The Qarmatian Da’wah and Grievance: An Overview
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2022
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Melbourne Authors
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Asia Institute
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Honours thesis
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Open Access
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© 2022 Lincoln Plummer
Abstract
No revolution, rebellion or uprising has been started by those who looked at the world and did not wish to change it. Throughout history, rabblerousers and revolutionaries alike have found their most fertile ground amongst the discontent, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed and the disillusioned. From its inception, Shi’ite Islam has planted its flag as the Islam of the have-nots and sought to rally support from those who had felt wronged by the world around them, using the rallying cries of the alleged usurpation of Ali ibn Abi Talib by Abu Bakr, the death of Ali’s son Hussain at Karbala in 680 and the mistreatment of the Ahl al-Bayt (the family of the Prophet Muhammad and Ali) by the Sunni authorities in order to draw the support of the proverbial underclasses of Muslim society. In the history of Shi’ite Islam, we find a notable example of this tendency to rally the aggrieved in the Qarmatian movement. Doctrinally a hodgepodge mix of Isma’ili Shi’ism, Zoroastrian cosmology and Christian ideas of the Logos, Qarmatianism promised a cycle of renewal at the end of the last of seven eras in the Persian tradition and shared property amongst its followers. Nevertheless, the Qarmatian movement found adherents from Syria to Iraq, Bahrain to Iran and even as far-flung as Multan and Sindh in what is now Pakistan.
At one point in time, both the Abbasid Sunni caliphs and Shi’ite Fatimid caliphs paid tribute to a Qarmatian polity in Bahrain, and the sect cemented itself in infamy when its adherents sacked Mecca in 930. It is this ability to leave such an outsized mark on the history of the Islamic world in spite of the esoteric and fragmented nature of the movement that makes the Qarmatians such a unique presence in the historical record and leads to the question of whether Qarmatian beliefs diffused into future ghulat practice, or whether the material conditions that allowed Qarmatianism to flourish changed enough to render the missionary work of its adherents no longer effective. This thesis aims to address the following questions;
1. How did Qarmatianism play to the local grievances and beliefs of local populations in order to gain broad support?
2. Did Qarmatian missionaries build on existing Isma’ili missionary networks or pioneer their own, and how did Fatimid Isma’ili missionary networks adapt in response to this?
3. To what extent did Qarmatianism shape the religious practices of its adherents as opposed to being shaped by their pre-existing beliefs?
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Keywords
Islam, Qarmatians, Ismailism, Ismailis, Shiism, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Jannabids, Dawah, Syria