Yadavaprakasa. Rules and Regulations of Brahmanical Asceticism:
Yatidharmasamuccaya of Yadava Prakasa. Albany, N.Y.,
1995.
DAVID M. KNIPE (1987)
Revised Bibliography
TAPU SEE POLYNESIAN RELIGIONS; TABOO
TAQ ̄IYAH (“safeguarding, protection”) and kitma ̄n
(“concealment”) are terms applied, primarily in the Sh ̄ıE ̄ı
branches of Islam, to two broader types of religious phenom-
ena: (1) the “prudential concealment” of one’s allegiance to
a minority religious group in danger of persecution and (2)
the esoteric “discipline of the arcane,” the restriction of a
spiritual reality or mystery (or its symbolic form) only to
those inwardly capable of grasping its truth.
JURIDICAL AND ETHICAL DIMENSIONS. The classical discus-
sions found in all Islamic legal schools are based on various
QurDanic verses (16:106, 3:28, 40:28, etc.) permitting the
neglect of certain religious duties in situations of compulsion
or necessity. In each school an elaborate casuistry was devel-
oped, detailing the special conditions for such exceptions.
However, the crucial practical question for Sh ̄ıE ̄ı groups,
given the endangered minority position of the Sh ̄ıE ̄ı imams
and their followers from earliest Islamic times onward, was
that of concealing the outward signs of their Sh ̄ıE ̄ı allegiance
(for example, their distinctive forms of the ritual prayer and
profession of faith) under threatening circumstances. Hence,
Sh ̄ıE ̄ı legal discussions of taq ̄ıyah traditionally focused on this
aspect, emphasizing, for example, surah 16:106, which was
taken to describe the divine forgiveness of a companion of
the Prophet, EAmma ̄r ibn Yas ̄ır, who had been forced to deny
his faith by the idolators of Mecca.
Sunn ̄ı polemics against Shiism have traditionally
stressed this narrowly prudential aspect of taq ̄ıyah, portray-
ing it as a sign of moral or religious hypocrisy, passivity, and
the like. However, neither that polemic (which overlooks the
central theme of martyrdom and heroic resistance in Sh ̄ıE ̄ı
piety and sacred history) nor the narrowly ethical reasonings
of the legal schools (including those of the Sh ̄ıEah) accurately
conveys the distinctively positive symbolic function of
taq ̄ıyah: for the Sh ̄ıEah themselves, and like the martyrdom
of so many imams and their supporters, it is a perennial and
fundamental form of “witnessing” their essential role as the
faithful spiritual elite of Islam, and not simply another com-
munal sect or school.
SPIRITUAL AND ESOTERIC DIMENSIONS. This uniquely Sh ̄ıE ̄ı
conception of taq ̄ıyah (or kitma ̄n) as a high spiritual duty,
rather than a pragmatic necessity, is grounded in a large body
of reported sayings (h:ad ̄ıth) of the first Sh ̄ıE ̄ı imam, EAl ̄ı ibn
Ab ̄ı T:a ̄lib (d. AH 40/661 CE), and other early imams (notably
Muh:ammad al-Ba ̄qir and JaEfar al-S:a ̄diq) which repeatedly
stress the positive, essential role of taq ̄ıyah as an integral part
of religion (d ̄ın) and true piety (taqwa ̄; see QurDan 49:13).
In Sh ̄ıE ̄ı tradition, the concept of taq ̄ıyah is intimately bound
up with the fundamental role of the imams, and their initi-
ates, as the divinely instituted guardians of the esoteric wis-
dom or “hidden secret” (sirr maknu ̄n) constituting the essen-
tial spiritual core and intention of the QurDanic revelation.
In this context, taq ̄ıyah refers primarily to the initiate’s strict
responsibility to divulge the forms of that spiritual knowl-
edge only to those rare individuals capable of perceiving (and
safeguarding) their inner truth.
Similar assumptions of esotericism—especially the basic
distinction between a public level of formal “belief” and ritu-
al practice, and a higher level of contemplative insight and
perception accessible only to a spiritual or intellectual elite—
were equally fundamental to such widespread (though by no
means specifically Sh ̄ıE ̄ı) Islamic spiritual traditions as Su-
fism and the philosophic schools. Those assumptions, along
with corresponding practices, came to be pervasive not only
in the high literate culture (for example, S:u ̄f ̄ı mystical poet-
ry) but also in social domains not involving strictly “reli-
gious” activities. Moreover, the social and political condi-
tions underlying taq ̄ıyah in Sh ̄ıE ̄ı circles, and such later
offshoots as the Druze or Nus:ayr ̄ıyah, likewise encouraged
similar precautionary developments among other minority
religious groups or sects, whether Islamic (certain S:u ̄f ̄ı
t:ar ̄ıqahs, religio-political “brotherhoods,” and so forth) or
non-Islamic. Hence, “taq ̄ıyah-like” phenomena—whether or
not justified in specifically Sh ̄ıE ̄ı terms—have continued to
form an essential, if still relatively unstudied, dimension of
religious and social life in many regions of the Islamic world
down to the present day.BIBLIOGRAPHY
For the classical Islamic legal sources, see R. Strothmann’s
“Tak: ̄ıya,” in The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden,
1961), which includes non-Sh ̄ıE ̄ı treatments; Hamid En-
ayat’s Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin, 1982),
which touches on contemporary Sh ̄ıE ̄ı political reinterpreta-
tions; and especially Etan Kohlberg’s “Some Ima ̄m ̄ı-Sh ̄ıEa
Views on Taqiyya,” Journal of the American Oriental Society
95 (1975): 395–402, with extensive bibliographic references.
Henry Corbin’s En Islam iranien, 4 vols. (Paris, 1971–1972;
English translation in preparation), contains numerous
translated canonical sayings of the Sh ̄ıE ̄ı imams concerning
taq ̄ıyah and its esoteric underpinnings, as well as later devel-
opments; see index under ketma ̄n and taq ̄ıyeh. For illustra-
tions from later Sh ̄ıE ̄ı thought and references to parallel phe-
nomena in other Islamic traditions such as philosophy and
Sufism, see my work The Wisdom of the Throne (Princeton,
1981). References to the actual social manifestations of
taq ̄ıyah at any period are usually fragmentary (given the very
nature of the phenomenon) and must be gleaned from auto-
biographies, travelers’ reports, and so on. Excellent illustra-
tions for nineteenth-century Iran may be found in Comte de
Gobineau’s Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale,
2d ed. (1863; reprint, Paris, 1971), and Edward Granville
Browne’s A Year amongst the Persians (1893; reprint, Cam-
bridge, 1959). For representative developments in the IndianTAQ ̄IYAH 8999