Abbas ibn Shuaib (Fatimide)

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Abu Haschim Abbas ibn Shuaib ibn Dawud ibn al-Mahdi ( Arabic أبو هاشم العباس بن شعيب بن داود بن المهدي, DMG Abū Hāšim al-ʿAbbās ibn Šuʿaib ibn Dāwud ibn al-Mahdī ; † 1025 in Cairo ) was a prince (amīr) of the Shiite caliph dynasty of the Fatimids and the designated successor of his cousin al-Hakim for the Imamate of the Shia of the Ismailis .

Prince Abbas was a great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty al-Mahdi (d. 934) and initially lived in the princes' quarter of the palace city of Cairo . To everyone's surprise, he was designated in 1013 by his cousin Kalif al-Hakim as part of a double succession to the successor to the dignity of the "head" ( imām ) of the Shia of the Ismailis , who since the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate ex officio with the Was connected to the dignity of the caliph, and was awarded the title of "heir to the throne of the faithful" (walī ʿahd al-muʾmimīn) . At the same time, another cousin, Prince Abdarrahim , was proclaimed the "heir to the throne of the Muslims" (walī ʿahd al-muslimīn) for the succession in the caliphate. With this succession plan, al-Hakim intended to separate secular and religious power, so that the secular caliphate, freed from all religious implications, could in future be viewed by all Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis, as the highest state authority. The Imamate of the Ismailis, on the other hand, was only supposed to restrict itself to the religious leadership of their mission (daʿwa) and their devout followers, analogous to the other religious denominations of the Sunnis, Christians and Jews existing within the Fatimid caliphate. The Fatimid state was to be stripped of its Ismaili character.

What was remarkable about the succession plan for the Imamat was the intended break with al-Hakim of the linear inheritance of the charism associated with dignity ( baraka ) , that outstanding and indivisible characteristic that the holder decodes the internal sense (bāṭin) behind the external Wording (ẓāhir) of the Koranic revelation enabled. In the imagination of the Ismailis this charisma is usually transferred from father to son, but al-Hakim was able to invoke a precedent already in the designation (naṣṣ) of Ali by his cousin Mohammed at the pond of Chumm . By bypassing his own son, Prince Ali, al-Hakim was able to convey the intended separation of the secular caliphate and the spiritual imamate unequivocally to the subjects.

Like all representatives of the Fatimid state leadership living at the time, Prince Abbas was named in the canon of the Druze , an extreme splinter group of the Ismailis, as one of the opponents of their doctrine, which in the person of al-Hakim is not a mortal human being, but the physical incarnation of the Creator God ( Allaah ) himself recognized. The disappearance of al-Hakim on February 13, 1021, which was enough for the Druze to confirm their belief, had made his double successor obsolete. The leading court camarilla around Princess Sitt al-Mulk immediately rejected his will and instead proclaimed the young Prince Ali under the ruler name az-Zahir as the new caliph and imam. Prince Abbas was forced "with the sword over his head" to renounce his right of succession to the imamate. After that he was locked in a dungeon for some time, but was then probably able to lead a life again in the princes' quarter of the palace city of Cairo. When he died four years later, he was buried in the Fatimid mausoleum.

literature

  • Heinz Halm : The Caliphs of Cairo. The Fatimids in Egypt 973-1074. CH Beck, Munich 2003.
  • Sami Nasib Makarem: Al-Ḥākim bi-amrillāh's appointment of his successors. In: Al-Abḥāṯ, Vol. 23 (1970), pp. 319-324.
  • Paul E. Walker and Paul Walker: Succession to Rule in the Shiite Caliphate. In: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 32 (1995), pp. 239-264.

Remarks

  1. See Halm, pp. 279 ff; Walker, p. 247.
  2. See Halm, p. 294.
  3. See Walker, p. 248.
  4. See Halm, p. 308.