In my first post on Shaykhīsm, entitled In Pursuit of Originality (published June 30), I intentionally excluded Mangol Bayat's Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran (1982), because I wanted the opportunity to discuss the book in a more nuanced way. First and foremost, Mysticism and Dissent should be treated as a pioneer and forerunner in the Shaykhī studies. Published in 1982, well before publication by peers Abbas Amanat (Resurrection and Renewal) and Denis MacEoin's (Messiah of Shiraz), Mangol Bayat was able to establish her name in the field of Shaykhī/Bābī studies. However, and probably like any other forerunner, the book suffers from some deficiencies.
Let me start with my personal feelings about Mysticism and Dissent: the picture Bayat paints of Shīʿīsm as a political sect, or a religion of dissent and revolt, is neither accurate nor complete. Which Imam revolted against the status quo and the political order of his time? It is actually reverse. The first Imam not only withdrew to his seclusion for 25 years when his rights were usurped by the close companions of the Prophet in Saqīfah, but also, he made no effort to take control of the Muslim community. The second Imam, Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, was forced to sign a peace treaty (albeit very fragile) with his archenemy, Muʿāwīya out of his concern for the benefits and interests of the ummah and in an effort to ward off harm and schism from them. It is also equally debatable whether the most monumental incident in the entire existence of Shīʿīsm, the massacre of Karbala, was a political upheaval by Ḥussein ibn ʿAlī. Did the third Imam leave Medina for Kufa in order to finish the unfinished project of his predecessors (provided that they had projects in the first place), i.e., to establish the just government of his father and his older brother, or in his disobedience to pledge allegiance with Yazīd was a decision made out of serious moral concerns of abstaining from swearing allegiance to the least eligible ruler that the ummah of his grandfather had ever had? Before finding answers for these questions, we cannot move forward with the arguments of the book.
Another controversary, and equal to the former, has to do with whether Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy was loaded with any political connotation, and/or his philosophy was directed against the mujtahids. As for the former, the opposite, i.e., the apolitical nature of Ṣadrā’s philosophy is the accepted outlook among scholars, and as for the latter, hierocracy at the time of Ṣadrā had not yet been shaped as a powerful and independent social class as it did almost two centuries later during the Qajar period. Therefore, his philosophy, from the point of view of Bayat, cannot be a rival to mujtahid’s power. Third, while I generally agree with her account of the Shaykhī school as “Radicalization of Dissent” (p. 37) and “Socialization of Dissent in Shia Thought” (p. 59), I cannot side with her analysis of the political stance of Muḥammad Karīm Khān Kirmānī, when she maintains that, according to rumors, he was preparing a revolt against the Qajar court, which compelled the king of the time, Nāṣir al-Dīn Shah to summon him to the court, urging him to pledge allegiance with the Shah (p.81). Unfortunately, Bayat does not provide us with any source to back her claim.
Pertinent to this is another claim that the hallmark of Kirmānī’s thoughts, i.e., the doctrine of rukn-i rābiʿ (lit. the fourth pillar), is encompassed by political ambitions, and since the existing scholarship on the Shaykhī political philosophy is still in a primitive mode, only further research can determine whether Kirmānī had any political plan. Moreover, she contradicts herself when she calls the Kirmānī Shaykhīsm “conservative” (p. 83), but at the same time, accuses its founder, the abovementioned Muḥammad Karīm Khān, of involvement in conspiracy against the court. What Bayat calls radicalization of dissent in Shīʿa thought was but a passive and latent messianism which later converted into the active and open messianism of the Bābī movement. However, her investigation into Kerman’s intellectual life in the nineteenth century is one of the strengths of the book. She shows how the three strands of Shaykhī, Ismāʾīlīs and Niʿmatullāhī Sufism, all representatives of esotericism, shaped the overall image of that city. Probably this can explain why no marjaʿ taqlīd or mujtahid (aka representative of exoteric Islam) has emerged from Kerman’s intellectual milieu.
Aside from this, Bayat’s Mysticism and Dissent is way too teleological, and it is rather a historical account of the finality or the function of the purpose of these trends, than a faithful narrative of the function of their cause in its historical and intellectual context. This purpose, i.e., Shīʿīsm as an inherently political and dissent movement, is imposed on the intellectual history of the early Qajar era to serve Mangol Bayat’s utopic image of Shīʿīsm.
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