Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
taken up into the angelic world, why do they deny the possibility of an
Angel's descending from that world as a messenger of the Revelation, or
even to put on a human body? But the central difficulty is clearly formulated:
for the Sabians, perfection resided in stripping off humanity, whereas
for the Hunafa', perfection was to be achieved by putting on the human
form. 44
Ta'wil makes it possible to delineate a final solution to this problem.
The Sabians already descend from the order of pure spiritual beings
(ruhaniyun) to the material Temples (hayakil) which are their personal
Figurations (ashkhas); the Hunafa' acknowledge the Temples (hayakil) of
divine beings (rabbaniyun) in personal, human Forms (ashkhas). This serves
to initiate the whole exegesis leading from the Heaven of astral religion to
the Heaven of the spiritual Earth, the Temple of the mediating Angel, and
establishing the representation of the esoteric Heavens of the sacred
Cosmos by the introduction of analogies which Shahrastani's Hunafa' are
quick to put into effect. 45 This signals the dissolution and disappearance
of the anthropomorphism for which the Sabians were so ready to condemn
the Hunafa': the anthropomorphosis of the Temple of the divinity is in
reality made possible by an angelomorphosis of anthropology. It also puts
an end to the scandal constituted, in the eyes of a Sabian, by the current
Islamic affirmation that the prophet—in the final analysis, man—takes
precedence over the Angel; 46 for it is now seen that the forms of the human
condition are themselves but one of the stages in angelology. With great
pertinence, the Sabians ask about the hierarchy (maratib) of intellects and
souls; and the answer they are given refers to an adamology, a representaiion
of Adam the true meaning of which will be unveiled to us in the
Ismaili exegesis explaining the identity of the "Angels" that were commanded
to prostrate themselves before Adam. 47
44 Libas, an image essentially Ismaili; cf. for example Kalami Pir, p. 65; Chwolsohn, op.
cit., II, 436; lith. Tehran, p. 147.
4;} Ibid., II, 342, and lith. p. 142. The spiritual (ruhani) element in the human person of
the Messengers corresponds to the angelhood of the pure spiritual beings. Their
individuality, their human "form", corresponds to the "temples" of the latter. The
motion of these human star-temples symbolizes with the motion of the star-temples
of Heaven: their institutions (shara'i') are the observance of the movements connected
with the ta'yid ilahi (a characteristic expression in Ismaili vocabulary).
46(If Wensinck, The Muslim Creed, pp. 200 ff.
47 Shahrastani (lith. p. 142) mentions the distinction between the religion (sunnah)
which issues directly from the creative Imperative (the world of ' Amr), i.e. the fitrah
(cf. Kalami Pir, index s.v., and En Islam iranien, op. cit., vol. IV, general index s.v.),
144
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SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
It is for this reason that, out of all the "Sabians", it is the Harranians
who are held in particular favour, for they proclaim both the essential
divine Unity and its pluralization in epiphanic Figures, visible in the
stellar Temples of the mediating Angels as well as in the human Persons
who typify them. They also conceive of a cosmic alchemy that produces
the Perfect Man as the epiphany of divinity—the same type of alchemy as
that which produces the subtle humanity (nasut) of the Ismaili Imam; and
so positive was this conception for them that the orthodox could hold
them responsible, together with the Christians and the extremist Shiites
(Ghulat) for the idea of the Incarnation (hulul).4 9 The notion of the human
or Hanifiyah religion mediated by the Prophets, and creatural religion (khalqiyah),
which issues from the world of Khalq, mediated by the Angels. The response given to
the Sabian question on the hierarchy of intellects postulates an onomaturgic Adam
who might be comprehended within the context of the orthodox exegesis, were it not
for the density of the allusion (p. 151) where the characteristic terms Zuhur and
Kashf (Unveiling, Manifestation) could refer to a concept to which the key is
provided by Ismaili adamology. There is the universal Adam (Adam al-Kulli,
cf. Strothmann, Texte, p. 52 s.v.), and the partial Adam, or rather a
plurality of partial Adams. The first Adam inaugurated the initial cosmic Cycle of
Unveiling (Zuhur, Kashf); each partial Adam, whose archetype he is, opens one of
the "historical" cycles which succeeded each other. The universal Adam, or archetype,
is himself an Intelligence or Angel of the primordial angelic world ('alam al-
Ibdd'); this Anthropos-Angelos (the archetype of the Imam-resurrector) is invested,
by the tenth Archangel of the eternal Imamate, with the government of nature (cf.
ibid., I, 4; II, 2, p. 20; XII, 37). We can note two consequences of this: 1) The name
of Adam, as the archetype Adam, already refers to an angelic essence. 2) If, at the
start of our Cycle, the "Angels" were ordered to prostrate themselves before Adam
("our" Adam, Biblical as well as Koranic), then the word "Angels" must have a
different meaning from the one currently accepted (cf. infra note 67): a meaning
which abolishes the opposition between prophetic and angelic mediation, as well as
the question of precedence. Even if the Adam of our Cycle enjoys the precedence of
an initiator, it is still the case that he had himself received the initiation of the Cycle
of Unveiling which preceded the Cycle of Occultation that he inaugurated. His
precedence over the "Angels" in his capacity as onomaturge thus calls for an
exegesis other than the common Koranic one. These remarks on the subject are of
course ail too brief (cf. note 67).
48 Cf. Chwolsohn, op. cit., II, 442, and Shahrastani, lith. Tehran, p. 157.
49 On the cosmic alchemy which produces the "subtle" humanity of the Imam, see
Strothmann, Texte I, 2. Ma'sum 'Ali Shah, the author of a modern Iranian encyclopaedia
of Sufism, saw in this an allusion to the doctrine of the Perfect Man (Insan
Kamil); cf. Tara'iq al-Haqa'iq, I, pp. 159-160. Here, in connection with the ideology
of the Temple, is the violent reproach that Abu'l-Ma'ali Muh. al-Husayam al-'Alawi
directed at the Harranians, whom he speaks of as a sect of Mages, and whom he
considers responsible, along with the Christians and the extremist Shiites, for the
idea of an inhabitation or divine incarnation in a human "temple" (hulul), a unio
mystica (ittihad). The passage must belong to that section of the work (Bayan al-
Adydn) which is missing in the only manuscript used for the editions (Persian
chrestomathy by Schefer, and the 'Abbas Iqbal edition, Tehran, 1312).