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[English edition] نعني بالإمامة «الولاية العظمى» للأمّة الإسلاميّة بعد وفاة الرّسول. (يهتمّ المقال بالنّظريّة العقدية والفقهيّة. ولمعرفة التطوّرات الحاصلة في المؤسّسة يرجى الاطّلاع على مقال «خليفة»). 1. بدايات النشأة كان تنصيب أبي بكر خليفة لرسول الله بعد وفاة محمّد تأكيدا للحفاظ على وحدة الأمّة الإسلاميّة في ظلّ قيادة واحدة. وقد أسّس الحدث لأحقيّة الصحابة المهاجرين من قريش، مع استبعاد ضمنيّ لفكرة الرّابطة الدّمويّة في أحقيّة خلافته. ورغم عدم حصول إجماع حول هذه المبادئ في أوّل الأمر، فإنّ ما حدث من أزمة في الخلافة بدأت مع الثورة …

[English edition] الإسماعيليّة هي إحدى أكبر الفرق الشّيعيّة، ولها العديد من التّفرّعات الثّانويّة الأخرى. انشقّت هذه الفرقة عن الطّائفة الإماميّة [انظر اثنا عشريّة]، إذ رأت الإمامة في إسماعيل، وهو الابن الأكبر للإمام جعفر الصّادق، ومنه اشتقّ اسم هذه الفرقة. 1. التّاريخ 1.1 الفترة ما قبل الفاطميّة والفاطميّة عقب موت جعفر الصّادق في عام 148هـ/765م تمسّك جمع من أتباعه بإمامة ابنه اسماعيل الّذي عيّنه والده خليفة له، ومات في حياة أبيه. إلاّ أنّ فريقا من الشّيعة ظلّ متشبّثا بفكرة أنّ إسماعيل لم يمت وأنّه سيظهر من جديد باعتباره «القائم» أو «المهديّ…

[English edition] المهدي هو اسم مُقِيم الدين والعدل؛ وبحسب اعتقاد إسلامي واسع الانتشار- سيحكم المهدي قبل نهاية العالم. في هذا المقال نتتبّع تاريخ هذا المعتقد، ولن نُعنى فيه بالتّاريخ السياسي للحركات المهدويّة إلاّ متى كان ذلك على صلة بالموضوع (بالنسبة إلى الحركة السودانيّة، انظر مقال «المهديّة»). 1. أصل المعتقد وتطوّره المبكّر في العصر الأموي لفظ «مهدي» بهذه الصيغة، لم يرد في القرآن؛ لكنّ الاسم مشتقّ بوضوح من الجذر العربي (هـ.د.ي)المستعمل في القرآن عموماً بمعنى الهداية الربّانيّة. استُعمل اللفظ منذ بداية الإسلام في معنى اللقب التشريفي لكن دون أن تك…

, Abu ’l-Fawāris S̲h̲īrd̲h̲īl, Būyid ruler (350-79/961-89), the eldest son of ʿAḍud al-Dawla ¶ [ q.v.]. His mother was, like his paternal grandmother, a Turkish slave woman. In 357/967-8, at the age of six or seven, he was given Kirmān as an appanage by his father, then ruling in Fārs. He accompanied his father on his campaign to conquer Bag̲h̲dād in 366/977, but was sent back to Kirmān to remove him from the court not long before ʿAḍud al-Dawla’s death in 372/983. Since the latter had failed to make final arra…

al-ḥusayn b. nāṣir b. al-ḥusayn , al-nāṣir li-dīn allāh , Zaydī Imām. There are some variants in the sources in regard to his own, his father’s and his grandfather’s personal names. He belonged to a Hasanid family which had been prominent in Abhar for some generations. Nothing is known about his life before he came to the Yaman after 429/1038 claiming the Zaydī imāmate. He gained some tribal support in northern Yaman and established himself in the Ẓāhir Hamdān region where he built the fortress and town of Ẓafār [ q.v.] near Dhū Bīn. In 437/1045-6 he entered and pillaged Ṣaʿda, the s…

al-ʿalawī al-zaydī , ʿumar b. ibrāhīm b. muḥammad , Kūfan grammarian, jurisprudent, Kurʾān scholar and traditionist. He was born in Kūfa in 442/1050-1, heard ḥadīt̲h̲ in his home town and Bag̲h̲dād, and stayed for some time, together with his father, in Damascus, Aleppo and Ṭarābulus. In Aleppo he read in 455/1063 the K. al-Īḍāḥ of Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī which he later transmitted in Kūfa. There he finished on 5 Ramaḍān 464/26 May 1072 the reading of the K. al-Ḏj̲āmiʿ al-kāfī , an extensive collection of Ḳūfan Zaydī fiḳh doctrine by the Sayyid Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥa…

(a.), “the rightly guided one” is the name of the restorer of religion and justice who, according to a widely held Muslim belief, will ¶ rule before the end of the world. The present article will trace the history of this belief and will deal with the political history of Mahdist movements only in so far as relevant (for the Sudanese movement, see al-mahdiyya). Origin and early development during the Umayyad age. The term mahdī as such does not occur in the Ḳurʾān; but the name is clearly derived from the Arabic root h-d-y commonly used in it in the meaning of divine guidance. As an hon…

, the leader of a religious movement in Bādg̲h̲īs [ q.v.] who rebelled in 150/767 against the ʿAbbāsid government. The people of Bādg̲h̲īs had been converted by Bihāfarīd [ q.v.] to his Zoroastrian reform doctrine that had adopted practices and prohibitions inspired by Islam. Ustād̲h̲sīs was a local chief there who had cooperated with the ʿAbbāsid governor of K̲h̲urāsān Abū ʿAwn ʿAbd al-Malik b. Yazīd (143-9/760-6). The Bihāfarīdīs of Bādg̲h̲īs wrote to al-Mahdī, son of the caliph al-Manṣūr and at that time viceroy of the East, demanding to be recognised as Muslims. Al-Mahdī put ¶ them u…

, Zaydī kalām theologian from al-Raḳḳa, active in the second ¶ half of the 2nd/8th century. Little is known about his life. He is said to have pledged allegiance to the ʿAlid pretender Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan and participated in debates with His̲h̲ām b. al-Ḥakam [ q.v.], Ḍirār b. ʿAmr [ q.v.], and the Ibāḍī ʿAbd Allāh b. Yazīd in the circle of the Barmakid Yaḥyā b. K̲h̲ālid. In legendary reports he is accused of having poisoned the ʿAlid Idrīs b. ʿAbd Allāh in the Mag̲h̲rib at the instigation of the caliph Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd or of Yaḥyā b. …

, abū ʿamr muḥammad b. ʿumar b. ʿabd al-ʿazīz , Imāmī traditionist flourishing in the first half of the 4th/10th century and author of one of the basic Imāmī rid̲j̲āl works dealing with the reliability of the transmitters from the imams. Though his place of origin is not specified in the biographical sources, it can safely be identified as Kis̲h̲s̲h̲ in Transoxania [see kas̲h̲ ] since most of the informants from whom he transmitted were from this or other towns in Transoxania and the neighbouring regions. His nisba thus should more properly be read al-Kis̲h̲s…

al-Ḳāsim b. ʿAlī al-ʿIyānī (d. 393/1003), Zaydī imām of Yaman, and a descendant of al-Ḳāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī [see rassids ] but not of the latter’s grandson al-Hādī ilā ’l-Ḥaḳḳ, the founder of the Zaydī imāmate in Yaman. The dates given by late sources for his birth (310/922 or 316/928) are unreliable. More likely he was born between 330/941 and 340/951. Before his arrival in Yaman, he lived in Tard̲j̲, south of Bīs̲h̲a, in the country of K̲h̲at̲h̲ʿam [ q.v.]. He gained early a reputation as a religious scholar and was visited for over twenty years by Zaydīs from Yaman …

, Abū Saʿīd Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā , mystic of the school of Bag̲h̲dād. Born in Bag̲h̲dād probably ¶ early in the 3rd/9th century, he joined al-Nibād̲j̲ī, Abū ʿUbayd al-Busrī, Sarī al-Saḳaṭī, Bis̲h̲r al-Ḥāfī, D̲h̲u’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī, Muḥammad b. Manṣūr al-Ṭūsī and other Ṣūfī s̲h̲ayk̲h̲s. He travelled extensively from an early age, though only few details about his itineraries are known from his own statements. His final departure from Bag̲h̲dād may be connected with the wave of persecution of the Ṣūfīs instigated by the Ḥan…

b. Aḥmad , the founder of the Druze religious doctrine. He was of Persian origin from Zūzan and a felt-maker. Among the Ismāʿīlī followers of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim [ q.v.] there had been speculations encouraged by his strange conduct and predictions of earlier authorities that he might be the expected Ḳāʾim . While the leaders of the official propaganda organization tried to counteract these speculations, al-Ḥākim early in 408/summer 1017 began to favour a movement led by al-Ḥasan al-Ak̲h̲ram proclaiming his divinity. …

, obscure Meccan transmitter from the Imāms Muḥammad al-Bāḳir and Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Ṣādiḳ who, two centuries after his death, gained notoriety as the father of the alleged founder of Ismāʿīlism and ancestor of the Fāṭimid caliphs, ʿAbd Allāh b. Maymūn [ q.v.]. According to the Imāmī sources, he was a client of Mak̲h̲zūm and a shaper of arrow shafts ( yabrī al-ḳidāḥ ). He became a personal servant of al-Bāḳir and al-Ṣādiḳ in Mecca. A few traditions of the two Imāms related on his authority are contained in the canonical collections of Imāmī ḥadīt̲h̲ . Al-Ṭūsī counts him also among the companions of Imā…

, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad , Muʿtazilī theologian. Virtually nothing certain is known about his life beyond that he was a student of Ḳāḍī ʿAbd al-D̲j̲abbār (d. 415/1025) in Rayy and survived him. His grandfather Mattawayh has been erroneously identified, on the basis of the title page of Houben’s edition of his al-Mad̲j̲mūʿ fi ’l-muḥīṭ bi ’l-taklīf , as ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUṭba (read ʿAṭiyya) b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nad̲j̲rānī, who was rather the scribe of one of the manuscripts of this book. The death dates given, withou…

, as a theological term meaning immunity from error and sin, is attributed by Sunnīs to the prophets and by S̲h̲īʿīs also to the imāms. In early Islam moral failures and errors of Muḥammad were freely mentioned, although there was an inconsistent tendency to minimize the shorteomings of the Prophet and in particular to deny that he had ever participated in the worship of idols. The term and the concept of ʿiṣma do not occur in the Ḳurʾān or in canonical Sunnī Ḥadīt̲h̲ . They were first used by the Imāmī S̲h̲īʿa, who at least since the first half of the 2n…

, “upholders of ird̲j̲āʾ ”, is the name of a politico-religious movement in early Islam and, in later times, refers to all those who identified faith ( īmān [ q.v.]) with belief, or confession of belief, to the exclusion of acts. The names Murd̲j̲iʾa and ird̲j̲āʾ are derived from Ḳurʾānic usage of the verb ard̲j̲ā (in non-Ḳurʾānic usage ard̲j̲aʾa ) in the meaning of “to defer judgment”, especially in sūra IX, 106. The related meaning of “to give hope” ( rad̲j̲āʾ ), although often imputed by opponents to the Murd̲j̲iʾa from an early date, was not implied. The early politico-religious movemen…

, Abu ’l-Ḥusayn Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḳāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥasanī , the founder of the Zaydī imāmate in Yaman, was born in al-Madīna in 245/859. His mother was Umm al-Ḥasan Fāṭima bint al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. Dāwūd b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥasan. He excelled early in religious learning and by the age of seventeen is said to have reached the level of rendering independent judgments in fiḳh and composing treatises. Because of his erudition, physical strength, bravery, and asceticism he soon carne to be considered ¶ by his family, including his fathers and uncles, as the most …

, nūr al-dīn ʿalī b. al-ḥusayn b. ʿalī b. muḥammad b. ʿabd al-ʿālī al-ʿāmilī , Imāmī scholar, born probably not later than 870/1466 into a family of scholars. His nisba al-Karakī refers to Karak Nūḥ in al-Biḳāʿ, where he studied religious sciences, chiefly under ʿAlī b. Hilāl al-D̲j̲azāʾirī. He also visited Egypt and heard some Sunnī scholars there. Around 909/1504 he settled in al-Nad̲j̲af, and in winter 910/1504-5 he was probably present at the court of the Ṣafawid S̲h̲āh Ismāʿī…

, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Bad̲j̲alī , founder of a S̲h̲īʿī sect in the Maghrib known as the Bad̲j̲aliyya [see al-bad̲j̲alī ]. His books ( kutub ), in which he gathered S̲h̲īʿī legal traditions, are quoted by the Ḳāḍī al-Nuʿmān in his K. al-Īḍāḥ . These quotations indicate that he wrote in the first half of the 3rd/9th century and belonged to the Mūsawī S̲h̲īʿa, who recognised Mūsā al-Kāẓim as their last imām and as the Mahdī. He lived and taught in Nafṭa in Ḳasṭīliya. His doctrine seems to have been propagated first by his son al-Ḥasan [see al-bad̲j̲alī ] in Darʿa and then…