Algar, Hamid -Religion in Safavid Persia

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Some observations on religion

in Safavid PersiaHamid Algar

a

aAssociate Professor in the Department of Near

Eastern Languages and Literatures, University of

California, Berkeley

Published online: 02 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Hamid Algar (1974) Some observations on religion in SafavidPersia, Iranian Studies, 7:1-2, 287-293

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SOME OBSERVATIONS ON RELIGIONIN SAFAVID PERSIA

HAMID ALGARIt is Indisputable that the religious historyboth of the Safavid period and of the two centuries thatpreceded it remains inadequately explored. There existedin Transoxania and Anatolia, as well as the Iranian pla-teau, a plethora of groups and individuals with diversetendencies and aspirations that it is difficult, in our

present state of knowledge, to synthesize into a compre-hensible whole. There are however a number of minorobservations on Professor Nasr's presentation that Iwish to make. The first is an expression of respectfuldisagreement, and the others are intended to directattention to matters not mentioned in his otherwisecomprehensive paper.Professor Nasr's contention that Sufism owes its

essential origin to Shicism, and that therefore itssuppression in the Safavid period ought to be regardedas a return to the womb that bore it, is highly contes-table. There is a certain tendency, deriving above allfrom the work of Henry Corbin, to present Sufism as anunacknowledged borrowing from Shicism, which receives itsmost extreme formulation in the claim that "true Shicismis Sufism, and true Sufism is Shicism."-'- Apart from thefact that this view of the "origins" of Sufism is hardlymore plausible than Orientalist theories of Christian orVendantine parentage, it tends too to obscure the richlegacy of Iranian Sunni spirituality, which includes someof the greatest names of Islam,' Thus, in his En Islam

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Iranien, Corbin makes hardly any mention of sunni figures,and his discussion of Ruzbihan Baqll is preceded by analmost apologetic mention of that Sufi's Sunni, or, as itis delicately put, "non-Shicite" affiliations.* Theassumption that the Sunni Sufism of pre-Safavid Iran wasShicite in essence and origin has the further effect ofconcealing the radical break with the past that the Safa-vid establishment of Shicism represented.

That Shicism had historical antecedents in Iran,and that the Mongol and Timurid periods had witnessedformative developments in Shi cism, none would deny. Butthe assertion that the way was prepared for the coming ofthe Safavids by fcarlqats pregnant with Shicism is dubious.The case of the Kubraviyyah is often adduced in this con-nection, and the late Marijan Mole indeed assembled muchfresh and important material in his interesting articleon the subject. The conclusions drawn by him are, how-ever, open to question. Of all the figures examined byhim--Najm ad-Din Kubra, Sa cd ad-Din Hamuya, cAla ad-DaulaSimnani, cAli Hamadani, and Sayyid Mutiammad b. cAbdullahNurbakhshit is only the last that may be regarded withany certainty as a Shicite, although there is some ambi-guity surrounding Hamadani. The others are shown only tocombine respect for the Family of the Prophet, particu-larly the Twelve Imams, with allegiance to the FourCaliphs and the Four Imams of the maz.5hib--an attitudeof integral respect for the leaders of the bmmah by nomeans peculiar to these Kubravl or their age. TheSunnism of the Kubravl was very marked. Najm ad-DinR3zl Daya, for example, cites as one reason for his choiceof Seljuq Anatolia as a place of refuge the supremacythere of Sunnism.^ He insists too on correct belief(ictiq5d), defined as the belief of the People of Sunnaand Community, as a condition for the state of "muridhood"and "sha khhood."^ Thfs cases of Hamadani and Nurbakhshshould not be taken as typical for the evolution of thewhole Kubraviyyah: it is not as if there were a seed ofShicism planted by Najm ad-Dln Kubra that attained itsnatural flowering with Nurbakhsh. The later history ofthe Kubraviyyah is still largely unexamined, but we knowthat in Transoxania the Kubraviyyah flourished in the

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same atmosphere of sunni dominance as the Yasawiyyah andthe Naqshbandiyyah, two fcarlqats of unquestioned sunniallegiance, as late as the second half of the sixteenthcentury. A certain Khaztnl, who migrated from Khwarazmto Istanbul in the reign of Sultan Selim II, was initiatedinto all three tarlqats, and wrote a work setting forththeir initiatic chains and devotional practices and makingit plain that they were three strands of a single tradi-tion bearing an unmistakable sunni stamp. The Kubra-viyyah later died out in the Ottoman lands, being absorbedlike the Anatolian remnants of the Yasawiyyah, into theNaqshbandiyyah, a process that would hardly have beenpossible for a proto-Shicite tariqat. In addition,several branches of the Kubraviyyah are known to haveflourished briefly in various areas: there is no indi-cation that they were Shi cite.7

Elements in Kubravi texts regarded as proto-shicite, such as expressions of devotion to the TwelveImams, are to be found also in the Naqshbandiyyah. Someconsideration of this tariqat is appropriate here, sincethe Corbin version of Iranian Sufism omits all mention ofit, although it had spread from its Transoxanian homelandas far west as Isfahan and Qazvin before the Safavidsextirpated it from the Iranian plateau.8 it is true thatthe chief initiatic chain of the Naqshbandiyyah leadsback to Abu Bakr rather than CA1I, but since that chainpasses through Jacfar as-Sadiq the Naqshbandiyyah alsopossesses a secondary silsilah, leading from Jacfar as-Sadiq through the Imamite line of descent to CA11, thatit designates as the "Golden Chain" (Silsilat a.z-gahab).9There is, then, an calavi element in the spiritualancestry of this purely Sunni tariqat. The eponymousfounder of the Naqshbandiyyah, Baha ad-Din Naqshband, ismoreover related to have beheld visions of CA1 I at criti-cal points in his wayfaring on the path, 10 ancj numerousexamples of similar devotion to the figure of CA1I can besupplied from the later history of the tariqat. Nor isit purely a question of cAli; all of the Twelve Imams areregarded as deserving of reverence and even as capable offunctioning poshumonously as spiritual guides. It isnoteworthy that the celebrated Rawdat ash-Shuhadac, a

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description of the martyrdom of Husayn at Kerbela and oneof the most important props of the Shicite commemorationof Muharram, was written by a Naqshbandi, Husayn b. cAliKashifi, whose son, Fakhr ad-Din cAli SafI, wrote thefundamental work on the early history of the tarlqat, theRashahat cAyn al-ffayat. That devotion to the Imams hasno necessary connection with Shicism is further demon-strated by its combination with pronounced hostility toShicism in a number of significant cases. Shaykh AhmadSirhindi, founder of the important Mujaddidi branch ofthe tarlqat, wrote a bitterly polemical treatise againstthe Shi ca, but in his celebrated Maktubat described'theTwelve Imams as the leaders of those who approach theDivine Presence by way of sainthood.^ Similarly, theNaqshbandi saint MawlSnS KhSlid Baghdadl, when passingthrough Mashhad on his way to India in the early nine-teenth century, composed one poem in praise of the ImamRi.za and another in condemnation of the hicite culamaof the city. 12

From these observations on the Kubraviyyah andNaqshbandiyyah we conclude then that the existence ofattitudes of devotion to the Twelve Imams in the ^arlqatsof the Mongol and Timurid periods was neither a borrowingfrom Shicism nor a proto-Shicite element. It is thereforenot possible to accept the assertion that the evolutionof the Safavids from Sunnism to Shicism mirrored a generaldevelopment among the tariqats, or that the tariqatseffectively prepared the way for the coming of Shi cismin Iran.

Any discussion of the transformation accomplishedby the Safavids must include some mention of the violentand coercive methods they liberally applied. Clearly,Shicism could not have flourished in the Iranian soil asit manifestly has through mere imposition; but to ignorethe violent nature of its introduction as state religionby Shah Ismacil would be to distort the historical pictureand to suggest that a relatively painless transition tookplace, not a ruthless campaign of suppression. From acertain point of view, the rise to power of Shah Isma cllmay be regarded as a Turkoman invasion of Iran from the

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west that produced almost as violent disruptions as pre-vious incursions from the east. In order to imposeShicism on the Sunni majority of Iran, Sunni culama' wereobliged to execrate the first three Caliphs, and therecalcitrant among them were immolated; the tombs of Sunnisaints and scholars were violated; and sunni mosques weredesecrated.I3 It is important to recall this violentlycoercive policy of the early Safavids, not only becauseit demonstrates that Iran was far from ready for a swiftpassage into Shicism, but also because it was connectedwith the peculiar and messianic form of Shicism practisedby Shah Ismacil, one at variance with subsequent Ithnacasharx orthodoxy. Ghulat elements appear to have enteredthe Safavid doctrine with Junayd and Ha ydar,^ and tohave reached their apogee with Shah Ismacll, who in hisTurkish poetry puts forward an ecstatic variety of claimsto being, alternatively, cAlt reincarnate, the Mahdl comein the fullness of time, and even the deity descended toearth.^ It was only with the importation of Arab Snicitescholars from al-Ahsa and Jabal cAmil that more temperatedoctrines came to prevail: an Arab scholarly influx cameto complement the Turkoman military invasion as a funda-ment of Shicite Iran. Finally, it should be rememberedthat the violence used by the Safavids in the establish-ment of Shicism elicited a shocked and horrified reactionin the sunni neighbors of Iran that for long determinedtheir whole attitude to Shi cism. There is a certainconsistency of tone and content in all the Ottoman fatvascalling for war on Iran, down to the eighteenth century:the Shicites are seen as neglecters of prayer and dese-crators of mosques, as persecutors of scholars and defilersof tombs.16 These accusations could be justified withreference to Shah Ismacll, and although their repetitionbecame to some extent a matter of scribal tradition, thereis no doubt that in general the Shi cites of Iran were seenby the Ottomans as irredeemably violent and irreligious.Even contemporary Turkish attitudes to the Shicah may besaid unconsciously to be colored by Safavid memories.

In conclusion, some of the wider effects on theIslamic world of the conversion of Iran to Shicism may beindicated. With the emergence of a militantly shi citey 291

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state in Iran, all possibility of territorial continuitybetween the western and eastern parts of the Islamic worldwas excluded. It is true that despite the barrier ofSafavid Iran the Ottomans communicated sporadically withCentral Asia, and had some seaborne contact with India andeven Sumatra. It may also be conceded that their Balkanand Mediterranean interests would in any event have pre-cluded a successful eastward expansion of their author-ity. 17 Safavid Iran nonetheless condemned the Sunnipopulations of Afghanistan and Central Asia to virtualisolation from the Ottomans, the most powerful sunnistate, and it may be held,in part responsible for thestagnation and gradual decay of the Uzbek khanates, endingin their conquest by the Russians in the nineteenth cen-tury. This too was part of the price paid for the minorrenaissance of Islamic culture that took place underSafavid patronage.

NOTES1. Henry Corbin, "Sih Guftar dar bSb-i TSrxkh-iMacnavly3t-i Iran," Majalla-yi Danishkada-yi Ada-biyat-i Tihran, vol. V (1337/1959), p. 56.2. En Islam Iranien (Paris: 1972), vol. Ill, pp. 9-11.3. "Les Kubrawiya entre Sunnisme et Shiisme aux Huitiemeet Neuvieme Siecles de l'Hegire," Revue des Etudes

Islamiques (1961), pp. 61-142.4. Mirsad al-cIbad min al-Mabda' ila 1-Macad, ed.

Muhammad Amin RiyShi (Tehran: 1352/1973), p. 20.5. Ibid., pp. 244, 258.6. Hujjat al-Abrar dar Asami-yi Auliya-yi Kibar, Biblio-theque Nationale, ancien fonds persan, 1226, ff.

103b-173b. Some information on Khazlnx and anotherwork of his is to be found in Fuad K'dprlllU, TUrkEdebiyatinda tlk Mutasawiflar, 2nd ed. (Ankara:1960), p. 323.

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7. See Bandirmalizade Ahmed MUnib, Mirat at-Turuk(Istanbul: 1306/1889), p. 12.

8. Muhammad b. Husayn b. cAbdullah Qazvxnx, Silsila-nama-yi Khw5iag5n-i Naqshband, ms. Laleli (Istanbul:1381), ff. 9a-llb.

9. Ibid., ff. 2b-3a. We may note in passing that ImamJacfar as-Sadiq was also physically descended fromAbu Bakr: his maternal grandfather was Qasim b.Muhammad b. Abi Bakr, one of the prominent tabicln.

10. Hafiz Husayn Karbala'I Tabrlzl, Raudat al-Janan waJannat al-Jinan, ed. Jacfar Sultan al-Qurra'l(Tehran: 1344/1965), I, p. 135!

11. Maktubat (Lucknow: 1306/1889), III, pp. 247-248.Sirhindl's Risala dar Radd-i Ravafid is printed asan appendix to this edition of the Maktubat.12. Divan (Bulaq: 1260/1844), pp. 41-42, 68.13. See Jean Aubin, "La Politique Religieuse des Safa-

vides," Le Shicisme Imamite (Paris: 1970), pp.237-238.

14. See Michel Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Safavids(Wiesbaden: 1972), p. 73.

15. V. Minorsky, "The Poetry of Shah Ismacll I," BSOAS,vol. X (1940-1943), pp. 1006a-1053a.

16. The subject has been examined in detail by ElkeEberhard in Osmanische Polemik gegen die Safawidenim 16. Jahrhundert nach arabischen Handschriften(Freiburg: 1970).

17. On this topic see the interesting study of AhmetAsrar, Osmanlilarin Dini Siyaseti ve is lam Alemi(Istanbul: 1972).

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