Rāfida
Rāfida ( Arabic رافضة, DMG rāfiḍa ' rejecters ', the plural forms rawāfiḍ or arfāḍ are also used) is a polemical collective noun that has been used for certain Shiite groups, especially the Imamites , since the eighth century . In German, the term is usually rendered using Rāfidites. Belonging to this group is also referred to in Arabic as Rafd ( rafḍ ).
The term Rāfida was initially only used in the context of intra-Shiite disputes, namely for those Shiites who in 743 were not ready to support the Aliden Zaid ibn ʿAlī in his revolt against the Umayyads . The background was that Zaid refused to curse the first two caliphs, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar ibn al-Chattāb . They were given the name “rejecters” ( Rāfidah ) because they rejected Zaid ibn ʿAlī.
From the polemical vocabulary of the Zaidites , i.e. the followers of Zaid ibn ʿAlī, the term later found its way into Sunni heresiography . Here those Shiites were referred to who, in contrast to the moderate Zaidites, did not recognize the imamate of the first two caliphs, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, but on the other hand did not go as far as the ghouls in their veneration of the Shiite imams . Al-Jahiz wrote with his writing al-ʿUthmānīya in the 9th century a refutation of the views of the Rāfidites. During the time of the Seljuk ruler Tughrul Beg (d. 1063), his vizier al-Kundurī had the Rāfidites in Khorasan publicly cursed on the pulpits .
To this day, the term plays an important role in the Sunni polemics against the Twelve Schia .
literature
- Josef van Ess : Theology and society in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Hijra. A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam . 6 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter 1991–97. Vol. I, pp. 272-403.
- Etan Kohlberg : The Term Rāfiḍa in Early Imāmī Shīʿī Usage in Journal of the American Oriental Society 99 (1979) 1-9.
- Etan Kohlberg: "al-Rāfiḍa" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. VIII, pp. 386b-389a.
- William Montgomery Watt : "The Rāfiḍites: A Preliminary Study" in Oriens 16 (1963) 110–121.
supporting documents
- ↑ Cf. Ibn al-Athīr : al-Kāmil fī t-tārīḫ. Ed. Muḥammad Yūsuf ad-Daqqāq. 11 Vol. Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, Beirut, 1987. Vol. 8, p. 365. Digitized