Hafizi Isma'ilism


Hafizi Isma'ilism was a branch of Musta'li Isma'ilism that emerged as a result of a split in 1132. The Hafizis accepted the Fatimid caliph al-Hafiz and his successors as imams, while the rival Tayyibi branch rejected them as usurpers, favouring the succession of the imamate along the line of al-Hafiz's nephew, al-Tayyib.
The Hafizi sect lost state backing and gradually disappeared after the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171 and the conquest of the Fatimid-aligned dynasties of Yemen by the Sunni Ayyubid dynasty shortly after. The last remnants of the Hafizi branch are attested in the 14th century in Egypt and Syria, but had died out by the 15th century.

Origin

The Hafizi branch of Isma'ilism has its origin in the assassination of the tenth Fatimid caliph, and twentieth Musta'li Isma'ili imam, al-Amir bi-Ahkam Allah on 7 October 1130. Al-Amir left only a six-month-old son, Abu'l-Qasim al-Tayyib, to succeed him, with no designated regent or a serving vizier who could assume that role. As a result, Abd al-Majid, a cousin of al-Amir and then the oldest surviving male of the dynasty, was proclaimed regent with the backing of a few of al-Amir's favourites.
It is unclear, however, whether that regency was in the name of the infant al-Tayyib, who disappears completely from the record at this point. Modern scholars speculate that al-Tayyib may have died in infancy, possibly even before his father; but at least one contemporary anonymous Syrian source maintains that he was murdered on Abd al-Majid's orders. Instead of al-Tayyib, the new regime maintained that al-Amir had left a pregnant concubine, and that the caliph, having dreamed of his impending death, had declared this unborn child to be a son and his designated successor, thus effectively bypassing al-Tayyib. What came of this pregnancy is likewise unclear, as different sources report that the concubine either bore a daughter or that the foetus could not be found. In the event, this concern proved moot, for within a fortnight of al-Amir's death, a military coup brought the strongman Kutayfat to power. Kutayfat all but abolished the Fatimid regime, and began dismantling Isma'ilism as the official doctrine of the state. At this point, at the latest, al-Tayyib was eliminated. Kutayfat's regime was overthrown when he was assassinated by Fatimid loyalists on 8 December 1131. Abd al-Majid was released from his prison and restored as regent.
of al-Hafiz, minted at Alexandria in 1149
Whether Abd al-Majid had previously harboured designs on the caliphate or not, the lack of an heir to al_Amir meant that the continuation of the Fatimid dynasty and the Isma'ili imamate required that he succeed as imam and caliph, since according to Isma'ili doctrine, "God does not leave the Moslem Community without an Imam to lead them on the right path". This was done in a decree on 23 January 1132, whereby Abd al-Majid assumed the title al-Ḥāfiz li-Dīn Allāh. For the first time in the Fatimid dynasty, power was not passed from father to son, creating a radical departure from established practice that had to be addressed and justified. Thus the sijill proclaimed al-Hafiz's right to the imamate, likening it to the sun, which had been briefly eclipsed by al-Amir's death and Kutayfat's usurpation, but had now reappeared in accordance with the divine purpose. No reference to any son of al-Amir was made. Al-Hafiz claimed that he had—secretly—received the designation as successor by al-Amir, and that Caliph al-Mustansir had foreseen this event. Earlier examples of breaks in the direct succession of the imamate, chiefly the designation by Muhammad of his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib, were brought up to buttress his claim.
Al-Hafiz's highly irregular accession and claims to the imamate were largely accepted by the Isma'ili faithful in the Fatimid domains in Egypt, Nubia, and the Levant, but rebuffed by some communities. Most notably, this was the case in the only other major Isma'ili realm, Yemen, where the hitherto staunchly pro-Fatimid Sulayhid dynasty broke up. The Sulayhid queen, Arwa, upheld the rights of al-Tayyib, whose birth had been announced to her in a letter by al-Amir, while the regional dynasties of the Hamdanids and the Zurayids recognized al-Hafiz's claims. The issue was not merely political, but, given the pivotal role of the imam in the Isma'ili faith, also intensely religious. In the words of Stern, "on it depended the continuity of institutional religion as well as the personal salvation of the believer". Al-Hafiz's accession produced a major schism in the Musta'li branch of Isma'ilism, between the adherents of the imamate of al-Tayyib, pitted against supporters of al-Hafiz and his successors. As Stern emphasizes, the issue was "not so much the person of the claimant that weighed with his followers — it was the divine right personified in the legitimate heir that counted".

History

Inextricably bound to the Fatimid regime, the Hafiziyya survived until the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171, but declined and disappeared quickly after, unlike its two rival branches, the Nizaris and Tayyibis, which survive to the present day.

Egypt

Hafizi Isma'ilism remained the state religion in Egypt until Saladin proclaimed the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliphs over Egypt in September 1171. Upon the death of the imam–caliph al-Adid shortly after, the members of the Fatimid family were placed under effective house arrest in the palace. Al-Adid's eldest son and designated heir, Da'ud, was recognized by the Hafizi faithful as the rightful imam, but he, like his own son and successor Sulayman Badr al-Din, lived and died in captivity.
The mostly Hafizi Egyptian Isma'ilis were persecuted by the new Ayyubid regime, with many fleeing to Upper Egypt. A series of abortive conspiracies and uprisings under pro-Fatimid sympathizers or Fatimid pretenders erupted in the 1170s and continued sporadically, with much diminished impact, until the end of the century. As a result of a pro-Fatimid conspiracy under Umara ibn Abi al-Hasan al-Yamani in Cairo in 1174, many of the supporters of the deposed dynasty were exiled to Upper Egypt, which became a hotbed of pro-Fatimid activity. A rebellion erupted there in 1174/5, under Kanz ad-Dawla, but was suppressed. In 1176/7 a pretender claiming to be Da'ud found wide support in Qift in northern Egypt. When the real Da'ud died as a prisoner in Cairo in 1207/8, the Hafizis asked the Ayyubid sultan al-Adil I for permission to mourn him in public. The sultan granted them permission, but used the occasion to arrest their da'is and confiscate their property.
Sulayman ibn Da'ud died in 1248, apparently childless, but some of his partisans claimed that he had a son who was hidden. As late as 1298, a pretender claiming to be the son of Sulayman ibn Da'ud appeared in Upper Egypt, but by this time the Hafizis—and Isma'ilism in general—had been reduced to small isolated enclaves. Still later, about the year 1324, an Isma'ili community is recorded in Usfun in Upper Egypt, and in Syria a Hafizi community is mentioned at the same time in the Baqi'a mountains near Safad.

Yemen

In the Yemen, the Hafizi Isma'ili cause also lost all official backing with the Ayyubid conquest in 1174. The fall of the Hamdanids and the Zurayids being the two dynasties that supported the Hafizi Isma'ili cause in Yemen. The Taiyabi Da'i al-Mutlaq Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Walid composed a polemical treatise and poems against the "Majidiyyah" as they were referred to by the Taiyabi, but they were already becoming a rare minority. The polemical treatise is called Risālat tuḥfat al-murtād wa-ghuṣṣat al-aḍdād, a refutation of the rival Hafizi Isma'ili claims on the imamate, edited by Rudolf Strothmann in Gnosis-Texte der Ismailiten. Arabische Handschrift Ambrosiana H 75, Göttingen 1943, pp. 159–170. The 19th Da'i al Mutlaq Idris Imad al-Din acknowledged that the Hafizi branch no longer existed in his time during the 15th century in northern Yemen.

List of Hafizi imams

  2. Ali
  3. Hasan ibn Ali
  4. Husayn ibn Ali
  5. Ali ibn Husayn Zayn al-Abidin
  6. Muhammad al-Baqir
  7. Ja'far al-Sadiq
  8. Isma'il ibn Jafar
  9. Muhammad ibn Isma'il
  10. Ahmad al-Wafi, died 829, Da'i and "hidden Imam", son of Muhammad ibn Isma'il according to Fatimid Isma'ili tradition
  11. Muhammad at-Taqi, died 840, Da'i and "hidden Imam"
  12. Abdullah ar-Radi, died 909, Da'i and "hidden Iman"
  13. Abdullah al-Mahdi Billah, died 934, Da'i who openly declared himself as Imam, 1st Fatimid Caliph
  14. Al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah, died 946, 2nd Fatimid Caliph
  15. Al-Mansur Billah, died 953, 3rd Fatimid Caliph
  16. Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah, died 975, 4th Fatimid Caliph
  17. Abu Mansur Nizar al-Aziz Billah, died 996, 5th Fatimid Caliph
  18. Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, 6th Fatimid Caliph, disappeared 1021
  19. Ali az-Zahir, died 1036, 7th Fatimid Caliph
  20. Al-Mustansir Billah, died 1094, 8th Fatimid Caliph
  21. Ahmad al-Musta'li Billah, died 1101, 9th Fatimid Caliph, son of Al-Mustansir Billah
  22. Al-Amir bi-Ahkam Allah, died 1130, 10th Fatimid Caliph
  23. Abu'l-Maymun Abd al-Majid al-Hafiz Li-Dinillah, died 1149, 11th Fatimid Caliph
  24. Abu Mansur Ismail al-Zafir bi-Amr Allah, died 1154, 12th Fatimid Caliph
  25. Abu'l-Qasim Isa al-Faiz bi-Nasr Allah, died 1160, 13th Fatimid Caliph
  26. Abu Muhammad Abdallah al-Adid Li-Dinillah, died 1171, 14th and last Fatimid Caliph; at his death, Saladin abolished the Fatimid regime
  27. Daud al-Hamid-lil-lah, died 1208, died in prison under the Ayyubid dynasty.
  28. Sulayman Badr al-Din, died 1248, died in prison under the Ayyubid dynasty without issue, ending the line of Hafizi imams