Hidden Empires: Revolt, Leadership, and Underground Networks in the Emergence of Early Shiʿi Muslim Sectarian Identities

University of Chicago, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, (August 2021)

• Dissertation Committee: Ahmed El Shamsy (Chair, NELC), Fred Donner (NELC), John Padgett (Political Science)

My doctoral dissertation undertakes a comparative survey of Shiʿi revolutionary movements from the uprising of al-Mukhtār b. Abī ʿUbayd (d. 67/687) and the origins of the Abbasid revolution through to the rise of the Fatimid Empire, the coming to power of the Buyids, and the beginnings of the “Shiʿi Centuries” at the turn of the 4th Hijri / 10th Common Era century. The study argues that the phenomenon of secret underground Shiʿi organizations, daʿwa (missionary) institutions, and the occultation of hidden imams were adopted by a wide range of pro-ʿAlid movements during a period of Shiʿi confessional ambiguity. These movements, while retaining generic Shiʿi sectarian identity and ʿAlid political loyalties, were often intentionally indistinguishable from one another due to their hidden underground organization. Only later, in the 3rd/9th century, they began to branch into Zaydi, Twelver, Ismaʿili, and other Shiʿi denominations once Abbasid imperial repressive pressures significantly weakened.

Specifically, it was not until after the “Anarchy at Samarra” in 247/861 that the diverse factions and family lines within Shiʿism began their gradual transformation into distinct exclusive sects and interpretations of Shiʿi Islam. Once imperial Abbasid repressive capacity relatively eased, the number and frequency of hidden Shiʿi Imams declined and previously hidden underground competitive pressures emerged out into the open between Shiʿi factional networks and ʿAlid family lines claiming universal sovereignty through the Imamate. Subsequently, different ʿAlid descendent branches put forth exclusive claims to legitimacy and consecrated or canonized their genealogies vis-à-vis the ʿAlid Other. This contentious process of previously underground Shi’i factional competition manifested in the proliferation of various exclusionary Shiʿi dynastic sovereign governments, including the Fatimids, Zaydis, Qarāmiṭa and others, and led to the emergence of distinct Shiʿi sectarian crystallization. The distinction between processes of sectarian crystallization for Shiʿism in the early Islamic period, therefore, was connected to the processes of state building, dissident revolutionary underground networks, and the consecration of exclusive ʿAlid genealogical lineages taking shape until the late 3rd/9th and early 4th/10th centuries.

While most scholarship on early Shiʿism focuses primarily on doctrinal and intellectual history—or on one Shiʿi sect in particular—my study reconstructs the political and historical sociological context of a wide range of interconnected Shiʿi revolutionary movements that do not adhere to early demarcations of intra-Shiʿi sectarian boundaries. The study engages in novel interdisciplinary methods, including social network analysis and the comparative study of underground revolutionary institutions. My research accordingly contributes to the field of Islamic studies as well as global history by providing the first historical survey work of early Shiʿi movements in a comparative revolutionary and socio-political context and advancing new theories on sectarian-imperial co-genesis that significantly impacted transnational societies in across the Near East and Central Asia in profound and long-term ways. The study adopts a multi-methods approach that combines philology, narrative criticism, and traditional hadith sciences along with reconstructivist socio-political and intellectual history. It also does so in part through an innovative use of social network analysis, where digital tools are applied to systematically code hadith chains found in the primary literature in order to uncover and reconstruct for the first time coalitions of individuals backing different candidates for dynastic or sectarian leadership.