Introduction*
The chapter edited and summarised below is taken from the polemical treatise Fath al-bab ila l-haqq wa-l-sawab of Mirza Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Nabi al-Nisaburi al-Khurasani (d. 1232/1817, hereon Mirza Muhammad).
Mirza Muhammad was an ardent supporter of Akhbari school of Imami Twelver jurisprudence, and hence he is widely referred to as simply Mirza Muhammad al-Akhbari. From the biographical notices, and from his own writings, he appears to have been a highly combative debater, writing treatises in refutation of his opponents. There are refutations of his Twelver Shi'i opponents (of Usuli and Shaykhi tendencies), of Sunni theological schools (Ash'ari and Wahhabi) and of other religions (Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Hinduism). Some of these are records of actual, public debates in which he challenged his opponent; other refutations are literary in character, refuting both the general doctrines and specific works of these various groups. Most of his oeuvre are detailed, often strident arguments against his opponents - he rarely embarks on expositions of his own views without this polemic edge. The passage from the Fath al-bab edited below is, then, typical of his writings more generally.Mirza Muhammad led an extraordinary life.1 He was born in India, though the biographical accounts differ as to the location; he records his own birth year in an autobiographical notice as 1178/17652 in his own (unpublished) biographical dictionary Sahifat al-safa. He certainly studied in Agra (known as Akbarabad under the Moghuls) and may also have been born there. From there he acquired al-Akbarabadi as one of his nisbas; his father was from Nisabur (Nishapour) in Khurasan, and hence he gains other nisbas - al-Khurasani al-Nisaburi. By his own account, at age 20 he left India with his parents to perform the pilgrimage to Meccas and Medina.
On the return journey, in 1199/1784, the party reached Muscat, where his father died; three days later, his mother died also. This event changed his life direction, as he decided to bury his parents in Najaf. He stayed in Najaf, studying at the seminary there: he was, at first, a supporter of the Usuli school; but quickly “converted” to Akhbarism. He travelled between the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, spending time also in Hilla for some years, until in or around the year 1211/1796 when he relocates to Iran. For the next 20 years or so, Mirza Muhammad spent time travelling between Iraq and Iran, basing himself in a city for a while, but eventually moving on (often having to leave following a controversy). During these years he ingratiates himself to the Iranian monarch Fath 'Ali Shah, who maintained an interest in the various religious movements, including Akhbarism, active during his reign. Fath 'Ali Shah’s power in the north of Iran was under constant threat from Russian forces, and this broke out into war between 1804 and 1813. Mirza Muham-The introduction of this chapter is written by Robert Gleave. mad, on some accounts, brought about, by supernatural means, the death of the Russian general Tsitsianov in 1806. This established him in the Shah’s favour, but also led to religious rivalry. He had an on-going series of debates and confrontations with the leading mujtahid of the day, al- Shaykh Ja'far Kashif al-Ghita’ (d. 1228/1813). He left Iran in 1225/1810, settling in Kazimayn - the Shi'i shrine just outside Baghdad. There he apparently gathered a significant following, engaging in debates, virulently criticising his Usuli opponents and writing many treatises, books and commentaries. His confrontational activities, combined apparently with his irascible character, led very soon to opposition from both religious and political circles. There were fatwas from leading figures declaring his blood to be licit, and permitting his killing on the basis of spreading unbelief and “corruption on the earth”.
The most famous of these was a fatwa, requested by the mujtahid Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Tabataba’i (d. 1231/1816) from al-Shaykh Musa Kashif al-Ghita’ (d. 1242/1825 or 1243/1827; the son of Mirza Muhammad’s long-term opponent, al-Shaykh Ja'far, mentioned above). The account is recorded by Muhammad Husayn Kashif al-Ghita3 (d. 1373/1954), a descendant of al-Shaykh Musa, in al-‘Abaqdt al-‘anbariyya:3Al-Sayyid [Muhammad al-Mujahid] wrote, in the form of a fatwa request from al-Shaykh [Musa] saying, “What does the Proof of God amongst his creation, and his security on earth, think about the man who agitates against the pious scholars, and tries by killing them to extinguish the light of religion?” Underneath this, [Musa] wrote: “It is obligatory on every devotee and person of wealth to expend his self and his wealth in killing him; and if he does not do so, then prayer and fasting is not valid for him; and thereby he would occupy his rightful place in hell.”
Most likely as a result of this fatwa along with the other public condemnations of Mirza Muhammad, his home was attacked by a mob on (according to some sources) 28 Rabi' I, 1232 (15th February 1817) in Kazimayn and he was killed, along with his son Ahmad and one of his students. He was buried in the Kazimayn shrine, though his grave does not appear to have been marked perhaps for political and religious reasons.
His output, as mentioned before, is dominated by polemics and refutations. He wrote an enormous amount: over 200 titles are attributed to him ranging from short treatises to lengthy monographs and a Qur’an commentary (reaching 3 volumes in its printed form). His Fath al-bdb ild l-haqq wa-l-sawdb (“Opening the Door to the Truth and the Right”) is a work of medium length.4 The work was written on the request of one of his pupils, identified only as 'Abd al-Husayn. He clearly considers him a special pupil - even though it is customary to praise the dedicatee of a book, Mirza Muhammad appears excessively laudatory in the introduction.
This 'Abd al-Husayn is recorded elsewhere as a recipient of an ijdza from Mirza Muhammad.5 Unfortunately, no further identifying information on 'Abd al-Husayn could be located amongst the records of Mirza Muhammad’s pupils. The colophon suggests that the author completed this work on the 1st Muharram 1210/18th July 1795 in Karbala. The work exists in numerous manuscripts, either with the title given here, or with the title Fath al-bdb ild tariq al-haqq wa-l-sawdb (“Opening the Door to the Path of Truth and the Right”) as given by Agha Buzurg al-Tihrani in his al-DharFa.6 The work is quite obviously written from an Akhbari perspective against the Usuli doctrine that the “door to knowledge is closed” (insiddd bdb al-llm). By this, the Usulis meant that certainty as to the content and the sources (primarily the reports from the Imams, the akhbdr) of the law is no longer available to the qualified jurist (i.e. the mujtahid). Given the state of the sources of legal knowledge available to the jurist, and furthermore, given the inherent uncertainty of any human interpretation of those sources, the jurist is resigned to the fact that certainty is no longer available, and legal investigation occurs at the level of “informed opinion” (zann). Mirza Muhammad, along with the Akhbari school more generally, rejects this doctrine - and in the Fath al-bab, he sets about demolishing the doctrine by demonstrating that all of the arguments the Usulis use to justify the loss of certainty are invalid. The section found in the edition below is the work’s introduction, followed by the first five arguments (wujuh) from the first of five sections (each called a murshid or “point of guidance”). As is shown below, in these arguments (which are in fact, counter-arguments to Usuli arguments and presumptions), Mirza Muhammad aims to demonstrate that the disappearance of the Twelfth Imam (the ghayba doctrine) does not mean knowledge somehow is lost; the sources remain available, and these sources are not difficult to understand or deliberately evasive (due to the Imams’ dissimulation - taqiyya), as the Usulis claim. Rather, the reader today (during the Imam’s absence), in the same way as the one who heard the Imams when they were present, can be certain (i.e. have 'ilm) that the sources available (the akhbar) not only come from the Imams, but that we can also understand them. The door to knowledge is not closed (the theory of insidad bab al-'ilm) but instead “open” (the theory of infitah bab al-'ilm). In this argument, which Mirza Muhammad backs up with citations from the Qur’an and the akhbar themselves, he demonstrates his thorough adherence to a basic Akhbari legal epistemology.
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