Introduction
Liyakat Takim
University of Denver
The Heirs
of the Prophet: Charisma and Religious Authority
in Shi‘ite Islam. ISBN: 0791467384
“The scholars are heirs to the prophets” is a famous tradition that has
been reported from the Prophet Muhammad. When I examined the provenance
and deployment of this tradition in the classical period of Islam (570 –
1258 C.E.), I realized that the title “heirs of the Prophet” was more than
an honorific epithet. As scholars belonging to different factions
contested the right to assume the title, it was obvious that the
exclusivist claims to be the heirs of the Prophet reflected a wider
struggle within the Muslim community to wield prophetic prestige through
demonstrations of authority, which were based on the Prophet’s legacy.
The “heirs tradition” as it was called, also became a polemical tool that
could be and was used by its bearers to wrestle authority from competing
factions. The deployment of the “heirs tradition” extended beyond
excluding scholars, who belonged to other factions, from legitimating and
exercising authority in the Muslim community. It also was used to impose
authoritative and exclusivist rendition of texts, beliefs, and religious
practices.
This study explores how different religious factions within the Muslim
community competed to be the heirs of the Prophet, and demonstrates the
interplay between power and knowledge and the ensuing tensions among these
factions. My exploration of the classical texts seeks to uncover and
elaborate the methods and strategies employed by the learned class, as
well as other groups, to wield and legitimize authority on behalf of the
Prophet.
My investigation into the different groups’ self-understanding of post-Muhammadan
authority and the struggle for legitimacy is predicated on a textual,
phenomenological, and chronological approach to the study and
interpretation of juridical, biographical, heresiographical,
hagiographical, exegetical, and polemical texts. I also examine how
various groups made use of hermeneutical tools in constructing authority
and vindicating their claims to be the exclusive heirs of the Prophet.
A number of recent studies have tackled the question of authority in
Islam. For instance, Hamid Dabashi has written on the general notion of
authority in Islam while Sa‘id Arjomand and Abdulaziz Sachedina have
focused on the authority of the jurists in the post-ghayba (940 C.E.)
period in Shi‘i Islam. The works of Patricia Crone, Martin Hinds, and
Muhammad Qasim Zaman examine the struggle for authority between the
caliphs and Sunni scholars. My study goes beyond their work in that it
fills the lacuna of inquiry into the struggle for authority between and
within the disparate groups that claimed to be the heirs of the Prophet.
The project also treads new ground by examining the impact of the
juxtaposition of different genres of authority in the Shi‘i community
during the times of the imams.
My discussion of how the “heirs tradition” shaped and molded leadership
and other related institutional structures in the classical period of
Islam is couched within the framework of the models of charismatic
leadership postulated by Max Weber (1862-1920). In attempting to locate an
Islamic equivalent of Weber’s tripartite typology of the modes of
authority (rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic), in chapter one I
discuss Weber’s characterization of charismatic authority, and contrast
this with the genres of authority dominant in pre-Islamic Arabia. I then
examine the exercise of authority in the post-Muhammadan era by deploying
Weber’s typology of the routinization of charismatic leadership in the
establishment of the charisma of office.
After the death of Muhammad, the discussion of authority was soon cast
under the designation “heirs of the Prophet.” The first chapter of this
study goes on to, therefore, examine the ramifications of claiming to be
the “heirs of the Prophet,” the emergence of the scholarly elite as the
sole careers of religious knowledge, and the struggle for authority that
ensued among scholars and their followers in different groups. While
examining the competition for Muhammad’s charismatic authority after his
death, I investigate the Shi‘i self-understanding of authority and argue
that this was an important factor in the formulation of a distinct Shi‘i
leadership founded upon its legal system.
Using the conceptual framework postulated by Rudolf Otto, I trace the
emergence of the holy man in Islam and the type of authority that he
wielded in the Muslim community in the second chapter. This chapter also
contrasts Sufi and Shi‘i variations in the conceptualization of the holy
men and examines the methods through which the holy men validated their
claims to spiritual authority. I also compare and contrast the authority
wielded by the jurists and holy men. Whether it is acquired or inherited,
the charisma of the holy man is in contradistinction to the charisma of
office as defined by the jurists.
A largely unexplored dimension of religious authority in Islam is the
routinization of charismatic authority in Shi‘ism during the presence of
the imams. In my discussion on post-Muhammadan authority, I argue that
Shi‘ism in the eighth century manifests a major variation from the
traditionally accepted, Weberian understanding of the rise of routinized
charisma. In chapters three and four, I extend my discussion of authority
and the “heirs traditions” to include the deputies of the Shi‘i imams.
My interest in the disciples of the imams, the rijal, was initially
kindled during my study in Qum, Iran, in 1983-85. I heard then that a
prominent scholar, Ja‘far al-Subhani, had been delivering lectures on the
study of the biographical profiles of the rijal. When I attended his
lectures, I realized not only the depth of the subject but also the
paucity of research on the rijal among contemporary western scholars.
Chapter three contends that the delegation of the imams’ authority to
their close associates was an important landmark in Shi‘i history insofar
as it signified a transition from the centralized, universal, charismatic
authority of the imams to a more structured and regionalized charismatic
office of the rijal. In the process of divesting their authority to their
close disciples, the imams were routinizing their charismatic authority
and diffusing their charisma into a newly emerging symbiotic structure. I
examine how the affirmation of the charismatic office of the imams’
prominent disciples and “heirs” to their knowledge interacted with and
often militated against the absolute nature of the imam’s charismatic
authority.
In the fourth chapter, I examine how the authority of the disciples of the
imams evolved and was enhanced in the very functions they performed. The
chapter delineates the various activities of the rijal, and contends that
these were highly significant in asserting a divergent concept of
religious authority in the Muslim community. I also argue that, by
performing various activities in the office of charisma, the rijal
constructed a normative basis or a “sectarian syndrome” through which
“orthodox” views and beliefs could be distilled and differentiated from
those espoused by their opponents. An important consequence of this
process of establishing “orthodoxy” was the accentuation of the authority
of the rijal and the construction of boundaries of identity and exclusion.
The chapter goes on to demonstrate that, as agents of the imams, the rijal
also established paradigmatic precedents in various fields, which
subsequent Shi‘is could emulate. The “living sunna,” which was generated
by the paradigmatic activities of the rijal, was incorporated into the
Shi‘i canonical tradition that crystallized in the ninth and tenth
centuries.
The fifth and final chapter explains how later biographers, faced with
contradictory appraisals of important personages, on the one hand, and the
need to depict an idealized image of them, on the other, encountered,
grappled, and finally shaped the authoritative images of those
individuals. I demonstrate that Shi‘i biographers were engaged in
hermeneutical activity and a textual enterprise that evolved into an
increasingly restrictive interpretation and canonical evaluation of the
disciples of the imams. The appraisals of the biographers laid claim to an
exclusivist hermeneutic and became sufficiently entrenched to impose an
authoritarian evaluation on those they profiled. The chapter also offers
evidence of a different and radical form of idealization in later Shi‘i
biographical literature.
In the second section of this chapter, I compare and contrast Sunni and
Shi‘i profiles of two important Shi‘i disciples of the imams,
demonstrating the tussle for authority and the struggle for legitimacy
that is evinced in the biographical texts. By comparing Sunni and Shi‘i
biographical literature, my book adds a new dimension to the questions of
textual authority and hermeneutical enterprises in Islamic biographical
dictionaries. Such an approach should lead scholars to consider new ways
of understanding the function of sacred texts within the communities that
engage and appropriate them for developing a charismatic authority and a
sense of loyalty to it.
The Heirs
of the Prophet: Charisma and Religious Authority
in Shi‘ite Islam. ISBN: 0791467384 |
