(Jul-Sep2002, Vol. 122.3, pp. 643-644.)
Discours sur l'Ordre et la création. Edited and translated by DIANE STEIGERWALD. Saint-Nicolas, Québec: PRESSES DE L'UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL, 1998. Pp. 168. $35 (paper).
Tāj al-Dīn Abū al-Fath Muhammad b. Abd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153) was one of the most learned theologians of his time. He is generally recognized as a Shafīi-Asharī Sunnī scholar, well versed in philosophical traditions, and as the author of a famous book on religions and Islamic sects, the Kitāb al-Milal wa al-nihal. But in recent decades, modern scholarship has brought to light a new aspect of this enigmatic and original Muslim thinker's thought. In particular, by analyzing three of his works, including the Majlis, his only extant Persian treatise reproduced in the volume under review mainly from the critical edition prepared by Muhammad Ridā Jalālī Nāīnī together with an annotated French translation and introduction, a number of scholars including Diane Steigerwald, have argued convincingly that al-Shahrastānī was in fact a crypto-Ismāīlī.
Al-Shahrastānī was a contemporary of Hasan-i Sabbāh (d. 518/1124), the founder of the Nizārī dawa in Persia. The early Nizārī dais were particularly active in Khurāsān, al-Shahrastānī's native land where he also became a close associate of the Saljūq sultan Sanjar. In fact, several of al-Shahrastānī's contemporary Sunni scholars such as al-Samānī (d. 562/1166) do report that he inclined towards the Ismāīlīs and their teachings. We also have the valuable testimony of the well-informed Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī who, in his spiritual autobiography (Sayr wa sulūk), refers to al-Shahrastānī with the Ismāīlī title of the dāī al-duāt, a significant appellation even if used purely in an honorific sense. Be that as it may, al-Shahrastānī doubtless had contacts with Nizārī Ismāīlī dāīs and was familiar with the Ismāīlī teachings of both the Fātimid and Alamūt periods, which he categorized respectively as the "old preaching" (al-dawa al-qadīma) and "new preaching" (al-dawa al-jadīda). That he had direct access to Ismāīlī literature is attested by the fact that Hasan-i Sabbāh's major theological treatise, the Fusūl al-arbaa, which has not survived, is preserved fragmentarily in al-Shahrastānī's Kitāb al-Milal wa al-nihal (ed. W. Cureton [London, 1842-46], 150-52).
At any rate, al-Shahrastānī's Majlis, as well as his Qurān commentary, the Mafātīh al-asrār, and his Kitāb al-Musāraa in which he refutes Avicenna's metaphysics on the basis of Ismāīlī views and arguments, clearly reflect Ismāīlī perspectives. The Majlis, on the two worlds of order (amr) and creation (khalq), was originally delivered as a sermon around the year 540/1145 to a Twelver Shīi audience in Khwārazm. In this theological-philosophical-mystical sermon, al-Shahrastānī expounds a cosmological doctrine that bears close affinities to the Neoplatonized Ismāīlī cosmology propounded by Abū Yaqūb al-Sijistānī and other Ismāīlī dāīs operating in Iranian lands, especially in Khurasān, during the Fātimid period. This brief text of some thirty printed pages is also permeated with Qurānic verses and hadīths for which al-Shahrastānī provides esoteric interpretations through the methodology of tawīl associated particularly with the Ismāīlīs--a methodology fully used in his Qurān commentary written a few years earlier than the Majlis.
A few examples from the Majlis, which deals with creation, prophecy and Shīi-related notions of guidance, would serve to show how extensively al-Shahrastānī was influenced by Ismāīlī teachings. Similarly to the Iranian Ismāīlī dāīs, he expounds the absolute transcendence of God beyond being and non-being, and beyond comprehension by human reason. As a result, he levels harsh criticisms at the Mutazila, the Asharīs and other theological schools for compromising the unity of God through anthropomorphism (tashbīh) or by denying God any attributes (tatīl) (pp. 92, 98-99). This concept of God's transcendence is more fully developed in the Kitāb al-Musāraa, where al-Shahrastānī refutes the alternative Avicennan concept of the wajib al-wujūd, or God as the "Necessary Being." Again, in line with the position of the Ismāīlīs, for al-Shahrastānī, too, the divine order, or amr, acts as an intermediary between God and His creation, or khalq (pp. 80-81); he also adheres to the Ismāīlī distinctions between the spiritual world, the ālam al-amr, corresponding to the ālam al-ibdā of Ismāīlī cosmogony, and the physical world, the ālam al-khalq.
In his treatment of prophecy (nubuwwa), and the process of guidance (hidāyat) needed by human beings, al-Shahrastānī draws on the Ismāīlī cyclical conception of time and prophetic eras (pp. 84-86); and, throughout the Majlis, he presents angels as intermediaries in creation and prophets and their successors (the ulu al-amrs and imāms) as intermediaries in guidance. Thus, he argues, in a Shīi-Ismāīlī sense, for the necessity of guidance by imāms. Reflecting more specifically Nizārī influences, he introduces the figure of qaim and depicts Alī b. Abī Tālib as such an eschatological figure (pp. 87, 93-94, 109). As it is known, the Nizārīs of the Alamūt period taught that starting with Alī every imam was potentially an imām-qaim. The Majlis sermon concludes with a mystical disputation between Moses and the Qurānic figure [ ] (pp. 101-7), another figure of importance in Nizārī thought. Later, the Nizārīs identified Khidr with Dhū al-Qarnayn, the imām-qaim of the prophetic era initiated by Moses. All this explains why the Majlis has been listed as an Ismāīlī work in I. K. Poonawala's Biobibliography of Ismāīlī Literature ([Malibu, Calif., 1977], 256).
A closer study of the Majlis and other Ismāīlī-inspired works of al-Shahrastānī will be invaluable not only for appreciating the complex religious thought of this scholar and his intellectual heritage, but also for a better understanding of the doctrines of the Nizārī Ismāīlīs of the Alamūt period whose literature has perished almost completely. Diane Steigerwald has rendered great service in offering this volume, which now makes the Persian text of the Majlis more readily accessible while her excellent annotated French translation, appearing on opposite pages, contextualizes al-Shahrastānī's thought and draws attention to parallels in Ismāīlī sources.
Farhad Daftary, The Institute of Ismāīlī Studies