Qarmatians


The Qarmatians were a syncretic branch of Sevener Ismaili Shia Islam. They were centred in al-Hasa, where they established a religious-utopian republic in 899 CE. They are most known for their revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate.
Mecca was sacked by a Qarmatian leader, Abu Tahir al-Jannabi, outraging the Muslim world, particularly with their theft of the Black Stone and desecration of the Zamzam Well with corpses during the Hajj season of 930 CE.

Name

The origin of the name "Qarmatian" is uncertain. According to some sources, the name derives from the surname of the sect's founder, Hamdan Qarmat. The name qarmat probably comes from the Aramaic for "short-legged", "red-eyed" or "secret teacher". Other sources, however, say that the name comes from the Arabic verb قرمط, which means "to make the lines close together in writing" or "to walk with short steps". The word "Qarmatian" can also refer to a type of Arabic script.
The Qarāmiṭah in southern Iraq were also known as "the Greengrocers" because of a preacher Abu Hatim, who, in 906 or 907, forbade animal slaughter as well as the eating of vegetables such as alliums. It is not clear if his teachings persisted.

History

Early developments

Under the Abbasid Caliphate, various Shiite groups organised in secret opposition to their rule. Among them were the supporters of the proto-Ismā‘īlī community, of whom the most prominent group were called the Mubārakiyyah.
According to the Ismaili school of thought, Imām Ja'far al-Sadiq designated his second son, Isma'il ibn Jafar, as heir to the Imamate. However, Ismā‘īl predeceased his father. Some claimed he had gone into hiding, but the proto-Ismā‘īlī group accepted his death and therefore accordingly recognized Ismā‘īl's eldest son, Muhammad ibn Ismail, as Imām. He remained in contact with the Mubārakiyyah group, most of whom resided in Kufa.
The split among the Mubārakiyyah came with the death of Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl. The majority of the group denied his death; they recognized him as the Mahdi. The minority believed in his death and would eventually emerge in later times as the Isma'ili Fatimid Caliphate, the precursors to all modern groups.
The majority Ismā‘īlī missionary movement settled in Salamiyah and had great success in Khuzestan, where the Ismā‘īlī leader al-Husayn al-Ahwāzī converted the Kūfan man Ḥamdān in 874 CE, who took the name Qarmaṭ after his new faith. Qarmaṭ and his theologian brother-in-law ‘Abdān prepared southern Iraq for the coming of the Mahdi by creating a military and religious stronghold. Other such locations grew up in Yemen, in Eastern Arabia in 899, and in North Africa. These attracted many new Shi'i followers due to their activist and messianic teachings. This new proto-Qarmaṭī movement continued to spread into Greater Iran and then into Transoxiana.

The Qarmatian Revolution

A change in leadership in Salamiyah in 899 led to a split in the movement. The minority Ismā‘īlīs, whose leader had taken control of the Salamiyah centre, began to proclaim their teachings - that Imām Muḥammad had died, and that the new leader in Salamiyah was in fact his descendant come out of hiding. Qarmaṭ and his brother-in-law opposed this and openly broke with the Salamiyids; when ‘Abdān was assassinated, he went into hiding and subsequently repented. Qarmaṭ became a missionary of the new Imām, Abdullah al-Mahdi Billah, who founded the Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa in 909.
Nonetheless, the dissident group retained the name Qarmaṭī. Their greatest stronghold remained in Bahrain, which at this period included much of eastern Arabia as well as the islands that comprise the present state. It was under Abbasid control at the end of the ninth century, but the Zanj Rebellion in Basra disrupted the power of Baghdad. The Qarmaṭians seized their opportunity under their leader, Abu Sa'id al-Jannabi, who captured Bahrain’s capital Hajr and al-Hasa in 899, which he made the capital of his republic and once in control of the state he sought to set up a utopian society.
The Qarmaṭians instigated what one scholar termed a "century of terror" in Kufa. They considered the pilgrimage to Mecca a superstition and once in control of the Bahrayni state, they launched raids along the pilgrim routes crossing the Arabian Peninsula: in 906 they ambushed the pilgrim caravan returning from Mecca and massacred 20,000 pilgrims.
Under al-Jannabi, the Qarmaṭians came close to raiding Baghdad in 927, and sacked Mecca and Medina in 930. In their attack on Islam's holiest sites, the Qarmatians desecrated the Zamzam Well with corpses of Hajj pilgrims and took the Black Stone from Mecca to al-Hasa. Holding the Black Stone to ransom, they forced the Abbasids to pay a huge sum for its return in 952.
minted by the Qarmatians during their occupation of Palestine in the 970s
The revolution and desecration shocked the Muslim world and humiliated the Abbasids. But little could be done; for much of the tenth century the Qarmatians were the most powerful force in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, controlling the coast of Oman and collecting tribute from the caliph in Baghdad as well as from a rival Isma'ili imam in Cairo, the head of the Fatimid Caliphate, whose power they did not recognize.

Qarmatian society

The land they ruled over was extremely wealthy with a huge slave-based economy according to academic Yitzhak Nakash:

Collapse

After defeat by the Abbasids in 976 the Qarmatians began to look inwards and their status was reduced to that of a local power. This had important repercussions for the Qarmatians' ability to extract tribute from the region; according to Arabist historian Curtis Larsen:
In Bahrain and eastern Arabia the Qarmatian state was replaced by the Uyunid dynasty, while it is believed that by the middle of the eleventh century Qarmatian communities in Iraq, Iran, and Transoxiana had either been won over by Fatimid proselytising or had disintegrated. The last contemporary mention of the Qarmatians is that of Nasir Khusraw, who visited them in 1050, although Ibn Battuta, visiting Qatif in 1331, found it inhabited by Arab tribes whom he described as "extremist Shia", which historian Juan Cole has suggested is how a fourteenth-century Sunni would describe Isma'ilis.

Imamate of Seven Imams

According to Qarmatians, the number of imams was fixed, with Seven Imāms preordained by God. These groups considers Muhammad ibn Isma'il to be the messenger - prophet , Imām al-Qā'im and Mahdi to be preserved in hiding, which is referred to as the Occultation.
ImāmPersonagePeriod
1Ali ibn Abi Taleb
Imām
2Hasan ibn Ali
3Husayn ibn Ali
4Ali ibn Husayn Zayn al-Abidin
5Muhammad al-Baqir
6Ja'far al-Sadiq
7Muhammad ibn Isma'il
Imām al-Qā'im al-Mahdi also
a messenger - prophet

Ismaili imams who were not accepted as legitimate by Qarmatians

In addition, the following Ismaili imams after Muhammad ibn Isma'il had been considered heretics of dubious origins by certain Qarmatian groups, who refused to acknowledge the imamate of the Fatimids and clung to their belief in the coming of the Mahdi.
writes about the fate of the successors of Abu Tahir al-Jannabi: