ISLAMIC MYSTICAL LITERATURE 663"exaggeration," included Abdallah ibn Saba, described by loan Culianu as "the
archheretic of Islamic ghuluw"—a figure comparable to Simon Magus in the
history of Christian gnosticism— who was devoted to Ali in Kufa, Iraq, and
continued to be a proponent of Ali even after Ali's assassination. Eventually
forms of Islamic exaggeration led to the development of several thinkers, ac-
tivists, and schools of thought, some of them quite radical: Isma'ilites, Assas-
sins, 'Alawites, Nusayris, Druzes, Sufis.
loan Culianu speculates on the roots of these ghulat in Islam:
How might gnostic myths have reached the Ghulat and the Is-
ma'iliyah? They were probably transmitted by the so-called
mawali, or "clients," from Kufa. The mawali were foreigners con-
verted to Islam after the conquest of Persia's capital, Seleucia-
Ctesiphon... and its transfer to Kufa under the Umayyads
(637-638 C.E.). Among the mawali, Jewish, Christian, Zoroas-
trian, gnostic, and Manichaean ideas were represented.^8Some of the ghulat put their speculative thought into literature. Two reve-
latory texts that stem from these traditions are the Mother of Books (Umm al-
kitab)^9 and the Book of Shadows (Kitab al-azillah). A portion of the former
work, the Mother of Books, is presented here. The Mother of Books comes
from the late eighth century, from the town of Kufa, famous for its ghulat. It is
a text that deals, like so much of the literature of gnosis in this volume, with
creation and the proper interpretation of creation. The strongest case for a
gnostic understanding of the Mother of Books has been made by Heinz
Halm.^10 Halm understands the Mother of Books to present a gnostic mytho-
logical account in Shi'ite form. The divine manifests itself in a fivefold fashion,
reminiscent, suggests Halm, of the divine father's realm of five (pentad) in the
Secret Book of John, but in the Mother of Books the five are identified with
prophet Muhammad; his son-in-law, Ali; his daughter, Fatima; and his grand-
sons, Hasan and Husayn. In Manichaean literature one of the ways the five is
expressed is in five trees of paradise, a motif that also occurs in the Gospel of
Thomas (saying 19). Five trees of paradise are also discussed in the Mother of
Books. The arrogance of the gnostic world ruler, so central to gnostic cos-
mogonies, finds its corollary in the Mother of Books in the arrogant Azazi'il.- Culianu, "Gnosticism," in The Encyclopedia of Religion 5:575.
- The epithet "Mother of Books" is also commonly applied to the Qur'an itself.
- Halm, Die islamische Gnosis.