L'imamat et l'occupation selon l'imamisme: Etude bibliographique et histoire des textes.

• Author: Newman, Andrew J.
• Position: Book review

L'imamat et l'occupation selon l'imamisme: Etude bibliographique et histoire des textes. By HASSAN ANSARI. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 134. Leiden: BRILL, 2017. Pp. xx + 310 + 268 (Ar.). $245, [euro]204.

Here is a gem of a contribution to the field of Twelver Shi'i studies! Hassan Ansari has set out to document the evolution of the concepts of the imamate and the occultation across a range of early Imami Shi'i sources and in the process to gather the relevant passages from these works into one volume. The result is some three hundred pages of identification of and background on the authors of these sources and the works themselves and nearly three hundred more pages of citations from many of those same works.

The French-language portion of the text comprises a preface, a brief introductory overview of both the imamate and the occultation, and two chapters. In the discussion of the imamate (pp. 1-5), Ansari briefly examines the Shi'i understanding of its necessity and of there being an Imam to explicate the revelation and "la Loi et l'interpretation spirituelle du Livre" (p. 3). The absence of the Twelfth and last Imam from the community, from 260/874, generated a rationalist Mu'tazili-style explication of the need for a clerical hierarchy and for the lay obligation to follow directions set by these clerics (p. 4). As to the occultation itself (pp. 6-11), Ansari reminds the reader of the crisis facing the community from the time of the eleventh Imam and his passing without an apparent heir, of the departure of many believers for other sects, but also of the evolution of the understanding of the Twelfth Imam as both qa'im and mahdi. With the onset of the greater occultation from 329/941, works on the occultation took two directions, one involving the gathering of hadith on the subject and the other a more theological discourse. The latter was eventually dominated by such rationalist theologians as al-Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 413/1022) and al-Sharif al-Murtada (d. 436/1044) who. doubling as jurists, asserted their authority as the Imam's representatives during the latter's prolonged absence.

The meat of the volume consists of the two chapters. Chapter one is divided into two sections. In the first (pp. 12-42), Ansari notes the major works on the imamate produced by the very earliest scholars of the Qum school of traditionists. He then discusses such later scholars as 'Ali b. al-Husayn b. Musa b. Babawayh al-Qummi (d. 329/941), the father...