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Fatimid Period Ismailism on the Bible and Christianity
Abstract
From the ‘Brethren of Purity’ to Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, al-Mu’ayyad fi l-Din al-Shirazi and Naser-e Khosrow, a number of Ismaili authors engaged Judaism and Christianity and their respective scriptures in ways that notably departed from the established Islamic modes of controversy and polemic. For one, the arguments proffered derived from an increased familiarity with such scriptures themselves, at times even including quotations from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in Syriac (cf. Paul Kraus and Paul Walker on al-Kirmani). Second, the Ismaili use of figurative interpretation (ta’wil) rendered earlier divine dispensations—as well as philosophical doctrines—diaphanous as to truths hidden from merely exoteric readings (cf., e.g., Daniel de Smet). Thus for the quoted writers, the dialectic of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’, concerning biblical truth as opposed to the Christian creed, operated on a different level than in the Koran, even if rejection of the Christian doctrine of incarnation remained the ultimate point of convergence(not to forget al-Hakim’s—passing—destructive aggressiveness, for which cf. Heinz Halm). The presentation here to be introduced will focus on Naser-e Khosrow, at the same time anchoring him in and contrasting him with the Ismaili tradition (cf. Carmela Baffioni) and specifically, preceding Ismaili representations of Christianity. Naser’s variant observations on things Christian, including as they do a charge of tritheism (in Jame´o l-hekmateyn) as well as an admiring—and glossing over doctrinally contentious issues—account of the Holy Sepulchre (in Safarname; cf. Alice Hunsberger) in their turn raise the intriguing, if not outright troubling question of the internal coherence of his works—a question to be discussed and, it is hoped, advanced in conclusion.
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
7th-13th Centuries