The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

heresiography

“Heresiography” is the term used in Islamic studies for a body of literature classifying, in a highly schematic way, religious sects, parties, and heresies. The genre was well established in early Christianity; it is also attested in both Karaite and Rabbinic Judaism, although lightly so and only after the tenth century, when it may have developed under Islamic influence. The earliest Muslim books seem to have been composed in the second half of the eighth century to support the practice of rationalizing theology (kalām), whose polemical purposes it served by identifying and categorizing doctrinal error. All Muslim groups that produced theologians also produced heresiography. Mu‘tazilis, Ash‘aris, Maturidis, Imami and Isma‘ili Shi‘is, and Ibadis all at one time or another used heresiography to defend their exclusive claims to the “true” Islam. Examples can also be found in Traditionalist circles unfriendly to theology.

As a rule, heresiographers take a schematic and ahistorical approach to the doctrines they describe. They do not see their particular versions of “orthodoxy” as, at base, historically contingent; instead, they understand themselves to represent an unchanging, original orthodoxy from which rival (“heterodox”) groups have broken away. Accordingly, an Imami Shi‘i writer will portray his own line of imams as having been the only legitimate one from the start and will treat the teachings of eighth-century Gnostic groups that surrounded some of those imams as heretical departures from—or exaggerations of (ghulūw)—an original Shi‘i orthodoxy. An Ibadi writer, similarly, will present Kharijism as an originally moderate teaching perverted by extremists who called for an immediate and total break with non-Khariji Muslims. In neither case does the writer allow for the possibility of historical development but instead projects his own teachings back into the earliest period. Sunni writers will do the same thing in order to establish the priority of their own orthodoxy. This ahistorical perspective is embodied in a famous hadith cited by many heresiographers, in which the Prophet refers to the fragmentation of the Jews and Christians into 71 and 72 sects, respectively, and predicts that his own community will divide into 73 sects, one of which—the saved sect, or firqa nājiya—will be in paradise while the rest will end up in hell. Although the report appears in slightly different versions (including one in which 72 are in paradise and only one in hell), it always takes for granted orthodoxy’s temporal priority over heresy. The teachings of the saved sect are not seen to have evolved over time from a pool of doctrines only later deemed heterodox but instead are understood to have been in place from the very beginning.

Although the categories of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” are frequently employed by scholars, some have questioned their aptness in an Islamic context. Islamic history has seen moments where rulers sought to impose or proscribe certain religious teachings (the latter especially when they were seen as linked to a political threat), but premodern Muslim societies did not possess the machinery for regularly delineating and enforcing correct doctrine, and in any case Islam itself has generally emphasized legal practice over doctrinal beliefs. Accordingly, Islamic heresiographical literature may be best seen as representing the efforts of Muslims of every stripe to depict their own particular teachings as normative while acknowledging the diverse array of doctrines and groups that possessed some claim to legitimacy within their societies.

See also Ibadis; Isma‘ilis; Karramis; Kharijis; Qarmatians; theology