unified as well. The ShiÀites posed a danger not only of military uprisings on
the periphery but also in the core of the empire; in Baghdad itself, the ShiÀites
made up 30 percent of the population (Massignon, 1982: 240, 252). In the
early 800s, Caliph al-MaÁmun had attempted to negotiate a settlement by
offering the succession to the current ShiÀite pretender; the failure of this move
led to the ill-fated Inquisition, an attempt to assert caliphal autonomy from
theological factions (Lapidus, 1988: 124). Now, in the early 900s, the caliph’s
regime was full of ShiÀite administrators, especially in finances and tax collec-
tion, though reserving the executive branch for Sunnites; his personal staff was
drawn from MuÀtazilites. There was constant concern for ShiÀite rebellions in
the provinces and conspiracies at court. In this context, al-Nawbakhti (100 in
Figure 8.1), a wealthy Baghdad businessman involved in court finances, for-
mulated the doctrine of the Hidden Imam. The Imam was the alleged successor
to the Prophet, on the side which lost the earliest civil war. Al-Nawbakhti now
held that the twelfth Imam was in hiding, and would reappear at some time
in the future to establish the reign of justice. This also meant giving up concrete
claim to the succession and transforming the Imam into a transcendental
symbol, depicted as a luminous divine substance transmitted to a human
intermediary in each generation. A colleague of al-Nawbakhti (102 in Figure
8.2) put the ShiÀites on a comparable basis with the Sunnites by formulating
their own canonical Imamite law and hadith.
For a time the ShiÀite front won political support. The caliphate, which had
been gradually losing de facto power in the provinces since the mid-800s, was
subordinated in 945 by a Buwayid sultan. The Buwayids encouraged Imamism,
as the doctrine no longer threatened rebellion in favor of an heir to the line of
Ali, while it delegitimated the caliphate and was indifferent to secular rule. The
chief remaining ShiÀite faction, the IsmaÀilis, established a rival caliphate in
Tunisia in the early 900s, and conquered Egypt and Syria from the crumbling
Baghdad caliphate in 970. No ShiÀite orthodoxy could be imposed, however.
The empire continued to disintegrate, and the Sunnites shifted to other power
bases outside the crumbling capital—new conquering states from the east, as
well as the Sufi missionary movements spreading from within.
Along with geopolitical disintegration and shifting religious fortunes came
intellectual realignment. On the Sunnite side were the bulk of the scriptural
scholars in the law schools, along with the AshÀarite theologians and the Sufis.
The eventual synthesizer of this entire alliance would be al-Ghazali. On the
ShiÀite side, appeared a coalition combining a new theology with themes of the
entire non-orthodox philosophical and scientific community. Here the synthesis
came in two phases: first with the Brethren of Purity, then in more sophisticated
form with Ibn Sina.
Intellectual history is driven by conflict, and therefore is full of ironic
Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom^ •^415