Kaisānīya

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The Kaisānīya ( Arabic الكيسانية, DMG al-Kaisānīya ) was an early extreme Shiite group in Kufa , named after Abū ʿAmra Kaisān, the chief of the bodyguard of al-Muchtār ibn Abī LeibUbaid , and who worshiped Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya as their imam and Mahdi . The followers are called kaisanites . With them, the later Shiite teaching, in which the imamate was continued over ʿAlī ibn Hussain Zain al-ʿĀbidīn , the son of al-Husain ibn ʿAlī , had not yet prevailed. After the death of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya, many Kaisānites believed that he was just hiding .

to teach

One of the most important sources for the doctrines of the Kaisānites is the "Book of Teachings and Sects" ( Kitāb al-Maqālāt wa-l-firaq ) written before 905 by the Imamite doxographer al-Qummī. According to his report the belief in the so-called four descendants ( asbāṭ , from so-called sib s , literally "grandchildren, tribe") was characteristic of the Kaisānites . This meant ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib and his three sons al-Hasan , al-Husain and Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya, who were venerated by them as imams . The Kaisānites viewed these four as the spiritual heirs of the four sons of Patriarch Jacob , namely Levi, Judah , Joseph and Benjamin , whose descendants played a prominent role within the twelve tribes of Israel . The Kaisānites believed that only the four tribes named had power, fame, honor and prophethood, and that the other tribes of Israel only rose to the rank of tribe ( sibṭ ) through the fame of these four brother tribes . So be it with the Banū Hāschim : Although all had the rank of descendants, only four of them, namely ʿAlī, al-Hasan, al-Husain and Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya, had the imamate , caliphate and kingship.

The kaisānites justified the quaternary of the descendants with the Koran word in sura 95 : 1-3: "By the fig trees! By the olive trees! By Mount Sinai! In this safe place!" In this they saw an allusion to ʿAlī (= fig tree), al-Hasan (= olive tree), al-Husain (= Mount Sinai) and Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya (= this safe place). Al-Qummī reports that a group of the Kaisānites claimed that through the four grandchildren, "creation is drenched with rain, the enemy fought, the evidence revealed, and error killed". "Whoever follows them will get there, whoever lags behind them will be destroyed. Take refuge in them; they are like Noah's ark: whoever enters them do what is right and be saved; but whoever stays outside drown and drown." "

The followers of the Kaisānite Ibn Harb taught that the four offspring were safe from discord, misstep and oversight. ʿAlī called them the "descendant of faith and security", al-Hasan the "descendant of light and paradise", and al-Husain the "descendant of evidence and catastrophe". Finally, in Muhammad ibn Hanafīya they saw the descendant who was the expected Mahdi ( al-mahdī al-muntaẓar ). He "will explain the causes, ride on the clouds, let the winds blow, blow the flood of water, bar the gate of the dam, make the necessary verdict and advance to the seventh earth."

Division into sub-cults

After the death of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya in 700, the Kaisānīya split up. Some of the Kaisānites, the followers of Abū Karib ad-Darīr, believed that Muhammad did not die, but was still alive and hid in the Radwā Mountains, where two angels had him on his right hand and a lion on his left and guarded a panther. Morning and evening, they taught, he received food from Paradise. According to the teaching of this group, called Karibīya, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya was the expected Qa'im and Mahdi. He would not die until he filled the world with righteousness just as it was filled with injustice. Some Caribbean believed that this was the punishment for doing the Baiʿa by Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān .

The poet Kuthaiyir ibn ʿAbd ar-Rahmān (d. 723), who is quoted in the following poem, can probably be assigned to this group:

A-lā anna l-aʾimmata min Quraiš
ʿAlīyun wa-ṯ-ṯalāṯatu min banī-hi
wa-sibṭun sibṭu īmānin wa-birr
wa-sibṭun lā yaḏūqu l-mauta ḥattā
muġaiyabun lā sanurīnī-him

wulātu l-ḥaqqi arbaʿata siwāʾ
humu l-asbāṭu laisa la-hum ḫafāʾ
wa-sibṭun ġaibatu-hū
Karbalāʾ yaʿūda l-ḫailu yaqdumu-hā l-liwāʾ
bi-Raḍunwā-ʿasal

Aren't the Imams from the Quraish ?
ʿAlī and his three sons;
One is the descendant of faith and piety,
and one will not taste death until
He is raptured, cannot feed them for years,

The rightful masters are four, equally
they are the offspring; for them there is nothing hidden
descendant was at Karbala caught up,
the horses will return to them the banner
in Radwa, provided with honey and water.

Another group, led by Haiyān al-Sarrādsch, said that Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya had died in the Radwā Mountains, but would return to earth before the day of the resurrection by joining his group ( šīʿa ) would be brought back to life. This is why these people were also called the "people of return" ( aṣḥāb ar-raǧʿa ). Together with them, they believed, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya would take possession of the earth and fill it with righteousness as it was filled with injustice. The tauba of those who opposed them should then no longer be accepted, they said, basing themselves on Sura 6: 158: "On the day when a sign from your Lord comes, no soul's faith is of use, that is not already previously believed. "

Finally, a third group taught that Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya had died and that the imamate had passed on to his son Abū Hāschim ʿAbdallāh ibn Muhammad. This Abū Hāschim then died without any offspring. This group was called Hāschimīya and later split into five subgroups:

  1. one group taught that Abu Hāschim had given the imamate to his nephew al-Hasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Muhammad al-Hanafīya,
  2. a second group said that Abū Hāschim had transferred the imamate to the Abbasid Muhammad ibn ʿAlī, the grandson of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās ,
  3. the third group said that Abū Hāschim had given the imamate to the Kindite ʿAbdallāh ibn Harb. He founded his own sect called Harbīya.
  4. the fourth group taught that after Abu Hāschim the imamate passed to Bayān ibn Samʿān.
  5. the fifth group transferred the Imamat to Abū Hāschim on ʿAlī ibn Husain Zain al-ʿĀbidīn and thus united with the Imamite Shia.

literature

  • Cyril Glasse and Huston Smith (eds.): New Encyclopedia of Islam: A Revised Edition of the Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. Alta Mira Press (2003) ( online excerpt )
  • Hamid Dabashi: Shi'ism: A Religion of Protest . Harvard University Press (2011)
  • Heinz Halm: The Islamic Gnosis. The extreme Schia and the Alawites. Artemis, Zurich / Munich, 1982. pp. 43-83.
  • Abū Saʿīd Našwān al-Ḥimyarī: al-Ḥūr al-ʿīn ʿan kutub al-ʿilm aš-šarāʾif dūna n-nisāʾ al-ʿafāʾif. Dār Āzāl, Beirut, 1985. pp. 211-213.
  • Wilferd Madelung: Art. "Kaysāniyya" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. IV, pp. 836b-838b.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Halm 1982, 51.
  2. ↑ See Halm 1982, 52.
  3. ↑ See Halm 1982, 52.
  4. ↑ Quoting from Halm: The Islamic Gnosis. 1982, p. 49f.
  5. ↑ Quoting from Halm: The Islamic Gnosis. 1982, p. 50.
  6. ↑ Cf. al-Ḥimyarī: al-Ḥūr al-ʿīn . 1985, pp. 211f.
  7. ↑ Quoted here from Saʿd ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Asarī al-Qummī: Kitāb al-Maqālāt wa-l-firaq . Ed. Muḥammad Ǧawād Maškūr. Maṭbaʿat-i Ḥaidarī, Tehran, 1963. pp. 28f. For the translation cf. Halm: The Islamic Gnosis. 1982, p. 51.
  8. ↑ Cf. al-Ḥimyarī: al-Ḥūr al-ʿīn . 1985, p. 213.
  9. ↑ Cf. al-Ḥimyarī: al-Ḥūr al-ʿīn . 1985, pp. 213-215.