Surviving Persecution: Ismailism and Taqiyyah in the Centuries after the Mongol Invasion

AbstractʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī concluded his History of the World Conqueror (Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushāy) by celebrating the Mongol destruction of the Ismailis at Alamut. For many centuries, historians assumed the community had ceased to exist. However, today, Ismaili communities flourish in many parts of the world. In the absence of any sustained historical narrative, the subfield known as subaltern historiography provides tools to examine their survival. Thus, following the descriptive-analytical method, this article draws upon not only historical sources butdoctrinal treatises, poetry, and similar works to highlight the role of pious circumspection (taqiyyah) in the community’s persistence through these centuries, highlighting the multivalent meanings of the term. The study sheds light on how this method of both survival and self-perception allowed esoterically inclined communities like the Ismailis to live quietly among others who did not share their spiritual ethos, or who were openly hostile. It also discusses the dangers to self-identity inherent in practicing pious circumspection (taqiyyah).Keywords: Taqiyyah, Ismailism, Shiism, Sufism, polemics and apologetics, Nizārī QuhistānīIntroduction: They must be slain … attack them and snatch the wealth from their hands … their property and children are to be distributed as booty … may Almighty God abase them and curse them!Thus, spewing fire and brimstone, Jalāl-i Qāʾinī advised Sulṭān Shāhrukh (d. 850/1447) on how the Ismailis in his territories should be treated. This diatribe in his Counsels to Shāhrukh (Naṣāʾiḥ-i Shāhrukhī) is found in a hitherto unpublished manuscript in the Imperial Library of Vienna. It is one of the few surviving historical sources testifying to the continued existence of the Ismailis in this period. Sulṭān Shāḥrukh, Tamerlane’s son and successor, had sent Qāʾinī ‘to exterminate, suppress … kill, banish, and expel the [Ismaili] community from Quhistān.’ In his memoire, Qāʾinī is less concerned with the question of whether or not the Ismailis should be massacred than with the legal nicety of whether this should be done because they are apostates (ahl-i riddat), rebellious (ahl-i baghy), or non-Muslims against whom war was required (ahl-i ḥarb). An adherent of the Ḥanafī school of Sunnī Islam, he was charged by Sulṭān Shāhrukh with the task of suppressing ‘heretics’ (bad-madhhabān), presumably including not only the Shīʿah, but perhaps even non-Ḥanafī Sunnīs. One of the most frightening aspects of his tirade is its vilification of those in his own religious community who wished to live in peace with the Ismailis. He threatens these moderates with the same dire fate as those whom he deemed heretics.This brief passage from the Counsels to Shāhrukh demonstrates that some earlier historians exaggerated in their depiction of the Ismailis’ destruction. The Mongol historian ʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī concluded his History of the World Conqueror (Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushāy) depicting how the triumphant Mongols had destroyed the Ismailis of Alamūt. Of the Ismaili Imam Rukn al-Dīn Khwurshāh and his adherents Juwaynī writes, “He and his followers were kicked to a pulp and then put to the sword; and of him and his stock no trace was left, and he and his kindred became but a tale on men’s lips and a tradition in the world.” However, recent research has demonstrated that, despite Juwaynī’s claims, even politically, the Ismailis remained active for some time in the South Caspian region and Alamūt itself. Soon, however, new information about them disappears from the writings of historians. How, then, did they survive, hidden from the eyes of the hostile world?Material & Methods Advances in historiography have helped us realize that traditional histories often discuss only those in power. How, then, can the histories of religious and ethnic minorities, women, and other marginalized people be preserved? In the absence of sustained historical narratives, subfields like “subaltern studies” provide us tools and avenues for such documentation. This article analyses the Ismaili practice of pious circumspection (taqiyyah) as a method adopted by marginalized communities to ensure their survival in hostile circumstances. In so doing, it draws upon not only historical sources but doctrinal treatises, poetry, and similar works to highlight the role of pious circumspection in the Ismaili community’s persistence through these difficult centuries, highlighting the multivalent meanings of the term taqiyyah. The study sheds light on how this method of both survival and self-perception allowed esoterically inclined communities such as the Ismailis to live quietly among others who did not share their spiritual ethos, or who were openly hostile. It also discusses the dangers to self-identity inherent in pious circumspection.Discussion of Results & Conclusions The section of Background explores historical understandings of taqiyyah in Ismailism and other communities prior to the Mongol debacle. “Hiding the Imam” discusses a recently discovered and unpublished passage in a manuscript that describes how the first post-Alamut Ismaili Imam, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, resorted to taqiyyah and how later Ismaili sources depicted the taqiyyah of the post-Alamūt Imams. “The Proof (ḥujjat) and Religious Hierarchy (ḥudūd-i dīn) in Times of Concealment” examines the religious hierarchy, and how it operated to maintain the community’s organizational structure. “Passing on a Persecuted Religious Tradition” draws on the poetry of Nizārī Quhistānī, who reminisces about his own upbringing and how his family maintained their religious heritage despite hostility. “The Cloak of Sufism” discusses the writings of both Ibn Khaldūn and Jalāl-i Qāʾinī, and their contemporary testimony that the Ismailis had survived as Sufis, a community that shared several elements of faith with them, but was not as severely persecuted. “Opportunities and Challenges of Spreading ʿAlid Devotion” speaks of how changing dynamics in parts of the Muslim world made devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt much more acceptable in general society. This allowed the Ismailis to appear as their sister Shiʿah community, the Twelvers. However, the closeness of the belief systems of the two communities also posed challenges, as those practicing taqiyyah as Twelvers could eventually become Twelvers themselves. The conclusion then summarizes the findings about how taqiyyah was adopted by the post-Mongol Ismaili community to survive the destruction of the Mongols and later hostility.The aftermath of the Mongol invasions was certainly a time of darkness and oppression for the Ismaili community. While there is evidence of cooperation between the Ismailis and other Muslim communities, including the mullahs and other religious functionaries in those communities, it is equally true that certain members of the clergy allied themselves with political leaders bent on destroying the Ismailis. One of their methods of survival was pious circumspection (taqiyyah), in its multiple meanings. Ismailis were cautioned to conceal the name and whereabouts of the Imam. Many accessed the Imam through the dignitaries of the Ismaili hierarchy (ḥudūd-i dīn), and particularly through the Imam’s Proof (ḥujjat). These were described as the stars and the moon that give light when the sun of the imamate is hidden. As the writings of the poet Nizārī Quhistānī demonstrate, the religious tradition was often passed down by word of mouth within individual families. A shared religious ethos and the cultivation of a common poetic vocabulary enabled Ismailis to appear as Sufis in Quhistān, and most likely elsewhere as well. Increasing ʿAlid devotion in many parts of the Islamic world eventually allowed the community to adopt the outward appearance of Twelver Shīʿīsm in many places, rather than of Sunnism. This had the advantage of allowing greater openness about their dedication to the Prophetic family, but it also held the inherent danger of absorption into the sister community. Sources such as The Counsels of Chivalry (Pandiyāt-I Jawānmardī) indicate the emphasis placed on the recognition of and access to the living, present (ḥāḍir) Imam, rather than the occulted (ghāʾib) Imam, claiming that the clergy had tried to usurp the role of the Imam in his absence. Throughout all of this, as the Fāṭimid period Ismaili luminary al-Muʾayyad fī’l-Dīn Shīrāzī wrote, the Ismailis must have hoped that the continued Godwariness, prudence, and pious circumspection (taqiyyah), practised in the times of darkness and oppression, would ennoble their souls at a time yet to come, when the earth would “shine with the light of her Lord” (Quran XXXIX: 69).

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