Author's note: I am grateful to Professor Wilferd Madelung for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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² The correspondence between Ibrahim and Jaʿfar al-Sadiq was still extant in the eleventh century (al-Najāshī, Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī, Rijāl al-Najāshī [Qumm, 1986–87], 355–56)Google Scholar.

³ Jafri, S. Husain M., Origins and Development of Shiʿa Islam (London and New York: Longman, 1979), 273Google Scholar.

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⁵ al-Ṭabarī, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, Taʾrīkh, 3:103Google Scholar; English trans., The History ofal-Ṭabarī, vol. 28: ʿAbbasid Authority Affirmed, trans. McAuliffe, J. D. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 24Google Scholar. See also the references cited in McAuliffe's note (23, n. 117), especially Akhbār al-Dawlah (231), and Najāshī, , Rijāl, 273Google Scholar. Yaqṭīn (meaning pumpkin) must be an Arabicization of Abu Muslim's appellation, yak din ([man of] one religion), designed to attest the sincerity and pure monotheism of a new convert.

⁶ Madelung, W., “A Treatise of the Sharīf al-Murtaḍā on the Legality of Working for Government (masʾalafil-ʿamal maʿa'l- ṣultān),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43, 1 (1980): 18Google Scholar.

⁷ The seventh imam praised ʿAli ibn Yaqtin for being among God's friends placed with oppressors “in order to protect His friends through them” (Kashshī, , Rijāl, 433Google Scholar). The eighth imam similarly considered Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil ibn Baziʿ among those placed at the gates of the oppressors “in order to protect His friends through them; through them God promotes the affairs of the Muslims, and with them is the refuge of the believers from harm” (Najāshī, , Rijāl, 331Google Scholar).

⁸ The first member of the family to convert may have been his son, whose string of unpronounceable patrilineal Persian names made the caliph smile and call him Sahl, Abu (father of the easy) (ʿA. Iqbāl, Khāndān-e Nawbakhtī [Tehran, 1932], 11)Google Scholar. The fact that Abu Sahl's son, Fadl, personally reports his difference of opinion with other astrologers concerning the ominousness of the hour of the designation of ʿAli al-Rida in the Imami collections suggests that the family soon became Imamis, even if they did not have that affiliation from the beginning (ibid., 20; Bābūya, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn, ʿUyūn akhbār alriḍā, 2 vols., ed. al-Kharsānī, M. M. [Naja, 1970]), 2:145–47)Google Scholar.

⁹ al-Nawbakhtī, Ḥasan ibn Mūsā, Kitāb Firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. Ritter, H., (Istanbul, 1931), 53–54Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Ashʿarī, Kitāb al-Maqālāt wa'l-Firaq, ed. Mashkūr, M. J., (Tehran, 1963), 76Google Scholar. The branch of Muhammad al-Baqir's Shiʿi who are said to have accepted the Hasanid Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah as Qaʾim and Mahdi evidently did so long after the fifth imam's death.

¹⁰ al-Iṣfahānī, Abū'l-Faraj, Maqātil al-Ṭālibīyyin, ed. Şaqr, A. (Cairo, 1949), 277–78Google Scholar.

¹¹ al-Ṭūsī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, Kitāb al-ghayba, ed.al-Tihrānī, Āghā Buzurg, (Najaf, 1965), 119, 255Google Scholar.

¹² al-Qāḍī, W., al-Kaysāniyya fi'l-taʾrīkh wa'l-Adab (Beirut, 1974), 195–96Google Scholar; Halm, , Die Schia, 24–26Google Scholar.

¹³ Ess, J. van, “Das Kitāb al-lrğāʿ des Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya,” Arabica 21 (1974): 24Google Scholar.

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¹⁵ The Sayyid can be taken as representative of the group of Kaysanis won over to Imami ʿism by the fifth and sixth imams. The existence of such a group can be inferred from the conciliatory tone of the early Imami traditions concerning Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya which allege that he accepted the imamate of his nephew (the fourth imam) before dying (Bābūya, ʿAlī ibn, al-Imāma wa'l-tabṣira min alḥayra, ed. al-Husyanī, M. R. [Beirut, 1987], 193–95)Google Scholar. In one tradition, the fifth imam denies Muhammad'simamate but confirms that he had been the Mahdi (ibid., 193).

¹⁶ Mufīd, , Irshād, 284Google Scholar; English trans., 430.

¹⁷ Ibid., 284. The version I have translated varies slightly from the one given in the printed Kamāl but is identical to the version found in some of its manuscripts (al-ṢadūqIbn Bābūya, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Ibn Bābūya, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, Kamāl al-dīn. wa tamām al-niʿma ft ithbāt l-ghayba wa kashf al-ḥayra, ed. Ghaffārī, A. A. [Tehran, 1970], 35, n. 6–7)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Hodgson, M. G. S., “How Did the Early Shiʿa Become Sectarian?” Journal of the American Oriental Society 75 (1955): 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 57Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 79–80Google Scholar.

²⁰ Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 65–67Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 87–89Google Scholar. Ismaʿil, the son Jaʿfar had designated as his successor, had predeceased him.

²¹ When Musa's death was announced, one group among his followers could not decide whether he was dead or alive because of “the many traditions proving that he was the Qaʾim, the Mahdi” (Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 69Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 91Google Scholar). For instance, a tradition in which Musa affirms that he is the Qaʾim (al-qāʾim bi'l-ḥaqq) is doctored by adding the phrase “but the Qaʾim who cleanses the earth from God's enemies and fills it with justice…is the fifth of my descendants for whom there is a long occupation” (Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 391Google Scholar). See also Bābūya, ʿAlī ibn, Imāma, 147Google Scholar.

²² Modarressi, H., Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shiʿite Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993), 10–14Google Scholar.

²³ Ibid., 87; Mufīd, , Irshād, 303Google Scholar, English trans., 456. According to a qāʿim tradition attributed to the fifth imam by the Wāqifiyya in connection with Musa al-Kazim, “For the lord of this cause (ṣāḥib hādha'l-amr) are four precedents: a precedent (sunna) from Moses and a precedent from Joseph, a precedent from Jesus and a precedent from Muhammad. From Moses that he is afraid and watchful, from Joseph the prison, from Jesus that it was said he was dead and he did not die, and from Muhammad the sword” (Bābūya, ʿAli ibn, Imāma, 234–35Google Scholar; Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 152–53Google Scholar, emphasis added). A later variant attributes the saying to the sixth imam, changes the traditions of Joseph and Jesus, and substitutes the qāʾim for the lord of the cause (Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 28Google Scholar; Arjomand, S. A., “The Consolation of Theology: The Shiʾite Doctrine of Occultation and the Transition from Chiliasm to Law,” Journal of Religion 76, 4 (1996): n. 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar for English trans.

²⁴ To forestall this, the caliph had in vain had the dead body of Musa al-Kazim identified and inspected by the judges, the Hashemites, and the army chiefs of the capital (al-Yaʿqūbī, Aḥmad ibn Wāḍiḥ, Taʾrīkh [Historiae], 2 vols., ed. Houtsma, M. Th. [Leiden, 1883], 2:499)Google Scholar. Some fifty to seventy men from his Shiʿa were reported to have been among those who inspected his corpse (Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 38–39Google Scholar). al-Iṣfahānī, Abū'l-Faraj (Maqātil, 504–5Google Scholar) reports that the body was even put on public display on a bridge in Baghdad. Nevertheless, some extremists among the Waqifiyya, who claimed divinity for Musa, continued to believe that he was the Qaʾim. One Muhammad ibn Bashir even claimed access to the divine Qaʾim, and reportedly offered favored followers views of a finely dressed man (or statue) who impersonated Musa (al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 62–63Google Scholar; Kashshī, , Rijāl, 477–81Google Scholar).

²⁵ Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 68Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 89–90Google Scholar.

²⁶ Halm, , Die Schia, 38–39Google Scholar.

²⁷ Modarressi, , Crisis, 62Google Scholar; among cited references, see esp. Kashshī, , Rijāl, 405,467Google Scholar, and Najāshī, , Rijāl, 300Google Scholar.

²⁸ Bābūya, Ibn, ʿUyūn, 1:17–18Google Scholar.

²⁹ Kashshī, , Rijāl, 465–67, 498–99, 506–8Google Scholar.

³⁰ Ibid., 464, 553.

³¹ Al-Tabarī, , Taʿrikh, 3:976Google Scholar; English trans., The History of al-Tabarī, vol. 32: The Reunification of the ʿAbbasid Caliphate, trans. Bosworth, C. E. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 9, 12Google Scholar; Isfahānī, , Maqātil, 523Google Scholar; Gabrieli, F., Al-Maʾ mun e gli ʿAlidi (Leipzig, 1929), 5, 15–16Google Scholar.

³² Al-Tabarī, , TaDrikh, 3:986, 999Google Scholar; English trans., 32:26–27, 44.

³³ Ibid., 3:987–88; English trans., 32:28–30; Kennedy, H., The Early Abbasid Caliphate (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 209Google Scholar.

³⁴ Iṣfahānī, , Maqātil, 539Google Scholar. Muhammad's brother ʿAli ibn Jaʿ far is said to have fought with him in Mecca (ibid., 540).

³⁵ Madelung, , “New Documents concerning al-Maʾ mun, al-Faḍl b. Sahl and ʿ Alī al-Riḍā,” in Studia Arabica Islamica. Festschrift für Iḥsān ʿ Abbās, ed. al-Qāḍi, W. (Beirut, 1981), 337Google Scholar.

³⁶ Iṣfahānī, , Maqātil, 540Google Scholar.

³⁷ Yaʿqubī, , Taʾrīkh, 2:545–46Google Scholar.

³⁸ Madelung, , “New Documents,” 336Google Scholar.

³⁹ Gabrieli, , Maʾmun, 32–45Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Madelung, , “New Documents,” 338Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Arjomand, S. A., The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, citing a tradition from Yaʾqūbī, , TaDrikh, 2:500Google Scholar. The eighth imam strongly disapproved of his revolutionary brother, Zayd al-Nar (Bābūya, Ibn, ʿUyūn, 2:234–38Google Scholar).

⁴² These phrases are used in Maʾmun–s letter to the ʿAbbasid rebels in Baghdad (Madelung, , “New Documents,” 345Google Scholar). The parousia of the Mahdi was expected for the year 200 (815)Google Scholar, and according to one apocalyptic tradition later excised from Nuʿ aym ibn Ḥammād's Kitāb al-fitan, the last of the Banu ʿ Abbas was called ʿ Abd Allah “and he is the last lord of the ʿayn among them…;he will be the key to the tribulation and sword of perdition” (cited by Madelung, , “New Documents,” 345Google Scholar).

⁴³ Ibid., 343; translation of “Kitāb al-dawla” modified.

⁴⁴ Babūya, Ibn, ʿUyūn, chaps. 36–37Google Scholar. His “stepping station” (qadamgāh) in a village near Nishapur is a popular place of pilgrimage.

⁴⁵ As many pages of Ibn Bābūya's ʿUyūn are devoted to these two years as to the rest of ʿAli al-Rida's career. Although he was known as a teacher of traditions and law in the Hijaz, much of his legal teaching belongs to the vice-royal period. A considerable section (ʿUyūn, chaps. 34–35Google Scholar), for instance, is transmitted by Fadl ibn Shadhan, who was presumably introduced to the imam in Nishapur at a young age (ibid., 2:119).

⁴⁶ Many Zaydis, presumably including the failed rebels, were among these (Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 73Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 94)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Mufīd, , Irshād, 316; English trans., 478Google Scholar.

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⁴⁹ Yaʿqūbī, , Taʾrīkh, 2:552–53;Google ScholarNawbakhtī, , Firaq, 27;Google Scholaral-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 93Google Scholar.

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⁵¹ Kohlberg, E., “Imam and Community in the Pre-Ghayba Period,” in Authority and Political Culture in Shiʿism, ed. Arjomand, S. A. (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988), 25;Google ScholarModarressi, , Crisis, 29–31Google Scholar.

⁵² For example, Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 228Google Scholar.

⁵³ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 223Google Scholar. Another tradition by the same transmitter (on whom, see the next note) reports the sixth imam as saying: “The earth is not left in place except for a learned one who knows the permissible and whatever the people are in need of, while he does not need the people” (ibid., 223; 224 for similar traditions).

⁵⁴ Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 65Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 87Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 74–76Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 95–99Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ al-Rāzī, Muhammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī, Uṣūl al-Kāfi, ed. Muṣṭafavī, J., (Tehran: ʿIlmiyya Islāmiyya, n.d.), 2:110–12Google Scholar; Modarressi, , Crisis, 64Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ This is the only case of succession to an Imam in which no schism is reported. Only a few Imamis are said to have proposed an even younger son of the deceased Imam but soon returned to the fold (Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 77Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 99–100)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Bulliet, R. W., “Conversion to Islam and the Emergence of a Muslim Society in Iran,” in Conversion to Islam, ed. Levtzion, N. (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1979), 30–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 77–81Google Scholar. The proportion of mawālī to Arabs forthe Imamis is probably no different from that for the Sunni jurists and theologians in the same period.

⁶⁰ Najāshī, , Rijāl, 253–54; 446–48Google Scholar. Yunus appears to have provided regular legal advice as the agent of Imam ʿAli al-Rida, who “instructed him… in giving legal opinions (futyā)” (ibid., 446). He strongly disapproved of ʿAli al-Rida's decision to go to al-Maʾmun's court, and must have infuriated the imam at this point. He was later rehabilitated by the ninth imam, Muhammad al-Jawad (Kashshī, , Rijāl, 483–88, 493, 496–99)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ A major Zoroastrian fire temple was located near Qumm. The city was also close to Daylam and Tabaristan, and was used by the Imami Shiʿis as an outpost for missionary activity in those regions (Faqīhī, A. A., Tārīkh-e Madhhabī-ye Qumm [Qumm: ʿIsmaʿīliyān, n.d.], 15, 63–65)Google Scholar.

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⁶⁴ Ibid., 12.

⁶⁵ Kashshī, , Rijāl, 514Google Scholar; cited in Modarressi, , Crisis, 14Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Kashshī, , Rijāl, 513–14Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ This account is uncritically accepted by Sachedina, A. A., Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shiʿism (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981), 28–29Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Mufīd, , lrshād, 344; English trans., 521–22Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Iṣfahānī, , Maqātil, 639Google Scholar. It is also interesting to note that after the death of the eleventh Imam, one of the Waqifite splinter groups that had been agnostic concerning the Imamate considered that the differences among the Shiʿa pending the manifestation of God's new Proof (ḥujja) should be referred to “the Rida from the House of Muhammad” (Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 164Google Scholar [source: Shahrastānī]).

⁷⁰ Yaʿqūbī, , Taʾrīkh, 2:625–26Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 79Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 102Google Scholar. As had been the case with Musa al-Kazim, the ʿAlid and ʿAbbasid dignitaries, army chiefs, judges, and jurists inspected the body and bore witness that he had died a natural death (Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 43Google Scholar; Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 107)Google Scholar.

⁷² Kippenberg, H. G., “Die Geschichte der mittelpersischen apokalyptischen Traditionen,” Studia Iranica 7 (1978): 64–80Google Scholar.

⁷³ Madelung, W., Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Bibliotheca Persica, 1988), chaps. 2, 5Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Sadighi, Gh.-H., Les Mouvements religieux iraniens au lie et au I lie siècle de l'hégire (Paris, 1938)Google Scholar. It is significant that the Abu Muslimiyya are identified with the Khurramiyya by the Imami heresiographers (Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 41–42Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿari, Maqālāt, 64)Google Scholar. The neo-Mazdakite character of these movements is underlined by Yarshater, who considers them “the third stage of Mazdakism” (Yarshater, E., “Mazdakism,” in Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Yarshater, E., vol. 3, 2: Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods [1983], 1001–6)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ These indigenous beliefs are recorded by Nizām al-Mulk, who was eager to conflate the beliefs of the Abu Muslimiyya with those of the Ismaʿilis. See al-Mulk, Niẓām (Abū ʿAlī Ḥasan ṣūsī), Siyar al- Mulūk, ed. Darke, H. (Tehran, 1976), 280, 312, 320Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Yarshater, , “Mazdakism,” 1014–15Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Daftari, F., The Ismaʿ ilis. Their History and Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 140Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Amir-Moezzi, M. A., Le guide divin dans le Shîʿisme original (Paris: Verdier, 1992), 44–45Google Scholar, citing references to Nuʿmānī's Kitāb al-Ghayba. This set was expurgated by Ibn Bābūya a generation later (ibid., 46). This work is now available in English under the title The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ For a list of other unorthodox transmitters, see Modarressi, , Crisis, 22 (n. 26)Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Amir-Moezzi, , Guide divin, 251Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Ibid., 250.

⁸² Kashshī, , Rijāl, 520–28Google Scholar; Modarressi, , Crisis, 71–72Google Scholar. His name shows his father to have been a convert to Islam.

⁸³ Modarressi, , Crisis, 43 (n. 135), 71–75Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 109Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Modarressi, , Crisis, 73–75Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 68.

⁸⁷ al-Rāzī, Abū Ḥātim, Kitāb al-zīna, edited and published as a supplement to al-Samarrāʾī, ʿAbd Allāh al-Sallūm, al-Ghuluww waʾl-firaq al-ghāliya fiʾl-ḥaḍāra al-islāmiyya (Baghdad, 1972), 291–93Google Scholar; Shahrastāni, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm, al-Milal waʾl-niḥal, 2 vols., ed. Muḥannā, A. A. and A. H. Faʿūr (Beirut, 1990), 1:200Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Kashshī, , Rijāl, 577–81Google Scholar; Modarressi, , Crisis, 70Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Modarressi, , CrisisGoogle Scholar, chap. 2. The complex issue of the social and ethnic composition of the adherents of these rival doctrinal positions had not yet been seriously examined.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 38.

⁹¹ al-Rāzī, Ibn Qiba, Naqḍ kitāb al-Ishhād li-Abī Zayd al-ʿAlawī, reproduced in Modarressi, Crisis, 181Google Scholar; English trans., 216. Ibn Qiba, however, vehemently rejected the idea and considered those who advanced it infidels.

⁹² Encyclopedia Iranica, 3:354–55Google Scholar, s.v. “Badā” (W. Madelung).

⁹³ Kashshī, ,Rijāl, 516–20Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ lbn Bābūya, , Kamāl, 222Google Scholar; Modarressi, , Crisis, 65Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Khalaf in al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 102Google Scholar; alhar in Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 79Google Scholar. The wording is otherwise identical in the two sources.

⁹⁶ The will was registered with the qadi and the government by the eleventh Imam's mother, and the division of his estate followed seven years of acrimonious litigation (Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 43Google Scholar; ṣūsī, , Ghayba, 75, 138Google Scholar; Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 108Google Scholar). This division of the eleventh Imam's estate, which was later presumed to belong to the hidden Imam, echoed the division of the estate of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, which had left a strong impression on al-Sayyid al-Himyari, who had considered Muhammad in occultation (Kamāl, 35)Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Klemm, V., “Die vier sufarāʾ des Zwölfen Imam. Zur formativen Periode der Zwölfersiʿa,” Die Welt des Orients 15 (1984): 132–34Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Rāzī, , Kitāb al-zina, 290–93Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ The name of the hidden Imam was kept secret on pain of anathema (Nawbakhtī, , Firaq, 91Google Scholar; al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 104–5Google Scholar).

¹⁰⁰ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 216Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 245–46.

¹⁰² Ibid., 216–17.

¹⁰³ Ibid., 219–23; Modarressi, , Crisis, 93Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 483Google Scholar; Ṭūsi, , Ghayba, 176Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ See Arjomand, S. A., “Imam Absconditus and the Beginnings of a Theology of Occultation: Imami Shiʿism around 900 CE/280–290 AH,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 117, 1 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, forthcoming.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid. for the translation of the rescript and commentary.

¹⁰⁷ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 257–58Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ Iqbāl, , Khāndān, chap. 6Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 93Google Scholar. Sayqal (or Saqil), the slave girl who was kept under surveillance by the caliph for two years to test the allegations that she was pregnant by Hasan al-ʿAskari, moved thereafter to the house of a Nawbakhti and was maintained as the mother of the hidden Imam for more than twenty years (Iqbal, , Khāndān, 108, 245Google Scholar).

¹¹⁰ lqbāl, , Khāndān, 214–16Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ Ibid., 91, 120. Abu Sahl and his nephew also drew on the theological tract on the Imamate by Ibn al-Rawandi's teacher, Abu ʿIsa al-Warraq (d. 861), a Muʿtazilite convert from Manichaeanism (ibid., 102–3).

¹¹² Madelung, , “Imamism and Muʿtazilite Theology,” in Le Shîʿisme imâmite, ed. Fahd, T., (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 13Google Scholar.

¹¹³ These were Ibn Qiba al-Razi in Rayy, to be considered later, and Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Mumallak al-Isfahani, who came from Gurgan and lived in Isfahan (Najāshi, , Rijāl, 380–81Google Scholar).

¹¹⁴ The thesis that a viable solution to the crisis caused by the absence of the Imam required a nomocratic theology is developed in my “Consolation of Theology.”

¹¹⁵ Modarressi, , Crisis, 125Google Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Naqḍ Kitāb al-Ishhād, in Modarressi, , Crisis, 178Google Scholar; trans., 212.

¹¹⁷ Masʾala fi'l-Imāma in Modarressi, , Crisis, 138Google Scholar; trans., 143.

¹¹⁸ Ibid., 135; trans., 139.

¹¹⁹ Ibid., 136; trans., 140–41.

¹²⁰ The Waqifite position had been revived after the death of the eleventh Imam. See Arjomand, “Imam Absconditus.”

¹²¹ The text from which the above passages were translated is preserved in Bābuya, Ibn, Kamāl, 90–94Google Scholar.

¹²² See n. 96.

¹²³ al-Nadīm, Ibn, Fihrist, ed. Flügel, G. (Beirut: Khayyat Reprints, 1964 [1871]), 176Google Scholar.

¹²⁴ Kulaynī, , Kāfi, 2:126–127Google Scholar; Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 648Google Scholar.

¹²⁵ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 92–93Google Scholar; English trans., Arjomand, “Imam Absconditus.”.

¹²⁶ Muhammad was hardly an outlandish name. One of the splinter groups after the death of Imam Hasan al-ʿAskari believed that he had appointed as his successor an adult son, named Muhammad, who was under cover from fear of his uncle Jaʿfar. Another small splinter group in the Sawad of Kufa denied that the son's name was Muhammad and called him ʿAli (al-Qummī, Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 114Google Scholar).

¹²⁷ Iqbāl, (Khāndān, 110–11)Google Scholar does not reject this report outright, but considers it a possible earlier opinion. If our analysis is correct, it is Abu Sahl's later view.

¹²⁸ See Arjomand, “Consolation of Theology.”

¹²⁹ See Iqbāl's, carefully documented account in Khāndān, 115–16Google Scholar.

¹³⁰ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 247Google Scholar.

¹³¹ Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 113–14Google Scholar. Hallaj was eventually executed in 922.

¹³² Klemm, , “Vier sufarāʾ,” 141–42Google Scholar.

¹³³ Ibid., 132–41.

¹³⁴ Ibn Ruh al-Nawbakhti was, according to one report, a relatively junior figure, one of the ten representatives of Ibn al-ʿAmri in Baghdad. He must, however, also have worked for Ibn al-ʿAmri as a secretary at the bureau of the Imam because one of the decrees issued by the hidden imam to curse one of Ibn al-ʿAmri's opponents appeared in his hand (Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 245Google Scholar).

¹³⁵ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 227;Google ScholarIqbāl, , Khāndān, 215–16Google Scholar. As Klemm, (“Vier Sufarā-ʾ,” 138Google Scholar, esp. n. 63) correctly observes, Umm Kulthum's grandson is the chief source for this period.

¹³⁶ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 227–28;Google ScholarIqbāl, , Khāndān, 216Google Scholar.

¹³⁷ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 504Google Scholar.

¹³⁸ Ibid., 509; Ṭūsī, Ghayba, 195–96.

¹³⁹ After Shalmaghani's defection, Ibn Ruh was asked what the Shiʿa were to do with his books “as our houses are full of them” (Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 239Google Scholar). We know from a question answered by the Sharif al- Murtada that Shalmaghani's legal manuals were still in use a century later (Rasāʿil al-sharīf al-Murtaḍā [Qumm: Dār al-Qurʾān, 198?] 1:279)Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 239Google Scholar; Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 230–34Google Scholar.

¹⁴¹ Ibid., 218.

¹⁴² Arjomand, , Shadow of God, 43Google Scholar, citing Tūsī, , Ghayba, 241Google Scholar.

¹⁴³ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 250Google Scholar. On the late Zoroastrian political oracles, see Kippenberg, “Mittelpersischen Traditionen,” 64–70Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 147–50Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁵ Ibid., 220–21; Klemm, , “Vier Sufarāʾ,” 133Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ Modarressi, , Crisis, 78–79, 82–83Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁷ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 227, 248–50Google Scholar; Iqbāl, , Khāndān, 215, 232–34Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁸ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 516Google Scholar. The editor notes (n. 1) that the variant tāmma (complete) is found in some copies of the manuscript. The latter variant is the one given in Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 243Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 254–56Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁰ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 516Google Scholar; Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 243Google Scholar.

¹⁵¹ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 3Google Scholar.

¹⁵² Kohlberg, E., “From Imāmiyya to Ilhnāʿashariyya,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 39 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Modarressi, , Crisis, 97–98Google Scholar. The sense of doubt pervades the short sections on the Lord of the House (ṣāḥib al-dār) and the occultation in Kulayni's Kāfi (1:117–20Google Scholar), and in dating one report, Kulayni uses the term perplexity (ḥayra) instead of occultation (ghayba) as the beginning of the period (2:470)Google Scholar. A rescript issued by the secretariat at the holy seat in response to a certain Ibn Abi Ghanim similarly speaks of the believers’ “doubt and perplexity (ḥayra) concerning those in authority” (Ṭūsī, , Ghayba, 173Google Scholar).

¹⁵³ Bābūya, Ibn, Kamāl, 87–93Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁴ Arjomand, “Consolation of Theology.”