Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of charts
- Preface
- Addenda and corrigenda
- I THE BEGINNINGS
- II THE WANING OF THE TRIBAL TRADITION, c. 700–900
- 4 INTRODUCTION
- 5 THE KHĀRIJITES
- 6 THE MUTAZILITES
- 7 THE SHĪITES OF THE UMAYYAD PERIOD
- 8 THE ABBĀSIDS AND SHĪISM
- 9 THE ZAYDĪS
- 10 THE IMAMIS
- 11 THE ḤADĪTH PARTY
- III COPING WITH A FRAGMENTED WORLD
- IV GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY
- Charts
- Bibliography, abbreviations, and conventions
- Index and glossary
7 - THE SHĪITES OF THE UMAYYAD PERIOD
from II - THE WANING OF THE TRIBAL TRADITION, c. 700–900
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of charts
- Preface
- Addenda and corrigenda
- I THE BEGINNINGS
- II THE WANING OF THE TRIBAL TRADITION, c. 700–900
- 4 INTRODUCTION
- 5 THE KHĀRIJITES
- 6 THE MUTAZILITES
- 7 THE SHĪITES OF THE UMAYYAD PERIOD
- 8 THE ABBĀSIDS AND SHĪISM
- 9 THE ZAYDĪS
- 10 THE IMAMIS
- 11 THE ḤADĪTH PARTY
- III COPING WITH A FRAGMENTED WORLD
- IV GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY
- Charts
- Bibliography, abbreviations, and conventions
- Index and glossary
Summary
Both the Khārijites and the Mutazilite anarchists restated the libertarian aspect of the tribal tradition in Islamic form. With the Shīites, by contrast, we encounter a thinking that can only be described as authoritarian. All Shīites held the imam to be something more than an ordinary human being and explained his special status in terms of his kinship with the Prophet. Yet Shīism also began among the conquerors, as has often been stressed, and the authoritarian style of thinking may well have tribal roots as well. For if the tribesmen of Arabia resisted kings, they also deferred to sanctity, as they showed when they accepted Muḥammad (and on many later occasions too). Early Shiism boiled down to the claim that power should be handed to a man of sanctity, defined as somebody more closely related to the Prophet than the Qurashīs originally seen as constituting his family. A kinsman of the Prophet was bound to be rightly guided: it ran in the blood. It is an odd idea to a modern reader, but it made sense in medieval times, and not only to tribesmen. In a world in which social roles were overwhelmingly allocated on the basis of descent it seemed self-evident that humans were replicas of their forebears: children everywhere tended to step into their parents’ positions. The Shiites thought that things had gone wrong because the Prophet's descendants had not been allowed to step into his.
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- Information
- Medieval Islamic Political Thought , pp. 70 - 86Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2004