Mulhid

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Mulhid ( Arabic ملحد, DMG mulḥid  'deviator', plural mulḥidūn or malāḥida , Kollektivum mulḥida ) is a disparaging expression in the field of Islam for a person who represents a religious or materialistic doctrine that deviates from the right faith . The term is mostly translated as heretic , heretic or apostate . After the Umayyads had used it during the Second Civil War (680-692) mainly for their political opponent ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair , it served in the early Abbasid period as a pejorative term for open or secret followers of Iranian religions and for philosophers . In the course of the 12th century it became the most important foreign name for the Shiite Ismailis . Since the 1930s, “Mulhid” has been the general name for adherents of atheist positions in the Arabic-speaking world .

Word origin and Koranic statements

The Arabic word mulḥid , which is composed of the three root consonants l-ḥ-d , is an active participle of the Arabic verb alḥada , which has the meaning of "incline, deviate from the right path". There is no evidence that the word was used in a religious sense in pre-Islamic times. The Islamic usage is linked to the following three Quranic verses in which the verb alḥada occurs:

  • Sura 7 : 180: “And God is entitled to beautiful names. Call on him with it and leave those who take a wrong attitude about his names ”( wa-ḏarū llaḏīna yulḥidūna fī asmāʾi-hī ).
  • Sura 41:40 : "Those who take a wrong attitude towards our signs ( yulḥidūna fī āyātinā ) are not hidden from us."
  • Sura 22:25 : “Those who disbelieve and keep (their fellow human beings) from the way of God and the holy place of worship that we have made for people, both for those who live there and for those who live in the desert. Anyone who wickedly strives for absurdity ( ilḥād ) in it, we let taste painful punishment. "

The term ilḥād occurring in the last verse is the verbal noun of the verb alḥada and has become the general term for “heresy”, “heresy” and religious deviance in post-Qur'anic times .

ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair as Mulhid

Mulḥid probably first became a religious and political battle term during the Second Civil War (680–692). The Umaiyads used the term in this dispute against their opponent ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair , who had founded a counter caliphate in Mecca. For example, the caliph Yazid I (r. 680-683) is said to have been the "plundering and apostate Mulhid" (al-mulḥid al-ḥārib, al-mulḥid al .) In a letter to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās from ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair -māriq) have spoken. And at the conference of al-Jābiya in 683 the calbit Hassān ibn Mālik is said to have asked the people to take the oath of allegiance to Marwān ibn al-Hakam because he deserves more support than the Mulhid Ibn az-Zubair. The Kaisanites ruling in Kufa , who regarded Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya as the rightful ruler and formed a third party in the conflict, also adopted the term. The Imperial poet Abū t-Tufail (or his son Tufail) praised Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya as a Mahdi in a poem and then addressed him with the words: “You are the imam , the leader chosen to rule, not Ibn az-Zubair , [...] the 'deviator' ( al-mulḥid ) ”.

In order to delegitimize ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair, the Umaiyad propaganda hadiths , according to which the Prophet Mohammed had foretold that “a man of the Quraish in Mecca will behave deviantly ( yulḥidu ) to whom half of God's punishment (in the afterlife) will come down "or" a man will behave deviantly from the Quraish (in the sanctuary), whose crimes, when weighed against the crimes of mankind and the jinn, will be more serious. "

The followers of ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair were even collectively insulted as mulhidūn in Umaiyad and Shiite propaganda. Conversely, the pro-Umaiyad poet Dscharīr (d. 728 or later) characterized the loyal followers of the Umayyads as people "who never had deviance in mind" ( wa-lā hammū bi-ilḥād ). According to a tradition that is narrated in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal , after the conquest of Mecca and the killing of ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair , al-Hajjaj ibn Yūsuf met his mother Asmā 'bint Abī Bakr and said, alluding to sura 22 : 25 and the hadiths spread by Umaiyad propaganda: “Your son has truly behaved deviantly ( alḥada ). God made him taste a painful punishment ”. Asmā 'is said to have replied: “You are lying. He was devout to his parents, praying and fasting all the time at night. By God, the Messenger of God has told us that from the tribe of Thaqīf two arch liars will arise, the second worse than the first, because he is a willful destroyer. ”By this she is said to have meant al-Muchtār ibn Abī ʿUbaid and al-Hajjāj themselves .

Later Umaiyad word usage

In the late Umayyad period, the term was also used for Kharijites . The poet Ru'ba ibn al-ʿAddschādsch (d. 762) says of the Harijite leader al-Dahhāk ibn Qais al-Shaibānī (d. 746) that every mulhid followed him. The term was also used by the Umayyads in al-Andalus . From ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Habīb (d. 853) it is narrated that he wrote a "book on the ruler's procedure with deviants" ( Kitāb Sīrat al-imām fī l-mulḥidīn ). This was probably a collection of relevant legal decisions by the ruler.

As a term for followers of Iranian religions and philosophers

In the early Abbasid state , the term mulḥid took on a new meaning. It was now used for Schuʿūbitisch -minded writers, poets and thinkers who leaned towards Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism . A man of this type was the poet Bashshar ibn Burd, who was executed in 783 on the orders of the caliph al-Mahdī . In the Aġānī of Abū l-Faraj al-Isfahānī there is a warning against the deceitful and seductive words “this deviant blind man” ( hāḏā al-aʿmā al-mulḥid ). According to Abū l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 935), the term Mulhida includes those who strip God of all attributes ( al-muʿaṭṭila ), thinkers influenced by Manichaeism ( az-zanādiqa ), the dualists ( aṯ-ṯanawīya ), who Brahmins ( al-barāhima ) and "others who deny the Creator and deny the existence of prophets ". One of the few theologians who openly confessed to being a mulhid himself was Ibn ar-Rāwandī .

Various Kalām scholars of the eighth and ninth centuries wrote independent works to refute Mulhidūn , including Muʿtazilite theologians such as Abū l-Hudhail , Bischr ibn al-Muʿtamir , an-Nazzām , ʿĪsā ibn Sabīh al-Murdār, Abū Bakr al-Asamm and Dirār ibn ʿAmr, the Murji'it al-Husain an-Najjār, the Ibadit al-Haitham ibn al-Haitham and the Zaidite Imam al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm ar-Rassī (d. 860). Only the book on the refutation of the Mulhid ( Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-mulḥid ) by al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm has survived of these works . The anonymous Mulhid is portrayed here as a religious skeptic who is inclined to atheism. In the opinion of Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī (d. After 1015) the Muʿtazilite theologian Wāsil ibn ʿAtā 'was the one who best understood the refutation of "deviants" ( mulḥida ).

From the 10th century onwards, the mulhid term was also used to apply to philosophers. For example, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī writes in his heresiographic work al-Farq bain al-firaq that the Muʿtazilit an-Nazzām mixed with a group of "philosophical deviants" ( mulḥidat al-falāsifa ) in old age . Al-Aschʿarī (d. 935) has written a book about the "doctrines of deviants" ( maqālāt al-mulḥidīn ) in which he discussed the cosmological theories of the ancient philosophers. Al-Juwainī said that the basis of the mulhida is the belief that "before the cycle in which we live, an infinite number of other cycles have expired".

As a name for the Ismailis

From the 12th century Mulhida or Malāhida became one of the most important foreign names for the Ismailis . This may have happened because of their closeness to philosophy. Ash-Shahrastani (d. 1153) this term is common for the Ismailis. He noted in his doxographic work al-Milal wa-n-Nihal , that the Ismailis in Iraq as Bātiniten , Qarmatis or Mazdakiten call while they are in Khorasan call Ta'līmīya or Mulhida. The anonymous author who wrote the Persian book Some Shamefulnesses of the Rāfidites ( Baʿḍ faḍāʾiḥ ar-Rawāfiḍ ) for the Seljuk Sultan Muhammad II (reigned 1153–1160) in 1160 uses the term mulḥidān (Pers. Plural) for the Ismailites . In a list he lists ten similarities between the Rāfidites and the Mulhids, with the former referring to the Twelve Shiites :

  1. They are both vengeful towards the Muslims;
  2. What the Mulhids teach about al-ʿAzīz of Egypt, the Rāfidites teach about the Qā'im (= Mahdi );
  3. Both Mulhids and Rafidites praise ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib and the Alides , although they abhor them;
  4. Mulhid and Rāfidit both carry a white standard;
  5. While the mulhid relies on the Sharia only in the interpretation of al-ʿAzīz of Egypt, the Rāfidit teaches that only the Qā'im knows its interpretation because he is infallible ;
  6. Both the Mulhid and the Rāfidit revile Abū Bakr , ʿUmar ibn al-Chattāb , ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and all the companions of the Prophets and the pious ancestors ( as-salaf aṣ-ṣāliḥ );
  7. Rāfidit and Mulhid add the formula ḫair al-aʿamal (“the best work”) to the call to prayer ;
  8. Both Rāfidit and Mulhid wear a ring on their right hand;
  9. When funeral prayer speak Mulhid and Rāfidit five times the Takbeer .
  10. Mulhid and Rāfidit let their hands hang down when they pray and use the formula ṣalawāt Allāh ʿalaihī (“The prayers of God be upon him”) for their imams .

The Persian historian Mīrchānd (died after 1495) explains that the Ismailis were only called Malāhida after their missionary Hasan II (officiated 1162–1166) proclaimed himself an imam and declared the Sharia to be abolished, but then this name too was used for the earlier Ismailis. If this explanation reflects historical reality, it can only refer to the special plural form Malāhida , because the word form Mulhida was already familiar to the ash-Shahrastānī, who died in 1153 .

In fact, the word form Malāhida became very popular in the last decades of the 12th century and also served as a name for the earlier Ismailis. For example, Ibn al-ʿImrānī (d. 1184) explains in his caliphary story al-Inbāʾ fī taʾrīḫ al-ḫulafāʾ regarding the Seljuk vizier Nizām al-Mulk that he was killed by Malāhida, by which he meant the Ismaili Fidā'īyūn . Contemporary Zaidi texts from the early 13th century also use the term Malāhida for the Ismaili community, while they refer to the assassins sent by Alamut as hashishis , a term from which the name of the assassins , which has become common in Europe, goes back. In Syria, too, Malāhida was used as a name for the Nizāritic Ismailis . For example, the Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubair , who traveled to Syria from 1189 to 1191, describes the slopes of the Lebanon Mountains as inhabited by Ismaili Malāhida, a sect "that had fallen away from Islam and recognized a person with divinity". Later, the Syrian historian Gregorius Bar-Hebraeus (d. 1286) described the siege of the Malāhida castles by Hülägü in his "History of the Dynasties" .

During the time of the Mongols , Chinese and European travelers spread this name as a name for the Nizāriten in their home countries. In the Chinese court chronicle Yüan-shi the name is given as Mu-la-i , Mu-lo-i or Mu-li-hsi , in other Chinese sources as Mu-nai-hsi and Mu-la-hsi . Wilhelm von Rubruk wrote: " Möngke Khan sent his biological brother to the area of ​​the assassins , which they called Mulihet , and determined that all should be killed" ( Mangu Chan misit fratrem suum uterinum in terram Hassassinorum qui dicitur Mulihet ab eis, et precepit quod omnes interficiantur ). Marco Polo calls the land of the Ismailis Mulahet and agrees very exactly with the Chinese sources in describing their mystical cult.

As can be seen from a letter that Silvestre de Sacy received from a friend in Tehran in 1808 , the Ismailis in Persia were still called Malahida (or, in modern pronunciation, Melāhede ) around this time . As the friend reported, her imam resided in Kehek, a village near Qom .

Ottoman word usage

In the Ottoman Empire , mülḥid was a term used to describe representatives of various subversive teachings among the Shiite and Sufi teachings. An example of this is the Bosnian follower of the mystical Wahdat al-wudschūd teaching Mulhid Wahdatī (d. 1598).

As a modern term for atheists

In the 20th century, the meaning of the term in the Arabic-speaking world changed again. The article "Why I am a Mulhid" ( Li-māḏā anā mulḥid ) by Ismāʿīl Ahmad Adham, which appeared in the Egyptian magazine al-Imām in 1937 , was important here. It is not yet clear whether Ismāʿīl Adham is really a real person or just a pseudonym. In any case, the author first describes in the article how he was brought to atheism through the strictly religious upbringing of his father and the reading of various Western thinkers such as Charles Darwin , Ernst Haeckel , René Descartes , Immanuel Kant , Georg Büchner and Aldous Huxley . Then he expands his view of the world, according to which the world is subject to an all-encompassing law of chance, which always produces new things. The poet Ahmad Zakī Abū Schādī responded to this article with the text Why I am a believer ( Li-māḏā anā mu'min ), in which he expanded his religious-liberal worldview. The two scriptures have led to the fact that mulhid is used today in the Arabic-speaking area for people who have turned away from the Islamic faith and take atheist positions.

The term also has this meaning in the 1974 work Ḥiwār maʿa ṣadīqī al-mulḥid ("A conversation with my friend, the Mulhid") by the Egyptian thinker Mustafā Mahmūd . In the book, a fictional conversation takes place between the author and a Western-minded friend who is portrayed as an atheist intellectual who did his doctorate in France and lived with hippies . This intellectual tries to make the author aware of the doubtfulness of his religion with subtle questions, but he does not succeed because the author has convincing answers to all questions. The book ends with the fact that both the author and the opponent of the discussion consider themselves the winners of the debate. However, when the author shows the mulhid the transience and the illusory character of earthly joys, he doubts the correctness of his own conviction. They intensify when the author points out to him that “a religious person has nothing to lose in life, whereas an atheist has everything to lose in life”.

literature

  • Stephan Conermann: Muṣṭafā Maḥmūd (born 1921) and the modified Islamic discourse in modern Egypt. Berlin: Schwarz, 1996. pp. 265-79. Digitized
  • Josef van Ess : Theology and Society in the 2nd and 3rd Century Hijra. A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam. 6 vols. Berlin-New York 1992–1997. Vol. I, p. 418, Vol. IV, p. 690f.
  • Denis Giron: From Submitter to Mulhid in Ibn Warraq (ed.): Leaving Islam, apostates speak out . Prometheus Book, Amherst, 2003. pp. 339-352.
  • GHA Juynboll: Ismail Ahmad Adham (1911-1940), the Atheist in Journal of Arabic Literature 3 (1972) 54-71.
  • Wilferd Madelung: Art. Mulḥid in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. VII, p. 546.
  • Wilferd Madelung: ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr the 'mulḥid' in CV de Benito and M.Á.M. Rodríguez (ed.): Actas XVI Congreso de l'Union européenne des arabisants et islamisants . CSCI, Salamanca, 1995. pp. 301-308.
  • Ahmet Yaşar Ocak: Osmanlı toplumunda zındıklar ve mülhidler, 15. – 17. yüzyıllar . 4th enlarged edition. Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, İstanbul, 2013.
  • Manfred Ullmann : Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . Volume II, Part 1. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1983. pp. 285, 287a-289a.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 287a.
  2. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 280b.
  3. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 285.
  4. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 287b.
  5. ↑ Madelung: “ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr the mulḥid ”. 1995, p. 303.
  6. ↑ Madelung: “ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr the mulḥid ”. 1995, p. 304.
  7. ↑ Madelung: “ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr the mulḥid ”. 1995, p. 305.
  8. ↑ Madelung: “ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr the mulḥid ”. 1995, pp. 307f.
  9. ↑ Madelung: "ʿAbd Allah ibn az-Zubayr the mulḥid ". 1995, p. 305.
  10. ↑ Madelung: "ʿAbd Allah ibn az-Zubayr the mulḥid ". 1995, pp. 304f.
  11. ↑ Madelung: "ʿAbd Allah ibn az-Zubayr the mulḥid ". 1995, p. 308.
  12. ↑ Cf. Madelung: Art. "Mulḥid" in EI² Vol. VII, p. 546b.
  13. ↑ Cf. Beatrix Ossendorf-Conrad: The "K. al-Wāḍiḥa" of ʿAbd-al-Malik b. Ḥabīb: Edition and commentary on Ms. Qarawiyyīn 809/40 (Abwāb al-Ṭahāra). Stuttgart: Steiner [u. a.], 1994. pp. 38f. Digitized
  14. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 287b.
  15. ↑ Ibn Fūrak: Muǧarrad Maqālāt aš-šaiḫ Abī l-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī . Ed. Daniel Gimaret. Dār al-Mašriq, Beirut, 1987. p. 143, lines 21f. Digitized
  16. ↑ Sarah Stroumsa: Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn Al-Rawāndī, Abū Bakr Al-Rāzī and Their Impact on Islamic Thought. Brill, Leiden, 1999. p. 40.
  17. ↑ Cf. Ibn an-Nadīm : al-Fihrist . Ed. Riḍā Taǧaddud. Tehran 1971. pp. 204-11, 214-15, 229, 234. Digitized
  18. ↑ See Wilferd Madelung: The Imām al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm . De Gruyter, Berlin, 1965. pp. 100, 110.
  19. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 289a.
  20. ↑ Cf. van Ess: Theology and Society . 1997, Vol. IV, p. 691.
  21. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 289a.
  22. ↑ Cf. Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī: Maqālāt al-islāmīyīn wa-ḫtilāf al-muṣallīn . Ed. Hellmut Ritter . Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1963. p. 326.
  23. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 289a.
  24. ↑ Cf. van Ess: Theology and Society . 1997, Vol. IV, p. 691.
  25. ↑ Cf. Muḥammad aš-Šahrastānī: al-Milal wa-n-niḥal Ed. Aḥmad Fahmī Muḥammad. Dār al-Kutub al-ʿilmīya, Beirut, 1992. p. 202. Digitized - German transl. Theodor Haarbrücker. 2 vols. Hall 1850-51. Vol. I, p. 221. Digitized
  26. ↑ Cf. M. Heidari-Abkenar: The ideological and political confrontation Shia-Sunna using the example of the city of Rey of the 10th – 12th centuries . Century AD Inaugural dissertation, University of Cologne, 1992. pp. 74, 104f.
  27. ↑ See 'Abd-al-Ǧalīl Qazwini. Kitāb to-Naqd ma'ruf bi-ba'd maṯālib to-Nawasib fī Naqd ba'd faḍā'iḥ ar-Rawafid az taṣānīf-i-i hudud 560 hiǧrī qamarī . Ed. Ǧalāl ad-Dīn Muḥaddiṯ Urmawī. Čāpḫāna-i Sipihr, Tehran, 1952. pp. 449f.
  28. ↑ Cf. the excerpts from his work Rauḍat aṣ-ṣafā , which are contained in the Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impériale et autres bibliothèques Tome IX. Imprimerie Impériale, Paris 1813. p. 226, lines 3-6. Digitized - Frz. Trans. 167. S. Digitalisat
  29. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 288a.
  30. ↑ See Wilferd Madelung: Arabic Texts Concerning the History of the Zaydī Imāms of Tabaristān, Daylamān and Gīlān . Steiner, Beirut, 1987. pp. 146, 329.
  31. ↑ Cf. Ibn Ǧubair: Riḥla . Ed. William Wright. Brill, Leiden, 1907. p. 255, lines 2f. Digitized . - German translator Regina Günther. P. 191.
  32. ↑ See Ullmann: Dictionary of the Classical Arabic Language . 1983, Vol. II / 1, p. 288a.
  33. ↑ Cf. Herbert Franke : The Chinese word for 'mummy' in Oriens 10 (1957) 253-257. Here p. 256f.
  34. ↑ See E. Bretschneider: Medieval researches from Eastern Asian sources . Vol. I. London 1887. p. 135. Digitized
  35. ↑ Silvestre de Sacy: Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins, et sur l'étymologie de leur Nom in Mémoires de l'Institut Royal de France 4 (1818) 1-84. Here p. 84. Digitized
  36. ↑ Madelung: "Mulḥid" in EI² Vol. VII, p. 546.
  37. ↑ See him Slobodan Ilić. "Mulḥid Waḥdatī, a Bosnian heretics of the 16th century" in Journal of the German Oriental Society 151 (2001) 263-273. Digitized
  38. ↑ See Juynboll: "Ismail Ahmad Adham (1911-1940), the Atheist". 1972, p. 62f.
  39. ↑ See Juynboll: "Ismail Ahmad Adham (1911-1940), the Atheist". 1972, p. 62.
  40. ↑ Cf. Conermann: "Muṣṭafā Maḥmūd (born 1921) and the modified Islamic discourse". 1996, p. 265f.
  41. ↑ Cf. Conermann: "Muṣṭafā Maḥmūd (born 1921) and the modified Islamic discourse". 1996, p. 279.