  Letters Archive
The Cosmology and Eschatology of the Ghulâlt My work, in very broad terms, focuses on idealists, optimists and visionaries who believe that justice could reign in this evil world of ours. It explores this sense of immediacy in the desire to experience a utopia on earth. Reluctant to await another existence, perhaps another form, or eternal life ensuing death and resurrection, these men (ghulâlt) who I study, want to hasten the attainment of the apocalyptic horizon of Truth. For them, time is cyclical; the ghulâlt do not see the universe in linear terms of a beginning and an end, but as successive cycles where the end of one era spontaneously flows into the beginning of another. Existence and time are eternal. And they are religious men who maintain the unity of God and invariably yearn to experience God's omnipresence. These spiritually inclined men envisage divinity incarnated in
earthly gods, each believer craving to communicate with the divine personally in anticipation of
prophetic inspiration and illumination. It is with such a temperament of hope and of continued
prophecy that one such group, the Qizilbash (Red Heads) took up arms to fight for Isma'il Safavi,
their divinely inspired leader, a venerable godhead in their eyes, to establish Truth and Justice on
earth. With Isma'il, it is the added ingredient of charisma that concerns me, an element that so
often secures the success of such messianic movements. But alas, it also involves a story of betrayal
and of human fragility when confronted with the task of fusing spiritual and temporal power
together to ensure a harmonious and egalitarian worldly existence for humankind. My book attempts to under stand how basic
issues human beings have been preoccupied with throughout recorded history—where we come from, what our purpose is in this world and in this universe, and where and if we travel from here—animated
the spiritual landscape of the Qizilbash. What were the particular cultural (social, religious,
and political) conditions under which such questions were expressed in the agrarian age and in the
geographical and historical setting of early modern Iran, Iraq, and Anatolia? What mixture of
traditions did these Qizilbash draw on in the articulation of their syncretic ideals? It is my hope
that such a study will shed light on one cultural variety, on a particular option, synthesis,
paradigm, and eschatology born out of the age of Late Antiquity: the product of an interaction
between the Irano Semetic and Hellenic cultures. This is the broad outline upon which my study has
its inquisitive foundation. More particularly, I explore the Safavi world (1501-1722), an esoteric
chapter in the history of early modern Iran that witnessed the royal enthronement of Isma'il, the
spiritual guide of the Safavi order. This mystic (sufi) turned king (shah) claimed to be the
reincarnation of a host of prophets (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad) and kingly
heroes (Faridun, Khusraw, Jamshid, and Alexander) from Iran's cultural past. "Prostrate thyself!
Pander not to Satan! Adam has put on new clothes, God has come," writes Isma'il in his poetry
composed as he, together with his adepts, the Qizilbash, conquered Iran and Iraq (1501). In an
attempt to add temporal power to the already existent Safavi spiritual dominion, these Qizilbash
allegedly entered the battlefield unarmed, thinking that Isma'il's miraculous powers would shield
them. Some are claimed to have devoured men alive in submission and devotion to their godhead.
It is not solely on the basis of his personal charisma that Isma'il wielded such power, for he had
inherited from his ancestor, the mystic Shaykh Safi al-din (d.1334), the leadership of the Safavi
order and, hence, a saintly aura and a spiritual legitimization, which in early modern Islamdom was
so intimately associated with sufism (mysticism) and the dervish culture. Moreover, in the
Anatolian context where Isma'il's grandfather Sultan Junayd (d.1460), had spent over a decade
(1448-59) in exile from Ardabil (NW Iran) ac cumulating Turkman disciples and engaging in holy war
against Byzantium, the prestige of this family of saintly men had become imbued with divinity. Indeed,
Junayd claimed to be God and his son, Haydar (d.1488), who had introduced the ritual red headgear
(hence the name Qizilbash) that symbolized membership in this transformed sufi brotherhood, claimed
to be the son of God. I attempt to understand the religious milieu of the Qizilbash and delineate the web of beliefs that
bound them to their Safavi masters—beliefs historians have vaguely termed "extreme Shi'ism." I have
adopted a variety of approaches to trace the "spiritual landscape" of Qizilbash Islam, a landscape
that was shaped by Islam as a living religion, but was nevertheless incongruous with its textual
ideals. I regard this landscape seriously, as a global phenomenon, because a series of similar
messianic movements had manifested themselves between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries in the
European provinces of the Ottoman empire, as well as in Anatolia, Iraq, Iran, Transoxiana, and India.
Safavi historiography, however, has focused on the Qizilbash as political actors, because initially
they came to form the military and administrative backbone of the early Safavi empire. In addition,
scholars have concentrated on the adopted imperial religion of Twelver Shi'ism, because once Isma'il
conquered Iran he altered his rhetoric; he adopted the Persian royal title of "shah" and proclaimed
Twelver Shi'ism as the religion of his domains. Nevertheless, the nature and origins of Safavi
revealed revolutionary beliefs that remain unexplored. Safavi historians have assumed that with
the proclamation of Shi'ism as the religion of the Safavi imperium (in 1501), an easy and
thorough conversion ensued. Tensions, however, between the spiritual landscape of Qizilbash Islam and Shi'ism had surfaced from the very inception of Safavi rule. It was not until
a century later that the political power of the Qizilbash had waned and Shi'i orthodoxy had received
the necessary political sanction to redraw its map of Shi'ism in Safavi Iran; sufism, a tendency so
embedded in classical Safavi culture was, then, cast as heretical and expunged from the boundaries
of legitimacy. Formalisms began to quench the free-spirited experiment that had given birth to the
Safavi idiom. As the intuitive gave way to the cerebral, an age of colloquia between spiritual and
temporal, reason and experience, mystical and theological came to a close. Since
politics and religion were so intimately linked in Safavi Iran, the transformations occurred on all
levels; repercussions of the erosion of Qizilbash Islam manifested themselves in the realms of written
and oral culture, in forms of sociability, as well as in politics. I believe that a proper assessment of
the meaning of change within the realm of religion and politics in Safavi society must consider both as
components of a system that em bodies behavior and attitudes, as well as ideology. To understand the
Qizilbash, religion and politics should be studied as two complementary spheres interacting within a
cultural system. For the Qizilbash, a dichotomous line between these two realms did not exist.
The most striking elements that distinguish these types of messianic movements, referred to pejoratively by Islamic heresiogra phers as the "exaggerators" (ghulâlt), from normative Islam is their particular cosmology and eschatology.* The
ghulâlt do not believe in resurrection—one of the five tenets of Shi'i Islam. For them the human being
dies but to be reincarnated, returning to this world in a different form. There is no heaven or hell for
the ghulâlt. Beyond a recurring cluster of doctrinal precepts, such as the idea of the transmigration of
the soul and the belief in the possible incarnation of all or part of the divine in certain men, these
movements share a conception of cyclical hiero-history: the notion that prophetic revelation
never ceased and a conception of his tory as a succession of dispensa tions that would inevitably
lead to a Final Era of Unveiled Truth and Utopian Lawlessness on Earth. The advent of the
personification of the Holy Spirit, bear ing glad tidings of a new dispensation of social Justice, is in the here
and now—not at the end of monotheistic time. Beliefs that revelation never ceased, that Muhammad was not
the seal of the prophets, and that souls of old prophets could migrate into different human beings at
any given time allowed for a constant rejuvenation and continuity of ghulâlt movements in time and space,
albeit in varied forms and languages. Not only did it present an alluring platform for aspiring
revolutionaries to embrace, but it became a channel through which social and political protest could
be voiced. The theme that runs through my book is the attrition
of the Qizilbash. My analysis centers around the dynamics of structural transformations—ideological
and institutional—that the Safavi realm had to undergo in the process of its conversion into an
orthodox and absolutist empire. I move from the analysis of cabals and coup d'etats, through ac
counts of the moments of emergence of messianic leaders, to the analysis of the formation of vernacular traditions through hadith (collection of sayings and acts of Muhammad and the Imams) and
storytelling, to the forms of sociability connected with courtly assemblies and coffeehouses of Safavi
Iran. I emphasize this cultural change on many levels (courtly, religious, written, and oral) of
Iranian society, and show how it is based on the emergence of new paradigms of authority, and on new
loci of intellectual socialization. I explore the spiritual land scape of the Qizilbash
in an era when conversion to Shi'ism and the waning of Qizilbash political might was becoming an institutional reality. Shah Abbas I (1587-1629) thoroughly incorporated slaves into the ranks of the military
and the central and provincial administrations to counter the autonomous nature of the Qizilbash.
Trained at court, these slaves owed alle giance to the shah, as ruler of the Iranian lands, rather than
to a spiritual guide whose rule extended into metaphysical domains. Shi'i clerics were to replace
the religious role of the Qizilbash. Shah Abbas patronized the clergy and introduced them into the
Safavi court. Shorn of their spiritual aspect, the activities of Safavi kings were now sanctioned so
long as they were in accord with the instructions of qualified jurisconsults. At this point some
obedient Qizilbash disciples revolted against their master, who had turned into a full-fledged
temporal king. I see the language of rebellion both at court and in the provinces—the motifs and
symbols evoked in reaction to this betrayal—as reveal ing aspects of the original nature of
Qizilbash Islam. My work represents an initial effort to reconstruct a
system of beliefs that never entered the annals of Islamic history as a coherent body of ideas and
practices, but whose doctrines, even today, are adhered to and practiced by communities in Iran,
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Anatolia. I have the good fortune of spending this year at the Robert Penn
Warren Center for Humanities at Vanderbilt amidst an interdisciplinary medley of scholars who are
considering the meaning of time, of beginnings and ends, embedded in different symbolic forms. The
fellowship has allowed me time to study ghulâlt movements from the early Islamic era (eighth century
through the eleventh century) more closely and focus on the nature of their spirituality, enabling me
to identify the pre-Islamic roots of their belief systems. Many early ghulât leaders were
mawalì (non-Arab converts to Islam) of Jewish, Christian, gnostic, Buddhist, or Zoroastrian
backgrounds. They carried into their understanding and expression of Islam their own
perceptions of the cosmos. Such perceptions of time and speculations on the soul are preserved in
poetry and epic romances. Alas, these sources remain untapped, because Islamicists have limited
themselves to texts emanating from the courtly and religious realms of the legal and theological to
reconstruct ghulât ideas. All this resonates in our present age, for as I mentioned earlier such groups still exist in
the Middle East. The Bahai religion, for example, has its roots in ghulâlt beliefs. The Islamic
revolution in Iran (1979) also played on the rhetoric of such messianic expectations, publicly
associating Khomeini with the expected messiah who would establish Justice where the injustice of the
Pahlavi monarchy reigned. And in this apocalyptic age of ours, we are bound to see revolutionary
ideals articulated through such culturally available paradigms. For more information, contact the Center's executive director, Mona C. Frederick. [ RPW Center for the Humanities | About the Center | Visiting Fellowship Information | Howard Lecture Series | Seminars and Programs | Programs since 1987 ] [ Vanderbilt University | Site Index | Search Vanderbilt | Help ]
Created by Vanderbilt University Publications & Design.
Copyright © 1998, Vanderbilt University |