The Silent Qur’an and the Speaking Qur’an: Scriptural Sources of Islam Between History and Fervor

The existence of elements of a mystical and esoteric sort are apparently quite old within proto-Shi’ism since they seem to be present among ʿAlī’s entourage, among the adepts of what has been termed “the religion of ʿAlī” (dīnʿ Alī).³ The swift transformation of the historic person of the first imam into a semilegendary hero and a figure of well-nigh cosmic dimensions had repercussions on the very image of his descendants, beginning with the younger son whom he had with Fāṭima, al-Ḥusayn, and another son whom he had with a woman whom he married after the latter’s death, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, the imam of the initiatory sect of the Kaysāniyya.⁴ From the accounts provided by heresiographical works on a certain number of disciples of different Shi’ite imams, especially in the second/eighth century, it can be concluded that teachings of a gnostic type were often current among circles of initiates.⁵ Nevertheless, particularly from the second half of this century and throughout the whole course of the following century, a literature developed by leaps and bounds that is as rich as it is varied and that is of a mystical, initiatory and gnostic character with a strong messianic component.⁶ In the third/ninth century this literature peaks in certain chapters of the Kitāb al-Maḥāsin by Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Barqī (d. 274/887–88 or 280/893–94) and most especially in our Baṣā’ir al-darajāt. The upsurge of this body of work, which quickly acquires imposing dimensions, is due to a twofold impasse among Shi’ites. On the historical plane, Shi’ism is a minority, marginalized and frequently persecuted with extreme violence. Apart from a few rare exceptions, this situation can be verified for the entire reign of both the Umayyads and the Abbasids; the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and the Abbasid caliphs al-Saffāḥ, al-Ma’mūn or al-Muntaṣir did demonstrate some tolerance toward the Alids/Shi’ites and a relative measure of respect for the rights of the members of the Prophet’s family, but these overtures, which can often be characterized as “political,” were of quite brief duration and, leaving aside the fourth/tenth century, “the Shi’ite century” of Islam, it can be said that the imams’ followers were definitively overwhelmed by the followers of Sunni Islam, by now the majority.⁷ Afterward, on the religious plane, Shi’ism will be ostracized and isolated, its doctrines set at naught by the immense and uninterrupted flow of Sunni traditions, in the sense that, in reaction to virtually every Shi’ite belief that glorifies ʿAlī, his descendants, and his offspring, other traditions lauding their enemies or even appropriating those enemies for the exigencies of the cause will be elaborated.⁸ In a certain sense it comes down to the Sunnis’ word, aided by the support of a frequently repressive political power, against that of the Shi’ites, the defeated minority. Confronted with this situation, Shi’ites seem to have decided to avoid any direct confrontation, henceforth considered ineffective, and to develop other doctrinal aspects running parallel to the restitution of the rights of ʿAlī and his descendants: the formation of complex esoteric doctrines of a gnostic character developed around the mystique of the figure of the imam. The proclamation of the rights of ʿAlī and of his descendants, together with the denunciation of their adversaries, steadily gains a cosmic and metaphysical perspective. The faithful are thus summoned to achieve a transforming knowledge, a saving wisdom, by rising above the tragedy of history. What’s more, messianism confers a horizon of hope on this perspective. In this gnostic religion the historical imam is the master of secret teachings while the spiritual and cosmic imam is the final content of these teachings.⁹

Al-Ṣaffār’s work is a perfect illustration of this evolution.¹⁰ As the representative par excellence of what I have elsewhere called “the original esoteric and nonrationalist tradition” of the Shi’ism in the schools of Qumm and Rayy, the Kitāb Baṣā’ir al-darajāt becomes problematic when, from the Buwayhid era onward (first half of the fourth/tenth century), “the rationalistic juridical and theological tradition” of the Iraqi school of Baghdad will become dominant and will seek, insofar as it can, to minimize the main doctrinal differences between Shi’ism and Sunnism.¹¹ From this perspective al-Ṣaffār and the tendency that his work represents can be situated within a twofold period of transition: that of the development of mystical and gnostic doctrine together with historical and exegetical doctrine (represented by such authors as al-Sayyārī or al-Ḥibarī) and that which signals the predominance of the school of Baghdad and the marginalization of those of Qumm and Rayy. We shall come back to this.

From the Buwayhid period onward, that is, several decades after al-Ṣaffār’s death, Imami prosopographers will display an ambiguous attitude toward him and his magnum opus. The work of the much later Ibn Dāwūd al-Ḥillī (d. after 707/1307), one of the most renowned authors of Imami bio-bibliographical dictionaries, in drawing up a sort of “account” of earlier data, seems especially revealing in this respect: he devotes an entry to Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Farrūkh with all the formulae of respectability and another entry to Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṣaffār, the author of the Kitāb Baṣā’ir al-darajāt, but uses none of the customary formulae of trustworthiness (tawthīq).¹² The no less renowned scholar Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Ardabīlī (b. ca. 1058/1658) does the same in his important prosopographical work Jāmiʿ al-ruwāt.¹³ Now we know, mainly thanks to several other sources to which we shall have occasion to return, that here we are dealing with one and the same person, and, even though other authors have devoted a single entry to al-Ṣaffār, nevertheless this “doubling” just noted in al-Ḥillī and al-Ardabīlī is telling; it reflects the paradoxical attitude of almost all Twelver Shi’ite scholars, at least from the fifth/eleventh century onward, toward al-Ṣaffār: an uneasy, hesitant, and ambiguous attitude, oscillating between respect and mistrust. This reaction is all the more puzzling in that al-Ṣaffār was said to have been close to the eleventh imam al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-ʿAskarī (d. 260/874) and his K. Baṣā’ir al-darajāt is one of the first, if not the very first, of the great collections of Imami doctrinal traditions to have come down to us and, moreover, constitutes the oldest known source on Twelver esoteric imamology.¹⁴ Furthermore, al-Ṣaffār was a forerunner of the great al-Kulaynī (see chapter 5) and from him to al-Majlisī, via Ibn Abī Zaynab al-Nuʿmānī, Ibn Bābawayh al-Ṣadūq, or al-Ṭūsī, he is abundantly cited, either directly or indirectly, by great scholars. This bespeaks his importance in the elaboration and commitment to writing of Twelver doctrine. And yet the ambiguous attitude to which he is subject within his own religious milieu persists even to the present day. The works of an al-Kulaynī or of an Ibn Bābawayh—belonging to the same tradition as our author, as we shall see—have prompted and continue to prompt numerous commentaries; they have been published repeatedly, critically edited and meticulously vocalized, translated in their entirety into Persian (the other language, along with Arabic, of Shi’ism), whereas, with regard to al-Ṣaffār’s work, no commentary can be found up to the present day, there exist solely one old lithographed edition, now impossible to find, dating from 1285/1868, and another published in limited numbers, produced on the basis of the lithographed edition, in the 1960s in a quite defective form and reprinted in 1404/1983, riddled with typographical errors and lacking either vocalization or a Persian translation.¹⁵ The author, a disciple of the imam and a precursor of the great al-Kulaynī, continues to be lauded, even while every step is taken to avoid engaging with his major work in any serious way. Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī (460/1067) who in his Fihrist presented our author as having written the Baṣā’ir al-darajāt as well as some letters addressed to the eleventh imam, was content in his Rijāl to present al-Ṣaffār as the imam’s disciple and to note their correspondence even while passing over his work as a compiler in silence.¹⁶ In the same period, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Najāshī (450/1058) drafted what is perhaps the richest entry on al-Ṣaffār, giving his complete name and a long list of his writings while simultaneously leaving the reports that linked him with the imam al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī unmentioned.¹⁷ But we must go back even further. Again according to the testimonies of al-Najāshī and al-Ṭūsī, al-Ṣaffār’s principal transmitter, namely, Muḥammad b. Ḥasan Ibn al-Walīd (343/954), a respectable traditionist, jurist, and Qur’an commentator in Qumm, transmitted al-Ṣaffār’s entire work with the exception of the K. Baṣā’ir al-darajāt.¹⁸

Plainly, al-Ṣaffār, and most especially his Baṣā’ir, posed, and continued to pose, a problem. Why? Who was he and what did his main collection of hadiths represent? What is his role or the role that the early Twelver tradition ascribed to him at the time of that decisive turning point occasioned by the Occultation of the twelfth imam?¹⁹ The answer to these questions will shed some light on the doctrinal and historical evolution of Shi’ism as well as its relation with the scriptural writings and the upheavals of history.

Al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī seems not to be missing from any Imami bio-bibliographical dictionary, but the most essential information about him is given by his two earliest biographers, namely, al-Najāshī and al-Ṭūsī, whereas later authors simply take up the same data while inserting variations into it in line with their own preoccupations.²⁰

Al-Shaykh Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad (also known as Mamūla, an affectionate diminutive of Muḥammad) b. al-Ḥasan b. Farrūkh al-Ṣaffār (“a worker in brass”) al-Qummī “al-Aʿraj” (“the lame”), who died in 290/902–3, was a client (a manumitted slave) of the powerful tribe of Ashʿarite Arabs in the Iranian city of Qumm; he was a contemporary of the tenth and the eleventh imams, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Naqī al-Hādī (d. 254/868) and al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-ʿAskarī (d. 260/874). According to al-Ṭūsī, he was the latter’s disciple and addressed a “questionnaire” (masā’il) to him. On the basis of a list drawn up by al-Najāshī and taken up by several later authors, he compiled thirty-seven collections of traditions, the majority of which were works of jurisprudence, as their titles show: “The Book of Ritual Prayer” (Kitāb al-ṣalāt), “The Book of Fasting” (K. al-ṣiyām), “Ablution” (K. al-wuḍūʿ), “Pilgrimage to Mecca” (K. al-ḥajj), “Visiting Tombs” (K. al-mazār, i.e., the tombs of the Prophet, Fāṭima, and the imams), “Commercial Transactions” (K. al-tijārāt), “Repudiation” (K. al-ṭalāq), “Legal Penalties” (K. al-ḥudūd), “Ritual Obligations” or “Distributive Shares in Estates” (K. al-farā’iḍ), “Beverages” (K. al-ashriba), etc. All these works now seem to be lost. Doubtless, in the light of the practice at the time, these were little treatises in which traditions dealing with a specific legal matter were assembled.²¹ Other collections would have contained traditionally Shi’ite doctrinal traditions: “The Refutation of Extremists” (K. al-radd ʿalā ‘l-ghulāt), “Eschatological Prophecies” (K. al-malāḥim), “The Obligation to Keep a Secret” (K. al-taqiyya),²² “The Initiated Imami Believer” (K. al-mu’min),²³ “Praises” (K. al-manāqib, i.e., of the Prophet, Fāṭima, and the imams or of Imamis in general), “Blames” (K. al-mathālib, i.e., against the enemies of the imams or Imamis in general), “That Which Is Reported on the Lineage of the Imams” (K. mā ruwiya fī awlād al-a’imma), and, last, the K. Baṣā’ir al-darajāt. The full title of this single compilation by al-Ṣaffār that has come down to us seems to have been, to judge from most of the manuscripts, Kitāb baṣā’ir al-darajāt fī ʿulūm āl Muḥammad wa-mā khaṣṣahum Allāh bihi (roughly, “Book of the Perceptions of Degrees of the Knowledge of the Descendants of Muḥammad—i.e., the imams—and What God Has Reserved Exclusively for Them in This Area”),²⁴ better known under the abridged title Baṣā’ir al-darajāt.²⁵ This title was used to designate quite a few works at different periods.²⁶ Literally meaning “perception of degrees,” it seems to mean the “progressive understanding” of a given theme. In the case of our work, it plainly denotes the progressive understanding of the initiatory Science or Knowledge (ʿilm, pl. ʿulūm) of the imams, both that which the latter possess as well as that which has them as its object.²⁷ Now the edition that has appeared in Iran has the title Baṣā’ir al-darajāt fī’l-maqāmāt wa-faḍā’il ahl al-bayt on its flyleaf (approximately “Book of Perceptions of the Degrees of the States and the Virtues of the Members of the Prophet’s Family”). Hence the term knowledge has been suppressed, though this is, as we shall see, the single most important element of the title since it forms the central theme of the work.

This is a voluminous collection of hadiths—it contains 1,881 traditions with some repetitions divided into 10 sections further divided into chapters, filling 540 octavo pages in the Tabriz edition—a kind of monograph on the various facets of the initiatory knowledge of the imams—or at least what the compiler judged as such. To give a preliminary sense of the contents of the book, here are a few chapter titles:²⁸ “the creation of the hearts and bodies of the imams and of their disciples” (section I, chapters 9 and 10), “the teaching of the imams is arduous and hard to grasp” (I/11), “their Knowledge is a secret wrapped in a secret” (I/12), “the imams are the Proof of God and His Threshold, His Face and His Side, His Eye, and the Treasurers of His Knowledge” (section II, chapter 3), “What the Sinless Ones (i.e., the Prophet, Fāṭima and the imams) have seen and known in the [preexisting] worlds of Shadows and Particles” (II/14–16), “the imams teach religion to the jinn” (II/18), “the imams are the heirs of the Knowledge of Adam and of all the initiates of the past” (III/1), “they know what transpires in the heavens and on the earth, the events that occur in heaven and in hell, those of the past and those of the future up until the Day of Resurrection” (III/6), “they keep the primordial Books and the Scriptures of earlier prophets” (III/10), “they possess the secret books of Jafr, of the Jāmiʿa, of the Muṣḥaf Fāṭima, [the books] of Genealogies, of sovereigns, and of the Blisses and the Miseries” (III/14 and IV/1–2), “they retain Adam’s shirt, Solomon’s seal, the Arc and the Tablets of Moses, the weapon of Muḥammad” (IV/4), “the imams know the supreme name of God” (IV/12), “they hear the celestial voices and have visions of forms more glorious than those of Gabriel and Michael” (V/7), “they raise the dead, heal lepers and the blind, visit the dead and are visited by them” (VI/3 and 5), “the teaching that the Prophet gave after his death to ʿAlī” (VI/6), “the imams receive inspiration by the branding of the heart and the piercing of the tympanum” (VII/3). “they know the language of birds, of wild animals, and of metamorphosed creatures” (VII/14–17), “the powers of riding the clouds’ overlapping and ascension into the heavens” (VIII/15), “the vision in the pillar of light” (IX/7–9), “the earth cannot be devoid of an imam, otherwise it would be destroyed” (X/12), “the knowledge that each imam has at the moment of his death with regard to his successor” (X/13), “other miraculous powers of the imams” (X/18)…

Al-Ṣaffār’s work, clearly based on older teachings, is the earliest extant systematic compilation of traditions about Twelver “imamology” and its epistemological theory, providing the bases of both imamite metaphysics and mysticism. At the same time, it stands as the oldest monograph bearing witness to the emergence of gnostic thought within the Shi’ite milieu. For this reason it is indubitably linked with what I have termed the original “nonrationalist esoteric” tradition and constitutes the earliest such source that has come down to us. Indeed, I believe to have shown elsewhere ²⁹ that it is possible to distinguish two quite different traditions on the nature and vision of the world from the earliest phase of the elaboration of Imami Shi’ism: the first, the older, appears to have predominated from the time of the five or six last imams up until about a half-century after the definitive Occultation of the twelfth and final imam in 329/940–41. This is clearly distinguished by a character that is esoteric and mystical, if not, indeed, magical and occult. This tradition is mainly reported by the traditionists of the Iranian school of Qumm and Rayy, such as al-Ṣaffār, al-Kulaynī (see chapter 5), or even Ibn Bābawayh al-Ṣadūq (d. 381/991), the last great thinker in this tradition. The Occultation of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, identified by tradition as the hidden imam and the future savior, placed the faithful in an extremely delicate position since it left a community, whose center of gravity was in fact its very guide, without an imam. Moreover, this Occultation was contemporaneous with the emergence and ever firmer establishment of a dialectical and rationalistic theology (the well-known science of kalām) within Imamism. Lacking a charismatic leader, living in an environment that was both socially hostile and politically unstable (even if the central power, from the fourth/tenth century onward, fell to the Shi’ite Buwayhids), and navigating an age ever more deeply marked by rationalism,³⁰ Imami thinkers appear to have viewed themselves as constrained to adopt certain methods of their Sunni adversaries simply in order to be capable of facing them in theological polemics as well as to be able to justify their legitimacy by forging a compromise between the preservation of their religion as a collective institution and a concern to mitigate their distinctive singularity amid the welter of dominant Sunni ideologies. Accordingly, with al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (413/1022) and his disciples in the Iraqi school of Baghdad, the science of kalām—despite being savagely attacked in the utterances of the imams—breached the Imami milieu on a massive scale, and the “rational theological and juridical” tradition now becomes both dominant and mainstream and will remain so until the present day, shoving the old esoteric tradition, henceforth charged with heretical extremism (ghuluww), firmly to the margins.³¹ As a result of this dominance, al-Ṣaffār and his work, a genuine summa of esoteric and nonrationalist traditions, comes to appear embarrassing, particularly so for the great Imami prosopographers who adhere, almost to a man, to the rationalist tradition. Without a doubt the pressure was already discernible by the time of al-Kulaynī (d. 328 or 329/939–40 or 940–41), a generation after al-Ṣaffār. What had been presented in a clear and quite methodical manner, set out in chapters richly furnished with different versions of the same hadith, in the work of al-Ṣaffār, al-Kulaynī’s precursor and tacit master, becomes in al-Kulaynī’s work more scattered and “diluted” in contexts which at times bear little relationship to the subject of the traditions. Furthermore, a good proportion of the hadiths reported by al-Ṣaffār are missing from al-Kulaynī’s work. This process intensifies still further throughout the work of Ibn Bābawayh (381/991), a great author of the next generation. The very same course of development is perceptible in whatever bears on the esoteric and nonrationalist details regarding the Occultation and the Return of the hidden imam. From the K. al-ghayba (“The Book of Occultation”) of al-Nuʿmānī (d. ca. 345/956 or 360/971) to the Kamāl al-dīn of Ibn Bābawayh, a gradual stifling as well as an ever stronger “dilution” of a certain number of traditions with an esoteric slant is set in motion, culminating at last in the K. al-ghayba of al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067), a great representative of rationalist Shi’ism, whose entire concern seems to be centered on rational demonstration of the Occultation and the Return. Hence, from al-Ṣaffār, living during a period when the imams are present, and passing by way of of al-Kulaynī, who writes during the minor Occultation, we can witness a steady consignment to silence of a number of traditions that are essentially of a highly original esoteric and gnostic type—and therefore susceptible to being judged “heterodox” by the majority—only to arrive at last at the rationalistic turning point with its attempts to conjoin the “orthodox” Sunni positions espoused by al-Mufīd and his main disciple al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (436/1044) with the more or less open and violent condemnation of those very traditions in the name of “reason.”³²

Viewed thus, the K. Baṣā’ir al-darajāt of al-Ṣaffār can be deemed the most faithful extant document—and as a result, the one that steadily became the most vexing—in the old esoteric and nonrationalist tradition.

On the one hand, nothing but respect is due to the disciple of the imam and the precursor, if not the immediate informant, of such illustrious persons as Ibn al-Walīd, Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī, Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-ʿAṭṭār, Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Mu’addib, al-Kulaynī, or, indeed, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn Ibn Bābawayh (the father of al-Ṣadūq).³³ Virtually all the biographers will take up the adjectives used by al-Najāshī with reference to our author: one of the most illustrious traditionists of Qumm, deserving of trust (thiqa), eminently respectable (ʿaẓīm al-qadr), one whose texts or chain of transmissions seldom display any lacunae (qalīl al-siqṭ fī’l-riwāya).

On the other hand, within a milieu dominated by rationalism and anxious not to engage in any violent clashes with Sunni “orthodoxy,” the contents and the character of the Baṣā’ir could scarcely avoid stirring up mistrust or ostracism. This will reach the extent, as we have seen, of splitting the figure of al-Ṣaffār in two. Authors adhering to the “rational theological and juridical” tradition will report only juridical hadiths on his authority.³⁴ His work will neither be pondered nor commented upon nor later even edited in a befitting manner. A remark of al-Majlisī’s, cited by al-Māmaqānī, is telling in this regard: “If Ibn al-Walīd did not transmit the Baṣā’ir al-darajāt [and, as we have already seen, this is the sole work by his master that he did not transmit], it is because he considered its contents to be close [to the theses] of Shi’ite extremism.”³⁵ The complaint of ghuluww (extremism, exaggeration) against the esoteric, nonrationalist tradition is a classic one. Ibn al-Walīd was perhaps not so sorely mistaken, all the more so in that during the period of the minor Occultation it could be thought that the conflict between rationalists and nonrationalists was rapidly taking shape and that, in any case, apart from al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, the rationalists incessantly accused their opponents of allowing themselves to be unduly influenced by “extremist” notions, among other things.³⁶

a) Al-Ṣaffār’s name appears in the chain of transmission of thirteen traditions.³⁸ In eight of these the transmitter is linked with al-Ṣaffār by two intermediaries, namely, Abū al-Qāsim b. al-ʿAbbās (whom I have not been able to identify)³⁹ and Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-ʿAṭṭār, whom we have met before and who is one of the main transmitters of the Baṣā’ir.⁴⁰ In four instances al-ʿAṭṭār is the sole intermediary between the transmitter and our author; in a single case the transmitter reports directly from al-Ṣaffār. To the best of my knowledge at the present time, it does not seem possible to identify the transmitter or transmitters of these traditions, and yet it is conceivable that one or more direct or indirect disciples of al-Ṣaffār subsequently inserted these hadiths into the original collection, and all the more so since, in almost all cases, these traditions appear at the beginning of sections (ten out of thirteen instances) or at chapter-heads (two instances). Doubtless this is also one reason why this version of the Baṣā’ir is called “the long version” or “the major version” (nuskha kubrā).⁴¹

b) Of the 1,881 traditions that make up the Baṣā’ir, not one is reported directly from the imam al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī whose disciple al-Ṣaffār was, according to several biographers, beginning with al-Ṭūsī in his Rijāl. If this information can be trusted—and there is no valid reason to doubt it—we must suppose that our author never saw the eleventh imam in person and that any direct contact, so to speak, between the two came down to an exchange of correspondence that today seems to be lost. To be sure, we have no other works by al-Ṣaffār, but if he had met and heard the imam’s teachings directly, he would certainly have reported what he heard from him in his Kitāb baṣā’ir al-darajāt, beyond all doubt one of his most important works. A further corroboration of this notion is that even among the later compilers, when a tradition is reported on the authority of al-Ṣaffār—even if this tradition does not figure in the Baṣā’ir—the latter is never, to my knowledge, directly linked to al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī. Likewise our author reports nothing directly from the tenth imam ʿAlī al-Naqī al-Hādī, the imam for thirty-four lunar years from 220/835 until his death in 254/868, a mere six years before that of his successor. And the same obtains with respect to two illustrious contemporaries, namely, the first two “representatives” of the hidden imam according to tradition, the ʿUmarī (or ʿAmrī), father and son, ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd (the “representative” from 260/874 until around 267/880) and Muḥammad b. ʿUthmān (from ca. 267/880 to 305/917).⁴² Hence al-Ṣaffār would have collected the hadiths of the imams only through other traditionists.

Who were these traditionists? Through examination of the chains of transmitters (isnād) in the Baṣā’ir, we end up with a list of some 120 direct informants of our compiler. A large proportion of these individuals—nearly 100—designated solely by their first name, occasionally augmented by their father’s name, or indeed by their kunya alone, appears hard to identify. Some are disciples of the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth imams (e.g., al-Sandī b. al-Rabīʿ, Muḥammad b. Khālid al-Ṭayālisī, al-Haytham Ibn Abī al-Masrūq al-Nahdī, etc.) whom al-Ṣaffār could not have heard directly for reasons of chronology; even so, he neglects to give the names of the intermediaries who linked him to them. Finally, others are important personages, the identification of certain of whom will help us better to discern al-Ṣaffār’s intellectual and spiritual personality and very likely, his position within the Imami Shi’ite religious hierarchy:

—Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qummī al-Ashʿarī, disciple of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh imams; one of the leading lights among the traditionists of Qumm. He is said to have figured among this handful of close disciples who enjoyed the privilege of beholding the hidden imam prior to his Occultation. He was one of the best-known “delegates” (wakīl) and the “thresholds” (bāb) of the imams and one of the intermediaries between the faithful and the “representatives” of the twelfth imam before the minor Occultation.

—Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Sayyār, called al-Sayyārī (see chapter 2). He was accused of “extremism” since he was suspected of having introduced reports of “extremist” origin into the corpus of traditions of the imams (the accusation of takhlīṭ) and of allowing himself to be corrupted in his beliefs (fāsid al-madhhab, munḥarif). Nevertheless, he remains an authority often cited not only by al-Ṣaffār but also by many others, as we have seen.

—Ayyūb b. Nūḥ al-Nakhaʿī, a disciple of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh imams and the “delegate” of the latter two (al-Ṭūsī presents him as the disciple of the eighth imam as well, but this seems unlikely). A respected traditionist, his asceticism and his integrity are often cited as exemplary.

—Al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Nuʿmān al-Kūfī, a disciple of the eleventh imam.

—Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Khashshāb, a disciple of the eleventh imam (Ibn Dāwūd errs in presenting him as having been a disciple of the eighth imam). A very respected traditionist, especially in the important Shi’ite centers that the cities of Qumm and Rayy represented.

—Al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī, a great religious authority of Qumm and one of al-Kulaynī’s direct masters.

—Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq al-Aḥmarī al-Nahāwandī (d. 268/899), a disciple of the tenth imam; author of several books, among them the K. al-Ghayba, he was accused like al-Sayyārī of takhlīṭ and ghuluww (extremism).

—Muḥammad b. Jazzak al-Jammāl, a disciple of the tenth imam.

—Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-ʿAṭṭār al-Qummī, whom we have already come across as a source as well as a transmitter of al-Ṣaffār. The two men, no doubt associates, and “classmates,” and enjoying the same rank in the hierarchy, transmitted hadiths mutually one from the other.

—Sahl b. Ziyād al-Ādamī (or Adamī) al-Rāzī, a disciple of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh imams; accused of “extremism” around 255/869, he was banished from Qumm by the head of the Imami community of the city, the intransigent Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Ashʿarī, and settled in the nearby city of Rayy from whence he wrote to the eleventh imam to explain his situation. An authority whose name is often employed by al-Kulaynī and Ibn Bābawayh al-Ṣadūq, as well as sometimes by al-Mufīd, opinions are quite divided with respect to him.

—Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq Abū Yūsuf al-Sikkīt, a disciple of the ninth imam and a close associate of the tenth imam prior to his imamate, a great connoisseur of Arabic poetry, both pre-Islamic and Islamic. He was executed in 244/858 by order of the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil because of his Shi’ism.

Al-Ṣaffār was clearly in close and unbroken communication with some of the highest Imami dignitaries, especially at Qumm and to a lesser extent at Rayy: disciples and delegates of the imams, religious authorities, renowned traditionists. The fact that several direct disciples of the imams frequented him seems to show that he held a rank within the initiatory Imami hierarchy that was respectable but perhaps not quite exalted enough to permit him to enter into lasting contact with the pinnacles of this hierarchy, namely, the imams or the “representatives” of the hidden imam whom doubtless he never met.⁴³ Furthermore, the presence of such figures as al-Sayyārī, al-Nahāwandī, or Sahl b. Ziyād, all accused of extremist heterodoxy, in the list of al-Ṣaffār’s masters, appears to confirm, if confirmation were needed, that our author belonged to the gnostic and esoteric tradition. Another allied point is that al-Ṣaffār was close to the circles of the Shuʿūbiyya, that intellectual protest movement of conquered peoples, and especially Iranians, against proponents of the supremacy of the Arab race and language.⁴⁴ Al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī, like the renowned Ibn Bābawayh al-Ṣadūq somewhat later, defended the usage of Persian in supererogatory prayers (duʿā’) during the canonical prayer (ṣalāt) and on every other occasion, basing his opinion on the hadiths of the imams as well as on juridical common sense in accord with which all that has not been prohibited is licit as long as it does not go against reason.⁴⁵ This was considered by their enemies a sign of extremism. Moreover, al-Ṣaffār is one of the very first authors to hold that the imam al-Ḥusayn’s wife and “the mother” of the entire line of succeeding Ḥusaynid imams was an Iranian princess, daughter of the last Sassanid emperor. It is noteworthy that in the traditions he reports on this subject ʿAlī speaks Persian with this princess who will become his daughter-in-law.⁴⁶

All this corroborates several points I noted earlier: the artificial distinction between “moderate” and “extremist” Shi’ites, the gap between the nonrationalist and esoteric tendency, and the rationalistic theological and juridical tendency, one of the classic complaints of the latter against the former residing precisely in the penchant toward extremism, and, finally, the ambiguous attitude of the rationalist intelligentsia with respect to al-Ṣaffār.

c) The most striking “anomaly” of the Baṣā’ir relates to the fundamental questions about the number of the imams and the Occultation of the last one among them. But before broaching this “anomaly,” it is necessary briefly to recall a few historical and doctrinal points. Many traditions, together with the way in which these two questions stand juxtaposed to the notion of taqiyya (the Shi’ite obligation to “keep the secret,” or “tactical dissimulation,” “the discipline of the arcane”) throughout the compilations lead us to consider that everything that touched upon the identity and destiny of the last imam—deemed to be the eschatological savior as well—was one of the chief objectives of the duty of “keeping the secret.” Within the old corpus deriving from the “the nonrational and esoteric tradition,” especially with al-Kulaynī and Ibn Bābawayh, very many hadiths dealing with the number of the imams or the personage of the savior-resurrector (al-qā’im)⁴⁷ include exhortations to a considerable measure of discretion.⁴⁸ The works of al-Nuʿmānī and Ibn ʿAyyāsh al-Jawharī (d. 401/1011) that are especially devoted to the twelfth imam (and hence to the definitive number of the imams) open with an entire chapter on “keeping the secret,” the purpose of which is doubtless to convince the reader that, during the period of the imams, all that pertained to the last of them was indelibly marked with the seal of secrecy.⁴⁹ True, the figure of the Islamic savior and the traditions—both Shi’ite and non-Shi’ite—concerning his terrible role in the bloody cleansing of the world in order to reestablish justice and peace had been long known to everyone. The anguish that eschatological accounts—mostly of Shi’ite origin—inspired at the heart of Umayyad and especially Abbasid power is well known. Every movement of the “mahdi” sort was harshly persecuted, every such rebellion stamped out in blood.⁵⁰ Despite their almost complete political passivity, particularly after the drama of Karbalā’,⁵¹ the imams of al-Ḥusayn’s line thus had good reason to be circumspect about everything that related to the resurrector-imam. By this logic, which later compilers sought to bring prominently to the fore, in order to safeguard the life of the mahdi, who would be simultaneously the last of the imams, it was imperative to keep the number of this last secret, along with everything that might reveal his identity, until he was in a safety that was complete, that is, a providentially provided Occultation by God. The fact that the specifications of the number of the imams (viz. twelve) as well as of the hidden mahdi are all reported by sources subsequent to the Occultation (from 260/874 on)—a fact the causes of which are clear to the historian—is doctrinally justified for the believer as well. It is from this perspective that the contradictory elements in the corpus of traditions ascribed to the imams and reported by authors subsequent to the Occultation are presented in compilations edited after this date as being so many “tactics” arising from “tactical dissimulation” (taqiyya) in a deliberate attempt to scramble the traces and so guarantee the safety of the savior pursued by a politically hostile power. These very elements are used, are “recovered,” for the exigencies of the cause.

Among the authors whose names or texts will be put to use by later Twelver authors the following may be cited as examples:

—Ibrāhīm b. Ṣāliḥ al-Anmāṭī, wāqifī of the fifth imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir, and who, for this reason, in his Kitāb al-Ghayba (The Book of Occultation) speaks of only five imams.⁵²

—Al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Sumāʿa, like his master, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭaṭārī, a supporter of the seventh imam, believed in the Occultation and in the qualification of mahdī (mahdawiyya) for the seventh imam. Accordingly, in his K. al-Ghayba he put forward the number seven as being the definitive number of the imams.⁵³

—The same occurs with Muḥammad b. al-Muthannā al-Ḥaḍramī (third/ninth century) who in his Kitāb (or Aṣl) reports a tradition from Jaʿfar according to which there will be seven imams after the Prophet, and the last one will be the mahdī al-qā’im.⁵⁴

—The number of the imams is eight in the K. al-Ghayba of al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Baṭā’inī al-Kūfī, a partisan of the eighth imam al-Riḍā and probably the wāqifī of this imam, as was his father.⁵⁵

—ʿAbbād b. Yaʿqūb al-ʿUṣfurī (d. 250/864), a contemporary of the tenth and eleventh imams, speaks of eleven imams in his Kitāb/Aṣl, but without naming them.⁵⁶

The Imami arguments thus seek to prove that it was because of taqiyya that the imams put forward different figures to indicate their definitive number. Moreover, in order to consolidate their arguments even further, these arguments rely on the account of acts of divine providence and the efforts of the eleventh imam, thanks to which the birth and the existence of the future hidden imam remain secret until his Occultation.⁵⁷ Earlier authors, for the most part wāqifī of one of the imams, are recovered in this way; and it is for this reason, due to the tireless efforts of such traditionists as al-Kulaynī, al-Nuʿmānī, and, above all, Ibn Bābawayh al-Ṣadūq—all active after the minor Occultation—that Imamis (imāmiyya) end up by calling themselves the Twelvers (i.e., with twelve imams: ithnā ʿashariyya).⁵⁸ Hence everything that tended to show that historical reality imposed the a posteriori adoption of the dogmas in question was turned to advantage by Imami Shi’ism and held out as just so many facets of taqiyya with respect to the number of the imams and the identity of the resurrector.

Nevertheless, what for historians is proof of an a posteriori invention is for believers the manifestation of providential foreordaining and hidden wisdom. Indeed, in everything connected to the number of the imams and the savior the data as presented impel the reader to distinguish two distinct phases, and the pivotal factor is, yet again, the occurrence of the Occultation: that information is not extant or is jumbled together prior to the Occultation, then becoming ever more precise subsequently; the early compilers’ silence on the subject, then the appearance of their names in the chains of transmission for traditions bearing on the same subject in later works; the prohibition on pronouncing the name of the mahdi (al-nahy ʿan al-ism; al-manʿ ʿan al-tasmiya),⁵⁹ then on pronouncing it out loud (al-manʿ ʿan al-tanwīh);⁶⁰ and the lack of an exact name for the doctrine prior to the Occultation, then the naming of it as “twelver” a short time later. I think that by using such a method of presentation the old Imami corpus belonging to the esoteric tradition sought to advance the following: the imams transmitted two categories of hadith dealing with their number and the identity of the mahdi. The first category contained information that was scrambled and was meant for the general run of disciples who had to commit the traditions to written form. In this category the name of the last imam was not given. So long as the definitive number of the imams remained unknown, it could not be known who the mahdi might be; as a result, “the rule on hidden matters” that dealt with it was observed.

A second category, meant solely for intimate disciples, contained precise information on the number of the imams and the identity and the fate of the final one whose name was given. Purely to ensure the safety and the life of the mahdi, this kind of hadith had to be transmitted only orally until the coming of the Occultation; it could be put into writing only once the life of the son of the eleventh imam had been saved. The obligation to “keep the secret” as applied to the resurrector-imam was no longer necessary. Ibn ʿAyyāsh states outright that the true rationale for the division of the initatory knowledge fashioned by the imams into “hidden knowledge” (ʿilm maknūn) and “knowledge disclosed” (ʿilm mabdhūl) lies here.⁶¹

Within this context the twin cases of al-Barqī and particularly of al-Ṣaffār, two of the greatest authors who were writing during the time of the imams and whose great works have come down to us, are revealing. In his Kitāb al-maḥāsin Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Barqī gives no information about the questions that concern us. In the first chapter of the book entitled Kitāb al-ashkāl wa’l-qarā’in, he reports traditions concerning the different meanings of the numbers, but he moves from the number three to ten and reports nothing regarding the number twelve, despite the fact that it was especially important for Twelvers.⁶² Even so, his name is frequently mentioned by al-Kulaynī, al-Nuʿmānī, or Ibn Bābawayh—to mention only these important early authors—in the chains of transmission for the traditions dealing with the number of the imams and the fate, Occultation, and final Return of the twelfth imam.⁶³

The case of al-Ṣaffār, al-Barqī’s disciple, is more complicated, as we have seen. In his Baṣā’ir he is silent on the matter of the Occultation, transmits several traditions of a general nature on the resurrector and his Return at the end of time without identifying him and, finally, a mere five traditions on the fact that the imams are twelve in number.⁶⁴ Five hadiths out of a total of 1,881 traditions are very few; here it’s conceivable that al-Ṣaffār resorted to the typical Shi’ite tactic of “dispersal of information” (tabdīd al-ʿilm), and all the more so in that these five traditions often have no logical connection with the chapter in which they occur.⁶⁵ Very much as in the case of al-Barqī, al-Ṣaffār’s authority (often under the name Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan) is widely invoked by later authors in reports of the traditions regarding all that concerns the twelfth imam, including his Occultation.⁶⁶ And yet how may this “anomaly”—indeed, this contradiction—be explained in one and the same author—al-Ṣaffār—a contradiction which lies in reporting traditions on the number of the imams but saying nothing about the Occultation of the last of them, especially since, after 260/874, the two dogmas had become inextricably linked within the tradition? The theme of the ghayba was well known, at least from the time of the Kaysāniyya within the imams’ entourages. Well before the twelfth imam went into Occultation, the imams’ supporters and disciples had composed many collections on the concept, examples of which we have already seen.⁶⁷ Al-Ṣaffār certainly did compose his Baṣā’ir, or at least its definitive version, following the minor Occultation in 260/874, since thirty years divide this date from the date of his death. Hence it is unremarkable that traditions about the twelve imams occur in his work, but why are they so few? Why did he pass over in silence the list of the imams and particularly the Occultation of the last among them, when, as noted earlier, such direct masters of his in Hadith as al-Nahāwandī and al-Ḥimyarī had each compiled a K. al-Ghayba and, indeed, while this latter, along with Aḥmad b. Isḥāq al-Qummī, enjoyed close relations with the “representatives” of the hidden imam? It is conceivable that so soon after the disappearance of the eleventh imam’s son, a definitive view of his fate had not yet taken shape; the theory of the Occultation was not yet firmly established, nor had the body of traditions about the twelfth imam been assembled in its entirety or brought to completion.⁶⁸ It is equally conceivable that the selection of the traditions to be transmitted depended on the rank in the hierarchy of the transmitter—as is the case in many esoteric traditions—and that al-Ṣaffār (who, as we have seen, apparently did not stand in the highest ranks of the Imami initiatory hierarchy) perhaps did not have the authorization to report—at least in writing—a certain category of tradition: that dealing with a subject as sensitive as the resurrector and his Occultation.

By virtue of its age and the fact that it is without a doubt the most reliable witness to the “esoteric and nonrationalist” Imami tradition, al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī’s compilation is a fundamental text for the study of the emergence and development of genuinely gnostic ideas in Shi’ism in particular and in Islam in general. In this regard, familiarity with the complete table of contents of the K. Baṣā’ir al-darajāt may prove helpful. Here I follow the order of the divisions in the Kūčebāghī edition, which reproduces that of the lithographed edition as well as that of the majority of manuscripts with very few exceptions.⁶⁹ To make this a bit less ponderous, the chapter numbering will not be included. Quite particular attention has been devoted to the terminology, which reached a high technical level during this period; this is all the more important since this terminology is not always obvious; many technical terms are quite anodyne in appearance. In my view, one of the main ways of gaining an adequate understanding of the text lies in disentangling the various semantic levels of the traditions intended for quite varied categories of believers. As one example, consider the word ʿilm (literally, science, familiarity, knowledge), a cardinal term in the entire work that is itself offered as a kind of monograph on the ʿilm of the imams in its various facets. To be sure, the term has the meaning of “religious science,” that of the Qur’an and the Hadith in particular, just as in the Sunnism of the same period. But in basing our examination on the old corpus of the “esoteric and nonrationalist” tradition, we come to realize that, when the imams utter it, the word ʿilm denotes above all a body of knowledge of an esoteric type that provides the bases of religious knowledge as such even while encompassing it.⁷⁰ In the context of this Shi’ite tradition, ʿilm can thus be rendered as “secret knowledge” or “knowledge/initiatory knowledge.” The first hadith in the Baṣā’ir al-darajāt, which “opens” the book, is the famous prophetic hadith: ṭalab al-ʿilm farīḍa ʿalā kulli muslim. According to a commentary that a religious scholar from Bahrain gave me—a scholar whom I met at the end of the 1970s and who preferred to speak anonymously—this hadith possesses several levels, as do others. On the first level, destined no doubt for believers who are not well advanced, if not for non-Shi’ite disciples who attended some of the imams’ teaching sessions, the hadith can be read in a literal way which agrees with the understanding of “orthodoxy” as “the quest for religious knowledge is a canonical obligation for every Muslim.” But on a more technical—and characteristically Shi’ite—level, “knowledge” is understood as “secret initiatory knowledge.” In the reasoning of the imams, this “Science”—reserved for an elite—cannot be incumbent on just any Muslim. Moreover, in the Imami technical lexicon, the muslim (the ordinary Muslim) is different from the mu’min (literally, faithful believer; in the technical sense, the faithful believer who is an initiate of the imams).⁷¹ At this level the last word of the hadith cannot be read as muslim but rather, as musallim, spelled the same in Arabic as the first term, but which is one of the many technical appellations for the believing Shi’ite initiate, one who is wholly “submissive” to his spiritual master the imam.⁷² At this level the prophetic tradition would thus be interpreted as “the quest for secret knowledge is a canonical obligation for every initiate who has submitted.” The rest of al-Ṣaffār’s work will endeavor to determine this “science” and this “obligation” and to present its multiple aspects. Thus the table of contents is translated here in accord with the technical meanings of these terms.

Section 1: The search for secret knowledge is a canonical obligation/the compensation of the initiator sage (ʿālim, the possessor of ʿilm, active participle of the first form of the verbal root ʿLM) and of the disciple who has been initiated (mutaʿallim, active participle of the fifth form of the same root)/the sage whose knowledge is equivalent to knowledge of God and whose ignorance is equivalent to ignorance of God/the superiority of the initiate in relation to the devout (ʿābid)/men fall into three categories: the initiator sage, the initiated disciple, and the spume borne away by the wave (ghuthā’); the imams are the sages, the true Shi’ites are the initiated disciples, and all others are the spume on the wave/the secret knowledge must be sought out at its source, that is, among the imams of the Prophet’s family/the imams are the source of the secret knowledge/the straying of those who turn away from the guides of truth (a’immat al-ḥaqq)/the creation of the imams’ and disciples’ bodies and hearts/the creation of the imams’ and the disciples’ bodies and spirits/the imams’ teaching are hard and difficult to grasp (ṣaʿb, mustaṣʿab)/ their cause is difficult to grasp/the knowledge of the Prophet’s descendants is a secret wrapped up in a secret (sir mustasirr)/the imams are the guides to the Prophet’s Message/they are the truthful ones (a Qur’anic expression, al-ṣādiqūn)⁷³/the distinction between the guides of justice (a’immat al-ʿadl) and those of injustice (a’immat al-jawr)/recognition of the imams of guidance (a’immat al-hudā) and of those who lead astray (a’immat al-ḍalāl)⁷⁴/God has made obedience (ṭāʿa) and affection (mawadda) for the imams an obligation/the closeness of the imams and the Prophet/the imams are the people who summon to God (a Qur’anic expression: ahl al-dhikr)/they maintain the knowledge of the licit and the illicit/they are the heirs of the Book/the Prophet’s statement regarding them, “God has given them my capacity for understanding as well as my knowledge”/the Prophet commanded faith in the knowledge of the imams and submission to them/about them God has said [in the Qur’an], “they are those who know while their enemies are those who do not know.”

Section 2: The imam is the mine of initiatory knowledge, the tree of prophecy (shajarat al-nubuwwa), the key of wisdom, the place of the law-revealing mission (mawḍiʿ al-risāla)/the Qur’anic example of the tree denotes the imams and their initiatory knowledge/the imam is God’s proof (ḥujja), the threshold (bāb), he who is responsible for the cause (wālī amr Allāh), the face, the side, the eye of God (Qur’anic expressions), the treasurer of secret knowledge/the “divine face” of the Qur’an designates the imams descended from the Prophet/the imams are the [Seven] Redoubled [Verses] (a Qur’anic expression: al-mathānī) offered to the Prophet/the angels’ holy love (walāya)⁷⁵ for the imam/the love of the prophets “endowed with firm resolution” (a Qur’anic expression: ūlū al-ʿazm) for the imam from the time of the preexisting world of the covenant (ʿālam al-mīthāq)⁷⁶/the love of the other prophets from the world of the covenant/another chapter on walāya/the sacred nature (walāya) of ʿAlī, Prince of the initiates (amīr al-mu’minīn)⁷⁷/the oath of allegiance of the initiates in the world of the covenant, the creation of the imams from the light of God and the fact that they “see” by means of this light/the oaths of creatures on walāya/ the imams are God’s witnesses (shuhadā’) among His creatures/the messenger of God recognized what he saw in the [preexisting] world of shadows (ʿālam al-aẓilla) and of particles (ʿālam al-dharr)/the prince of the initiates (i.e., ʿAlī) recognized what he saw in the world of the covenant/the imams recognize what they have seen in the world of the covenant/the angels frequent the imams and bring them information/the jinn frequent the imams and receive initiatory instruction from them/the imams are the treasurers of the secret knowledge of God in the heavens and on earth/the kingdom of the heavens and the earth is present before them, and they are able to see up to the divine throne/they possess the entirety of the knowledge of the angels, the prophets, and the universe.

Section 3: The imams are the heirs of the secret knowledge of Adam and of all the initiated sages [of the past]/the initiates inherit knowledge one from the other and, thanks to them, it is never lost/the imams are the heirs of the secret knowledge of the prophets “endowed with firm resolution” along with that of all the other prophets/they are depositaries of divine knowledge and possess the knowledge of destinies and afflictions (al-manāyā wa’l-balāyā) as well as of the genealogies of the Arabs/all that concerns the Cause (amr) has been revealed to them⁷⁸/all that happens in the heavens and on earth is known to them/they know the happenings in the heavens and the earth, in paradise and in hell, in the past and in the future until the Day of Resurrection/the knowledge acquired (ʿilm mustafād) every Friday night/the legal rulings of the prince of the initiates (ʿAlī) in accord with the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms (Zabūr [of David] and the Qur’an/the imams keep the primordial Books (kutub al-awwalīn), the Torah [of Moses], the Gospels [of Jesus], the Psalms [of David], and the pages (ṣuḥuf [of Abraham])/ how the descendants of Muḥammad received the tablets (alwāḥ)/the imams keep “the comprehensive page” (al-ṣaḥīfa al-jāmiʿa) dictated by Muḥammad and written by ʿAlī/another chapter on the books [of the imams]/the [secret] books al-Jafr, al-Jāmiʿa, and the collection (muṣḥaf) of Fāṭima.

Section 4: The imams hold the Books of the Prophet and of the Prince of the initiates/the book of the rulers of the earth/the book containing the list of Shi’ites designated by their names and the names of their fathers/the imams hold the weapon (silāḥ) of Muḥammad and the signs (āyāt) of the prophets, such as the stick, the ark, and the tables of the law of Moses, the seal of Solomon, or the shirt of Adam/the compilation on the inhabitants of paradise and of hell/the imams are alone in possessing the integral version of the Qur’an/they possess knowledge of the exoteric commentrary (tafsīr) and of the esoteric hermeneutics (ta’wīl) of the Qur’an/ʿAlī knew everything that was revealed to the Prophet in all circumstances and so too do the imams of his line/the imams are the pillars (arkān) of the earth and the dazzling proof of God; they have knowledge of destinies and afflictions as well as of judgments such as “the severing Word” (a Qur’anic expression: faṣl al-khiṭāb)/they are those who have been “firmly grounded in knowledge” (a Qur’anic expression: al-rāsikhūn fi’l-ʿilm) to whom God alludes in His Book/knowledge is established in the breasts of the imams/they possess God’s Supreme Name.

Section 5: God’s Supreme Name and the knowledge of the Book/another chapter on the Supreme Name and its supernatural powers/what the imam receives on the night of the decree (a Qur’anic expression: laylat al-qadr, literally, “night of power”)/the Prophet read and wrote in all languages ⁷⁹/the Prince of the initiates and “the prophet endowed with firm resolution”—which of these two possesses more knowledge?/the imams’ superiority over Moses and Khaḍir/the imams hear heavenly voices and see forms (ṣuwar) more glorious than those of the angels Gabriel and Michael/the forms which the angels Gabriel and Michael, as well as the angel of death, assume when they appear to the imam/confronted by “difficult cases” (muʿḍilāt) unforeseen by the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet, the imam receives inspiration (ilhām)/the imam knows [the secrets of] of the soul and the conscience [of men]/even from afar, the imam knows what men do and what is going on inside them/the imam knows [the secrets of] the soul of his faithful/the [supernatural] power (al-qudra) conferred by God on the Prophet and the imams/the imam knows who will come home to him even before the man himself knows/the imams in Muḥammad’s line pronounce their judgments in accord with the laws of David’s descendants/even from afar, the imams know the states in which their faithful are/they know if their faithful are hiding something from them and they know their destinies.

Section 6: the imams know the date and the cause of the deaths of their faithful/they possess the knowledge of destinies and afflictions, as well as knowledge of genealogies and the “severing Word”/they are able to resuscitate the dead, heal the blind and lepers with God’s permission/another chapter on the power of resurrecting the dead/the imams visit the [spirits of] the dead and they pay them visits in return/Muḥammad’s post mortem instruction of ʿAlī/the imams are able to meet up with their dead enemies/the imams recognize the sincerity or the hypocrisy of those with whom they speak/they know the goodness or the badness, the love or the hate, of those with whom they speak with respect to themselves/the Prophet initiated ʿAlī into the entirety of secret knowledge: he associated him with his own knowledge, but not with his role as a prophet-legislator/the episode of the two fruits of the pomegranate/the imams are the heirs of ʿAlī’s initiatory knowledge/they know whether a patch of earth is fertile or barren, whether this or that group of men are on the right path or this or that other on the path of perdition/they possess the foundations (uṣūl) of the knowledge received as a legacy from the Prophet and make no pronouncements based on their own personal opinion (ra’y)/they know everything contained in the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Sunna, but they never use their own personal opinion, nor do they allow their faithful to do so/the “chapters” (abwāb) in the knowledge that the Prophet taught to ʿAlī/the “letters” (ḥurūf) the Prophet taught to ʿAlī/the Word (kalima) the Prophet taught ʿAlī.

Section 7: the instruction (ḥadīth) ʿAlī got from the Prophet/when the imam wants to know, he knows/inspiration through marking of the heart (nakt fi’l-qalb) and piercing of the tympanum (naqr fi’l-udhn)/the imam’s threefold knowledge/the imam is “he to whom the heavenly entities speak (al-muḥaddath) and “he to whom comprehension from on high” is given” (al-mufahham)⁸⁰/a further chapter on the muḥaddath/what the imam receives, day by day, indeed, hour by hour, by virtue of his quality as muḥaddath/the legacy of knowledge and the operations of “marking of the heart” and “piercing of the tympanum”/the seventy aspects (wajh) of the pronouncements of the imams/they know the increase and the decrease of truth and falsehood on the face of the earth/they know all languages/they read the holy books of earlier prophets despite their diversity of language/knowledge of the language of the birds (a Qur’anic expression: manṭiq al-ṭayr)/knowledge of the language of wild beasts/knowledge of the language of transformed beings (musūkh)/knowledge of physiognomony (tawassum)/the imam does not need the acknowledgment of others to be what he is/what the Prophet said to his community respecting the imams/those among people of the past whom the imams resemble.

Section 8: The difference between the prophet as lawgiver, the prophet as messenger, and the imam/the imams retain the treasures of the earth/they hold God’s Secrets, transmit them and are their depositaries/what was confided to Muḥammad/what was confided to the Prophet he in turn confided to the imams/the imams receive divine Aid (tawfīq) when they confront instances unforeseen by the Qur’an and the Sunna/the imam recognizes his faithful and his enemies from the sight of their faces and of their names [as incised] in the clay out of which they have been created/the imams’ knowledge grows every day and every night or else it would vanish/the imams know what occurs at a distance from them/the power of spatial displacement/another chapter on the power conferred by God to the imams/the Prince of the initiates and the powers of the overlapping of the clouds and the ascension into the heavens/God summoned the Prince of the initiates to Ṭā’if through the angel Gabriel acting as intermediary/the prophetic statement: “I leave you Two Precious Things (al-thaqalayn): the Book of God and my Family”⁸¹/the Prince of the initiates is he who shares in (qasīm) the inhabitants of paradise and those of hell.

Section 9: The power of the penetrating glance (al-baṣar) which remains efficacious even during sleep/reading thoughts/each imam teaches his successor what he himself has learned but augmented by five new things/the deeds [of men] are made present to the Prophet and the imams/the presentation of deeds to imams both living and dead/a further chapter on the presentation of deeds to living imams/the presentation of actions in the Pillar of Light (ʿamūd min nūr)/a Minaret of Light is erected where the imam is by means of which he can see what occurs in other places/a further chapter on the Pillar of Light ⁸²/the birth of the imam/another chapter on the raising up of the Pillar of Light at the moment of the imam’s birth/the prophetic tradition: “my life and my death are both a good for you”/the spirits of the prophets, the imams and the faithful who have been initiated and the five spirits of the imams of the Prophet’s Family/the Holy Spirit (rūḥ al-quds) visits the imams when they need it/the Spirit (a Qur’anic expression: al-Rūḥ) of which God speaks in His Book assists and informs the Prophet and the imams/the secret knowledge of the initiate comes, now from the books that he possesses, now from the instruction he has received, and now from information inspired by the Spirit/a further chapter on the Spirit/the difference between the [heavenly entity] Spirit and the angels/the imam knows the moment of his own death in advance/the moment at which the imam realizes that he has become imam/the Prophet bequeathed to ʿAlī the Supreme Name of God, the legacy of prophecy and the legacy of secret knowledge.

Section 10: The imams know the Prophet’s testament (ʿahd) concerning his heirs⁸³/just before dying, thanks to divine inspiration, they know him whom they must designate as their successor/the present imam and what he will bequeath to his successor/the moment in which the succeeding imam receives what his predecessor possesses/some imams have more knowledge than others, but the knowledge of what is licit and what illicit is identical for all of them/what is identical between the Prophet and the imams/the imams know when they will die/the earth cannot be without an imam/if only two men remained on earth, one of them would be the imam/were the world to be without an imam it would be annihilated/the [supernatural] creatures beyond the Orient and the Occident know the imams; they visit them and they hate their enemies/the imams can elicit the affection of rulers if they so desire/the imams know the inhabitants of paradise and of hell/inanimate things (ghayr al-ḥayawānāt) converse with the imams/another chapter on the miraculous powers (aʿājīb) of the imams/every portion of truth extant in the knowledge of the great mass of people (al-ʿāmma, i.e., non-Shi’ites) comes from the teaching of the imams in Muḥammad’s line, while all that arises from personal opinion (ra’y) and from reasoning by analogy (qiyās) derives solely from the falsehoods [of the religious authorities] of the masses/submission (taslīm) vis-à-vis the imams/the statements of the Prophet and of the imams about themselves and the refutation of those who fall into extremism with regard to them as a result of their ignorance of the deep meaning (maʿnā) of these statements/against those who refute the teaching of the imams without having understood it.

Al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī’s work is illustrative of a major evolution that is surely representative of a powerful current at the very heart of Shi’ism; it will characterize branches as representative as Isma’ilism, Nuṣayrī Shi’ism, and, it goes without saying, Twelver Shi’ism for a long time and persistently. Gnosis, understood as a transformational and redemptive knowledge, forms the pivot of this evolution. The dogma proclaiming that Muḥammad is the last of the lawgiver-prophets appears henceforth to be established; even so, prophecy continues, and will always continue, thanks to the gnosis of its possessor, the initiatory sage, whom Shi’ism calls the imam or the walī (the friend or ally of God, the bearer of walāya). Simultaneously the religion of the “faithful initiates” comes into a perspective, situated between two immeasurable immensities: that of the cosmos and that of the inner world. Knowledge and the sacred alliance that underlies it derive their origin from preexisting universes, both primordial and spiritual, well before the creation of the world known to the senses. Both are preserved and transmitted by the initiatory sage, the master of wisdom who is ever present in the world, so as to allow his disciples to attain to the mysteries of God, the universe, and its being. Thus history, the theater of victory for the most unjust, comes to be subsumed in a far more glorious history within which only “those who know” are saved, while the others are swept away on the wave of perdition.

The “Book of the Progressive Comprehension of Sacred Knowledge” is the earliest systematic exposition of the emergence of gnosis within Shi’ism and, indeed, perhaps within Islam more generally. Even a close reading of its table of contents demonstrates this plainly. For it contains virtually all the characteristics—obviously adapted to Shi’ite Islam—of gnostic doctrines tinged by the Neoplatonism of Late Antiquity, just as they have been masterfully synthesized by Kurt Rudolph:⁸⁴ a dualistic vision of the world, the theater of a cosmic struggle between the forces of Good and of Evil (the friends of God, the initiatory sages, and their faithful on the one side and their enemies on the other). The Doctrine of God’s Emanations, bringing forth the pleromas and the hypostases (the creation of the preexisting of the imams from the Divine Light), but also their malevolent adversaries (the preexisting entities of the forces of ignorance). A pessimistic view of the world and of man (most people, willingly or not, are on the side of ignorance). Man is a hybrid being, a bundle of light enclosed within the shadows of matter who can only be freed through knowledge. This salvific gnosis is borne and transmitted by an eternal being of light who became incarnate to save those able to recognize him (Christ for the Gnostics, the imam for Shi’ites). This guide, the possessor of knowledge, benefits from its results to wield thaumaturgic powers. Complete salvation is effected at the end of days when all the bundles of light that were imprisoned will be freed throughout the countless cycles of history. Gnosis is concealed within the esoteric meaning of the Scriptures, covered over by their literal meaning; hence, hermeneutics becomes indispensable for an adequate understanding of the holy Book.⁸⁵

The lack of direct sources for the two first centuries of Islam makes the study of the literary relationship between gnostic movements and the various branches of proto-Shi’ism and Shi’ism difficult. Nevertheless, numerous studies, of which the aforementioned monographs of Heinz Halm⁸⁶ stand as the most thoroughgoing, have demonstrated that religious currents of a gnostic type, and especially those influenced by or loyal to the adepts of Mani (Mānī in Arabic), Bardasanes (Bardayṣān), and Marcion (Marqiyūn), remained active in Islamic regions up until the third and fourth/ninth and tenth centuries, sometimes adapting to the new Arab religion with all their intellectual and spiritual weapons and baggage. It is interesting to observe that almost all these movements occurred in Iraq (especially in the cities of Kūfa, Baṣra, and Ḥīra), in other words, in the homeland of Shi’ism.⁸⁷ On the basis of what emerges from Muslim heresiographies, but also from Imami and Ismaili texts as well as from those works coming from those Shi’ite milieus termed “extremist” (such books as the K. al-Haft wa’l-aẓilla or, indeed, the Umm al-Kitāb), it is reasonable to infer that the sorts of gnostic teachings that were transmitted in an initiatory manner (that is, mainly orally), were current from the time of the imams Muḥammad al-Bāqir and his son Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, within the confines of the first and second/seventh and eighth centuries. The K. baṣā’ir al-darajāt seems to indicate that the methodical, written transmission of these teachings developed especially from the second half of the third/ninth century onward.⁸⁸