defended is exactly identical to that used by sunnite theologians, including al-Ghazàlì himself, when they defend the necessity of the Prophet Mu˙ammad’s 'ißma. For al-Ghazàlì, the notion of imàm ma'ßùm was especially reproachable and he dedicates an entire chapter of his al-Munqidh min al-∂alàl to rejecting the notion because for him there is no more than one imàm ma'ßùm, the Prophet Mu˙ammad.73 That is to say, in the eyes of a sunnite, the text quoted above would make the Imàm equal to Mu˙ammad. If absolute obedience to Mu˙ammad is unavoidable because he possesses the quality of ma'ßùm, Ibn Tùmart’s quality of ma'ßùm also carries with it the need for absolute obedience. It looks as if the imitation of Mu˙ammad’s example, united to the idea of a khalìfa, or successor to Mu˙ammad, led to the actual replacement of the Prophet by the Imàm. A few pages after the passage from which I have quoted, it becomes very clear that this imàm ma'ßùm is the Mahdì, because Ibn Tùmart states that “falsehood cannot be destroyed other than by the Mahdì and truth cannot be imposed other than by the Mahdì, and faith in the Mahdì is an obligation (wàjib) and whoever doubts him is an infidel (kàfir) and the Mahdì is ma'ßùm in all that he proclaims and all that he says is true and does not permit of error . . . he is unique in his time and true in everything, he will end tyranny and imposture and he will conquer the world from east to west bringing justice to it as before it was full of injustice and so it will remain until the Final Hour (alsà'a).” He insists that faith in the Mahdì is an obligation and that anyone who doubts him is an infidel.74 One of the articles of the 'aqìda used by the Almohads for swearing-in purposes expresses recognition of this known and impeccable (ma'lùm, ma'ßùm) Imàm: he who does not know the Imàm of his time dies the death of a kàfir. As far as I have been able to see, there is no text in which Ibn Tùmart explicitly claims to be this imàm ma'ßùm, this Mahdì whose appearance is dictated by the manifest corruption of his times75 to 73

Which I have read in the Spanish translation by E. Tornero, Algacel. Confesiones, “La doctrina de la enseñanza del Imam infalible y sus males”, pp. 60 and ff. 74 Goldziher, Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, Arabic text, p. 257. 75 He insists also that ignorance has become generalized, truth has been lost while falsehood prevails, and that ignorant local leaders and deaf and dumb kings have assumed control of the world . . . Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, pp. 256–7.

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the extent that al-qiyàm bi-amr Allàh has become an inescapable obligation that cannot be delayed. What Ibn Tùmart does write is that “the Mahdì came [that is to say, he has already come] and God distinguished him by bestowing right guidance upon him and promised him he would change the habitual state of things and destroy their norms to return them to truth, with God’s permission, so that affairs are ordered in accordance with right guidance.”76 Although Ibn Tùmart does not say in a completely explicit way that he himself is the Mahdì, it is easy to see how inevitable and obvious the connection would have been for his followers and supporters. The A'azz mà yu†lab includes an eschatological opuscule which lays down the characteristics by which a Mahdì could be recognised: by his acquired nobility (˙asab), i.e. by having established the party of the Almohads (˙izb al-muwa˙˙idìn); by his genealogy or inherited nobility (nasab), given that he must be a descendant of Fà†ima, the Prophet’s daughter; by the time and place in which he will appear; and by his works and actions.77 To borrow the words of al-Marràkushì, Ibn Tùmart seems to have spoken so much of the Mahdì that the people came to wish for his appearance, until they reached a point where they saw that it was he who was the Mahdì. But there is more. In a letter written by Ibn Tùmart to the Almoravid emir 'Alì ibn Yùsuf, Ibn Tùmart denominates himself alQà"im bi-dìn Allàh, al-'àmil bi-sunna rasùl Allàh, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh, and goes on to use the terms al-'Arabì, al-Qurayshì, al-Óasanì, al-Fà†imì, i.e. the Mahdì with the name of the Prophet.78 He had come as a second Mu˙ammad under these names to instal the kingdom of heaven on earth. This vision of the Mahdì was inevitably linked to the shì'ite conception of ma 'ßùm, the sinless Imàm who guaranteed the perfection of the faith through the perfection of his knowledge, and whom the believer had the absolute duty of obeying absolutely. The duty of the believer to obey the sinless Imàm is related to the Imàm’s role as instructor, an essential point in the Fà†imid doctrine of the Imamate. And the Imamate is interwoven with the theory of knowledge. For Ibn Tùmart, knowledge ('ilm) was

76

Goldziher, Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, Arabic text, p. 251. Goldziher, Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, Arabic text, pp. 240–54. 78 Lévi-Provençal, Documents inédits, text 11–12 trans. 19. See M. Brett, “The lamp of the Almohads. Illumination as a political idea in twelfth century Morocco”, in Brett, Ibn Khaldùn and the Medieval Maghrib, p. 9. 77

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created by God and shows itself in the believer’s heart as a light or lamp. Ibn Tùmart considered it his mission to unveil that knowledge, which had become progressively darkened since the death of the Prophet, and it was his belief that this was the mission of the sinless Mahdì predicted by tradition. When Ibn Tùmart states that the Mahdì is closest to God and that it is he who bears the time which brings heaven on earth, he is using the image of the pole or sufi qu†b, as the central axis of the tent which connects the roof to earth at the same time that it holds up the tent.79 In the article by Cornell to which I have repeatedly referred already, “Understanding is the mother of ability”, Cornell argues that sinlessness, i'ßàm, is the state of being free from sin that is produced by the quality of idràk, or understanding, which in the case of the Imàm is necessarily perfect. Idràk is synonymous with 'ilm which in turn is a synonym, in this context, of nùr, the lamp which brings enlightenment.80 As we have seen, al-Baydhaq recorded that Ibn Tùmart spent three months in a cave, in the traditional prophetic manner. Inside it, one of his disciples laid his burnous out as a rug for his master, at which point another disciple protested and placed on top of it his own kisà" or cape, which would undoubtedly have been white, just as the burnous tends to be made of black, or dark brown, wool. The second disciple said, “How is it that you have laid down your burnous for the nùr al-'ilm, the light of knowledge? Light can only be on light, nùr 'alà al-nùr.” “Light upon light” is a quotation from the Qur"àn, from the Sùra of the Light (see Chapter 4), where the light of God is compared with a lamp with which God guides the elect.81 This verse was also a point of reference for alGhazàlì, “light of the lamp of Prophecy”, nùr mishkàh al-nubuwwa, the Revelation. The light of the Imàm’s knowledge is a product of the light of prophecy and is identical to it in its perfection. The identification of Ibn Tùmart with the principle of Illumination is indicated by his appellative Asafu, a Berber term which is understood to have meant “light” or “lamp” and which was applied to the Mahdì in his youth by his fellow-disciples, either because of the nights he spent reading the Qur"àn by the light of a lamp, or because of his dedication to lamps in the mosque. This appellation anticipated 79 80 81

Nagel, “La destrucción de la ciencia de la “arì'a”. M. Brett, “The lamp of the Almohads”, VI, 10 and ff. Apud Brett, “The lamp of the Almohads”, VI, 10 and ff.

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and symbolised the enlightenment that the Mahdì was to bring, in a way that was highly characteristic of hagiographical texts. The relationship between enlightenment and guide becomes even clearer in Ibn Tùmart’s successor 'Abd al-Mu"min, “lamp of the Almohads”, the chosen disciple of the Mahdì and his sole heir, despite the fact that he was not a member of Ibn Tùmart’s family or even of the Maßmùda tribe. Brett interprets al-Baydhaq’s frequently-cited account as devoted to showing that 'Abd al-Mu"min was the sole designated heir. To this end he casts himself as witness and agent of the critical moment of the designation, as Salman Pak or al-Fàrisì in shì'ite legend. Al-Baydhaq wrote a long description of how Ibn Tùmart distinguished 'Abd al-Mu"min in a mosque one night and asked him to stay with him. He then asked al-Baydhaq to bring him the book with the red covers and announced to 'Abd al-Mu"min that he would be the one who would give life to religion and the “Lamp of the Almohads”, siràj al-muwa˙˙idìn. According to Ibn Khallikàn, this book with the red covers was al-Jafr min 'ulùm Ahl al-Bayt, which predicted that after the year 500H a man from the family of the Prophet would call the people to follow the original message of Islam and that he would be buried in a place with the letters TINML. This person would be al-Qà"im bi-Awwal al-Amr and his successor would have in his name the letters 'BD MUMN.82 On hearing Ibn Tùmart’s words, 'Abd al-Mu"min broke into tears and said, “I am not in any way prepared for this role, I am a man who wishes to cleanse himself of his sins” at which the Sinless One said, “The cleansing of your sins will be to save the world (ßalà˙ aldunyà).”83 A logical interpretation of these words would be that Ibn Tùmart meant “your redemption lies in redeeming the world.” Al-Baydhaq also gives details of the miraculous signs that accompanied the birth of 'Abd al-Mu"min and the journey he made before meeting Ibn Tùmart. His mother dreamt whilst pregnant with him that a fire emerged from her body which lit up the four corners of the earth.84 The association of 'Abd al-Mu"min with the Light which illuminates the world becomes even clearer in a panegyric on him written by the Andalusi poet al-Rußàfì of Valencia (d. 572/1177) on his arrival in Gibraltar in 1160, when he climbed into the moun82 83 84

I. Goldziher, Le livre de Ibn Toumert, pp. 27–8. Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, 87/56. Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, text 53–54, trans. 82–84.

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tains to receive the vassalage of the princes of al-Andalus. The poem, which rhymes in nùr, i.e. light, was recorded by al-Marràkushì:85 Had you fetched from the summit the fire of true guidance taking all that it pleased you of knowledge and light No shining star-maiden had grown her bright tresses to light those abroad or at home in the night. By the brightness of prophecy, brightness of guidance (nùr al-nubuwwa, nùr al-hidàya), fate is fulfilled and dark falsehood in flight. Devotion has tended the hearth of God’s purpose, in fasting by day and praying by night, Till faith has encouraged a blaze from the ember hidden by unbelief ’s ash in the grate, For a light of whose essence God covered the kindling for the time of the Mahdì to set it alight.86

Although allowances must be made for poetic licence, the equivalence of the Light of the Prophet and the Light of the Guide are quite clear from this text. Yet, as Brett points out in his commentary on this passage, there was a difference between the two enlightened men, the Imàm-Mahdì and the caliph, which is made explicit in the last lines of the poem: Hail to the Sword of God, Lord of all Guidance, entrusted with war in the perils of night, Whose hilt is held fast in the hand of the Mahdì, whose edge is all set for the victory fight; As the sun shone on Moses, so it illumined Giantkilling Joshua, his conquering knight ( fatà).

Al-Rußàfì compares Ibn Tùmart with Moses, and 'Abd al-Mu"min with Joshua (Yusha"), the prophet who assumed leadership after Moses and led the children of Israel to their entry into the Holy Land (Qur"àn 5:23). Gibraltar was a particularly appropriate place to make this comparison: it was situated at the confluence of two seas and evokes the Qur"àn 18:59–60, where Moses says to his knight Joseph: “I will not cease until I reach the confluence of the two seas.”87 Ibn 85 Al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'jib, ed. Al-'Arabì al-'Alamì, Casablanca, 1978, pp. 317–18, apud Brett, “The lamp of the Almohads”, p. 13. 86 Apud Brett, “The Lamp of the Almohads”. See also T. Garulo, “La poesía de al-Andalus en época almohade”, Música y poesía al Sur de al-Andalus. El legado andalusí, Granada-Seville, 1995, p. 151, where there is a translation and commentary of this same panegyric. 87 Garulo, “La poesía de al-Andalus en época almohade”, p. 151.

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Qasì, a contemporary of 'Abd al-Mu"min, was the author of a treatise, Khal' al-na'layn (“Remove your sandals”) in which, as we have seen previously, he writes of the ghurabà" as preservers of the true faith in a world dominated by corruption and states that they are the heroes of religion because they guard the Light of the divine message. According to Ibn Qasì, their knowledge does not derive from the transmission of holy texts, but from their own divine source of knowledge, as with Moses when he was called by God (Qur"àn 20:12): “I am your lord! Remove your sandals, for you are in the holy valley.” Foreigners or ghurabà" are equivalent to Moses, and they know how to pierce the surface of created things and achieve a knowledge of the order of the world and of divine will which comes directly from God.88 These references to Moses/Mùsà are important. In the Qur"àn, Mùsà is considered the precursor, the model and the announcer of Mu˙ammad (Qur"àn 7:156) and he who has been guaranteed illumination, instruction and guidance.89 If Light and Illumination were specifically associated with 'Abd al-Mu"min, another term which was often used of him and, after him, all succeeding Almohad caliphs, was al-amr, the Authority.90 The first reference to the use of this term comes from al-Baydhaq’s account of the battle of al-Bu˙ayra in 524/1130, when the Almohads suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Almoravids close to Marrakech. Al-Baydhaq compares the battle with the battle of U˙ud, where the Muslims were defeated by the Meccans and where it was even feared for a time that Mu˙ammad himself might have perished. Presenting himself, as usual, as both a witness and an agent, al-Baydhaq writes that he was entrusted by 'Abd al-Mu"min with the task of carrying the bad news of this defeat as soon as possible to Ibn Tùmart, who had not taken part in the battle because of the illness that would cause his death some three months later. Ibn Tùmart immediately asked if 'Abd al-Mu"min had survived, and on being informed that he had, gave thanks to God, adding the words qad bàqiya amru-kum and then, al-Amr bàqin.91 In other words, not all was lost because the Authority remained. It is not difficult to relate 88

T. Nagel, “Le mahdisme d’Ibn Tùmart”, p. 134. See article “Mùsà” in EI 2, B. Heller. 90 E. Fricaud, “Origine de l’utilisation priviligièe du terme de amr chez les Mu"minides almohades”, Al-Qan†ara 23 (2002) pp. 23–121. 91 Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, p. 79 apud Fricaud, “Origine de l’utilisation priviligièe du terme de amr”. 89

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this idea to the ismà'ìlite interpretation of this same term as Divine Authority or Divine Will, as seen in the appellation al-Qà"im bi-amr Allàh. It is from this moment on, according to Fricaud, that usage of the term al-amr becomes generalised in Almohad coinage and sources, alongside the terms khalìfa and amìr al-mu"minìn when designating Almohad caliphs, though it is not present in post-Almohad sources covering the Mu’minid dynasty. The Almohad coins have on one side: Allàhu rabbunà/Mu˙ammad rasùlunà/al-Mahdì imàmunà: God is our Lord, Mu˙ammad is our Prophet, the Mahdì is our Imàm. On the other side: al-Mahdì imàmu l-ummati l-Qà"im bi-amri llàh. In a recent monograph dedicated to Almohad coinage the authors argue in favour of the following translation: “The Messiah is the Guide of the Community, the Executor of God’s Will”92 in which the ismà'ìlite notion of Divine Will or Divine Disposition is made clear. The Almohad Amr was, as in the ismà'ìlì case, eschatological in character, and the use of the term would certainly have conjured eschatological associations. One of the many changes introduced by the Almohads concerned renovation of the mosques, which became austere and bare, and reorientation of the qibla. Al-ˇur†ùshì, of whom the Almohads made such widespread use and who was claimed by them as a teacher of Ibn Tùmart, devotes a chapter of his book Kitàb al-˙awàdiΔ wa-lbida' 93 to describing the innovations introduced in the building of mosques. He cites in support of the idea of a return to the austerity of Mu˙ammad’s times a ˙adìth which refers to the construction of a mosque in Medina, writing that when the Companions wanted to adorn it the Prophet said “Nay, a booth like the booth of Moses” and added the words Mà arà al-amr illà a'jal min dhàlika according to one version, or al-amr asra' min dhàlika according to another.94 In this case, and as Kister points out, amr is equivalent to sà'a, the time of total calamity which will be followed by resurrection. Amr denotes here an affair which will put an end to life in general. The Prophet was saying that there was no need to restore or sumptuously embellish the mosques because the Hour was near.95 It may be more than a M. Vega, S. Peña, M. Feria, El mensaje de las monedas almohades, pp. 295 ff. See M. Fierro, El libro de las novedades y las innovaciones, nº. 179. 94 M.J. Kister, “A booth like the booth of Moses. A study of an early ˙adìth”, BSOAS 25 (1962) pp. 150–155. 95 ˇur†ushì also cites the ˙adìth bada"a al-islàm ghàriban. See Fierro, “Spiritual alienation and Political Activism”, p. 247. 92 93

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coincidence that this ˙adìth brings together Moses and the notion of al-amr. The importance of 'Abd al-Mu"min’s prophetic qualities in legitimising his taking of power is also clear from the lineage which was attributed to him.96 'Abd al-Mu"min was a Berber from the Zanàta tribe, who lived in the area of Tlemcen. According to the Kitàb alansàb, the first Almohad caliph belonged to the Arabic tribal group of the Qays 'Aylàn, a nasab to whom legend attributed Berber origins.97 This meant that 'Abd al-Mu"min was thus not Qurayshite, a necessary condition for any sunnite to be able to aspire to the caliphate. However, if the Quraysh had the Prophet Mu˙ammad, the Qays 'Aylàn also had a prophet among their ancestors, one Khàlid b. Sinàn, a true prophet admitted by Islamic tradition as one of the few Arab prophets living in the period before Mu˙ammad. Perhaps the most curious of the things we know about Khàlid b. Sinàn is that all the various places where he is said to have been buried are in Algeria, in territories known to have been inhabitated by the Zanàta.98 After mentioning Khàlid b. Sinàn, the anonymous author of the Kitàb al-ansàb concludes: “The Qays are peoples of a lineage chosen for prophecy and therefore with greater reason worthy of being a people chosen for the caliphate.”99 This amounts to saying that if the Quraysh have the Prophet Mu˙ammad, the Qays 'Aylàn have another prophet, Khàlid b. Sinàn. If such a people have been deserving of the gift of prophecy, then they are no less deserving of the caliphate itself. As Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi wrote in a poem, “Authority (al-amr) will fall upon a descendant of Adan, a noble man belonging to the branch of 'Aylàn . . . From the moment that power (al-amr) is accorded him by destiny, divine assistance and triumph will direct themselves towards him.” The Mahdì Ibn Tùmart died in Rama∂àn 524/September 1130, but his death was deliberately kept a secret for some time, as was the decision of the Jamà'a shaykhs to appoint 'Abd al-Mu"min as his successor. Two years of victories over the Almoravids in southern 96 M. Fierro, “Las genealogías de 'Abd al-Mu"min, primer califa almohade”, AlQan†ara 24 (2003) pp. 77–107. 97 H. De Felipe, “Leyendas árabes sobre el origen de los beréberes”, Al-Qan†ara 11 (1990) pp. 379–396. 98 E. Landau-Taseron, “Unearthing a pre-Islamic Arabian Prophet”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 21 (1997) pp. 42–61. 99 Apud Fierro, “Las genealogías de 'Abd al-Mu"min”, p. 86.

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Morocco would have to pass before 'Abd al-Mu"min felt confident enough to announce the Mahdì’s death and his own succession as head of the community. From this moment on, 'Abd al-Mu"min began the process of appropriating the Almohad movement for himself and replacing it with a model of dynastic power which differed greatly from the ideology of Ibn Tùmart’s preaching. 'Abd al-Mu"min was proclaimed caliph by the Almohad community in 526/1132.100 However, he was not to occupy Marrakech until 542/1147, and it was only after that date that the great Almohad conquests began; before these conquests could be undertaken, 'Abd al-Mu"min had first to concentrate on ending his struggle against the Almoravids and on consolidating within his own movement the group which supported him, in order to achieve which he carried out a complete purge of the movement’s hierarchies.101 These actions, and in particular the cleansing from Almohad ranks of those individuals who in the eyes of the caliph appeared doubtful or lukewarm in their support for him, were executed with an extreme ferocity and rigour. Particular violence was also employed to repress the revolts which took place after the announcement of Ibn Tùmart’s death.102 As soon as the news was publicly known, there were uprisings against Mu"minid authority, firstly initiated by tribes of the Sùs and then by tribes from the Atlantic plains such as the Óà˙à, the Regràga, Haskùra, Dukkàla and Barghawà†a. All of these had areas to be reconquered by 'Abd al-Mu"min’s troops. Insurrection spread from south to north, and 'Abd al-Mu"min was also forced to fight bitterly to bring about the submission of the Berber mountain tribes. According to Ibn Khaldùn, two entire sections of the Ghumàra tribes, together with their chiefs, were at one time put to the sword, and it was only after this act of reprisal that the Berber troops of the Atlas elected to respect Mu"minid authority.103 During his siege of Marrakech, 'Abd al-Mu"min had also received a delegation from al-Andalus, where Christian pressure on the Islamic territory was increasing. However, the new leader was in no position 100

Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, text, 85, trans. 137. For these, see A. Merad, “'Abd al-Mu"min à la conquête de l’Afrique du Nord (1130–1163)”, Annales de l’Institut d’Etudes Orientales, Algiers XV (1957) pp. 109–165. 102 Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, text, 122 and ff, trad. 207 and ff. 103 Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima. Discours sur l’histoire universelle, French trans. V. Monteil, Paris, 1968, II, p. 174. 101

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at that time to respond to pleas for asistance from the Muslims of the Iberian peninsula. At that time, 'Abd al-Mu"min’s response was limited to sending a military corps led by two of the Mahdì’s brothers, 'Abd al-'Azìz and 'Ìsà al-Amghàr. In 542/1147, the city of Seville vowed allegiance to the Almohads and in 545/1150 'Abd alMu’min received in Salé the Andalusian delegates who had been sent to render him the bay'a. However, 'Abd al-Mu"min had by then left to conquer the middle Maghreb as far as Tunisia, delaying his disembarkment in al-Andalus for a further ten years. The Almohad conquest of the extreme Maghreb was completed in about 543/1149. It was then that 'Abd al-Mu"min launched the bloody operation known as I 'tiràf, a large-scale purge carried out in a highly systematic manner: the caliph drew up lists of suspicious individuals in each tribe and sent these lists to the corresponding tribal shaykhs, ordering them to use the sword against all those listed.104 The Almohad historian al-Baydhaq records imperturbably that the number of victims of this purge was as high as 32,730 men—after this, he writes, there ceased to be any further differences of opinion. The tribes against whom 'Abd al-Mu"min carried out this clear act of reprisal were the Hazmìra, Regràga, Óà˙à, Haskùra, Ghumàra—the same tribes that had followed the Almoravid cause, and those which had lent support to the most significant revolt after the death of Ibn Tùmart, the uprising led by the Jazùla of the Sùs, to be considered in the next chapter. I will come back now to Fierro’s interpretation of the Mahdism of Ibn Tùmart as related to the milieu the Almohads had to face in al-Andalus. Fierro points to the question of the proximity in time and space of Ibn Qasì’s and Ibn Tùmart’s proclamations as Mahdìs. More is known about the dating of the proclamation of Ibn Qasì: a coin minted in his name carries the date 539/1144. This coin bears the legend Allàhu rabbunà wa Mu˙ammad nàbiyyunà wa-l-mahdì imàmunà (Allàh is our lord, Mu˙ammad is our prophet, and the Mahdì is our Imàm). This legend is almost identical to that found on Almohad coins, which do not generally bear dates, the only difference being that the coins of the latter carry the incorrect words Mu˙ammad rasùlunà, (Mu˙ammad is our envoy) rather than describing him as either “the envoy of Allah” or “our prophet” as on the

104

Al-Baydhaq, “Les mémoires d’al-Baydhaq”, text 109–110, trans. 181.

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Ibn Qasì coin. Portuguese scholars have proposed the hypothesis that Ibn Qasì’s coin came first and that the Almohads needed to incur in such a mistake in order to differentiate themselves from their predecessor in a legend which was in every other way essentially identical.105 This hypothesis has not enjoyed general acceptance, however, since the Almohads are known to have minted coins before going to al-Andalus. There is nonetheless consensus in accepting that the Mahdì referred to in the dated coin is Ibn Qasì, and that referred to in the undated coin Ibn Tùmart. Fierro claims that the feature that characterises Ibn Qasì and distinguishes him from Ibn Tùmart is his sufism, and that the term Mahdì, as far as Ibn Qasì is concerned, must be interpreted as part of a sufi doctrine that can be traced back to Sahl al-Tustarì (d. 283/896), who spoke of an Imàm guided by God (Mahdì), who was in turn a guide (hàdin) in both spiritual and secular affairs and who would be called a “stranger in his age” (al-gharìb fì zamàni-hi).106 Preceding chapters will make it clear that my own interpretation does not coincide with that of Fierro. However, I do believe that it raises important issues that must be addressed: in particular that of whether there has to be a Mahdì before there can be a caliph, to which my own answer would be affirmative, at least as far as the Muslim West is concerned. However, I find it difficult to believe that Almohad reclamation of Ibn Tùmart’s Mahdism derived from his encounter with al-Andalus and his need for legitimisation when faced with that world. As I have argued, Ibn Tùmart was one in a long line of Berber prophets who led their people, the new chosen people, to a new conquest of the kingdom of this world and the future world. Several different strands were intertwined in him which we have seen accumulating since Late Antiquity: ideas of moral apocalyptists, of prophetry and illumination, united to notions of a profound austerity and moral rigour. We also see in his career the importance of the old idea that only a prophet can be the legitimate leader of the community, which reveals once more the peculiar receptivity of the Berber tribes to Islamic prophetry. A second Mu˙ammad risen from the dead, Ibn Tùmart is part of the same 105 I summarise here from the article by Fierro “Las genealogías de 'Abd alMu"min”; see the bibliographical references given there for further details. 106 M. Fierro, “Spiritual alienation”, pp. 230–60 and also T. Nagel, “Le mahdisme d’Ibn Tumart”.

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phenomenon as the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh and the Almoravid Ibn Yàsìn. Having said this, the three of them were also very different. Abù 'Abd Allàh was the herald of the Fà†imid Mahdì, the descendant of 'Alì; Ibn Yàsìn was the prophet of the Law as defined by the Màliki school; and Ibn Tùmart was the Mahdì who had come to restore the immediate authority of the Book. Ibn Yàsìn made no claim to be a Mahdì, no doubt because his preaching and his legitimization were based on revolt against the Fà†imids and his legitimizing support came, not from the 'ulamà" of al-Andalus, but from the Màliki 'ulamà" of Ifrìqiya. In a pendular movement, Ibn Tùmart rose against the Almoravids and made use of legitimizing instruments close to the Fà†imids: that of a sinless Imàm, the supreme instructor of believers. This certainly represented a “sunnization” of shì'ism, but by the twelfth century it was a sunnization heavily determined by a doctrinal elaboration of two centuries of sufism, from which it absorbed precisely those concepts which bring sufism and shì'ism closest together.107 It was in the Maghreb where Mahdìs were expected, where they received tribal and military support, and where they triumphed. Similar figures also arose in al-Andalus, but they never succeeded in the same way. In this context, it is interesting to read the comparisons that Ibn Khaldùn made between the movements of Ibn Qasì and Ibn Tùmart. According to the great historian, the former was destined to fail because he lacked a strong tribal base for his movement. If a Fà†imì, he writes, attempts to propagate his doctrine among any people or in any country, without having a tribe to support him and armed forces to impose respect, his doctrine and his lineage will never be enough. No attempt to found a religion or an empire will ever triumph unless it is supported at its base by a strong party bound by ties of blood. Thus, writes Ibn Khaldùn, a highly urbanised territory like al-Andalus, where clan ties have diminished so greatly, is always unlikely to be an auspicious one for such movements. Such points are further illustrated by later movements of revolt against the Almohads, and these are the subject of the next chapter.

107

See Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, chapter on “The Mahdì among the sufis”.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MAHDISM AFTER THE ALMOHADS Ibn Tùmart was unique in at least two ways: firstly as the last of the prophets of the three great revolutions that created a new political order in the Maghreb and secondly as a Mahdì who succeeded where all others failed, on the strength of a radically new doctrine. Even the Fà†imid Mahdì had only come to power through the efforts of his missionary. But this is not to say that Ibn Tùmart was unique as a Mahdì: he arose in a climate of Mahdist expectations and was followed by a whole series of other mahdìs. Some in North Africa where his imitators who arose in opposition to the Almohads, in at least two cases, out of their quarrels. Others, appearing somewhere later in al-Andalus, arose out of the disaster of defeat and conquest by the Christian kingdoms. Their failure underlines the dismissal of Mahdism by Ibn Khaldùn as a fantasy for the credulous while emphasizing the fact that the Almohad revolution was indeed the last. On the one hand, it had ended the era of doctrinal controversy which had divided Islam from the ninth century onwards. On the other, it had completed the Islamisation of North Africa in the sense that there remained no marginal peoples to convert into one chosen people to conquer the world. The history of these Mahdist pretenders introduces a period dominated by the dynasties that divided the Almohad empire between them: the Óafßids of Tùnis, the 'Abd alWàdids of Tlemcen, the Marìnids of Fez and the Naßrids of Granada in what remained of Muslim Iberia. The power and prestige of these dynasties limited the possibilities of religious opposition while allowing the spread of Sufism as a form of government in the countryside and that of Sharìfism as a principle of leadership.

Mahdis against the Almohads Ibn Hùd al-Hàdì The Jazùla of the Sùs were one of the tribes which suffered from the I'tiràf carried out by 'Abd al-Mu"min. They rose in rebellion

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against the caliph in Marrakech headed by a new religious leader describing himself as the “good guide”, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh Ibn Hùd al-Màssì. Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd Allàh was, at any rate, the name he was required to adopt on becoming a Mahdì: al-Baydhaq, as a fervent supporter of 'Abd al-Mu"min, refers to him as 'Umar ibn al-Khayyà†. Ibn Hùd seems to have been a man of extremely humble origins, about whom very little is known1 before his appearance in a ribà† in Màssa, in the Sùs (on the Atlantic coast, about 45 kilometres south of Agadir), where he began to preach and propagandise on his own behalf, adopting the name al-Hàdì, “he who guides”, a name deriving from the same root as “Mahdì”. Ibn Hùd’s revolt began one year after the occupation of Marrakech by 'Abd al-Mu"min and his troops, in 541/1147. According to Almohad dynastic chronicles, fugitives from many different regions united under his flag, together with “the dregs of the population of the provinces”. He was proclaimed by the inhabitants of Sijilmàsa and the Dar'a, the Dukkàla, Regraga, Huwara, and Tàmesnà tribes, and the echo of his movement resounded throughout the entire area of the Maghreb.2 Al-Baydhaq lists the regions which rose in Ibn Hùd’s name: Jazùla, Óà˙à, Hazmìra, Haskùra, Dukkàla, Banù Wariaghel, and even Ceuta, Tangier and Almeria. Ibn 'Idhàrì claims that following Ibn Hùd the entire country “apostated” excepting Marrakech and Fez.3 In fact, all the tribes of the Atlantic plains had rebelled, particularly hostile as they were to the government of the Almohad Maßmùdas. After a number of victories over the Almohads, Ibn Hùd was eventually defeated and killed about one year after the start of his uprising. The court secretary Ibn 'A†iyya wrote a letter to 'Abd alMu"min informing him of his troops’ victory over the rebel which was subsequently reproduced in several sources. Ibn 'A†iyya’s letter reveals the fierceness of the struggle and cruel defeat suffered by Ibn Hùd, and it also shows Ibn Hùd’s relation with the ribà† of Màssa, and how the preaching of the sufis who lived there had helped to ease the aspiring Mahdì’s reception: “What led these peoples to 1 Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib, Spanish trans. A. Huici Miranda, Tetuan, 1953–4, p. 288. 2 Ibn Khaldùn, Ta"rìkh 'alàmat Ibn Khaldùn. Kitàb al-'Ibar, ed. Y.A. Dagir, t. I, Muqaddima, Beirut, 1956, vol. VI, 310, Berbères, II, 181. The same information is found in al-Nàßirì, Kitàb al-Istiqßà, trans. I. Hamet, Archives Marocaines 32, Paris, 1927, pp. 49–56. 3 Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib, p. 289.

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rebel—what led them to drink of pernicious beverage—was the arrival in their region, some years ago, of peoples preaching withdrawal from the world, who pretended to fast all day and stay awake at prayer the entire night . . . the flaunting of piety is their only cult”.4 According to Ibn 'Idhàrì, the Barghawà†a upheld their obedience to “al-Màssì” even after his defeat and death, and continued fighting for some time against the troops of 'Abd al-Mu"min.5 Ibn al-Kha†ìb, for his part, relates in an interesting passage Ibn Qasì’s rejection of his former obedience to the Almohads, which dated back to the time of his revolt against Almoravid power in al-Andalus, and his adherence to the revolt led by Ibn Hùd: “When the situation of the Mu"minid state (al-dawla) had deteriorated as a consequence of the revolt led by al-Màssì who sought the hidàya and rose with most of the territory against the Almohads, Ibn Qasì rejected his sovereignty.”6 Ibn al-Kha†ìb in this passage appears to relate the two revolts carried out in the name of the hidàya, supported by the sufi murìdùn. Another revolt against 'Abd al-Mu"min’s authority which was apparently inspired by the sufis was that which was led by Yaddar alDukkàlì, who rebelled among the Dukkàla. “The people of the waterskins (ahl al-rakawàt) died for him”, writes al-Baydhaq.7 As I pointed out in Chapter 3 when discussing Abù Rakwa, the rakwa was considered a distinctive sign of sufis and wandering ascetes, and Dukkàla was known as an area of notable sufi activity, mainly because of the influence in that region of the ribà† of Tì† founded by the Banù Amghàr.8 The Banù Amghàr were themselves the protagonists of a revolt in about 551/1156–7 which came close to bringing the dynasty to an end when their connivance with a former companion of 'Abd al-Mu"min, Abù Óafß ibn Tafraghìn, governor of Marrakech, very nearly allowed them to take control of the city in 'Abd al-Mu"min’s absence.

4 Al-Nàßirì, Kitàb al-Istiqßà, trans. I. Hamet, p. 52; Ibn al-Kha†ìb, Al-I˙à†a fi akhbàr Garnà†a, ed. 'A. Inàn, Cairo, 1973–7, vol. I. p. 269. 5 Ibn 'Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-mughrib, p. 293. 6 Ibn al-Kha†ìb, Kitàb a'màl al-a'làm, ed. M. Mukhtàr al-'Abbàdì, Rabat, 1964, p. 251. 7 Ibn al-Kha†ìb, Kitàb a'màl al-a'làm, ed. al-'Abbàdì, p. 208. 8 'I. Dandash, “Dukkàla min khilàl al-Tashawwùf ” in A∂wà" jadìda 'alà al-muràbi†ìn, Beirut, 1991, 187–203, p. 199; V.J. Cornell, “Ribà† Tì†-n-Fi†r and the origins of Moroccan Maraboutism”, Islamic Studies 27 (1988) pp. 23–36.

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This revolt occurred in 551/1156 as a result of the caliph’s decision to appoint his own son Mu˙ammad as his successor, and his other sons as governors of the main cities of the Almohad state. The official Almohad Letters (mainly numbers XIII and XIV) in which the caliph informs of these appointments take care to emphasise that such decisions have been taken in accordance with the wishes of the shaykhs, and that each of the Mahdì’s sons would be accompanied by one of these shaykhs, who would act as their advisors in their new posts. Such measures allowed the Almohads to hope that effective authority would remain in their hands and that the Mu"minid governors would become no more than official representatives of their father the caliph. The Almohad Letters allowed, in theory, for the continuation of a division between law and state: what was at issue for the Almohads was the question of the extent to which he who governed possessed authority to interpret the law instead of simply having the authority to administer it and put it into practice. 'Abd al-Mu"min was staking a claim for authority over both domains and in doing so he ran the risk of alienating the Almohad shaykhs, who claimed their own authority over the law. Ibn Tùmart, as Mahdì, had held the kind of dual authority to which 'Abd al-Mu"min now aspired by confronting the shaykhs and a large number of Ibn Tùmart’s followers. The revolts mentioned thus far, together with the one led by the two brothers of Ibn Tùmart who lived under surveillance in Fez, are proof of the deep crisis opened up by the dynastic aspirations of the Mu’minids.9 'Abd al-Mu"min took over the Almohad movement for his own family’s benefit, dismantling the complex system set up by Ibn Tùmart and replacing it with a hereditary dynasty. In order to achieve this, 'Abd al-Mu"min transformed the mechanisms which governed the practice of power, as could be seen most clearly from the way in which he reformed the original military organisation of the Almohad movement. This organisation was profoundly altered in the mid-6th/12th century by the incorporation within the army of the Arab tribes with whom 'Abd al-Mu"min had made contact during his campaigns in the central Maghreb and Ifrìqiya (524–558/ 1130–1163).10 These tribes belonged to the Banù Hilàl confedera9 R. Le Tourneau, “Du mouvement almohade à la dynastie mu’minide: la révolte des frères d’Ibn Tùmart de 1153 à 1156”, Mélanges d’Histoire et d’Archeologie de l’Occident Musulman. Hommage à Georges Marçais, t. II, pp. 111–116. 10 V. Aguilar, “Aportación de los árabes nómadas a la organización militar del ejército almohade”, Al-Qan†ara 14 (1993) pp. 393–415.

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tion based in Ifrìqiya since the middle of the previous century, and their recruitment for the Almohad armies was legitimised by a call to jihàd against the Christians of Iberia, as well as through use of 'Abd al-Mu"min’s alleged Arab genealogy, which was traced back to the Qays 'Aylàn. A good example of the role which was to be played by the Arab troops in Mu"minid propaganda and the Mu"minid state is provided by the qaßìda which 'Abd al-Mu"min commissioned from the philosopher Ibn ˇufayl (d. 381/1185). The qaßìda was a panegyrical text as well as a call to arms in the name of the faith which not only upheld the notion of the common genealogy of the Qays, sons of Hilàl ibn 'Àmir, and 'Abd al-Mu"min, but claimed further that this genealogy was also that of the Prophet and his family, and of the Mahdì [Ibn Tùmart], so that “the taifa of the Mahdì is also yours and he bows down before you”.11 The Arab tribes were to receive important concessions in the form of lands in the Atlantic plains of Morocco, and their tribal chiefs, settled in Marrakech, played a vitally important role during the rule of the Mu"minid dynasty. However, the idea which had constituted the very essence of the Almohad movement, the belief in Ibn Tùmart as the Mahdì, was not to receive its final blow until the reign of the caliph al-Ma"mùn, thus culminating what Kably describes as a “doctrinal mutation of the state”.12

The Mu"minid dynasty’s rejection of the doctrine of Ibn Tùmart During the 13th century, and after a period which is usually related to the definitive defeat of the Almohads in Spain in 1212, the Almohad empire entered upon a period of considerable decline and decomposition. One important factor in this process was undoubtedly the official rejection of the doctrine of Ibn Tùmart, which sparked off a moral crisis of incalculable proportions.13 Many uprisings of a messianic and prophetic nature took place towards the end of the 6th century of the Hijra and in the first half of the 7th, and 11 E. García Gómez, “Una qasida política inédita de Ibn Tufayl”, Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos I (1953) pp. 21–28. 12 M. Kably, Société, pouvoir et religion au Maroc à la fin du Moyen Âge (XIV e–XV e siècle), Paris, 1986, p. 277. 13 See R. Le Tourneau, “Sur la disparition de la doctrine almohade”, Studia Islamica 32 (1970) pp. 193–201.

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in spite of the vagueness and sparseness of the reports on most of them, they seem to indicate a resurgence of prophetism in both Morocco and al-Andalus during this period. Ibn Tùmart’s doctrine was officially abolished by the Almohad sultan al-Ma"mùn in early 627/1230, according to virtually all contemporary and later chroniclers. A series of circumstances coincided during al-Ma"mùn’s reign which probably heightened the devastating effect upon many of his subjects of the abolition of the Mahdì’s doctrine. Al-Ma"mùn had signed a treaty with Ferdinand III of Castile (who was to conquer Seville a few years later) in which the sultan agreed to grant ten fortified towns to the Christian king in exchange for military aid. A further series of concessions were made to Christians living on Almohad territory: they were to be allowed to build a church in Marrakech, where they might practise their religion without any restriction, and would even be permitted to ring the church bells. Persecution of Christian missionaries was forbidden, as was any attempt to convert Christians to Islam. As a result of this agreement, an army of 12,000 men was sent from Castile to southern Morocco to fight against al-Ma"mùn’s main rival. Such pacts made it clear to all that the times of 'Abd al-Mu"min belonged firmly to the past, regardless of any changes in official ideology. The sultan al-Ma"mùn ordered the suppression of the name of the Mahdì on all new coinage and in the khu†ba, the Friday homily. The Bayàn and the anonymous chronicle al-Óulal al-mawshiyya reproduce the text of al-Ma"mùn’s official declaration,14 in which the sultan directed the following words to notables, sharìfs, †alabà" and 'àmma: “We have rejected that which is false and we have made public the truth and there is no Mahdì other than 'Ìsà ibn Maryam, who alone was called al-Mahdì because he spoke of the good guidance; and this innovation we have suppressed and God assists us in the mission we have taken upon ourselves. We have annulled the epithet ma'ßùm because the 'ißma has not been proven and for that reason we have suppressed its mark, which is wiped out and falls and is not preserved. Our lord al-Manßùr had thought to declare what we now declare and to repair for the community the breakage which we have now repaired; but he had no success in his expec14 Al-Óulal al-mawshiyya, ed. Allouche, pp. 137–138. I am following the text of the Spanish translation by Huici (Tetuan, 1951) pp. 192–193, which is based on a more complete manuscript than that used by Allouche.

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tation and his death did not give him time to suppress it, and he presented himself before his Lord with a true intention and a pure conscience. If the 'ißma is not confirmed for the wise, the Companions of the Prophet, what to think of him who does not know how to take his Book? Out with them, for they have lost their way and have led others to lose themselves and that is why they perished and slipped and they have no argument on this great path. My God! Guide us, for we ignore them as the people of Paradise ignore the people of Hell, and we turn to your protection to free ourselves from their ruined cause and their perverse behaviour, because they have the dogma of the people of hell and we say of them what our Prophet said: “Lord, leave not on earth one man alive among the unbelievers”. These extremely harsh words totally discredited Tùmartian dogma and abolished all belief in the Mahdì and his teachings, portrayed as fitting to “the people of hell”. The chronicler Ibn Abì Zar'’s version of events complements the text of this proclamation. According to Ibn Abì Zar', when al-Ma"mùn entered Marrakech he climbed up to the minbar of the mosque of al-Manßùr and delivered a speech closely resembling the previous proclamation. When he reached the end of his speech al-Ma"mùn said: “Oh assembly of the Almohads! Do not think that I am Idrìs, he who is to destroy your empire by his hand; no, he will come after if God is willing.” The sultan then descended and sent out written instructions to all the provinces ordering the immediate abandonment of the Mahdì’s sect, and ordering his name to be suppressed from public prayers and on all coinage; he also ordered the square dirhams to be changed back to round ones.15 The only difference between Ibn Abì Zar'’s version and other writers’ coverage of the same events is the inclusion of such a curious reference to Idrìs as “he who will come after”. It seems unlikely that the sultan was referring to the mysterious prophet Idrìs, who in addition seems to have played no role in Muslim eschatology,16 but to Idrìs the founder of the Maghreb dynasty. If this is the case, al-Ma"mùn’s remark appears to imply the existence of a messianic aureola that would come to be so closely associated with Idrìs during the Marìnid period, as we will see in the next chapter.

15 Ibn Abì Zar', Raw∂ al-qir†às. Spanish trans. A. Huici Miranda, Valencia, 1964, vol. II, pp. 487–488. 16 See art. “Idrìs” in EI 2 by G. Vajda.

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The al-Manßùr referred to in this letter is the Almohad caliph who was al-Ma"mùn’s father, in whose will, unlike in that of his predecessors, there had been no mention of the Mahdì nor any reference to his doctrine.17 Al-Manßùr was a caliph especially reputed for his piety and saintliness whose life was subjected to great scrutiny in the sources and whose disappearance gave rise to a series of legends: the chroniclers record that the masses refused to believe in alManßùr’s death and eagerly awaited his return. The word “Mahdì” does not appear in any of the accounts of these popular beliefs, but the dead caliph does seem to have been regarded as a Mahdì.18 The existence of such hopes and expectations is further implied by the appearance of other Mahdis immediately after al-Manßùr’s death.

Mahdìs in al-Andalus Ibn Faras One example of such a figure is 'Abd al-Ra˙ìm ibn Ibràhìm Ibn Faras, known as al-Muhr or al-Garnà†ì, the city where his family was based.19 Ibn Faras seems to have been an 'àlim, and had received a relatively high standard of education in al-Andalus, especially in the field of philosophy. Abù-l-Walìd ibn Rushd sent him to Marrakech to learn the mystic way of Abù-l-'Abbàs al-Sabtì.20 In Marrakech, during an assembly presided over by the caliph al-Manßùr, Ibn Faras expressed daring opinions and was later forced to remain in hiding so as not to suffer the consequences of his lack of prudence.21 After the death of the caliph al-Manßùr in 591/1195, he led an uprising in the lands of the Jazùla, where he presented himself as an imàm 17 A. Huici Miranda, Historia política del Imperio almohade, Tetuan, 1956–57, 2 vols, vol. I, p. 385. 18 This according to Halima Ferhat’s conclusions in her study of the caliph included in her book Le Maroc aux XII e et XIII e siècles: Les siècles de la foi, Casablanca, 1993, pp. 91–100. 19 Ibn Sa'ìd, Al-Mughrib fì ˙ulà al-Maghrib, ed. S.H. Dayf, Cairo, 1955, 2 vols, p. 111. 20 This information is provided by al-Tàdilì, who gives him the name al-Óazrajì. Al-Tàdilì, Al-Tashawwuf ilà rijàl al-taßawwuf, ed. A. Toufiq, Rabat, 1984, French trans., Regard sur le temps des soufis: vies des saints du sud marocain des V e, V e, VII e siècles de l’hégire, Casablanca, 1995, p. 327 and note 9. 21 Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l’Afrique Septentrionale, trans. de Slane, Paris, 1925, vol. II, p. 226.

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by virtue of his claimed descent from Qa˙†àn, of whom the Prophet had said: “The Hour will arrive when a man will appear who is a descendant of Qa˙†àn, who will lead the people with his goatherd’s crook and fill the world with justice, just as before it had been desolated by tyranny . . .”. Ibn Sa'ìd and Ibn Khaldùn both record a poem attributed to Ibn Faras, in which the arrival of the Qa˙†ànì is announced, as well as an end to the line of descent of 'Abd alMu"min ibn 'Alì.22 Ibn Faras was followed in his uprising by Berber troops from the Lam†a and Jazùla, and some of the Maßmùda tribes from the surroundings of Marrakech. He was finally defeated and killed by the Almohad troops of the caliph al-Nàßir in 600 or 601/1203–5, and his head was sent to Marrakech, where it was hung on display from one of the city gates.23 Al-Jàzirì A very similar case to that of Ibn Faras is, according to reports given in the chronicles, that of Abù 'Abd Allàh Mu˙ammad al-Jàzirì, who was also a man of letters of Andalusi origin. Like Ibn Faras, he led a revolt at the end of the 6th/11th century, between 579 and 586H. Al-Maqqarì records that al-Jàzirì attempted to re-establish Tùmartian doctrine for his own benefit by claiming that he was the Mahdì, and that followers of the Mahdì’s doctrine became his followers and protected him during the years in which he managed to escape persecution by the authorities in both al-Andalus and the Maghreb.24 Al-Jàzirì’s legendary ability to make himself scarce and avoid capture no doubt explains the spread of the belief among the 'àmma that he had the ability to turn himself into a cat, a dog or a donkey.25 Nevertheless, al-Jàzirì was eventually caught close to Baza in al-Andalus and his head was duly sent to Marrakech for public display. As if all this were not enough, there also seems to have been a re-flowering of Fà†imid or Ismà'ìlite ideals during this same period. Ibn Khaldùn recorded that a member of the family of 'Abd Allàh al-Fà†imì, known as Ibn al-'À∂ìd, a descendant of al-'À∂id, the last Ibn Sa'ìd, Al-Mughrib fì ˙ulà al-Maghrib, ed. S.H. Dayf, II, p. 111. Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères, trans. de Slane, II, p. 227. 23 Al-Nàßirì, Kitàb al-Istiqßà, trans. I. Hamet, p. 98; Ibn Sa'ìd, al-Mughrib fì ˙ulà al-Maghrib, ed. S.H. Dayf, II, p. 111. 24 Al-Maqqarì, Naf˙ al-†ìb, vol. IV, pp. 65–66. 25 Ibn Sa'ìd, Al-Mughrib fì ˙ulà al-Maghrib, ed. S.H. Dayf, I, pp. 321–322. 22

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caliph of the Fà†imid dynasty in Egypt, led a revolt in the province of Fez and assumed the name of Mahdì. Ibn al-'À∂id was later betrayed by some of his followers and sent to al-Manßùr, who had him executed.26 Al-Marràkushì also mentions Ibn al-'À∂id, though giving different dates to those of Ibn Khaldùn. The author of the Mu'jib writes that he knew the rebel personally, and that he had presented himself as a mystic devoted to meditation and silence. He had first made himself known in Seville during the reign of Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb, seeking in vain to be granted an interview with him. Ibn al-'À∂id was later arrested in Marrakech in 596, during the period of government of Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb’s successor, and not released until 601. He then travelled to the lands of the Íanhàja, who received him favourably and followed him in a organised revolt. The movement spread as far as Sijilmàsa, where the rebels defeated the city’s troops and succeeded in bringing down the Almohad governor. Al-Marràkushì highlights Ibn al-'À∂id’s travels among different tribes and explains his failure by the fact that “he was a stranger in language and country”.27 The chronicles mention the appearance of another Fà†imid pretender, identified by al-Nàßirì as the son of Ibn al-'À∂id.28 This son achieved great following among the masses, characterised by al-Nàßirì as “ignorant and lost”. He led an uprising in the lands of the Jazùla, and official Almohad letters celebrated victory over the Jazùla rebel in 612/1215, in ten circulars whose terms make it clear that the danger was felt to be very great.29 The Mu'jib records that the Almohads were greatly pleased by the rebel’s eventual execution.30 Màssa Behind the appearance of these rebels against the Almohads and Marìnids lay not only opposition to their dynasties but the millenarianism to which Ibn Tùmart had appealed and which, following the collapse of the Almohad empire and the Christian conquest of the greater part of al-Andalus was a sign of despair on the part 26

Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères, trans. de Slane, II, p. 228. Al-Marràkushì, Kitàb al-Mu'jib, pp. 465–66. 28 Al-Nàßirì, Kitàb al-Istiqßà, trans. I. Hamet, II, p. 219. 29 A. 'Azzawi, Rasà"il muwa˙˙idiyya: majmù'a jadìda, Kenitra: Manshùràt Kulliyat al-Àdàb wa-l-'Ulùm al-Insàniyya, vol. I, 1995, letters no. 97 to 101, pp. 328 and ff. 30 A. 'Azzàwì, Rasà"il muwa˙˙idiyya, p. 328. 27

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of its Muslim population. In a manner that on the one hand recalled the previous salvation of al-Andalus by invaders from North Africa, the Almoravids and Almohads, and on the other the triumph of Mahdism that the Almohads represented, this Andalusian millenarianism of the late thirteenth century was associated with the home of the Almoravids and Almohads in Southern Morocco in the form of the ancient ribà† of Màssa on the coast south of Agadir. Legends involving the small post of Màssa appear for the first time in writing in the Tadhkira of the Andalusi author al-Qur†ubì (d. 671/1272), although the revolt of Ibn Hùd al-Màssì seems to suggest that these traditions may have gone back further in time. The Tadhkira was written by al-Qur†ubì during a period in which the Islamic territories of the Iberian peninsula had been drastically reduced to the Naßrid sultanate of Granada. During this period, the general sense of persecution and fatality, the anxiety of the Iberian Muslims facing what seemed to be their imminent end, produced a feverish atmosphere of prophesies and forecasts which was to persist until the city fell into Christian hands two centuries later. In al-Qur†ubì’s Tadhkira, the Prophet Mu˙ammad prophesies the Christian conquest which was already taking place during the lifetime of the author, but also predicts the Muslim re-conquest of Spain. This re-conquest would be headed by the Mahdì, who would be a native of the town of Màssa in the Maghreb al-Aqsà. The Mahdì would gather together an army from among the tribes of the Sùs, cross the Strait of Gibraltar and enter al-Andalus, where his army would inflict great damage on the Infidels, as described in great detail in al-Qur†ubì’s text. The Mahdì, a native of Màssa and min wuld Fà†ima (from among the descendants of Fà†ima) would then lead prayers in the mosque of Seville and receive the vassalage of all Muslims, as well as conquering seventy Christian cities.31 These traditions, according to one of which the Mahdì would appear in 599/1202–3, were late to develop and were probably an echo of the original appearance of Ibn Tùmart mixed with legends and local folklore which have been kept alive until quite recent times in the oral tradition. The abundance of such legends and the literature devoted to them prove their strength and survival over the

31 Al-Qur†ubì, Al-Tadhkira fi a˙wàl al-mawtà wa-umùr al-àkhira, ed. Al-Gamili, Beirut, 1986, ed. Beirut, 1986, pp. 347–349.

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centuries.32 Ibn Khaldùn dedicates several pages to Màssa, recording popular expectations that the Mahdì would appear there, and citing instances when crowds went to the ribà† of Màssa in the hope of seeing him. The Mahdì that they awaited and longed for, he writes, “will not bear the yoke of submission nor will he carry the authority of any power, nor will he have to obey the decisions of any government. No army will be able to defeat him.” These beliefs, writes Ibn Khaldùn, were exploited by ambitious and unscrupulous impostors who came before the ignorant people with claims to be the awaited Fà†imid.33 Ibn Khaldùn’s text reflects in a very detailed and specific fashion chiliastic anxieties about liberation from the yoke of all government, and the kind of impunity from government armies that the masses associated with the ribà† of Màssa, as well as shedding light on the way in which some figures sought to benefit personally from these expectations. Ibn Khaldùn returns to this theme in his Muqaddima, where he describes the number of people who travelled in pilgrimage to the ribà† of Màssa hoping to see the appearance of the Mahdì, and adds that as this ribà† was close to the land of the veiled Ghudàla, many of them believed that the Mahdì would come from among those people—an echo of the belief in the veiled or hidden Mahdì who was none other than the hidden imàm—since the land of the Ghudàla was beyond the control of the reigning dynasties. The general belief was that salvation would come from beyond government control, from a country outside the reach of power, law and force.34 The quatrains of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Majdhùb, the mystical sixteenth-century poet, often evoke the mysterious Ghudàlì, the ribà† of Màssa and its drum, the same drum which Ibn Tùmart’s adversaries had heard sound out.35 Use of the term “Ghudàlì” as a synonym of Fà†imid or Mahdì had been made since at least the Almoravid period in a curious twist to what we know of the origins

32 See R. Montagne, “Une tribu berbère du Sud Marrocain: Massat”, Hespéris 4 (1924), 357–403 and “Coutumes et légendes de la côte berbère du Maroc”, Hespéris 4 (1924) pp. 101–16, esp. pp. 112 and ff; R. Basset, Relation de Sidi Brahim de Massat, Paris, 1883; H. Basset, Essai sur la littérature des Berbères, Algiers, 1920, pp. 268.272; H. Ferhat, “Littérature eschatologique et espace sacré au Maroc”, Studia Islamica 80 (1994) pp. 47–56. 33 Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères, trans. de Slane, II, p. 201. 34 Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima. Discours sur l’histoire universelle, French trans. V. Monteil, Paris, 1968.II, p. 674. 35 A.L. de Premare, Les quatrains de al-Majdoub, Paris, 1986, nos. 118–119.

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of the Almoravids in the Western Sùdàn. The Ghudàla, it will be remembered, were the first to invite the prophet of the Almoravids, Ibn Yàsìn, but then rejected his message and defeated the Lamtùna whom he had finally formed into the Almoravids. They then disappear from history, to survive in this way as a legendary people in a legendary land for a legendary purpose that in this case offered a demoralised population the hope of deliverance from oppression. It was a far cry from the days of the Almoravids, when people like the Ghudàla had lived in a land beyond the borders of a self-confident Islamic world into which they were drawn, and signals a major change in the circumstances of Mahdist belief in the Muslim West.36 The legend of Màssa certainly lived on, since as late as the 16th century, Leo Africanus was to write: “On the sea coast, outside Màssa, there exists a temple which is an object of great veneration. Several historians say that from this temple will come the Just Pontiff prophesied by Mu˙ammad”.37 A contemporary of al-Qur†ubì, the author of the Tadhkira, was Ibn al-Zubayr (627/1230–708/1308), another Andalusi, who composed a curious treatise, Al-Zamàn wa-l-Makàn,38 announcing the future triumphs of Islam. Based on the symbolic value of letters and numbers as well as a long eschatological tradition, the text claimed that the telling signs of a final victory were already patent and that the Muslims would occupy Rome and Constantinople. The saviour of Islam was predicted to appear in the Iberian peninsula, where victorious campaigns in defence of the Muslim faith would begin. By the same time (by the end of the 13th century) also the Castilian and Aragonese Christians believed in eschatological prophecies, and claimed the appearance of a Holy Universal Emperor in their midst. Such were the ambitions of Alfonso X of Castile who was to launch a military expedition against Salé. The prophecies about the Emperor of the Last Days acquire in the Christian territories of the Peninsula a specifically Spanish addition according to which the conquest of Jerusalem will include an initial march across North Africa. The eschatological prophecies linked to the recovery of Jerusalem can be

36 For the Ghudàla in history, see H.T. Norris, The Berbers in Arabic Literature, London, 1982, p. 111 and idem, Saharan Myth and Saga, Oxford, 1972, index. 37 León l’Africain, Description de l’Afrique, ed. A. Epaulard and T. Monod, Paris, 1956, p. 88. 38 Critical edition of M. Bencherifa, Casablanca, 1993.

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traced in Spain to the Aragonese Arnau de Vilanova (1240–1311), private physician of the king Pedro III of Aragon. He was entrusted by the king with the organization of a crusade to reconquer Jerusalem conquering first Granada and North Africa. This expedition never took place, but Arnau de Vilanova wote a very influential work, Veh mundo in centum annis (1297–1301) which commented on the prophecies of Joachim de Fiore to reinforce the messianic ideals of the House of Aragon. The King of Aragon is called the New David who will liberate Jerusalem and will rebuild there the citadel of Mount Sion. All those prophecies and sense of providential support had been enhanced by the Christian conquests of Muslim territories in the Peninsula. In 1212 a large Christian army inflicted a decisive defeat on the Almohads in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (al-'Uqàb), between the cities of Ciudad Real and Jaén. This victory opened up the entire territorial region of the valley of the Guadalquivir river, and Cordoba was duly conquered in 633/1236, and Seville in 646/1248. Jaime I of Aragon occupied eastern Spain during the same period, and the thirteenth-century conquest of the territory between Valencia and the Algarve in Portugal left the Islamic territories of the peninsula drastically reduced, in a relatively brief period of time, to the kingdom of Granada, covering an area approximately equivalent to the current Spanish provinces of Málaga, Almería and Granada. The Andalusi Muslims who remained experienced an intense feeling of anxiety and persecution, and of the certainty of their imminent end, and these factors together with the cramming of refugee populations into the kingdom of Granada and a massive flood of emigration into the Maghreb contributed to the creation of a generally apocalyptic feeling. Eschatological predictions and writings proliferated during these years, as did various kinds of leaders described by the sources as rebels against the political authorities, who were quick to repress such leaders in an exemplary and severe manner. Among these leaders was a certain al-Tuzayrì who led an uprising in Màssa, and expressed his own claim to be considered al-Fà†imì al-Mahdì. According to Ibn Khaldùn,39 al-Tuzayrì was a sufi who had settled in Màssa and seduced the people of the place, whose spirits were predisposed towards him on account of prophecies predicting that the Mahdì would appear in that area. He gained a great

39

Ibn Khaldùn, Histoire des Berbères, trans. Slane, vol. II, p. 202.

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number of followers among the Jazùla and came to constitute a genuine threat to the central powers. Al-Tuzayrì, as is implied by his nisba, was from Tozeur in Ifrìqiya and his decision to move to Màssa was, according to Ibn Khaldùn, part of a deliberate plan to benefit from local legends predicting the arrival of a Mahdì in Màssa. Ibn Khaldùn recorded another story along the same lines which he had been told by his master Mu˙ammad b. Ibràhìm al-Àbilì, who had informed him that when he was making the pilgrimage to Mecca, he met, close to the ribà† al-'Ubbàd where Abù Madyan was buried in the region of Tlemcen, a man travelling from the shì'ite territory of Karbalà" in Iraq who was descended from the family of the Prophet. This man was accompanied by a large retinue of followers and was held in great esteem by the disciples and servants who accompanied him. His journey had been financed by followers in his home land. The man was a Fà†imid candidate who believed he would be able to carry out his cause from the Extreme Maghreb. However, when he saw the forces of the Marìnid sultan Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb, employed at that time to lay siege to Tlemcen, the unnamed man said to his followers “Let us go back, for we have made a mistake. Our hour has not yet arrived.”40 It is difficult to judge the credibility of such stories, but a large number of them were certainly recorded by various commentators. Another movement was led by one al-'Abbàs, known by the name of al-Óàjj, who arrived in the Rìf town of Bàdis at the end of 685/1287, having arrived from the East, where he had just made the pilgrimage. Al-'Abbàs belonged to the tribe of the Ghumàra which had settled in that region and claimed, according to a contemporary source, to be a servant of the Fà†imid, saying that he had been ordered by him to call the peoples in his name because his time was drawing near. Such appeals led to an uprising in 686/1287. Al-'Abbàs was followed by large crowds of people belonging to the tribes of the Rìf.41 He entered Bàdis, where he allowed pillage and violence against women (kashf al-ma˙àrim). He was defeated and killed by a cavalry corps of the Banù Wa††às, and his head was displayed throughout the kingdom on an itinerant journey at the end of which it was 40

Ibn Khaldùn, Muqqadima, trans. Monteil, vol. II, pp. 675–676. Al-Bàdisì, Al-Maqßad al-sharìf wa-l-manzi' al-la†ìf fì-l-ta'rìf bi-ßula˙à" al-Rìf, French trans. and notes by G.S. Colin in Archives Marocaines, 26, Paris, 1926, biographies 25 and 27, pp. 112–113. 41

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hung up in Marrakech while his body was crucified in the northern town of Al-Hoceima. All of these events had repercussions in the Maghreb, and nowhere more than in the city of Ceuta.

Ceuta and the establishment of the mawlid al-nabì In 1230 Jaime I of Aragon conquered Mallorca, and all of the Balearic Islands came under his control in 1235, marking the beginning of Christian involvement in the Spanish islands and western Mediterranean, as well as in the Muslim territories of the Spanish peninsula. A Catalan fleet laid siege to Ceuta in the summer of 1234; the blockade could only be broken with the assistance of Genoan ships. In Ceuta, this development itself brought about the fear of a growth in Genoan dominance, and the Genoan funduq in the city was burnt to the ground as a result. The Genoan responded by sending out a punitive expeditionary force which forced the city of Ceuta to pay a sum of money in compensation.42 In the midst of this atmosphere of constant threat from Christians, Abù-l-'Abbàs al-'Azafì took the decision to introduce the mawlid alnabì, or celebration of the birth date of the Prophet Mu˙ammad, in the city of Ceuta.43 Al-'Azafì was a qà∂ì with a distinguished background in theology and mysticism, which he taught at the great mosque of Ceuta during the whole of his life. His work Al-durr almunaΩΩam fì mawlid al-nabì al-mu'aΩΩàm sought to promote the establishment of the celebration of the Prophet’s birth as a means of strengthening the Muslim identity of Ceuta and of counteracting Muslim celebration of Christian feasts, as was by then occurring systematically in al-Andalus and its neighbouring territories such as Ceuta.44 Al-'Azafì was unable to complete the task before his death in 633/1236, and it fell to his son Abù l-Qàsim to put it into practice. Abù l-Qàsim al-'Azafì rose to power in Ceuta in 647/1250 after an uprising, becoming in the process the first governor of the 42 See C.A. Dufourcq, “La question de Ceuta au XIIIème siècle”, Hespèris 42 (1955) pp. 67–127. 43 See N.J.G. Kaptein, Mu˙ammad’s Birthday Festival. Early History in the Central Muslim Lands and Development in the Muslim West until the 10th/16th century, Leiden, 1993, p. 76 and ff. 44 See the translation of his introduction in F. de la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas en al-Andalus”, Al-Andalus XXXIV (1969) pp. 1–53.

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local dynasty of the 'Azafids, which managed to keep Ceuta in a situation of relative independence for some seventy-five years.45 In the same year in which he took power, Abù l-Qàsim officially established the mawlid, which was celebrated annually from then on, making him the first Maghrebi governor to associate the celebration with the political authorities, in a clear attempt to use the feast to support and legitimise his own power. The only precedent for such use of this religious feast had occurred under the Fà†imids in Cairo, where there had been court celebrations of the mawlid: essential elements in this celebration were a procession of dignitaries to the palace of the caliph, followed by sermons and recitations of panegyrical poems in praise of Mu˙ammad (which included a description of the creation of al-nùr al-mu˙ammadì, the Mu˙ammadan light) and the caliph. The celebration established by Abù l-Qàsim was more modest, but included features such as processions and lighted candles considered by some as bida' or pernicious innovation because of their resemblance to Christian practices. Abù l-Qàsim also carried out a widespread propaganda campaign in an effort to spread the establishment of the mawlid and urged the last Almohads and the first Marìnids to follow his example. According to Ibn 'Idhàrì, it was due to Abù l-Qàsim’s insistence that the Almohad caliph al-Murta∂à (d. 665/1266) celebrated the mawlid in great splendour with all his dignitaries, marking the event by distributing gifts among his subjects.46 Kaptein has argued that Abù l-Qàsim’s efforts to popularise the mawlid derived from a conscious desire to promote unity among Muslims and contribute to a process of moral re-armament in the face of the Christian threat.47 I will return to this issue later. At all events, use of the mawlid by those in power must be related to the emergence of an increasingly visible and powerful group, the shurafà", who were especially influential in Ceuta. As had occurred under the Fà†imids, the sacralisation and glorification of Mu˙ammad became a way of glorifying the Prophet’s Family. It was no coincidence that it had been in Ceuta where the Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂ had written his Kitàb al-shifà", a text identifying love of the Prophet with love of his family and descendants. In addition, it should also be remembered that the Marìnid sultan Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb named his son Abù Ya'qùb Yùsuf heir to the J.D. Latham, “The rise of the 'Azafids of Ceuta”, Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972) pp. 263–287, “The later Azafids”, ROMM 15–16 (1973) pp. 109–125. 46 Apud Kaptein, Mu˙ammad’s Birthday Festival, p. 93. 47 Kaptein, Mu˙ammad’s Birthday Festival, p. 96. 45

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throne on a night of the mawlid. In doing so, Abù Ya'qùb Yùsuf deliberately highlighted the fact that he was the son of a sharìfa, as a means of presenting himself as the aptest and most legitimate candidate to assume power. Abù Ya'qùb Yùsuf also chose this day with a view to his planned conquest of Ceuta, since both mawlid and shurafà" were known to be particularly important in that city.48 Abù Ya'qùb Yùsuf ’s decision to introduce the mawlid officially in the city of Fez in 691/1292 was a clearly political one, and I will discuss it in the next chapter. During this period, Ceuta became above all a land of refuge for Andalusi immigrants. The Andalusi sufi Abù Marwàn al-Yu˙ànisì emigrated to Ceuta and spent the last years of his life there, dying in 667/1268 and being buried in the city. Al-Bàdisì recorded a description of how the saint Abù Marwàn had celebrated in Ceuta the laylat al-mawlid, preparing a banquet with honey and cakes for the fuqarà" and the mu˙ibbùn or novices. An ecstatic dance (sath) took place by the light of glass lanterns.49 It becomes clear from al-Bàdisì’s text that the mawlid was also celebrated in mystical circles. In the circumstances, such celebrations of the mawlid, the birth of the Prophet in the past, were tinged with messianism, the hope of a future birth. In those same years, like Ibn Qasì at Murcia and Ceuta, Ibn A˙là, also of Murcia (d. 645/1247) was gathering a number of followers behind him. At Lorca, he organised a semi-clandestine movement which combined promises of spiritual guidance with political leadership. He seems to have belonged to the ahl al-wa˙da but also to have held ismà'ìlite (bà†inì) beliefs concerning the imminent arrival of a messianic restorer, which caused him to lead an attempt to seize power in Lorca. After his defeat, Ibn A˙là fled to Murcia, where he died two years after the capture of the city by Christian forces. He is important in this context because he was a teacher of Ibn Sab'ìn, undoubtedly the most important saint to live in Ceuta during this period. Born in Murcia in 613 or 614/1217–8 Ibn Sab'ìn was highly reputed for his knowledge of ancient sciences like philosophy, magic, alchemy and medicine, but his mystical doctrines caused the enmity and suspicion of the authorities and forced him to leave the Iberian peninsula at the age of thirty and seek refuge in Ceuta. He was fol48 H. Beck, L’image d’Idrìs II, ses descendants de Fàs et la politique sharìfienne des sultans Marìnides (656–869/1258–1465), Leiden, 1989, pp. 100 and ff. 49 Al-Bàdisì, Al-Maqßad al-sharìf, trans. Colin, pp. 90–91.

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lowed on his journey by a great number of followers and novices, known as Sab'iyyin, who seem to have been extraordinarily attached to their master and to have entertained messianic expectations of him. Ibn Sab'ìn’s barely orthodox religious opinions, taken together with the agitation that his teachings and those of the fuqarà" who lived around him caused among the people, forced the governor of Ceuta to expel him and he died in Mecca in 668/1269–70.50

Al-Fazàrì The pretended prophet (mutannabì) al-Fazàrì first rose in Málaga in 660/1270. Attributing to himself the nubuwwa and risàla he led a revolt against the Naßrid sultan that year. Al-Qashtàlì devotes several pages to al-Fazàrì in his work on the miracles of al-Yu˙ànisì, the refugee saint in Ceuta referred to previously who celebrated the mawlid with his fuqarà".51 Al-Fazàrì claimed to be “the awaited one” (al-muntaΩar) who had come to combat evil and to restore and strengthen the bases of Islam. He was in the habit of saying to the crowds, “I am the prophet from Heaven”. According to al-Qashtàlì, al-Fazàrì made predictions of future events and on one occasion had the fortune to be successful in one of his forecasts, thereby gaining a large number of followers among the ignorant. He also managed to turn the authorities against his opponents among the well-educated and pious. The people considered him to be either a walì (friend of God) or a nabì (prophet). Others felt such fear of him that they did not dare to testify against him to help the authorities to capture him. At one point al-Fazàrì had a meeting with al-Yu˙ànisì, to whom he said “Sidi, nothing prevents me from becoming your servant now, but the abominations that people attribute to me.” The shaykh replied “What are those hateful things that people impute to you?” He answered, “My followers ascribe things to me and spread news of me but I do not wish to admit them as mine.” The shaykh said to him, “If that was not your intention, why did you not leave them, why did you befriend them? If you are innocent, as is possible 50 E. Lator, “Ibn Sab'ìn de Murcia y su «Budd al-'arìf»”, Al-Andalus IX (1944) pp. 371–417; M.T. Urvoy, “Un penseur de frontière en Islam: Ibn Sab'ìn”, BLE XCVIII (1997) pp. 31–35. 51 Al-Qashtàlì, Tu˙fat al-mugtarib bi-bilàd al-Magrib fì karàmàt al-shaykh Abì Marwàn. (Milagros de Abu Marwàn al-Yu˙ànisì), ed. F. de la Granja, Madrid, 1974, pp. 81–82.

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because saints experience misfortune, and you have shown that what is said of you is not true, ask God to judge only your good deeds.” Al-Yu˙ànisì treated al-Fazàrì, in other words, in the same way that he may have dealt with other religious figures: as victims who were dragged along more or less voluntarily by popular expectations and beliefs rather than by their own convictions. A short time later, alFazàrì was captured by the authorities and crucified in Granada together with a number of his followers. The qà∂ì Ibn al-Zubayr presided at his trial and ordered the death sentence against him, although the sentence could not be carried out until the Naßrids had conquered the city, from the hands of the Banù Ashqìlùla, who protected al-Fazàrì.52 Al-Qashtàlì recorded a similar meeting which al-Yu˙ànisì held on another occasion.53 The saint was travelling towards Cordoba, which was under siege, with the aim of making ribà† (to collaborate with the efforts of holy war) there to assist in its liberation. Finding it impossible to reach the city, he headed instead for Seville, where he asked for news of any man who was well-known among the people for his piety and virtue. He was told of a young man ( fatà) by the name of Ibn ManΩùr who was famous for his chastity and purity (ßawn, †ahàra) and for having persevered in the personal struggle (ijtihàd ), although he had no formal master. God had given him powers which even he did not understand, causing him great personal anxiety and leaving him in a highly confused mental state. The young man seems to have resolved these confusions by declaring himself ßà˙ib al-waqt, or Master of the Hour. He was convinced that he had been entrusted with the task of saving the people of alAndalus, and that the salvation of the community, ßalà˙ hadhihi alumma, lay in his hands. When al-Yu˙ànisì met him he was surrounded by a group of young men, his followers, and on hearing al-ManΩùr’s claim to be responsible for saving the umma, al-Yu˙ànisì replied that that task corresponded to a member of the Banù Hàshim, or a sharìf. Al-ManΩùr’s answer was that he was a sharìf, at which al-Yu˙ànisì “made a gesture with his arm”, “one of those which bring bad luck to the Jews”, i.e. he ridiculed the young man not only by refusing to believe that he was the saviour of the umma, or even a sharìf, but by branding him as a Jew. Al-ManΩùr eventually met the usual fate 52 53

Ibn al-Kha†ìb, Al-I˙à†a fi akhbàr Garnà†a, ed. 'A. Inàn, Cairo, 1973–7, I, p. 191. Al-Qashtàlì, Tu˙fat al-mugtarib, pp. 174–175.

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of all such prophets, and was crucified at the bàb al-mu’adhdhin of the city wall. Al-ManΩùr was not the only impassioned and illumined young man to have come to the attention of the authorities in this period: during the early years of the reign of the caliph al-Mustanßir, which started in 610/1213, there lived in Marrakech a †àlib and notary who had a son of whom the †àlib was extremely proud because of his talent and intelligence, and the knowledge he had acquired at such a young age. The episode of the child-prophet, who is never named, is related in the first person by the judge Abù l-Óasan Ibn al-Qa††àn, who was placed in charge of the affair.54 The boy, who was twelve years old at the time of the judge’s investigations, was presented to him as being so extraordinarily intelligent that he had acquired knowledge of a kind that was closed to those who were much older than him. The actions of the father and the judge, as well as the theological and political dimensions of the boy’s dreams and prophecies, would provide enough material to write an entire separate study. It is a unique case in which it is possible, on the one hand, to witness the construction of a messianic figure and his propaganda, and on the other, to see the methods which the authorities used in setting up judicial proceedings to deal with such claims. Alarm was at one point caused by the boy’s claim that Mu˙ammad need not be the seal of the prophets in the sense of the last of them, for other prophets before him, such as Moses and Jesus, had also claimed that title for themselves. Such a claim would make it possible for the boy himself to be a prophet—in defiance of what had now evidently become the orthodox dogma in contrast with previous periods (see Chapter 3). The child was reported as having dreams in which he read and commented on the Qur"àn with angels and prophets, especially with an angel named Salanun, who took him under his protection and did not leave his side. The boy also had dreams which were difficult to interpret, but could be explained by reference to later events. In one of them, Óusayn and Ibràhìm gave greetings to his father. “Who are they?” asked his father. Óusayn may have been the grandson of 54 In the biographical entry for him by 'Abd al-Malik al-Marràkushì in his AlDhayl wa-l-Takmila, ed. by M. Bencherifa and I. Abbas, Beirut-Rabat, 1984. See Emile Fricaud, “La notice biographique d’Abù l-Óasan 'Alì ibn al-Qa††àn dans l’A≈˛ayl wa-t-Takmila d’Ibn 'Abd al-Malik al-Marràku“ì”, Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de al-Andalus. Biografías Almohades II 10 (2000) pp. 223–83, esp. 256–270.

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the Prophet, given that the father had become the object of a legal action brought against him by a zaydite. Some time later, one Ibrà˙ìm subjected him to another lawsuit, as a result of which he ended up being imprisoned. In this way the son’s dreams turned out to be forecasts confirmed of real events, such as one he had about a group of travellers who were robbed on the road, as indeed apparently happened. In particular, the dreams began to enlighten the boy about his own fate. In them he was named Ayyùb ( Job) because a period of trials awaited him after which, at the age of 31, he would reach a position of power. His father therefore took him to witness a military parade so that he would realise the extent of Almohad power, but the boy laughed and said that the number of lambs did not frighten the butcher. It was at this point that the judge Ibn al-Qa††àn began to feel a greater sense of alarm and accused the father, until then his only informant, of not being oblivious to what was occurring, of inducing events or of being his son’s accomplice. He also accused the father of publicising his son’s case, of spreading news about him. Ibn alQa††àn was well aware of the importance of rumour, and of the complicity of those who spread news about the child and even of those who simply listened to him. He wanted to know what punishments had been inflicted on the boy, and what measures had been taken against him, and eventually demanded a personal interview with him. Ibn al-Qa††àn interrogated the boy about the celestial voices that he heard and warned him that anyone who proffered words such as his was placing himself outside the legality of Islam, but the boy replied that the voices had told him to have no fear, that he had a divine order to manifest himself, to warn people and to inform them. The judge explained to him that through dreams, even those which were about the Prophet Mu˙ammad, one could not construct precepts for action, that a dream needed to be interpreted and could sometimes be inspired by the devil. Nevertheless the twelve-year-old claimed to have made a nocturnal journey to Paradise which bore a remarkable resemblance to the Mi 'ràj of the Prophet, and to have had dreams that frequently featured Solomon and Dhù-l-Qarnayn, because he, the boy, was to achieve on earth as much power as the second and the peoples would submit to him as much as to the first. He told his father, “I will have a power like that of Dhù l-Qarnayn and the peoples will obey me as they obeyed Solomon.” Dhù-lQarnayn or Alexander the Great played an important role in Islamic eschatological literature, where he was sometimes identified with the

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Emperor of the Last Times. Al-Qur†ubì, in his Tadhkira, includes beliefs which have a long tradition in Western Arab sources according to which Alexander had built a bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar; he is a symbol of salvation who encloses and at the same time defends the world from outside dangers.55 On the basis of such dreams, the boy, whose name is never mentioned, predicted that he would take power in 630, and that the peak of his power would come in the year 633, at the age of 31, when his “Alexandrine” destiny would be fulfilled. Once he had achieved full power in the Maghreb he would leave a man called Mu˙ammad b. A˙mad there and would go to the East to search for the descendant of the Marwànid Umayyads called Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh, to whom he would render the bay'a. When the boy expressed his fear in his dreams that he would have no forces or followers with whom to seize power, the celestial apparitions informed him of his supernatural powers and of the signs of those powers, using familiar apocalyptic topos like the idea that he would have a white rod with which he would beat a black one, thus making day turn to night and night turn to day etc. The father, in the meantime, had counted eleven tribes, mostly from the desert, who would be his followers. These desert tribes, like the Ghudàla, were beyond the reach of established power and it was by their hand that redemption would arrive. Not the least interesting aspect of this fascinating text is the role played in the process by the boy’s father, firstly as informant of what he claimed to be happening to his son, and then as participant in interrogations of the child, when he often answered for his son, and told him how to reply, frequently adding information or interpretations of his own. Al-Qa††àn clearly came to the conclusion that the man was an accomplice and instigator in the affair, which ended with the execution of both father and son. All of these movements, defined by the chronicles as “revolts” against authority, seem to have involved saints who were also saviours, prophets, young novices and fuqarà". At the same time the authorities themselves used their own constructions to re-build a legitimacy that had been shaky since the death of Ibn Tùmart: examples have been shown in the establishment of the mawlid and social and political support for the shurafà". If there is one thing that is surprising about 55 M. Marín, “Legends on Alexander the Great in Moslem Spain”, Graeco-Arabica IV (1991) pp. 71–90.

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such a convulsed situation in the thirteenth century it is not so much the resort to apocalyptic figures as the absence, throughout al-Andalus, of a call to jihàd against Christians as a means of both legitimising and strengthening political power. Such a call to jihàd had in the past been used by 'Abd al-Mu"min to justify the recruitment of Arab tribes for the new army he had used to cement his power. Pierre Guichard has wondered about the inability of the peoples of alAndalus to halt the advance of the Christians, given that such an advance was far from inevitable: al-Andalus was a much more denselypopulated territory with larger and better-defended cities and greater technical knowledge than their Northern enemies. As a possible explanation or at least as an explanatory factor of prime importance, Guichard points to the inability of the Andalusis to consider the jihàd as fard 'ayn, i.e. as a duty and responsibility involving each and every one of its inhabitants. The explanation which, in turn, Guichard proposes for this inability is that al-Andalus had for centuries possessed a strong central government which had made it its own responsibility and duty to carry out the jihàd, leaving this duty in the hands of an army which had a very slight impact on the rest of the social fabric. The social prestige of soldiers and men of arms, so high in Christian medieval society, was low in the Islamic West where prestige was centred in 'ulamà" and shurafà", and contributed to the segregation and isolation of the military. 56 In my view, such an interpretation is convincing but incomplete. Re-reading all these stories of “rebels”, or of sultans in power who took it upon themselves to name their heirs, the most striking factor is the absence of a legitimacy of power, coupled with the lack of a means of legitimisation which might achieve sufficient consensus within the Western Muslim community. Indeed, such a lack of legitimacy is what seems to strengthen the messianic discourse of the Good Guide, of the man chosen by God as capable of transmitting divine will. But in the absence of legitimacy, the fact that there was so little recourse to the jihàd, either on the part of the authorities or by those who rebelled against them, remains very surprising. Perhaps one should conclude that, as in some groups of the Shì'a, a jihàd was considered unthinkable in the absence of a Mahdì. Put the other way round, it seems that the appearance of a Mahdì was a necessary requisite for a successful jihàd to occur. 56 M. Shatzmiller, “The Crusades and Islamic warfare: a re-evaluation”, Der Islam 69 (1992) pp. 247–288.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE MARÌNIDS AND SHARÌFISM

Between the death of the Almohad caliph Ya'qùb al-Manßùr in 595/1199 and the capture of Marrakech by the Marìnids in 668/1269, the Almohad dynasty of the descendants of 'Abd al-Mu"min was unable to do much more than survive. When the Almohad empire was eventually brought to an end by the conquest of its capital, the Almohads were replaced by the Banù Marìn, a clan of the Berber tribe of the Zanàta which was to reign over the extreme Maghreb from its new capital of Fez for the next two hundred years. The Marìnids were a group of nomadic tribes which made annual journeys to the plains of the Tell, a grain-yielding region whose crops the tribes transported to the south. The Marìnid assumption of power can thus be interpreted as deriving from the traditional aspiration of Saharan tribes for an easier life, i.e. as an attempt to control the commercial routes and cities through which their trading activities took them. The shaykhs of the Banù Marìn, a semi-feudal oligarchy of Berber warriors, turned Morocco into their own personal landholding, an area in which land, taxes and political influence could be granted or refused by the members of that oligarchy. The system was maintained through alliances and rivalries between three main groups: the Zanàta groups related by kinship to the ruling family; Arab and Berber allies whose loyalty was safeguarded through marriage ties and grants of land or taxes; and finally the religious elites who supported Marìnid governance in exchange for political and economic security. Unlike their dynastic predecessors the Almoravids and the Almohads, the Marìnids had no precise religious aims. To put the same idea in other words, Marìnid legitimacy did not derive from a new way of interpreting Script and sources of the Law—it did not follow from new preaching or a da'wa dictated by a charismatic figure with the ability to revoke or replace that which had constituted the basis of the Almohad empire. After the demise of the Almohads, their former territories were split up into different realms, each of them ruled by a separate dynasty: the Naßrids in al-Andalus, the Marìnids in

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Morocco, the 'Abd al-Wàdids in Algeria, and the Óafßids in Tunisia. The Óafßids and the Marìnids both made attempts to take on the caliphal and territorial legacy of the Almohads in its entirety, and for this reason there was rivalry and conflict between them. The Marìnid conquest of power also coincided with the demise of the Baghdad caliphate at the hands of the Mongols, whose leader Ìlkhàn Hùlàghù ordered the execution of the last 'Abbàsid caliph, al-Mu'taßim in 656/1258. The disappearance of the Baghdad caliphate was a significant development because it had constituted at times a pole of legitimacy for the Islamic West, and as such had been used by dynasties like that of the Almoravids. A whole set of factors, not all of which are covered in this chapter, thus contributed to the need for a renewal in the issue of legitimacy of power, as several historians have pointed out. For example, Mohammed Kably, in his splendid study of power, society and religion during the Marìnid period, argued that the “legitimising obsession” of the Marìnids derived from their lack of a religious preaching that might justify the violent conquest of power, and that this lack was compounded by the fact that the new governors were of Berber genealogy.1 Where was legitimate power to be found? How could it justify itself ? What sort of claims could it make? My main concern here is to examine the kind of religious elements the Marìnids used to legitimise their power and in this context to consider the gradual rise to pre-eminence of the crucial notion of sharìfism as well as the rise to social hegemony of the shurafà" themselves. The period between the 7th/13th century and the 9th/15th saw three major developments which were to be decisive in the political, religious and cultural history of Morocco, not only in that period itself but in the following two centuries. The first of these developments was the institutionalisation of Maghrebian sainthood within corporatised sufi orders (†à"ifa, plural †awà"if ) associated with the different “schools” or ways (†arìqa, plural †uruq) of achieving sainthood. The Almohad period had already seen the rise of powerful sufi †uruq and the emergence of a new religious sensibility based on the cult of saints, and this development was to acquire further significance in the Marìnid period.2 The second main development 1 M. Kably, Société, pouvoir et religion au Maroc à la fin du Moyen Âge (XIV e–XV e siècle), Paris, 1986, p. 66. 2 There is an extensive bibliography on this subject. See H. Ferhat, Le Maroc aux

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was related to this process of institutionalisation and it was the gradual consolidation of the idea that descent from the line of the Prophet Mu˙ammad was both a necessary and sufficient prerequisite for the exercise of religious and political authority. This idea was not entirely new either—we have already seen its emergence in earlier periods, when it was related to and reliant upon the growing cult of the figure of the Prophet Mu˙ammad—but it had not been a dominant notion in the Almoravid or Almohad periods. Despite the Idrìsid precedent and the fact that Ibn Tùmart had himself claimed Sharìfian lineage, descendants of the Prophet did not proliferate or acquire pre-eminent status until the 7th/13th century, and it was only after this period that sharìfism became a major issue. Both of these two developments, the corporatisation of sufism and the consolidation of sharìfism, were especially significant in rural areas of Morocco and the same can be said of the third major development in this period, which was the ongoing process of Arabization. This process had begun, as we have seen in the previous chapter, when the Almohad caliph Ya'qùb al-Manßùr transferred the Riyà˙ and Jusham clans of the Banù Hilàl tribes to settlements in the territories of Dukkàla in the Atlantic plains of Morocco. It was in that region that the pastoral Arab Banù Hilàl tribes, aided by later arrivals from the Banù Ma'qil groups, took part in the eventual destruction of the Almohad state: the Banu Sufyàn, a segment of the Banù Hilàl, led an uprising in 656/1258 in support of the Marìnids in the region of Tàza and were followed by other Arab tribes who had settled in the region of Tàmesnà. The Banù Ma'qil had been settling in southern Morocco since the early 7th/13th century and now took control of the mountain passes leading to the Sahara, thereby supervising the transSaharan caravan routes and making themselves a key element in the general balance of power. Once in power, the Banù Marìn were careful to promote marriage alliances with daughters of leading Arab tribal chiefs and even claimed their own Arab lineage, alleging descent from the tribe of Mu∂ar and inventing their own Sharìfian nasab. Arab modes and practices became part of the lives of the reigning family and court.

XII et XIII siècles, or Le Soufisme et les Zaouyas au Maghreb, Casablanca 2003; V. Cornell, Realm of the saint. Power and authority in Moroccan Sufism, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1998, Chap. V.

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At the same time, Marìnid efforts to definitively neutralise all Almohad ideology, as well as mahdism, led to their encouragement of other developments such as the social and political rise of the shurafà", with all that this was to imply for the future handling of messianic movements. I will deal with the rise of the shurafà" in the second part of this chapter. As well as lacking a legitimising family background, the Marìnids were faced with the difficulty of having to cope with a number of other forces coinciding with the processes I have just listed, and which were often determined by them. For instance, the Marìnids had somehow to handle the existing rivalries between the Màliki 'ulamà", the shurafà", the holy men of the sufi †uruq and the increasingly significant Arab tribes.3 The holy men had by this time taken over the prophetic model and had developed their own lines of genealogy. As we have already seen, they continually questioned the legitimising function of the fuqahà" and the 'ulamà". The latter for their part sought to defend those privileges which conferred upon them the role of interpreters of the Law, transmitters of knowledge, models and sources of social authority and, in the final instance, legitimising agents of those in power. Controversies thus arose between the 'ulamà", bearers of knowledge ('ilm), and the holy men, whose aim was to seek and achieve the Truth (˙aqìqa). The 'ulamà" also challenged charismatics or “exaggerated” mystics thanks to the premises of theology and of the Màlikite school which sanctioned the positions of specialists in divine Law as the sole intermediaries between the believer and God. Some of these scholars would argue that political rule was reserved for them as well. Faced with the need to control the elites of learned men and to invest themselves with authority in the eyes of those elites, the Marìnids promoted a new or renewed religious orthodoxy, mainly through the creation of centres of higher education for the 'ulamà", known as madrasa (plural madàris). Grammar, theology and law were taught at these new schools, which became responsible for educating the intellectual elites of the new regime. The main aim

3 M. Shatzmiller, “Les premiers Mérinides et le milieu religieux de Fès: l’introduction des médersas”, Studia Islamica 43 (1976) pp. 109–118 and “Islam de campagne et Islam de ville: le facteur religieux à l’avènement des Mérinides”, Studia Islamica 51 (1980) pp. 123–136.

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of these state-founded, state-financed schools was to prepare scholars and agents devoted to the cause of defending the sovereign legitimacy of the Marìnids.4 The renewed orthodoxy consisted above all in re-establishing the Màliki school of jurisprudence as the arbiter of judicial and social life. Màlikite milieus in Fez had initially expressed opposition to the new rulers, but the latter were eventually successful in neutralising this opposition and, after Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb, turning it into support for their regime.5 The decision to give several tribal groups lands in usufruct (iqta'àt) and the right to collect taxes in certain designated areas by the same tribal groups meant that the tax burden was extremely onerous from the very beginning of the period covered in this chapter. This burden was justified by invoking defence of the Dàr al-Islàm through an ongoing jihàd against the Christians of the Iberian peninsula, who by the early 13th century had conquered large areas of land previously in Muslim hands, including cities as important as Cordoba, Seville and Valencia. In short, from the earliest moment of the dynasty’s assumption of power, the Marìnids were faced with the challenge of justifying the legitimacy of their regime at the same time that they sought to dismantle memories of the Almohad caliphate. They had to define their own rule as different and therefore in reference or in opposition to Almohad ideology. On the one hand, the new order was founded on the jihàd and the practice of scrupulous piety; on the other, it systematically enhanced sharìfism, until then confined mainly to those sufi milieus which were associated with the Màlikites. The aim was to neutralise mahdism, as has been said, but also to combat any form whatsoever of subversive and anti-establishment mysticism.6 As we will see, the social and political relevance acquired by the shurafà" throughout the Marìnid period would in the end bring about the demise of the dynasty. In spite of all official measures, the cult of Ibn Tùmart, or belief in his figure, is known to have survived in many parts of the old Almohad empire. The cult seems to have lasted until the 8th/14th

M. Kably, Société, pouvoir et religion, p. 280 and ff. provides a more complex and nuanced vision than M. Shatzmiller, “Les premiers Mérinides et le milieu religieux de Fès”. 5 Kably, Société, pouvoir et réligion, p. 271; M. Shatzmiller, “Les premiers Mérinides et le milieu religieux de Fès”. 6 M. Kably, Société, pouvoir et réligion, p. 285. 4

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century, particularly in northern areas, as is shown by the proclamation of fatwàs referring to it in the Tàza region, recorded in the Mi'yàr of al-Wansharìsì. It is through the survival of these fatwàs that we know that the †à"ifa of the Jaznaya isolated itself from the community ( jamà'a), treating Muslims as non-believers and refusing to consume meat sacrificed by them. They also declared non-believers all those without faith in the Mahdì Ibn Tùmart, whom they regarded as superior to Abù Bakr and 'Umar. They also classed non-belief in the taw˙ìd as a lack of faith. Touching illicit women (al-ma˙àrim) invalidated ablution and any man who shaved was deemed by them a magus.7

Sufism The emerging phenomenon of institutionalised sufi orders, or brotherhoods, was far from being exclusively or mainly restricted to the Maghreb, and was an important development in the entire Islamic world between the late 12th century and the mid-13th. What had previously been groups of scattered disciples following individual spiritual masters for limited periods of time now started to become organised, institutionalised and hierarchical entities. Codes of conduct were created to regulate the incorporation of new aspirants and their behaviour. Disciples came to be governed by sets of rules and rituals, and the management of the orders evolved over time as they came to be headed by sons and genealogical descendants rather than the best or closest disciple as had previously been the case. Dynasties of holy men created holy lineages which were identified with sharìfism. The sufi brotherhoods had their physical centre around the grave of a holy man, generally the founder of the †arìqa. A cult of saints developed which designated dead human beings as the recipients of reverence and it linked these dead and invisible figures to precise visible places and to precise living representatives upon which it conferred enormous power.8 New forms of reverence orchestrated by new leaders, the shuyùkh of the brotherhoods, produced new forms

7 Al-Wansharìsì, Al-Mi'yàr al-mu'rib wa-l-jàmi' al-mughrib 'an fatàwà ahl Ifrìqiya wal-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib, ed. M. Hajji et al., Rabat, 1983, II, pp. 352–8 and 420–6. 8 P. Brown, The Cult of Saints, Chicago, 1981, p. 21.

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in the exercise of power and new bonds of human dependence based on those of master and disciple.9 The first corporate sufi orders had appeared in southern Iraq, an area of particular doctrinal fecundity in the century preceding the Mongol conquest. Iraq produced mystical orders which were to influence the whole of Islamdom.10 One of them, the Qàdiriyya, founded by the Óasanid sharìf 'Abd al-Qàdir al-Jìlànì (d. 561/1166), was particularly significant in the Islamic West. 'Abd al-Qàdir alJìlànì, or al-Jìlàlì as pronounced in Morocco, was the eponymous founder of an order which later branched out into several lines, the most extreme of which came close to deifying 'Abd al-Qàdir, regarding him as the Lord of Creation after God. Several descendants of 'Abd al-Qàdir lost their lives in the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols but two of his sons emigrated, firstly to al-Andalus and then to Fez, where they founded a branch of their father’s order. In the Maghreb, the movement claiming descent from 'Abd al-Qàdir was also known as Jìlàlìsm, with entire communities coming to be classified as Jìlàlà. In North Africa the Qàdirids brought pre-Islamic beliefs to their brand of mystical sufism in the form of cults of subterranean or occult powers of the kind which the Qur"àn places under the subjection of Solomon and which in the Maghreb were associated with primitive cults like those of sacred stones, caves etc. 'Abd al-Qàdir al-Jìlànì became the Lord of the Jinns, or genies. Also claiming descent from 'Abd al-Qàdir al-Jìlàlì were the Darqàwa, 'Ìsàwa, Hadàwa, Gnàwa . . .11 All of these groups were to incur the enmity of the 'ulamà" and the most moderate Moroccan sufis. The other great order to establish itself in the Maghreb at this time was the ˇarìqa Shàdhiliyya or “Shàdhilite way”, named after the Moroccan sharìf Abù l-Óasan 'Alì b. 'Abd al-Jabbàr al-Shàdhilì (d. 656/1258), a disciple of 'Abd al-Salàm Ibn Mashìsh, who had

9 A. Hammoudi, Master and Disciple. The cultural foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism, Chicago and London, 1997, 45 ff. 10 As well as the Qàdiriyya, the Rifà'iyya, founded by the Óasanid sharìf A˙mad al-Rifà'ì and the Suhrawardiyya, whose eponymous founder was Abù Najìb alSuhrawardì (d. 563/1168). See J.S. Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, Oxford, 1971. 11 E. Michaux-Bellaire, Le Gharb, chap. X. “La vie religieuse. Les marabouts, les zouia, les tribus maraboutiques”, Archives Marocaines XX, Paris, 1913, p. 235. H. Ferhat, Le Soufisme et les Zaouyas, p. 170.

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himself inherited the title of qu†b al-zamàn from the Egyptian sufi alUqßurì (d. 642/1244). Al-Shàdhilì was the most important and influential sufi in the Muslim West since Abù Madyan, whose mantle or “cloak” (al-khirqa al-Madyaniyya) he had inherited. The †arìqa was not specifically Moroccan, being spread by a wide network of zàwiyas from the Moroccan Atlantic as far afield as Iran. Al-Shàdhilì’s life and doctrines are known to us mainly through the hagiographical work on his successor, Abù l-'Abbàs al-Mursì, La†à"if al-minan, written by another leading figure in the Shàdhilìte †arìqa, Ibn 'A†à" Allàh, al-Shàdhilì’s successor in Egypt.12 Ibn 'A†à" Allàh was aware of his role as the wàrith, or heir to the founders of the order, and his La†à"if al-minan was to make a major contribution to the consolidation and expansion of the brotherhood. In his long introduction to his work, the author considers in detail the notions of sainthood (wilàya) and prophethood (nubuwwa). The saint is seen as the place where the epiphany (maΩhar) of the prophetic Light takes place, the mirror where the ˙aqìqa mu˙ammadiyya, or light of the Prophet, is reflected. Saints are described as the heirs of the prophets. The difference between the two groups is that the prophet is a man with a public vocation which he manifests publicly, whereas sainthood is secret (ghayb). God sometimes entrusts the wàlì with a mission so that he may call men to God. This investiture as dà'i has outward signs such as the jalàla, the majesty that inspires in believers the hayba or reverential fear which makes them submit to his preaching. Jalàla was the royal majesty which makes saints the true kings of the world. Another outward sign of the wàlì-dà'i was the splendour and moral beauty which inspired the love of his followers.13 These notions of fear and love were later to find their way into the political theology of the Marìnids. The main aim of Ibn 'A†à" Allàh’s La†à"if was to show that his two masters, al-Shàdhilì and al-Mursì, had achieved the dignity of qu†b al-zamàn. Al-Shàdhilì was a disciple of Ibn Mashìsh, an Idrìsid sharìf from the Rìf. He declared himself a sharìf and when passing through Tunis on his way to the East, was accused of being a Fà†imid by the qà∂ì Abù-l-Qàsim Ibn al-Barra. This qà∂ì even went so far

12 P. Nwyia, Ibn 'A†à" Allàh (m. 709/1309) et la naissance de la confrérie shadilite, Beirut, 1972, pp. 26 and ff.; Cornell, Realm of the saint, pp. 147 and ff. 13 P. Nwyia, Ibn 'A†à" Allàh, p. 28.

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as to send letters to Alexandria warning the authorities about alShàdhilì, whom he described as kàfir. In addition to this, when alMursì, travelling from al-Andalus, met al-Shàdhilì in Tunis, he was greeted by him with the words “My son, at last you have found the khalìfat al-zamàn” i.e. the spiritual caliph of our times.14 Such behaviour could only raise the suspicions of those in power. Another highly influential work on al-Shàdhilì was Durrat al-asràr by Ibn al-Íabbàgh. This work represents Maghrebi tradition, whereas the La†à"if was written as an apology for the Egyptian branch of the brotherhood. In the Maghrebi tradition, al-Shàdhilì appears as both a spiritual and a political leader and his Sharìfian lineage is always very strongly emphasised. In the Durrat al-asràr, al-Shàdhilì makes use of the fact that he descends from the Prophet to create his own aura of power and authority: al-Shàdhilì consistently refers to the Prophet, in whose honour he composes prayers, as his forebear ( jaddì ), and says that family proximity also gives him a special intimacy with God which is manifested through prophetic conversations (munàjàt). In one of the anecdotes recorded in the Durrat al-asràr, alShàdhilì’s right to exercise spiritual authority is confirmed by the oldest son of Ibn Mashìsh, who says to him, “Oh, 'Alì, you wished to ask the shaykh about the greatest name of God, yet it is not your affair to ask about the greatest name. It is rather your affair to be the greatest name of God.”15 Ibn al-Íabbàgh also relates that alShàdhilì established relations with the leaders of the Banù Hilàl living on the western edge of the Egyptian desert. To put his abilities to the test, the Arab shaykhs asked him to intercede on their behalf in a dispute over taxes they were compelled to pay to the sultan of Cairo. Naturally, al-Shàdhilì took the opportunity provided by this occasion to make a successful intervention in favour of the shaykhs proving by it the capacity of the sufi saint to be intermediary between men and human, temporal power as well as being intermediaries between men and God. Shàdhilite doctrines as they had developed in Egypt returned to the Maghreb through the mystic form al-Andalus Ibn 'Abbàd alRundì (d. 792/1390), who held the post of imàm at the Qarawiyyìn mosque of Fez and wrote the first commentary in the Maghreb on

14 15

P. Nwyia, Ibn 'A†à" Allàh, p. 30. Apud Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 149.

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the Kitàb al-˙ikam by Ibn 'A†à" Allàh, a work of great importance for the transmission of the teachings of the Alexandrian mystic. The Shàdhiliyya had a great appeal for many 'ulamà" and it brought about what might be described as a merger between those scholars and learned men who felt the attraction of sufism and the mystics who were disturbed by the excesses of some sufi brotherhoods. This is a very important development and means that the two ways (in theory antagonistic) of reaching Knowledge, the rationalist, erudite way on the one hand and the way which sought intimacy with God through initiation, inspirations and prayer, came to overlap. Sufism started to become a discipline which attracted the learned, and this included a number of high-ranking figures at court. Thus it was that some of the leading scholars of the age took an interest in sufism, such as Ibn Marzùq, Ibn al-Kha†ìb, Ibn Khaldùn, or others. Ibn Marzùq, author of Al-Musnad al-ßa˙ì˙ al-˙asan, a partly hagiographical work which was by turns a historical chronicle, biography and a “mirror of princes” dedicated to the sultan Abù l-Óasan, presents the Marìnid sultan as a true saint or holy man. The dynastic authorities used sanctification as an instrument of control and neutralisation—thus it was that sovereigns resorted to the protection of particular holy men, embellishing their graves and creating ziyàras, a sort of “canonization” by the dynasty of specific places and specific saints. The sultan himself would visit the great shrines and, like his subjects, pray by the tombs of illustrious saints. From the early 13th century onwards, the manifestation of divine power through priviledged individuals pervades with sacredness the whole territory of the Maghreb. Individual paths towards sainthood were gradually transformed into axes of attraction which began to configure a new map of veneration in which particular sanctuaries and graves were to create a web whose tendency was to unite the whole region of the Maghreb. A link was established between sainthood and specific geographical locations, and holy places were expected to be perpetuated by descendants of the saints concerned. In this way sacred lineages were created which came increasingly to vindicate their belonging to the Ahl al-Bayt. The zàwiyas founded their own dynasties. Saints became leading actors on the political stage, where they embodied the values of specific social groupings (peasants, urban artisans, outcasts or the impoverished). The cult of saints made plain the desire for concord and for the unsullied exercise of power, and were the source of a sense of community in rural areas

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outside urban life. Champions of the struggle against injustice, saints went beyond their purely religious role to make themselves mouthpieces of attitudes of rebellion against political power and against the strict supervision of orthodoxy by the 'ulamà".16 They embodied new forms of domination and submission, they had the capacity of punishing, of exersing violence both symbolic and physical. They penetrated in many aspects the field of political power. If on the one hand the period witnessed a growth of interest among the 'ulamà" in moderate sufism and their increased membership of certain brotherhoods, on the other hand it was also a time of intense controversy and denunciation of the excesses of sufism by scholars and legal advisers. After all, it should be remembered that the life and influential work of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) date from precisely this period. Ibn Taymiyya denounced all forms of bid'a, opposed the cult of saints and the visiting of their graves and condemned what he deemed unacceptable deviations in doctrine, ritual and morals. Ibn Taymiyya was in turn opposed by Ibn 'A†à" Allàh, among others.

Jihàd Sufism did not praise feats of arms and the sufis were not armed combatants. War-faring was not highly regarded by either saints or the authors of hagiographies, who rarely used the term shahìd or martyr in the corpus of their works.17 Despite all this, sufism became an important instrument for Marìnid sultans seeking to create a legitimising image of themselves as pious governors and champions of jihàd.18 “Holy Wars” had several advantages for the Marìnids, quite apart from the booty they brought. For one thing, they served to heal internal disputes between Arab and Berber tribes, and they also provided an outward image of power which could be used in the struggle against other dynasties. Above all, such activity could be

16 These conclusions are drawn from Halima Ferhat, Le Soufisme et les Zaouyas au Maghreb. 17 H. Ferhat, Le Soufisme et les Zaouyas au Maghreb, pp. 51 and ff. 18 M.A. Manzano Rodríguez, La intervención de los Benimerines en la Península Ibérica, Madrid, 1992.

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used as a propaganda instrument as a means of increasing the dynasty’s prestige among its own subjects. As leader of the Banù Marìn, Abù Khàlid Ma˙yù, the founder of the Marìnid dynasty, had already taken part in the battle of Alarcos in al-Andalus against Christian forces in 591/1195. But it was Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb, who came to the throne in 656/1258, who was the first Marìnid sovereign to devote himself wholeheartedly to jihàd. Right at the outset of Abù Yùsuf ’s reign, a momentous event occurred when Alfonso X of Castile attacked the port of Salé in 659/1260.19 Alfonso X’s intervention was actually the response to a call of assistance by Ya'qùb b. 'Abd Allàh, Abù Yùsuf ’s nephew, who was attempting to set up his own independent fiefdom in RabatSalé. However, Alfonso X, who was at the same time competing with other European candidates for the title of Holy German-Roman Emperor, took this opportunity to realise his plans for a Crusade in North Africa and sent a great force to take the city. Abù Yùsuf reconquered Salé very quickly but was unable to prevent many of its inhabitants from being taken captives by the Castilians. This episode permitted the Marìnids to integrate jihàd into their political discourse, which helped to support military intervention in al-Andalus, an action in which the Marìnid legitimist ideology on the one hand and economic and political interests on the other were equally served. During the next ten years of his reign, Abù Yùsuf crossed on five separate occasions to al-Andalus, where he led military campaigns as part of the jihàd against Christians and turned such campaigns into the basis of his propaganda. Marìnid sources insist on the sovereign’s dedication to the “effort in the way of God”, presenting him as a pious monarch who spent part of each night reciting the Qur"àn and praying assiduously. These same dynastic sources choose to ignore the fact that Abù Yùsuf at one time negotiated an alliance treaty with the Christians of Aragon in order to bring off his conquest of the city of Ceuta. The terms of the treaty involved Abù Yùsuf receiving Catalan ships and soldiers in exchange for an annual tribute and the promise to build a Christian church within the conquered city itself.

19 A. Huici, “La toma de Salé por la armada de Alfonso X”, Hespéris, 39 (1952) pp. 41–74.

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In 674/1276 Abù Yùsuf, as well as continuing the jihàd in alAndalus, ordered the construction of a new residence for his use, a entire palatine city on the outskirts of Fez which came to be known by the name of Fàs al-Jadìd or New Fez. For Abù Yùsuf, a successful waging of jihàd included his self-presentation as a brave Islamic prince and by building a capital specifically designed to accommodate his military and administrative elite, the sovereign was establishing his credentials as the true founder of a new dynasty. Such ambitions were underlined by his adoption of the title of amìr almuslimìn. Abù Yùsuf also married a sharìfa, Umm al-'Izz, who later became the first member of the Marìnid dynasty to be buried in the cemetery of Shalla on the outskirts of Rabat, where her husband and widower ordered a mosque to be built in her honour. Abù Yùsuf ’s marriage with a sharìfa is usually interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the Marìnid sultan to attract the shurafà" to his person and to enjoy some of their prestige and legitimising status. Such interpretations are supported by the fact that he named his and Umm al'Izz’s son Yùsuf as his successor on the night of the celebration of the mawlid in the year 671/1272.20 Abù Ya'qùb Yùsuf was the son of a sharìfa: his noble lineage made him especially deserving of the title of heir to the throne, and this point was brought home by his appointment as such on the mawlid, the feast of the Prophet, the ancestor of all shurafà". Abù Yùsuf ’s efforts to conquer Ceuta, taken together with the emphasis placed on the fact of his marriage with a sharìfa and the designation of their son on the day of the mawlid must be seen as deliberate attempts to win the population of Ceuta over to his cause. In this respect we should not lose sight of the importance of the shurafà" in the city of Ceuta, nor of the fact that it was in that city that the celebration of the mawlid had first taken place.

Celebration of the mawlid The introduction of an official celebration of the feast of the mawlid was a measure of the greatest importance in the general drive to

20

N. Kaptein, Muhammad’s Birthday Festival, Leiden, 1993, p. 102.

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promote and intensify the idea of Marìnid proximity to and protection of the family of the Prophet. This celebration was introduced during the reign of Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb (d. 685/1286), who used it to reinforce the importance of the designation of his son and heir. Abù Ya'qùb Yùsuf officially celebrated the mawlid in Fez from 691/1292 onwards, thereby strengthening his position with regard to the religious community of the city—shurafà", sufis and 'ulamà"— in addition to smoothing internal frictions between and within these groups. The mawlid then came to be celebrated officially throughout all the Moroccan territory, spreading the image of a pious sovereign regarded as especially devout towards the Prophet and respectful towards his descendants. Apart from these official celebrations, the mawlid was also celebrated in sufi circles and became widespread over all Morocco. The feast gained in solemnity during the reign of the sultan Abù l-Óasan (d. 749/1351) and is described in great detail in Ibn Marzùq’s Musnàd.21 The mawlid was celebrated in the sultan’s palace, where many kinds of food, sweetmeats, perfumes and sumptuous clothing had previously been prepared. Attending guests were announced in order of preference and placed in accordance with their rank, after which a banquet was served which also varied in content depending on the rank of each guest. After the meal, a tenth part of the Qur"àn was recited by readers especially trained for the occasion and congratulatory poems and elegies of the Prophet (mawlidiyyàt) were sung and recited, with special reference made in them to his performance of miracles. These poems also included praise for the ruling sovereign and on occasions references were made to important events that had taken place during the course of the year. The fuqarà" were given presents and food, especially candles and perfumes. The celebration lasted all night and after the early morning prayer (ßalàt al-ßub˙) another meal was served. The sultan offered gifts of clothing to the guests, again in accordance with their dignity and rank. It was in fact through the gifts and seating order of the guests that the sultan publicly determined hierarchical relations

21 Ibn Marzùq, Al-Musnad al-ßa˙ì˙ al-˙asan fì ma"àthir mawlànà Abì l-Óasan, ed. M.J. Viguera, Algiers, 1981, pp. 153–154; trans. M.J. Viguera, El Musnad. Hechos memorables de Abù al-Óasan, sultán de los Benimerines, Madrid, 1977, pp. 133–134. See also N. Kaptein, Mu˙ammad’s Birthday Festival, pp. 104–111.

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at his court, as well as demonstrating and confirming his political pre-eminence and power over them all. The order in which they appeared publicly was also the way to show their hierarchical preeminence in relation to the sultan. Closeness, service and gifts were the signs and the operators of power relations.22 The sultan Abù l-Óasan also celebrated the mawlid during the years when he was away from court, doing so in al-Andalus before the battle of Tarifa (741/1340) and in Ceuta as he prepared to do battle with Alfonso XI of Castile. The sultans who came after him— Abù 'Inàn, Abù Sàlim and Abù Fàris—continued to celebrate the feast with ever-growing splendour. The ceremony became a great mise en scène of the power, piety and legitimacy of the sultan, as well as being used as an instrument of political stability.

The construction of a political theology The fact that the Banù Marìn dynasty did not have a da'wa as the origin of its conquest of power does not mean that the Marìnids did not construct the legitimisation of their rule on religious foundations, building for themselves a sort of political theology. Before considering the historiography of the dynasty, I will examine some of the political ideas that can be identified in “allegorical” texts from this period which at first sight do not appear to deal with politics at all.23 From these texts, and from emblematic writings in epigraphs, and on banners and coins, a portrait emerges of a double-natured king who was both loved and feared, both humble and majestic, both merciful and punitive. In epigraphs and coinage,24 successive Marìnid sultans suppressed the Almohad profession of faith, and in particular the Quranic verse 16: 53, of which the Almohads had made such widespread usage. Marìnid coins by contrast carry Qur"àn 57:3 on the Apparent and Hidden God, Ωàhir/bà†in: huwa al-awwal wa-l-akhìr wa-l-bà†in wa-huwa bi-kull shay" 'àlim, “He is the first and the last, the

22

Hammoudi, Master and Disciple, p. 48. Ph. Buc, “Pouvoir royal et comentaire de la Bible (1150–1350)”, Annales, E.S.C. 44 (1989) pp. 691–713. 24 As studied by S. Gubert, “Pouvoir, sacré et pensée mystique: les écritures emblématiques Mérinides (VII/XIII–IX/XV siècles)”, Al-Qan†ara XVII (1996) pp. 291–427. 23

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Apparent and the Hidden One, the knower of all things”, a verse lying at the very heart of mystical thinking which constituted the most striking novelty in Marìnid epigraphy. This verse was highly prominent in Shàdhilìte literature, featuring in the work of the leading representative of the brotherhood in Morocco, Ibn 'Abbàd alRundì, as well as in the work he commented upon and publicised, the Óikam of Ibn 'A†à" Allàh. The new social and religious processes previously described required the creation of new political symbols which would bring together in the person of the sovereign emblems of the various concurrent forces. The Marìnid scheme rested on four dimensions of power ('ilm, knowledge, ma'rifa, gnosis, ˙ilm, forbearance and shawqa, coercive power), which corresponded to four kinds of figures from whom the sovereign needed support and which were the relevant points in his society: learned men ('ulamà"), saints (awliyà"), shurafà" and soldiers ( jund). The emblematic texts created a new political theology which associated with the sovereign personal qualities or marks making reference to those figures.25 It is particularly noticeable that during this period both vocabulary and metaphors of power are not the essence of a rigid political way of thinking but are instruments for the conceptualisation of society and thus a way of bringing influence to bear upon it. The terms met with here, taken from the religious lexis of sufism, had undergone a slow process of evolution and their flexibility allowed the same terms to be used for completely different ideological constructs. The Marìnids used terms which were clearly influenced by sufi thinking, such as those relating to divine grace (ni'ma) and divine sustenance (naßr). During the Marìnid period a new sovereign figure emerged, represented by a new title or appellation: mawlà. The governors of the dynasty, known as the amìr al-muslimìn, all carried the surname Mawlày or Muley. In fact, the term mawlà crystallizes a whole problematic: it was a name that was both new and at the same time banal, serving to designate both the master and the client, and reflecting the ambiguity of Marìnid power. It had already been used during Almohad period the under the form mawlàna, though never in a systematic manner, and only began to be used more generally from the 13th

25

Gubert, “Pouvoir, sacré et pensée mystique”.

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century on. Under the Marìnids its use was spread through coinage, banners and epigraphs. The term reached its peak under Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn (1310–1331). It was used before the name of the sovereign, after which came his royal titles al-màlik, al-sul†àn, amìr al-muslimìn. Historical chronicles describe sultans as 'abìd (devout), zàhid (ascetic), ßàli˙ (saintly), mujàhid (a combatant in holy war). Abù l-Óasan 'Alì (1331–1351), the most important of the dynasty’s sultans, apparently also considered adopting the title of caliph.26 He used that of amìr al-muslimìn, to which he added that of nàßir al-dìn, defender of religion, that of “caliph” only appearing in two inscriptions dating from the end of his reign. The Musnad describes him as an imàm like his illustrious namesake the imàm 'Alì, the Prophet’s son-in-law. Abù 'Inàn, Abù l-Óasan 'Alì’s son and successor, adopted the title of amìr al-muslimìn, which is found in all inscriptions relating to him, but which his successors seem to have renounced. One inscription from the al-Andalusiyyìn mosque in Fez shows that Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn III (801–823/1399–1420) also used this title. In Marìnid epigraphy, the term mawlà can also be used to designate God. When applied to a sovereign, the term therefore makes allusion to the double tie of patronage between the sovereign-servant of his master, mawlà or God, and that between the sovereign himself, mawlà, and his subjects. The term mawlà as applied to the Prophet also appears in several ˙adìths of shì'ite origin, accepted by al-Ghazàlì and used to legitimise Mu˙ammad’s designation of 'Alì as his successor.27 The Prophet had said to his followers from a height near the pond of Kumm, “Those of whom I was mawlà today have 'Alì as mawlà”. It was the term, also used by the dà'i Abù 'Abd Allàh to present the Fà†imid Mahdì to his followers: “mawlànà wamawlàkum”. The term mawlà can be seen here in both its social and spiritual aspect, and in this way it was interpreted by Ibn Khaldùn in his Muqaddima.28 'Alì occupies a special place in Marìnid historiography: several chroniclers of the period emphasize the fact that his sword, the sword of Idrìs II, was kept at the top of the minaret of Qarawiyyìn.29 Nobility (sharaf ) and prestige (˙asab) allowed the

26 M. Kably, Société, pouvoir et réligion, p. 137; H. Bassett and E. Lévi-Provençal, Chella, une nécropole mérinide, Paris, 1923, pp. 43–44. 27 S. Gubert, “Pouvoir, sacré et pensée mystique”, pp. 408–409. 28 Ibn Khaldùn, Muqaddima, trans. Monteil, I, pp. 268–271. 29 Al-Jaznà"ì, Zahrat al-às, trans. A. Bel, Algiers, 1923, p. 90.

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mawlà to establish bonds of clientage which replaced all other ethnic and genealogical considerations in favour of the dynasty (dawla). The honour of clients (mawàlì) was mixed with that of the patron through a bond known as wilàya: the bond of patronage muwàlàh was compared with the bond of friendship wilàya which in turn referred to sainthood, seen as nothing less than divine friendship. Marìnid titles express a double register of tension between submission and sovereignty, between assuming the burden of Divine Will (amr) and the exercise of royalty (mulk), which implied the employment of force. Royalty saw itself from what was also the double perspective of Ωàhir/bà†in, with the sovereign giving proof of internal spiritual qualities which allowed him to carry out his double relation of patronage (wilàya and muwàlàh) and the exterior management of force, shawqa, which characterised the exercise of power. Through his submission to God the sovereign obtained the grace (ni'ma) which conditioned divine support (naßr), which in turn transformed the exercise of coercive force into legitimate force in the service of the community and its welfare. Dynastic chroniclers emphasised the scrupulous piety and extreme devoutness of sultans, as well as their dedication to holy war. These chroniclers also initiated two propaganda movements which were centred around two themes which with time were to assume great importance—the re-writing of the history of the Idrìsids and the general exaltation of the city of Fez. Both of these developments, as well as the official celebration of the mawlid to which I have already referred, were related to the growing prestige of the shurafà", a process which the Marìnids encouraged in order to take advantage of its strength and boost support for their dynasty.

The shurafà" From the 8th/14th century onwards, the sharìfian argument was to be forcefully invoked in the exercise of power and in its legitimation. In the act of investiture of the sultans, in the homilies which accompanied Friday prayers, in the mawlid and other rituals which mark the Muslim year, the presence of the shurafà" provided an indispensible consecration. During the bay'a they were the first witnesses to be named. This prominence was far from being strictly ceremo-

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nial, since crucial affairs of state required their mediation. They enjoyed special privileges, among which were large landholdings given to them by decree of the sovereign and exemption from taxes. The social prestige of the shurafà" had been a factor since the times of the Islamic conquest and was related to the creation by the caliph 'Umar of the dìwàn al-jund, a register in which a committee of three genealogists had noted, tribe by tribe, the names of all those troops who had taken part in the Arab conquest and those who had then been sent with their families to take up residence at any of the garrisons of the provinces. The salary of those registered in the dìwàn al-jund depended on the services they had given to Islam and their degree of parentage with the Prophet.30 In later years, this aristocracy of the shurafà" gradually dissociated itself from its original military context. Thus by the time al-Mawardì (d. 450/1058) dedicated a chapter of his A˙kàm al-sul†àniyya, a very widely read work in the Maghreb, to the dìwàn al-jaysh, i.e. the military register, the aristocracy of the ashràf had already been institutionalised as a separate object of administration.31 In the Maghreb the shurafà" had a nàqib or mizwàr, i.e., a trustee or spokesman and head of the group entrusted with keeping a register of the true shurafà", who were exempt from taxes and granted various economic and social privileges. This register was designed to distinguish such privileged families from those with false genealogical pretensions. In this way, a kind of caste or blood aristocracy was created. Such genealogical rigour was combined with background ambiguity when it came to reconciling the value accorded to origins (ansàb) with the egalitarian, communal ideal of the umma. Such issues were discussed by many thinkers, among them Ibn Óazm (d. 456/1064), who sought to bring off a compromise between egalitarianism and recognition of the privileges conferred by a noble descent by referring to the ˙adìth which stated that in the eyes of God the most noble man was also the most pious man. This ˙adìth also said that God had shared men out into tribes and nations so that they might be able to recognise each other and Ibn Óazm claimed that this conferred a high dignity among the sciences of knowledge on the science of genealogy. 30 31

G.S. Colin, art. “Dìwàn”, “Muslim West” in EI 2. See ed. Fagnan, 1915, chaps. VIII and XVIII.

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The shurafà" began to play an important social and political role during the Almohad era. Indications of this include the fact that there was a cult of the figure of Idrìs I, which developed in conjunction with those processes that were to make sharìfism such a highly significant phenomenon, such as devotion towards the figure of the Prophet and the evolution of sufism, analysed in previous chapters. During the Marìnid period there was by contrast a growing cult of the figure of Idrìs II, which culminated in the discovery of his burial place in 841/1437 and coincided with the phenomenon of general glorification of the city of Fez. The changing image of Idrìs II and the growing cult of his figure together with the glorification of Fez itself were all closely linked to the dynasty’s political ideology. After the collapse of the Baghdad caliphate, the Marìnids recognised the authority of the Mamluks, self-proclaimed guardians of Islam once the sultan Baybars had defeated the Mongol protectors of the caliphate at 'Ayn Jalùt in 658/1260. Relations with Egypt improved and the reign of the sultan Abù Ya'qùb Yùsuf saw the first instance of what was to become an official, i.e. government-run and government-protected, pilgrimage to Mecca. It was through these pilgrimages that the Marìnids established relations with the shurafà" of Mecca. The son of the sharìf of Mecca, deposed by the Mamluks, was granted political asylum in Fez, leading the shurafà" of Mecca to declare themselves independent of the Mamluks and vassals of the Marìnids. These developments provided a great boost to the prestige of the Marìnids as protectors of the family of the Prophet. On the international stage, the shurafà" played an important role in Abù l-Óasan 'Alì’s policies because they legitimised his aspirations of extending his power over the Middle Maghreb and al-Andalus. They also conferred greater prestige at the national level. Several examples have survived of the preferential role given to the shurafà" at court, whether in general descriptions of the mawlid, where they appeared occupying the highest places in the hierarchy, or more specifically as on the occasion that the sultan invited the shurafà" to accompany him in the funeral cortege which followed his dead mother from Tlemcen to Shalla near Rabat.32 The shurafà" provided Abù

32 H. Beck, L’image d’Idrìs II, ses descendants de Fàs et la politique sharìfienne des sultans Marìnides (656–869/1258–1465), Leiden, 1989, p. 172.

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l-Óasan with the testimony he needed in the eyes of his subjects to exercise a legitimate right to the highest power. The sultan favoured one group of shurafà" in particular above all others—the Jù†iyyùn of Fez, whose nasab related them to the Idrìsids. Abù 'Inàn Fàris carried out a coup d’état against his own father Abù l-Óasan (749/1348). The main factor contributing to the success of this state coup was the support he received from the Óusaynite shurafà" of Ceuta, the Sabtiyyùn, a branch of the descendants of Abù ˇàhir.33 Descendants of Abù ˇàhir were more generally known as Íiqilliyyùn because they had emigrated to Sicily (and then to alAndalus) before settling in the Maghreb. The Sabtiyyùn were related to the 'Azafids, the governors of Ceuta who had introduced official celebration of the mawlid in the city. The fact that the sharìf Abù l-'Abbàs A˙mad was able to incite the people of Ceuta to rebel against the legitimate ruling sultan, Abù l-Óasan, in favour of his son, is an indication of the extent of his power over the local population. It is therefore not surprising that under Abù 'Inàn the shurafà" should figure as the leading elite at court, ever-present at ceremonies, processions, battles or visits to the tombs of the sultan’s forebears in the cemetery of Shalla. Furthermore, Abù 'Inàn behaved, his chronicler al-Numayrì tells us, “with his subjects like the Prophet . . . both in public and in private”.34 The pre-eminence of the shurafà" during this reign seems to have been so great that the sultan feared his own status was being questioned, rather than strengthened, by them. This was probably the reason why his secretary alMaqqarì was promoted after the following event took place: Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Maqqarì found himself one day in the majlis of the Marìnid sultan Abù 'Inàn when the mizwàr al-shurafà" entered the room. All those present stood up as a mark of respect, including the sultan himself, with the sole exception of al-Maqqarì. The mizwàr reproached al-Maqqarì for the lack of respect shown towards his ancestors and the noble sharìfian lineage, to which al-Maqqarì replied, “I bear within me my nobility, which is the knowledge which I impart and which no-one places in doubt. Yours is subject to caution, for who can guarantee its authenticity after seven hundred years? If we were

33 34

Beck, L’image d’Idrìs II, pp. 174 and ff. Kably, Société, pouvoir et réligion, 291.

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truly certain, we would have to depose this man”—pointing at the sultan—“and put you in his place.”35 This anecdote is significant in the light of arguments used by those who opposed the hegemonic nature of the political and economic elite which the shurafà" had by then become. Such opponents set 'ilm wa-'amal, science and good deeds, i.e. worth as measured by an individual’s merit, against the kind of worth which was due to exclusively genealogical merits.36 The anecdote also shows that, despite an apparent lack of respect, it was also accepted by all that if the shurafà" were true shurafà", it was to them that the sultanate, the leadership of the community belonged. And therefore, in spite of this opposition, the Idrìsid nasab succeeded in imposing itself during the Marìnid period as an indispensable element for the legitimacy of any spiritual and political power. Genealogical transmission came to condition authority in every sphere of activity. Even those areas which by definition did not in principle depend on genealogy, as the milieu of the 'ulamà", were unable to break completely free from such a dependency: the chains of transmission that are seen in the curricula of the 'ulamà" were also a form of genealogy—they were presented as a means of authentication through recorded and well-known descent. In Fez there were several concurrent groups of shurafà". The Jù†iyyùn or Banù 'Imràn, descendants of Idrìs II, played an important role in the life of the city and had had links with the sovereign Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb, who took members of the family with him on his many expeditions to al-Andalus to fight the jihàd.37 The baraka conferred on the sultan by their company on these campaigns was rewarded by the granting of certain privileges to the family. The Jù†iyyùn provided several sultans of the dynasty with secretaries and visirs, as well as occupying the post of naqìb al-shurafà" for so many years that they were able to turn it into a virtual family monopoly.

35

A˙mad Bàbà, Nayl al-ibtihàj, in the margins of Ibn Far˙ùn, Dìbàj, Beirut, [s.a.], p. 263. 36 M. García-Arenal, “Imposture et transmission génélogique: une contestation du sharifisme?” in Bonte, P., Conte, E., Dresch., Emirs et présidents. Figures de la parenté et du politique dans le monde arabe, Paris, 2001, pp. 111–136. 37 Beck, L’image d’Idrìs II, pp. 105 and ff.

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The re-writing of the history of the Idrìsids and the city of Fez The link between Fez and the shurafà" is seen very early in historical works, going back to the start of the 13th century. The anonymous author of Mafàkhir al-Barbar and Ibn 'Abd al-Óalìm in his Kitàb alansàb record ˙adìths which were later to be repeated extremely often and in which Fez becomes the last refuge of the Ahl al-Bayt and Islam. Both sources also recorded sayings of Fà†ima, the Prophet’s daughter, announcing that it would be in the city of Fez where her descendants found shelter from all persecution. But this link became more overwhelmingly significant in one of the first and most influential official chronicles of the Marìnid dynasty, Raw∂ al-qir†às by Ibn Abì Zar', probably written during the reign of Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn II (d. 732/1331).38 Ibn Abì Zar' praised the city of Fez at great length, describing it as the city of cities, inhabited by people of knowledge and religion and endowed with baraka by its founder Idrìs II. This baraka was symbolised by the fact that Idrìs II’s sword was kept at the top of a minaret in the mosque of Qarawiyyìn from the time the mosque had been built in 345/956. According to the Marìnid chronicler, the Prophet himself had prophesied that Fez would be a pious city, always in the way of Truth. In the Raw∂ al-qir†às, Ibn Abì Zar' clearly re-writes the history of the Idrìsids, whose story is stripped of all zaydite or shì'ite connotations, emphatically presenting them as belonging to the Ahl al-Bayt. In addition to stressing this factor and cleansing their history of all heterodox connotations, the text places Idrìs II and the city founded by him as very closely related to the strictest form of màlikism from earliest times. Whereas pre-Marìnid sources highlight Idrìs I’s role by attributing to him the foundation of at least one of the nuclei of the city of Fez, it is Idrìs II and the closeness of his links with Fez that constitute the central pillar of the Raw∂ al-qir†às: one cannot be considered without the other. Not only was his sword preserved there, but Idrìs II himself was buried in the city, in the mosque of the shurafà" built by him. The Qir†às was the first work to cite the theme of Idrìs’ sword, later the subject of so much literary embellishment as the sword inherited from 'Alì which would be recovered at the end of all Time. 38 Beck, L’image d’Idrìs II, pp. 54 and ff.; Shatzmiller, Historiographie mérinide, pp. 25–28.

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The new interpretation of Idrìsid history presented in the Qir†às can partly be explained as a consequence of the pro-sharìfian policies by which Marìnid sultans hoped to gain prestige and legitimise their government. But it is also related to the events (and alterations) surrounding the “miraculous appearance” of the body of Idrìs I in Walìlì in 718/1318, which proved that sharìfism could also be a two-edged weapon. This discovery produced such a frenzy of popular fervour that the sultan Abù Sa'ìd was forced to bring in the army to disperse the crowds which had gathered in the area.39 Faced with such a fervent cult of Idrìs I, and unable either to control or displace it, the solution of the Marìnids was to shift all symbolic emphasis towards Idrìs II and try to co-opt and capitalize on his figure. And so Idrìs II was linked to the city of Fez, now reinstated as the capital, in order to be able to control Idrìsid veneration and reinforce the centralisation of power in the city, where other measures in the same direction had already been carried out, such as the building of Fàs Jadìd, the introduction of the mawlid and the foundation of madrasas. To emphasise relations between Idrìs II, Fez and the descendants of Idrìs who still lived in the city, the Jù†iyyùn, the history of the Idrìsids needed to be re-written, and this was achieved through the sanctification of Idrìs II.40 At the same time, Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn was portrayed as the model incarnation of Idrìs II and his kingdom as corresponding to the ideal state of the age of the founding saint. Fez was thus portrayed as the centre of the whole Maghreb—the place where orthodox and Màlikite Islam had its roots and was propagated by the madrasas, the place where the shurafà", members of the ahl al-bayt, lived in the homes of their predecessors, receiving from the sovereign the honour which they deserved. Re-writing the history of the Idrìsids allowed the Marìnids to centralise the shurafà" in Fez and improve their control over them. At least for a time.

The discovery of Idrìs II’s grave in 841/1437 The city of Ceuta was captured by the Portuguese in 841/1415, and the impact of this defeat and the subsequent evacuation of the city’s 39 40

M. Kably, Société, pouvoir et réligion, p. 295. A. Sebti, Villes et figures du charisme, Rabat, 2003, pp. 83 and ff.

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Muslim inhabitants is comparable only to that which was caused at the end of the century by the conquest of Granada in Spain. The sense of disaster was exacerbated further in 1418, when Muslim troops failed in their attempt to overcome the Portuguese garrison which defended the city. Five years later, the sultan Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn III was assassinated by his vizier (wazìr), leading to an unstable period in which several viziers and governors carried on a struggle for power. The figure eventually arising from among them all as leader was a member of the Banù Wa††às family, a clan related to the Marìnids. This man was Abù Zakariyyà" Ya˙yà, who in 1437 defeated a Portuguese expedition attempting an assault on Tangier. Only a few months after this victory, Idrìs II’s burial place in Fez was miraculously discovered; among those present were Abù Zakariyyà" Ya˙yà himself, champion of the jihàd and protector of the shurafà", 'Abd Allàh al-'Abdùsì, muftì of Fez and the mizwàr al-shurafà" Abù l-Óasan 'Alì b. 'Imràn al-Jù†ì. The body of the saint was found to be perfectly preserved, God forbidding the earth to devour the bodies of prophets, martyrs and saints.41 The discovery of Idrìs II’s grave was an event of the greatest importance and has been interpreted in many different ways. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it has become a point of convergence for a number of different vectors.42 It has been explained as a part of the jihàd against the Portuguese, as an attempt by Wa††àsid viziers to reinforce their power, as an exaltation of the shurafà", or with reference to the rivalry between the shurafà" and the sufi brotherhoods. Kably has drawn attention to the policy of the Marìnid sultan Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn III (801–823/1399–1420), who had proclaimed measures aimed to restrict some of the shurafà"’s privileges. After the assassination of this sultan, inter-group rivalry increased, especially between the sufis and the shurafà".43 The discovery of Idrìs II’s grave and the creation of a zàwiya on the spot would have been useful as part of an attempt to counterbalance the influence of the zàwiyas in rural areas, and confer an added prestige on the governors of Fez. Fez became the greatest and most important zàwiya in

A. Sebti, Villes et figures du charisme, p. 83. All of these angles are carefully analysed in H. Beck, L’image d’Idrìs II. 43 M. Kably, “Musà˙ama fì ta"rìkh al-tam˙ìd li-Ωuhùr dawlat al-sa'diyyìn”, Majallat Kulliyat al-Àdàb wa-l-'Ulùm al-Insàniyya bi-Ribà†, 3–4 (1978) pp. 7–19, sp. 35–36. 41 42

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Morocco, its most important sacred locus, the ˙aram which conferred glory and legitimacy on its governors. Beck has in fact shown that the discovery was related to the rivalries that existed between different branches of the shurafà". Such rivalries, often exploited and even provoked by the Marìnid sultans, are seen by Beck as the main factor behind the discovery of the grave, which marked the definitive preeminence of one of these groups over all others, and marked also the birth of a cult. Whatever the interpretation, the discovery cannot be explained without the reference we have already made to the creation of a new image of Idrìs II by the Marìnid court historians. In Fez, the construction of the three most important buildings was attributed to Idrìs II: the mosque of the shurafà", the Dàr al-Qay†ùn palace and the marketplace of the Qaysàriyya, the heart of local trade together with the house where the descendants of Idrìs II lived beside the mosque. In time this was converted into a mausoleum which became the centre of the cult of the founder.44 In this way a symbolic centre was created casting its light over the entire Maghreb, in accordance with a historiography which promoted a blessed and luminous vision of Idrìs II’s reign. In that tradition, Idrìs II received the superlative titles of mystic pole (qu†b) and “sultan of the saints”, while Marìnid historians built their lives of the saint-king, with his virtues (manàqib) and prodigies (karàmàt) articulated in the sanctified king’s powers after his death, around four main themes: the foundation of the city, the sanctification of the founder, the building of a symbolic centre and the protection which shone out from that centre and from the founder’s own sanctuary. Idrìs II’s sanctuary became a ˙aràm or ˙urm, an inviolable asylum, a place of refuge, protection and intercession which sheltered the whole city and made it resemble Mecca in the times of the Prophet, a place between Heaven and Earth. Through its Idrìsid foundation and the building of its major points of reference by Idrìs II, Fez the immemorial city with a glorious past was also able to look ahead to a radiant future: one of piety and prosperity, of respect for the Law, adhesion to the Sunna, and doctrinal purity, but also one of earthly fecundity, business prosperity, concord and the absence of all sedition by virtue of the baraka dispensed upon it by its saint-king and founder. The history of the

44 G. Salmon, “Le culte de Moulay Idris et la mosquée des Chorfa à Fès”, Archives Marocaines III (1905) pp. 413–429.

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Idrìsids was to become, from the period of Marìnid historiography onwards, the inaugural story of Morocco, the Idrìsids being those by whom conversion to Islam was accomplished, and therefore the “fathers” of Islamic Maghreb, an origin which was both ancient, holy and sanctifying. After the dispersion of the sons of Idrìs II, defeated by the Zanàta chieftain Mùsà ibn Abì l-'Àfiya in the tenth century, each town and region of Morocco claimed as its founder one or another of the descendants of Idrìs linking them all together in a sacred geography marked by the holy characteristics of their respective founders. In this way Idrìs II came to acquire an eschatological role as the restorer of the Realm of Justice, and Fez, his city, became a sort of “Holy Centre of Future Times” or “City of Cities”, a sacred zone between heaven and earth.45 In 8th–9th/14th–15th century Moroccan sources, this glorified city of Fez entered the category of a “New Jerusalem”, the city of the founding and holy ancestors, potential restorers of the purity and justice of the earliest times. All messianic movements need their sacred spaces, and the Idrìsid city was turned into the model of the holy city, resembling both Jerusalem and Mecca as an actual city that was at the same time the symbol of the Muslim community and the earthly image of heaven.46 Muslim eschatology predicts an important role for Jerusalem: during the eschatological struggle preceding the End of Time, the faithful in the city would be besieged by forces of the Antichrist, the Dajjàl, who will be unable to enter the city and finally suffer a terrible defeat.47 Fez acquired this same eschatological dimension, in which hopes for the arrival of the Time of Justice coincided with the expectation of an Idrìsid restoration, and Fez the city where legitimate power began. The history of the Idrìsids after the death of Idrìs II was now couched in terms of dispersal, fragmentation and suffering as a result of the massacres perpetrated by the Zanàta leader Mùsà ibn Abì l-'Àfiya. In this respect, Ibn al-Sakkàk (d. 1415) opened an entire new genre with his important work Nuß˙ mulùk al-Islàm, which marked an essential change of direction in the fashioning of the ideology of

45

M. García-Arenal and E. Manzano, “Idrìsisme et villes idrìssides”. J. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, p. 243. 47 G.A. Wiegers, “Holy cities in the perspective of recent theoretical discussions in the science of religions”, A. Le Boulluec (ed.) A la recherche des villes saintes, Brepols, 2004, pp. 1–13. 46

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sharìfism:48 al-Sakkàk read Islamic history in the light of the fate of descendants of the Prophet under the various different dynasties. God avenged the shurafà" and it was the duty of sultans to protect them—such is the exordium which Ibn al-Sakkàk addressed to the Marìnids. In his view, the ahl al-bayt were endowed with certain intrinsic virtues and specific qualities. At the same time, in his work there is a move towards martyrology with clear shì'ite undertones, given that the shurafà" are presented as the martyrs of legitimacy. Ibn al-Sakkàk constructs a cautionary tale from the story of the persecuted Idrìsids, condemned to exodus, secrecy and dispersion, from which they were only redeemed by the Idrìsid “re-appearance” encouraged by the Marìnids. Other examples of exile also existed, such as that of the Qàdiriyyùn, who were forced to leave Iraq because of the Mongol invasion in which several members of the family lost their lives while Islam was threatened at the very cradle of its birth. The mass exodus from al-Andalus ahead of a new catastrophe, that of the conquest of Granada by the Christians, was to provide another example—in this case also, Fez was to become the exiles’ definitive home. The Íiqilliyyùn, another illustrious family of shurafà" already mentioned above, were also forced into exile from Iraq, first living in al-Andalus before settling in Fez. Persecution of the Idrìsids, Mongol invasion, the Christian conquest of Ceuta and of Granada—such were the trials which God inflicted on the ahl al-bayt as a sign that they were his chosen people. This martyrological model was not very different from that which can be found in the shì'ite genre of the Maqàtil al-ˇalabiyyìn. Such trials and martyrdom were both a sign and a source of baraka, of the fecundity and intercession appropriate to shurafà" families.49 Another clear indication of the link between genealogy and baraka can be seen in the dìwàn al-shurafà": as I have explained above, there existed a list or register of “certifiable” shurafà" who enjoyed certain privileges like exemption from taxes. The aim of this dìwàn was not only to register all true shurafà" but also to separate the true from the false, to defend true shurafà" from impostors. However, those shurafà"

48 H. Ferhat, “Cherifisme et enjeux du pouvoir au Maroc”, Oriente Moderno XVIII, 2 (1999) p. 474. 49 A. Sebti, “Cherifisme, symbole et histoire”, Oriente Moderno XVIII, 2 (1999) pp. 629–638.

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who found it difficult to demonstrate their affiliations through the necessary legal documents were given the opportunity to do so by carrying out prodigies (karàmàt) or recounting dreams which gave proof of their sanctity. Dreams were an accepted proof of sharìfism. The existence of these two modes of justification certified the equivalence of ansàb (genealogy) and manàqib (virtues, prodigies). The shurafà" invoked the karàmàt as a supplementary way of proving their authenticity and as indicators of the grace of which their lineage was the vehicle.50 The prodigious sign became a form of genealogical proof so that from the 15th century onwards, the awliyà" would resort to sharìfian genealogy to confirm their status as holy men. At the same time genealogical literature begins to acquire hagiographical undertones, authors going so far as to suggest that descendants of the Prophet can acquire his 'ißma. Thus, one of the best-known commentators, Ibn Shabì˙ì, claimed that the shurafà" were absolved of all their sins and forgiven for them from the moment of their birth. Indeed, their faults were no more than the appearance of sin, since God had purified them before they came into the world. There was no position equivalent or superior to that of a sharìf because such a man had not reached such a position by the acquisition of knowledge, piety or virtue, but was a living part of the Messenger from God. By the late 15th century, the merger between the two proofs and sources of sainthood, i.e. genealogical origins and the exercise of supernatural powers, had become a well-established fact. Baraka was transmitted from one generation to the next through lineage and all the great figures of Maghribian sufism from al-Shàdhilì to al-Jazùlì were to claim an Idrìsid nasab. In a double shift of the greatest significance, the founding saints acquired an Idrìsid lineage and the descendants of Idrìs joined the zàwiyas which thus came to play a vital role in the origins of future dynasties such as the Sa'dids. In the Sa'dids’ rise to power, zàwiya, Idrìsid lineage, sufi ideals under the persuasion of al-Jazùlì, mahdism, all joint vectors converge. They are the subject of my next chapter.

50 A. Sebti, Aristocracie citadine, pouvoir et discours savant au Maroc pré-colonial. Contribution à la relecture de la littérature généalogique fassie (XV e–début du XX e siècle), Ph.D. Thesis, Rabat, Université Mohammed V, 1984, p. 87, F. Rodriguez Mediano “Justice, crime et châtiment au Maroc au 16e siècle” Annales HSS, mai-juin (1996), 3, pp. 611–627.

CHAPTER NINE

THE RISE OF THE SA'DID DYNASTY The rise to power of the sharìf Mu˙ammad ibn 'Imràn al-Jù†ì The Sharìfian elite dominated the social and economic life of the city of Fez throughout the 9th/15th century. They exerted a similar hold over the field of politics which culminated in 869/1465, when a veritable coup d’état brought the Marìnid dynasty to its sudden end. In that year the mizwàr al-shurafà" Mu˙ammad b. 'Imràn al-Jù†ì overthrew the last Marìnid sultan, 'Abd al-Óaqq, ordered his execution and took power in the city and the region which depended on it.1 The success of this rebellion seems to have owed a great deal to the instigation and preaching of the kha†ìb of the Qarawiyyìn mosque, 'Abd al-'Azìz b. Mùsà al-Waryàghilì. Contemporary sources trace the uprising to 'Abd al-Óaqq al-Marìnì’s appointment of a Jew to the post of vizier, claiming that this vizier had failed to respect the traditional privileges of the shurafà" through his insistence that they be required to pay taxes. This and other deeds of a legendary character—the vizier was also alleged to have gone so far as to strike a sharìfa in a street of Fez—were employed by the sources to justify a rebellion against the sultan, a rebellion whose legality it was in fact very difficult to defend. The truth was that by the time of the rebellion of 869/1465 the sultan 'Abd al-Óaqq had already been confined for several years to his palace, deprived of all access to power by his vizier Ya˙yà alWa††àsì, son of the regent Abù Zakariyyà" al-Wa††àsì, who had led the successful expedition against the Portuguese troops that had attempted to capture Tangier in 1447. 'Abd al-Óaqq eventually managed to conspire with guards at the palace and have this vizier arrested and executed, gathering up again the reins of power. The 1 M. García-Arenal, “The revolution of Fàs in 869/1465 and the death of sultan 'Abd al-Óaqq al-Marìnì”, BSOAS 41 (1978) pp. 43–66.

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Wa††àsids fled to Aßìla, where the head of the family, Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh al-Wa††àsì, became the emblematic leader of a holy war against the Portuguese. By then, the Portuguese penetration in Morocco was becoming important: they were occupying and fortifying a chain of coastal posts and harbours on the Moroccan Atlantic coast from Ceuta to the Western Sahara. After occupying Ceuta in 1415, Portuguese troops had conquered al-Qaßr al-Íaghìr in 1458 and Anfà (Casablanca) shortly afterwards. Aßìla and Tangier were captured by Portugal in 1471. The rebellion of 869/1465 was in fact a veritable coup d’état carried out by the sharìfian family of the Jù†iyyùn. It led to the execution of the legal sultan 'Abd al-Óaqq, whose throat was cut like the lamb in the festival of the 'Ìd, and to the assumption of power by the mizwàr, to whom bay'a (allegiance) was sworn. Mu˙ammad b. 'Imràn al-Jù†ì reigned until 875/1471, when he was in turn overthrown by a member of the Banù Wa††às family and when the Jù†iyyùn were forced into exile. At the time the rebellion was taking place in Fez, two scholars from the city took the side of established authority by speaking out in favour of the Marìnid sultan and against the rebels. These men were Mu˙ammad al-Qawrì (d. 872/1468), muftì of Fez, and his disciple A˙mad Zarrùq (d. 899/1493), who was later to become a famous sufi master and founder of a †arìqa bearing his name. Zarrùq left the city shortly after al-Jù†ì’s rise to power, probably because of the stand he had made against him; before leaving, Zarrùq had refused to pray under the guidance of al-Waryàghilì, whom he described as a “rebel” ( ghandùr) and a “fraud” (mulà'ib). Al-Qawrì also refused to comply with the rebels when they tried to force him to proclaim a fatwà declaring their uprising against 'Abd al-Óaqq to have been a legitimate one. Both of these men, al-Qawrì and Zarrùq, together with their disciples, were to play important roles in subsequent events, as will be seen later in this chapter. Al-Waryàghilì was the disciple and replacement of 'Abd Allàh al'Abdùsì as kha†ìb of the Qarawiyyìn. Al-'Abdùsì had been with the mizwàr al-shurafà" Abù l-Óasan 'Alì b. 'Imràn al-Jù†ì, father of the instigator of the coup d’état, on the occasion of the discovery of the burial place of Idrìs II in 841/1437. The third protagonist of the famous “discovery”, Abù Zakariyyà" al-Wa††àsì, was the father of the vizier deposed and executed by 'Abd al-Óaqq. It therefore

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seems quite clear that there was a connection between the discovery and the subsequent rebellion. The shurafà" government of Fez did not last long. The Banù Wa††às regained power after just six years and remained the reigning dynasty until the mid-16th century. The rise of the shurafà" to political power would have to be undertaken by another family, the Banù Sa'd, who hailed from another region of the country, the Sùs. Their taking of power and the propaganda they employed under the sign of mahdism and the protection of the sufi brotherhood of the followers of alJazùlì, are the main concerns of this chapter.2 The Jazùliyya †arìqa Abù 'Abd Allàh Mu˙ammad ibn Sulaymàn al-Jazùlì is undoubtedly the most significant mystical religious figure of the Moroccan 15th century—the paradigm, in fact, of all politically active holy men. AlJazùlì was a Shàdhilite mystic, the founder of his own †arìqa and of an extremely popular brotherhood, which by the time of his death in 870/1465 had some 12,000 members. His movement was closely related to the rise of the Sa'did dynasty and the region of the Sùs, where most of his zàwiyas were located.3 As in the case of other reformers examined in this book, what we know about al-Jazùlì has been warped by legend, hagiography, and the recorded views of his opponents. Very few details of his life or writings have survived to our day, in spite of which he remains a highly influential figure: his Dalà"il al-khayràt, a book of prayers to the Prophet Mu˙ammad, has always been widely popular. Many of the traditions concerning aspects of al-Jazùlì’s life or preaching were recorded a long time after his death, in an ideological context of conflict between various models of authority very different to that which existed during the time of his life.4

2 This chapter draws on my article, M. García-Arenal, “Mahdì, Muràbi†, Sharìf: l’avènement de la dynastie sa'dienne”, Studia Islamica 70 (1990) pp. 77–114. 3 For detailed coverage of the figure and preaching of al-Jazùlì, see V. Cornell, Realm of the Saint. Power and authority in Moroccan Sufism, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1998, pp. 155 and ff. 4 In particular, the work of Mu˙ammad al-Fàsì, Mumti' al-asmà' fì akhbàr al-Jazùlì wa-l-Tabbà' wa-mà lahumà min al-a†bà', Fez, 1305/1887–8. French trans. of some fragments by A. Graulle, Archives Marocaines, 19 (1913) pp. 277–91, which I have

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As is indicated by his nisba, Mu˙ammad ibn Sulaymàn was a member of the Berber tribe of the Jazùla, already mentioned several times in previous chapters. The Jazùla lived during the 15th century in the coastal plains of the river Sùs, between Màssa and Dàr al-Murabi†ìn—both the tribe and the area itself were rich in messianic reformers. Al-Jazùlì, despite his Berber tribal origins, always claimed a sharìfian lineage which linked him to the Idrìsids and which became a fundamental element in his preaching. Al-Jazùlì studied fiqh at one of the madrasas of Fez and first became interested in sufism through one of the branches of the Shàdhìliyya. He seems to have taken part in the expedition sent to defend Tangier in 841/1437. He also carried out the indispensable journey to the East, and whilst in Egypt followed the teachings of the Egyptian branch of the Qàdiriyya. Both the Shàdhiliyya and the Qàdiriyya †arìqa had their doctrinal influences on his work.5 For al-Jazùlì, social activism was an inherent part of the essence of sufism, and in his 'Aqìda he calls upon his followers to watch over the moral standards of the community, commanding right and forbidding wrong. His attacks were aimed in particular at the Arab pastoral tribes who lived in and around the ribà† of Àfùghàl—he condemned their drunkenness, the way they tattooed their bodies and their generally evil habits, describing them as “madmen (majnùn) enemies of God, the Messenger and religion and enemies of those God-fearing souls who call people to him”.6 Al-Jazùlì proposed that these individuals be made to give up their nomadic lives and take up agriculture.Two generations later, during the era of the Sa'dids, his successor al-Ghazwànì expressed the same opinion about these nomads and devoted much of his own activity and that of his disciples to the recovery, irrigation and use of their farmland.7 One important element in the thinking of al-Jazùlì and his followers was the interpretation of spiritual authority as an emanation of sharìfian descent. The shaykh 'Abd al-'Azìz al-Tabbà' (d. 914/1508), al-Jazùlì’s successor as the head of the Jazùliyya, believed that the

used in writing this chapter. For this work and its context, see Cornell, Realm of the Saint, pp. 157–160. 5 Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 175. 6 Apud Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 234. 7 F. Rodríguez Mañas, “Charity and Deceit: the practice of the i†'àm al-†a'àm in Moroccan Sufism”, Studia Islamica 91 (2000) pp. 59–90, p. 81.

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shaykh who could prove direct descent from the Prophet Mu˙ammad was entitled by divine right to exercise spiritual authority over his followers.8 Hagiographic sources record some of al-Jazùlì’s own statements in this respect, such as the following: “Reputation is not won by one’s possessions or the tribe in which one is born. One is great by nobility of one’s origin: I am a sharìf, my ancestor is the Prophet of God, to whom I am closer than any other creature. My glory existed before Time, it is wrapped in silver and gold. Oh those of you who desire that silver and gold, whoever you may be, follow me!”9 The Mahdist references in such remarks are plain to see. According to one of the ˙adìths, especially in the version recorded by the Ía˙ì˙ of Muslim, the Prophet had said, “There will come in the end of my nation a khalìfa who will scatter wealth, not counting it.”10 But al-Jazùlì was even more explicit: “Assembly of the Muslims, do you not know that the Chosen One is at my side and that his authority (˙ukmuhu) lies now in my hands? Whoever follows me will be his follower, whoever does not follow me will not. The Prophet has said to me: “You are the Mahdì. Let whoever wants to save himself come unto you (man arada an yus'ada).” Assembly of the Muslims, become a part of the nation of the Chosen One . . . God has sent down to earth one who will guide you until the end of time.” Apocalyptic fervour was united with a call to the jihàd: “Our polity (dawla) is of those who make effort (mujtahidùn) and fight (mujàhidùn) in the way of God, a people of champions of the faith who struggle against the enemies of God.” And who exactly were these enemies? “He who refuses to follow me.” Al-Jazùlì obtained his wisdom directly from the very source of prophethood: “Write down what you hear from me for I am an intermediary between yourselves and the Truth.” The authority of the spiritual master of the Jazùliyya was absolute and the shaykh expected absolute obedience from his followers: “He who follows the example of his shaykh follows the example of his Lord. For the sacredness (˙urma) of the shaykh before his disciples is like the sacredness of the Prophet before his Companions.”11 8

Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 175. Al-Fàsì, Mumti' al-asmà', p. 279. 10 For further references to this magnificent khalìfa and his abundance of silver and gold, see J. Wensinck, Handbook of Early Muhammadan Tradition, Leiden, 1921, p. 100b. 11 Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 183. 9

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The same source from which I have quoted above also records that a few hours before al-Jazùlì’s death his disciples said to him, “Master, the people say that your power resembles that of the awaited Fà†imì.” The holy man replied, “The people do not believe any other than he who cuts their throats. May God give them a leader who will cut their throats.”12 Like all such emblematic anecdotes, this one is open to different readings. One interpretation of these words would be that al-Jazùlì was not prepared to be considered a Fà†imì—the least likely explanation, perhaps, given that he had declared himself a mahdì just a few pages earlier in the same source. Another possible reading is that al-Jazùlì was giving vent to a sense of disappointment with his followers, and thought that the people did not recognise the kind of true spiritual authority he represented so much as the exercise of force, the only language they could understand in the application of the Law of which he was the transmitter and interpreter. Another possible interpretation—that provided by the source itself—is that al-Jazùlì was making a prophecy concerning his own disciple al-Sayyàf, who later led a revolt which was to plunge the entire Sùs region into war for more than twenty years.

Al-Sayyàf 'Amr b. Sulaymàn al-Shaya∂mì al-Sayyàf was one of al-Jazùlì’s most devoted disciples, and was singled out for praise by him on several occasions.13 When al-Jazùlì died in 869/1465, allegedly poisoned by figures close to the Fez authorities, al-Sayyàf refused to allow his master to be buried and ordered him to be displayed on a catafalque. On the pretext of avenging al-Jazùlì’s death, al-Sayyàf organised a full-scale revolt against the authorities, calling on al-Jazùlì’s followers to join him, and fighting against those he considered unwilling or excessively lukewarm in their acceptance of his ideas. Al-Sayyàf gave himself the mission of restoring religion to its original purity by all means possible, including blood and fire. His first victims were those disciples closest to the deceased al-Jazùlì who did not accept

12

Al-Fàsì, Mumti' al-asmà', p. 12, Archives Marocaines, p. 285. Al-Fàsì, Mumti' al-asmà', p. 287; Muhammad al-'Arbì al-Fàsì, Mir'àt al-Ma˙àsin, Fez, 1324 H, p. 207. 13

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him in his role as the leader of a new messianic community. Those who did not accept his message and leadership were classified as apostates upon whom it became legitimate to declare war and claim their possessions as war booty. He called his followers murìdùn and described al-Jazùlì as the Moses of his own mission, i.e. as the prophet who had announced his Coming. His power and influence were so great that he held military sway over the entire Sùs region and was able to preserve it entirely independent of the ever-declining authority of the Wa††àsids of Fez. His victories were said to be due to alJazùlì’s corpse in his coffin, which accompanied him on all his military expeditions. This coffin could be seen at night, surrounded by torches and guarded by soldiers, and his followers would gather around it to do ribà†. Al-Sayyàf was eventually murdered by his own wives (amongst whom featured the widow and the daughter of al-Jazùlì) in 890/1485. When Leo Africanus travelled throughout the region in the second decade of the 16th century, he recorded the observation that al-Sayyàf ’s followers still kept a handful of forts there.14 A˙mad Zarrùq, a contemporary of al-Sayyàf, devoted some pages to him in his writings15 and was particularly harsh on him regarding his claim to possess the gift of prophecy. He included al-Sayyàf in his invectives against those figures who under the pretext of extreme religion had taken advantage of the gullibility of the people, dabbled in occult sciences and divination and, above all, made claims to be the Mahdì, the awaited Fà†imì. Such figures had all sought to become political leaders of their community and to replace the sultan. Although these false mahdìs or prophets called on the people to follow them, they were never able to revoke the bay'a they owed to their legitimate governors. In Zarrùq’s view, insurrection and secession were synonymous with apostasy and incredulity.16 Zarrùq’s criticisms were aimed in a more general way at followers of 'Abd al-'Azìz al-Tabbà', al-Jazùlì’s successor as leader of the Jazùliyya, and all those who supported the kind of political and social activism undertaken by this sufi brotherhood, whose shaykhs were seen as much more than spiritual or mystical masters.17 In his double

14 15 16 17

Leo Africanus, Description, I, pp. 81–81 and 96. Especially in Kunnàsh, ed. A. Kushaim, Tripoli (n.d.) pp. 26–27. A. Khushaim, Zarrùq the Sufi, Tripoli, 1976, pp. 200–202. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, pp. 230 and ff.

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role as imàm and ßàli˙, the Jazùlite shaykh symbolised every aspect of the Mu˙ammadan paradigm: he was both a transmitter and an interpreter of religion, a model of piety and a leader of his community. In the Jazùlite model of sainthood that was al-†arìqa alMu˙ammadiyya, the shaykhs found a way to articulate in one person the prophetic dimension in its religious, social and political versions. As possessors of the Mu˙ammadan inheritance, their interpretations of doctrine were divinely legitimated. A pure example of al-†arìqa al-Mu˙ammadiyya in its Jazùlite acceptance was the successor of al-Tabbà' as shaykh of the Jazùliyya, 'Abd Allàh al-Ghazwànì (d. 935/1528–9), a disciple of al-Tabbà', from whom he received his prophetic training (tarbiyya nabawiyya). Like his predecessor al-Jazùlì, al-Ghazwànì spoke of himself in elevated terms, allowing himself to be known as “Exemplar of Our Salvation” (qudwat sa'àdatina), “Possessor of solicitude and power” (dhù 'inàya wasal†ana), as also of “justice and authority” (dhù 'adl wa-˙ukm), “Symbol of Light” (àyat al-Nùr).18 Like al-Jazùlì, he was the receiver of divine messages (mukhà†abàt). Al-Ghazwànì claimed that he would embody the Imàmate of Justice (imàmat al-'adl) and said, “I am the sultan of this world and the next” and his disciples were taught to answer the question who was the sultan by replying “Sìdì 'Abd Allàh alGhazwànì.”19 Al-Ghazwànì was eventually arrested and imprisoned by the Wa††àsid sultan of Fez, Mu˙ammad al-Bur†uqàlì. This was another episode fitting perfectly into the topos of the confrontation between the holy man and the sultan, and was duly recorded in a legendary and exemplary fashion. When al-Ghazwànì was asked by his judge, “What is it that the people say of you?” an 'àlim, 'Abd al-Wàrith al-Yalßùtì, answered for him, “This man settled in a land of great evil, indeed it is one of the most evil of all. Then this man started to forbid people from doing evil. God has allowed him to guide whomever he wills and punishes those who reject him.”20 After being released, al-Ghazwànì moved to Marrakech in about 921/1515, and as he was leaving Fez took off his burnous and, pointing with his hand first towards Fez and then towards Marrakech, pronounced the words, “Come, sultanate, to Marrakech” (Ayyà yà sal†àna ilà

18 19 20

Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 249. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 248. Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 251.

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Marràkush)21 or, according to another version, “The power of the Marìnids departs from them at the same time that I do.”22 This statement was interpreted as a withdrawal by the holy man from the sphere of the Fez Wa††àsid’s dynastic power, in favour of the Sa'dids to whom al-Ghazwànì was to give his support. In Marrakech, al-Ghazwànì had to assert his authority over other shaykhs of the Jazùliyya who aspired to the honour of being appointed al-Jazùlì’s successors as leaders of the brotherhood, struggling in particular with one 'Abd al-Karìm al-Fallà˙. The shaykhs decided to choose the man who best exemplified the Prophetic Inheritance. Defending his own candidacy before an assembly of shaykhs, alGhazwànì said, “I am your sultan and the master of your silence (ßà˙ib saktikum); with me alone you are minted. He who stamps his own dinar or dirham will succeed; if not, he will not.”23 This had implications beyond the issue of al-Jazùlì’s successor in the field of political power. A disciple of al-Ghazwànì who served him in the last years of his life said that the first time he had seen the master, “There was a splendour and a radiance about him, as if I had seen a man with an enormous body. His complexion was as if he were made of light. When I looked at him I said, ‘He is he.’”24 The Jazùlite doctrine of al-†arìqa al-Mu˙ammadiyya was close to shì'ite models of authority, as was al-Ghazwànì’s concept of authority or holy leadership, siyàdat al-imàma, which took up the Muhammadan inheritance in its capacity to transmit and interpret the Law at the same time that it implemented its compliance. These ideas, reinforced by that of a holiness of blood, were to be used to their benefit by the sharìfs of the Banù Sa'd. The sharìf Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn, al-Qà"im bi-Amr illàh Shortly after the death of al-Sayyàf, in the final years of the 15th century, we find the first references in the sources to a sharìf from

Al-Fàsì, Mumti' al-asmà', p. 43; Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, French trans. A. Graulle, Archives Marocaines, 19, Paris, 1913, p. 97. 22 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì fì akhbàr mulùk al-qarn al-˙àdì, ed. and French trans. O. Houdas, Paris, 1889. Vol. I, Arabic text, vol. II, translation, p. 38. 23 Al-Fàsì, Mumti' al-asmà', pp. 44–45. 24 Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 251. 21

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the Sùs known as Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Zaydànì. The history of this man’s family is a mythical tale of the fecundity and baraka so often associated with a shurafà" family of Middle Eastern origin. The family originally came from the Óijàz region of the Arabian Peninsula, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn’s predecessors arriving in the Maghreb in the early 8th/14th century. Faced with a disturbing sequence of bad harvests, inhabitants of the Dar'a region had sent a delegation of its leading men to Arabia to locate a family of descendants of the Prophet who might wish to settle among them. This family and its dynasty came to be known by the name of the Banù Sa'd rather than the family nisba of al-Zaydànì because their rivals and successors in the Moroccan throne, the Alawite shurafà", alleged that their opponents’ sharìfian lineage was inauthentic. The family were held to descend from the family of the Prophet’s wet-nurse, the Banù Sa'd, and not directly from the Prophet’s own family. At first, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn was a modest faqìh, teaching the Qur"àn to young children (mu'allim kuttàb), but soon became noted for the zeal with which he “forbade wrong and commanded right”. He had knowledge of occult sciences and magical divination. He began to preach publicly and to place on display his two children, A˙mad al-A'raj and Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh (not to be confused with Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh al-Wa††àsì), talking of certain prodigious events which had surrounded their births and predicting that they would reign over all the earth and fill it with justice. Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn made his pilgrimage to Mecca and during his journey to the Middle East, like Ibn Tùmart, he was the cause of conflict with the authorities in some areas for his over-zealousness in commanding right and forbidding wrong as he travelled. He was expelled from several places in a series of anecdotes and prodigies similar to the ones atributed to Ibn Tùmart in the later Almohad sources and considered in Chapter 6. On his return he spread the news that in Mecca a holy man had forecast to him an extraordinary future for his two sons. Contemporary sources soon began to use the term mahdì in reference to him, and he placed behind his name the messianic appellative al-qà"im bi-amr illàh, as used by the Mahdì of the Fà†imìds.25

25

I am here summarising from my own M. García-Arenal, “Mahdì, Muràbi†,

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Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn did not limit himself to propagandising on behalf of his two sons, but also carried out a series of actions to assist them: in 1506 he sent them on their own pilgrimage to Mecca, from where they returned as famous muràbi†s (holy men living in ribà† or zàwiya) who were honoured by the people of the towns and villages through which they passed, who would come to kiss the hem of their clothing as they walked along absorbed in religious meditation. He also sent them to Fez in 1508, where they received instruction at a madrasa and acquired a solid religious and juridical education as disciples of some of the most highly renowned 'ulamà" of the day. They distinguished themselves in military campaigns in Tangier and Aßìla and frequented the zàwiya of Abù Mu˙ammad 'Abd al-Karìm al-Fallà˙ (d. between 931–940/1524–33), shaykh and pole of the Jazùliyya, khalìfa of 'Abd al-'Azìz al-Tabbà' (a rival of al-Ghazwànì, since they disputed the khilàfa of al-Tabbà') who had himself been the khalìfa of al-Jazùlì.26 In other words, the brothers A˙mad and Mu˙ammad managed to become close disciples of leading 'ulamà" of Fez, representatives and arbiters of legitimacy and orthodoxy, at the same time that they were members of the Jazùliyya and therefore intimately linked with the mahdist traditions of the Sùs. In this way they were able to acquire the religious qualifications of fiqh and baraka that they needed to build up a reputation. The brothers returned to the Sùs in 1512. By 1513 the Sa'dids had gathered together a group of followers who claimed that A˙mad, the older son, was “the awaited Fà†imì who the Master of the Law (ßà˙ib al-sharì'a) has promised will appear at the end of all Time.”27

The zàwiyas or sufi lodges of the Jazùliyya The support of the Jazùliyya was essential for the rise to power of the Banù Sa'd as was the strategic position of the zàwiyas of the brotherhood in the Sùs region.

Sharìf: l’avènement de la dynastie sa'dienne”, Studia Islamica 70 (1990) pp. 77–114— see for further references to sources. 26 Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, pp. 172–173. 27 Al-Jannàbì, Ta"rìkh, in E. Fagnan, Extraits inédits relatifs au Maghreb, Argel, 1924, p. 341.

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By the 16th century, the Sùs was virtually beyond the control of the Fez government and in a state of fragmentation or precarious balance between the different Berber tribal confederations. To make matters worse, the entire area suffered from the constant threat of attack by nomadic Bedouin tribes. Local holy men (awliyà") and the leaders of religious brotherhoods played a crucial role in the maintenance of the social equilibrium and a state of peace which was at least stable enough to permit local trade and the protection of the routes and centres of sub-Saharian commerce. The zàwiyas were important to their surrounding communities for a number of reasons. They were used as granaries where peasants could store their crops to keep them safe from predators, whether these were tax collectors or pillaging nomadic invaders.28 They also served as shelters (˙urma) for the lawless, who in practice were often seditious rebels against the political authorities. Their leaders were also called upon to arbitrate in tribal disputes, because their charismatic authority transcended tribal loyalties and commitments. Generally speaking, the zàwiyas represented their communities and had organised institutions to alleviate periodic problems like hunger and drought.29 During the first decade of the 16th century there were four important zàwiyas placed at strategic points along the trans-Saharian commercial routes: of the four, the one in Ma∂aghra, on the shores of the river Zìz in the Tàfilàlt, was the easternmost of them all, standing not far from the city of Sijilmàsa. Under the leadership of the shaykh 'Abd Allàh ibn 'Umar al-Ma∂aghrì (d. 932/1520) the zàwiya of Ma∂aghra had allied with the shurafà" of the Tàfilàlt, the family 'Alawì or Filàlì (from whom the present dynasty of Morocco is descended) to defend the sedentary peoples of the oases from the attacks of pastoral nomads. Al-Ma∂aghrì was a militant muràbi†, forbidding wrong and commanding right in an entirely inflexible manner.30 The zàwiya of Tàgmàdart was under the leadership of the sharìf Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Zaydànì (Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im) and was located in a valley of the Dar'a, near the present city of Zagora. Tàrùdànt and Tiyyiùt, in the vicinity of Tàgmàdart, belonged

28 F. Rodríguez Mañas, “Hombres santos y recaudadores de impuestos en el Occidente musulmán, siglos VI–VIII/XII–XIV”, Al-Qan†ara XII (1991) pp. 471–496. 29 F. Rodríguez Mañas, “Charity and Deceit”. 30 Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, p. 154.

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to the sharìf Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im (Tàrùdànt was to be his first capital.) The plains to the south of Tàrùdànt were occupied by Arabs who lived off their pastures and forced the city to pay a large amount of money for the right to use their farmlands and in exchange for protecting their caravans. Sugar cane was grown in Tiyyiùtì, although its plains were in the hands of the Arabs. Sìdì al-Óasan al-Tamlì al-Tiyyiùtì, the local holy figure, was the private tutor of the sharìf ’s two sons. Perhaps the most important zàwiya of all was that of Tidsì, to the south of the city of Tàrùdànt, and whose shaykh was Barakàt ibn Mu˙ammad al-Tidsì (d. 1511). Tidsì, where Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im was to find himself in 915/1510–11, was with its deputation of leaders of the Jazùla clans and the mediation of Sìdì Barakàt, a significant commercial enclave located in a farming area where sugar cane, one of the most commercially valuable crops of all in the early 16th century, was grown. Tidsì [like Tiyyiùt] was obliged to pay a heavy tax duty to the Arabs of the surrounding region for the protection of its caravans and the use of its lands. The most renowned sufi shaykh in southern Morocco at this time was Mu˙ammad ibn Mubàrak al-Aqqawì, head of a zàwiya in Aqqa, close to Màssa, who had instituted a truce making it possible to run an important trade fair in the area. The territory around Aqqa was in this period controlled by the Rehamna Arabs, one of the Ma'qil tribes. All of the shaykhs mentioned belonged to the Jazùliyya and were, as we have seen, located in strategic positions at the same time that they were surrounded by hostile Bedouin tribes. Jazùliyya support was manifested from the very beginning of the career of the sharìf Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn and his sons, and is represented in the hagiographic sources in a series of miraculous tales. For example, Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn once told the Jazùlite shaykh Mu˙ammad ibn al-Annabì of his desire to govern and of the ambitions he had conceived for his sons, complaining of his lack of economic means and of how little repercussion his activities had had among the people. The shaykh helped him in a miraculous way, turning into gold all the pieces of iron that Mu˙ammad was able to gather together.31 'Abd Allàh ibn 'Umar

31

Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, pp. 160 and ff.

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al-Ma∂aghrì, from Tàgmàdart, was master to the two brothers “and it was he who made them rise to power”.32 These hagiographic anecdotes contrast and complete the official history as recorded by the dynastic chroniclers. Al-Ifrànì, the most important of them, gives an interesting account of this rise to power.33 According to al-Ifrànì, the authority of the Banù Wa††às was completely non-existent in the Sùs and when the people of the region felt threatened by the activities of the Portuguese, who in 1513 set up a fort in Agadir known as Santa Cruz do Cabo Gue,34 they went to their patron, the Jazùlite saint Ibn al-Mubàrak in his zàwiya in Aqqa to explain to him their situation and swear obedience to him so that the saint would gather them under his command and unite them to face the enemy. Ibn al-Mubàrak refused to do this, but advised them to go to the sharìf with the two sons destined for great things, and to render homage to him.35 Another holy figure, Sìdì Barakàt al-Tidsì, of the zàwiya of Tidsì, also advised leaders of the tribes to speak to the sharìf when a group of them came to ask him to speak on their behalf in negotiations for the release of captives taken by Portuguese troops.36 The Sa'dian chronicler al-Ifrànì records both of these examples, placing them after a long discussion aimed to show that the sharìfian lineage of the Sa'dids was a true one and not false as had been alleged by their enemies. His conclusion is that these holy figures would not have recommended the Sa'dids to the tribal chiefs had they not been certain of their sharìfian status, since the leadership of a community could only be entrusted to a sharìf.37 The holy man in possession of authority designates the candidate who is to exercise power and this candidate in his turn legitimises his power through the authority of the holy man: a familiar pattern ever since the birth of the Almoravid dynasty, as we have already seen on many occasions: in post-Marìnid times this candidate must appear provided with a sacred lineage.

32 A˙mad Bàbà, Nayl al-ibtihàj, in the margins of Ibn Far˙ùn, Dìbàj, Beirut, [s.a.], p. 161; Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, p. 153. 33 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì fì akhbàr mulùk al-qarn al-˙àdì, ed. and French trans. O. Houdas, Paris, 1889. Vol. I, Arabic text, vol. II, translation, pp. 20–21. 34 R. Ricard, “L’occupation portugaise d’Agadir (1505–1541)”, Hespéris (1946) pp. 93–102. 35 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 21. 36 Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, pp. 193 and ff. 37 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 25.

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Sa'did preaching in favour of the jihàd justified and legitimised the dynasty’s rise to power and became a jihàd against the Portuguese:38 as under the Marìnids, the jihàd against the Christians became a key element in the dynasty’s legitimising ideology. The geographical location of the zàwiyas allows us to draw up a more complex picture if we also consider the tribal composition of the earliest supporters of the Sa'dids, the Ilalen and Jazùla who made up the troops of Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im and constituted the personal guard of his second son, Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh al-Mahdì. The zàwiyas I have mentioned were positioned at strategic points along the commercial routes from which the sedentary populations were able to defend themselves against attacks by the nomadic Arab tribes living on the plains. These Banù Ma'qil tribes were perfectly capable on occasions of devastating the region and taking control of the commercial routes. The same hagiographic sources which record accounts of the protection of the Sa'did brothers by local holy figures also carry abundant testimony of miraculous punishments for unbelieving, irreverent and threatening Arabs.39 Al-Ma∂aghrì, already mentioned, was one man capable of inflicting such punishments, but there was also 'Abd Allàh al-Qanùn of the zàwiya of Amizmiz, who protected the people of the land from Arab attacks.40 The sources record examples of holy men who preached the jihàd against the Arabs, or those like 'Abd Allàh al-Kùsh, a disciple of al-Jazùlì, who sought a martyr’s death by facing up to Arab assaults, or Abù 'Abd Allàh Mu˙ammad al-Zaytùnì, whose miraculous powers protected the caravans of pilgrims travelling to Mecca against attacks by Arabs.41 However, it was not only the hagiographic accounts that recorded events like these: Leo Africanus also described in great detail conflicts between the Berber sedentary with the Arab tribes of the Sùs, concentrating especially on the Jazùla struggle against those who fought them for their land and commercial routes—a struggle in which the Jazùla were clearly on the losing side until the emergence of the

38 Al-Ifrànì’s proposal is supported by V.J. Cornell, “Socioeconomic dimensions of Reconquista and Jihàd in Morocco: Portuguese Dukkàla and the Sa'did Sùs, 1450–1557”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1990) pp. 379–418. 39 M. García-Arenal, “En Marruecos: árabes, bereberes y hombres de religión”, Al-Qan†ara XI (1990) pp. 489–508. 40 Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, p. 189. 41 Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, pp. 126–128.

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Sa'dian shurafà". The Ma'qil were allies of the Portuguese in the coastal garrison towns and could count on the complicity or virtual support of the Fez sovereigns who had lost all control of the area. The struggle against these Arab forces could now, with the rise of the Sa'dids supported by Jazùlite shaykhs, be turned into a jihàd against both Arabs and Christians, as well as contesting the established dynastic power of Fez. Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im settled first in Aqqa and then in Tidsi. Finally, he made a significant move to Àfùghàl, where the zàwiya and burial place of al-Jazùlì was located, remaining there until his death in 923/1517. His son A˙mad received the bay'a at his death and later conquered Marrakech in 930/1524. When Wa††àsid troops tried to recover the city, A˙mad received the miraculous assistance of al-Ghazwànì himself, who came out from behind the city walls to aid the besiegers. Al-Ghazwànì received a bullet-wound in the chest, but the bullet failed to penetrate his body, turning soft on impact as if it were made of wax. Al-Ghazwànì then prophesied the end of the Banù Wa††às.42 Immediately after conquering Marrakech, the sharìf A˙mad alA'ràj ibn Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im ordered the mortal remains of his father and of al-Jazùlì to be transported to the new capital, and had them buried side by side. The link between the Jazùliyya and the Sa'dids was thus officially sealed. The founder of what was to be the new dynasty is therefore revealed as a militant muràbi† who made himself the inheritor of Jazùlism and used in his favour some of the main points of al-Jazùlì’s preaching: sharìfism, mahdism, jihàd. He was supported by the main shaykhs of the Jazùliyya, whose preaching had opened an ideological path and had also preceded him in the struggle of the Berber tribes to recover farmlands and the control of commercial routes. The Ma'qil Arabs were traditionally supported by the sultans of Fez and now became the main allies of the Portuguese in North Africa. Jihàd against the Arabs and their allies, militancy against the established order. Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh removed his older brother a few months after their conquest of Marrakech, and had him sent to Sijilmàsa.

42

Ibn 'Askar, Daw˙at al-nàshir, p. 97.

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He took power with the surname al-Mahdì and made widespread use in his propaganda and legitimising texts of Jazùliyya terminology, especially the term sa'àda, salvation, thoroughly in accordance with his surname al-Mahdì as used in the name Dàr al-sa'àda he gave to the royal palace he had built for him in Marrakech. The term sa'àda figures significantly in the writings and sayings attributed to al-Jazùlì, as was shown earlier, and as is seen in the saying “No one can be included in our polity unless he has already attained salvation (sa'àda)”. According to Cornell this dawlat al-sa'àda may have been the semantic equivalent of al-dawlat al-sa'diyya, meaning both “the Sa'did dynasty” and “the salvific state”: i.e. Cornell suggests that the appellation Banù Sa'd may not have been just an accusation launched a priori by their rivals to challenge their sharìfian pretensions, but their own contemporary name, based on the idea of the salvation that the dynasty was to bring to its subjects.43 The Sa'did attempt to establish an ideology of authority by divine right is illustrated very clearly by the example of Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh al-Mahdì (d. 964/1557), the first leader to unify the whole Moroccan territory under the power of his dynasty. The epitaph on his grave leaves no doubts concerning his aura of divine legitimisation, carrying verses such as “His death has eclipsed the sun of guidance and has clothed the seven spheres in darkness . . . through him was made manifest the house of the Imàm of Guidance and the Garden of the Mahdì.”44 However, neither the material interests of his first followers nor his supporting ideology were to be of much use beyond the southern regions. In the North, the region under the control of Fez which was only conquered after a long series of armed struggles, the dynasty would have to shift its ideology and propaganda towards the notions of sharìfism and jihàd against the Christians, creating an image of themselves as the new Almoravids, and impose themselves on another powerful group, the 'ulamà" of Fez. For if in the birth of Sa'did power there is a convergence of the holy lineage imposing its hegemony on a tribal grouping with its corresponding armed forces, the zàwiya with their charismatic influence in Fez were to clash with another kind of genealogical transmission. 43

Cornell, Realm of the Saint, p. 259. For the whole epitaph, see Gabriel-Rousseau, Le mausolée des princes sa'diens, pp. 32–34; G. Deverdun, Inscriptions arabes de Marrakech, Rabat, 1956, p. 83. 44

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The Sa'did conquest of Fez45 In a work from the mid-Sa'did period entitled Fawà"id, by alTamanartì, the author records the following quotations from La†à"if al-minan by Ibn 'A†à" Allàh: “He who does not have a continuous chain of masters . . . is like a found child, without father or origin” and “Attributing one disciple to another who is not his master is like attributing a child to another who is not his father. This parentage (that of the master and his disciple) is the truest.”46 This comparison between the transmission of knowledge and the transmission of genes brings us face to face with a dynastic tendency in the transmission of knowledge which, taken together with the already mentioned genealogical transmission of sainthood carries important implications and reveals the nature of the change which occurred in 16th-century Morocco. In the early 16th century, the character of the 'ulamà" of Fez was strongly marked by the characteristics of the system of transmission established during the Marìnid period as a product of the pedagogical framework of mosques and madrasas. This led to the development of a strong tradition of 'ulamà" in the city, who came to constitute what Jacques Berque described as the “Fez school”,47 the product as we have seen in the previous chapter of a directly proportionate impulse or encouragement from those in political power. Some of the main representatives of this school of 'ulamà" were now faced with the challenge of experiencing the takeover of their city by a new, alien, dynasty. Marrakech was conquered by A˙mad al-A'raj, the sharìf ’s first son, in 930/1524. This opened a period of armed struggle with the Wa††àsids of Fez for the northern territories which was to last for some thirty years. The Sa'dids conquered Fez for the first time in 956/1549, then lost control of it and finally re-conquered it definitively in 961/1554.48

45 See M. García-Arenal, “Société civile et pouvoir dynastique au Maroc: la résistance de Fès aux Sa’diens”, Annales, E.S.C., 4 (1990) pp. 1019–1042. 46 F.R. Mediano, “Los ulemas de Fez y la conquista de la ciudad por los Sa'díes”, Hespéris-Tamuda XXX (1992) pp. 21–28. 47 J. Berque, “Ville et université. Aperçu sur l’histoire de l’Ecole de Fès”, Revue Historique du droit français et étranger, 1949, pp. 64–116. 48 M. García-Arenal, “Saintété et pouvoir dynastique au Maroc: la résistance de Fès aux Sa’diens”, Annales, E.S.C. 4 (1990) pp. 1019–1042.

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I am not going to attempt a reconstruction here of the events which led to the double conquest of Fez.49 Instead I intend to concentrate on a clearly anti-Sa'did description and analysis of them in an anonymous contemporary chronicle.50 The anecdotes contained in this account, as well as the intervention of the different groups and the terms used against the Sa'dids are of interest because of what they reveal about the ideological debate and the reception by one sector of the 'ulamà" of Fez of Sa'did propaganda and ideology. During the winter of 949/1548, Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh spent several months besieging the city of Fez and was eventually on the verge of abandoning it because of the refusal of the leading 'ulamà" of the city to pledge to him the bay'a. On the contrary, the 'ulamà" encouraged the city to resist its besiegers. These 'ulamà" included 'Alì al-Óasan Óarzùz, 'Abd al-Wahhàb al-Zaqqàq and the most important of them all, 'Abd al-Wà˙id al-Wansharìsì, the great qà∂ì and muftì of the city. Years earlier, in 932/1536, al-Wansharìsì had been in charge of composing the bay'a of the Wa††àsìd sovereign of Fez A˙mad ben Mu˙ammad al-Marìnì al-Wa††àsì, and his signature had featured at the head of its list of subscribers. According to the contemporary sources, Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh knew that the city would not surrender to him until al-Wansharìsì had pledged him the bay'a, and that al-Wansharìsì had said there was no legal cause for revoking the bay'a pledged to A˙mad alWa††àsì. Al-Wansharìsì had answered Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh’s request by saying, “I have committed myself to be faithful to this sovereign [A˙mad al-Wa††àsì] and only a legal cause can free me from my commitment and that cause does not exist.”51 Al-Wansharìsì and alZaqqàq harangued the population of Fez, reminding them that their bay'a to A˙mad could not be broken in words that were very similar to those of A˙mad Zarrùq quoted at the beginning of this chapter: “Suppose, with all the catastrophes emerging from this belief, that the Fà†imì is at the gate of your city. How can you forget the pledge of allegiance (bay'a) to its ruler in your heart? You cannot

49

R. Le Tourneau, “Fès et la naissance du pouvoir sa’dien” Al-Andalus XVIII (1953), 271–293. I follow here my own M. García-Arenal, “Saintété et pouvoir dynastique”. 50 Chronique anonyme de la dynastie Saadienne, ed. G.S. Colin, Rabat, 1934, French trans. in E. Fagnan, Extraits inédits relatifs au Maghreb, Algiers, 1924. 51 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, 61/33.

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revolt against him because of this pledge.”52 Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh had addressed the people of the city as follows, “If the city capitulates, I will fill it with justice, but if I take it by force I will fill it with deaths.”53 To which al-Wansharìsì is said to have replied with verses in which he said “You lie! I swear it by the holy House, for you will not practise either good or justice, because God has not granted you merit or authority, for you are a pagan ( jàhil ) and a rebel (mu'ànid ) who cannot deceive anyone other than he who is ignorant.”54 Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh thus decided to pay a gang of delinquents to enter Fez and assassinate al-Wansharìsì while the qà∂ì, surrounded by his disciples, was teaching al-Bukhàrì in the Qarawiyyìn. Three days after this assassination, the city surrendered to al-Shaykh. After the Sa'dids had entered Fez, A˙mad al-Wa††àsì and the members of his immediate family were deported to Marrakech, where all of them lost their lives in prison. The people of the city of Fez sent them on their way with “tears of blood”.55 Only Abù Óassùn, an uncle of A˙mad al-Wa††àsì, managed to escape and later returned to re-conquer the city in 956/1549 with the aid of Turkish forces sent from Algiers. Zaqqàq, who by that time had been removed from his post as qà∂ì, urged the local population to welcome and obey Abù Óassùn as the legitimate heir to the throne of his forebears. Abù Óassùn permitted every licence of activity on “the peoples of the Sùs and the Jerawa”, whereas the following words were attributed to Zaqqàq: “Killing a sùsì is like killing a majùsì ” (a pagan). In 961/1554, Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh conquered Fez for a second and definitive time. This second conquest was followed by a ferocious process of repression in which 2,000 leading men, qà∂ìs and shaykhs were decapitated. One of the first to be called for execution was al-Zaqqàq. According to one contemporary source, the sultan said to him, “Donkey belly, why did you recognise Abù Óassùn and what is it that has prevented you from recognising me?” “My belly,” replied al-Zaqqàq, “is a belly of knowledge and good works ('ilm wa'amal ) whereas yours is a belly stuffed with usury and illicit gains (al˙aràm wa-l-ribàn wa-l-su˙t).”56 The sultan ordered him to be whipped,

52 53 54 55 56

Trans. of Khusaim, Zarrùq the Sufi, Tripoli, 1976, pp. 200–201. Chronique anonyme, p. 367. Chronique anonyme, p. 368. Chronique anonyme, p. 371. In a slightly different version Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh said to al-Zaqqàq: “You

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and while this punishment was carried out, al-Zaqqàq stood and recited the sùra of the Thunder against the Unbelievers (Qur"àn 13: 6): “They ask thee to hasten on the evil in preference to the good: yet have come to pass before them exemplary punishments”.57 AlZaqqàq was then decapitated, after prophesying that Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh would himself one day die in the same manner, as was indeed to occur several years later. 'Alì al-Óassàn Óarzùz, kha†ìb of Meknes, had earlier urged the population to resist the Sa'did leader from the pulpit: “He is not, I take heaven as my witness, either sharìf or sayyid, nor does he follow the path of justice. He contaminates and corrupts the earth, Allàh does not like disorder, . . . a heavy punishment is his in the Hereafter”, citing Qurà"n, 5:36. Óarzùz and his son later suffered exactly the same ordeal as al-Zaqqàq, Óarzùz attempting to encourage his son by reminding him that they were dying the deaths of martyrs and that they were following the example of the caliph 'Uthmàn, who had been assassinated by the shì'ites. This account from the anonymous anti-Sa'did chronicle reflects the essence of the position taken by the 'ulamà" of Fez with respect to the Sa'dids, portraying them as straightforward rebels and usurpers of power. The illegitimacy of their insurrection made them equivalent to unbelievers and pagans; it meant that they could be treated as non-Muslims whom it was legal to resist by force. But because of their mahdism and extreme jazùlism, they could also be portrayed as shì'ites, and this gave an added dimension to anti-Sa'did propaganda. The passage in which the anonymous chronicle relates alWansharìsì’s stand against Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh reproduces verbatim a passage from the work of the 11th-century historian al-Bakrì. AlBakrì’s geo-historical work, finished in 1086, had carried a chapter on the shì'ite dynasty of the Fà†imids which contained a passage describing how 'Abd Allàh al-Fà†imì had written a letter to the inhabitants of the Maghreb inviting them to recognise his authority as spiritual and temporal leader. In this passage, 'Abd Allàh alFà†imì, like Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh several centuries later, had promised the people salvation if they obeyed him, and a deserved death if

are nothing more than a sack (ziqq) of error and perdition (dalàl)” and Zaqqàq replied, “I am a sack of 'ilm and good guidance (hidàya)”. Al-Nàßirì, Kitàb al-Istiqßà lì-akhbàr duwal al-Maghrib al-Aqßà, ed. M. Al-Nàßirì and Y. Al-Nàßirì, Casablanca, 1954–56, V, p. 19. 57 Chronique anonyme, trans. 377, Arabic 22.

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they did not. Yùsuf ibn Íàli˙ had replied to this letter with verses written for him by a poet, later repeated by al-Wansharìsì, in which 'Abd Allàh al-Fà†imì was described as a deceitful, ignorant ( jàhil ) impostor (munàqif ).58 The author of the anonymous Sa'did chronicle inserted this passage from al-Bakrì, an extremely well-known and oft-quoted author in the work of several historians from the region, to underline parallels between the Sa'dids and their shì'ite Fà†imìd predecessors.59 Let us return now to the revolt of the shurafà" of Fez in 869/1465 with which I opened this chapter. In this case also an illustrious group of 'ulamà", defenders of the legality which they embodied, people of 'ilm wa-'amal, stood up to a number of “rebels” who in the view of the 'ulamà" were seeking to usurp legally established power, sanctioned by them, by virtue of their genealogical origins. It is striking to see that the terms used by the 'ulamà" to describe these earlier rebels are remarkably similar to those employed in the later anonymous chronicle: rebel (mu'ànid, gandùr) hypocrite (munàfiq), impostor (mulà'ib), ignorant ( jàhil ). If we consider the biographies of the 'ulamà" involved in the two revolts, clear chains of transmission and teaching can be observed relating the 'ulamà" of one generation to those of the next, and culminating in al-Qawrì and A˙mad Zarrùq.60 These 'ulamà", members of a coherent and solid grouping, related to each other through the genealogy of transmission, also monopolised from the late 15th century the posts of imàm and kha†ìb of the Qarawiyyìn mosque, and those of qà∂ì and muftì of the city. The prestige, the scope for influence and the amount of political and religious power conferred by these positions is clear. Most of these figures also belonged, moreover, to the Shàdhilite brotherhood, sharing a common brand of knowledge and interpretation of sufism: a moderate sufism which was far removed from the intellectual excesses of the †arìqas and closer to the science of ußùl al-fiqh. Fearful in their attitudes towards exaggeration and innovation, they were as mistrustful of extreme mystical manifestations as they were of sharìfism,

58

Al-Bakrì, Description de l’Afrique septentrionale, ed. and trans. by M.J. de Slane, Paris, 1965, p. 190, Arabic, p. 95. 59 M. García-Arenal, “Imposture et transmission généalogique: une contestation du sharifisme?” in P. Bonte, E. Conte, P. Dresch, Emirs et présidents. Figures de la parenté et du politique dans le monde arabe, Paris, 2001, pp. 111–136. 60 M. García-Arenal, “Société et pouvoir dynastique”, pp. 1029 and ff.

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which they regarded as tinged with mahdism and heterodoxy and as a challenge to their control over interpretation of the law, which permitted them to sanction political power and have a share in authority. Màlikite juridical authorities tended to regard secession and insurrection as forms of infidelity and even apostasy—thus the accusations of jàhil and majùs, infidels or pagans. Such people were thought of as rebels who could bring nothing other than chaos and corruption. However, in these struggles for power it is also possible to note the sense of threat felt by the inhabitants of cities faced with invading groups of rustic Sùs tribes from the very confines of the Maghreb—ignorant, uncivilised peoples whose all-conquering ruralism reduced the significance of those cities and of urban life in general. The spread of Jazùlism, a new form of sacrality, constituted a rural re-conquest of the cities.61 Ernst Gellner has proposed that the 'ulamà" were highly influential in determining the general nature of the society governed by an imàm, but that they were incapable of influencing the choice of this figure, since they were obliged to ratify any imàm who was able to impose himself through force of arms. Gellner insists that 'ulamà" verdicts on legitimacy were produced post eventum, and must therefore be seen as ratifying de facto authorities rather than passing judgement on them.62 But this was not true of Fez during the period examined in this chapter: the 'ulamà" were clear and determined in their judgements on the legitimacy of the shurafà" assumption of power before, during and after the revolt. The supernatural and charismatic power of the shurafà" required the recognition and approval of the 'ulamà", doctors of the law. But at the same time, the prestige of their lineage was such that the 'ulamà" supplied themselves with their own kind of lineage, that of the transmission of knowledge, another example of the many we have seen throughout this book, of the paradoxically close relationship between groups, movements or trends which appear to be radically opposed.

61 62

J. Berque, “Ville et université. Aperçu sur l’histoire de l’Ecole de Fès”, p. 85. E. Gellner, Muslim Society, Cambridge, 1981, p. 115.

CHAPTER TEN

AÓMAD AL-MANÍÙR AL-DHAHABÌ

The 25-year reign of the Moroccan sultan Mawlày Abù l-'Abbàs A˙mad ibn Mu˙ammad al-Manßùr bi-llàh al-Dhahabì (1578–1603), the “Victorious” and “Golden” ruler whose years of government marked the high-point of the Sa'did dynasty, achieved a quasi-sacred status in the work of contemporary historians.1 A group of court secretaries, poets and official chroniclers of the dynasty—al-Ifrànì, Ibn al-Qà∂ì, al-Fishtàlì, al-Tamaghrùtì2—devoted many pages to the lavish celebrations and great deeds of their sultan, as well as constructing and spreading a legitimising propaganda which sacralized the sovereign so far as to provide him with clearly messianic characteristics. This propaganda gives the reigning sultan an eschatological identity in order to justify the absoluteness of his power and his universalising imperial aspirations. A paradigm was designed by such writers which unites his claim to a legitimate right to universal dominance with spiritual authority based on a holy lineage. Eschatological arguments, those apocalyptic beliefs which so many mahdìs had previously used to rebel against established authorities, now come to be used in a conscious and strategic manner by those very authorities as a means of conjuring up the divinely inspired figure of the Universal Caliph who would reign during the eschatological Millennium.

The Battle of Wàdì-l-Makhàzin Abù l-'Abbàs A˙mad al-Manßùr, son of Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh, acceded to the Moroccan throne in 1578 as a result of the battle 1 M. García-Arenal, “Pouvoir sacré et mahdisme: A˙mad al-Manßùr al-Dhahabì”, Al-Qan†ara 17 (1996) pp. 453–71. 2 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì fì akhbàr mulùk al-qarn al-˙àdì, ed. and French trans. O. Houdas, Paris, 1889. Vol. I, Arabic text, vol. II, translation; Al-Fishtàlì, Manàhil al-ßafà", ed. A. Karim, Rabat, 1973; Al-Tamaghrùtì, En-nafhat el-miskiya fi-s-sifarat ettourkiya, Relation d’une embassade marocaine en Turquie, 1589–1590, French trans. by H. de Castries, Paris, 1929; Ibn al-Qà∂ì, Al-Muntaqà al-manßùr, ed. M. al-Razzuq, Rabat, 1986.

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usually known as that of Alcazarquivir, or Wàdì-l-Makhàzin, that of the “Three Kings”, which saw al-Manßùr fight alongside his older brother, the sultan 'Abd al-Malik, who had taken power two years earlier from his own nephew Mu˙ammad al-Mutawakkil. The battle was part of an attempt by al-Mutawakkil to recapture the throne with the aid of Portuguese forces led by the king of Portugal, Dom Sebastian. The three leading figures at this battle all lost their lives: 'Abd al-Malik was already seriously ill and died of cholera or plague, although there were also rumours of poisoning, Mu˙ammad alMutawakkil drowned in the river as he tried to flee, and Dom Sebastian was killed on the battlefield. A˙mad the Victorious’ accession to the throne was therefore a chance event to some extent, and the start of his reign was bolstered by a spectacular victory over the Portuguese which had a tremendous impact in Morocco and the whole of Europe. The origins of the battle lay in a dispute over the order of succession to the throne. Two principles of succession came into conflict: that which dictated that power be inherited by the oldest male member of the dynasty, and that which granted that right to the oldest son of the deceased ruler. After the death of Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh in 1557, his sons 'Abd al-Malik and A˙mad had fled to Algiers to escape from their older brother 'Abd Allàh al-Ghàlib bi-llàh (1557–1574), who was determined to eliminate all possible rivals. From Algiers, the two younger brothers travelled to Istanbul to place themselves under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Selim II, who promised them, as his vassals, his support as candidates to the Moroccan throne. The Sa'dian princes were part of the Ottoman armada which took the fortress and port of La Goleta in 1574, previously captured by Charles V of Spain. They were in Istanbul at the time of the Ottoman sultan Selim II’s death later in the same year 1574. Selim’s successor Muràd III withdrew all direct support for the young pretenders, but sent them back to Algiers with five frigates and instructions directed to the Turkish pasha in Algiers to provide them with military assistance. When 'Abd Allàh al-Ghàlib died in 1576 after naming as his successor his oldest son Mu˙ammad al-Mutawakkil, 'Abd al-Malik returned to Morocco and made a successful bid for power, fighting against his brother with the assistance of a Turkish army. AlMutawakkil fled to the Iberian peninsula, where he sought economic

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and military aid, firstly (without success) from the Spanish crown and then from the Portuguese. 'Abd al-Malik was a significant figure who during his brief reign carried out important reforms to the army and administration, which were changed along Turkish lines, and who also engaged in important diplomatic activity with several European countries.3 His brief reign opened a period, which continued under his brother and successor, of “Turkification” of Morocco, especially in the organisation of the makhzan and armed forces. Mu˙ammad al-Mutawakkil received little more than rejection or evasiveness during his time in Spain, but had a better reception in Portugal where the king, Dom Sebastian, saw in his dilemma the pretext for a large scale undertaking in Morocco which would go beyond the mere occupation of fortified coastal towns, the Portuguese policy until that moment. The young Portuguese king, unmarried and without children, educated in ideas and ideals which seem more medieval than fitting for the modern age, believed in the possibility of organising a Great Crusade capable of spreading the dominions of Christendom throughout Morocco. Despite the opposition of most of his noblemen and advisers, and in the face of the opinion of his uncle Philip II of Spain (who assisted him by sending some troop contingents, but avoided playing a fuller role in the adventure), Dom Sebastian made an immense effort to raise enough money, men, arms, ships, and mercenary troops to go to Morocco, and to this end he succeeded in mobilising the state coffers, an entire national army and much of the Portuguese nobility. The final result turned out to be a complete and utter disaster for Portugal, an unreserved catastrophe. The impact of Portugal’s defeat on the rest of Europe gave Morocco a new role in international politics, turning it into a nation to be taken into account. All the European nations sent ambassadors to Morocco with costly gifts, and Spain’s main enemies, especially England and the Dutch Republic, went to some lengths to become allies of the Moroccans. However, at the same time diplomatic relations with Philip II of Spain were also established, al-Manßùr expressing gratitude to the Spanish king for refusing to participate in Dom

3 M. García-Arenal, “Textos españoles sobre Marruecos en el siglo XVI. Fray Juan Bautista y su ‘Crónica de Muley Abdelmalech’”, Al-Qan†ara II (1981) pp. 167–191.

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Sebastian’s foreign venture. In general terms, al-Manßùr sought to take advantage of Philip II as a way of counterbalancing Turkish influence, the most pressing danger for Morocco at this time. Philip was after all the victor of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, which had closed the Western Mediterranean to the Turks. The Turks had been increasing their involvement and influence in Morocco since the final years of the Marìnid dynasty, whose last members had received Turkish aid in their struggles against the Sa'dids. Mu˙ammad alShaykh, the father of A˙mad, had been assassinated in 1557 by members of his own Turkish guard and his head had been put on display on the walls of Istanbul. The Ottomans had helped 'Abd alMalik to conquer the throne, albeit briefly, and were now interested in occupying the port of Larache; when al-Manßùr broke with the Porte by suspending his chains of vassalage and fealty, they started to search for a new candidate for the throne of Morocco, eventually hitting on 'Abd al-Malik’s young son, who had been left behind in Algiers throughout this period. Therefore, al-Manßùr’s policy from the very beginning was to play Spanish and Turkish forces against one another by allying himself first with one side and then the other in an effort to maintain a complex equilibrium which might keep them both at bay.4 In addition, Philip II held as hostages Mawlày al-Nàßir, a brother of Mu˙ammad al-Mutawakkil, and Mawlày alShaykh, his uncle. The uncle and nephew were obvious rivals to alManßùr and aspirants to the Moroccan throne who had fled to Spain to escape from the sultan in the hope of being given Spanish military aid, which, however, was never forthcoming. In other words, both Philip and the Sublime Porte held possible replacement candidates for the Moroccan throne in reserve as a way of strengthening their bargaining position in negotiations with al-Manßùr. War booty produced by the battle of Wàdì-l-Makhàzin, which included the huge number of Portuguese captives taken at the battle, among whom figured a large part of the Portuguese aristocracy, produced boundless riches as a result of the ransom payments which ended up in the sultan’s coffers and led to his being known as alDhahabì, “the golden one” or “he who has gold”. Many of the

4 M. García-Arenal, F. Rodríguez Mediano and R. El Hour, Cartas marruecas. Documentos de Marruecos en Archivos españoles (siglos XVI–XVII), Madrid, 2002, pp. 47 and ff.

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Portuguese aristocrats and gentry, for whom the very highest ransom sums were demanded, spent several years in Morocco while negotiations for their release were being carried out, and on occasions their relatively high status meant that they were able to make eyewitness observations of court events. Records of diplomatic relations with European countries taken together with Portuguese accounts of years spent in Morocco after the battle constitute an excellent source of documentary material with which to supplement the official Moroccan historians to whom I referred earlier. Of particular use is the work of a Portuguese nobleman, Antonio de Saldanha, who was present at the court of A˙mad al-Manßùr, for whom he felt great admiration, until the sultan’s death in 1603, and who wrote an excellent account of his reign which will be the source of much of the information presented in this chapter.5 Although there does not exist for Morocco at this time such detailed archive material as for Portugal, we do know that the preparations for the military campaign and the Portuguese disembarkment were the cause of tremendous anxiety in Morocco, of a sense of imminent and inevitable defeat and an atmosphere of general terror. Some of the hagiographic accounts reflect this terror, revealing that fear took such a hold of many inhabitants of Fez that they fled to the mountains around the city on hearing news of the imminent Portuguese landing in Larache. The subsequent Moroccan victory and the extraordinary, devastating defeat of the Portuguese, as unexpected as it was overwhelming, must have had a great impact on the side finding itself the sudden victor and this feat of arms invested the sole significant survivor of the battle, A˙mad al-Manßùr, with a series of heroic characteristics which were seen as a sign of the sort of divine election and support which could alone explain the victory. The battle was such a moment of rupture for Portugal, whose crown passed into the hands of Philip II—Portugal ceased to be an independent country for the next sixty years—with all its nobility and officials either dead or captive and an extraordinary number of young men missing in Morocco, that the Portuguese were unable to digest the defeat and its consequences and resorted in many cases to the belief that Dom Sebastian had not in fact lost his life and was in ghayba

5 Crónica de Almançor, sultão de Marrocos (1578–1603), ed. A. Dias Farinha, French trans. by Léon Bourdon, Lisbon, 1997.

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or Encoberto (Hidden), and would return as the Emperor at the end of all time to restore the glory of Portugal and its universal dominion by establishing the Fifth Empire announced by the biblical Book of Daniel.

The construction of an imperial ideology The battle of Wàdì-l-Makhàzin was thus in some sense such an incomprehensible event that it was impossible for either side to assimilate if it was not given an eschatological interpretation.6 Among the Moroccan historians, it was Ibn al-Qà∂ì and al-Fishtàlì who developed a version of the battle that made A˙mad deserving of his title al-Manßùr and which in their view was comparable to the ghazwa of Badr, that archetypal moment in the Prophet Mu˙ammad’s great exploit. In this version of events, 'Abd al-Malik, the leading Moroccan figure and one of the three kings who died in the battle, almost completely vanishes from view. These accounts pay him little or no attention, but it was in fact 'Abd al-Malik who had designed his country’s entire defence strategy, largely based on aid from the Turkish army, and it was 'Abd al-Malik who led the Moroccan troops until the final stages of the battle. However, Ibn al-Qà∂ì and al-Fishtàlì both focus far more on 'Abd al-Malik’s younger brother A˙mad, bringing in marvellous or miraculous elements where necessary to emphasise the extent of divine intervention in the course of his life—such intervention allegedly having manifested itself since his childhood through an infinite number of prodigies and predictions. Both authors make particular mention of the dreams of leading holy men in which the Prophet Mu˙ammad appeared to designate A˙mad as khalìfa. In one such dream recorded by the author alIfrànì, A˙mad appears as an oil lamp from which the Prophet himself causes a spark to fly.7 From the moment of the glorious battle itself, official descriptions dedicate whole chapters of their works to episodes of symbolic importance, focusing especially on the court ceremonies, festivities and rituals, which now reached unprecedented levels of complexity and significance. The celebrations and these

6 7

See L. Valensi, Fables de la mémoire. La glorieuse bataille des Trois Rois, Paris, 1992. Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 143.

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descriptions of them all formed part of a general strategy designed to promote the grandeur or even deification of the new sultan. Moroccan court relations with the European nations produced a wealth of correspondence from the Moroccan chancellery which leaves no doubt as to the status A˙mad accorded himself after adopting the title of caliph: these letters are all adorned with a beautiful a'lama or validating sign greatly resembling the Ottoman togra,8 and in them the sultan does not hesitate to present himself as imàm alManßùr bi-llàh, amìr al-mu"minìn ibn amìr al-mu"minìn ibn amìr al-mu"minìn, al-sharìf al-˙asanì,9 Caliph, son and grandson of caliphs. Despite the endeavours of official historians, backed by the chancellery, al-Manßùr’s claim to power was still of a doubtful legitimacy, as was pointed out by various alternative aspirants to the post already mentioned here such as the son or the brother of the sultan Mu˙ammad al-Mutawakkil, who had been forced to flee to Spain when their attempts at revolt failed, or the son of 'Abd al-Malik.10 A˙mad al-Manßùr pre-empted further rebellions against his authority by imprisoning all his nephews, the shurafà" of Marrakech, and ordering the eyes of all of them to be put out.11 Such details are omitted from all officially sponsored court chronicles. At the beginning of his reign, al-Manßùr introduced a series of far-reaching fiscal and economic measures designed to strengthen his country’s international standing, such as a revaluation of the currency and restrictions on the export of foreign currency coming into Morocco through trade and ransom deals. He also took steps to halt the import of foreign manufactured goods and promote their production within Morocco itself, bringing in Flemish, Dutch and Italian artisans and technicians to assist in this process by teaching native Moroccans their trades in specially-built workshops. Brand new neighbourhoods were built in Marrakech to house and protect these foreign workers and traders, al-Manßùr being particularly concerned to ensure that such visitors feel as safe and comfortable as possible during their trading activities. A whole series of measures was introduced to attract merchants, especially from Protestant countries in

8 H. de Castries, “Les signes de validation des Cherifs saadiens”, Hespéris I (1921) pp. 231–252. 9 E.g. in Cartas marruecas, p. 187. 10 Crónica de Almançor, sultão de Marrocos, pp. 66 and ff. 11 Crónica de Almançor, sultão de Marrocos, pp. 68–70.

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Northern Europe, where the Papal Bull forbidding the sale of gunpowder and weapons to Muslim countries had little or no effect. AlManßùr also set up gunpowder factories of his own, as well as foundries for the production of artillery pieces such as Morocco had been forced to import from abroad until his reign. He also undertook reforms of the armed forces and administration, and took steps to increase the cultivation of sugar cane, building refineries controlled by the makhzan. Not all of these measures were generally welcomed in Morocco. In 1583, two Jazùliyya shaykhs led a revolt against alManßùr from their zàwiyas in the Atlas mountains, complaining that the sugar refineries which the sultan was exploiting so successfully due to the contracts he had signed with Christian nations who bought the sugar had left the inhabitants of the region with little land left for their own farming purposes. Al-Manßùr immediately sent an army of 4,000 soldiers to crush the revolt: the two shaykhs were flayed alive and their skins, stuffed with straw, were later placed on public display in Marrakech.12 In 1590, A˙mad al-Manßùr sent a military expedition across the Saharan desert to conquer the Western Sùdàn, known also in contemporary sources as the “Country of the Negroes”. The Moroccan sovereign had been demanding taxes from the Sudanese king Askia Is˙àq II since 1586 for the salt mines of Tagaza, but the Sudanese continued to exercise control over the caravan traffic in slaves and gold dust. Such control was of great significance to the Moroccan makhzan, especially since the Ottomans were continuing to make advances into other sub-Saharan areas. Moroccan conquest of the Sùdàn also acquired a further symbolic significance to which I will make reference below. Al-Manßùr went to great lengths from the beginning of his reign to improve and embellish his capital city of Marrakech, and to provide it with grandiose constructions which, according to the sources, gave it a grandeur of a kind which had never been seen before. AlManßùr was greatly concerned to inform himself about the progress and characteristics of the palace Philip II was building for himself in El Escorial during these same years as a symbolic setting for his display of the power of the Spanish crown gathered around the

12

Crónica de Almançor, sultão de Marrocos, pp. 78–82.

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tombs of his dynastic predecessors.13 Emulating sentiments were also behind al-Manßùr’s decision to build funerary monuments to his forebears in imitation of the Mamlùk tombs which the sultan had visited in Cairo during his journey to Istanbul in the years of his exile.14 In 1592 he decided to undertake the building of a mosque which might compete with the heroic monuments of a previous age. In preparation for this task, al-Manßùr sent agents to take the measurements of the Qarawiyyìn mosque of Fez, the Zaytùna of Tunis and the Great Mosque of Istanbul (i.e. Santa Sophia). Foundations were laid for the grandiose building in the Jàma' al-Fnà of Marrakech, but the mosque was never completed: al-Manßùr’s sudden death and the subsequent war of succession between his sons made construction an impossible task. The news provided by Antonio de Saldanha, that al-Manßùr followed the planning and construction of the palace at El Escorial with such interest, is highly significant. Two fundamental events which had taken place in the late 15th century—the end of the Reconquista and the discovery of America, both in 1492—had led the Spanish monarchy to believe itself granted a special function of metaphysical origin, making it the nation chosen by God for the realisation of the very greatest political and spiritual undertakings. This near-simultaneous pair of achievements were both attributed to a divine providence which would bring with it the conversion of all humanity to the Christian faith and a re-establishment of the early church. One of Philip II’s most ostentatious titles was that of “King of Jerusalem”, implying the Spanish crown’s intention to rule over all holy places. Philip, the “new Solomon”, thought of El Escorial as representing the recovery and incorporation of the Hebrew monarchy of the Old Testament, and the building was planned in accordance with Biblical descriptions of the Temple of Solomon, regarded as a model of construction for Christians, as divinely revealed architecture inspired by God. It is impossible to know how much of this was known by A˙mad al-Manßùr and his informants, but he would undoubtedly have realised the general importance of El Escorial as a means of legitimising Philip’s hopes of a universal empire. 13 This according to Antonio de Saldanha, then living at the sultan’s court, in Crónica de Almançor, sultão de Marrocos, pp. 162 and ff. 14 G. Deverdun, Marrakech des origines à 1912, Rabat, 1959 and 1966, vol. I, pp. 404 and 592–593.

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Thus it was that A˙mad al-Manßùr built his own palace or rather, palatial complex of buildings, known as the Dàr al-Makhzan. Arabic sources emphasise in particular the construction and characteristics of the palace of al-Badì' (the “Incomparable”, one of the names of God) and the various celebrations which took place within it, especially the celebrations of the mawlid, exactly as they had been carried out by Mawlày A˙mad. There existed a clear link between court ceremonial and architecture: the sources dwell on the ceremonies and lavishness of the celebrations that took place, but also on the pomp and pageantry with which the sultan travelled and received visitors in audience. The palace of al-Badì' was eventually destroyed by Mawlày Ismà'ìl al-'Alawì, sultan of the dynasty which replaced that of the Sa'dids, but detailed descriptions of it have survived in the accounts of contemporary court chroniclers and European travellers, some of whom even included maps and drawings in their descriptions, one of the most important of which is conserved at none other than the palace of El Escorial.15 Within the vast complex of buildings of Dàr alMakhzan, the palace of al-Badì' was exclusively reserved for receptions and ceremonies. It was made up of a closed rectangular courtyard with two qubbas at each end, around a symmetrical riyà∂ built on two axes. In this garden divided into four sectors, with a pond in the centre which was used for breeding fish and was fed by channels bringing clear, fresh and ceaselessly flowing water down from the Atlas, the sultan had many varieties of highly fertile fruit trees and a great number of palm trees which were subjected to such successful grafting techniques that they began to yield prodigiously huge quantities of fruit after only five or six years.16 Descriptions of the garden reflect the passage in the Qur"àn (55: 46–78) on the Gardens of Paradise, which were also divided into four, served by streams and adorned by fruit trees of every variety. It was also a design of clearly divine inspiration, of architecture revealed or inspired directly

15 Jaques-Meunié, “Le grand Riad du Palais du Badì' selon le plan publié par Windus”, Hespéris 44 (1957) pp. 129–34; G. Aimes, “Le palais d’El-Bedi, à Marrakech et le mausolée des Chorfas Saadiens”, Archives Berbères 3 (1918) pp. 53–64; H. Koehler, “La Kasba saadienne de Marrakech d’après un plan manuscrit de 1585”, Hespéris 27 (1940) pp. 1–20. 16 For a description of the garden and its delicious fruit, see Crónica de Almançor, sultão de Marrocos, pp. 80–81.

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by God. The fruits of the garden of al-Badì', such as the miraculous dates which appeared even before the palm trees had reached a sufficient height, could not be transported to Spain because they rotted immediately—as fruits of Paradise, they clearly could not be enjoyed by infidels. The garden of al-Badì' was not of course the first garden designed along Quranic lines with a clearly legitimising intention. Amongst those who had carried out such projects in the past was the Cordoban caliph, the Umayyad 'Abd al-Ra˙màn III in his palace of Madìnat al-Zahrà", at a time of great rivalry for the caliphate with the Fà†imids.17 The qubba used for receptions was built on two levels, with an internal staircase connecting them both, so that the interior of the palace was conceived as a sort of monumental platform, a theatrical staging for the appearances of the Sharìf. The precise spot where the al-Badì' had been built was also full of significance, sited as it was within the Almohad qaßaba—another way for al-Manßùr to represent himself as an incarnation of the living past. Al-Ifrànì18 and al-Tamaghrùtì19 describe the palace and record the inscriptions it carried: “Al-Manßùr, Pole of the Caliphate, crown who sits on the forehead of his dynasty, he in whose name armies launch bullets which make men tremble in the heart of Iraq, an army which crosses a bridge.”20 Descriptions of al-Badì' are accompanied by descriptions of the fabulous celebrations with which al-Manßùr marked the mawlid, elaborate and solemn celebrations which were clearly intended to exalt the figure of the caliph rather than that of his forebear the Prophet Mu˙ammad, but at all events sought to emphasise the direct link between the former and the latter. The magnificence of the celebrations of the mawlid at al-Badì' in which all the classes and hierarchies of the realm participated in order of social importance, were evidently a thing of wonder to participants and spectators, including even the most influential groupings of them all, the shurafà", the qà∂ìs, holy men, visirs, “all of whom were able to imagine that they were in the gardens of Paradise”. Paradise itself was also organised in hierarchical terms. “Dressed in beautiful clothing which emphasised

17 M. Fierro, “Madìnat al-Zahrà", el Paraíso y los Fà†imíes”, Al-Qan†ara 25 (2004) pp. 299–327. 18 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, pp. 180 and ff. 19 Al-Tamaghrùtì, En-nafhat el-miskiya, pp. 186 and ff. 20 G. Deverdun, Marrakech des origines à 1912, Rabat, 1959, p. 329.

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even more his majestic and imposing appearance, the sultan sat in his usual place. He was contemplated with respect and admiration. His dazzling beauty struck all those present; men of the country and inhabitants of the city alike felt great pleasure as they looked upon him.”21 Al-Tamaghrùtì insists on more than three occasions on the idea that all those present believed themselves to be in Paradise. When describing the enormous amounts of food offered at these occasions, al-Tamaghrùtì explains that guests could eat as much as they wanted without fear of evil, as in Paradise. According to alIfrànì, one leading courtier exclaimed during the celebration, “If I knew, my Lord, that there were one who loved you more than I do, I would cease to consider myself as belonging to the community of Muslims”.22 Love for the sultan became identified with love for God. The festival of the breaking of the fast is also described in great detail by official chroniclers. For this event, the sultan appeared mounted on a white horse, himself dressed in white and surrounded by his guard, revealing himself half-saint half-warrior beneath the famous parasol already used by the Fà†imids and which symbolised closeness to God. Al-Tamaghrùtì writes that when the sultan presented himself in this way, he brought to mind a mountain of clemency and goodness, or a lion full of heroism and courage (asad, lion, was one of the appellatives of 'Alì) in a sea of generosity and forgiveness, or a full moon spreading the clarity of its light through the darkness of the night. Al-Tamaghrùtì uses the appellatives alsaffà˙, al-manßùr, al-rashìd, appellatives with strong messianic undertones23 harking back to the terms used by 'Abbàsid caliphs, thereby reinforcing once again the idea of continuity and the incorporation of a glorious past.24 Another recurring theme in descriptions of these

21 Al-Tamaghrùtì, En-nafhat el-miskiya, p. 89. Al-Tamaghrùtì includes in his works lengthy descriptions of the mawlid, as does that other court secretary al-Fishtàlì, Manàhil al-ßafà", ed. A. Karim, Rabat, 1973, pp. 237 and ff. The three texts are translated in the article by Yehosua Frenkel, “Mawlid al-nabì at the court of sultan A˙mad al-Manßùr al-Sa'dì”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 19 (1995) pp. 157–72. 22 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 10. 23 A ˙adìth from the 'Abbàsid period states “There will be from us the Saffà˙, the Manßùr and the Mahdì who will hand the caliphate to 'Ìsà b. Maryam”. Another reads, “I heard the messenger of God say “The Qà"im is from us, from us is the Manßùr, from us is the Saffà˙, from us is the Mahdì . . .” etc. See art. “Mahdì” in EI 2, p. 1233. 24 Al-Tamaghrùtì, En-nafhat el-miskiya, p. 89.

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festivities is that of the sultan’s generosity and the way in which he gave out gifts of gold and silver—such generosity is often compared to that of rain-bearing clouds.25 This theme also re-appears in the inscription on the marble fountain that al-Manßùr donated to the Qarawiyyìn mosque in Fez in 999/1588, where the sultan is described as a sea of generosity.26 Accounts of al-Manßùr’s generosity with gold and silver are reminiscent of the ˙adìth which reads, “At the end of my community there will be a caliph who will pour out the money without counting it.” As for the comparison of the sultan with a moon shedding light upon the darkness, it should be remembered that a similar light metaphor had appeared in the epitaph on the tombstone of al-Manßùr’s grandfather Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh.27 The kind of pomp associated with al-Manßùr’s official journeys, which became one of the essential rituals of Moroccan dynastic power from this reign on,28 was not only related to the official function of such journeys, in which taxes were collected from different areas within the sultan’s territory. It also served to express a way of exercising power and created a stage setting designed to meet the expectations of the sultan’s subjects. This setting made use of symbols communicating the idea of both dynastic and religious continuity with previous Islamic sovereigns and, above all, they suggested a true mimesis with the Prophet and his Companions. They were part of a continuous, unavoidable and unforgettable vindication of the blood relationship between the Prophet and al-Manßùr, for as was stated in the inscription on the mausoleum of al-Manßùr’s mother, “The Prophet of God has said: all genealogy is my lineage. Every son of woman has his father as agnate, except the sons of Fà†ima, who has me as father and as agnate.”29 When the caliph granted an audience, he would carry out such interviews hidden behind a sitr or veil. This practice had its 'Abbàsid and Fà†imid precedents,30 and symbolised the process of the caliph’s

25

Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 210 and al-Tamaghrùtì, p. 86 and p. 93. Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 261. 27 Gabriel-Rousseau, Le mausolée des princes, pp. 32–34; G. Deverdun, Inscriptions arabes, p. 83. 28 J. Dakhlia, “Dans la mouvance du prince: la symbolique du pouvoir itinérant au Maghreb”, Annales, ESC 43 (1988) pp. 735–760. 29 Gabriel-Rousseau, Le mausolée des princes, pp. 48–49. 30 M. Canard, “Le cérémonial fatimite et le cérémonial byzantin. Essai de com26

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evanescence, his final state being that of total disappearance, ghayba or hiding, a complete absence in order better to be always and everywhere present.31 The sitr signalled the unbridgeable gap between the caliph and the rest of humanity and his exceptional identity as khalìfat Allàh. That some 'ulamà" rejected these practices giving the caliph a semi-divine status is shown by reports of the interview between A˙mad Bàbà, the renowned Sudanese 'àlim who was captured and taken before al-Manßùr in his palace in Marrakech. Al-Manßùr received A˙mad Bàbà sitting behind the curtain which always separated him from the public whenever he granted audiences. On witnessing these preparations, A˙mad Bàbà said, “God, blessed and extolled, has declared in the Qur"àn that no human being can communicate with God if it is not through revealed Law or by staying hidden behind a veil: you imitate then the supreme Lord; but if you wish to speak with me, put aside the curtain and come toward me.” The ideology of legitimisation placed great emphasis on the special link between Mawlày A˙mad and the Prophet Mu˙ammad, as is shown in official accounts not only by the description of festivals and rituals, a theatre that conveyed meaning to its spectators, but in the pages devoted, for example, to listing the rebels crushed by al-Manßùr, turning the notion of fitna into a positive element in a history which enhances the sultan by allowing us to interpret him as reproducing the Prophet’s great exploits, for disorder was the Jàhiliyya’s domain and its defeat an essential part of the monarch’s legitimacy.32 Fitna or disorder was also a warning of the end of all Time, after which would come the awaited imàm. The sultan bases his claims on his sharìfian lineage and direct descent from the Prophet, in order to establish the holy nature of his power and attempt to unfold the extraordinary nature of direct divine sanction, and his apologists seek to present him as the renewer of religion (mujaddid).

paraison”, Bizantion 21 (1951) pp. 355–420; D. Sourdel, “Questions de cérémoniel abbaside”, Revue des Etudes Islamiques XXVIII (1960) pp. 148–171. 31 M. Barceló, “El Califa patente: el ceremonial omeya de Córdoba o la escenificación del poder”, in Estructuras y formas del poder en la historia. Actas de las Segundas Jornadas de Estudios Históricos (Salamanca, 1990), Salamanca, 1991, pp. 51–71, p. 52. 32 A. Sebti, “Présence des crises dans la chronique dynastique marocaine: entre la narration et les signes”, Cahiers d’Études Africaines 119, XXX–3 (1990) pp. 237–50, pp. 241–242.

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The Millennium and the conquest of Western Sùdàn As seen from Earth, the planets Saturn and Jupiter are aligned every 960 years, after travelling the entire course of the zodiac. This recurring astronomical phenomenon, known as the “great conjunction”, or the “auspicious conjunction” can of course be read as part of a sort of eschatological text announcing the end of an era or a cyclical renewal further manifested through signs and wonders, whether catastrophes like plague and drought, or the appearance of a prophet sent “with a proof of his divine mission”, or a “great and powerful king”.33 The famous astrologer Abù Ma'shar (d. 886) had produced a theory on the rise and fall of dynasties in accordance with the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn which led to the development of a number of apocalyptic movements. This astrologer was generally known in the Iberian peninsula as Abulmasar and had been translated into Latin there during the Middle Ages by Johannes Hispalensis. His texts were interpreted by 16th-century Muslims and Christians alike as announcing the arrival of the Anti-Christ at the time of the conjunction due to occur in 900/1582. This conjunction acquired particularly strong apocalyptic connotations for Muslims because of its close proximity to the Islamic millennium, the year 1000 of the Hijra, between October 1591 and October 1592: there seems to have been a widespread belief in both popular and learned circles that Islam would not last longer than 1000 years. Jalàl alDìn al-Suyù†ì (d. 911/1505)34 master of 'Abd al-Qàdir al-Shàdhilì, mentions this belief in his work, written in 898/1492 and entitled Kashf 'an mujàwaza l-umma ’l-alfa, which announced the appearance of a renewer (mujaddid al-dìn) for the beginning of the 10th century. Al-Suyù†ì evokes the apocalyptic fervour at the time of the close of the century, stating that this fervour was shared by both the learned and the ordinary people, who quoted ˙adìths to confirm their belief that history would end with the coming of the 10th century. Zayd al-Dìn al-'Iràqì (d. 806/1404) had recorded in his Al-Muqni' traditions concerning this renewer, according to which the Prophet had said that at the beginning of each new century God would send a 33 C. Geertz, “Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power” in Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology, New York, 1983. 34 Al-Sakhàwì, Al-Îaw" al-làmi' fì a'yàn al-qarn al-tàsi', ed. Maktabat al-Hayat, Beirut [n.d.], IV, pp. 65–70.

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man, a descendant of his family, who would explain matters of religion anew. Among the chroniclers of al-Manßùr’s reign, it is al-Ifrànì who developed furthest the theme of the “renewer of religion” as applied to the Sa'did monarch. Al-Ifrànì inserts in his chronicle the complete text of letters addressed to al-Manßùr by figures such as alQaßßàr, the qà∂ì al-Shà†ibì or the mufti of Marrakech, all of whom expound on the theme of the mujaddid, quoting ˙adìths about the renewer of religion, on how he would appear at the beginning of a century (al-Manßùr’s reign coincided exactly with the end of the Millennium), and how the signs of his coming would be his generosity and piety, the renewal of religion at his hand and the defeat of fitna and Infidelity. All of these characteristics point without a shadow of doubt to al-Manßùr.35 The qà∂ì al-Shàtibì goes further, claiming that al-Manßùr was the man to whom God had promised dominance over all the world, because of his resemblance to the Mahdì.36 Al-Ifrànì explains that the ˙adìth to which these noble figures were referring was that “at the beginning of each century God will send to his community a man who will renew things of religion”, and later in his text he returns to the eschatological nature, in his view unquestionable, of A˙mad al-Manßùr, describing the signs that foretold his arrival: “The entry of the sultan Abù l-'Abbàs’s troops in Sùdàn, the capture of the sultan Sokia in his palace at Kagu and the conquest of Timbuctu and its region had been some of the numerous foretelling signs of the imminent coming of al-imàm alfà†imì, al-mahdì. Equally, the plague which reigned during these years, the seditions and expensiveness of foodstuffs which still persists in some regions had been signs of the coming of the mahdì, and to this list must be added the conquest of Oran, which must be carried out by the mahdì or under his orders.”37 In the light of these texts it could be interpreted that the conquest of Western Sùdàn undertaken by al-Manßùr in 1599 was in fact part of an attempt by the sultan to have himself seen as the Emperor of the Last Times.38

35

Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 10 and 244. Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 244. 37 Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 307. 38 J.R. Willis, “Morocco and the Western Sudan: Fin de Siècle-Fin des Temps. Some aspects of Religion and Culture to 1600”, The Maghreb Review 14 (1989) pp. 91–93. 36

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All references to the mahdism of al-Manßùr appear in relation with his conquest of Sùdàn. The documents from the Moroccan chancellery quoted in al-Fishtàlì or Ibn al-Qà∂ì do not go so far as to use the word Mahdì but are based on an identification with the Prophet which according to both historians conferred upon al-Manßùr the right to inherit the Earth and to become a part of Mu˙ammad’s prophecy. Al-Fishtàlì speaks of A˙mad’s prophetic illumination using the word nùr, al-anwàr al-nabawiyya, or light, prophetic lights. A˙mad’s personal belongings, the gifts he sent, were often mentioned in conjunction with the qualifying term nabawì, as in the case of the expensive clothing he sent to the sultan of Bornu, described as al-thawb al-nabawì.39 The two chroniclers repeatedly describe A˙mad al-Manßùr’s power as khilàfa and imàma: hadhìhil-imàm al-karìma al-qudsiyya ala˙madiyya al-nabawiyya al-sharìfiyya,40 al-khilàfa al-nabawiyya, al-imàma al'alawiyya.41 The authors insist on A˙mad’s right to govern over all Muslims and to unify all the territories inhabited by the umma under his government, the only legitimate one possible: by the same token only those who accept al-Manßùr’s government can belong to the umma. Al-Tamaghrùtì is the author who writes most extensively on these themes, perhaps at least partly because apart from being a courtier and chronicler of al-Manßùr he was the Moroccan ambassador in Istanbul in 1589–90. In his account of this diplomatic mission, alTamaghrùtì includes a brief relation on the origins of the Ottomans42 which serves to introduce the notion that the monarchs of the Maghreb are superior to the former and the only ones possessed of a legitimate right to the caliphate, since unlike the Ottomans they are descendants of the Prophet and the imàma can only be legitimate when held by a member of the Quraysh. In al-Tamaghrùtì’s view, the Ottomans were to be categorised as al-mamàlik wa-l-mawàlì, those to whom God had entrusted the task of defending Muslims, but who had no right to the khilàfa. He believed that it was the sovereigns of the Maghreb (bilàdunà al-Maghrib) who should lead and

39

Al-Fishtàlì, Manàhil al-ßafà", p. 68. Al-Fishtàlì, Manàhil al-ßafà", p. 70. 41 Al-Fishtàlì, Manàhil al-ßafà", pp. 118, 123, 131, 133 etc.; Ibn al-Qà∂ì, Al-Muntaqà al-manßùr, pp. 367 and ff. 42 Al-Tamaghrùtì, Kitàb al-naf˙a al-miskiyya fi l-sifàra al-turkiyya, lithographic ed., Fez, [n.d.] pp. 147–148. 40

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govern all Muslims, not the Ottoman sultan. In support of this argument, al-Tamaghrùtì gives over several pages to citing from the Tadhkira of al-Qur†ubì, the compendium of traditions, legends and poems concerning the appearance of the mahdì in the Maghreb already cited, with particularly detailed attention paid to those relating to Màssa. Four pages of al-Tamaghrùtì’s account of his embassy in Turkey are devoted to recording traditions about the appearance of the mahdì, his physical characteristics, how he would belong to the Ahl al-bayt through Fà†ima, how he would fill the world with justice, conquer Rome, Jerusalem and Istanbul and so on.43 He then goes back to speaking of A˙mad al-Manßùr, who meets all the descriptions contained in the traditions he has just cited, including those of his physical appearance, and explains how it is the fact that he has just conquered Sùdàn which demonstrates that he has started to undertake his conquest of the whole world, where he will spread blessings, safety and fertility like the beneficent rain. His mahdist claims were clearly contrasted with those of the Ottomans, and related to the conquest of Sùdàn. Al-Tamaghrùtì is not the only author to do this. In the surviving chronicles in general, the messianic discourse is emphatic and clearly related to the conquest of Sùdàn. A few examples of this discourse will have to suffice. The conquest had been preceded by victories in the oasis of Tuwàt and Tìgùràrìn, as well as the sending to Marrakech of an embassy from the sultan of Bornu. Al-Fishtàlì describes this embassy, and how al-Manßùr invited the sultan of Bornu through this ambassador to recognise his authority and to be his vassal, which was the same as being the vassal of the Prophet, to whom every people in all countries should submit: he demonstrates with arguments taken from the Qur"àn revealed to his Ancestor and of prophetic traditions that the holy war which the sovereign of Bornu intended to undertake could not be compulsory for him, nor legitimate nor even bring him any merit unless it were done with the authorisation of the imàm of the community of Muslims and heir of the Prophecy. The ambassador from Bornu then asked a bay'a to be drawn up to which he could subscribe, and whose text,

43 Al-Tamaghrùtì, Kitàb al-naf˙a al-miskiyya, pp. 148–152. These pages are not included in the French translation by H. de Castries, and are only to be found in the Arabic edition published in Fez.

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dated 990/1582, was written by al-Fishtàlì himself and included in his chronicle,44 where A˙mad al-Manßùr is described as the Óasanid and 'Alawì imàm, commander of believers, descendant of God’s envoy, khalìfat Allàh on earth, to whom all creatures owe obedience, since all others who tried to exercise power without his authorisation would be heretics. A˙mad is the leader who brings back the heroic age of Prophecy, and he follows the example of the two 'Abbàsid imàms, al-Saffà˙ and al-Manßùr. Al-Fishtàlì’s rhyming prose is full of adorning symbolic images such as that of the sun that lights the way of salvation and tears apart the dark depths of ignorance, or the fount of goodness and generous and beneficent water that fertilises the rocky ground . . . In the early stages of the conquest of Sùdàn, there appeared those arguments which were capable of turning it into a fully legitimate enterprise: A˙mad al-Manßùr was the heir of the Prophet and of Prophecy, the only legitimate ruler for all Muslims. Those who did not obey him became heretics against whom it was permissible to fight. However, the conquest of Sunnite Sùdàn provoked the opposition of many Moroccan 'ulamà", who regarded it as an action with no legal grounds and without legitimate justification. In the letters sent out to various parts of the Moroccan realm to announce the news of al-Manßùr’s actions in Sùdàn, his court secretaries insisted that the dynasty had rightfully inherited the lands of the Prophet’s descendants as caliphs of Islam and guides to the community, with al-Manßùr portrayed as the Fà†imid and prophetic imàm (he is repeatedly described as al-nabawiyya, al-fà†imiyya, al-'alawiyya) who had added to his previous victories another which prefigured the unity of Islam. Such letters claim that no dynasty since Ancient Times had been so powerful nor so dominant over such far-off lands, all of which demonstrated God’s predilection for the dynasty.45 Apart from these letters, poems were also composed for the occasion, some of which have survived, such as this one by al-Fishtàlì reproduced by al-Nàßirì which contrasts the army of the triumphal day with that

44

Al-Fishtàlì, Manàhil al-ßafà", pp. 68–73. For the texts of the letters, see H. de Castries, “La conquête du Soudan par Moulay Ahmed el-Mansour”, Hespéris 3 (1923) pp. 483–488; E. Levi-Provençal, “Un document inédit sur l’expedition sa'dide au Soudan”, Arabica 2 (1955) pp. 89–96, p. 95. 45

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of the night, and the victory of the whiteness of the former over the blackness of the latter, in reference to the skin-colour of the Sudanese. The caliph’s banners had brought light to the dark horizon, his army resembling the column of dawn which pierces the darkness of night. This darkness had been riven by the sword of the new Dhù l-Faqàr (of A˙mad al-Manßùr) and the darkness of the night had been dissipated due to the prophetic halo which shone out from his forehead. The messianic commonplace of the dissipation of darkness is related here to the skin-colour of the defeated armies, turned into an image of evil and ignorance in a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, so characteristic of messianic propaganda. The name Dhù l-Faqàr as connected to al-Manßùr is a reference to the miraculous and legitimising fact that the sultan possessed the Prophet Mu˙ammad’s famous sword, passed on through 'Alì, and which was a sign of the Mahdì and symbol of the last days, al-yawm al-akhìra.46 This was alleged to be the sword brought back to the Maghreb by Idrìs and kept in the Qarawiyyìn—a religious emblem possessed and guarded by al-Manßùr which linked him with the holy past from which he derived his authority and legitimacy. The so-called Champion of the Faith and Universal Emperor, alManßùr seems to have believed his own propaganda and his own agenda: in 1596 he went so far as to send a group of diplomatic representatives to England through whom he held correspondence with Queen Elizabeth and asked for her assistance in planning a military conquest of Andalusia. When Elizabeth delayed her response to the proposed project, al-Manßùr suggested instead a joint AngloMoroccan attack on the Spanish America possesions, as an alternative way of undermining Philip II’s power.47 With the same aim of re-conquering al-Andalus for the Muslim faith, an action which according to the Tadhkira of al-Qur†ubì would one day be achieved by the awaited Mahdì, al-Manßùr wrote to renowned Egyptian 'ulamà" requesting them to direct prayers in Medina and Mecca asking God to help him defeat the Enemy of

46 D. Alexander, “Dhù" l-Faqàr and the legacy of the Prophet, Miràth Rasùl Allàh”, Gladius XIX (1999) pp. 157–187. 47 SIHM, Angleterre, II, pp. 206 and ff.; G. Pianel, “Le Maroc à la recherche d’une conquête: l’Espagne ou les Indes?”, Hespéris 40 (1953) pp. 511–521.

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Religion and lend him assistance to “conquer al-Andalus, make the vestiges of Faith come alive again in that country and resuscitate the vestiges of Islam”. In another letter written in very similar terms to the sharìf Abù l-Ma˙àsin Óasan, “sultan of Mecca and Medina”, alManßùr asks for the same spiritual assistance and support for this undertaking.48 Neither A˙mad al-Manßùr himself nor his secretaries and chroniclers actually use the term Mahdì as applicable to the name of the sovereign, but they do use a whole series of messianic symbols and metaphors which are clearly redolent of mahdism. His power is portrayed as holy and his legitimacy as deriving from an equally holy dynastic lineage. The traditions and ceremonies used by al-Manßùr emphasise the continuity of royal power and the strength of the affiliations linking the sovereign to an ancestral world which seems almost divine.49 It was, at all events, a very different discourse from the one used by the founders of the dynasty, who had defied the legitimacy of the establishment by reference to their charisma, their magical qualities and above all, the support for their claims which came from a brotherhood, that of the Jazùliyya, which had previously carried out an apocalyptic preaching. Mahdist characteristics were emphasised by reformers and rebels when they were struggling to overthrow those in power; in the case of al-Manßùr, such claims were only emphasised when he sought to overthrow another established power, a Sunnite Islamic power, that which ruled over the Western Sùdàn. But it was not only the conquest of Sùdàn that required for its justification the deployment of a messianic discourse. The political and symbolic rivalry of the Ottomans, who posed a constant threat to the Maghreb, was another reason for its use. Al-Manßùr was well aware of the Ottoman threat, after the period of his life when he had fled to Istanbul with his brother 'Abd al-Malik, and after seeing his own brother take power with the aid of a Turkish army. Rivalry with the Ottomans and fear of an intervention by them in

48 Al-Nàßirì, Kitàb al-Istiqßà, Archives Marocaines, vol. 40, pp. 216, 259 and ff., 267 and ff. 49 L. Heusch, “Le pouvoir et le sacré”, Annales du Centre d’Etudes des Réligions, Brussels, I (1962) p. 158.

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the Southern Sahara seem to have been the main reasons for the Moroccan conquest of 1591.50 I have just mentioned the letters sent by al-Manßùr to the shurafà" of Medina and Mecca informing them of his military plans and asking for their spiritual assistance and support. This move is more significant when considering that one of the most important titles held by the Ottoman sultan since the time of Selim I (1512–1520) had been that of khàdim al-˙aramayn al-sharìfayn, guardian and defender of the holy places. Such titles gave legitimacy and primacy to the Ottomans over and above any other Muslim ruler, giving them the power over the political and the holy which is the essence of the caliphate. Caliphal claims lay behind and legitimised the political activity and propaganda of the Ottomans in the Maghreb, and the Moroccan dynasty staked its own claims in opposition to these.51 The Moroccans were afraid that the Turks, who controlled Algiers, would also come to control the lands of the Western Sùdàn. The king of Bornu, Mai Idrìs, was on good terms with Istanbul and obtained from the Ottomans military aid to fight against his neighbours,52 which helps to explain the emphatic tone of the caliphal propaganda in the letters sent by al-Manßùr to which I have referred above and, more specifically his refusal to accept that Mai Idrìs could start any war without his permission. This also explains why it was al-Tamaghrùtì, in his account of his diplomatic mission to Turkey, who insisted so strongly on the indisputable right of the Moroccan dynasty to the caliphate and why it was that he uses such a battery of arguments concerning the Mahdì and his appearance in the Extreme West, in what is after all essentially an account of diplomatic dealings in Istanbul. But al-Tamaghrùtì found in the Ottoman court a new shared imperial culture transmitted by a corporate elite, a group of chroniclers and secretaries who gave the sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver or the Magnificent an almost sacral status, and the formulation of both a visual and a lit-

50 J.O. Hunwick, “Songhay, Bornu and Hausaland in the Sixteenth Century” in The Cambridge History of Africa, London, 1974. 51 A. El Moudden, “The Idea of the Caliphate between Moroccans and Ottomans: Political and Symbolical stakes in the 16th and 17th century Maghrib”, Studia Islamica 82 (1995) pp. 103–112. 52 El Moudden, “The Idea of the Caliphate between Moroccans and Ottomans”, p. 110.

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erary imperial iconography whose aim was the monopolisation of temporal and spiritual authority and the ideological legitimisation of that monopoly. This elite was to find in messianism the ultimate coalescence and apparent reconciliation of competing and conflicting intellectual, social and political trends.

Moroccan rivalry with the Ottomans The legitimising and propagandistic efforts of A˙mad al-Manßùr take on an added dimension if we also consider similar efforts made by Ottoman sovereigns. In the early 16th century, the Islamic areas at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, and in particular the Ottoman Empire, found themselves, like the Islamic regions in the West, facing increasingly aggressive Christian powers, as well as the new Íafawid state in Iran. Ottoman dynastic legitimacy was far from being commonly accepted, at a time when there was near-universal acceptance of the paradigm that required a special sanctity and even eschatological identity from all aspirants to power. In Iran, a group known as the Qizilbàsh (Red Heads) had taken up arms at the very beginning of the 16th century in favour of their divinely inspired leader, Shaykh Ismà'ìl alÍafawì (1501–1524), the shaykh of a sufi brotherhood who was expected by his followers to establish the realm of justice on earth.53 The Íafawids were shì'ites and believed in the divine power of their imàm. Sultan Selim (1512–1520) was to take his place in Ottoman historiography as one of the great conquerors of the dynasty. According to 16th-century historians, if it had not been for his premature death, he would have become a conqueror on the scale of a Chingiz Khàn or Alexander the Great, and would have shown the falsity of Íafawid, and therefore shì'ite, claims of divine inspiration and divine support for their cause. Clear evidence of Selim’s eschatological pretensions can be found in the introduction to a chronicle written by Lufti Pasha, one of his visirs, which was completed in 1550. Lufti credits Selim with being the müceddid (mujaddid) of the Tenth century, the

53 K. Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs. Cultural landscapes of Early Modern Iran, Cambridge, Mass., 2002.

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renewer of religion divinely enabled to set right the world of Islam.54 Selim’s most eloquent claim to this status was based on the fact that he defeated the ßafawid Shàh Ismà'ìl in 1512. In relating Selim’s victory, Lufti Pasha uses all his battery of ˙adìths and traditions concerning events of the Last Days to support his claim that Selim united the identity of Renewer with that of World Conqueror. Of particular interest are two letters included by Lufti in his text from two Sunnite 'ulamà" of Transoxiana congratulating Selim on his victory in Çaldiran and inviting him to extend his power to Iran and Central Asia. In the first of these letters Selim is described as the Mahdì of the Last Days (mahdì-yi akhir-i zamàn) and Divine Force (qudrat-i ilàhi ) whilst in the second he becomes Alexander (Zù’lQarnayn), the World Conqueror whose coming at the End of times had been foretold by apocalypses and malà˙im literature dating from the times of Early Islam. The Ottoman-Íafawid rivalry and Selim’s military accomplishments fit readily into an apocalyptic interpretative mode. Also, Selim and his court participated in the process of fitting Ottoman sovereignty to a messianic model using the imagery and terminology of the religious and military brotherhood, as can be shown in many ways, for example through reference to Selim’s use of the term mürid when speaking of his followers.55 Ottoman imperial ideology as linked with messianism reached its most extreme example after 1520, when Süleyman the Lawgiver, the Magnificent, ascended to the throne. The first thirty of the fifty years of his rule were to became a sacralised and exemplary period regarded by Ottoman historians as the peak of all their history. Cornell Fleischer has shown that the emphasis placed from the very beginning of his reign by Süleyman himself and his chroniclers on the idea that his kingdom would be a time of perfect, impartial justice constituted an apocalyptic gesture intended to show that his age, in the Tenth century of the Muslim era, was in fact the Millennium, and to suggest that he was the ruler who would fill the world with justice as it had been filled with injustice. Fleischer bases his argument on the evidence of a number of Ottoman historical works written during the

54 C.H. Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah: the Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleymân”, G. Venstein (ed.) Soliman le Magnifique et son Temps, Paris, 1992, pp. 159–177, p. 163. 55 C.H. Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah”, p. 164.

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early part of Süleyman’s reign, focusing in particular on the overview of Ottoman history entitled Cami' ül-Meknunat (The Compendium of the Hidden Things) written by Mevlânâ 'Isa in 1543. One of the book’s main themes is that of Süleyman’s rivalry with the Habsburg Emperor Charles V of Spain, both being seen as aspirants to the status of divinely guided universal ruler or Last World Emperor. Mevlânâ sets out an impressive array of arguments in favour of Süleyman, writing that the leader was the müceddid foretold in many ways, among them astral conjunctions, for the year 960/1522–23. He also writes that Süleyman is the ßà˙ib qiran (Master of the Great Conjunction), referring to the universal ruler who will inaugurate the dominion of a single religion that it is to coincide with that great conjunction of the stars. He also writes that Süleyman is the mystical qu†b of his age, the thirtieth qu†b whose coming coincided with that of the year 1000. As qu†b al-aq†àb, Süleyman was to be thought of as the spiritual ruler of the world, uniting in his person both temporal and spiritual powers. Mevlânâ, a mystical qà∂ì with links to the court, was making use in such writings of a widespread substratum of religious and political culture, as can be seen in the other works from this period to which Fleischer refers: the writings of Lufti Pasha mentioned above, those of Levhi, another author with court connections who composed in verse a Cihadname-i Sultan Süleyman, and the copies which circulated at court of the work by 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Bis†àmì (d. 1454) entitled Miftà˙ al-jafr, which predicted the coming of the Mahdì for the end of the Tenth century of the Hijra. Süleyman had at court a geomancer called Óaydar whose expertise consisted in applying astrological calculations to the “Book of Daniel”. The writings of Óaydar using in Süleyman’s favour the predictions of the Apocalypse Mal˙amat Dàniyàl, his closeness to the sultan as well as his longevity indicate that these apocalyptic themes and terms must have reached the sultan himself, that he knew and allowed these apocalyptic interpretations of his persona. Süleyman allowed himself to be spoken of and described as the Last World Emperor; he even played an active role in the formation of his messianic image and seems to have believed in his own apocalyptic role. The apocalyptic content of the concept of ßà˙ib qiran was an essential element in the sacralisation of Süleyman’s sovereignty and it makes frequent appearances in poems, letters and petitions written to the sultan, often together with mentions of the mahdì (mehdi-yi ßà˙ib-zaman, mehdiyi âkhir üz-zaman).

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The process of creating a less human, more mysterious, hidden sovereignty involved ideological measures, formal innovations and grandiose ceremonials with the intention of sacralising the person of the sovereign and the expression of his universalist ambitions.56 Even the architectural structure of the palace at Top Kapi was used as a way of staging his power.57 From the decade of the 1550s on, the ideological tone of the regime and its historiography started to vary considerably. The universalist dreams of the first three decades gave way to a graver, consolidating tone which carried a note of disillusionment. From the age of about sixty, Süleyman’s health began to deteriorate, the dreams of universal dominion had not been fulfilled, his sons were disputing the succession and, equally importantly, the time of the Millennium had passed by. Thus the “classic” Ottoman historiography of the second half of the reign lost all its messianic connotations. However, it is clear that Süleyman’s sovereignty was formulated within the powerful prophetic and messianic currents of its time, and that it nourished itself on them. The apocalyptic content of Süleyman’s ideology was related to his ability to bring about important, large-scale changes in society and the Ottoman order, projecting it as a universal and ideal order. The sultan’s legal innovations were founded on his subjects’ assumption, both at the popular level and among the elite, that the sultan had authority over the interpretation and dictate of the Law which was concomitant with his messianic nature. The tremendous energy liberated by messianic expectations led to the legitimisation of an absolute power, but also to the legitimisation of changes and innovations which could have been the cause of a rupture with the established order, even when these changes, as in the case of Süleyman, were instituted from within the establishment and not in revolt against it. A˙mad al-Manßùr also implemented measures which brought about a profound change and with which he sought to make his stand against the pressure and rivalry of the Habsburg Spaniards on the one hand and the Ottomans on the other. Both rivals also had, as

56 G. Necipoglu, “Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry”, The Art Bulletin 71 (1989) pp. 401–427. 57 G. Necipoglu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power. The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, pp. 13 and ff.

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we have seen, their own respective aspirations to the title of Last World Emperor. From these same prophetic and messianic currents which Selim and above all Süleyman had made use of, spread through the popular classes through the powerful role of the sufi brotherhoods, the ideology seen in the historiography of A˙mad al-Manßùr was able to draw its nourishment. The work of these historians also shows up the clear political and symbolic rivalry of the Moroccan dynasty with the Ottomans and the wish to counterbalance the permanent and real danger of Turkish intervention in the Maghreb. Faced with a powerful and conservative class of interpreters of the law, the kind of innovation or “modernisation” that al-Manßùr attempted to bring to so many areas of political and social life was in need of some sort of messianic vindication. Processes of reform undertaken by those in power need a mahdist justification, just like revolts against established power: a messianic figure can convert bid'a into Sunna. The conquest of Sùdàn was presented as part of an aspiration towards a Universal Caliphate, but in reality constituted a weak point in al-Manßùr’s legitimising aspirations against the 'ulamà", making it necessary for him to emphasise his eschatological identity: the Moroccan 'ulamà" were far from convinced of the legitimacy of an armed invasion of another Muslim (and Sunnite) country. By calling on sharìfism, mahdism and sufism, and by casting himself as a symbolic rival to the Ottoman sultan and to Philip II, the Sa'did sultan took all of these elements to their most extreme degree. A˙mad al-Manßùr and those who sought to describe and explain his greatness and deeds had to resort to the ideological instruments at their disposal to justify absolute temporal and spiritual power, and these instruments were bound to shape the eschatological identity of the exalted caliph.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE LAST SPANISH MUSLIMS: MESSIANIC PROPHETISM AMONG THE MORISCOS

While the previous chapter dealt with the relationship between messianism and imperial expansion—with what might be called political messianism—this chapter will focus on the spread and popular acceptance of millenarian ideas. At the same time that the notion of an Emperor of the Last Times was appropriated by an establishment in need of legitimisation and turned into an official, legalistic ideology in support of an absolute power, the belief in the arrival of the Millennium itself, with all its egalitarian connotations, became the subversive substrate for movements seeking to challenge that same establishment. Another significant subversive substrate was belief in a “sleeping” or “hidden” emperor, which legitimised refusal to obey the actual ruling monarch. Although this chapter looks at the prophetic and apocalyptic beliefs of the Moriscos, the last Muslims in Spain, it is in practice impossible to do this without taking into consideration ideas shared by followers of each of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions on both sides of the Mediterranean, i.e. in Spain and the Maghreb. All three groups were affected by what came to seem a form of messianic contagion. Morisco beliefs in a “hidden” emperor, or their use of the Prophecies of Saint Isidore, were part of a common heritage shared by followers of all three Abrahamic religions in the Early Modern Mediterranean.

The last Muslims of Iberia Throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages, through alternating phases of deadlock and advance, the Christian kingdoms of the north of the Iberian peninsula gradually extended their territory southwards, at the expense of the Islamic territory of al-Andalus. This process of conquest involved the incorporation of Muslim and Jewish populations within Christian territories, religious minorities

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which took their place in Christian society under a statute very similar to that of the dhimma in Islamic lands: this statute gave them the consideration of protected tributaries and allowed them to uphold their own religion and law as well as their forms of organisation and communal authority. The name of “Mudejars” was given to those Muslims who continued to live in Christian territories after they had been conquered, or to those who moved into Christian areas or lived in them as hostages of war or immigrants from al-Andalus during periods of political disturbance, civil war or economic hardship. Over the centuries, these Mudejars were subjected to growing pressure to integrate or leave the areas where they lived, and they slowly lost— in some regions more than in others—their knowledge of the Arabic language. In 1237 the city of Granada became the capital of the last Muslim kingdom in the Peninsula. Governed by the Naßrid dynasty, the kingdom of Granada was made up of the current Spanish provinces of Malaga, Granada and Almeria. By this time it had become a densely populated kingdom as a result of the influx of Muslim refugees from regions conquered by the Christians. Dependent on the crown of Castile, to which its sultans paid tributes, the kingdom of Granada suffered considerable Castilian interference in its growing internal political conflicts, as well as being obliged to keep up a war on its frontiers for almost two hundred years. During the two and half centuries of its existence, Christian harassment, demographic pressure and internal political disagreements all served to increase anxiety and certainty of impending doom in the population of Granada, the fear of the end of an entire world. Granada was finally conquered in 1492 by the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabel, who signed with the Moorish kings a series of advantageous pacts equivalent to those which had been in force during the times of Mudejarism. However, the same year also saw the expulsion of Jews from all Spanish kingdoms, creating fears among Muslims that a similar fate might soon overwhelm them. From 1492 onwards, the new Spanish monarchs, who had for the first time united under one dynasty the territory today known as Spain, took a series of measures designed to homogenise that territory, including the unification of judicial norms and religious beliefs. There was also a parallel growing tendency for the state to intervene in more areas of the political, social and religious lives of its subjects, and institutions such as the Inquisition were created or

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imported to implement state control more effectively. Spanish Jews became the first victims of this tendency when they were forced to choose between exile and conversion to Catholicism in 1492. Most chose exile, and a large number of those expelled emigrated southwards to Morocco. The situation for the Mudejars of Granada deteriorated rapidly in the final years of the 15th century, firstly because of the arrival of Castilian colonists who occupied their lands, but also for economic reasons (the ruin of the silk industry, which the Castilians had no interest in upholding), and, above all, for religious reasons: the arrival of the notoriously militant Cardinal Cisneros in Granada led to an energetic campaign of conversions to Catholicism which then sparked off a Mudejar revolt in the Albaicin of Granada in 1499. The rebellion spread throughout the kingdom of Granada and could not be quashed until 1501. The Muslims of Granada had rebelled because in their view the pacts signed at the time of the conquest had not been respected, whereas the Christians took the position that the rebellion itself had annulled the legitimacy of those pacts. The final result was the 1502 decree requiring the compulsory conversion of all Muslims within any of the territories of the crown of Castile. In 1526, a second decree required the forced conversion of the Muslims of Catalonia, Valencia and Aragon. Subsequently known as Moriscos, these forcibly converted Muslims became the object of particular vigilance and repression by the Inquisition and came to constitute an important problem in Early Modern Spain, a country which was watchful and insistent when it came to the issue of total assimilation within Christian society, at the same time that it was also fearful of Morisco attempts to erase their origins and become completely absorbed. In the various areas of Spain, and depending on the exact period of time, diverse Morisco groups alternated between crypto-Islamism and complete assimilation. Even when they were crypto-Islamists, the Moriscos gradually came to lose their knowledge of Arabic, and their religious education was greatly impoverished because of their lack of institutions, mosques and religious scholars. A wide Morisco literary production has survived from this period, written in aljamía, i.e. a form of Spanish written in Arabic script with syntactical calques and the use of Arabic religious terminology, which can be considered an Islamic variant of the Spanish language. In 1567, Philip II ordered the publication of a pragmatic announcing

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the immediate application of repressive measures which had been debated by the Spaniards for many years: the Moriscos of Granada were henceforth forbidden to use the Arabic language, either in spoken or written form, or to possess any book or document written in Arabic, whatever its subject matter. Traditional clothing —the socalled “hábito morisco”—was also forbidden, as was the custom of women covering part of their faces or using henna to adorn their hands or feet, or to dye their hair. Morisco music was banned at all weddings and nuptials, as was the practice of bathing and the use of Arab names or surnames. Moriscos were forbidden to employ slaves and to possess arms. As can be imagined, the resulting consternation in Granada was immense. Philip II’s pragmatic was the direct cause of an important Morisco text, the Memorial written by the Morisco nobleman Fernando Núñez Muley to the Audiencia of Granada, in which he argued that Morisco clothing did not represent religion but regional variety, being proper to “the natives of that land” and therefore differing from the traditional costumes worn by Castilians or Valencians. Núñez Muley also argued that the use of Arabic did not imply Islamic belief, since it was also spoken by the Christians of the Middle East and, again, that in the case of Granada, it was a regional distinctive feature, just as the Catalans or Galicians used different languages without their faith ever being called into question. Núñez Muley attempted, in other words, to separate the cultural characteristics of Granada from religious identity, and to link them to a regional identity by no means incompatible with Christian belief, and which was not unique to Granada, since there were so many different languages, clothing and customs in the various regions of Spain. He placed repeated emphasis on the fact that the Moriscos themselves and their customs were “native to the land”. He was particularly aggrieved by the requirement to change their names, thus losing all knowledge of their family history and the genealogical lineages, one of the pillars of Morisco identity and group cohesion. The banning of their language would bring with it the loss or annulment of testaments, land deeds and contracts. Without lineage, without a heritage, and without slaves, “Would we all be equal?” protested the Morisco nobleman. In a society as strongly stratified as Spain, this pragmatic, as well as wiping out all distinctive cultural signs, condemned the Moriscos to the outer margins of society. Philip II’s pragmatic was a direct cause of the so-called War of

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the Alpujarras, the armed rebellion of the Morisco inhabitants of the Alpujarra mountain range between Granada and Almeria—an extremely cruel and merciless conflict on both sides lasting from 1568 until 1570. The regular army had great difficulties in controlling an extremely high and accidental territory where its movements were impinged by the lack of open roads or mountain passes. The troops of Don Juan of Austria, the bastard brother of Philip II and a very experienced and successful military man, were called upon to crush the rebellion, which was finally brought to an end in late 1570 with the deportation of all Moriscos in Granada to the region of Castile. This enforced deportation, carried out in the depths of the winter of 1570–71, caused a great number of deaths among the impoverished Morisco population, already severely weakened by two years of constant and cruel warfare. The Moriscos of Granada were re-located in tiny groups scattered across the entire territory of Castile, where they entered into contact with the “old Moriscos” already residing there, who by now constituted a generally peaceful population in an advanced state of assimilation within Castilian and Christian society. The arrival of new Moriscos in Castilian towns created a number of serious conflicts and added to the religious problem a social one related to the arrival of uprooted and impoverished groups of individuals who were seen by Castilians as an alien threat to their way of life. The old Moriscos were caught up in this process of rejection, and a number of them became victims of a wave of Inquisitorial repression after 1570. The Inquisition treated all Moriscos with particular harshness during the remainder of the century, and right up to the eventual Expulsion of 1609. Its omnipresent and unavoidable pressure was enormous, since it tried not only to put an end to Morisco “heresy”, but to break up family nuclei and the cohesion of old Morisco communities. The punishments meted out by the Inquisition—except in the small number of cases where prisoners were condemned to be burnt alive— were usually of a monetary nature, or consisted in the confiscation of goods and possessions. Morisco communities were virtually broken by the kinds of denunciations of neighbours and family members made by prisoners under torture, as also by the recruitment into Castilian society of elite figures, economic impoverishment and the fear which the Inquisition provoked. As if all this were not enough, these were also the worst years of Spanish military confrontation with the Turks, with whose threat to

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Christendom the Moriscos of Granada and Valencia found themselves becoming identified. For their part, the Moriscos looked to the Ottomans as possibly their only hope of liberation: they maintained as much contact as they could with Istanbul and requested armed assistance on occasions such as the War of the Alpujarras. In 1575 the Moriscos of Valencia were ordered to give up all arms of any kind. Spanish authorities and local Christian populations had by this time become obsessed by the constant threat to their eastern coasts from North African corsairs, who were thought to rely on Morisco collaborators in those areas in the planning and carrying out of their raids. In 1585 in Aragon, a war broke out between Christian mountain shepherds and Morisco farm-workers of the lowlands on the shore of the river Ebro, the Moriscos having made alliances with the Protestants of Bearn. The Morisco situation worsened considerably as a result, with the flames of hatred being fanned by a series of polemicists who would today be described as ultra-nationalists. From the late 1580s, the Spanish authorities therefore started to consider the possibility, in special committees and commissions, of decreeing an order of expulsion of all Moriscos. Fear and hatred lay behind a series of reasons and arguments legitimising such a measure, which would take twenty years to come to fruition. It was argued by many that the Moriscos were impossible to integrate and that they hated everything that was Christian; that they felt no loyalty towards the Crown and had made alliances with the Protestants, the Turks and the Muslims of North Africa, coming to constitute a sort of fifth column within the country; also that they were highly prolific and jeopardised the balance with Christian society by a constant increase in their numbers; and that they would never accept the customs and ways of life that characterised Christian society. Such arguments overlooked the fact that a large number of Moriscos, especially in the two Castiles, Extremadura and Murcia, but also in Aragon and even in Granada, had already become Christians and achieved complete integration. The possibility of a general expulsion order was first seriously discussed at a Council of State meeting in Lisbon in 1582. It was therefore an idea which took some time to mature and one which the Moriscos were perfectly aware of long before 1609, when the order finally came to expel all Moriscos from Valencia. Between 1609 and 1614, Moriscos were expelled from all other regions of the Peninsula,

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the last of them being the Moriscos of the valley of Ricote in the province of Murcia, who had converted voluntarily to the Christian faith even before the 1502 decree of the Christian kings. An estimated 300,000 Moriscos were expelled from Spain, most of them settling in the southern Mediterranean area, and a large number of them in Morocco.

From Messianic Emperor to Eschatological Millennium Morisco suffering, starting with forced religious conversion, was caused by very harsh legal measures, social marginalisation, Inquisitorial harassment and the disappearance of a whole series of cultural signs of identity. It was in fact the disappearance of an entire world. It is hardly surprising that such a situation should produce a great deal of prophetism, providentialism, and messianic visions with which to feed hope or the desire for liberation and revenge. This was even more likely when one considers that messianic prophetism was also a marked characteristic of the political and religious life of contemporary Christian Spain, the society in which the Moriscos found themselves immersed and partially integrated. Beyond this, it could be argued that messianism and prophetism had become common not just in Spain but in the entire Mediterranean area from the late 15th century onwards. The great Ottoman expansion, the Christian conquest of all Spanish peninsular territory and the taking of this struggle to North Africa were seen on both sides as a clearing of the stage for a final, decisive confrontation between Christendom and Islam which fed the feeling that a messianic age was drawing near.1 On the Christian side, the conquest of the kingdom of Granada by the Catholic Kings and the continuation of the armed struggle in the Maghreb which saw Cardinal Cisneros capture Oran in 1509 and Portuguese forces take the Moroccan port of Azzemmùr in 15132 produced an intense wave of messianic enthusiasm which began to look forward to the definitive ending of Islam, the conquest of Jerusalem, the re-establishment of the Primitive Church and the

1 J. Deny, “Les pseudo-prophéties concernant les Turcs au XVIe siècle”, Revue des Etudes Islamiques 2 (1936) pp. 201–220. 2 M. Bataillon, Erasmo y España, Madrid, 1979, pp. 53–56.

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conversion of all humankind to the Christian faith. Both religions used prophecies and predictions in support of interpretations in favour of their side to predict the total disappearance of the rival faith. Throughout the 16th century and the first half of the 17th, Holy Scripture was carefully scrutinised with the purpose of finding prophecies in it which might be applied to contemporary events and Christian situations. Particular attention was paid to the Prophecies of the Book of Daniel concerning the Fifth Empire. Of a clearly messianic design, deeply woven into Franciscan ideology, these prophecies played an important role in the conquest and evangelisation of the American continent,3 as well as in the great Portuguese expeditions inspired by mythical messianic quests such as that for the kingdom of Prester John.4 The medieval prophetico-eschatological cycles introduced by the Franciscans into Catalonia, where Arnau de Vilanova was the first to use the messianic prophecies about the conquest of Jerusalem and universal royalty in support of the Catalano-Aragonese dynasty. These prophecies, which in the 13th century had been an expression of Byzantine and Muslim terror in the face of a crusading king of France or the Emperor Hohenstaufen, were now applied to a completely different context, giving them renewed vigour. At the same time, and since the late Middle Ages, the persecutions suffered by Jews in the Iberian peninsula had themselves fomented messianic and apocalyptic expectations among Jews, who had cast Islam, the traditional enemy of the Christians, in a providential role which was further emphasised after the Muslim conquest of Constantinople,5 interpreted in some Jewish circles as proof that the final phase of opposition between the Christian West and the Turkish East was approaching, that the opening of a messianic era had arrived. Isaac Abravanel, one of the most representative Jewish figures

3 As has been clearly shown by A. Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica en el ambiente franciscanista español, Valladolid, 1983 or J. Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, Los Angeles, 1979. 4 L.F. Thomas, “Factions, interests and messianism: the politics of Portuguese Expansion in the East, 1500–1521”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 28 (1991) pp. 97–109. 5 J. Genot-Bismuth, “Le mythe de l’Orient dans l’eschatologie des Juifs d’Espagne à l’époque des conversions forcées et de l’expulsion”, Annales, E.S.C., 45 (1990) pp. 819–838; D.B. Rudeman, “Hope against hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic expectations in the Late Middle Ages” in Exile and Diaspora /Exilio y Diáspora, estudios presentados al Prof. Haim Beinart, Madrid-Jerusalem, 1991, pp. 185–202.

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during the times of the Catholic Kings, wrote from his exile in Italy a significant messianic oeuvre which had important repercussions among Spanish Jews in diaspora and among those who had converted to Catholicism and remained in Spain. According to Abravanel, the destruction of the Fourth Kingdom would come about as the result of a great clash, a “war of monsters” between Christendom and Islam which during its first phase would see the victory of the former. In Abravanel’s messianology, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel would play a prominent role, during a second phase, in the punishment and defeat of Christendom, without for that reason being allied with the Muslims. They represented the revenge of Israel and embodied not only Jewish courage and honour, but also their chances of achieving positions of power.6 However, there is a moment in Abravanel’s text where he writes: “It is very possible that the Messiah will appear in the land of the Muslims and who knows if a king of the Muslims will not accept the religion of Israel and will be the Messiah who will save Israel.”7 The diffuse but omnipresent notion that Jewish redemption and the dawn of the messianic age would come about as a result of the great confrontation between Christians and Muslims is particularly explicit in the writings of the preacher and cabbalist Abraham ben Jacob Saba, who was expelled from Spain and took refuge firstly in Portugal, then Fez and later in Venice, where he published his work.8 There was thus in the Iberian peninsula during this period, as in the Middle East during the very earliest stages of Islam, a state of intense millenarian hope and prophetic messianism fed by ideas or topoi which were actually shared by followers of different religions in conflict with one another.9 As we have already seen in Chapter 3, messianic beliefs tend to flourish among communities belonging to conflicting religions; the process in this case was certainly related to the phenomena of forced conversion and general religious polemic. The parallel with the situation extant in the East Mediterranean at

6 I. Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, Statesman and Philosopher, New York, 1995, pp. 230–232. 7 Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, p. 323. 8 H. Ben Sasson, “Exile and redemption in the eyes of the generation of exiles from Sefarad” (in Hebrew), Yitzhak Baer Jubilee Volume, Jerusalem, 1961, pp. 216–227. 9 M. García-Arenal, “Un reconfort pour ceux qui sont dans l’attente. Prophétie et millénarisme dans la péninsule Ibérique et au Maghreb (XVI–XVII siècles)”, Revue de l’histoire des religions 220, 4 (2003) pp. 445–486.

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the beginning of Islam is so evident that, for example, the Prophecy of the Pseudo-Methodius (Revelatio S. Methodii de temporibus nouissimis) that had been translated into Spanish in the Late Middle Ages was printed and widely diffused during the 16th century. Printed copies of the Pseudo-Methodius from between 1579 and 1620 have survived to our day, as well as references to it in several Spanish treatises on apocalyptic subjects. The revelations of the Pseudo-Methodius announced for Spaniards “the departure of the Arabs who took over Africa and Spain”.10 The apocalyptic ideas and prophecies of one religion were interpreted in an inverse manner and re-used by the other side, and those prophecies were tinged with prestige precisely because they came from a demonised enemy endowed in the popular imagination with access to certain kinds of secret knowledge. Thus it was that Fray Marcos de Guadalajara, one of the most virulent writers against Moriscos, staunch supporter of their general expulsion, cited in his work Muslim astrologers such as Abulmasar, or possibly fictitious figures like “the wise Arab philosopher Acham Turuley” when writing about ancient prophecies concerning the destruction of all Muslims at the hands of “a fair-haired king come from the West”.11 Indeed, Christians read so many Jewish books on the kabbala and secret sciences that at one point king Enrique III of Castile asked Fray Lope de Barrientos to compose a reply to these books in the form of a treatise on prophetic dreams and divination, in which Barrientos was to argue that all such texts were forgeries.12 Barrientos’ treatise was not against the idea of prophetic dreams as such, but he was anxious to distinguish true dreams from fraudulent attempts to deceive, to distinguish between evil and good manifestations of the supernatural. In the circumstances of 16th-century Spain, these ancient prophetic and apocalyptic motifs whose trajectory can be traced from Late Antiquity, form part of an ideology of exclusion, of absolute eradication of all those not fortunate enough to be included in the group which was to triumph at the Final Hour. In the final instance, they were identity myths: a “chosen king” needed a “chosen people”.

10 L. Vázquez de Parga, “Algunas notas sobre el Pseudo Metodio y España”, Habis 2 (1971) pp. 155–156. 11 Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro, fol. 161r–162v. 12 “Tratado de la verdadera profecía” in Vida y obras de Fray Luis Lope de Barrientos, ed. Luis G.A. Getino, Salamanca, 1927.

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Messianic hope becomes a particularly strong identity myth for the excluded, victims of persecution, marginalisation or expulsion, and this hope feeds and at the same time nourishes on feelings of alienation and opposition (armed or passive) to ruling society or those in power against whom millenarian forecasts and predictions represent a chance to take revenge. Desire for liberation is linked with the need to re-discover a sense of self-respect and dignity as much as to alleviate feelings of guilt associated with having endured the kind of forced conversions imposed upon Iberian Jews and Muslims. They are identity myths because from the defence and preservation of a world on the verge of being lost forever, they predict a mythical return to an original past.

The Prophecies of St. Isidore In the Spanish tradition, there has only existed one great prophetic cycle that is truly autochthonous, one that is linked to the national historiographical theme of the destruction/restoration of Spain, i.e. the Muslim invasion of the peninsula and the Christian Reconquista which was prolonged in the so-called kingdom of Fez.13 This cycle was made up of the prophecies attributed to St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636), who from a position of universal knowledge, had predicted the fall and redemption of the kingdom of the Visigoths, to which he belonged. To this cycle can be added the prophecies concerning a charismatic descendant of the Castilian king Fernando III “el Santo” (conqueror of Seville and the Guadalquivir valley in the mid13th century), who it was forecast would complete the Reconquista which this king had advanced so spectacularly.14 The prophecies of St. Isidore overlapped with Muslim myths concerning the loss of alAndalus to which reference has been made in the earliest chapters of this book. This schema of destruction/restoration was at the same time an identity myth to be used against all those who could be classified as “destroyers”: Moors, Moriscos and Jews, but also political

13 A. Milhou, “La chauve-souris, le nouveau David et le roi caché (trois images de l’empereur des derniers temps dans le monde ibérique, XIII–XVII siècles)”, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez XVIII, 1 (1982) pp. 61–78. 14 Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro, fol. 160r.

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dissidents, heretics, homosexuals or any other disturbers of the order of Christian society.15 This cycle of prophecies was used, until the expulsion of 1609–14, by both of the communities involved: by the Moriscos to strengthen and reinforce their resistance or to provide a supernatural explanation for their defeat,16 and by Christians to justify their fear and vigilance, and, at length, the decision to expel the Moriscos. Though less widespread than among the Christians and the Moriscos, there was also a marked interest in the figure and prophecies of St. Isidore among Jewish authors of Castilian origin in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, as part of a much wider concern regarding all sorts of eschatological speculations. One good example of this is Chapter 50 of the Qißßur Zekher Íaddiq by R. Yosef b. Íaddiq of Arévalo, a halakhic commentary written in Castile in the 1480s, or the appendix to the Sefer ha-Qabbalah of R. Abraham b. Salomon Ardutiel, an expelled Castilian who settled in Fez, dated 1510, or, finally, the introduction to the anonymous Sefer ha-Yashar, a work which circulated during the 16th century among the megorashim of Fez.17 The megorashim, the Spanish Jews who were expelled and then settled in Fez, continued to use and develop further narrative structures related to peninsular traditions, and this was not only the case among the erudite authors of books but was also, and perhaps above all, the patrimony of the common people. One illustrative episode in this respect is that which was recorded by the Spanish chronicler Diego de Torres when he described in his chronicle the last days of the Wa††àsid dynasty in Fez in 1549 and the role played in them by Abraham Cabeza, the Jewish physician to Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh, the new Sa'did monarch. At the time when al-Shaykh was prepar-

15 A. Milhou, Pouvoir royal et absolutisme dans l’Espagne du XVI è siècle, Toulouse, 1999, p. 15. 16 Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro, fol. 160r; L. del Mármol, Historia del rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del reino de Granada, ed. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Madrid, 1797, pp. 169 and ff.; L. Cardaillac, Morisques et Chrétiens, un affrontement polémique, Paris, 1977, pp. 49–56; L. López Baralt, “El Oráculo de Mahoma sobre la Andalucía musulmana de los últimos tiempos en un manuscrito aljamiado-morisco de la Biblioteca Nacional de París”, Hispanic Review 52 (1984) pp. 14–57. 17 J. Castaño, “Mesianismo Pseudo-Isidoriano y polémica religiosa en autores judíos de Castilla y Fez (en torno a 1492)” in M. García-Arenal (ed.), Judíos en tierras de Islam II: los judíos del Magreb en la Edad Moderna, Madrid, Casa de Velázquez, 2003, pp. 1–25.

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ing to end the siege of Fez (in 1549), having given up all hope of being able to capture the city, Cabeza told the sultan of the prophecies of St. Isidore, interpreted by him in his own manner.18 As a result, the sultan decided to persist with the siege and was eventually able to conquer the city.

The “Hidden” Emperor Another widely held belief among peninsular Christians was the belief in the appearance or return of the messianic figure of a “hidden” emperor (the “Encubierto” in Castilian, “Encoberto” in Portuguese, or “Encobert” in Catalan), which parallels that of the Hidden Imàm. It is not possible to go into much detail here on the theme of the Encubierto, a sort of Emperor of Last Times, so productive in the Catalan territories and in Portugal, where it was to culminate in the Sebastianist movement (i.e the believers in the return of Dom Sebastian, killed in the battle of Wàdì-l-Makhàzin), but it is important to insist that mid-16th century beliefs about the appearance of such a figure as linked with the prophecies of Isidore and the conquest of Fez had a highly significant echo.19 The greatest exponent of such beliefs in Portugal was Gonçalo Anes Bandarra, a poet and popular troubador who in the early 16th century announced the political and religious unification of the entire world under the dominance of a mysterious “Encoberto”, or “Hidden” king. This hidden “new David” could be interpreted as a version of Dom Sebastian, Joao IV (the

18 “Digote que ai profecia entre los Cristianos revelada de Dios a San Isidro, Arçobispo que fue de Sevilla, en que dize que los reyes de Fez an de perderse por el pecado de la sodomía y pues los que agora reinan y toda su familia lo cometen tan públicamente, de creer es que ha llegado el tiempo de su castigo” [I tell you that there is a prophecy among the Christians revealed by God to Saint Isidore, once Archbishop of Seville, in which it is said that the kings of Fez are to lose themselves through the sin of sodomy and since those who now reign and all their family do commit it so publicly, it is to be believed that the time of their punishment has come.] Diego de Torres, Relación del origen y suceso de los xarifes y del estado de los reinos de Marruecos, Fez and Tarudante, ed. M. García-Arenal, Madrid, 1980, pp. 183–184. 19 See, for example, the letter written by Diego de Gouvea to Juan III in 1527, published in M. Bataillon, “Le rêve de la conquête de Fès”, Mélanges d’études lusomarocaines dédiés à la mémoire de David Lopes et Pierre de Cenival, Lisbon-Paris, 1945, pp. 31–39 and several of the documents in SIHM, Portugal, IV, p. 285 and ref.

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candidate for those who supported the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy as independent from the Spanish crown) or the Jewish Messiah, depending on the viewpoint of readers of or listeners to Bandarra’s Trovas.20 The trovas of Bandarra elaborated on messianic themes of Jewish origin such as that of the Ten Lost Tribes, but it also drew on ideas from the Catalan regions, and in particular the motif of the Hidden Emperor, which also appears in the Coplas of Fray Pedro de Frias (Valencia, 1520). The coplas by Frias which mentioned the Encoberto had themselves already been applied to one Portuguese monarch with messianic ambitions, as can be seen from a reference in a letter written on 19 October 1468 by the Duke of Bragança to the Kig of Portugal: “Se Deus tem tal ordenado, nao somente havereis o reino de Castela, mais conquistareis o de Granada e tirareis a espada de Fez e com ela conquistareis todo o mundo”: God willing, you will have not only the Kingdom of Castile, but you will also with the help of the sword in Fez, conquer the whole world.21 An equally influential figure before Bandarra, especially on the Eastern coast of the peninsula, was Juan Alemán or Alamany, who wrote a work on the prophecies and signs of the Antichrist.22 Alemán’s work, a peculiar cross between Joaquim de Fiore and the work of the Valencian Arnau de Vilanova, had a very great influence throughout the peninsula, both in numerous manuscript copies and then in printed Latin and Catalan editions. According to Alemán, the Encoberto would pass over to Ceuta and from there march on to capture an important city “and take it he will, its name is Fez and there he will find the doubtful sword guarded in the great city in the noble tower which is like that of the temple of Seville”—Alemán mistakenly situates the Kutubiyya of Marrakech in the city of Fez— “and once the city is taken then the Moors of the Algarve (the Muslims of the West) and Tlemcen and Morocco will all leave

20 This according to E. Lipiner, Gonçalo Anes Bandarra e os Cristaos-novos, Trancoso, 1996. 21 Manuel J., Gandra, Joaquim de Fiore, Joaquinismo e esperança sebastica, Lisbon, 1999, p. 97. 22 Obra de fray Johan Alamany, “De la venguda de Antichrist. E de les coses que se han de seguir. Ab una reprobació de la secta mahomètica”, Valencia, 1520; Libro de los grandes hechos que an de ser en el mundo por los muchos y grandes peccados en los que los hombres se enbolveran, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, ms. 6176.

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fleeing . . . out of great fear and they will not understand that they will not be able to remain in any uninhabited or populated place”. After this, the Hidden Emperor would proceed on his triumphal march towards Alexandria, ending his exploits by taking the city of Jerusalem.23 The sword buried in Fez which would make the Hidden Emperor a Universal one features in a large number of Christian sources, some of them having great popular impact when appearing as brief published relations, pamphlets or chapbooks. In one such brief relation, from 1612, it was said that the city of Fez was founded by “Muley Driz”, who drove his sword up to the hilt in the main mosque of the city. This “Driz” or Idrìs was also a “famous astrologer” who had forecast that the city would one day be captured by Christian forces and that “a great Christian king” would recover his sword and reign over the whole of Africa. The relation adds that some Muslim “morabitos [marabouts] and sorcerers”, naturally enough classed as impostors, had claimed that this great Christian king or “Sultan Quibir” would turn Muslim on pulling out the sword.24 Alemán’s work on the coming of the Antichrist must be seen above all in the context of the movement known as that of the Germanías of Valencia. In 1521–2, there had been great disturbances in the region as a result of the uprising of the “Agermanados” or brotherhoods of traders and urban artisans against king Charles V. Like its equivalent contemporary movement in Castile, that of the Comuneros, this revolt had clearly millenarian undertones, and the prophecies of St. Isidore were a key element in it.25 As formulated by Alemán and deployed by the Agermanados, Isidore’s prophecies assumed clearly anti-Islamic proportions which made the Moriscos the main victims of the rebels.26 Among the Agermanados there was an individual acclaimed as “el Encubierto” who claimed to be a reincarnation of Don Juan, i.e. the prematurely deceased son of the Catholic Kings,

23 For a reproduction of a Castilian version of the text, see Libro de la venida del Anticristo in Manuel J. Gandra, Joaquim de Fiore, p. 93. 24 “Relaciones de las guerras de Africa y muerte del Rey Muley Xeque que estuvo en España”, in I. Bauer, Relaciones de Africa. Marruecos, t. II, Madrid, 1920, p. 15. 25 R. Alba, Acerca de algunas particularidades de las Comunidades de Castilla tal vez relacionadas con el supuesto acaecer terreno del Milenio Igualitario, Madrid, 1975, especially pp. 175, 177, 178. 26 P. Pérez García and J. Catalá Sanz, Epígonos del encubertismo. Proceso contra los agermanados de 1541, Valencia, 2000, pp. 140 and ff.

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who, had he lived, would have worn the Spanish crown instead of the abhorred Charles V of Flanders.27 The individual concerned was short, extremely thin and dark in complexion. He also knew Arabic and Hebrew, which was hardly surprising in view of the fact that he turned out to be a Jewish citizen of Oran, the son of one of the thousands of Jews expelled from Spain by the Catholic Kings who had settled in North Africa. The man was circumcised, and had never been baptised. He was eventually hanged in Valencia in May 1522, the year of the definitive defeat of the Agermanados.28 However, new Encubierto figures appeared in Valencia in 1523, 1529 and 1545, a clear indication that a collective conviction lingered that the original figure was still alive and was bound to re-appear to fulfil the prophecies postponed by the defeat of the Germanía—in particular, those which forecast the salvation of the kingdom of Valencia from Islamic peril and the Encubierto’s journey across the Mediterranean to open the gates of Jerusalem. The repeated appearances of an Encubierto, an eschatological and subversive figure in defiance of Charles V’s legitimacy, fed the myth of his immortality and made him assume the charismatic identity of the figure announced in latemedieval prophecies, a monarch of Last Times. The Valencian Encubierto of 1529 claimed also to be the posthumous son of Don Juan and therefore a grandson of the Catholic Kings, conferring upon himself a symbolic and rhetorical architecture fed by apocalyptic visions, millenarian ideas, miracle-working powers, religious reformism, dreams of crusade and revolt against the “usurping” house of Habsburg. The Trovas of Bandarra and Juan Alemán’s treatise were also read and interpreted by members of the Spanish Jewish community, both by those conversos (new Christians of Jewish origin) who had remained in the peninsula and by those who had fled to Morocco. There is frequent evidence of this in the records of Spanish Inquisition trials, as in the case of Nicolás of Zaragoza, who was examined by the Inquisition tribunal of Cuenca in 1526.29 Nicolás had been born to

27

S.T. Nalle, “The millenial moment: revolution and radical religion in sixteenthcentury Spain”, in P. Schäfer and M. Cohen, Toward the Millennium. Messianic expectations from the Bible to Waco, Leiden, 1998, pp. 151–171. 28 Fr. Prudencio de Sandoval, Historia de la vida y hechos del Emperador Carlos V, ed. and study by Carlos Serrano, BAE, Madrid, 1955, pp. 288–294. 29 Archivo Diocesano Conquense, Ing. Leg. 117 exp. 1596.

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Jewish parents in Zaragoza some thirty years before the expulsion order of 1492, and in that year left the peninsula for North Africa, where he lived for a number of years. Like many of his fellow-Jews, he later returned to the Peninsula, converting to the Christian faith and embarking on a largely itinerant life as a book-binder. He was arrested in Cuenca in 1526, accused of having made the claim that “a new composer of the law, a composer of a new law” was about to reveal himself, a statement which was interpreted as proof of his Judaism and belief in the imminent arrival of a Messiah, whose coming Nicolás had predicted for the year 1524. In his statements to the tribunal, Nicolás recited several prophecies forecasting the end of the world, claiming to have read them in “the treatise of the Antichrist by Fray Juan Alemán”, a work he had clearly studied with some attention. Further evidence of the extent to which these notions were so widely shared is provided by the work Las cortes de la muerte by Micael de Carvajal and Luis Hurtado de Toledo, in which a Spanish Jewish exile who had fled to North Africa states that in Morocco the Jewish community believed that the Messiah would appear with half a million men on horseback, arriving from the Midday, from the regions beyond the Caspian Sea where the nine and a half tribes were hidden.30 Such beliefs and expectations were maintained among the Jewish community of Morocco and Spanish conversos until the second half of the 17th century, and constituted the substrate of the acceptance of the arrival of the Messiah in the person of Sabbatai Zevi, the messianic leader whose movement enjoyed such widespread success in Morocco and southern Spain.31

The “Great Conjunction” Throughout the 16th century, celestial signs and astral conjunctions were interpreted by Spanish Christians as warnings of the danger of the continued presence of Moriscos on Spanish soil, and also as

30 J. Caro Baroja, Los judíos en la España moderna y contemporánea, Madrid, 1972, vol. I, p. 409. 31 M. García-Arenal, “Attentes messianiques au Maghreb et dans la Péninsule Ibérique: du nouveau sur Sabbatai Zevi” in Lucette Valensi à l’ouevre. Une histoire anthropologique de l’Islam méditerranéen, Paris, 2002, pp. 225–242.

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forecasts of the imminent expulsion of those Moriscos, as a symbol of Christendom’s definitive victory over Islam. The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 990/1582 was read in both the Islamic and Christian world as an apocalyptic sign. The astronomical work of Abù Ma'shar (d. 272/886), already translated in Spain in the 13th century by Johannes Hispalensis and by Hermannus Secundus, acquired a further lease of life when it was printed in Latin in Augsburg in 1489, and in Venice in 1495 and 1506.32 Roger Bacon used it in his Opus Magnum. Abulmasar, the Latinised form of the Arab name, had expounded a theory of astral conjunctions as signals of the end of a cycle or dynasty and the coming of a prophet which served Christians to interpret the conjunction of 1582 as a sign of the arrival of the Antichrist.33 The writings of Juan Andrés became particularly well-known in Spain. Andrés used Arab astrological sources and the conjunctions of the stars to forecast the end of Islamic kingdoms: “All their realms are to change in an extraordinary manner for more than twenty conjunctions will occur”. Contemporary writers who argued in favour of an expulsion of the Moriscos, such as Guadalajara, Bleda or Aznar Cardona, all recorded diverse celestial phenomena which they interpreted in their own various ways.34 Guadalajara describes celestial prodigies as “a dumb language”, arguing that they were the language used by God to warn his chosen people (Spaniards) of the perils surrounding it or of the right moments to free themselves providentially from such perils; he writes that it was a language that was not understood by everyone, the Muslims having particular difficulty in comprehending it, as was evidenced by their erroneous interpretations of celestial prodigies. The years leading up to the expulsion of the Moriscos saw a number of significant astral phenomena. In 1603, Spanish Christian astrologers detected a “great conjunction” which they interpreted as follows: “They all agreed that this conjunction foretold the fall and final resolution of the sect of Mahoma in Spain, within twenty years . . . As a reminder of this, each of them

32

J. Vernet, Problemas bibliográficos en torno a Abulmasar, Barcelona, 1952. M. Aston, “The Fiery Trigon Conjunction: an Elizabethan Astrological Prediction”, Isis (1970) pp. 159–187. 34 See chapter III of Guadalajara, Prodición y destierro de los moriscos de Castilla, Pamplona, 1614, fol. 9r. and ff., entitled “Vanse descubriendo en España señales y prodigios de la prodición de los moriscos della”. 33

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brought the reading of ancient and modern predictions”.35 In the widely difused book, Discurso sobre la coniuncion maxima que fue en Deziembre del año 1603. En el qual se pronostican los felicissimos succesos y vitorias que señalan al Rey Don Phelipe III nuestro señor y a su gente Sagitaria que son los Españoles, published in Valencia in 1604, its author, the astronomer Dr. Francisco Navarro, uses both astrological arguments and the predictions of Abulmasar and of Alcabitius, i.e. 'Abd al-'Azìz alQàbisì (IV/X cent.) and links the conjunction with the horoscope of Philip III. The year 1604 saw “the universal conjunction of all the stars, and the second conjunction of Jupiter and Mars”, to which was added in 1606 the appearance of a comet which astrologers claimed never to have seen in the Northern hemisphere. It was this conjunction that prompted the Moriscos to conspire against their expulsion by sending ambassadors to the Turks and Mawlày Zaydàn in Morocco.36 After several chapters on celestial prodigies and predictions concerning the “restoration of Spain” after a thousand years of Islamic presence, Guadalajara writes: “Many saints and illustrious men prophesied how long it would take for this restoration of Spain to come about, and among them was the holy Archbishop of Seville Isidore, as widely read by the Moriscos as he is misunderstood by them (for the Prophecy of God cannot be accommodated to the perverse understanding of the sons of ire). It was also predicted by the most ancient astrologers, wise men and soothsayers of the Moors themselves at the time they conquered these realms, finding by the stars and their false oracles that it was to last until the year 1610 so that all would thus concur with the Prophecies of St. Isidore.”37 As can be seen, Guadalajara does not hesitate to describe the Muslim oracles as false even when their conclusions are regarded by him as correct. He also makes the remark that the Moriscos carried out their uprisings when and where their astrologers informed them it was propitious for them to do so.

35 36 37

Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro, ff. 159v–163r. Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Prodición y destierro, fol. 19 r–v. Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Prodición y destierro, fol. 12 r–v.

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Morisco prophetism In 1540 in the town of Arévalo, in the heart of Spanish Castile, the Inquisition carried out a series of arrests of “new Christians”, i.e. Moriscos, in an attempt to destroy an alleged “plot” involving Moriscos from Medina del Campo, Valladolid, Segovia and Toledo which had caused considerable alarm among the Christian authorities. The Inquisitorial tribunal of Valladolid entered a period of intense letterwriting and trial activity concerning an affair about which, nevertheless, very little is now known. At the centre of the “plot” or alleged conspiracy was a boy “who they believed in Arévalo to be a prophet and a messenger from Mu˙ammad”.38 Accusations of such prophethood and messianic attitudes appear frequently in Inquisitorial trial proceedings against Moriscos, where prisoners are accused of believing and spreading prophecies about the liberating arrival of Muslims from North Africa, of the appearance of a bridge over the strait of Gibraltar, of celestial signs that the time of liberation was near, or of the physical signs that the Liberator would carry on his body.39 These trials reveal the contacts that existed between the Moriscos and the Maghreb and Turkey, and show the importance for the Morisco community of the prophetic traditions of liberation reaching them from Islamic lands. For example, in 1582 one Alexandro Castellano, a native Morisco from Aragon who had returned to his native land from Turkey, where he had initially fled in 1560, claimed to have been sent back by the Turks “to see if certain signs in this kingdom and in that of Valencia agreed with what was said in a Turkish prophecy concerning the time when Spain would be won”. Castellano declared that the time for Spain to be conquered by the Turks had in fact arrived, given that the signs mentioned in the prophecy had occurred, and in particular that of the appearance of a boy with prophetic signs and certain physical characteristics, such as having six fingers on each hand and a disproportionately long arm.40 The physical characteristics of prophetic figures mentioned in these and other trials had their roots in Islamic tradition, and in particular in legends concerning the Prophet Mu˙ammad. Miguel

38 39 40

S. de Tapia, La comunidad morisca de Ávila, Salamanca, 1991, pp. 228–230. L. Cardaillac, Morisques et Chrétiens, pp. 49–51. Archivo del Instituto Valencia de Don Juan, Envio 1/IV, ff. 132 and ff.

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de Luna, the Granada Morisco author of a false chronicle entitled Historia verdadera del rey Don Rodrigo, wrote of a certain prediction which warned of the loss of Christian Spain to the Muslims, stating that “the captain who was to conquer it was to be very courageous and strong and as a sign for him to be recognised, he would have a hairy mole as big as a chick pea, and that the said mole was to be on his right shoulder.” Luna added that the prophet’s right arm would be much longer than his left.41 According to the apologist of the expulsion of the Moriscos, the Aragonese anti-Muslim polemicist Aznar Cardona, late 16th-century Aragonese Moriscos believed in the inminent coming of “al-Fà†imi”. This Fà†imi was an “Encubierto” or “sleeping emperor”, for, Aznar wrote, “they held it as infallible faith and tradition that . . . the Moor Alfatimi would come out on his green horse to defend them and slay the Christians, having hidden in the mountains in past centuries during his struggles with the army of Don Jaime [the Christian conqueror of Muslim Aragon]”.42 Morisco eschatological beliefs thus linked the prophecies of St. Isidore with productive Islamic traditions of the Maghreb concerning the mahdì and the loss of alAndalus. Once again we see the influence of the Kitàb al-Tadhkira of alQur†ubì (d. in 671/1272), which recorded a number of traditions concerning the coming of the mahdì, including one which said he would recruit an army with which he would cross the Strait of Gibraltar on a prodigious bridge, destroying the Christians and conquering seventy cities. According to this tradition, the mahdì would go on to pray in the mosque of Seville.43 Al-Qur†ubì’s predictions became entangled with a peculiar interpretation of the prophecies of St. Isidore which was often cited by Moriscos even as they stood before Inquisition tribunals: in 1569 one Zacarias of Granada predicted a new Muslim conquest of the peninsula in accordance with Isidore’s prophecies, and said that “in the Strait of Gibraltar there

41

M. de Luna, Historia verdadera del Rey Don Rodrigo, Granada, 1592. Facsimile edition, Granada, 2001, p. 32. 42 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada de los moriscos españoles, Palencia, 1612, 2nd part, p. 11. See also Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Prodición y destierro, p. 25. 43 M. García-Arenal, “La conjunction du sufisme et du sharifisme au Maroc: le Mahdi comme sauveur”, REMMM 55–56 (1990) pp. 233–56.

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was to appear a wire bridge and that the Moors were to pass over it and take all of Spain as far up as Galicia”.44

The War of the Alpujarras As was noted at the time by contemporary chroniclers, predictions and prophecies making frequent allusions to St. Isidore also played a role of prime importance in the development of the Morisco rebellion which led to the War of the Alpujarras (1568–1570). The Moriscos were certain that the time of the destruction of Spain had come (“Guay de ti España” [“Alas for you, Spain”] was the refrain of one of the prophecies that has survived)45 and large numbers of them joined the uprising with great joy and optimism. The chronicler Luis del Mármol describes how the Moriscos in the early months of the war danced publicly in the towns of the Alpujarras, the women with their hair let down over their shoulders and their breasts exposed to view because, they said, the time of a state of innocence had arrived.46 Mármol recorded in his chronicle three prophecies or “jofores” circulating among the Moriscos “for the consolation of the expectant”, in which the prophecies of St. Isidore are mentioned as well as that of a king of the Arabs, an “encubierto” who would cross over to Fez on a marvellous bridge and recover from its mosque the sword of Idrìs, at which point all Christians would convert to Islam.47 In some legendary predictions, this hidden king was Boabdil, the last sultan of Granada, who slept with his army in caves.48 Caves,

44 See Cardaillac, Morisques et Chrétiens, p. 51; L. López-Baralt, “Chronique de la destruction d’un monde: la litterature aljamiado-morisque”, Revue d’histoire maghrebine 17–18 (1980) pp. 43–73. 45 M. Sánchez Álvarez, El manuscrito misceláneo de la Biblioteca Nacional de París (leyendas, itinerarios de viajes, profecías sobre la destrucción de España y otros relatos moriscos), Madrid, 1982, pp. 246 and ff. 46 L. del Mármol, Historia del rebelión y castigo de los moriscos, Libro IV, cap. VIII. 47 L. del Mármol, Rebelión, Libro III, cap. III, “A la sazón enviará Dios un rey de alta estatura, encubierto, más alto que las sierras, el que dará con la mano en el mar y la henderá y saldrá de ella un puente . . . y entrarán en Fez y hallarán al encubierto en la mezquita con la espada de Idris en la mano y vestido de moro; lo qual visto, todos los christianos se volverán moros.” 48 F. Delpech, “Un mito andaluz: el reino oculto de Boabdil y los moros encantados” in J.A. González Alcantud and M. Barrios, Las Tomas: antropología histórica de la ocupación territorial del Reino de Granada, Granada, 2000, pp. 656–615.

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long seen as holy places of origin, were often used by Moriscos as places of refuge and occupy an important place in Morisco re-interpretations of prophecies attributed to St. Isidore, as can be seen from surviving aljamiado manuscripts.49 Alonso del Castillo, Morisco and intrepreter of Arabic working for the Spanish authorities as translator and spy during the Alpujarras War, translated several Morisco prophecies which speak of the coming of al-Fà†imì, that he will conquer Rome and the whole world after entering the Qarawiyyìn in Fez and holding Idrìs’s sword in his hand. This Fà†imi is to be born in the Sevillian city of Carmona. Another chronicler of the war, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, claimed to base his account on “Arabic books from these lands, and those of Muley Hacen king of Tunisia and on what has stayed in the memories of men until today” to reconstruct a speech made by one of the local leaders of the rebels, Fernando el Zaguer, who harangued his followers with talk of the predictions which “showed themselves adverse to the Christians”, with prodigies such as an eclipse of the sun and “extraordinary appearances of armed people” in the mountains of Granada, the Plutonic army of the last sultan.50 Half a century later, the Moriscos, now expelled to Morocco, still continued to look forward to the arrival of the leader who would pull out the sword of Mawlày Idrìs at the mosque of Fez.51 Among the Christians who fought against the Moriscos in the War of the Alpujarras, the same prophecies also circulated, though interpreted in an inverse manner. Don Pedro de Deza of the Royal chancellery of Granada claimed to have held in his hands a book of prophecies which was a very ancient manuscript whose predictions fitted contemporary events in a remarkably close manner. Deza informed the president of the Granada Inquisition about this manuscript in 1572, telling him that the text announced the arrival of a hidden leader or Encubierto who would come to save the Christians. This Encubierto seems to have had all the physical characteristics of Don John of Austria—known as “Austro”, he was handsome in

49 “salran de sus kuebas las bestias agareñas emponçoñadas para destruir a Spaña la alta y la basa”; “I berna el enkubierto kon los del linaje de Etor y linpiaran las kuebas y la ciudad de Erkules”; “sonara entonçes el nuevo David por akuçiya del enkubierto”, in M. Sánchez Álvarez, El manuscrito misceláneo, p. 248. 50 Delpech, “Un mito andaluz: el reino oculto de Boabdil”, p. 594. 51 I. Bauer Landauer, Relaciones de África. Moriscos, Madrid, 1922, pp. 15–16.

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build, fair-haired and white-skinned, a lover of justice and an enemy of Moors “who resembled king David when he was alive”.

The Lead Books of Sacromonte It is within the context of the War of the Alpujarras that we must consider a false discovery, a Morisco forgery, which caused a tremendous impact in Spain. This was the affair of the forgery of the parchment and Books of Lead which appeared in the Sacromonte, one of the hills facing the Alhambra of Granada between 1588 and 1595. In 1588, during the construction of the new cathedral of Granada, after knocking down the old minaret of the main mosque, known as the Torre Turpiana, some workmen found a box containing a parchment of very ancient appearance with writings in Latin, Hebrew and Spanish, allegedly dating from the period of the Roman emperor Nero, together with bones and ashes that seemed to be human remains and were immediately identified as relics of the Christian martyr Saint Cecilius. Four years after the findings of Torre Turpiana, and during a run of four consecutive years, further “discoveries” were made in the caves of Valaparaíso, known today as Sacromonte, of circular lead sheets written in what was described as “Solomonic writing” which turned out to be nothing more than contemporary Arabic in a slanted hand and without the use of diacritics. These texts purported to be a new gospel transmitted by the Virgin Mary, which amongst other ideas—such as presenting a vision of Christianity close to or synthesised with Islam—explained that the relics previously found in the Torre Turpiana belonged to Arabic paleo-Christian martyrs who had travelled to Spain with the apostle St. James/Santiago and had been converted and indoctrinated by him before meeting their deaths in Granada. The names of these martyrs were given as Cecilius, Hiscius and Ctesiphon. The first Christian settlers in Granada had, in other words, been Arabs, and the Virgin had used Arabic to speak to her faithful early followers. In one of these Lead Books, entitled Certidumbre del evangelio (Certainty of the gospel), the Virgin was asked who the saviours of the Faith would be and replied, “I tell you that it will be the Arabs . . . and they will be the most handsome among all the peoples, and their tongue one of the most beautiful”. The Lead Books presented a millenarian programme in which the Arabs, political and cultural victors, would be given the task of offering a correct interpretation of

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the Bible in both its Old and New Testaments and of achieving the triumph of the only Faith before the coming of the Antichrist. One of the books contained a prophecy of an apocalyptic nature attributed to Saint John the Evangelist which fully concurred with the expectations fed by Morisco prophecies among that community. The intention of the forged books was clearly to establish the idea of a common historical origin for Spanish Christians and Arabs, and their interpretation of Christianity was close to Islam, avoiding all mention of the Holy Trinity, the divine quality of Christ, or the worship of images. In the texts, Arabic acquired both an original and eschatological character, as the chosen tongue. The whole affair represented an attempt by assimilated Spanish Moriscos to uphold their most precious signs of identity even within a form of the Christian faith which they sought to bring closer to, or concur with, Islam. By presenting Arabs as the oldest Christian settlers of Granada, i.e. by presenting themselves as “natives of that land”, the Morisco authors of the forged texts also sought to prevent the expulsion order that had been the subject of such discussion since the early 1580s. They attempted to have the lineages, nobility and past glories of the Arabs recognised as a part of their own heritage by Christian society in the vain hope that this would translate into an increased respect and acceptance for Moriscos in the present, perhaps even in the form of privileges for the surviving descendants of the first Moors of Granada. The question of the eschatological and chosen nature of the Arabic tongue also crops up in some Inquisitorial trial records. One notable example is that of Alonso de Luna, a prisoner of the Inquisition of Murcia in 1619. Luna was a highly cultured individual, a doctor by profession with knowledge of Arabic, Latin, and Italian, who also knew the Qur"àn well. He had written to the king of Spain and the Pope announcing to them that the time of Resurrection had come, that the End was nigh and that all humanity would be converted to the Christian faith, aided by the Arab nation. This conversion, wrote Luna, would be carried out in the Arabic tongue, “a very perfect tongue and chosen by God as the best and with which he praised the angels and was to punish the Spaniards because they did not want to permit it”.52 Luna’s was an exemplary case of a certain 52 B. Vincent, “Et quelques voix de plus: Francisco Núñez Muley à Fatima Ratal”, Sharq al-Andalus 12 (1995) pp. 131–145, esp. p. 143.

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syncretism united to the attempt to save or guarantee some of the essential signs of Morisco identity—now that their religion was gone— and above all, their language. The Moriscos also placed an eschatological emphasis on their interpretations of the expulsion order decreed by Philip III in 1609: the measure was seen by them as the signal by which a king would manifest himself who was to subjugate the entire world and unite it under one true religion (Islam), himself being immune to all artillery.53 Expelled Moriscos who emigrated to Morocco continued to use and develop the theme of the prophecies of St. Isidore, as can be seen from the letters they wrote to friends and acquaintances in the Spanish peninsula,54 or in the reports on their behaviour drawn up by Spanish agents living in Morocco. One such agent, Jorge de Henin, wrote that a Morisco councillor had convinced Mawlày Zaydàn, sultan of Marrakech, that according to certain prophecies the honour of conquering Spain corresponded to him, saying “that he was to conquer the whole of Spain and that the first battle would take place in Carmona”.55 Henin also reported that it was Mahoma de Alcocer, a Morisco exile, who in 1610 had been the first to recognise Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, the rebel against Mawlày Zaydàn discussed in the next chapter, as a mahdì, proclaiming that he was “a holy man . . . who raises the banners of Mu˙ammad because he is to be King of all the world and is to reduce all laws to that of Mu˙ammad”.56 The reference to the “battle of Carmona” is common in contemporary sources recording Morisco prophecies. The town of Carmona had a notable presence in the eschatological traditions of al-Andalus, (it is the place where al-Fà†imì will be born, according to one prophecy translated by Alonso del Castillo) in which it was the site of a mal˙ama or fitna, a great massacre. The literature on malà˙im is made up of predictions concerning the destiny of the different dynasties. In the

53

Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara, Prodición y destierro, p. 77. See “Carta de un morisco granadino escrita desde Argel a un caballero de Trujillo”, July 1611 in F. Janer, Condición social de los moriscos españoles, pp. 350–351: “no ha sido en mano del Rey de España, el avernos desterrado de la tierra: pues ha sido inspiración divina, porque aquí he visto pronósticos de más de mil años en que cuentan lo que de nosotros ha sucedido . . . Pero que el más mínimo agravio lo tomaría Dios por su cuenta y embiará un Rey que sojuzgaría todo el mundo . . .” 55 Memorial de Jorge de Henin (1603–1613), ed. T. Pérez de Guzmán, Rabat, 1997, p. 109. 56 J. de Henin, Memorial de Jorge de Henin, p. 124. 54

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predictions and prophecies concerning the destiny of al-Andalus, there are already references to al-Qarmùniyya, the day of Carmona, in the work of the Andalusi historian Ibn Óabìb (d. 582).57 Al-Qur†ubì was perpetuating a long tradition in Western Arabic sources when he wrote of the legend according to which Alexander the Great, Dhù l-Qarnayn, had built a bridge over the Strait of Gibraltar. In this and similar legends, Alexander was a symbol of salvation enclosing and at the same time defending the world from external danger.58 The theme of loss and restoration also appears in the legend of the so-called “golden apples” of Marrakech, three balls made of gold and copper (and therefore yellow or red in colour) which topped the minaret of the main mosque of the city, which “according to Moorish prophecy”59 would be snatched away at the End of all Time by a Christian king who would “bring the sun at his back”.60 According to other versions, these adornments were copper apples covered in gold and every Muslim king who had wanted to touch them or take them away to make use of the gold had suffered a violent death.61 The motif of the golden apples was one which seems to be linked with the Ottoman eschatological cycle arising in the late 15th century which was known as that of the “Red Apples”,62 and features the balls or cupolas, possibly made of copper, of a city on the confines of the Ottoman Empire where a Christian sovereign who had been sleeping since his defeat by 'Alì b. Abì ˇàlib would wake at the end of time to conquer the universe.63 The Fà†imì of the Aragonese Moriscos slept in exactly the same way after his defeat by Jaime I of Aragon, as did the Boabdil of the Moriscos of Granada. The legend of the “Red Apples” (Kizil-Elma) prophesied the end of the Ottoman Empire at the hands of a Christian emperor, but was also given an inverse interpretation: during an Inquisitorial trial in Venice in 1595, a Jewish prisoner of Portuguese origin spoke of these apples

57

M. Fierro, “Sobre al-Qarmùniyya”, Al-Qan†ara 11 (1990) pp. 83–94. M. Marín, “Legends on Alexander the Great in Moslem Spain”, pp. 71–90. 59 See Diego Torres, Relación del origen y suceso de los Xarifes, pp. 89–90. 60 G. Turbet-Delof, L’Afrique Barbaresque dans la Littérature française aux XVI et XVII siècles, Geneva, 1973, pp. 68–69. 61 L. del Mármol, Descripción general de África, fol. 28v–29r. 62 See art. “Kizil-Elma” in EI 2 by P. Boratav. 63 P.N. Boratav, “La légende de la Pomme Rouge et du Pape de Rome” in J.P. Digard (ed.), Le cuisinier et le Philosophe. Hommage à Maxime Rodinson, Paris, 1982, pp. 127–134. 58

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and their meaning with the words, “Il Turco venerà, abrugerà Roma et ogni cosa et noi restaremo in libertà et vivaremo a nostro modo”.64 The prophecies of the “Red Apples” also mention Alexander the Great, linking the theme of loss/restoration with that of enclosing/defending, which is in the last instance the theme of salvation or loss coming not only from the past, but from beyond the known confines. A golden apple was also used in Ottoman ceremonial as a symbol of universal royalty. The symbol of the imperial golden apple was introduced after 1453 by the sultan Mehmet in ceremonies of accession to the throne, and embodied Ottoman aspirations to conquer all Christendom: according to the legend, Alexander the Great had possessed an apple carved in the gold he had received in tribute from all the territories he conquered, and the apple shone in his hand as a symbol of the power held by that hand over all the world. Mehmet knew of these legends of Alexander and aspired to turn himself into “the sovereign of all the world and all the people; that is, a second Alexander”.65 The painting of the Virgin Mary which was found with the parchment in the Torre Turpiana in Granada, represented the Virgin in “Egyptian dress” and holding the baby Jesus with a golden apple in his hand. It was not only the loss of al-Andalus that became the theme of eschatological predictions: belief in a Christian conquest of the Maghreb, associated with eschatological themes, was widespread among the Moroccan Muslim population, as is shown by the proverbs of the popular Sìdì 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Majdhùb66 or other similar hagiographic oral cycles.67 All sacred times need their sacred spaces and in Morocco, the city of Fez, city of cities and a sacred zone between heaven and earth appears constantly in a context of legitimacy and mahdism. In late-medieval Moroccan sources, the glorified Fez acquires the category of a new Jerusalem because Fez was the city of the Idrìsids, the initiating ancestors who preserved the essence

64 P.C. Ioly Zorattini, Processi del S. Ufficio di Venezia contro ebrei e giudaizzanti, Appendici XIII, Florence, 1997, p. 235. 65 G. Necipoglu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power. The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, pp. 11–12. 66 H. de Castries, Les gnomes de Sidi Abd er-Rahman el-Medjdoub, Paris, 1896, pp. 33–34 or A. de Prémare, La tradition orale du Mejdûb. Récits et quatrains inédits, Aixen-Provence, 1986, pp. 176–179. 67 J. Drouin, Un cycle oral hagiographique dans le Moyen Atlas marocain, Paris, 1975, p. 112.

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of original Islam, the potential restorers of the purity and justice of the earliest times.68 On the Christian side there existed the corresponding “dream of the conquest of Fez” in the words of Bataillon,69 a reflection in the mirror image in the imperial and legitimising anxieties of the Castilians and Portuguese. In the mid-17th century, the French traveller G. Mouette, in his description of the population of Morocco, stated that the generalised belief existed there that the Christians would come to Fez and besiege it, and that their conquests would begin in Salé.70 Salé was at this time the Moroccan port situated opposite Rabat at the mouth of the river Bu-Regreg, and was almost entirely inhabited by Moriscos expelled from the Iberian peninsula. In cases of political activism in the name of a mahdì, followers would describe themselves as ghurabà" or strangers to mark their spiritual alienation from a corrupted world.71 Such was the practice, for example, of the earliest Almohads regarding their mahdì, Ibn Tùmart. In the “Prophecy of the Prophet Mu˙ammad concerning Spain” preserved in aljamía, the Prophet refers to the last inhabitants of Spain as “algaribos”,72 a clear reference to the eschatological ˙adìth saying that Islam began as a stranger and would end as a stranger. The Moriscos, the last Muslims in Spain, saw themselves as a chosen people, as proof of which they were required to suffer a long series of calamities—they thought of themselves as those to whom the Prophet had entrusted the task of restoring the Islam of the earliest times, as the inheritors of a legacy of absolute purity.

68 M. García-Arenal and E. Manzano, “Légitimité et villes idrissides” in M. GarcíaArenal and P. Cressier, Genèse de la ville islamique en al-Andalus et au Maghreb occidental, Madrid, 1998, pp. 257–284, esp. pp. 259–261. 69 M. Bataillon, “Le rêve de la conquête de Fès”, Mélanges d’études luso-marocaines dédiés à la mémoire de David Lopes et Pierre de Cenival, Lisbon-Paris, 1945, pp. 31–39. 70 “mais qu’ayant assemblé leurs forces, ils nous le feront lever, comme il est écrit dans leurs prophéties, et qu’ensuite ils passeront à la conqueste d’Espagne et du reste de la Chrestienté; que la ville de Salé doit estre la première conqueste du roy qui entrera dans le pais”, SIHM, France, II, p. 166. 71 M. Fierro, “Spiritual alienation and political activism: the gurabà" in al-Andalus during the Sixth/Twelfth century”, Arabica 47 (2000) pp. 230–260. 72 M. Sánchez Álvarez, El manuscrito misceláneo, p. 251.

CHAPTER TWELVE

IBN ABÌ MAÓALLÌ AND HIS ADVERSARIES In the same year that the first Morisco victims of the Expulsion order from Spain started to straggle into Morocco, i.e. in 1610, the city of Sijilmàsa in the South East of Morocco was conquered by a group of ragged and badly armed men headed by a figure known as Abù Ma˙allì or Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, who expelled the city’s governor and the Sa'dian army which controlled it. Sijilmàsa was immediately subjected to the reformation of customs and repression of abuses in keeping with what Ibn Abì Ma˙allì had been preaching since previous years. From Sijilmàsa, where there was an explosive growth in the number of followers prepared to believe that Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was the mahdì and long-awaited Fà†imì, the leader went on to conquer the region of the Dar'a, to cross the Atlas and then lay siege to the Sa'adian capital of Marrakech, which eventually also fell to his troops. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s brief period of government ended in 1613 with his death during a battle against followers of Mawlày Zaydàn, the Sa'adian sultan, who regained control of the capital, and had Abù Ma˙allì’s head hung from the city walls until it had largely rotted away, when its decomposed remains were finally buried in the sanctuary of Abù-l-'Abbàs al-Sabtì. Despite this, the peoples of the southern Atlas and the Sahara refused for many years to believe that their leader had died and claimed that he was simply “hidden” until the day of his return. He was the last mahdì to seize power and although the period of his reign was only to last three years, he was certainly the most important prophetic figure to have emerged in Morocco since Ibn Tùmart.1 Although Ibn Abì Ma˙allì and his actions are comparable in many ways to the Almohad Mahdì, and indeed are inevitably compared with him in the contemporary Arab sources, historians have never given him the kind of attention devoted to the Almohad mahdì. This

1 M. García-Arenal, “Imàm et Mahdì: Ibn Abì Mahallì” in M. García-Arenal (ed.), Mahdisme et millénarisme en Islam, REMMM 91–94 (2000) pp. 157–179.

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has no doubt been mainly due to the fact that Abù Ma˙allì’s movement failed where Ibn Tùmart’s succeeded in bringing about dynastic continuity, in the case of Ibn Tùmart through the figure of 'Abd al-Mu"min. There was a consequent lack of dynastic historians devoted to re-writing their founder’s biography and ennobling his figure as in the case of Ibn Tùmart, and as a result there is no comparison between the sheer amount of existing secondary bibliography for one leader and the other. Ibn Tùmart was successful and Abù Ma˙allì failed; nevertheless, both can still be seen within the same prophetic paradigm. French colonial historians paid attention to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, describing him as a “marabout” or religious figure, or, as he is often called, a “religionnaire”, a man who led the xenophobic reaction of a group of anarchical and primitive tribes, a charlatan who exploited xenophobia and fanatical superstitions in pursuit of his own chimerical career. Such historians sought to underline Abù Ma˙allì’s resemblance, in other words, to the frequently messianic leaders of revolts against the French occupation of Algeria in the nineteenth century,2 and worked hard to portray him as deeply antagonistic to all notions of modernity and civilisation. In standard Moroccan reference books on Moroccan history, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s movement remains just one more episode among the many troubles which took place after the death of A˙mad al-Manßùr and during the civil wars between followers of his rival heirs as they sought to fill the power vacuum he left behind him. I would like to suggest that his career was rather more interesting and complex: the new leader was a figure of scrupulous faith and respectfully familiar with the Law, a prolific scholar who went to great lengths to show himself a follower of the strictest sunnism and at the same time carried out a revolutionary act intended to restore the symbolic order of the world at its foundation, eradicating evil from the surface of the earth. A significant number of sources concerning Ibn Abì Ma˙allì have survived, the most important of which are undoubtedly his own works, consisting of half a dozen manuscripts which have remained unpublished.3 Important sources from the Alawite period (i.e. the 2 On this subject, see J. Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia c. 1800–1904), Berkeley, 1994. 3 The inventory of his works is to be found in M. Hajji, L’activité intellectuelle au Maroc à l’époque Sa‘dide, Rabat, 1977, p. 270.

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dynasty which took over after the Sa'dis) such as the Mu˙à∂aràt of al-Yùsì, the Nuzha of al-Ifrànì or Nashr al-Mathànì by al-Qàdirì,4 also pay detailed attention to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì. In addition to contemporary and later Arab sources and the copious writings of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì himself, there also exist a considerable number of archive documents written by contemporary European observers who travelled to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s court in Marrakech with the aim of establishing official relations with the new sovereign and obtaining commercial concessions.5 The different types of sources present different levels in the public view of such a figure and show the intersections between oral traditions, rumours, written texts . . . concerning the advent of the Mahdì. Their contrasting and at times complementary visions make it possible to see the relations between, on the one hand, a personal trajectory and ideological preaching, and on the other popular expectations and interpretations, as well as taking into account the views of his contemporary peers, such as those 'ulamà" and sufis who did not take part in his movement. The existence of all these sources allows us to form an idea of the wide spectrum of views ranging from the popular apocalyptic expectations and beliefs of his followers to the persona and doctrinal elaboration of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì himself. The sources can also help us to understand which aspects of an individual’s thought can come to acquire public legitimacy, and how they come to acquire it, adopting to socially understood and constructed paradigms. A combination of circumstances coincided with the moment at which Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s revolt took place and make of it a period of grave general crisis. Early seventeenth-century Morocco had suffered from a series of droughts and famines culminating in a devastating plague epidemic which had even claimed the sultan, A˙mad alManßùr. Al-Manßùr’s death led to a long civil war between his sons, each of whom proclaimed his right to the throne, and this civil war and the power vacuum which accompanied it brought about a profound destabilising of society. From 1609 onwards, Morocco was also

4

Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì fì akhbàr mulùk al-qarn al-˙àdì, ed. and French trans. O. Houdas, Paris, 1889. Vol. I, Arabic text, vol. II, translation; Al-Yùsì, Al-Mu˙à∂aràt, ed. M. Hajjì, Rabat, 1976; Al-Qà∂irì, Nachr al-mathani, ed. N. Cigar, Londres, 1981. French trans. A. Graulle, in Archives Marocaines, 21, Paris, 1913. 5 All of them published in different volumes of the series Sources Inédites de l’Histoire du Maroc, (SIHM), dir. Henry de Castries, Paris, 1907–1925.

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to receive the final representatives of the now mythical al-Andalus, irretrivably lost. In 1610, one of the warring candidates for the Moroccan throne, one of A˙mad al-Manßùr’s sons, Mawlày al-Shaykh, ceded the town of Larache to Spain in exchange for military aid from the Spaniards to fight against his brother and rival, Mawlày Zaydàn who was the candidate supported by the Ottomans. Tangier, Ceuta and Oran remained under Spanish control. But in addition to all these hard circumstances, A˙mad al-Manßùr had in the final years of the previous century conquered another Muslim country, the Western Sùdàn, by force of arms and had used decidedly messianic propaganda to justify his actions. All of these events came at the time of the millennium, given that the year 1592 coincided with the year 1000 of the Hijra. A frequently-cited passage from the work of the historian al-Ifrànì explicitly relates all of these fraught historical circumstances to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì: “The entry of the troops of the sultan Abù l-'Abbàs [A˙mad] in Sùdàn, the capture of the sultan Sokia in his palace in Jagu and the conquest of Timbuctu and its dependencies were telling signs of the near coming of the Fà†imid imàm, the Mahdì. Equally, the plague which reigned throughout those years, the seditions and the high cost of foodstuffs, which still persists in several regions, had been further signs of the mahdì’s coming; to this list must be added, from what we are told, the taking of Oran, which had to be carried out by the mahdì in person or under his orders.”6 The above paragraph is intended only as a brief outline of the historical context of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s movement before going on to cover and comment briefly on his life story. These explanations will be divided into three sections, in accordance with the types of sources, mentioned previously, on which I base my comments i.e. the man’s own work, Arab sources and contemporary European reports.

Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s writings Let us begin with the writings of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì himself. Between the years 1607 and 1611, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì embarked on a period

6

Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 307.

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of febrile activity, writing some one thousand pages in which it is shown that whilst the author is certainly a visionary, he is also a scholar with the ability to resort to legal authority to support his prophetic pretensions. Most of his work is written in a militant and combative tone and deals with the Dajjàl and the right to insurrection against corrupt and injust powers which must be headed by the Mahdì announced in tradition. The most significant of these works for an outline of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s strategy until his proclamation as mahdì is his work entitled Al-Ißlìt al-khirrìt,7 (The Sharpened Sword ) in which Ibn Abì Ma˙allì provides detailed information about himself, his upbringing, conversion to sufism and family background as well as his evolution towards an ideological option of messianic prophethood. According to the Ißlìt, A˙mad ibn 'Abd Allàh ibn Mu˙ammad ibn al-Qà∂ì, known as Abù Ma˙allì or Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, was born in Sijilmàsa in about 967/1560. His family ran a zàwiya in the city known as the Zàwiya of the qà∂ì because of the distinguished work as qà∂ìs that the Awlad Ma˙allì had carried out for several generations. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì studied under his father, a qà∂ì described in the Ißlìt as a severe and authoritarian figure who educated his son within the strictest possible norms, causing him to feel aversion towards sufism, which he had initially found highly attractive. In about 980/1572 Abù Ma˙allì was sent by his father to study in the city of Fez, where he stayed for some five or six years. In Fez, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was looked down upon as an unrefined provincial from a far-off region, and reports that he often suffered the ironic comments and mockery of his colleagues. The city itself dazzled him. In the Ißlìt he writes “I saw in this mosque [al-Qarawiyyìn] such knowledge and such men of knowledge that I cannot describe because I had never had occasion to see such things. I felt very sad, desolated, when I saw the standards which had been attained by boys of Fez of my own age. They had studied, understood and assimilated sciences that boys of Sijilmàsa older than I had not possessed and would never be able to possess, all of which saddened me exceedingly and caused me pain.”8 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was still in Fez in 7 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Al-Ißlì† al-khirrìt fì qa†' bul'um al-'ifrìt al-nifrìt, Bibliothèque Royale de Rabat, mss. nº 100, f. 59. 8 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Al-Ißlì† al-khirrìt, p. 6. A.M. Kaddouri, “Ibn Abi Mahalli, á propos de l’itinéraire psychosocial d’un Mahdi”, pp. 119–124.

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1578 at the time of the arrival there of the troops of the Portuguese king Dom Sebastian. A prey to panic like thousands of other inhabitants, and convinced as he was of the imminence of defeat by the Christian troops, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì fled the city and hid in a remote area in the mountains. However, the battle of Wàdì-l-Makhàzin ended in glorious victory for the Moroccan troops, who were aided by the participation on the battlefield of large numbers of 'ulamà" and awliyà". It can be inferred from remarks in the Ißlìt, and above all from the manner in which Ibn Abì Ma˙allì over-justifies his flight from Fez, that the situation after the battle was far from easy for those who had played no part in the heroic events. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì left the city and took refuge in the countryside together with the shaykh Mu˙ammad b. Mubàrak al-Tastawì al-Za'rì, a near-illiterate saint reputed to possess strange powers whom Ibn Abì Ma˙allì had approached out of curiosity rather than interest since, as he writes, “my passion was the study of science and I did not for one moment think I would embrace the doctrine of the sufis. Sufis at that time suffered from a very bad reputation and I felt great mistrust towards them.” Accompanied by the shaykh, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì underwent full conversion to sufism, leading to a split with his father as described in the Ißlìt: “When I decided to go into isolation to devote myself entirely to the knowledge of truth, my father, may God forgive him, became indignant and refused to accept it. He wrote me a very severely worded letter in which he addressed me as if I were a madman and asked me how I could dare to prefer ignorance to knowledge, to choose life in the countryside and leave the city behind.”9 Abù Ma˙allì’s conversion to sufism was preceded by a series of painful and violent crises: “I had moments of madness and death, I lost the ability to sleep. At times I would leave home in my bare feet, and roam the streets with my head uncovered . . . I continued in this state of illness and insanity until the day that God cured me of these evils and saved me from physical and mental loss.”10 “Finally, the bandage that covered my eyes was ripped away and when I saw what I could see, I converted. I then gave myself up to following my shaykh, since without his help and that of God I would undoubtedly have perished just as, if he had not guided me, I would have

9 10

Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Al-Ißlì† al-khirrìt, f. 54. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Al-Ißlì† al-khirrìt, f. 58.

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been lost. And how could it be any other way given that through the mediation of the shaykh God removed me from the ocean of passions into which I was about to be submerged . . .” He writes that one day he roamed the streets repeating the words “anà sul†àn, anà sul†àn” (I am the sultan, I am the sultan), an anecdote later used against him by his adversaries, who claimed that it proved his political, temporal ambitiousness, although in his work Al-Salsabìl Ibn Abì Ma˙allì furnishes the story with a figurative and spiritual meaning, as reflecting his state of uncontrollable euphoria. After two years with the shaykh, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì left to undertake his pilgrimage, which proved to be another long and painful adventure involving wandering for months in the Barqa desert in Cirenaica before eventually arriving in Cairo half-dead through illness. On his return to Morocco Ibn Abì Ma˙allì settled in Fighìgh, where he devoted himself to the study of the Kitàb al-Shifà" of Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂. He also became a follower of a locally important Shàdhilite saint, 'Abd al-Qàdir b. Abì Samba, known as Sìdì Shaykh. He was such a close and devoted disciple that Sìdì Shaykh gave Ibn Abì Ma˙allì his daughter in marriage. Nevertheless, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì soon lost faith in Sìdì Shaykh and came to consider him a fraudulent hypocrite as well as a bida'ì (innovator), and he initiated a series of violent polemics with him. This was the period 1606–08, a time of great literary activity for Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, when a large part of his production was devoted to denouncing Sìdì Shaykh and his ilk as impostors. He showed a particular interest in denouncing bid'a and all those he considered believers in magic, necromancy, heretical rites, fraud and corruption. Above all, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was opposed to imposture, and a great part of his written work is given over to thoughts on this idea and to separating imposture from Truth. He also began to denounce the corruption of the world and to speak of the need to return to a purified form of religion. For Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, if the originating past was infinitely pure, then change and innovation could only mean decadence and corruption. He moves from a visionary past to a prophetic future. From imposture he goes on to the idea of legitimacy, which was no longer a question of separating the canonical saint from the charlatan, but one of taking sides against the dynasty in power: the kind of obedience owed to the imàm could only ever be conditional. Moral evolution leads the devout man to assume temporary leadership; only introspection can disentangle the true from the false, or the divine impulse from

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demoniacal temptation. All authority, he wrote, should be earned and the shurafà" should not be permitted to exercise it simply because they were shurafà". Ibn Abì Ma˙allì proclaimed the right to rebel against the monarch who did not fulfil his duties: “If passions assume control of the true power which is the Power of God, the Merciful is irritated and the devil rejoices. If, in spite of this, scholars follow the devil, then the principles of religion are erased and God orders the destruction of the world.” “The just one is the shadow of God upon the path”, where “the just one” is he who rises against corrupt power and becomes a good guide on the path to be followed. At the end of Al-Salsabìl, (another of his works) Ibn Abì Ma˙allì encouraged believers to command good and forbid evil. In the Mihràs he wrote, “As for he who openly commits sins [i.e. the sultan Zaydàn], if a reformer [i.e. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì himself ] rises against him through love of religion it is necessary that all true Muslims unite with him in order to bring about the triumph of faith in God. Whoever does not do so is disobedient, an infidel . . .”11 Once again we see the characteristic demonisation of the opponent or adversary, and the idea that all those who are not followers or supporters of the mahdì are to be regarded as his adversaries. In his writing, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì revealed himself to be tormented by the spiritual duty brought by the qu†baniyya, i.e. the sufi status of qu†b or pole destined to save the community on behalf of God. His rhetoric, especially when writing of Sìdì Shaykh, is extraordinarily aggressive, imbued with enlightened and radical violence and invested with great verbal force. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì draws an apocalyptic picture of contemporary geo-political circumstances which depicts the Christians as a doubleheaded hydra with forces in both Malta and Oran. He laments the loss of al-Andalus and the situation in Ceuta, Tangier and Oran, but above all he expresses consternation at the loss of Larache to Spain. He reproaches his contemporaries for having abandoned their sacred duty of the jihàd and for having accepted humiliation. The mahdì, he writes, will himself come to lead the jihàd. Contemporary Morocco was divided by struggles between the two rivals to the throne, each of whom dominated different areas of the country. The fratricidal struggle was represented by Ibn Abì Ma˙allì

11 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Mihràs al-ru"ùs al-jahala al-mubtadi"a, Bibliothèque Générale, Rabat, Mss. no. K192, f. 7.

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in terms of countries which meet in tremendous clashes, with subsequent price rises throughout the Maghreb and epidemics for several consecutive years. The devil, writes Ibn Abì Ma˙allì in the Ißlìt12 was no longer satisfied with those he already had within his grasp and was now attempting to take control of good men, for the powerful devoured the weak, heads were disturbed, everything was turned upside down, and absurdity attained the heights while nobility was wiped out, right and justice decayed until all traces of them disappeared, and iniquity was widespread. Men behaved like women and women like men, alcohol was sold publicly in the streets, treachery triumphed and all security vanished. The natural order of things had been overturned, and this was an unmistakable sign of the arrival of the Dajjàl. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì dwells on the same contemporary problems that we have seen emphasised in the short passage from al-Ifrànì quoted above: drought, the expensiveness of foodstuffs, and famine.13 He considers the conquest of the Sùdàn by A˙mad al-Manßùr and the treatment of A˙mad Bàbà, the famous and reputed wise man of Timbuctu, as signs auguring the future arrival of the mahdì14 and writes that “I have heard it said that the mahdì will arise in Sijilmàsa and that he will have carried out his studies in the Qarawiyyìn”. The mahdì, he states, will be the last of the saints in the same way that the Prophet was the last of the prophets—using the same terminology as Ibn al-'Arabì, he describes him as khatm al-awliyà". Ibn Abì Ma˙allì gives up many pages to a dogmatic description of the Mahdì, writing that he will come to command right and forbid wrong, that he will build a kingdom of extreme joy for Believers and annihilation for the Infidel, that he will rely on the Qur"àn, Tradition and the Consensus of Believers. For several pages Ibn Abì Ma˙allì describes at length the characteristics and function of the mahdì as well as the signs of he who may legitimately be regarded as such. After this he enters upon assessments of all those who had claimed to be mahdìs throughout the history of the Maghreb, from 'Abd Allàh the mahdì of the Fà†imids to Ibn Tùmart the mahdì of the Almohads, to whom he devotes most attention. All of these figures

12 13 14

Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Al-Ißlì† al-khirrìt, f. 58. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Al-Ißlì† al-khirrìt, f. 33. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Al-Ißlì† al-khirrìt, f. 91.

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were regarded by him as impostors who had practised magic or were possessed by the devil. He also writes of the mahdist pretensions of some mystical figures such as al-Shàdhilì, al-Jazùlì or al-Ghazwànì. All of these past pretenders are discredited. Nevertheless, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì took some time to present himself as a mahdì, in spite of the expectations that had arisen around him. As in the chronicle describing the deeds of Ibn Tùmart, he spoke so much of the mahdì that he made them wish for the arrival of one and instilled in them the belief that only he possessed the characteristics announced by Tradition. His followers asked him, “You have inflamed our desire for the Awaited One (al-muntaΩar) and filled our hearts with desire by announcing his coming. When will he present himself ? What is his name? How long will his reign last and how are we to recognise the truth of his mission?”.15 The fundamental issue did not take long to arise: “If you truly are the awaited mahdì, break the silence surrounding your mission and announce the good news.” Ibn Abì Ma˙allì replied to these questions in a well-known passage, saying that the initiative depended on an express order from God:16 “They tell me that all my words revolve around the status of the Mahdì, he whom the people call the Fà†imì expected in every place at the End of all Time; and if I am he, I ought to undertake my mission and announce to you the news . . . why remain silent, why fear . . . In this hypothesis, my reasons are as follows: either I still doubt in myself, or I presume, or I have certainty. If I doubt or I presume, it is not permissible for me to adopt a dignity on the basis of doubt or pretension. If however I have certainty, and not doubt or presumption, what prevents me from presenting myself not in allusions but explicitly is the fact that I subordinate the initiative to an express order from God.” This divine order would come in successive stages and was expressed by a series of signs: in 1014/1605 a purple light illuminated the horizon, surrounding an immense light. Other celestial signs announced that the coming was imminent, while Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was in retirement in his hermit’s cell (khalwa). But it was the concession of Larache to the Spanish that stung Ibn Abì Ma˙allì into action. 15 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, Mihràs al-ru"ùs; apud Berque, Ulémas, fondateurs, insurgés du Maghreb au XVII e siècle, Paris, 1982, p. 75. 16 H. Touati, “L’arbre du Prophète. Prophètisme, ancestralité et politique au Maghreb”, REMMM 91–94 (2000) pp. 148–152.

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In the description Ibn Abì Ma˙allì gives of his prophetic figure, genealogy plays a fundamental role. However often he had stated that the fact of being shurafà" could not give the Sa'dids the right to govern as they wished, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì made very great efforts to demonstrate that he himself was a sharìf. In his pages on the characteristics that a mahdì should possess he writes that he must be a member of the family of the Prophet through the line of his uncle 'Abbàs ibn 'Abd al-Mu††alib, whereas tradition in the Maghreb dictated that he ought to be a descendant of the Prophet through the line of his daughter Fà†ima. Then he presents evidence to support the claim that the Abù Ma˙allì’s descended from 'Abbàs. He presents authoritative arguments, documentary proof from the family archives, etc. In addition to this oral and written evidence, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì introduces marvellous elements, mentioning a dream he had one day, by divine inspiration, and which proved that he was an 'Abbàsid. As we have already seen, miraculous evidence proving a sharìfian lineage was as acceptable in the Maghreb as documentary proof. The dream also revealed to him that he had a mark on his body of whose existence he was unaware because it was located in a place where he could not see it: this was the prophetic sign of the mole or stain on his right shoulder-plate. Another dream showed him the pre-eminence, endorsed by the Prophet Mu˙ammad, of the line of 'Abbàs over that of Fà†ima. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, who cannot ignore the fact that it was the Fà†imid sharaf that his contemporaries venerated, preserves his own interests by presenting the Idrìsid lineage of his mother. Two centuries earlier the doctors of law of the Central Maghreb had decided to concede men the right to inherit the sharaf through their mother, in a decision which had made jurisprudence.17 But it was the 'Abbàsid lineage that allowed him to claim the title of last caliph. According to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì the 'Abbàsid caliphate was now in the hands of the Ottomans, who would hand it on to the last of the 'Abbàsid caliphs who was none other than the Mahdì. His lineage allowed him to acquire great symbolic and religious capital as well as that which was political, for political legitimacy in the Maghreb was impossible by this time without filiation.18 17 H. Touati, “En relisant les Nawàzil de Mazouna: marabouts et shurfa au Maghreb central”, Studia Islamica LXIX (1989) p. 90. 18 Touati, “L’arbre du Prophète”, p. 152.

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The traditions concerning the appearance of the Mahdì also warned against the impostors who would arise to take the imprudent into error. The dilemma faced by the 'ulamà", local holy men and leading figures was that of distinguishing the “rightly guided” from the impostor.

The contemporary Arab Sources Arab sources always mention Ibn Abì Ma˙allì within the context of the theme of the dangers inherent in the censorship of customs. All of them present him as a legal scholar who was reputed and respectable as such. The shaykh, the faqìh Abù-l-'Abbàs A˙mad al-Tuwàtì (who wrote a work on Ibn Abì Ma˙allì which is cited by al-Ifrànì),19 wrote of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì in the following terms: “At first the faqìh Abù Ma˙allì was a simple jurist: after travelling for some time along the path of sufism, he received divine inspiration and showed the signs of his providential mission. The people went out to see him as he peregrinated, sometimes individually and sometimes in groups. His fame did not take long to spread throughout the entire country and the number of his adepts multiplied. When I heard news of this, I myself came to his side and stayed with him for a certain time until I saw that he was presenting himself as the mahdì foretold by the time-honoured traditions. From that moment on I refused to follow him along that path and I gave him up to his vanities.” The longest text on Ibn Abì Ma˙allì is that of al-Yùsì,20 included in his Mu˙à∂aràt, and which is reproduced or cited by other authors such as al-Qàdirì or al-Ifrànì. According to al-Yùsì, the legitimate act of commanding right and forbidding wrong can be taken too far. For one thing, he who launches himself on that course of action generally thinks of himself as superior to all other mortals, lacks humility and is often inspired by earthly ambitions and evil inclinations. Al-Yùsì explains very clearly how the reformer of customs can encourage the false notion that he will be able to bring about strict fulfilment of the law and thereby induce the people to think of him as the long-awaited mahdì. For al-Yùsì, the first of all mahdìs was 19

Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 331. Al-Yùsì, al-Mu˙à∂aràt, ed. M. Hajjì, Rabat, 1976, pp. 105–113. See also J. Berque, Al-Yousi, Problèmes de la culture marocaine au XVII ème siècle, París, 1958. 20

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Ibn Tùmart, to whom he devotes a long chapter which ends with an account of al-Yùsì’s own experiences among sufis of the Jabal Banì Zirwal, with whom he stayed and who showed him a book entitled Al-Maqßad al-asnà" fì l-mahdì l-aqnà containing calculations and predictions about the coming of the mahdì, and which spoke of the †à"ifa tùmartiyya. When he realised that he was among followers of Ibn Tùmart, al-Yùsì became so alarmed that he made haste to leave the area without eating any of the food they had prepared for him.21 Nevertheless, the true target of his diatribe on the hazards of the reform of customs is Ibn Abì Ma˙allì. He tells several anecdotes in which the leader is depicted as an excessive observer of the ˙isba and he stresses the example of Ibn Abì Bakr al-Dilà"ì, who refused to obey Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s call to go out onto the streets and censor customs: al-Dilà"ì answered by purifying himself and praying alone, thereby demonstrating that in his view such duties started and ended with oneself: “As far as I myself am concerned, I have achieved my aim, I have guarded my religion and I have turned towards integrity and purity. And whoever comes with a bad act, God will bear it in mind. As for you, look to that in which you yourself have incurred”—such as neglecting his own prayers by going out to chide others.22 Despite this response, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì went on with his work, and he captured the hearts of the people by telling them that he was the awaited mahdì and saying that he would stand at the head of the jihàd. The Arab authors relate Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s adventure and repeat the tale of his victories, his predictions about the corruption of the times, the signs indicating the coming of a mahdì, and the beliefs of his followers, such as the idea that any bullets fired at them would squash against their bodies as they hit them, as if they were made of wax. This is a sign of divine protection which al-Ghazwànì had also claimed for himself. Al-Ifrànì treats Ibn Abì Ma˙allì with respect and includes long paragraphs from the Ißlìt in his Nuzha. He portrays him as an eminent jurist with elevated thoughts and polished rhetoric, and he speaks of his many works with great admiration. But, in al-Ifrànì’s view, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì believed himself capable of carrying out a radical reformation of customs and it was this that brought about his downfall

21 22

Al-Yùsì, Al-Mu˙à∂aràt, p. 106. Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 332.

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without his ever realising it.23 Al-Ifrànì also reproduces the dualistic discourse of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, characteristic of all messianic movements, according to which those who obeyed him would be saved and those who did not would be lost. He also said to them, “You are greater than the disciples of the Prophet, for it is in a time of error that you are rising up in defence of the truth, whereas they lived in the very time of truth.”24 He also cites the legal expert Ya˙yà b. 'Abd Allàh al-Óà˙ì, who in allusion to this point wrote verses directed against Ibn Abì Ma˙allì: “Oh nation of the Chosen One, the Guide, do you by any chance lack models to follow among the 'ulamà" of past times?” In other words, who embodied the Tradition better than the 'ulamà", what better tradition was there than their example? Why look for a Guide elsewhere? This Ya˙yà ibn 'Abd Allàh had been a fellow-disciple of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì in Fez and after maintaining a campaign against him, ended up fighting at the head of the army of Mawlày Zaydàn which defeated Ibn Abì Ma˙allì in Marrakech. I will return to this figure later.

The European view of Ibn Ma˙allì Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s appearance on the Moroccan political scene, at a time when Morocco remained divided into regions governed by diverse rivals for the throne, aroused the interest of several European countries, which had commercial and diplomatic agreements with some of the different Moroccan rulers. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s initial success led some to think that he might be able to do as he had announced and unite the whole country under his command. The mark of this interest and concern can be seen in the archives of several European countries. Let us now move on to those texts preserved in European archives which not only give the personal opinion of informers and merchants who had met Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, but also contain references to the legends and beliefs about him which circulated among the people.

23 24

Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 331. Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 334.

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Two such accounts are clearly antagonistic to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì because they were written by followers of Mawlày Zaydàn. One is by Moses Pallache, a Fez Jew who worked as a translator of the sultan, and was a nephew and son respectively of two of the sultan’s comercial agents in the Netherlands.25 The other was written by Jorge de Henin, a Spanish envoy at the court of Mawlày Zaydàn for many years and whose account of his life and experiences in Morocco, written in 1614, pays great attention to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì.26 Henin begins by describing how Ibn Abì Ma˙allì had started to relate his dreams to his followers. According to Henin, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì pretended to speak in dreams when they were nearby: “Those who were about him asked him who he was talking to and he replied that he was speaking to Mu˙ammad, and that he was ordering him to raise his flags and to do other things of great import. They asked him again to explain the revelation to them. He then told them that Mu˙ammad had chosen him as sovereign defender of the Moors and destroyer by knife of the evil kings who were tyrannising the Mohammedan people and that he would conquer the whole world and would reduce all laws to one. He would enter Rome where, he said, there were as many gates as there were days in the year, all of which were made of gold and silver and the bells made of gold, and that the Moors who followed him in that journey would have such abundance of riches that they would say to one another, soand-so, lift up this gold, and that he would answer, lift it yourself for I have more than enough already, and that the least worthy Moor would have fifty Christian maidens and that in order to pass over into Christian lands ships would not be needed for when the time came a copper bridge would be discovered between Ceuta and Gibraltar and that beside the bridge there were two streams of molten lead . . . and that he would go from Rome to Jerusalem to reduce all laws to one . . . and that he would be king until the end of the world and that the Moors should look to what they did because noone would be able to save themselves except those who followed his flags . . . and that none of them need fear the bullets of their ene-

25 M. García-Arenal, G. Wiegers, A man of Three Worlds. Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew between Catholic Spain, Protestan Europe and Islam, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins U.P. 2003. 26 J. de Henin, Del sitio del Reyno de Marruecos y de su disposición y umos de la gente, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Manuscritos, nº 17 645.

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mies for they would be turned into soft wax . . .”27 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì proclaimed war against Christians and led his hearers to believe that Mawlày Shaykh and Mawlày Zaydàn were Christians and that it was necessary to destroy them first. A large number of Arabs and Berbers came from the Sahara to follow him because of his great fame and reputation as a saint. He began to collect taxes, saying that their purpose was to finance war against the Christians. On 20 May 1612, wrote Henin, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s forces triumphed over those of Mawlày Zaydàn and he entered Marrakech with the following proclamation: “A general pardon to all by mandate of Muley Mahamete ben Abdala, may God raise him up, King of the world-universe and great Redeemer, sent by God to punish evil kings and reward good ones.”28 Moses Pallache’s account is more openly scornful, and he brands Ibn Abì Ma˙allì “an impostor and necromancer”, precisely the same terms used by Ibn Abì Ma˙allì to describe his rival Sìdì Shaykh.29 In fact, these were the discrediting terms better used by the religious establishment of the 'ulamà" against a sufi shaykh who was gaining too many followers. In Pallache’s words, “In the year 1612, he left for the regions which the Arabs call Sahara, an uninhabited place on the extreme edges of the territory of the emperor Mawlày Zaydàn, in the south-east of Morocco. There, this impostor built a hermitage for himself, assumed the behaviour of a saint and retired far from the world. In this hermitage he accommodated, without charging any sum in exchange, all travellers who passed through the area, so that inhabitants of distant regions began to come to him bringing gifts and presents thinking that they would thereby gain a place in heaven”.30 Pallache also tells how on one of his journeys of pilgrimage to Mecca, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì met an Ethiopian who practised magic and helped him make a pact with the devil. He tells how Ibn Abì Ma˙allì began to gather people behind him by promising salvation of the soul to any of them who killed followers of the sultan or his governors. He gathered an innumerable crowd of people with whom he took control of the city of Marrakech, which he entered “mounted on a billy-goat”. The intention behind such a 27

J. de Henin, Del sitio del Reyno de Marruecos, f. 181 sq. J. de Henin, Del sitio del Reyno de Marruecos, f. 224. 29 Palatse, M., Een waerchtige beschryvinghe vant ghene datter geschiet is int lant van Berbarien, Rotterdam, 1614, French trans., Récit véridique de ce qui est arrivé dans le pays de la Barbarie, in S.I.H.M., Pays-Bas, vol. II, pp. 440–443. 30 SIHM, Pays-Bas, II, p. 441. 28

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description was once again to underline the notion that Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was a folk magician or wizard using a motif (the goat) from outside the Islamic ambit, so that European readers would associate him with black magic. In Islamic lore the “rightly guided” would rather ride a donkey or a white horse. But messianic figures tend to ride all kind of beasts: Bu Ma’za, “the man of the Goat” was an insurgent mahdist figure who rose against the French in the Algerian region of Dahra in 1845.31 Pallache ended his account as he had started it, claiming that “never and under no pretext should subjects rise up or rebel against their sovereign because God always ends by punishing them”. The aim of Pallache’s text, which was published in Rotterdam in 1614, was to defend the legality and legitimacy of the sultan Mawlày Zaydàn and thus encourage the continuation of support for him from the Dutch States General. Such efforts were certainly necessary, because some years earlier an important Dutch merchant by the name of Paul Van Lippeloo, of great influence in both the Netherlands and Morocco, had written a very different sort of relation on Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, with whom he had been granted an interview. Lippeloo’s Relation also begins with the origins of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s preaching, predictions and prophesies about him, his fame as a saint on the edges of the Sahara, and his campaigns. It insists, like the other documents I have mentioned, on the idea that he made his followers believe that they were immune to bullets and it describes them in the following terms: “They were all men of the Sahara, robust and hardened, rough peoples who go on foot, most of them with their heads uncovered and without anything around their bodies other than a miserable habit known as a haik, and a great wooden rosary around their necks. Hardened against the cold, heat and all privations, much tougher than the Moors of these regions [i.e. Marrakech]: enemies of all other nations, without any culture or usages but knowing how to pray to God assiduously in their way; stricter observers of the Law than other Moors, zealots, and Abì Ma˙allì mortal enemies of Christians.”32 Van Lippeloo wrote that Ibn Abì Ma˙allì had entered Marrakech and proclaimed himself king: “This king is called Mawlày A˙mad ben 'Abd Allàh el Fà†imì and he gives himself the titles of King of

31 32

C. Richard, Etude sur l’insurrection du Dhara (1845–1846), Argel, 1846. SIHM, Pays-Bas, II, p. 120.

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the Two Seas and the Deserts beyond Guinea, risen by order of God to bring peace to the world, Believer in the Law of God, combatant against the Infidels.” The khu†ba began to be said in his name throughout the whole of Morocco. He sacked the region of Dukkàla, home to rich Arab tribes who had refused to pay tribute to the makhzan for the last eleven years, and occupied the whole region as far as Fez. Van Lippeloo wrote, “Everyone fears him, which is remarkable because he does not make use of any particular rigour in his sentences . . . Wine and other vices to which the Moors used to give themselves up against their laws are now abhorred and rejected by them in all parts.” In July 1612 Van Lippeloo was one of a group of Christian merchants who were granted an interview with the new king. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì received them immediately, in his own tent, where he sat in the middle on a mat, with his elbow resting on a leather cushion. He wore a white shirt and kaftan and on his head a red hat surrounded by a blue turban, with his feet in sandals and his legs bare. Around his neck he wore a leather pouch of the kind that were used to carry a copy from the Qur"àn, and a kumiya, or dagger, in a belt. The triumphant leader received them in an affable and simple manner and invited them to sit down around him. He said to them, “Be welcome to my country; behave like honourable people, for you will find nothing in me other than good justice and policy because God has sent me to assist the persecuted, to expel evil from earth, to restore his Laws and rectify all that which Zaydàn and his followers have so shamefully allowed to decay. It is through him that all the evils on earth have come about, and this is why, by the will of God, he must take no part nor hope to gain anything in this realm. That is why he will be persecuted until the final consequences. I forbid you all to engage in mercantile dealings with any of those places which are still in his possession under pain of being considered my enemies. And if he takes to sea, you will please me by chasing him with your ships, and if you can bring him here I will reward you, you will be my friends and you will enjoy all my favours. You have yet to see what God will bring about by my hand, for what I have done so far is nothing in comparison with what I will do yet.”33 Van Lippeloo continues by remarking that the Fà†imì bore several signs on his body: the Moors

33

SIHM, Pays-Bas, II, p. 123.

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told him that it was written in their books that a man with those same signs would one day be designated their king. The signs were visible and he showed them to anyone who cared to see them. He intended to conquer Mazagan and the Christian lands before entering the city of Rome. Similar information is provided by an English text of September 1612, which is written by an English merchant who was almost certainly, like Van Lippeloo, one of the group of Christians invited to speak to the new sultan in his tent. In the words of this text, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì said that he had been in his ma˙alla for forty days, making reference to predictions about Màssa and how the drum would sound. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì had claimed that he “is sent from God because of the evill government of Muley Hammet’s sonnes the Xeriffes; and to stablish their Prophet’s religion that was decaied; and to fight against the Christians and recover those parts of Christendome the King of Spaine holds from them as Granada, Andaluzia etc and tels his people thay shall yet see greater wonders come to passe where they shall acknowledge he is sent of God . . . he must raigne forty years and then must com Christ whom they call Sidie Nicer, and he must surrender all to him for he must judge the world and then all must end.”34 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was seen by the English merchant as a simple and polite man of great wisdom and knowledge, dressed in a humble fashion: “He is a great saint and learned in the law, and was sought unto many of the principallest of the land for his blessings and favour.”35 The Protestant merchants seem to have been assured by Ibn Abì Ma˙allì that his wars against Christians would be limited to Spain, France and Italy, whereas he would maintain good relations with England and the Netherlands, to whom he would grant freedom of trade because he had been sent by God to redeem the oppressed even if they were Christians, and this phrase seems to have been interpreted by the merchants from Protestant countries as a warning to the King of Spain. Like the Arab sources, the European accounts record Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s strong magnetism, so fascinating for his people, and they were strongly impressed by the reigning climate of religious exaltation.

34 35

SIHM, Angleterre, II, p. 469. SIHM, Angleterre, II, p. 470.

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Unlike A˙mad al-Manßùr with his great court and ceremonial pageantry, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì represented the other side of the symbolism of power whose force and recurrence have been noted so insistently in previous chapters: that of the austere ascete, devoid of pomp, accessible to his subjects, holy and wise as well as being a warrior. Far from granting audiences from upon a dais or behind a veil, he sat bare-legged on the ground, wearing sandals. His habit of retiring to the desert as a hermit, with the primitive cave as his place of prophetic inspiration, were evident in all his behaviour and attire. He projected himself as a man who was close to his subjects, but also close to God. The revolutionary potential and apocalyptic charge of such an image was enormous.

Popular expectations and oral tradition The frequent references quoted in the Arab sources in connection with Ibn Abì Ma˙allì of legends and predictions concerning the mahdì who was to appear in Màssa (legends whose first written versions were analysed in Chapter 7) as well as what his leadership would mean for his followers (the reconquest of al-Andalus, the abundance of gold and silver etc) coincide with references made by these European merchants who were contemporaries of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì. Some of these legends also reflect the stereotypes of accusations exchanged between various holy figures and their followers, in which mutual allegations were made of imposture, magic or dealings with devils. The whole issue of imposture and how to distinguish it from the true grace conceded by God comes across as the most pressing problem for all holy men in pursuit of power. For it must be remembered that Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was not the only such holy figure to rise up in this period. The problem of the existence of other contemporaries who claimed to be the Awaited One, had already been analysed in his writings by Ibn Abì Ma˙allì himself, for he states that he had met several men who aspired to take up the canonical function of the Mahdì, citing among others Abù l-'Abbàs al-Sharìf, a native of Fez who imagined himself to be the mahdì and presented himself as such among the Ma∂aghra. He was captured by soldiers of al-Manßùr and died in prison where “the truth of his imposture became evident”, in the words of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì. Although

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not all of them openly proclaimed themselves mahdìs, several holy men intervened in the struggles for power. The chaotic situation brought about by the civil wars between the rival Sa'adian brothers was further complicated by a seditious movement in the Sùs after 1609 which was led by Sìdì Ibràhìm, a grandson of the famous Sìdì A˙mad ou Mùsà, from the zàwiya of Tazerwalt.36 From this date onwards, Sìdì Ya˙yà of the zàwiya of Zaddagha,37 also in the Sùs, also began to gain in significance. In the north, it was the zàwiya of Dilà" . . . Apocalyptic speculations and popular eschatological traditions were transmitted by maddà¢s, wandering troubadors who recited poems or proverbs in villages or among tribes, in which the ßà˙ib al-sà'a, Master of the Hour or ßà˙ib al-˙imàr, “man of the ass” always played a leading role. Their recitations took place in the annual mawsim, the religious festivals which honoured the saints of the tribes or in the fairs of villages. Some of these compositions have ended up forming hagiographic cycles which have survived from their late-medieval origins until modern times, like the legends concerning holy men or founders of †arìqa.38 These texts are a good illustration of the nature of the collective visions of the Muslim redeemer in Maghreb society and of how hopes associated with the mahdì reached ordinary people as well as the elites. European observers undoubtedly recorded and reflected contemporary legends and rumours. These orally transmitted legends are obviously themselves derived from the same traditions as written Arab sources. I will now cite one of these legends, which may or not refer to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì himself. This is the legend attributed to Mu˙ammad b. 'Ìsà, founder of the †arìqa of the 'Ìsàwa.39 According to it, the Sa'adian sultan requested help from Mu˙ammad b. 'Ìsà in the years 1610–20 in his struggles against a khàrijite, i.e. a rebel or leader of an uprising. This unnamed khàrijite had claimed to be marked by

36

Al-Tamanàrtì, Fawà"id al-Jamma, French trans. by J. Chartres, 1953, pp. 65 and 85. 37 Al-Tamanàrtì, Fawà"id al-Jamma, p. 66. 38 A.-L. De Prémare, La tradition orale du Mejdub. Récits et quatrains inédits. Aix-enProvence, 1986, pp. 259–261; J. Drouin, Un cycle oral hagiographique dans le moyen Atlas marocain, Paris, 1975, p. 112. 39 R. Brunel, Essai sur la confrérie religieuse des Aissaoua au Maroc, Paris, 1926, 2nd ed, Casablanca, 1988, p. 40.

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the Seal of God and in the region of Tuwàt (the desert region between Morocco and Algeria) he organised fierce propaganda against the central authorities. His popularity grew daily, a thousand prodigies were attributed to him, and he had 13,000 khuddàm, of whom 9,000 were men and 4,000 women. The sultan was alarmed by these developments and requested the saint’s assistance in reducing the rebel to impotence. The legend tells that the saint sent the rebel a message instructing him to desist, then threatened him and finally caused his death through the bite of a black scorpion. The saint wrote the following words to the sultan: “Know that the rebel of the Touat has died. This man was not a saint, but his wife was a jinniya (she-devil) who revealed to him the secrets of men.”40 Mu˙ammad b. 'Ìsà did not doubt that the rebel had access to such secrets—his reason for rejecting him is that he had arrived at them through the use of evil arts and not through the kind of holiness which Mu˙ammad b. 'Ìsà himself obviously possessed. In the same legend, another episode is then related in which the same saint confronts another competing saint, Sìdì A˙mad al-Milyànì, over his ability to make it rain after a period of absolute drought lasting for seven years. Although they live at a great distance from each other, the two men come to blows, one of the pair suffering a broken leg and the other a dislocated shoulder. Given that these are 'Ìsàwa legends, it is of course Mu˙ammad b. 'Ìsà, the holy founder, who succeeds in making it rain and is recognised as his superior by his injured rival. The legend coincides with historical records: according to chroniclers, the Sa'adian sultan Mawlày Zaydàn requested help from the faqìh Ya˙yà b. 'Abd Allàh al-Óà˙ì, a former fellow student and friend of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì in the madrasa of Fez. Sìdì Ya˙yà was also the most important saint in the Sùs, a region which he dominated from his zàwiya in Zaddagha to such an extent that he came temporarily to have an even greater influence than his rivals from Tazerwalt, the zàwiya of the descendants of Sìdì A˙mad ou Mùsà. According to some sources, Sìdì Ya˙yà carried out a veritable campaign in the form of letters, epigrams and poems in which he dismissed and discredited his former colleague. This campaign and the arguments used in it resembled very closely that undertaken by Ibn Abì Ma˙allì against his former friend and master Sìdì Shaykh.

40

Brunel, Essai sur la confrérie religieuse des Aissaoua, p. 40.

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The entire Sùs obeyed Sìdì Ya˙yà, whose ability to recruit troops was considerable, and it was for this reason that Mawlày Zaydàn wrote to him in the following terms: “It is your duty to defend the dynasty in my person because I am one of your followers. You must therefore act in my favour and fight all those who conspire against me.”41 The sultan presents himself, in other words, (or rather, the sources present the sultan) as a follower and subject of the saint, almost as a vassal who has a right to be defended by his lord. The sultan clearly relinquished to the saint two fundamental prerogatives for the maintenance of his own power: the defence of that power and of his subjects, and the organisation and deployment of military force: the sultan is powerless without the power of the saint. Ya˙yà b. 'Abd Allàh seems to have taken over a year to answer the sultan’s call, but eventually gathered together numerous troops from among his followers and marched on Marrakech during the Rama∂àn of 1022 (October 1613). As in the legend, he urged the rebel to lay down his arms and made threats to him, without receiving a reply. The two armies faced up to each other and Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was killed by one of the very first shots to be fired in battle.42 His troops fled in panic on discovering that they were not invulnerable to bullets as they had been led to believe. The story of al-Ifrànì closes with two chronograms concerning Ibn Abì Ma˙allì around the dates 1019 and 1022 respectively: “He rose a billy-goat and he perished a lamb”43 i.e. he died with his throat slit like a sacrificial lamb and he had risen either like or upon a he-goat. These words bring to mind events as reported by Moses Pallache. Sìdì Ya˙yà entered Marrakech and moved into the royal palace, making it clear by his actions that he intended to keep for himself the power which his control of the capital allowed him. He was therefore threatened by Mawlày Zaydàn. According to al-Ifrànì, Ya˙yà left Marrakech and returned to the mountains in order to show his followers that he had no designs on secular power and only wished to defend legitimate power. Others believed that he really had sought to take control politically, but discovered that not all his followers were prepared to back him in this attempt by facing up

41 42 43

Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 339. Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, pp. 340–41. Al-Ifrànì, Nuzhat al-˙àdì, p. 342.

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to Zaydàn. In fact, the Berber troops who had accompanied him and taken part in the conquest of the city immediately started to disperse and return to their homelands. However, the chronicle continues with another tale which smacks of legend: before handing power over to Mawlày Zaydàn and going back across the Atlas, Sìdì Ya˙yà is said to have extracted promises from the sultan that he would reform his tyrannical government, renounce the practice of sodomy and the consumption of wine, and remove from positions of power Jews like Ibràhìm b. Wayish, his treasurer and administrator of the royal treasury, who was accused of enriching himself excessively. The sultan’s non-fulfilment of these vows would justify Sìdì Ya˙yà’s subsequent revolt against Mawlày Zaydàn, a few months later in September 1614. Sìdì Ya˙yà’s movement was also carried out under, and legitimised by, the banner of the reformation of customs. Sìdì Ya˙yà was poisoned to death by the sultan in 1626. To recapitulate: Ibn Abì Ma˙allì was from a peripheral region away from the main centres of power in the Maghreb, where his family enjoyed strong local influence and social prestige. His was a family of 'ulamà" and they took care to send their son to Fez to complete his education as one of their number. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì converted to sufism and reached a certain grade of mystical initiation, although he continued to be engaged in studies, such as those of alBukhàrì or the Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, which were the studies undertaken by aspiring 'ulamà". Once in contact with other holy figures, he seems to have been tormented by the problems of the bida', by imposture and also by the duties he felt that his own qu†baniyya brought with it. His own desire for Rigour led him into Action. He reflects and writes at length on these themes. His writings reveal both his personal development until the moment he felt ready to undertake prophetic activity and the strategy required firstly to kindle the everlatent embers of messianic expectation and secondly to provide the signs that showed that he was himself the mahdì. There is no doubt, as we see in the writings of his rivals, that at a time when supernatural grace was displayed as a prerequisite for the exercise of power, when leaders of zàwiya competed to establish a dynasty, the problem of detecting imposture had become truly fundamental. That made genealogy a necessary ingredient for any legitimacy. Other holy figures gained power through local patronage and rarely went beyond the borders of their regions. It was a messianic

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prophecy that re-awakened endemic expectations in southern Morocco and gave an unexpected although ephemeral dimension to Ibn Abì Ma˙allì’s movement. The mahdì’s actions transcended tribalism and the segmented world of politics. Ibn Abì Ma˙allì is a “founding hero” who did not have the time to achieve what would in Weberian terms be called the routinisation of charisma, since he was soon abandoned by his followers, who after the initial flash of brilliance did not see a fulfilment of their expectations of creating an Islamic “city of God”. One of the English observers cited above made the forecast that Ibn Abì Ma˙allì would not last long, given that many of the Arab tribes which had initially followed him had now begun to desert him. It was for the same reason that Sìdì Ya˙yà, his vanquisher, was forced to give up the conquered city of Marrakech to Mawlày Zaydàn. In both cases a following was almost immediately achieved because of a millenarian tradition of expectation, but the impulse deflated very quickly. Rather than an 'Abd al-Mu"min, Ibn Abì Ma˙allì probably needed a figure like Bashìr al-Wansharìsì to purge, organise and stratify the movement in accordance with the specific needs of a new temporal power which aimed at self-perpetuation. At the beginning of this chapter I pointed out that French colonial historians, the first to take an interest in Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, interpreted him in terms dictated by their own contemporary situation. To consider other interpretative frames of reference, does Ibn Abì Ma˙allì fit into the famous typology of Ernst Gellner to which I made reference in the Introduction? To a certain extent he does, in the sense that he was a puritan reformer from the margins of the system, i.e. a rural leader who placed in doubt the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty; and also in the sense that it was the process of coming into contact with the centre of that system that instilled ideals and expectations in him which the system to which he belonged only marginally could not fulfil. Marginality and radicalism were features of his movement. It was sufism that provided an outlet for his frustration, ire and violence and a means of expressing it, and also provided him with legitimising arguments. The main problem for Gellner’s paradigm in the case of Ibn Abì Ma˙allì is that he was also an 'alim, like Sìdì Ya˙yà and al-Yùsì, and that all these men were attached to a †arìqa or zàwiya as well as being 'ulamà". Sìdì Ya˙yà was, for example, a zàwiya leader of some repute. Not only did he study in a Fez madrasa as we have seen—al-Tamanàrtì, in his Fawà"id, includes among the biographies of his masters a portrait

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of Sìdì Ya˙yà, and specifies how he studied Bukhàrì and the science of the ˙adìth under his guidance at the zàwiya. Al-Yùsì was a legal scholar who met the followers of Ibn Tùmart in the mountains, in a story to which I made reference earlier, on his way to visit the grave of 'Abd al-Salàm ibn Mashìsh in the hope of obtaining benefits through the saint’s mediation. It would be possible to continue with other such examples, but it should already be clear that in this period there was no clear separation between 'ulamà" and awliyà, or between orthodox city-based Islam and heterodox rural Islam. Such a distinction was not to be clearly established until the Salafiyya movement of the 1920s. Sufism was not a solely rural phenomenon: it embodied the religious ideals of an elite and came to have a social function as it spread and provided the unprotected classes with a form of ideology. Theological debates over the excesses of the †arìqa, the limits on the practise of censorship of customs, on the exact nature of the bida', had their effects on the social system as well as an influence on the restructuring of local groupings and powers. All these processes of restructuring of groups and bidding for universal power from a local basis were carried out under a religious banner, whether censorship or reform, and both imply an ideological transformation of the “orthodoxy” which according to Gellner is a feature of the 'ulamà". To return again to al-Yùsì, whose Mu˙à∂aràt denounces and condemns the hazards I have mentioned, this author devotes several chapters of that same book to defending the concept of tawassul i.e. intercession, giving similar testimony of supernatural events, divination (mukàshafa), premonitory dreams and beneficial interventions. The notion that privileged individual have access to supernatural power is not challenged: what matters is the need to distinguish between evil and good powers. Imposture arises out of the excessiveness of material appetites by ceding to the vanities of the world. It was political ambition, the ability to win an audience, that alarmed so many of these men of religion belonging to the “establishment” and alarmed also the sultans in power. Every ascete or holy man held in his hands the chance to build a new and necessary city of God, and resorted to symbols both produced and nourished by the social and historical experience of the groups among whom he carried out his preaching. Thus the caution and fear of the Islam of the scholars, and the guarantees they try to establish to decide who is really a holy man and not an ambitious impostor and which should be the limits to a holy man’s behav-

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iour so that he is not led astray in the exercise of earthly and material powers. In fact, we are not very far from the Late Antique debate, as defined by Peter Brown,44 over the difference between legitimate and illegitimate forms of supernatural power, the debate that tries to draw the boundary between the sorcerer and the holy man. As in Late Antiquity, or rather, since Late Antiquity, the dream of justice and union with the divine continues to be expressed in apocalyptic terms.

44

P. Brown, The making of Late Antiquity, Cambridge, 1978, pp. 60–62.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

I began the journey undertaken in this book by describing the Early Islamic debate concerning authority and the urge—common to the three Abrahamic religions—to delay the encounter between the divine and the human until the end of all time, mentioning also the tendency of the peoples of the umma (as of the other two religions) to resist this urge. The earliest chapters told a story of religious conversion and intercultural translation which was characterised by a persisting use of the language of the Apocalypses of Late Antiquity which spread throughout the Mediterranean regions, myths shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians. These deeply rooted and widespread myths survived until the period covered in the final chapters of this book and constitute the context for the reception of political messages of a messianic nature. The language of apocalyptic messianism was employed to express a great variety of desires for change at the same time that its usage represented an attempt to apply traditional patterns of thought to a completely new phenomenon, that of Muslim revelation and subsequent Arab dominance. Desire for immediate contact with the sacred plus the hope of experiencing a world of purity and justice on earth found expression through the familiar language of the Apocalypses, which also carried with it a refusal to accept the notion that prophethood had come to a definitive end with the figure of Mu˙ammad. The use of apocalyptic language eventually gave way to the appearance of new means of exercising power, new bonds of human dependence, new and intimate hopes for protection and justice in a world undergoing a process of transformation, new ways of interpreting the history of a community of believers. I have tried to describe the nature of collective visions of the Muslim redeemer in North African society, and to show how expectations associated with the figure of the mahdì had as great an effect on ordinary people as on the ruling elites. In my view, the mahdì fits neatly into the debate, already familiar for the period of Late Antiquity through the work of Peter Brown, on supernatural power and the legitimate or illegitimate ways in which this power might become manifest in certain men. Throughout the history narrated

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in this book, political and religious movements of dissent arise to challenge the cultural hegemonies which aimed to rationalise religion by breaking off in the name of Islam all forms of intimate, direct contact between the holy and the divine. Hence the tremendous importance that was achieved by sufist ideas, which firstly provided those who rebelled against established powers, and then the establishment itself, with a new theological and symbolic conceptualisation. Sufism provided the vocabulary, the metaphors, the symbols and the authority. The strength of the motif of intimacy with God embraced a definition of the bond of political and religious subjection and thus had a direct effect on monarchs and governors. In fact, direct, intimate contact between the holy and the divine was never completely severed in the long period covered by this book. It permeated and emerged constantly in diverse mystical and philosophical movements and impulses. Believers continued to expect the emergence of messiahs from mystical circles who would introduce new cycles of revelation and further renovations in the interpretation of Tradition. But all such impulses in sufism or philosophy—as in the field of politics—have a tendency to generate their opposite and there was therefore a close relationship between movements and trends which might at first sight seem to be radically opposed. Such was the case of those movements of political and religious dissent against elite groups seeking to “confiscate” the interpretation of divine Law. The main strands of thought described in this book converge as much as they diverge, especially when we consider the relationship between those specialists in divine Law who sought to be the sole intermediaries between the believer and God (the 'ulamà") and those figures claiming close contact with God (the holy men or awliyà"). In the various chapters it has been seen that these two groups were linked and inter-related by common elements such as their study of the same books (that is to say, using the same ways of seeking references for their authority), their worship of the Prophet Mu˙ammad, their adoption of blood lineage as a means of legitimisation and so on, until a stage was reached where the zàwiya and the madrasa had overlapped. Both the zàwiya and the madrasa were overshadowed by the growing hegemony of the holy lineage of the shurafà", descendants of the family of the Prophet, who integrated the regions of the Maghreb within a wider Islamic holy geography by establishing their own bonds with the physical space and also with the time of Revelation.

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In the chapters covering the period after sufism’s rise to preeminence it has been seen that if the language of mysticism was politically credible, it was because it had first been historically instrumentalised through a sufficiently purposeful process of repetition. Apparent absence of innovation on the one hand and apparent chronic political instability on the other must both be seen as indications of a capitalising process in the field of politics and the construction of legitimacy: a symbolic background was built up which became firmly established in the collective memory, and which was taken advantage of by various different movements and power groups. We see, in other words, and beyond the immediate question of specific changes of dynasty, a general capitalisation of experience and the subsequent construction of a political field based on certain continuities, among which prophethood and apocalypticism were clearly fundamental. I hope to have shown how the words and signs taken from mysticism and deployed by those in power were flexible and adaptable enough to allow them to circulate in different registers and, in the guise of normative references, to produce new combinations of power as well as recurrent forms of revolt against it. The same words serve very different movements, very different purposes. When I first started working on this project, I imagined that Islamic messianism would turn out to be the province of visionaries and idealists, of “primitive rebels” who believed in the possibility of the realm of justice on earth. I believed that this book would mainly be a study of “popular” movements, “popular” referring here to the ability of the few to mobilise the support of the many. In fact, the story presented in this book shows messianism to have been, more than anything else, a near-indispensable ingredient of absolute caliphal power. By the end of the Middle Ages, the messianic paradigm had become inseparable from caliphal claims and the mere expression of caliphal pretensions had itself become the sole source of political legitimacy. The language of the mystical experience of intimacy with God strengthened the charisma of individuals endowed with supernatural characteristics who inspired submission and love in their subjects through a ruthless exertion of brutal and bloody force. A paradigm of authority was created that juxtaposes absolute authority and absolute submission. The political power thus derived was of a very different nature from the original ideal of egalitarianism and interior dialogue first promoted by the reprocessed metaphors and symbols of moral apocalypticism and of sufism.

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Subsequent political movements tended to define themselves against their predecessors at the same time that, paradoxically, they were forced to take up legitimising elements from those opponents against whom they defined themselves. There was not a single opposition movement that did not absorb elements and arguments from its enemy. Mahdism in the Islamic West was inseparably linked to claims on the caliphate which emerged in successive alternating dynasties in a seesawing movement. The process began with the Idrìsids and Fà†imids, against whom the Umayyads and the Almoravids found it necessary to define themselves, and was continued by the Almohads, who claimed legitimacy from the mahdì Ibn Tùmart and against whom the Marìnids in turn defined themselves, and after whom the Sa'dids rose up in a vindication of their own mahdist, caliphal claims. There is no usage or vindication of the title of amìr al-mu"minìn that does not carry with it a previous process of preaching of a messianic and apocalyptic nature linking aspirations to supreme political and religious power with hopes of fulfilling the role of Last Universal Emperor. There has to be a mahdì first, to make a caliph legitimate. Divinely inspired religious knowledge merged with a holy genealogy was not, then, a combination that was exclusive to the imàm of the shì'ites. In the Maghreb, the caliph seems to have been impossible without the mahdì. The caliph and the mahdì in one became Mu˙ammad’s true avatar, Mu˙ammad brought back to life— khalìfat Allàh rather than khalìfat rasùl Allàh. The pre-requisite for any figure with claims on the caliphate seems to have been the messianic paradigm of the divinely guided and inspired figure who interpreted and enforced the Law. Such a man was in direct contact with God and had access to the Truth—through his possession of knowledge and a sacred lineage he was entitled to absolute authority and absolute power. The figure of the mahdì swung between that of the man directly guided by God and the holy figure endowed with supernatural prerogatives. The moral apocalypticism embodied in the figure of the hermit living away from the world was the basis of the construction of the figure of the sovereign, who now assumed the characteristics of simplicity, accessibility, austerity and piety first associated with insurgents. A strong sense of austerity and puritan reform attached itself to the figure of the hidden or sleeping imàm who had come to redeem his community. The characteristics of such a figure were symbolically assumed by all those who exercised power. The hidden caliph

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was able to make himself present always and everywhere, and his ubiquity and invisibility made him resemble the Divinity. The belief in the Hidden Imàm allowed and legitimised rebel insurgence against the patent or visible caliph who had usurped the place of the true and hidden caliph whose appearance would at last bring the kingdom of God to earth. The image of a man retired to the desert, emaciated by fasting, living in a cave, the holy and original setting, in direct conversation with God and with his rifle or other weapon set by his hand after renouncing the glories of this world and all earthly fortune, is one of such strength and recurrence that we should not forget that it possessed, and possesses, in different settings and at different times, new and increasingly “modern” elements. The revolutionary actions of such a figure were intended to restore the symbolic order of the world to its original foundations, eradicating evil from the face of the earth. The mahdì was to purge humanity with the aid of a select group of followers—“strangers” in a corrupt world—making it return to a pristine, original purity in the name of a Tradition which was constantly being re-invented. He was to direct the last, definitive jihàd against the Infidel in order to impose true religion on the entire human flock, but this jihàd was and is also aimed, first and foremost, against the corrupt elites, not only in politics but also in religion, who had strayed from the right path and who kept men from making close contact with God. This was the symbolic language of dissent and revolt, but absolute power found itself needing to borrow from such language. By the end of the period covered in this book, the Mediterranean world was in a state of dispute among pretenders to the title of Universal Emperor of the Last Times. Power was now only legitimate if it was absolute and supernatural, exercised by the vicar of God on earth, the leader of a final, definitive defeat of evil and dissidence, and such a defeat had become necessary for the inauguration of a new realm of order and justice in the world.

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INDEX

'Abbàsids, 46, 47, 48, 51, 54, 63, 64, 65, 93, 99 'Abd Allàh l-'Abbàs b. al-'Arìf al-Anßàrì of Almeria (vid. Ibn al-'Arìf ) 'Abd Allàh, Emir of al-Andalus, 86, 90 'Abd Allàh al-'Abdùsì, 241, 247 'Abd Allàh al-Fà†imì (Mahdì), 47, 57, 62, 66, 67, 73, 75, 88, 95, 171, 192, 201, 266, 267, 333 'Abd Allàh al-Ghàlib bi-llàh al-Sa'dì, 270 'Abd Allàh b. 'Umar, companion of the Prophet, 97 'Abd Allàh b. 'Umar al-Ma∂aghrì, 257, 258, 259, 260 'Abd Allàh b. Yàsìn (vid. Ibn Yàsìn) 'Abd al-'Azìz b. Mùsà b. Nußayr, 77 'Abd al-'Azìz al-Qàbisì, astrologer, 314 'Abd al-'Azìz al-Tabbà', 249, 252, 256 'Abd al-Óaqq al-Marìnì, 246, 247 'Abd al-Malik b. al-Qa†an al-Fihrì, 78 'Abd al-Malik al-Sa'dì, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275, 289 'Abd al-Mu"min, Almohad Caliph, 105, 137, 149, 158, 159, 165, 170, 172, 174, 175, 177, 179, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 201, 216, 217, 326, 349 'Abd al-Mu††alib, Prophet’s uncle, 89, 335 'Abd al-Qàdir b. Abù Samba (Sìdì Shaykh), 331, 332, 340, 346 'Abd al-Qàdir al-Jìlànì, 223 'Abd al-Ra˙ìm b. Ibràhìm b. Faras al-Muhr (or al-Garnà†ì), 200, 201 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Bis†àmì, 293 'Abd al-Ra˙màn I al-Dàkhil, Umayyad Emir of al-Andalus, 47, 78, 85, 89 'Abd al-Ra˙màn II, Umayyad Emir of al-Andalus, 87 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Majdhùb, 323 'Abd al-Ra˙màn III al-Nàßir, Umayyad Caliph of al-Andalus, 79, 85, 88, 93, 94, 95, 131, 279 'Abd al-Ra˙màn b. Rustum, 69

'Abd al-Salàm b. Mashìsh, 117, 223, 224, 225, 350 'Abd al-Wà˙id al-Marràkushì, 120, 159, 168, 169, 170, 182, 185, 202 'Abd al-Wà˙id al-Wansharìsì, 222, 264, 265, 266, 267 'Abd al-Wàdids of Tlemcen, 193, 218 Abraham bar Óiyyà, 148 Abraham b. Da"ùd, 148 Abraham b. Ezra, 149, 151 Abraham Maimuni, son of Moshe Maimonides, 154 Abraham / Ibràhìm, Prophet, 72, 125, 213, 214 Abravanel, Isaac, 303, 304 Abù l-'Abbàs A˙mad al-Tuwàtì, 336 Abù l-'Abbàs al-'Azafì, 208 Abù l-'Abbàs al-Sabtì, 145, 200, 325 Abù l-'Abbàs al-Mursì, 224, 225 Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Fà†imì, 57, 201, 266, 267 Abù 'Abd Allàh Mu˙ammad b. Sulaymàn al-Jazùlì (vid. al-Jazùlì) Abù 'Abd Allàh Mu˙ammad al-Jàzirì, 201 Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Ían'ànì, dà'i of the Fà†imìds, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 87, 90, 91, 95, 100, 172, 192, 233 Abù 'Abd Allàh al-Shùdhì, 145 Abù 'Alì al-Raghràghì, 115 Abù 'Alì al-Íadafì, 103, 111 Abù 'Alì al-Sarràj, 89, 90, 124 Abù Bakr, Caliph, 43, 222 Abù Bakr b. al-'Arabì, the Qà∂ì (vid. Ibn al-'Arabì) Abù Bakr al-ˇur†ùshì (vid. al-ˇur†ùshì) Abù Óafß b. Tafraghìn, 195 Abù l-Óasan 'Alì b. 'Abd al-Jabbàr al-Shàdhilì (vid. al-Shàdhilì) Abù l-Óasan 'Alì b. 'Imràn al-Jù†ì, 241, 247 Abù l-Óasan 'Alì al-Qàbisì, 119 Abù l-Óasan 'Alì al-Marìnì, sultan, 230, 231, 233, 236, 237, 266 Abù 'Imràn al-Fàsì, 98, 99, 100, 118, 119

382

index

Abù 'Inàn Fàris al-Marìnì, sultan, 231, 233, 237 Abù 'Ìsà al-Warràq, 47 Abù Ja'far al-Manßùr, 'Abbàsid Caliph, 46, 93 Abù Khàlid Ma˙yù al-Marìnì, 228 Abù Madyan, 112, 113, 115, 117, 140, 144, 168, 169, 207, 224 Abù l-Ma˙àsin Óasan, 289 Abù Marwàn al-Yu˙ànisì, 210, 211, 212 Abù Ma’shar (Abulmasar), 283, 305, 313, 314 Abù Mu˙ammad 'Abd al-Karìm al-Fallà˙, 254, 256 Abù Mu˙ammad b. Tìsyìt, 100 Abù l-Qàsim al-'Azafì, 208 Abù Rakwa, 91, 92, 94, 98, 195 Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn II al-Marìnì, 233, 239, 240 Abù Sa'ìd 'Uthmàn III al-Marìnì, 233, 241 Abù ˇàlib, 'Abd Allàh b. Óasàn b. 'Alì, 18, 47, 49, 85, 322 Abù–l-Walìd b. Rushd, 161, 179, 200 Abù Ya'qùb al-Nahrajurì, 131 Abù Ya'qùb al-Sijistànì, 156 Abù Ya'za, 113, 116, 144 Abù Yazìd Makhlad b. Kaydàd al-Zanàtì, 74, 75, 88, 173 Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb al-Manßùr, Almohad Caliph, 113, 198, 199, 200, 202, 217, 219 Abù Yùsuf Ya'qùb, Marìnid Sultan, 236, 238 Abù Zakariyyà" al-Jaràwì, 109 Abù Zakariyyà" al-Warghalànì, 53, 61 Abù Zakariyyà" Ya˙yà al-Wa††àsì, 241, 246, 247 Acién, M., 87 Adam, 11, 15, 85, 124, 129, 130, 137, 142, 155 Al-'∂id, Caliph, 201 Àfùghàl, 249, 261 Agadir, 194, 203, 259 Aghlabids, 65, 72, 76 Aghmàt, 100, 145, 167 Ahl al-bayt, 19, 29, 51, 136, 184, 226, 239, 240, 244, 286 Ahl al-kitàb, 9, 37 A˙mad al-A'raj al-Sa'dì, 255, 261, 263 A˙mad Bàbà, 282, 333 A˙mad al-Manßùr al-Dhahabì al-Sa'dì, 29, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274,

275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 294, 295, 326, 327, 328, 333, 344 A˙mad ou Mùsà, Sìdì, 345, 346 A˙mad Zarrùq, 143, 247, 252, 264, 267 'Àisha, wife of the Prophet, 61 Alarcos, 228 Alcazarquivir (Wàdì"-l-Makhàzin), battle of, 269, 270, 272, 274, 308, 330 Alemán (or Alamany), J., 309, 310, 311, 312 Alexander the Great, 11, 214, 215, 291, 292, 322, 323 Alexandria, 68, 112, 154, 163, 164, 225, 310 Alfonso I of Leon, 79 Alfonso II of Leon, 79 Alfonso III of Leon, 79, 83 Alfonso X of Castile, 205, 228 Alfonso XI of Castile, 231 Algarve, 136, 206, 309 Algiers, 102, 265, 270, 272, 290 Alhambra of Granada, 319 Al Hoceima, 208 'Alì b. Óirzihim, 109, 113, 117, 144, 145 'Alì b. Abì ˇàlib, 18, 47, 49, 85, 322 'Alì b. Mu˙ammad, 47 Al-'Aliyya, 47, 49, 50 Aljamía, 298, 324 Almeria, 133, 134, 136, 140, 144, 163, 194, 206, 297, 300 Almohads, 2, 29, 38, 62, 75, 96, 104, 105, 114, 120, 135, 149, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 171, 181, 182, 184, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 202, 203, 206, 209, 217, 218, 231, 324, 333, 355 Almoravids, 56, 62, 75, 96, 98, 102, 103, 104, 105, 109, 120, 134, 135, 158, 161, 162, 173, 174, 176, 186, 188, 189, 192, 203, 205, 217, 218, 262, 355 Alpujarras, War of the, 300, 301, 317, 318, 319 Alvarus of Cordoba, 84 'Amr b. 'Ubayd, 53, 54 Al-Amr bi-l-ma'rùf, 22, 52, 54, 90, 91, 96, 98, 106, 107, 108, 110, 112, 115, 116, 164, 165, 176

index Amìr al-mu"minìn, 50, 73, 85, 93, 94, 174, 187, 275, 355 'Amr b. Sulaymàn al-Shaya∂mì al-Sayyàf, 251, 252, 254 Al-Andalus, 1, 29, 31, 38, 47, 50, 59, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 102, 103, 104, 106, 109, 110, 111, 112, 118, 119, 120, 126, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 140, 141, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 161, 163, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 208, 212, 216, 217, 223, 225, 228, 229, 231, 236, 237, 238, 244, 288, 289, 296, 297, 306, 316, 321, 322, 323, 328, 332, 344 Anfà (Casablanca), 247 Aragon, 90, 206, 208, 228, 298, 301, 315, 316, 322 Arnau de Vilanova, 206, 303, 309 Al-Ash'arì, Abù-l-Óasan 'Alì, 47, 51, 118, 145 Ash'arites, 118, 119, 120, 166, 174, 179 Aßìla, 247, 256 'Àßim b. Jamìl al-Yazdajùmì, 58 Asturias, 79 Atlas, 35, 162, 189, 276, 278, 325, 348 Awliyà" Allàh, 16, 23, 70, 109, 114, 120, 123, 139, 141, 142, 143, 156, 169, 232, 245, 257, 330, 333, 350, 353 Awràba, 48, 51 Ayyùb ( Job), 214 Aznar Cardona, 313, 316 Bàb al-Ruwà˙, 176 Babylon, 60 Al-Bàdisì, 'Abd al-Óaqq b. Ismà'ìl, 116, 210 Badr, 42, 274 Baghdad, 63, 93, 99, 103, 119, 147, 163, 218, 223, 236 Ba˙ìrà, 12, 18, 81 Ba˙rayn, 68 Al-Bajalì, al-Óasan b. 'Alì b. Warsand, 56 Bajaliyya, 56, 57, 59 Al-Bakrì, 45, 48, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 101, 266, 267 Balearic Islands, 208 Balj b. Bishr, 78 Bandarra, Gonçalo Anes, 308, 309, 311

383

Banù Amghàr, 195, 116 Banù Ashqìlùla, 212 Banù Hàshim, 212 Banù Hilàl, 38, 91, 196, 219, 225 Banù 'Imràn, 238 Banù Lamàs, 56 Banù Ma'qil, 219, 260 Banù Marìn (see also Marìnids), 169, 217, 219, 228, 231 Banù Midràr, 73 Banù Muznì, 115 Banù Qasì, 90 Banù Qurra, 91, 92 Banù Sa'd, 248, 254, 255, 256, 262 Banù Sìd Bùna, 115 Banù Sufyàn, 219 Banù ˇarìf, 56 Banù Wariaghel, 194 Banù Wa††às (see also Wa††àsids), 241, 247, 248, 259, 261 Banù Yifrin, 42 Al-Bàqir, 97 Baraka, 24, 144, 168, 169, 172, 176, 238, 239, 242, 244, 245, 255, 256 Barakat b. Mu˙ammad al-Tidsì, 258, 259 Barànis, 36, 37 Barghawà†a, movement, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 100, 101, 189, 195 Barqa, 91, 331 Bashear, S., 9, 60 Bashìr al-Ra˙˙àl, 54 Bashìr al-Wansharìsì, 171, 349 Bataillon, M., 324 Al-Baydhaq, 159, 162, 165, 167, 168, 170, 183, 184, 186, 190, 194, 195 Baza, 201 Berbers, 29, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 65, 75, 78, 85, 89, 91, 92, 161, 162, 340 Bible, 60, 153, 320 Bijàya, 164, 165 Boabdil, 317, 322 Bobastro, 88 Bornu, 285, 286, 290 Brett, M., 36, 66, 67, 73, 75, 184, 185 Brown, P., 9, 10, 58, 351, 352 Al-Bu˙ayra, battle of, 186 Bulliet, R., 36 Butr, 36, 37 Byzantium, 11, 80, 81 Carmona, 318, 321, 322 Carthage, 12

384

index

Carvajal, Micael de, 312 Casanova, P., 8, 9 Castile, 198, 205, 228, 231, 297, 298, 300, 301, 305, 307, 309, 310, 315 Castillo, Alonso del, 318, 321 Catholic Kings, 297, 302, 304, 310, 311 Certeau, M. de, 4, 27 Ceuta, 103, 104, 117, 119, 145, 194, 208, 209, 210, 211, 228, 229, 231, 237, 240, 244, 247, 309, 328, 332, 339 Charles V of Spain, 270, 293, 310, 311 Christians, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 32, 36, 37, 38, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 129, 148, 149, 150, 151, 157, 177, 197, 198, 205, 208, 216, 221, 228, 244, 260, 261, 262, 277, 283, 297, 298, 299, 301, 303, 304, 305, 307, 308, 311, 312, 313, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 324, 332, 340, 341, 343, 352 Cirenaica, 91, 331 Cisneros, Cardinal, 298, 302 Ciudad Real, 206 Constantinople, 80, 81, 82, 85, 139, 205, 303 Cook, D., 8 Cook, M., 8, 9, 10, 12 Cordoba, 78, 83, 84, 85, 87, 90, 95, 102, 104, 129, 130, 133, 151, 152, 162, 163, 206, 212, 221 Cornell, V.J., 262, 176, 180, 183 Crone, P., 8, 9, 10, 12, 62 Al-Dajjàl, 13, 19, 22, 55, 75, 75, 82, 85, 86, 88, 139, 173, 243, 329, 333 Damascus, 47, 77, 78 Daniel, Prophet, 10, 11, 13, 83, 148, 150, 274, 293, 303 Dar'a, 35, 194, 255, 257, 325 Dàr al-Qay†ùn, 242 Deutero-Zechariah, 60 Deza, Don Pedro de, 318 Dhimma, 37, 297 Dhù l-Faqàr, 75, 288 Dhù l-Qarnayn, 214, 322 Dilà", zàwiya of, 345 Donatists, 36 Donner, F., 9 Duero, 79 Dukkàla, 116, 189, 194, 195, 219, 342

Ebro, 77, 301 Egypt, 48, 67, 78, 85, 91, 92, 149, 154, 164, 202, 224, 225, 236, 249 Elias, 13, 14 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 288 Emperor of the Last Days / Last Times / Last World Emperor / Last Universal Emperor, 11, 15, 83, 205, 214, 284, 293, 295, 296, 355, 356 Encubierto (vid. Hidden / Sleeping Emperor) Enoch, 13, 14 Escorial, El, 276, 277, 278 Eulogio of Cordoba, 84, 129 Europe, 5, 147, 270, 271, 276 Fakhkh, battle of, 47 Al-Faraj b. Uthmàn, 59 Fà†ima, daughter of the Prophet, 34, 46, 48, 85, 89, 116, 182, 203, 239, 281, 286, 335 Fà†imids, 2, 20, 28, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49, 62, 64, 67, 75, 77, 85, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 103, 158, 171, 174, 192, 209, 255, 266, 279, 280, 333, 355 Ferdinand III of Castile, 198, 297 Fez, 44, 50, 99, 100, 102, 108, 109, 113, 115, 119, 145, 150, 151, 160, 165, 166, 194, 196, 202, 210, 217, 221, 223, 225, 229, 230, 233, 234, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 249, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 273, 277, 281, 304, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 317, 318, 323, 324, 329, 330, 338, 339, 342, 344, 346, 348, 349 Fierro, M., 87, 126, 133, 161, 175, 178, 190, 191 Fiore, Joachim de, 12, 206, 309 Al-Fishtàlì, 'Abd al-'Azìz, 269, 274, 285, 286, 287 Fitna, 22, 79, 85, 86, 87, 88, 115, 282, 284, 321 Fitna in al-Andalus, 79, 85, 86, 87, 88, 115, 321 Fleischer, C.H., 292, 293 France, 82, 147, 303, 343 Friedmann, Y., 16 Gabriel, Archangel, 59, 61 Galicia, 79, 317

index Geertz, C., 24 Gellner, E., 25, 268, 349, 350 Ghadìr Khumm, 97 Al-Ghazàlì, Abù Óàmid, 29, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119, 119, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 146, 147, 162, 163, 165, 174, 175, 181, 183, 233 Al-Ghazwànì, 19, 253, 254, 256, 261, 334, 337 Ghudàla, 98, 100, 204, 205, 215 Ghumàra, 58, 117, 189, 190, 207 Ghurabà", 23, 138, 186, 324 Gibraltar, Strait of, 77, 184, 185, 203, 215, 315, 316, 322, 339 Gil, J., 83 Ginzburg, C., 28 Goldziher, I., 176 Granada, 26, 30, 103, 104, 115, 193, 203, 206, 212, 241, 244, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 309, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 322, 323, 343 Gregory of Sicily, 49 Guadalquivir, 206, 306 Guichard, P., 216 Óà˙à, 190, 194 Al-Óàkim, Caliph, 92 Óakìm al-Tirmidhì, 141 Halbwachs, M., 27 Óà-Mìm, 57, 58 Óafßids of Tunis, 159, 193, 218 Hammoudi, A., 25 Hàrùn b. Yùnus al-Arbàbì, 55, 56, 73 Óasan al-'Askarì, 63 Óasan al-Baßrì, 52 Haskùra, 189, 190, 194 Hazmìra, 171, 190, 194 Henin, J. de, 321, 339, 340 Hidàya, 21, 136, 138, 153, 185, 195 Hidden / Sleeping Emperor (see also Encubierto), 296, 308, 309, 310, 316 Hidden Imàm, 18, 63, 68, 204, 308, 356 Hilàl b. 'Àmir, 197 Óisba, 22, 29, 68, 90, 96, 98, 99, 101, 105, 107, 108, 115, 116, 121, 164, 165, 166, 176, 337 Hishàm II, 91 Hobsbawm, E., 24 Óujja, 19, 64 Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, 318

385

Hurtado de Toledo, L., 312 Al-Óusayn, 47 Iberia / Iberian peninsula, 1, 34, 35, 38, 41, 44, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 89, 111, 139, 154, 162, 190, 193, 203, 205, 210, 221, 270, 283, 296, 303, 304, 324 Ibn 'Abbàd al-Rundì, 225, 232 Ibn 'Abd al-Óakam, 36 Ibn Abì Bakr al-Dilà"ì, 337 Ibn Abì Ma˙allì, 26, 30, 269, 274, 285, 321, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349 Ibn Abì Wà†ìl, 138, 139 Ibn Abì Zar', 100, 101, 102, 159, 166, 170, 199, 239 Ibn al-'À∂ìd, 201, 202 Ibn A˙là, 210 Ibn al-A˙mar, 99, 100 Ibn al-'Arabì, Abù Bakr, the Qà∂ì, 103, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 120, 138, 139, 333 Ibn al-'Arabì al-Mursì, Mu˙yì al-dìn, 13, 29, 125, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 154, 156, 178 Ibn al-'Arìf, 134, 135, 136, 140, 154 Ibn 'A†à" Allàh, 224, 226, 227, 232, 263 Ibn al-Athìr, 91 Ibn 'A†iyya, 114, 194 Ibn Barrajàn, 109, 113, 133, 134, 135, 136, 140, 141, 146 Ibn al-Faqìh, 52 Ibn Óabìb, 85, 86, 322 Ibn Óafßùn, 'Umar, 26, 29, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91 Ibn Óamdìn, 103, 104, 152, 162 Ibn Óawqal, 48, 56 Ibn Óayyàn, 94, 95, 98, 130 Ibn Óazm, 56, 107, 123, 131, 132, 133, 163, 235 Ibn Hùd al-Hàdì al-Màssì, Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh, 193, 194, 195, 203 Ibn 'Idhàrì, 68, 72, 73, 159, 194, 195, 209 Ibn Khaldùn, 18, 49, 58, 68, 117, 121, 138, 140, 143, 145, 146, 147, 151, 160, 167, 170, 189, 192, 193, 201, 202, 204, 206, 207, 226, 233 Ibn Khallikàn, 184

386

index

Ibn al-Kha†ìb, 49, 135, 136, 195, 226 Ibn Khurdàdhbih, 52 Ibn ManΩùr, 212 Ibn Marwàn, 87 Ibn Mas'ad, 97 Ibn Masarra, Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh, 29, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 140, 145, 152, 154 Ibn al-Qalànisì, 177 Ibn Qasì, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 146, 154, 156, 162, 186, 190, 191, 192, 195, 210 Ibn al-Qa††àn, 159, 163, 170, 171, 213, 214 Ibn al-Qi††, 89, 90, 91, 92, 98 Ibn Rustam (see also Rustamids), 51 Ibn Sab'ìn, 138, 146, 154, 210, 211 Ibn Íà˙ib al-Íalàt, 159, 168, 170 Ibn Íàli˙, Yùsuf, 267 Ibn Taymiyya, 227 Ibn ˇufayl, 197, 161 Ibn Tùmart, 29, 105, 110, 111, 114, 150, 151, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198, 202, 203, 204, 215, 219, 221, 222, 255, 324, 325, 326, 333, 334, 337, 350, 355 Ibn ˇumlùs of Alcira, 111 Ibn Yàsìn, 57, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 161, 192, 205 Ibn al-Zubayr, 146, 205, 212 Ibràhìm b. 'Abd Allàh, 54 Ibràhìm b. Wayish, 348 Idrìs I, Idrìs b. 'Abd Allàh b. Óassàn b. 'Alì b. Abì ˇàlib, 34, 43, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 117, 158, 160, 199, 288, 310, 317, 318 Idrìs II, 49, 50, 162, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 247 Idrìs, 'Ubayd Allàh b. Idrìs b., 50, 56, 162, 236, 239, 240 Idrìsids, 44, 45, 48, 50, 57, 63, 80, 93, 95, 234, 237, 239, 240, 243, 244, 249, 323, 355 Al-Ifrànì, Mu˙ammad al-Saghìr, 259, 269, 274, 279, 280, 284, 327, 328, 333, 336, 337, 338, 347 Ifrìqiya, 34, 37, 48, 51, 57, 62, 65, 73, 78, 93, 94, 98, 99, 102, 118, 119, 164, 171, 192, 196, 207

Ìghìllìz, 170, 171 Ilalen, 260 Ìlkhàn Hùlàghù, 218 Imàm, 10, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49, 55, 57, 62, 63, 64, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 102, 104, 107, 111, 113, 114, 121, 123, 125, 126, 128, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 146, 156, 160, 163, 167, 168, 170, 171, 174, 176, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 187, 190, 191, 192, 200, 204, 225, 233, 253, 262, 267, 268, 275, 282, 284, 285, 286, 287, 291, 308, 328, 331, 355, 356 Inquisition, 63, 111, 297, 298, 300, 311, 315, 316, 318, 320 Iran, 64, 224, 291, 292 Iraq, 47, 64, 207, 223, 244, 279 'Ìsà / Jesus, 8, 13, 19, 20, 55, 59, 60, 66, 82, 137, 141, 143, 173, 178, 213, 323 'Ìsà al-Amghàr, 190 Isaiah, 60, 150 'Ìsawa, 345, 346 Is˙àq b. Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd al-Óamìd, 48 Ismà'ìl, 63, 64, 75 Ismà'ìl al-'Alawì, Mawlay, 278 Ismà'ìlites, 20, 21, 33, 49, 64, 90, 128, 137, 139, 153 Israel, 150, 155, 185, 304 Isrà"iliyyàt, 13 Al-I߆akhrì, 48 Istanbul, 270, 272, 277, 285, 289, 290, 301 Italy, 82, 304, 343 Ithnà 'Ashariyya, 57, 63 Jaen, 206 Jafr, 18, 154, 184 Ja'far al-Íadìq, 18, 63 Jàhiliyya, 139, 173, 282 Jaime I of Aragon, 206, 208, 322 Jalàl al-Dìn al-Suyù†ì, 283 Jaznaya, 222 Jazùla, 99, 190, 193, 194, 200, 201, 202, 207, 249, 258, 260 Al-Jazùlì, 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256, 260, 261, 262, 334 Jerusalem, 5, 9, 11, 46, 60, 150, 154, 205, 206, 243, 277, 286, 302, 303, 310, 311, 323, 339

index Jesus (Vid. 'Ìsà) Jews, 8, 9, 10, 13, 32, 37, 83, 84, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 157, 212, 297, 298, 303, 304, 306, 307, 311, 312, 348, 352 John the Baptist, 59, 66 Joseph, 66, 185 Joshua (Yusha"), Prophet, 185 Jupiter, 283, 313, 314 Jusham, 219 Jù†ì / Jù†iyyùn, sharifian family from Fez, 237, 238, 240, 247 Ka'b al-A˙bàr, 13 Kably, M., 25, 175, 197, 218, 241 Kabylia, 74 Kàdù b. Mu'àrik, 74 Kàhina, 36, 58 Kalàm, 15, 40, 118, 120, 122, 153, 166 Kaptein, N.J.G., 209 Karàmàt, 23, 123, 138, 144, 155, 169, 242, 245 Karbalà", 207 Khàlid b. Sinàn, 188 Khàlid al-Zanàtì, 41 Khalìfat Allàh, 62, 287, 355 Khalìfat rasùl Allàh, 17, 63, 355 Khàrijism, 17, 41, 42, 53, 56, 65, 72, 74, 174 Khàrijites, 17, 18, 33, 36, 42, 46, 51, 52, 53, 65, 74, 107 Al-Khi∂r / al-Kha∂ir, 13, 125 Khuràsàn, 46, 163 Kister, J.M., 187 Kutàma, 62, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 91, 100, 102, 172 Lamtùna, 98, 100, 172, 205 Larache, 272, 273, 328, 332, 334 Leo Africanus, 49, 205, 252, 260 Leon, 79, 83 Leo the Wise, 11, 92 Lévi-Provençal, E., 159 Lewis, B., 46 Libya, 41 Linton, R., 26 Lisbon, 89, 301 Lorca, 210 Lucena, 152 Luna, Alonso de, 320 Luna, Miguel de, 315, 316 Madìnat al-Zahrà", 279 Al-Maghàmì, 86

387

Maghìla, 42 Maghràwa, 41, 99 Al-Mahdiyya, 73, 75, 88, 95 Maimonides, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154 Malaga, 206, 211, 297 Mallorca, 208 Malta, 332 Al-Ma"mùn, Almohad Caliph, 197, 198, 199, 200 Manichaeism, 36 Al-Maqqarì, 201, 237 Marìnids (see also Banù Marìn), 45, 105, 158, 159, 160, 193, 202, 209, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 224, 227, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 236, 240, 241, 244, 254, 260, 355 Mármol, L. del, 317 Marrakech, 102, 108, 109, 134, 136, 145, 158, 160, 166, 167, 172, 174, 186, 189, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 208, 213, 217, 253, 254, 261, 262, 263, 265, 275, 276, 277, 282, 284, 286, 309, 321, 322, 325, 327, 338, 340, 341, 347, 349 Al-Marràkushì (Vid. 'Abd al-Wà˙id al-Marràkushì) Maßmùda, 54, 58, 100, 162, 172, 184, 194, 201 Màssa, 194, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 249, 258, 286, 343, 344 Al-Mas'udì, 48 Matthew, 60 Mawàlì, 41, 78, 79, 90, 234, 285 Al-Màwardì, 63, 235 Mawlid al-nabì, 208, 209, 210, 211, 215, 229, 230, 231, 234, 236, 237, 240, 278, 279 Maysara, 41, 54 Al-Màzarì, 103 Mecca, 17, 42, 69, 70, 71, 94, 98, 100, 207, 211, 236, 242, 243, 255, 256, 260, 288, 289, 290, 340 Medina, 46, 60, 69, 70, 71, 173, 187, 288, 289, 290, 315 Meknes, 266 Merida, 89 Mesopotamia, 11, 60 Messiah, 4, 5, 6, 8, 19, 21, 27, 59, 66, 82, 83, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 187, 304, 309, 312 Miknàsa, 89 Mìla, 72 Mongols, 218, 223

388

index

Moriscos, 26, 30, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 305, 306, 307, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322, 324 Moses (Mùsà), 66, 185, 186, 187, 188, 213, 252, 339 Moshé al-Dar"ì, 150, 151, 152 Mozarabs (Arabised Christians), 11, 26, 83, 87, 129 Mu'àwiya b. Abù Sufyàn, Caliph, 7, 45 Mudejars, 297, 298 Mu˙ammad (the Prophet), 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 31, 32, 34, 42, 43, 49, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 81, 84, 85, 97, 105, 112, 119, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 144, 156, 170, 173, 181, 186, 187, 188, 190, 195, 203, 205, 208, 209, 213, 214, 219, 233, 248, 250, 274, 279, 282, 285, 288, 315, 321, 324, 335, 339, 352, 353, 355 Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd Allàh al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, 46, 47, 48, 60, 89 Mu˙ammad b. 'Abd al-Ra˙màn al-Zaydànì (Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im), 255, 256, 257, 258, 260, 261 Mu˙ammad b. A˙mad al-Qur†ubì (vid. al-Qur†ubì) Mu˙ammad b. Ibràhìm al-Àbilì, 207 Mu˙ammad b. 'Imràn al-Jù†ì, 246, 247 Mu˙ammad b. 'Ìsà, 345, 346 Mu˙ammad b. Is˙àq Amghàr, 116 Mu˙ammad b. Mubàrak al-Tastawì al-Za'rì, 330 Mu˙ammad al-Mutawakkil, 270, 271, 272, 275 Mu˙ammad al-Qà"im al-Fà†imì, 75 Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh al-Mahdì, 255, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 269, 270, 272, 281, 307 Mu˙ammad al-Shaykh al-Wa††àsì, 247, 255, 264 Mu˙ammad b. Wa∂∂à˙, 86 Mu˙tasib, 68, 98, 107, 133, 165 Mu˙yì al-dìn b. al-'Arabì al-Mursì (vid. Ibn al-'Arabì) Al-Mu'izz, 67 Mujaddid, 20, 94, 282, 283, 284, 291 Al-Mukhtàra, 47

Muley Hacen, 318 Mu"minid dynasty, 158, 187, 189, 195, 196, 197 Munàfiqùn, 71 Al-Muqaddasì, 48, 49 Murcia, 139, 210, 301, 302, 320 Al-Murta∂à, Almohad Caliph, 209 Mùsà b. Abì l-'Àfiya, 243 Mùsà b. Ja'far al-KàΩim, 57, 63 Mùsà b. Nußayr, 77 Al-Mu'taßim, 'Abbàsid Caliph, 218 Mu'tazila, 15, 40, 51, 52, 53, 54, 63 Mu'tazilism, 51, 52, 54, 118, 130, 174, 175 Mu'tazilites, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 107, 118, 131, 132, 133 Nabì, 16, 39, 56, 58, 122, 142, 208, 211 Nafza, 78 Nagel, T., 175 Nallino, C.A., 53 Naßrids of Granada, 193, 203, 212, 217, 297 Navas de Tolosa (al-'Uqàb), battle of, 206 Netherlands, 339, 341, 343 Nu'aym b. Óammàd, 14, 85, 86 Núñez Muley, F., 299 Nùr Mu˙ammadì, 23, 124, 125, 127, 129, 155, 183, 185, 209, 253, 285 Oran, 109, 284, 302, 311, 328, 332 Ottomans, 272, 276, 285, 286, 289, 290, 291, 294, 295, 301, 328, 335 Oviedo, 79 Pak, Salman, 184 Pallache, M., 339, 340, 341, 347 Pechina, 133 Pedro III of Aragón, 206 Pedro de Frias, Fray, 309 Persians, 35 Pharaoh, 88 Philip II of Spain, 271, 272, 273, 276, 277, 288, 295, 298, 299, 300 Philip III of Spain, 314, 321 Pines, S., 155, 156 Pope, 11, 83, 92, 320 Portugal, 206, 247, 270, 271, 273, 274, 304, 308, 309 Pseudo-Methodius, 11, 12, 85, 305

index Al-Qà∂ì 'Iyà∂, 103, 104, 105, 114, 117, 120, 129, 156, 209, 331, 348 Al-Qà∂ì al-Nu'màn, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 88 Qàdiriyya, 223, 249 Qa˙†àn, 201 Qaràmi†a, 59 Al-Qarawiyyìn, 50, 225, 233, 239, 246, 247, 265, 267, 277, 281, 288, 318 Qarma†ians, 49, 59, 64, 95 Al-Qaßr al-Íaghìr, 247 Qißaß al-anbiyà", 13 Al-Qur†ubì, Mu˙ammad b. A˙mad, 114, 115, 203, 205, 214, 286, 288, 316, 322 Qu†b, 64, 121, 146, 156, 180, 183, 224, 242, 293, 332 Qu†baniyya, 332, 348 Qayrawàn, 34, 41, 42, 43, 68, 71, 72, 73, 75, 77, 98, 99, 100, 102, 119 Qays 'Aylàn, 197, 188 Qur"àn, 2, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 25, 33, 43, 53, 55, 58, 59, 63, 65, 70, 74, 88, 97, 100, 102, 109, 112, 115, 119, 128, 133, 134, 144, 174, 176, 178, 183, 185, 186, 223, 228, 230, 231, 255, 266, 278, 282, 286, 320, 333, 342 Quraysh, 17, 85, 188, 285 Rabbi Simon ben Yohai, 12 Raqqàda, 68, 73 Rasùl, 13, 16, 17, 50, 58, 63, 122, 182, 187, 190, 355 Reeves, M., 6, 92 Regràga, 194, 189,190 Rìf, 116, 207, 224 Riyà˙, 219 Rome, 82, 83, 139, 205, 286, 318, 339, 343 Rotterdam, 341 Al-Rußàfì of Valencia, 184, 185 Rustumids, 42, 72 Sacromonte (Valparaíso), 319, Sa'dians / Sa'dids, 245, 249, 254, 256, 259, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 272, 278, 335, 355 Íafawids, 291 Sahara, 98, 101, 219, 247, 276, 290, 325, 340, 341

389

Íà˙ib al-sà'a, 20, 345 Íà˙ib al-waqt, 212 Sahl al-Tustarì, 106, 124, 131, 191 Sa˙nùn, Abù Sa'ìd 'Abd al-Salàm b. Sa'ìd, 43 Salaf, 70 Salamiyya, 68 Íàli˙ b. ˇarìf, 58 Saldanha, Antonio de, 273, 277 Salé, 190, 205, 228, 324 Ían'à’, 65 Íanhàja, 100, 102, 202 Santa Cruz do Cabo Gue, 259 Santaver, 89 Satr, 64 Sebastian, King of Portugal, 270, 271, 272, 273, 308, 330 Sebastianist movement, 308 Selim I, Ottoman Sultan, 290, 291, 292, 295 Selim II, Ottoman Sultan, 270 Seville, 82, 110, 111, 134, 145, 190, 198, 202, 203, 206, 212, 221, 306, 309, 314, 316 Al-Shàdhilì, Abù l-Óasan 'Alì b. 'Abd al-Jabbàr, 112, 117, 223, 224, 225, 245, 334 Shàdhilites, 223, 224, 225, 232, 248, 267 Shàdhiliyya, 143, 223, 226, 249 Shaliff, 41 Shaqyà b. 'Abd al-Wà˙id, 89, 92 Sharì'a, 65, 146, 177, 256 Shaykh Ismà'ìl al-Íafawì, 291, 292 Al-Shaykh al-Sa'dì, Mawlày, 272, 278, 328, 340 Shihàb al-Dìn al-Suhrawardì, 29, 127 Shì'ism, 10, 17, 19, 29, 40, 45, 62, 96, 125, 126, 155, 156, 174, 175, 192 Shurafà", 29, 72, 209, 210, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221, 229, 230, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247, 258, 255, 257, 261, 267, 268, 275, 279, 290, 332, 335, 353 Sibylla, 14 Sicily, 49, 237 Sìdì Ya˙yà, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350 Sijilmàsa, 42, 66, 68, 72, 73, 76, 194, 202, 257, 261, 325, 329, 333 Solomon, 11, 214, 223, 277

390

index

Spain, 1, 11, 29, 30, 77, 147, 197, 203, 206, 241, 270, 271, 272, 275, 279, 293, 296, 297, 298, 299, 302, 304, 305, 306, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 319, 320, 321, 324, 325, 328, 332, 343 St. Ephraem, 14 St. Isidore of Seville, 82, 296, 306, 307, 308, 310, 314, 316, 317, 318, 321 St. John of Patmos, 14 Sùdàn, 205, 276, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, 295, 328, 333 Sufism, 13, 16, 22, 25, 29, 40, 68, 96, 97, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 140, 144, 145, 146, 147, 153, 154, 168, 169, 191, 192, 193, 219, 222, 223, 226, 227, 232, 236, 245, 249, 267, 295, 329, 330, 336, 348, 349, 350, 353, 354 Sulaymàn, Umayyad Caliph, 45 Sultan Sokia, 284, 328 Sunna, 17, 25, 45, 70, 95, 100, 109, 116, 118, 123, 142, 166, 169, 178, 180, 182, 242, 295 Sunnism, 17, 18, 62, 158, 326 Sùs, 35, 41, 49, 56, 57, 99, 100, 162, 189, 190, 193, 194, 203, 248, 249, 251, 252, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260, 265, 268, 345, 346, 347 Syria, 11, 46, 59, 64, 80, 81, 84

Timbuctu, 284, 328, 333 Tìnmàl / Tìnmallal, mosque of, 158, 170, 171, 173, 174 Tì†, ribà† of, 116, 195 Tlemcen, 42, 59, 145, 164, 168, 188, 193, 207, 236, 309 Toledo, 102, 315 Torre Turpiana, 319, 323 Torres, Diego de, 307 Transoxiana, 292 Tripoli, 41, 158, 164 ˇubna, 72 ˇudgha, 49 Tunis / Tunisia, 37, 42, 62, 68, 117, 159, 190, 193, 224, 225, 277, 318 Al-ˇur†ùshì, Abù Bakr, 103, 110, 111, 112, 113, 163, 164, 175, 187 Al-Tustarì (Vid. Sahl al-Tustarì) Al-Tuzayrì, 206, 207

Al-ˇabarì, 15, 45, 59 Al-Tàdilì, 108, 125, 144, 145 Tàdla, 109 Tafilelt, 35 Tàhart, 42, 52, 53, 69, 72, 76 Tajdìd al-dìn, 20 Talbi, M., 36, 40 Al-Tamaghrùtì, 269, 279, 280, 285, 286, 290 Tàmesnà, 54, 194, 219 Tangier, 34, 41, 52, 58, 77, 194, 241, 246, 247, 249, 256, 328, 332 ˇarìf al-Barghawa†ì, 54 ˇàriq b. Ziyàd, 35, 41, 77, 81, 85 ˇarìqa / †uruq, 45, 115, 117, 143, 218, 220, 222, 223, 224, 247, 248, 249, 253, 254, 345, 349, 350 Tàza, 219, 222 Tazerwalt, zàwiya of, 345, 346 Tàzrùt, 70

Valencia, 184, 206, 221, 298, 301, 309, 310, 311, 314, 315 Valladolid, 315 Van Ess, J., 53, 54 Van Lippeloo, P., 341, 342, 343 Vandals, 12 Viguera, Mª J., 111 Visigoths, 34, 35, 79, 82, 306

'Ubayd Allàh b. al-Óab˙àb, 41 U˙ud, battle of, 186 'Ulamà", 16, 23, 24, 25, 42, 63, 110, 114, 120, 123, 127, 131, 133, 145, 156, 161, 167, 192, 216, 220, 223, 226, 227, 230, 232, 238, 256, 262, 263, 264, 266, 267, 268, 282, 287, 288, 292, 295, 327, 330, 336, 338, 340, 348, 349, 350, 353 'Umar, Caliph, 43, 222, 235 'Umar al-Farùq, 8, 9 'Umar b. al-Khayyà†, 194 Urvoy, D., 179

Wahb b. Munabbih, 13 Wajjàj b. Zalù al-Lam†ì, 98, 99, 100 Al-Walìd, Caliph, 77 Walìla, 48 Wansbrough, J., 10, 16, 40, 65 Warathat al-anbiyà", 16, 123 Wàßil b. 'A†à", 52 Wa††àsids (see also Banù Wa††às), 247, 252, 263 Weber, M., 24, 27

index Yaddar al-Dukkàlì, 195 Ya˙yà b. 'Abd Allàh al-Óà˙ì, 338, 346, 347 Ya˙yà b. Zakariyyà", ( John the Baptist), 59, 66 Ya˙yà b. Ibràhìm, 98, 99, 100, 102 Ya˙yà al-Wa††àsì, 246 Ya'qùb b. 'Abd Allàh al-Khàqànì al-Fàsì, 115 Al-Ya'qùbì, 45 Yehuda Ha-Levi, 148, 154, 155, 156 Yemen, 65, 67, 68, 149, 151 Yohanna Bar Penkayê, 12 Yùsuf b. Tàshufìn, 'Alì b., 103, 104, 111, 119, 134, 152, 166

391

Zaddagha, zàwiya of, 345, 246 Zàhid, 22, 96, 101, 106, 164, 233 Zahirite, 174 Zamora, 79, 90 Zanàta, 37, 53, 74, 92, 188, 217, 243 Zàwiya, 45, 115, 129, 224, 226, 241, 245, 248, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 276, 329, 345, 346, 349, 350, 353 Zayd b. 'Alì, 52 Zayd al-dìn al-'Iràqì, 283 Zaydàn al-Sa'dì, Mawlày, 314, 321, 325, 328, 338, 339, 340, 341, 346, 347, 348, 349 Zaytùna, 277

THE

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN IBERIAN WORLD Editors: Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University),

Isidro J. Rivera (University of Kansas), Donna M. Rogers (Middlebury College), Arie Schippers (University of Amsterdam), Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen) AS MEDIEVAL IBERIAN PENINSULA. 1. Le calendrier de Cordoue. Publié par R. Dozy. Nouvelle édition, accompagnée d’une traduction française annotée par Ch. Pellat. 1961. ISBN 90 04 00486 6 2. Imamuddin, S.M. Muslim Spain 711-1492 A.D. A Sociological Study. 2nd edition 1981. ISBN 90 04 06131 2 3. Monroe, J.T. Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Sixteenth Century to the Present). 1970. Out of print. 4. Gallego Blanco, E. The Rule of the Spanish Military Order of St. James 1170-1493. Latin and Spanish Texts, edited with apparatus criticus, English translation and a preliminary study by Enrique Gallego Blanco. 1971. ISBN 90 04 02665 7 5. Tibi, A.T. (ed.). The Tibya-n. Memoirs of {Abd All¸h b. Buluggºn, Last Zºrid Amºr of Granada. Translated from the Emended Arabic Text and Provided with Introduction, Notes and Comments by Amin T. Tibi. 1986. ISBN 90 04 07669 7 6. Arié, R. Études sur la civilisation de l’Espagne musulmane. 1990. ISBN 90 04 091165 7. Schippers, A. Spanish Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition. Arabic Themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09869 0 8. Wiegers, G. Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado. Yça of Segovia (fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09936 0 9. Scales, P.C. The Fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba. Berbers and Andalusis in Conflict. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09868 2 10. Roth, N. Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain. Cooperation and Conflict. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09971 9 11. Zwartjes, O. Love Songs from al-Andalus. History, Structure and Meaning of the Kharja. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10694 4 12. Echevarria, A. The Fortress of Faith. The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11232 4 13. Macpherson, I. & MacKay, A. Love, Religion and Politics in Fifteenth Century Spain. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10810 6 14. Girón-Negrón, L.M. Alfonso de la Torre’s Visión Deleytable. Philosophical Rationalism and the Religious Imagination in 15th Century Spain. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11957 4

AS MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN IBERIAN WORLD. 15. Robinson, C. In Praise of Song. The Making of Courtly Culture in alAndalus and Provence, 1005-1134 A.D. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12453 5 16. Larsson, G. Ibn García’s Shu{¢biyya Letter. Ethnic and Theological Tensions in Medieval al-Andalus. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12740 2 17. Ljamai, A. Ibn Ýazm et la polémique islamo-chrétienne dans l’histoire de l’islam. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12844 1 18. Lucas, J.S. Astrology and Numerology in Medieval and Early Modern Catalonia. The Tractat de prenostication de la vida natural dels hòmens. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13242 2 19. Kogman-Appel, K. Jewish Book Art Between Islam and Christianity. The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13789 0 20. Meyerson, M.D. Jews in An Iberian Frontier Kingdom. Society, Economy, and Politics in Morvedre, 1248-1391. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13739 4 21. Heijkoop, H. & Zwartjes, O. Muwa±±a¥, Zajal, Kharja. Bibliography of Strophic Poetry and Music from al-Andalus and Their Influence in East and West. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13822 6 22. Robinson, C. & Rouhi, L. (eds.). Under the Influence. Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile. 2005. ISBN 90 04 13999 0 23. Walker, T.D. Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition. The Repression of Magical Healing in Portugal during the Enlightenment. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14345 9 24. Bowes, K. & Kulikowski, M. (eds.). Hispania in Late Antiquity. Current Perspectives. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14391 2 25. Keitt, A.W. Inventing the Sacred. Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14581 8 26. Martin, T. & Harris, J. (eds.). Church, State, Vellum, and Stone. Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John Williams. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14705 5 26. García-Arenal, M. Messianism and Puritanical Reform. Mahdºs of the Muslim West. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15051 X