ʾadab La Littérature aux marges du ʾadab Modulo 2018-11.pdf · Iyas Hassan est agrégé d’arabe et chercheur ... ce volume et pour leurs conseils judicieux dans la réalisation

La Littérature aux marges du ʾadabregards croisés sur la prose arabe classique

Sous la direction de Iyas Hassan

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La Littérature aux marges du ʾadab

La notion de ʾ adab est très importante dès lors qu’on aborde le monde arabe dans sa période dite classique. Le terme est généralement traduit par « littérature », mais à l’origine il recouvre un sens plus large, davantage lié à un savoir-être courtois et urbain, comprenant notamment la maîtrise de la prose par des auteurs qui furent en premier lieu de hauts fonctionnaires œuvrant aussi bien à l’administration qu’aux domaines juridiques et religieux. C’est principalement leurs écrits narratifs ou ceux renvoyant à la morale et à l’éthique que la tradition académique a retenus comme étant le noyau dur à partir duquel se sont développés les canons du ʾadab. Mais qu’en est-il de la riche production qui existe en dehors de ces domaines ?

Le présent ouvrage s’inscrit dans une nouvelle orientation des études arabes visant à redessiner les frontières du littéraire dans le domaine des sources arabes. Le parti pris est ainsi de s’intéresser aux écrits classiques dont on considère, à tort ou à raison, qu’ils ne relèvent pas de ce registre. Neuf contributions issues des études littéraires, islamologiques et historiques sont rassemblées ici afin de permettre à des textes, pourtant différents par leur nature, leur genre ou leurs origines intellectuelles, d’entrer en interaction, révélant ainsi des territoires dont l’approche par des outils littéraires est encore rare, voire inédite.

Iyas Hassan est agrégé d’arabe et chercheur à l’Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo)

ISBN 979-10-97093-00-6 Prix : 24 €

Diacritiques Éditions / Institut français du Proche-Orient

Presses de l’

00-couv-IH3.indd 1 17/03/2017 10:38

Sources et histoire des sources

Collection dirigée par Pascal Burési et Iyas Hassan

Diacritiques Éditions — 2017

Ouvrage réalisé avec le soutien du bureau Moyen-Orient de l’Agence universitaire de la francophonie, de l’UMR 5191 ICAR (CNRS, université Lumière-Lyon 2 et ENS de Lyon) et du LabEx

ASLAN (université de Lyon).

Conception graphique François Marcziniak

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(CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

© Diacritiques Éditions, 2017ISBN 979-10-97093-00-6

© Presses de l’Ifpo, 2017 (PIFD 814)ISBN 978-2-35159-728-6

La littérature aux marges du ʾadab

Regards croisés sur la prose arabe classique

Sous la direction de

IyaS HaSSan

Presses de l’

Remerciements

Les contributions réunies dans le présent ouvrage sont issues des réflexions portées par le programme GenèR (Ifpo). Je tiens à remercier ici Bruno Paoli pour tout ce que ce programme lui doit.

GenèR a bénéficié lors de la réalisation de sa première étape des précieux conseils d’Ahyaf Sinno, de Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, d’Anne-Marie Eddé et de Georges Bohas ; ces derniers, ainsi que Bruno Paoli, ayant contribué à l’évaluation des contributions ici présentées. Qu’ils en soient remerciés très chaleureusement.

Mes remerciements vont aussi à Eberhard Kienle, directeur de l’Institut français du Proche-Orient, et Frédéric Imbert, directeur du département d’études arabes, médiévales et modernes de l’Ifpo, pour leur infaillible soutien dans mes diverses démarches.

Je tiens à exprimer ma gratitude envers le Père Salim Daccache, recteur de l’université Saint-Joseph, le Père Michel Scheuer, vice-recteur, et le Père Salah Abou Jaoudé, directeur de l’Institut des lettres orientales, pour l’accueil bienveillant qu’ils ont toujours réservé aux initiatives émanant du programme GenèR.

GenèR doit aussi beaucoup au travail de suivi d’Isabelle Mermet-Guyennet et Cyril Roguet dont l’aide m’a été précieuse dans la réalisation de cet ouvrage.

Enfin, je souhaite remercier Cécile et Yves Gonzalez-Quijano, pour le temps qu’ils ont bien voulu consacrer à la relecture de ce volume et pour leurs conseils judicieux dans la réalisation de l’ouvrage, Manuel Sartori pour sa relecture minutieuse et sa rigueur dans l’application des normes de translittération, ainsi que Thierry Quinqueton pour le temps précieux qu’il a généreusement accordé à la finalisation de ce volume.

Translittération de l’arabe

Le système de translittération suivi par Diacritiques Éditions est celui de la revue Arabica. Le cas échéant, les translittérations alternatives ont été conservées dans les titres d’ouvrages et les citations. En dehors de ces cas, l’alphabet arabe est translittéré comme dans le tableau suivant.

L’article al‑ est lié par un trait d’union au mot déterminé et il n’est pas assimilé par les « solaires ». L’article est systématiquement translittéré al‑ à moins qu’un préfixe monolitère arabe ne lui soit appliqué (bi‑l‑... ; li‑l‑... ; wa‑l‑...)

La hamza est systématiquement notée, même en initiale de mot, sauf s’il s’agit d’une hamza dite de liaison (hamzat al‑waṣl) dite aussi « hamza instable ».

Les termes arabes les plus courants, comme « hadith », « minbar » ou « madrasa », et les noms de lieux qui font l’objet d’une entrée dans les dictionnaires français (dictionnaire Robert, encyclopédie Larousse, Trésor de la langue française) sont indiqués sous leur forme francisée, sans italiques et sans majuscule dans le cas des noms communs.

Bibliographies

Les ouvrages, sources et études, sont présentés par ordre alphabétique d’auteur. Pour les noms arabes translittérés, l’article al‑ n’est pas pris en compte, et les lettres transcrites sont placées après la même lettre sans point diacritique, dans l’ordre alphabétique des lettres arabes correspondantes (h puis ḥ puis ḫ, g puis ǧ puis ġ, etc.). Le ʿ (ʿayn) et la ʾ (hamza) ne sont pas pris en considération dans l’ordre alphabétique. Pour les sources, dans le cas où plusieurs éditions d’un même texte ont été mises à contribution, ces dernières sont distinguées par un chiffre arabe placé à la suite du titre abrégé (Buḫārī Ta rʾīḫ1, Ta rʾīḫ2, etc.).

Transcription Lettre arabe Transcription Lettre arabe

ā ا ẓ ظ

b ب ʿ ع

t ت ġ غ

ṯ ث f ف

ǧ ج q ق

ḥ ح k ك

ḫ خ l ل

d د m م

ḏ ذ n ن

r ر h ه

z ز w/ū و

s س y/ī ي

š ش ʾ ء

ṣ ص a َ ـ

ḍ ض u ـُ

ṭ ط i ِ ـ

L a l i t t é r at u r e au x m a rg e s du ʾ a da b

Pre-Existence and Shadowsa Gnostic Motif or a Literary One ?

Leonardo Capezzone

Sapienza – Università di Roma

P r e - E x i s t e n c e a n d S h a d o w s 3 3 7

The doctrine of pre-existence of the Twelve Shiite Imams in the form of incorporeal shadows, or reflections of divine light ( aʾẓilla, or aʾšbāḥ) is one of the main narrative focuses of three Gnostic texts : ʾUmm al‑kitāb ( = ʾ Umm), Kitāb al‑haft wa‑l‑ aʾẓilla ( = Haft) and Kitāb al‑ṣirāṭ ( = Ṣirāt). It is based on the transmission of the exegetical word of Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Ǧaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, the fifth and the sixth Shiite Imams, by some of their most intimate disciples, like Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʾAnṣārī, Ǧābir b. Yazīd al-Ǧuʿfī and Mufaḍḍal b. ʿUmar al- Ǧuʿfī (fl. between the first/seventh and the third/ninth centuries). The authenticity of these texts, whose original drafts seem to go back to a period between the second/eighth and the fourth/tenth century1, and the reliability of their transmitters have raised a long history of criticism and censorship (and, finally, rehabilitation in the modern Age) among Imamite scholars2. Such a view, which implies the Gnostic notion of a genealogy marked by the presence of a particle of divine light, also encompasses the souls of the muʾminīn, who recognized the salvific message of the Imams’ word. Since the fourth/tenth century, Imamite Shiism deemed those sources dangerous forgeries, and the outcome of a heterodox hermeneutical trend. Nonetheless, the most ancient collections of Shiite traditions (al-Kulaynī, al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī) prove to have included a disturbing, although fragmentary, reverberation of that doctrine. Furthermore, besides transmitters who were censured for transmitting traditions related to the doctrine of aʾẓilla (including Mufaḍḍal b. ʿUmar al-Ǧuʿfī up to the enigmatic al-Šalmaġānī), other lost versions of a Kitāb al‑ʾaẓilla (whose title lets us easily understand the traditions gathered in these texts), that were collected by representatives of the Imami

1 For these texts (ʾUmm, Haft and Ṣirāṭ), see Tidjens 1977 ; Halm 1978 ; Halm 1981 as well as Halm 1982, p. 113-199 and p. 240-74 ; Ṣirāt, p. 295-317 ; Capezzone 2002 ; Turner 2006 ; Anthony 2011 and Asatryan 2015.2 Examples of such debates are in Capezzone (forthcoming) ; Capezzone 2000.

3 3 8 L a l i t t é r at u r e au x m a rg e s du ʾ a da b

school of Qumm, do not seem to have undergone any censorship (see Capezzone [forthcoming]).

Most likely drawing on these sources, early Imamite heresiographers (e.g. al-Nawbaḫtī, al-Qummī), when giving a narrative shape to the spread of heterodoxy during the first-second century H., use the basic, descriptive elements of this ‘genealogical’ doctrine, placing its evocative image —a clear sign of deviance— alongside with the notion of transmigration (intiqāl, tanāsuḫ) of the genealogical charisma into the soul of a false imam.

Besides the impact of Gnostic contents on religious themes that support ġulāt claims3, is it possible to detect, and to determine the gradual transition of a specific, genealogical motif, based upon the powerful Gnostic images of pre-existence (apparently going back to the Prophet Muḥammad according to some sources, Masʿūdī and Kumayt in this case), from the literary realm, right up to the early Shiite doctrinal laboratory, until it becomes, conversely, capable of providing a descriptive device to narratives about heterodoxy ?

* * *

3 For a discussion on the real presence of Gnosticism in the heterodox panorama of the period, see Bayhom-Daou 2003.


1. A long passage by Masʿūdī (d. 345/956) describes an overview of Shiite heterodoxy on the eve of the major occultation of the Twelfth Imam. In fact, this passage is a digression (as often occurs with this author). The opportunity is provided by the citation of some verses in praise of the Prophet Muḥammad, wherein the Prophet’s genealogy acquires an element (the pre-existence of the Prophet in the form of shadow) which, despite its fragmentary appearance, sounds like a clue of the spread, in seventh century Arabia, of the Gnostic motif of shadows of light as attested, for example, in some texts of the Nag Hammadi Library (fourth century)4. Thus Masʿūdī writes (Murūǧ, t. III, p. 262-268)5 :

Many of those who exaggerate in religious devotion, departing

from reason and common sense, [...] get their arguments for their

doctrines [...] from the verses that al-ʿAbbās [b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib,

the Prophet’s uncle] composed in praise of the Prophet. According

to Quraym b. ʾAws b. Ḥāriṯa b. Lām al-Ṭāʾī, [when al-ʿAbbās] paid

4 In the treatise called On the Origin of the World, we read : “And the shadow comes from a product that has existed since the beginning. It is, moreover, clear that it existed before chaos came into being, and that the latter is posterior to the first product. […] Now the eternal realm (aeon) of truth has no shadow outside it, for the limitless light is everywhere within it. But its exterior is shadow, which has been called by the name ‘darkness’. From it, there appeared a force, presiding over the darkness. And the forces that came into being subsequent to them called the shadow ‘the limitless chaos’. From it, every kind of divinity sprouted up [...] together with the entire place, so that also, shadow is posterior to the first product. It was <in> the abyss that it (shadow) appeared, deriving from the aforementioned Pistis” (Robinson 1990, p. 161). In the Apocryphon of John, Adam “was revealed because within him dwelt the shadow of light” (Davies 2015, p. 111). I would like to thank Alberto Camplani for pointing out these texts. See also Asatryan et Burns (2016).5 On Masʿūdī’s heresiographic competence, and the religious landscape observed by this author, see Van Ess 2011, p. 587-595.


homage to the Prophet converting to Islam, he said :

– O Prophet of God, let me recite your praise. – Speak the Prophet

said may God never silence your tongue. – And he recited :

Until now, you existed in the form of shadow (fī ẓilāl)

in places in paradise where leaves covered bodies.

Then you came down on earth, not even in human form, flesh and blood,

but a drop wandering on a drifting vessel, risking shipwreck.

A drop passing (tanqalu) from the loins to the womb

When a world ended and another one began.

When you were born the earth lit up, and your light cleared the horizon.

How could we, in the middle of your light, divert liars from your path ?

Sectarians are obstinate, when they say that these verses were

quoted by all the chroniclers, who preserved the memory of the

Prophet’s joy in hearing al-ʿAbbās as he declared this panegyric. But

this faction of extremists (ṭāʾifa min al‑ġulāt) drew from these verses

arguments in favor of their allegorical tenets (dalāla fī bawāṭin iddaʿū‑

hā), and forced interpretations that led them away from reason and

common sense. This error was supported by many of their authors,

and also by the most subtle of their theologians, who belonged to

the muḥammadiyya, ʿilbāniyya or even to other sects. Among these,

we should remember ʾIsḥāq b. Muḥammad al-Naḫaʿī, called al-

ʾAḥmar, well-known for his book entitled Kitāb al‑ṣirāṭ (See Ṣirāṭ,

p. 303). [...] We have already had [elsewhere] the opportunity to

talk about muhammadiyya, ʿilbāniyya, the muġīriyya and all the other

heterodox doctrines, such as those of the entrustment (tafwid),

or the mediation (waṣāʾiṭ) ; we have already refuted them all and

also the ones who preach the transmigration of souls (tanāsuḫ al‑

ʾarwāḥ) in animal species, whether they are Muslims or wise men


from ancient Greece, or India, or they are dualist, Zoroastrians, or

Christians6.

We already gave our arguments against the heretics who have

preceded us or who live in our time, in the year 322/933-934. I want

to mention here only those who, continuing to speculate on the

principles of the previous doctrines, expressed similar propositions,

around which they built their beliefs. [...] But let’s now go back

to the story of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, from which we drifted with our

digression.

From the point of view of the history of mentality, the inference that brings Masʿūdī to connect an ‘orthodox’ homage to the Prophet, based on a shared (though not yet canonical) literary motif, to expressions of Shiite sectarianism of his time is extremely interesting. The concept of a prophetic entity that is transmitted in Muḥammad in the form of a spermatic quiddity that traces back to Ishmael and Abraham, and then to the series of biblical patriarchs up to Adam, has already been expressed in the first-second centuries H., and the related traditions reflect an adherence to the cultural model of genealogy, which is confirmed in both the Prophet’s standard biography and in later Sunni sources7. The transfer of this prophetic entity regards the spermatic substance that is transmitted, and it is perceived and expressed in the context of a natural vision, in the order of ideas of reproduction : in many ḥadīṯ, Muḥammad pre-exists in the loins of Adam (Rubin 1975, p. 67 ff., 81 ff.).

In these verses, genealogical praise is enriched by a descriptive element : fī ẓilāl that provides a fleeting but clear Gnostic valence to the literary image. Only a century later, that valence would

6 On metempsychosis, see Walker 1991.7 Sīra, p. 3 ff. The issue of prophetic genealogy has been extensively studied by Rubin 1975 (for the verses quoted from Ibn Qutayba, see p. 90) ; Rubin 1979 ; EI2, s.v. “nūr muḥammadī”.


give birth to a doctrine which, in turn, would be illustrated (or rather : narrated ?) in texts by a range of heterodox Shiites trends : Masʿūdī —and, in a more detailed fashion, third-fourth/ninth-tenth century heresiography— give an account of those trends. Actually, the heavenly shadow evoked by the poet, the form in which the Prophet existed before creation, heavily recalls the Gnostic theory, preached by heterodox texts, of shadows ( aʾẓilla) of light in which the descendants of Muḥammad, through ʿAlī and Fāṭima, existed since before the creation of the world. The connection established by Masʿūdī is evidently the clue of a continuity (invoked by sectarians, as Masʿūdī admits8) between the earliest formulation of the nūr muḥammadī and the subsequent Shiite reworking.

Let’s now read two verses of the poet Kumayt (d. 125/743), addressed to the Prophet9 :

When the name of your ancestors is pronounced

the tree of your descent blooms from Eve to ʾĀmina, your mother.

From generation to generation to you were transmitted,

and from ʾĀmina you took, white silver and gold.

Even in this case, the verses reflect the order of ideas in which the prophetic profile of Muḥammad was acknowledged : the praise of his descent, the transmission of genealogical virtue, attention to the female line, and eventually a symbolic mention

8 It is interesting that in Masʿūdī’s report, there is memory only of Kitāb al‑Ṣirāṭ and its presumed author. As a matter of fact, ʾUmm al‑Kitāb (that according to Halm 1981, p. 35-36, is the most ancient text from Kufan ġulūw) seems to have disappeared from bibliographic and heresiographical Shiite repertoires, whilst many versions of a Kitāb al‑ʾaẓilla are present in Imamite ʿilm al‑riǧāl literature ; for the censorship that struck some of these versions (or rather, some of the transmitters of a text named as such) see Capezzone (forthcoming).9 Kumayt Hāšimiyyāt, p. 84. See Rubin 1975, p. 91 ; Amir-Moezzi 1992a, p. 110. The poet was a well-known supporter of the kaysāniyya.


of light in the metaphor of silver and gold. I would like to focus on the words with which these things are expressed : in the first hemistich of the translated second verse, in order to express ‘transmission’, the poet uses tanāsuḫ (qarnan fa‑qarnan tanāsaḫū‑ka, la‑ka / al‑fiḍḍata min‑hā bayḍā aʾ wa‑l‑ḏahab). Translating these verses, with an inference which in many ways reminds the one of Masʿūdī, Ignaz Goldziher thought he had found a reference to the transmigration of souls (Goldziher 1908, p. 335) ; I rather think that Kumayt was ‘simply’ talking about the prophetic substance of Muḥammad that passed through his ancestors. It is interesting to compare the linguistic use of the verb, transitive also in this case, tanāsaḫa in a source that is above any suspicion of heresy as Ibn ʾAbī al-Ḥadīd. Here, the verb expresses the same concept, already developed by Shiism in favor of Ḥusaynid descent : tanāsuḫ stands for the transmission of genealogical virtue (tanāsaḫat‑hum karā iʾm al‑ aʾṣlāb), which transits in the best vicars (as in the case of the Prophet’s father, ʿAbd Allāh) eventually to settle in the right depositary (Ibn Aʾbī al-Ḥadīd, Šarḥ, t. II, p. 180). Exactly like Goldziher did in translating Kumayt’s verses, heresiographers of the third/fourth century H. gave the term tanāsuḫ the meaning of metempsychosis, transmigration of souls ; they saw it as a peculiar term of the heterodox lexicon.

We are facing an ambivalence in the relationship between word and thing : when a source of the fourth/tenth century like Masʿūdī speaks about forms of pre-existence of the Prophet, even in the figurative sense of a genealogical virtue, the result is a consequential discourse that induces the author to digression and inference, leading him to talk about heresies. Nonetheless, behind these apparent misunderstandings, or inferences, probably a late antique cultural and religious background is at work, providing a common root first to the emersion of the literary motif, celebrating the genealogical virtues of Muḥammad, then to the expansion of the same motif in a Gnostic, sectarian


theme aiming at magnifying his own descendants10. We shall try to outline the historical context in which such elaboration has been consummated, and to identify who was responsible for this transformation, starting from a fact inherent to the early history of Shiism, as early heresiography narrated it : the disclosure and the deceitful use of Gnostic doctrines by the impostor ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb.

* * *

2. The uprisings that preceded the Abbasid revolution —not only the one of Muḫtār in Kufa, but also the gigantic revolt led by ʿ Abd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya, son of a son of a brother of ʿAlī from 127/774 to 129/746— shed a light on some peculiar elements of a complex parental horizon, from which claims of legitimacy could spring. As to this revolt, still in the sixth/twelfth century Šahrastānī could write that

[…] there was a deep fracture on the issue of the Imamate between

the followers of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya and those of Muḥammad b.

ʿAlī (the Abbasid) ; each of them claimed to be the executor of ʾAbū

Hāšim’s will, despite its groundlessness11.

The alleged will may have been without grounds, yet at the time it had a big impact on collective consciousness (and on the mechanisms of political propaganda, which was not exempt from using false news as a resource), since it was deemed necessary in giving legitimacy to whoever aspired to it. In such an order

10 Amir-Moezzi’s translation of the term with métemphotose, i.e. “déplacement de la lumière prophétique” sounds very relevant to the connection of the word tanāsuḫ with the memory of a Gnostic background. See Amir-Moezzi 1992a, p. 109, 313.11 Šahrastānī Milal, t. I, 113 ; Moscati 1952. On the revolt of ʿ Abd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya : al-Qāḍī 1974, p. 239-57 ; Shaban 1971, p. 161, 63 ; Tucker 1980.


of ideas on power and its transmission, the perception of an authority that transcends the real exercise of power begins to spread ; this authority is not yet sacred, but from sacrality it borrows the ineffable character of consensus. The concept of transfer of authority is loaded with a new charisma, and it is developed through unusual channels : the line of transmission, according to the kaysāniyya trend —architect, with Muḫtār, of sacral infusion, hanging in the balance between messianism, gnosis and antinomianism— proceeds from the Prophet (who is the bearer of a sublime solitude : an orphan with no male progeny) ; passes on to the husband of his daughter, that also has a brother, Ǧaʿfar, from which ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya descends (and sources let us suppose that his revolt, antagonist of the Abbasid one, was another claim in the dynamic of family rights given for granted) ; it then continues with Ḥasan, with his first brother Ḥusayn, and at last with his second brother Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya. Obviously, this same line would imply the succession of the latter’s son, ʾAbū Hāšim.

On one hand, we have Shiites that support the rights of Husayn’s son, Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, against the followers of Muḫtār’s claim (later perceived as heterodox) in the name of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya. In this way, they radically innovate the system of authority transfer in a family, developing a vision that, step by step, narrows down from the Banū Hāšim (the Prophet) to the Talibites (ʿAlī) to the Alides (Ḥasan and Ḥusayn) to the Ḥusaynids12. On the other hand, Abbasid demagogy accepts the premises of the kaysāniyya discourse (religiously heterodox, but politically pertinent to the parental order of the time), claiming the validity of the alleged testament of the son of ʿAlī’s third son. Then, that same demagogy shifts the balance from one branch of the family to

12 For the first emergence of a line of twelve Imams in early Imamite heresiography, see Kohlberg 1976.


another one, inserting a non Alid element in a genealogical order that however originates from ʿ Alī (or at least passes through ʿ Alī).

ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya claims his right to ʾAbū Hāšim’s legacy as he is the son of a son of ʿAlī’s brother, whose grandfather was ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Therefore, it is from the inheritance of the Prophet’s uncle that the net of kindred unfolds, all inside the Banū Hāšim clan, within which one could think of claiming any right. However, the infrastructure, with all its religious implications, behind the structural fact of a political-genealogical dispute, highlights a cultural attitude that is beginning to consider, in the concept of power that is being developed and disputed, the transfer of a sacred charisma that now characterizes this power. It is the marginal and peripheral voice of ʿ Abd Allāh b. Ḥarb, that from al-Madāʾin would join ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya’s adventure. After the death of the Talibite leader, although completely out of any genealogical association, he would claim that he was invested of the Imamate’s transmission (al‑waṣiyya wa‑l‑ iʾmāma), and that ʾAbū Hāšim’s soul had passed into himself (taḥawwalat fī‑hi)13.

ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb’s pretension seems to be the first of a long list of deviant claims, coming from the heterogeneous Shiism between the first/seventh and the second/eighth centuries, by personalities that declare, outside of any genealogical logic, they are the true heirs of ʾAbū Hāšim. The first heresiographical report on ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb come from ps. al-Nāšiʾ al-ʾAkbar (dating no later than 230/843-844), in which we see him propagate his doctrine only after ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya’s death and follow a recurring type : he is only the propagandist of a charismatic leader. In the doctrinal vision of ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb’s sect, loaded with Gnostic elements deduced from a particular exegesis of the Qur’an, the Prophet is invested of the Holy Spirit (rūḥ al‑quds), which he then

13 al-Qummī Maqālāt, p. 40 ; Nawbaḫtī Firaq, p. 30 : here he is called al-Ḥāriṯ. See Capezzone 2006.


passes on to ʿAlī ; from ʿAlī the Holy Spirit is transferred (intalaqat) in Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, then in Muḥammad b. ʿAlī (that is Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya), then in ʾAbū Hāšim and at last in ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya. The source closes the long passage on this sect, called ḥarbiyya, with the following remarks :

With their doctrines they corrupt the divine word ; furthermore,

they declare that a believer, when he knows (ʿarafa) his imam, is

authorized to suspend the observance of religious precepts (farāʾiḍ).

This is a common opinion among those who exaggerate the concept

of the Imamate ; the difference between them lies in the person

whom, among the lineage of ʿAlī, they recognize as the Imam ([ps.]

al-Nāšiʾ al-ʾAkbar Niḥal, p. 36-40).

Twelver heresiographers such as Qummī and Nawbaḫtī are particularly committed in distancing themselves from the exaggerations of those Shiite trends, while facing the spread of some heterodox doctrines (that ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb misused to legitimize his mission), and of some disturbing texts that claim to contain the exegetical knowledge of imam Ǧaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, transmitted to his most intimate disciples. Such doctrines, and such texts, in that period, evidently sounded heterodox and dangerous for the safety of the Imamite community14. In these

14 Madelung 1967 proved that the treatises of Nawbaḫtī and Qummī depended on common sources, such as Kitāb al‑radd ʿalā al‑ġulāt by Yūnus b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ; the two writers seem to depend on this source especially when passages of their writings reveal a refutative style. Yūnus, close to the imams Mūsā al-Kāẓim and ʿAlī al-Riḍā, had the chance to study the quality of the sectarians’ allegorical exegesis while refuting their heresies, and he clearly realized that these doctrines developed from a bold Koranic exegesis. In fact, Yūnus met a group of Shiite followers of the imam al-Bāqir (waǧadtu bi‑hā qiṭʿa min ʾaṣḥāb Aʾbī Ǧaʿfar) in Iraq ; he brought with him their texts, and submitted them to the eighth Imam’s judgement. The Imam invalidated as false the majority of traditions that were attributed to his predecessors : see Kaššī Iḫtiyār, p. 146.


two heresiographical sources, ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb is presented as a fraud, filling the vacuum left by ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya :

The partisans of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya, called muʿāwiyya, believed

that souls transmigrated (tatanāsaḫū), and that the Spirit of God,

by this rule, was in Adam, as some Christian sects said. Prophets

had a divine nature, their succession corresponding to the one

of the Spirit, arriving to the Prophet Muḥammad, continuing

with ʿAlī, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya, his son ʾAbū Hāšim and

finally with ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya. They believe that the world

is eternal, and that adultery and sodomy are legitimate. When

ʾAbū Muslim killed ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya in prison, his followers

split in several groups : one recognized the imamate of ibn Ḥarb,

keeping alive the heresy of the transmigration of souls (tanāsuḫ),

of the pre-existence of souls as shadows (ʾaẓilla) and of the cycles

of existence (dawr), declaring that those were the doctrines

transmitted by Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī and Ǧābir b. Yazīd

al-Ǧuʿfī, to whom the whole school traced back (maḏhab) (Qummī

Maqālāt, p. 43 ; Nawbaḫtī Firaq, p. 31)15.

Both writers are describing a very uncertain and politically confused historical moment after the failure of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya’s revolt (“... one group believed that ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya died without leaving a clear will indicating the imam. The perplexed members of this group passed from one Shiite group to another without referring to a specific imam...”, Qummī writes, Maqālāt, p. 44.). In fact, Qummī recognizes in the disconcert of the perplexed people the last traces of kaysāniyya, by now declining, and the emergence of the muġīriyya current (Qummī Maqālāt, p. 44). In this source we see the attempt of describing an ideological line that, after experimenting an

15 On Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʾAnṣārī and Ǧābir b. Yazīd al-Ǧuʿfī see the relative entries in EI2 ; we shall come back to them further on.


eccentric course, is returning towards a centre. Mentioning muġīriyya, the heresiographer evokes Muġīra b. Saʿīd, the leader of a group named after him, loyal to the imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir (therefore to the Ḥusaynid line). He belongs to the same heresiological type of ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb : individuals who declare the divine nature of the imam they support, and then claim the chrism of prophecy for themselves (See Tucker 1975 ; Halm 1982, p. 89-96 ; Wasserstrom 1985). But this centre, to which the model of the heterodox drift seems to return, in the meantime is burdened, or enriched, by the baggage that drift has picked up during its wandering : it is inside this front that the heresiographical myth of sabā iʾyya reappears, naming a group that speculates on certain religious themes (takallamū fī al‑ aʾẓilla wa‑l‑tanāsuḫ fī al‑ aʾrwāḥ, Qummī Maqālāt, p. 44 ; Nawbaḫtī Firaq, p. 35). Moving away from the chronological anxiety of heresiographers, we can observe the persistence of a core of doctrines (that later on Twelver Shiism would consider heterodox) whose tenets —divine light transmitted from Adam to the prophets and imams, pre-existence in the form of shadows— are formalized by means of a transmission routed by individuals close to the exegetic knowledge of the fifth and the sixth Imam. This stream of transmission begins to take the form of texts (which the versions of ʾ Umm, Haft, Ṣirāṭ that have reached us presumably depend on), from which heresiographers clearly draw on ; as such, these tenets must be refuted ([ps.] al-Nāšiʾ al-ʾAkbar Niḥal, p. 36-40).

* * *

3. The heterodox drifts that we have looked upon adopt, more or less always, the kaysāniyya religious language and its messianic functions, but they are structured on the controversial affair of Aʾbū Hāšim’s testament. On this fact, overloaded with a spiritual valence tending to the sovereign’s sacralization, parental ideology


—not only pro-Alid but specifically pro-Husaynid— inserts itself. Pro-Alid Shiism needs arguments that could be capable of going beyond the contingency of tradition, and do not limit themselves to legalize but also to legitimize. Pro-Husaynid Shiism, instead, needs to create a superstructure of values with a highly emotional profile (to which the tragic passion and death of Ḥusayn is not unrelated), that is to elaborate a new culture of genealogical transmission.

Possibly in this historical moment, when Muḥammad al-Bāqir’s majority age places him at the head of the Ḥusaynid branch of the Alid family, the earlier step of the Shiite doctrine of nūr muḥammadī starts to develop. A light coming from Adam is genealogically transmitted to the Prophet, and it shapes the intimate essence of the connection between ʿAlī and his lineage, and then transmitted from father to son. Fāṭima’s role is quite evident in this parental strategy ; but the concept takes its substance from the cultural and overwhelming concept of prophecy, and its cyclical incidence on time : an active factor, capable of contrasting the merely legalist discourse. The divine light particle, infused in the Prophet’s genealogy starting from ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, grandfather of Muḥammad and ʿAlī, and from them transmitted to his descendants in equal parts, is the keystone of a system of boundaries of sacrality from a familiar point of view.

From Muḥammad al-Bāqir on, a corpus of traditions starts developing. These would be collected in the great Imamite repertoires (Kulaynī above all)16, that would then be globally inserted in the eleventh/seventeenth century in the encyclopaedic Biḥār al‑ aʾnwār by Maǧlisī. A unifying topic is the feature of such a corpus, that is the divine light from which Muḥammad and ʿAlī were created : a light that has been transmitted to them by

16 On him see Amir-Moezzi et Ansari 2009.


their common ancestors, enclosed in the genealogy of prophets of the Judaeo-Christian tradition that traces back to Adam (Maǧlisī Biḥār, t. XI, p. 33-34 ; t. XXIII, p. 39, 57 ff.). The prophetic light gives substance to the idea of waṣī, which provides a new shape to the parental order : an ancient idea, that already appeared in Muḫtār’s messianic propaganda when he defined Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya as al‑mahdī ibn al‑waṣī (Balāḏurī Aʾnsāb, t. V, p. 218, quoting ʾAbū Miḫnaf).

Including the discourse on heritage in the order of prophetic genealogy, nevertheless, two modalities of transmission are distinguished between ʾ awṣā and dafaʿa (Maǧlisī Biḥār, t. XI, p. 41 ; t. XXIII, p. 57-59) ; the distinction actually outlines a qualitative difference between the act of ‘infusing’ waṣiyya and the one of ‘pushing it’. If Muḥammad receives prophetic light from his father, this happens through the simple transposition of the peculiar element of prophecy, by which the father is a mere receptacle ; indeed in ʿAlī there is a real proper infusion, that makes him the actual embodiment of a long chain of ʾawṣiyāʾ in the religious history, common to Israelites and Muslims. Therefore, light is the fundamental substance of prophetic heritage ; it is the building block of the doctrine of incarnation of the spirit of eternal light in the earthly bodies of the Imams. The expansion of this article of faith embraces the pre-existence, before creation, of Muḥammad, ʿAlī, and Fāṭima and of their first two descendants : it has all the features of an emanation theory, in which the light, as intimate substance of this pentad, proceeds from the same light of God’s throne, and the world generates from these five lights (in short, this is the doctrine of the tafwīḍ). Even the names of the Five are emanations of the attributes of God, reflecting a theological speculation on divine name and faculty. The Five pre-exists, before creation, in the form of ʾašbāḥ and ʾaẓilla, immaterial containers of divine


light thought of as shadows of light (Maǧlisī Biḥār, t. XI, p. 41 ; t. XXIII, p. 57-59)17.

* * *

4. The corpus of traditions on which early Shiism developed its own discourse on nūr muḥammadī, and on the pre-existence of the Prophet’s Family in the form of shadows of light, allow us to isolate and to date some doctrines connected to the religious circle of the fifth Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir. The transmission of this set of traditions is a practice that continues up to the last imam of the Husaynid line : al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī (d. 290/902-903), contemporary to the tenth and eleventh Imam, would collect them in his Baṣā iʾr al‑daraǧāt, aiming at systemizing them18.

With all likelihood this source is the last work —or, at least, among those which have reached us— which gathers in such a systematic manner traditions that are also dear to heterodoxy. It seems to be the terminal outcome of an age of Shiite religious thought that is about to end, on the eve of the minor occultation of the Twelfth Imam. A clue of the slight suspicion this text would later arise comes from the doubts the fifth/eleventh century Imamite bio-bibliographer al-Naǧāšī expressed, not so much about the author’s reliability, as about the uncertain origin of traditions he sometimes collects19. In al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī’s work,

17 On the pre-existence of Muḥammad, see Maǧlisī Biḥār, t. XXIII, p. 310-11, 319 ; on ʾašbāḥ, t. XI, p. 118, 175 ; XV, p. 25 ; on ʾašbāḥ/ʾaẓilla of the Prophets’ Family created before Adam, t. XI, p. 114, p. 116, 117-118, 164-165, 172-174 ; XV, p. 6, 8-9, 10, 18-19, 23, 24 ; on the creation of the world by emanation of light from the Five, t. XV, p. 10-11, 27 ss. ; t. XXIII, p. 320. 18 On this text and its author see Amir-Moezzi 1992a and Amir-Moezzi 1992b, p. 73-154 on the pre-existence of the Imams ; Amir-Moezzi 2011, p. 127-158 ; Newman 2000, p. 67-93, 113-147.19 Naǧāšī Riǧāl, t. II, p. 252 : kāna waǧhan… ṯiqa, ʿaẓīm al‑qadr… qalīl al‑saqṭ fī al‑riwāya.


one can verify the recurrence of the same terms featuring some heterodox expressions (particularly the muḫammisa-mufawwiḍa currents), even when these trends, expanding the Gnostic vision of the pre-existence of Muhammad and his lineage, elaborate the emanation theory of tafwīḍ, the ‘mandate’ by which God entrusts the Prophet and his Family (Fāṭima, ʿAlī, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn) the demiurgic function of creating the world (Kulaynī ʾUṣūl, t. I, p. 265-68).

While al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī’s text seems to have reached us in its integrity, another source of the same period, that over time became canonical —the Uṣūl min al‑Kāfī by Kulaynī, one of al-Ṣaffār’s pupils (d. 328/940-41)— raises some concerns : in fact, a disproportion stands out between the profusion of traditions related to this topic that, in the seventeenth century, Maǧlisī recollects from the ʾUṣūl in his Biḥār (Balāḏurī Aʾnsāb, t. V, p. 218, quoting ʾAbū Miḫnaf ; Maǧlisī Biḥār, t. XI, p. 41 ; t. XXIII, p. 57-59), and the relatively small number of traditions on the same topic that have reached us from al-Kulaynī’s source. A meaningful clue of Imamite censorship, that may have affected this fundamental source for the history of Shiite doctrines, comes indirectly from al-Naǧāšī. In the biographical note that he dedicates to Isḥāq b. al-Ḥasan b. Bakrān al-ʿUqrānī, a transmitter from Kulaynī (Naǧāšī Riǧāl, t. II, p. 291-292), Naǧāšī describes him as a weak transmitter (ḍaʿīf), and writes about him :

I saw him in Kufa […]. He has been transmitting Kulaynī’s text

[after having received it] from him (wa‑kāna yarwī kitāb al‑Kulaynī ʿan‑

hu). In that time, it was a heresy, and I never heard anything from

him (wa‑kāna fī hāḏā al‑waqt ġuluwwan fa‑lam ʾasmaʿ min‑hu šayʾan).

The historical value of this sentence is highly controversial : was there a period during which transmitting Kulaynī’s text (or some sections of it) was considered to be a deviation from a criterion of orthodoxy ? Naǧāšī’s testimony brings us back to the


first decades of the major occultation (the same period in which al-Masʿūdī described his heterodox landscape), when Kulaynī’s work had already gained its authoritativeness, as well as an established redactionary shape —from which, likely, ʿUqrānī may have diverged. Actually, the modern source of Māmaqānī (d. 1933) is enlightening : ʿUqrānī was not ġālī, yet the fact of transmitting some passages of Kulaynī’s work, concerning some particular issues related to the Imams, at that time, was considered an act of ġulūw (Māmaqānī Tanqīh, t. I, p. 114).

Elsewhere I have showed that materials, that would later be considered heterodox, may have passed into the ʾ Uṣūl by means of one of Kulaynī’s teachers, Sahl b. Ziyād (Capezzone [forthcoming], p. 182-190). Many of the ʾisnād that connect this scholar to his important pupil prove Sahl b. Ziyād’s dependence on names that result connected with the transmission of a version of a Kitāb al‑ʾaẓilla. And it is al-Naǧāšī himself that reminds us that Sahl b. Ziyād was expelled from Qumm because he was accused of having joined ġulūw (Naǧāšī Riǧāl, t. I, p. 417-418).

In the most ancient repertoires of Shiite traditions, Etan Kohlberg traced some unusual cases of transmission of religious knowledge concerning the imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir. In these sources one can find a limited number of ḥadīṯ in which the fifth Imam quotes a saying of the Prophet without any additional passage in between the two authorities ; or, in some cases, he receives it through a single transmitter who therefore joins him to the Prophet. The second case is evidently an anomaly, as the knowledge of every Imam is the charismatic sign of his genealogy, and cannot be derived from the teaching of others (Kohlberg 1975) ; this anomaly can also be observed in the transmission of traditions on the pre-existence of the Prophet’s family members.

For obvious chronological reasons, the fifth Imam could not have known the Prophet ; he therefore needed someone who connected him to the Prophet. The mediation between al-Bāqir


and Muḥammad is supplied by Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʾAnṣārī (d. around 77-78/696-97), and it emerges in a chain of transmissions that connect all the eminent disciples to whom the Imams al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq passed on the Gnostic teachings that would converge in the later redactionary development of the ʾUmm, Haft and Ṣirāṭ (Muḥammad b. Sinān – Mufaḍḍal b. ʿUmar al-Ǧuʿfī – Ǧābir [b. Yazīd] al-Ǧuʿfī – a man (raǧul) – Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʾAnṣārī – Muḥammad)20. In other words, there is a name that historically provides the connection between the living voice of the Prophet and Muḥammad al-Bāqir : it was the long-lived Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʾAnṣārī who guaranteed the continuity of this specific element of Gnostic knowledge. Clearly, the waiver, or anomaly (since only the Imam should be the source), is unavoidable when the content of the transmission is quite relevant ; we must not forget that, in al-Bāqir’s time, debating against the imamate of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya and his son’s alleged testament was of capital importance.

Extremely relevant to our study is a tradition recorded by Maǧlisī, in which Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Aʾnṣārī asks the Prophet : – What are the aʾšbāḥ ? Muhammad answers : – They are shadows of light, luminous bodies without soul (qāla : ẓill al‑nūr, ʾabdān nūraniyya bi‑lā aʾrwāḥ)21. Maǧlisī takes this tradition from Kulaynī, but in the ʾUṣūl not a single trace appears of this sentence coming directly from the Prophet ; nevertheless, another tradition with the same content survives, in which it is not Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh

20 Quoted in Kohlberg 1975, p. 147. The generic ‘man’, behind whom, according to the scholar for taqiyya reasons, the fifth Imam is concealed, is meaningful.21 Maǧlisī Biḥār, t. XV, p. 25 ; see Rubin 1975, p. 99.


al-ʾAnṣārī, but Ǧābir b. Yazīd al-Ǧuʿfī who hears it from the fifth Imam and then transmits it22.

The sources of Nawbaḫtī and Qummī, concerning ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb’s heresy and the doctrine of tanāsuḫ, now acquire great documentary value : they identify in the two companions of the fifth and sixth Imam the connecting links between the most ancient formulation of certain Gnostic doctrines and their subsequent spreading and divulgation —or distortion, as in the case of ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥarb’s fraud, matured in the heterogeneous environment of al-Madāʾin.

We may conclude remarking that the original elements of what would become the Shiite doctrine of pre-existence and prophetic light would be transmitted from an individual, Ǧābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʾAnṣārī, whose historicity is certain. He was a very young companion of the Prophet, then an aged follower of a young fifth Imam, to whom he transmits an embryonic stage of an Islamic Gnostic concept of prophetic genealogy. All this seems to be another little detail arising from a wider Late Antiquity landscape, whose influence on rising Islam, for the most part, is still hidden, and still to be detected.

22 Kulaynī ʾUṣūl, t. I, p. 442 (al‑Ḥusayn [ʿan Muḥammad] b. ʿAbd Allāh – Muḥammad b. Sinān – al‑Mufaḍḍal – Ǧābir b. Yazīd qāla : qāla Aʾbū Ǧaʿfar : yā Ǧābir iʾnna Allāh ʾawwal mā ḫalaqa ḫalaqa Muḥammad wa‑ʿitratu‑hu al‑hudāt al‑muhtadīn fa‑kānū aʾšbāḥ nūr bayn yaday Allāh. qultu : wa‑mā al‑ʾašbāḥ ? qāla : ẓill al‑nūr ʾabdān nūrāniyya bi‑lā ʾarwāḥ). See Halm 1982, p. 96-112, p. 109-10. It is worth mentioning the presence, in this iʾsnād, of al-Mufaḍḍal (b, ʿUmar al-Ǧuʿfī) and Muḥammad b. Sinān, whom the transmission of Ṣirāṭ and Haft depend on.


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Table des matières

Introduction. La littérature arabe ancienne et son corpus. Questions disciplinaires

Iyas Hassan .................................................. 10

Le Kitāb al‑zuhd wa‑l‑raqā iʾq de ʿ Abd Allāh b. al-Mubārak (m. 181/797)Ahyaf Sinno ................................................. 32

Les mythes eschatologiques arabes. De la négligence religieuse à la reconnaissance littéraire

Jaafar Ben El Haj Soulami ................................. 62

Les traditions apocryphes. Questions littéraires, questions de société

Mohamed Hamza............................................ 92

L’image du locuteur dans le qaṣaṣ du hadith prophétique. D’après le modèle du « récit de l’Espionne »

Mohamed Zarrouk ........................................ 136

Šarḥ ou gloses poétiques. Considérations sur le développement d’un genre prosaïque arabe

Iyas Hassan ................................................. 174

al‑Durr al‑ṯamīn attribué à Raǧab al-Bursī. Un exemple des « commentaires coraniques personnalisés » shi’ites (Aspects de l’imamologie duodécimaine XVI)

Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi ............................ 218

Abraham et les idoles de son père. Une lecture postcoraniqueCatherine Pennacchio .....................................268

Écriture et réécriture de l’histoire des Idrissides. Entre la littérature historique zaydite des ixe-xe siècles et l’historiographie mérinide malékite des xiiie-xive siècles

Chafik T. Benchekroun ................................... 298

Pre-Existence and Shadows. A Gnostic Motif or a Literary One ?Leonardo Capezzone ....................................... 336

La Littérature aux marges du ʾadabregards croisés sur la prose arabe classique

Sous la direction de Iyas Hassan

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La Littérature aux marges du ʾadab

La notion de ʾ adab est très importante dès lors qu’on aborde le monde arabe dans sa période dite classique. Le terme est généralement traduit par « littérature », mais à l’origine il recouvre un sens plus large, davantage lié à un savoir-être courtois et urbain, comprenant notamment la maîtrise de la prose par des auteurs qui furent en premier lieu de hauts fonctionnaires œuvrant aussi bien à l’administration qu’aux domaines juridiques et religieux. C’est principalement leurs écrits narratifs ou ceux renvoyant à la morale et à l’éthique que la tradition académique a retenus comme étant le noyau dur à partir duquel se sont développés les canons du ʾadab. Mais qu’en est-il de la riche production qui existe en dehors de ces domaines ?

Le présent ouvrage s’inscrit dans une nouvelle orientation des études arabes visant à redessiner les frontières du littéraire dans le domaine des sources arabes. Le parti pris est ainsi de s’intéresser aux écrits classiques dont on considère, à tort ou à raison, qu’ils ne relèvent pas de ce registre. Neuf contributions issues des études littéraires, islamologiques et historiques sont rassemblées ici afin de permettre à des textes, pourtant différents par leur nature, leur genre ou leurs origines intellectuelles, d’entrer en interaction, révélant ainsi des territoires dont l’approche par des outils littéraires est encore rare, voire inédite.

Iyas Hassan est agrégé d’arabe et chercheur à l’Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo)

ISBN 979-10-97093-00-6 Prix : 24 €

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ʾadab La Littérature aux marges du ʾadab Modulo 2018-11.pdf · Iyas Hassan est agrégé d’arabe et chercheur ... ce volume et pour leurs conseils judicieux dans la réalisation