Organisers: Zahra Azhar, Edmund Hayes, Kate Pukhovaia (Leiden University) and Ferenc Csikes (University of Birmingham)
We invite proposals for a workshop on Shiʿi manuscripts and archives from the medieval and early modern periods, to be held at Leiden University on 8–9 December 2026. The workshop aims to advance scholarly conversations on manuscript and archival production in Shiʿi communities across the Islamic world, while fostering collaboration between established scholars, doctoral researchers, librarians, archivists, and early-career academics.
The Leiden workshop will have two components: presentations in which scholars report on work in progress, and a hands-on training session focused on reading and comparing manuscripts. The training session will involve direct engagement with Leiden Library Special Collections materials.
Recent decades have witnessed a dramatic expansion in access to Shiʿi written heritage through digitisation, cataloguing initiatives, and the discovery of previously understudied collections. Yet significant gaps remain in our understanding of manuscript transmission, archival practices, and the social histories of textual production. The workshop seeks to bring together scholars working across disciplines and regions to explore these questions and to highlight lesser-known manuscript collections and archives, particularly those located outside Europe. The training workshop focuses on the question of “what is a Shii manuscript and what makes a manuscript Shii?
We welcome papers employing a wide range of methodologies, including but not limited to:
Philology and textual criticism
Codicology and palaeography
Book history and manuscript culture
Archival studies
Digital Humanities and digital cataloguing
Intellectual, social, and religious history
Possible themes include:
Unexplored or understudied Shiʿi manuscript collections and archives
Digitisation, cataloguing, and accessibility of manuscript resources
Transmission of works in law (fiqh), legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh), hadith, rijāl, biography, theology, and related disciplines
Early modern practices of compilation, preservation, and redaction
Anthologies (majmūʿāt), miscellanies (jongs), and other manuscript formats
Patronage, readership, and the social contexts of manuscript production
Manuscripts and archival materials as sources for histories of enslavement and enslaved people
The relationship between manuscript and print cultures
The workshop will combine research presentations with a practical training session focused on reading, comparing, and analysing manuscripts. Participants will also have the opportunity to engage with Leiden’s important manuscript collections, including its new acquisition of Shii manuscripts.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words and a short biographical note (100 words maximum) by 15 September 2026.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 1 October 2026.
Please send submissions and enquiries to: z.azhar@hum.leidenuniv.nl
We particularly encourage applications from doctoral students and early-career researchers.
The workshop forms part of a broader initiative to strengthen the study of Shiʿi manuscripts and archives and to build a sustainable international network of scholars working in this field.
Dr Leone Pecorini Goodall (PhD awarded by the University of Edinburgh)
received the 2025 BRAIS Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World. This international prize is awarded annually to one outstanding doctoral thesis. Because of the overwhelming amount of submissions, this year 2 PhD dissertations received the award.
Leone’s dissertation is entitled:
Sons and Daughters of the Caliphate: Succession Politics in the Marwanid and early Abbasid family (64-216/684-831).
More information on the thesis and the prize can be found here
Fragment (Wandmalerei) 836 – 892
Credit: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst / Christian Krug
This conference seeks to illuminate the embedding of imams (and uncanonised candidates for imamate) as actors within their social, institutional and historical context before the canonization of an unbroken line of Twelve imams (260/874).
It will consist of a conference with traditional presentations, combined with a more workshop-style discussion of sources and approaches aimed at generating solid conversations about the state of the field.
The Imami imams are familiar as scholars and sources of knowledge, but they were, crucially, also elite members of the Islamic empire and as such occupied a pre-eminent place within society, serving as landowners, powerbrokers and community leaders. They also married into the other major families including the dynastic families of the Umayyad and Abbasids. Many of their followers occupied eminent positions within the polities of their day, while a number of imams (Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, in primis) serve as transmitters of religious knowledge for non-Shiʿi communities. They were, thus, embedded within early Islamic society and played a role in its formation.
A core assumption of this conference will be that the institutions of the Imami Shiʿi imamate came into being in historical time at some point after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, but that it is not clear exactly when or how this occurred: key questions, then, will be to interrogate potential methodologies for tracing different aspects of when and how a distinctive Imami imamate emerged. The conference will not accept papers that are purely doctrinal or intellectual history, without a large component of social or institutional contextualisation.
The organisers welcome papers addressing the following themes for the period 700-900 CE:
Imami vs Caliphal authority: in what sense were the imams, imams?
The household of the imam
Access to the imams
Socio-political studies of the lives of individual imams
The development or role of the “Shi’i” community in specific regions/cities (e.g., Qom, Kufa, Medina, Baghdad)
Inheritance and bequesting practices
Instruments of succession – waṣiyya,naṣṣ vs bayʿa
Estates and property
Kinship ties between the imams and other Arabian elites
The role of companions of imams in the caliphal court
Networks of companions (geographical and social)
Imams at the caliphal court (politics, imprisonment etc.)
Methodologies and sources for writing Shiʿi social and institutional history
Comparisons between the social and institutional positioning, and followers of different candidates and conceptions of imamate: such as Zayd b. ʿAlī, ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ, Abū Ḥanīfa, or the caliph al-Manṣūr
Failed imams
Alqāb as indicators of claims to authority
Inscriptions and papyri as sources for the early Shiʿa
Presentations will be 45 minutes long and the organisers are open to allowing presenters to choose how they wish to use their time, whether as a traditional presentation (30 minutes talk + 15 minutes Q&A), by pre-circulating primary sources you wish to discuss or other suitable arrangements. The organisers intend to publish contributions from the conference as either an edited volume/special issue and will be in touch with further details and timeline once the speakers have been determined.
In much existing scholarship, our understanding of Muslim groups in early Islam has been gauged through a reliance on later works of heresiography and doxography. These fourth/tenth century works portray a diverse range of groups (including the Imami, Zaydi, and Ismaili Shiʿa, Kharijis, Muʿtazilis, Murjiʾis, and various others who eventually came under the banner of ‘Sunnism’) emerging in the first three centuries of Islam, often over issues surrounding the rightful political leadership of the Muslim community and later coalescing around other theological beliefs which facilitated more coherent, structured systems for members of these groups to adhere to. Studies engaging with such works have greatly enriched our understanding of the doctrines and beliefs ascribed to these groups, their evolution over time, and what images the sources construct of them.
In studies on the social dynamics of this period, however, more attention has been paid to relations between Muslim and non-Muslim groups through processes such as conversion and cross-communal engagement with alternative legal systems than has been between the various Muslim groups. There is arguably a lacuna in thinking about how individuals belonging to divergent Muslim groups interacted, and how the interactions between them were practically structured. Research on interactions between Muslims belonging to divergent groups has tended to focus on theological polemics or political violence, rather than day-to-day interactions. We therefore lack a deeper understanding of what it meant to belong to a Muslim group during this early period of the first/seventh to third/ninth centuries on a more practical level. This workshop, organised under the auspices of the ERC Horizon Starting Grant project ‘Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shiʿi Community 700-900 CE’ with the support of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, aims to address this these concerns.
Folio from the Majma’ al-tawarikh (Compendium of history) by Hafiz Abru (d.1430); recto: The Birth of Muhammad; verso: text, Wet nurse Halima and her husband, Harith, taking care of infant Muhammad, 1426. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery #F2005.5.
Signs at Birth: Maternal Autonomy and the Making of an Imam
Just as stories about the deaths of the Imams often reveal the next successor through who leads the funeral prayer or prepares the body for burial, narratives about their births contain key signs that point to their divine status and future role. In our workshop, we examined early Shiʿi hadith collections and biographical sources to trace how these birth stories unfold. We focused on four stages: pre-conception, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Each phase contains specific signs that mark the child as the future Imam. These signs are often witnessed—and sometimes narrated—by the mothers themselves.
The role of mothers in these narratives is striking. Six of the twelve Imams were born to umm walads, yet these women are depicted as central figures in the divine unfolding of the Imamate. From the very beginning, they are shown to possess a unique kind of autonomy, spiritual receptivity, and even prophetic insight. Stories describe them as “chosen wombs,” selected for a sacred task. While early narratives about women like Fatima emphasize qualities such as purity and non-menstruation, stories about umm walads often highlight royal ancestry, noble character, or virginity.
Pregnancy itself becomes a space of divine revelation. Some mothers report experiencing unusual signs: light radiating from their bodies, dreams foretelling the child’s future, or sensations of the fetus engaging in dhikr (remembrance of God) from the womb. The unborn child was described as reciting Quranic verses, listening to conversations, or even responding to the Prophet. These moments are not just symbolic—they serve to establish the Imam’s divine knowledge and exceptional nature from the very beginning.
At birth, the signs intensify. Narratives speak of angels present in the room, an otherworldly light illuminating the house, and the newborn entering the world already pure, circumcised, and engaged in worship. Some are born in prostration, speaking God’s name, or with Quranic inscriptions said to be visible on their bodies.
These extraordinary elements collectively signal the Imam’s divine appointment and the continuation of sacred authority through the Prophet’s lineage. But they also highlight something more: the foundational role of mothers—free or enslaved—in shaping the sacred history of the Imamate. Their experiences are not incidental; they are essential to how the Imams are recognized, remembered, and revered.
In this way, the story of an Imam begins not with public leadership, but with the quiet, powerful witness of a mother.
Abbasid Dirham of al-Maʾmūn (d. 833) with the tile al-Imām on obverse.
Imam with an uppercase I
The term imam has often been used relatively uncritically in discussions concerned with leadership of the nascent Islamic community. For instance, while Crone and Hinds in their seminal book God’s Caliph (1986) scrutinized the appropriateness of the term Caliph, imam was not treated and used to define a leader varying from the caliph to an abstract ideal of Islamic authority. The workshop in Leiden prompted us to reflect on the various uses of the term and given the obvious centrality of the role and title to the Embodied Imamate project, scrutinize and nuance the term’s use in Imāmī and non-Imāmī sources. Throughout the workshop we began to make the distinction between Imam with a capital or lowercase I, in other words, imam as leader of prayer or as a source of religious authority and Imam as leader of a religious community or polity – like the caliph or the Shi’i Imams.
Imām in poetry
Part of our discussion centered on asking: who can be an Imam? Who employed this term and where was it used? As addressed by Ḍayf (1952), Tyan (1954) Crone and Hinds (1986) and Bitsch (2023) the Umayyad caliphs actively employed the title imam in poetry, being eulogized as imam al-Hudā (the Imam of guidance), imam al-Mubarak (the blessed Imam), imam al-ʿadl (the Imam of justice) and imam al-Manṣūr (the victorious Imam) amongst others. The same question had hitherto not been asked of Abbasid poetry, which I approached.
A preliminary search revealed that although they were eulogized as Imams it was nearly exclusively as imam al-Hudā (the Imam of guidance), rather than forming ulterior compounds with the title imam, poets began to play on their alqāb (regnal titles) by which they appear to have been known – at least in official correspondence. Furthermore, the first to use al-Imām in a construct we would recognize as a regnal title is the figurehead of the Abbasid revolution Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad who is found as Ibrahīm al-Imām in poetry and in historical accounts. (Baladhuri, al-Azdi, al-Iṣfahānī) Therefore, the Abbasid revolution which was proto-Shiʿi in nature began to use the title al-Imām with a capital I, once the caliphate was secured, the Abbasids continued the Umayyad precedent of this nomenclature favouring the construct imam al-hudā in poetry.
Abbasid Dirham of al-Maʾmūn (d. 833) naming ʿAlī b. Mūsā [al-Riḍā] as heir apparent.
Imāmī succession and marriage
As for the Shiʿi Twelver Imams, the title became analogous to amīr al-Muʾminīn (commander of the faithful)– the title employed to indicate the leader of the caliphate – a position that represented their religious and political authority. This was accompanied by the creation of a series of requirements associated with succession and eligibility. Where the caliphate employed the mechanism of the wilayāt al-ʿahd (Marsham, 2009)the Imamate was centered on the waṣiyya (will) of the previous Imam, who would nominate his son as his successor. This mechanism of succession bears striking similarities to that employed by the Umayyads and Abbasids, not only for the requirement of designation but also in terms of marriage and procreation strategies. This phenomenon occurred nearly contemporaneously with the change in marriage strategy of the Abbasid caliphs and the rise of concubine mothers of Imams and Caliphs, as demonstrated by Ahmed, Robinson and Bernheimer. The first with a concubine mother was the fourth, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿAbidīn, as he was the only son who survived the massacre at Karbala (Ahmed), however, it was not until the eighth, ʿAlī al-Riḍā, that concubine-born Imams became the norm. This will form part of another workshop The Social Dynamics of Communal Affiliation in Early Islam organized by the Embodied Imamate team taking place in June 2026.
Marriage practice is a further point of comparison, as the Husaynids – from whom 9 of the 12 Imams claimed descent – began to marry solely endogamously (within the family) following the death of the 7th Imam, Mūsā al-Kāzim (d. 799). This is mirrored by the adoption of endogamous marriage practices by the Abbasid caliphs in the same period. Highly notably, one of the few exceptions to this is the marriage of the daughters of the caliph al-Maʾmūn (d.833), Umm Ḥabīb and Umm al-Faḍl, to the 8th and 9th Imams, ʿAlī al-Riḍā (d.818) and Muḥammad al-Jawād (d.835).
A report variously ascribed to the Prophet Muḥammad (d. 11/632), Abū Dharr (d. 32/653), ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), states: “your imam is your delegate (or ‘intercessor’ in one variant) to God, so do not take a fool or a hypocrite as your delegate.” This could, of course, refer to an imam in the other senses of the term, but is generally agreed to refer, in this context, to the imam as a prayer leader. What this report and others in a similar vein highlight is that who one chooses as one’s prayer leader had a bearing upon one’s prayer. We thus see numerous questions posed to early authorities about who can and who cannot act as a prayer leader. Concerns are raised about those with physical impairments and illnesses such as the blind, those with leprosy, and the insane, those who were perceived to be of a low social status such as the offspring of illegitimate relationships, those who had been subject to capital punishment, and Bedouins, for their reputation of being aloof from the settled Muslim community.
Piece of linen cloth. It depicts a male figure with raised hands, possibly in an attitude of supplication, standing before an arch with a hanging lamp. The cloth is decorated with rows of birds, fish and heart-shaped motifs. Egypt, 12th century; H. 25 cm, W. 15 cm.; Benaki Museum 15040
Concerns were likewise raised about prayer leader’s whose theological and political commitments differed to one’s own. Questions posed to early authorities about prayer leadership expressed concern with praying behind an imam who held heretical or problematic beliefs. Early authorities such as Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795), Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798), Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d.241/855) are said to have variously prohibited prayer behind those who held what were deemed to be heretical theological beliefs and those whose beliefs on the leadership of the Muslim community after the death of the Prophet were deemed unacceptable such as the Rāfiḍīs, the pejorative term for the Shiʿa stemming from their rejection (rafḍ) of the first three Caliphs, and the Murjiʾīs, who postponed judgement in the debate over ʿAlī’s and Muʿāwiya b. Abī Ṣufyān’s (d. 60/680) claims to rule. Such questions were also posed to the Shiʿi Imams with most questions concerned with prayer behind groups that may be hostile to the Shiʿa, such as those described as anti-ʿAlids (nawāṣib). The status of the Shiʿa as a minority forced the Shiʿi Imams to provide tactful responses to their followers in the face of such hostility. While an anti-ʿAlid should not be prayed behind if it can be helped, if one finds oneself under social or physical pressure to do so, then the one being led should either recite the Quran behind the hostile imam, indicating — implicitly — that they do not consider the prayer valid, or repeat the prayer when appropriate to do so. What such instances indicate is that who one prayed behind — or perhaps more importantly, one who did not pray behind — had become, by this time, a means by which communal boundaries could be demarcated and enforced.
Can archaeology, material culture, and iconography shed light on the role and concept of Imam/Imamate in the first two centuries of Islam?
If we look at the epigraphic record, the most securely datable occurrence of the word “Imam” that has come down to us is found in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
Figure 1 Mosaic detail of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem with the name of al-Ma’mun and the title “Imam” (from Grabar 2006)
Both the monument and its original inscriptions date to the time of the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik—specifically, to 691–2 CE. However, the term “Imam,” written in golden tesserae against a cobalt background and used as a title for the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833 CE), appears in the section of the epigraphy that was altered by the latter in 831 CE. This occurrence, therefore, dates to the early 9th century CE—a period when the word also features prominently as a caliphal title, alongside amir al-mu’minin, on coins issued by al-Ma’mun himself. This development may suggest a deliberate emphasis at this particular moment on qualities of the caliphal office that the term “Imam” more precisely conveyed. But can material culture from earlier periods help us better understand what these qualities entailed?
Before al-Ma’mun’s time, as far as the published evidence is concerned, the word imam seems to be attested only on a tombstone from al-Mihna, a locality 7 km from Karak in Jordan. Although the object does not bear a date, the individual for whom it was made is confidently recognisable as ‘Uthman b. Khalid b. ‘Abd al-Malik b. al-Harith, the son of one of Hisham’s (r. 724–743 CE) governors of Medina. This allows us to place the date of ‘Uthman’s death—and hence the making of the tombstone—roughly in the second half of the 8th century.
Figure 2 Tombstone from Mihna, al-Karak Governatorate, Jordan, ca. 2nd half of 8th century (from Webet-Karyotakis & Khammash 2020)
In this inscription, the word Imam appears as an appellative of the Prophet, who is referred to as “Imam al-Rahma” (Imam of Mercy).
The fact that the first occurrence of the title in the epigraphic record refers to the Prophetic persona is particularly interesting, as it might suggest that, in the 8th century, the term was associated with concepts of Arab legal and political leadership with a strong component of piety and religious charisma.
These very concepts may be reflected in one of the two surviving typologies of caliphal representations from the Umayyad period: the one appearing on coins of the so-called standing caliph type issued by ‘Abd al-Malik between 693–696 CE.
Figure 3 ‘Standing Caliph’ dinar Probably minted at Damascus, 697 CE (Ashmolean Museum HCR6573)
Here, we see a bearded man standing, wearing an Arab headdress flowing down beside his head, a long draped robe, and a sword. This image, in its pose, austerity, and attire, contrasts with other images of rulers from the same period—those from private princely contexts, where the caliph is typically portrayed wearing a Sasanian winged crown, a long blouse or kaftan over trousers, sometimes beardless, with bent legs (a sign that he is sitting on an eastern low throne, takht)—all elements recalling the iconography of Indo-Persian rulership.
Figure 4 ‘Sasanian caliph’ from Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, Damascus, National Museum (from Meinecke 2020)
Significantly, the so-called standing caliph image is associated on coins with the legend Khalifat Allah (God’s Caliph) and, in some cases, Muhammad Rasul Allah (Muhammad, the Messenger of God), suggesting that this iconography functioned as an archetypal representation of the Prophet and, by extension, of an Arab leader with a strong emphasis on religious authority. But can we consider this a representation of an Imam?
It is noteworthy that an analogous iconography appears on a type of fals almost contemporaneous with the standing caliph coins, issued by the governor of Kufa, Bashir b. Marwan from 692–694 CE and known as the “Orans type”. The figure—a standing bearded man wearing the same long robe and Arab headdress as the “standing caliph”—is portrayed with both hands raised and flanked by two characters, and has been interpreted as a representation of the leader of the ritual prayer (imam al-salat). Some numismatic evidence discussed by Luke Treadwell suggests that this image was intended to represent the Marwanid governor himself as a khatib—that is, delivering the Friday khutba: a function reserved for the ruler or his representative, and one that, at this time, essentially coincided with that of imam al-salat.
Figure 5 Orans Drachms minted in ‘Aqula and Basra, AH 75 (from Treadwell 2001)
In sum, the specific iconography shared by these issues during the Marwanid period was intended (interchangeably) as a representation of:
The Prophet Muhammad
The caliph in his most Arab connotations
The caliph/governor as imam al-salat
The caliph/governor as khatib
Can this iconography, therefore, be taken as a visual representation of the concept of an Imam—understood as an Arab masculine leader with a strong component of religious authority—as opposed to other iconographies that portray the caliph as a Late Antique prince, adorned with regalia borrowed from non-Arab royal cultures?
The fact that images of the second type appear in private princely contexts suggests that they were exclusively intended for courtly circles, whereas the occurrence of what I argue being the “Imamic” iconography of the ruler on coins shows that this was the identity the caliph wanted to project publicly.
Reasoning on such dual imagery, it is interesting that a specific architectural development, which seems to have been aimed at facilitating, mediating, and staging the transition from one to the other, took place throughout the Islamicate world at the turn of the 8th century.
This development consists in the emergence of a particular architectural group comprising a gubernatorial palace (dar al-imara) built alongside the qibli wall of a Friday mosque, with a door in the qibli wall allowing direct transit from the palace into the maqsura, the royal enclosure from which the caliph could attend and lead the Friday service as imam.
Figure 6 ‘Anjar, Lebanon, early 8th century CE: view of the bab al-imam from inside the maqsura (ph. Santi 2020)
Archaeology has revealed the existence of such complexes in Kufa, Wasit, Jerusalem, al-Sinnabra, ‘Anjar and at 16 stations of the Darb Zubayda, including al-Rabadha.
Figure 7 Mosque-Dar al-Imara complex in Kufa, 7th-8th century CE
Figure 8 Mosque-Dar al-Imara complex in Wasit, 7th-8th century CE
Figure 9 Mosque-Dar al-Imara complex in Jerusalem, 8th century CE
Figure 10 Mosque-Dar al-Imara complex in al-Sinnabra, late 7th century CE (after Da’adli 2020)
Figure 11 Mosque-Dar al-Imara complex in al-Rabadha, late 8th century CE
In addition to the archaeologically attested examples, written sources abundantly document the existence of analogous complexes in Damascus, Basra, Marw, Medina, and, during the Abbasid period, in Baghdad, as well as, on a reduced scale, in Samarra and Tulunid Cairo.
Figure 12 Mosque-Dar al-Imara complex in Samarra, 9th century CE
Archaeological evidence—supported by textual sources—exists for many of the abovementioned examples, indicating that the section of the dar al-imara adjoining the qibli wall was used for the performance of ablution by the caliph or wali, which was followed by a change of clothing before crossing the door in the qibli wall to enter the maqsura and lead the Friday service.
It is important to point out that the Friday Prayer was essentially the only occasion on which the ruler was seen publicly by the masses, and we know from written records that the imam/khatib function in the Friday Mosque was associated with a specific choice of attire that recalls the images on coins which we have discussed.
In conclusion, I propose that the area of the palace adjoining the mosque served as a liminal space to prepare the ruler for his public appearance within the mosque space and the performance of his role as prayer leader and khatib. There, he quite literally “removed the garments” of mundane authority in order to assume the attire of masculine, charismatic political-religious Arab leadership. Essentially, transforming from prince into Imam.
When did the idea of “imam” become a thing? When did it reach its mature meaning of the supreme religio-political leader of the Muslims?
In her survey of Islamic political thought, Patricia Crone acknowledges the multiple meanings of the word “imam.” However, she picks one concept as ruling them all: the concept of “imam” as meaning the supreme religio-political leader of the Muslims. She depicts this concept as a primordial religio-political category in early Islam, and the central organising principle of political thought since the death of the Prophet Muḥammad:
“The dictionaries define an imam as somebody to be imitated, whether head of state or not. A simple prayer leader was an imam: you stood behind him and did as he did in performing the ritual prayer. Other righteous leaders were imams too: one modelled oneself on what they said and did. Great scholars, for example, came to be known by that title. But the head of state was the supreme imam. His imitators were not merely a small group of people at prayer or a major school founded by a great scholar, but rather the entire community of believers, the entire umma. At some point his leadership was dubbed ‘the great imamate’ (al-imāma al-kubrā /al-uẓmā) to distinguish it from leadership of other types. Unless otherwise specified, the imamate always means the great imamate in this book.”[1]
But this flattens the diverse landscape of usages of the word in early Islam, and promotes the classical, and especially Sunni, conception of the word as being the most correct way of thinking about it. The Imami Shiʿi non-political imam, in particular, she tends to see as a divergent offshoot from this central meaning.[2]
In order to understand the early emergence of the idea of an imam, it is worth going back to the most reliable early source, the Quran, where it is used in several senses. Yusuf writes that “imam” is:
“A term… used in the Qurʾān to mean the following: symbol, leader, model, ideal example, revelation, guide, archetype, and foremost. It appears in the Qurʾān seven times in the singular and five times in the plural form. ”[3]
These meanings include people, but also inanimate “guides” like a book or a road.
The Quranic passage that is most relevant for the later tradition of religious and political authority is the reference to the appointment of Abraham leader of the Israelites in Q 2:124:
2:124 And when his Lord tested Abraham with commands, and he fulfilled them, He said: Lo! I have appointed thee a leader (imām) for the people. [Abraham] said: And what about my offspring? [God] said: My covenant does not include the wrong-doers.[4]
So Abraham is tested by God and then appointed as a leader to the people: perhaps the Israelites in particular, or mankind more generally. Abraham expects his leadership to continue in lineal descent, but God cautions that such lineal succession cannot include the wrongdoers. This approaches the mature Islamic understanding of imam as implementing God’s commands and acting as God’s representative over people.
However, this is but one sense of imam, and does not dominate other usages in the Quran. In early Islam, the word is also used to denote a military leader, and we also see the term to continue to be used to refer to books containing wisdom.[5] So while one could imagine the idea of “imam” as growing out of the Abrahimic example, it is also possible that Muslims in the first and second Islamic centuries looked for inspiration in the Quran to underscore their developing ideas about religious and political authority, and innovated in their application of the title imam to emerging types of authority.
In inscriptions and papyri, the religio-political leader of the Muslims was not officially given title of “imam” until the Abbasid period. Instead terms like “Commander of the Faithful” (Amīr al-Muʾminīn) and “God’s slave” (ʿAbd Allāh), and somewhat later, “God’s Deputy” (Khalīfat Allāh) are used.[6][EH1]
Norman Calder provides perhaps the most illuminating study of the idea of imam in early Islam, which he associates in particular with legal authority. He suggests that the use of the word “imam” was associated with a bringer of law, even from pre-Islamic times, citing Labīd’s famous Muʿallaqa poem:
من معشر سنت لهم آباؤهم — ولكل قوم سنة وإمامها
One of a band whose fathers laid down for them a sunna — every tribe [qawm] has a sunna and its imām.[7]
Calder explains:
Sunna here refers to tribal law, the well-established customary practice of the tribe, validated by tradition and by the practice of the forefathers. Taking the pronomial element of imāmuhā as referring to sunna (not qawm) I would understand imām as referring to a tribal hero whose actions enshrine and articulate the law – that is precedent.[8]
Calder suggests that this idea of a tribal leader who establishes precedents later on develops further to include an association with those who know God’s law: in the juristic context which begins to crystallise in the 2nd and 3rd Islamic centuries, sunna comes to refer to divine law instantiated through the example of particular authorities like the Prophet, his companions and, for the Shiʿa, ʿAlī and the members of the Prophet’s family (ahl al-bayt).
By the early 3rd Islamic century/ 9th century CE, al-Shāfiʿī used the word imam to refer to a religious specialist who had mastered the key sciences of Islam. In Calder’s translation of the Risāla:
He who grasps knowledge of God’s commands in his Book, whether explicitly expressed or by inference, and to whom God grants success in enunciating and acting on that knowledge, has attained excellence in religious and worldly affairs; he is free of doubts, wisdom illuminates his heart and he merits in dīn the status of imāma.[9]
Calder gives Shāfiʿī’s contribution particular emphasis, saying that the varied early usages of the word imam “find a kind of resolution” in this passage. He suggests an imam is not only someone who knows laws and establishes precedents, but that “the authority of past imāms is continued in, and manifested in contemporary imāms” and that these imams are conceived of as, in particular, jurists, or “those who have perfected their knowledge.”
Although this statement is expressed by one of the founders of Sunnism, the idea of a succession of non-state-affiliated religious specialists whose wisdom is exemplary, and who provide an unbroken thread of religious guidance, has much in common with the Shiʿi conception of the imamate.
Rather than accepting Crone’s hypothesis of a primordial conception of the religio-political imam as definitive, then, we can see an alternative interpretation of history whereby the political usage of the term which emerges most clearly under al-Maʾmūn (see Aila and Leone’s contributions) is itself an appropriation of the term as used by a subculture of religious specialists who include both the (proto-Sunni) jurists and the Imami imams and their followers. Thus understood, neither Shāfiʿī nor the Imami Shiʿa would be divergent cases, but rather both understandable adaptations of the broadly understood meaning of imam in early Islam. From the broad semantic field of imam as a generic “leader” or “guide”, a number of different technical meanings were derived, including the prayer leader, the political leader and the jurist or religious specialist.
This means that we should not just ask ourselves who was the imam at any one time, but rather, how did the developing idea of imam relate to the ongoing creation of new roles of religious and temporal authority in early Islam – new models of leadership. Both Sunnis, Shiʿis and other Muslims participated in this process of creating new roles and the words to fit them.
[1] Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought [God’s Rule], Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p 17.
[2] Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought [God’s Rule], Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p 82-3.
[5] Calder, Norman Calder, “The Significance of the Term Imām in Early Islamic Jurisprudence,” in
Interpretation and Jurisprudence in Medieval Islam, edited by Norman Calder and Jawid Mojaddedi (London: Routledge, 2006), 263.
[6] Though Umayyad court poets like Jarīr and Farazdaq did use the word “imam” as part of their wide lexicon for praising the caliphs in court panegyrics. See Crone and Hinds, God’s Caliph.
Zahra Azhar, Edmund Hayes, Birte Kristiansen, Leone Pecorini-Goodall, Adam Ramadhan, Aila Santi
The investiture of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib at Ghadir Khumm (MS Arab 161, fol. 162r, 1308–1309 CE, Ilkhanid manuscript illustration)
The Imami Shiʿi Imams played a key role in early Islam in general, not just Shiʿa Islam. The assumption that their are just two kinds of Islam, Sunni and Shiʿa, is very much formed by today’s understanding of Sunnism and Shiʿism. From a purely historical viewpoint, early Islam was not a binary phenomenon. And there were many overlaps and intertwinings between Sunni and Shiʿa groups and individuals that make any clean separation impossible. The question as to who was the rightful heir to prophet Muhammed’s legacy, both in material and moral terms, was important to all who considered themselves Muslim. Imams with a claim to divine knowledge provided one possible answer; theologians strongly leaning on Greek-based logic another one; and caliphs could use the circular argument that if an all-mighty God had made them powerful, their power was already the proof of their rightful status as leader of the believers. Both caliphs and imams claimed an intimate connection with the prophet based on family descent.
The idea that there were clear-cut boundaries between those with different claims to authority in society greatly oversimplifies the complexity of the actual situation. Different stake-holders of authority were in a constant battle to secure their positions and there was plenty of interdependence between them. The Imams, who claimed descendance from the prophet’s family through ʿAlī’, played their own part in this complex dynamic.
In our project Embodied Imamate Mapping the Development of the Early Shiʿi Community 700-900 CE we focus on the Imams as historical persons and try to understand how they were embedded in a larger society. A logical first question is: What is an Imam? Formulating an answer to that turned out to be more difficult than the question would suggest. In this series of posts we will shed some light on this question using different methodologies and starting points that we discussed in our workshop: “What is an imam?” We look at different aspects of how we encounter the word Imam and Imamate:
Aila Santi in her contribution Inscriptions, Images, and Architecture of Imamate sheds light on the material evidence that can help us understand the concept of the imam. However, sometimes the lack of evidence can be just as telling…
In Praying Behind an Imam, Adam Ramadhan makes the distinction between the different uses of the word imam.
Finally in Signs indicating the imams as the Chosen ones Zahra Azhar focuses on signs around the birth of the Shi’i Imams communicated in the Shi’a tradition as a central feature in religious believes.
