Читать книгу A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate онлайн

11 страница из 57

At Jaʿfar’s death another schism took place, indeed the perpetual sub-division into new sects has always been a salient characteristic of the Shiʿiya. Jaʿfar had nominated his son Ismaʿil as his successor, but afterwards disinherited him because he had been found in a state of intoxication and chose as heir his second son, Musa al-Qazam. There were some, however, who still adhered to Ismaʿil, and refused to admit that his father had power to transfer the divinely ordained succession at will; they asserted indeed that the son’s drunkenness was itself a sign of his superior illumination as showing that he knew that the ritual laws of the Qurʾan were not to be taken literally, but had an esoteric meaning which did not appear on the surface. Musa, the seventh Imam as generally reckoned, and his son, ʿAli ar-Rida (p. 202), the “two patient ones,” suffered harsh treatment at the hands of the contemporary ʿAbbasid rulers; they were brought from Madina by Harun ar-Rashid so as to be under the observation of the court, and in 148 Musa was poisoned by the wazir Ibn Khalid. His son ʿAli married the daughter of the Khalif Maʾmun, and was intended to be the heir to the throne. But Maʾmun very nearly provoked civil war by his strong Shiʿite sympathies, and when he perceived how dangerous a storm the projected accession of ʿAli was beginning to arouse, he extricated himself from the difficulty by procuring the Imam’s death. ʿAli al-Qazim was usually reckoned as the eighth Imam, the ninth was Muhammad al-Jawad (d. 220), the tenth ʿAli al-Hadi (d. 254), and the eleventh al-Hasan (d. 260), these two latter being buried at Samarra, which replaced Baghdad as the ʿAbbasid capital from A.H. 222 to 279. The town afterwards fell into decay, but has been colonised by Shiʿites, and is one of the places of Shiʿite pilgrimage. The twelfth Imam was Muhammad al-Muntazir, who in A.H. 260 “disappeared.” The mosque at Samarra is said to cover an underground vault into which he went and was no more seen. The “twelvers,” or Ithna ʿashariya, who to-day form the main body of the Shiʿites, and whose belief is the official religion of modern Persia, suppose that he is still living, and the place where he is to re-appear when he emerges from concealment is one of the sacred spots visited by the Shiʿites.