V. CONCLUSIONln an article on heterodoxy in Islam, J. Taylor describes ta'wil as "the essence of the theosophy which 'leads back' the gifts of life to their Origin, their Giver. This is not to opt out of history but to view it with an entirely different perspective, the perspective of a vertical experience of life rather than a horizontal observation of evolution..." (76) This vertical viewpoint can easily become a stumbling- block for anyone who attempts to understand the Ismâ'li dogmatic turnarounds. For instance, both Kalâmi Pir and Tasawwurât repeatedly state that theImam may work in terms of deeds or of words (or both combined), but there is no straight line of evolutionary development from one to the other. Rather, the Imam's rule may oscillate between deeds and words, but in the Qiyâma words alone suffice. (77) Scholars of Nizârism have tended to underestimate the significance of the Qiyâma as an event transcending the zâhir- bâtin principle; the interpreters' own dualism often appears to stand in the way of an appreciation of the limits of dualistic models. (78) The Qiyâma is not a matter of bâtin overruling and doing away with the zâhir, -this pair is eradicated altogether. (79) The Qâ'im, overtly repealing the shari'a in the Qiyâma, transcends the previous Imâm-role, i.e. he represents the culmination-point of the Imâm. Precisely the ostentation abolishment of dualities, and the stopping of time and history, make the Qâ'im something else than just a superlatively powerful Imâm. (80) The Qiyâma can be seen as a halt, a "full stop", in the pend- ulous swings between periods of occultation and openness. The fluctuations in the religions duties, and thus, in the interpretations of the Ismâ'ili teachings on the whole, appear, increasingly, to somehow involve a philosophy of time. The expression "timeliness of the shari'a" has already been introd- uced (81). E. Leach, in his "Two Essays concerning the symbolic Representation of Time," (82) deals with issues closely connected to such "timeliness". ln his first essay, he introduces the idea of "time... represented as a sequence of role reversaIs." (83) Applied to Ismâ'lism this statement adequately catches something essential about the switching from presence to absence of the shari'a. The Imâm is a symbol of time: occultation and openness periods alternate, as do the Imâm's appearance as "Lord of slaves" or "Lord of hearts." In his second essay, Leach says of the alternations between opposites, "the essence of the matter is flot the pendulum, but the alternation." (84) Againt in Ismâ'lism the question is not what or who the Imâm, the "pendulum", is, since transcendental entities cannot be caught in conceptual definitions.It is the fluctuating nature of the Imâm's activities that is of interest; activities provide the measure of time. (85) Shari'a or lack of shari'a demonstrates which realm (or "time") is Currently at hand. The Imam, as pendulu, swings back and forth between opposites, keeping up time. Moreover Leach's view of time as a succession of alternations and full stops and as discontinuity of repeated contrasts, (86) works well within the Ismâ'ili example. The back-and-forth movements timed by the Imàm come to a full stop in the Qiyâma. Also as Leach observes, time does not flow at a constant speed, it accelerates, or slows down, even, occasion- ally, stops. (87) There is no required time-length for the varions periods of openness and occultation, Qiyâma and shari'a. Following van Gennep, Leach provides a chart of time, plotting festival-times onto the straight line of profane lime D.:
The sequence A-C comes from, and return to D, profane time, which, in due time, will break into a new festival period. This is a useful model for understanding the Qiyâma. Pro- fanetime is the ordinary alternations between openness and occult- ation, and each one includes both zâhir and bâtin. This pattern is broken by the rite of separation, A., i.e. Hasan II's declaration of the Qiyâma. B. is the paradisial state of the Qiyâma itself, lasting forty-seven years; time has stopped, as has sharia. It is essential to grasp that the partakers of the Qiyâma are flot only beyond profane time, they also live beyond the zâhir-bâtin principle: esotericism, bâtin, itself has no place in the paradisial state. So, it is not a matter of ascending from an exoteric to an esoteric level. This suspended, static moment B. is, nevertheless, a prelude to C., the reintroduction of time in the worldly sense, Hasan II's re-Islamization. Again, this leads over into profane time which still includes the promise of a future, full stop at the final end of the world. To recapitulate, step B is not really time at al, but a halt outside of time. This accords with my argument that dichotomies like zâhir-bâtin, openness-occultation, etc., have been, temporarily, overcome. A. and C., Leach notes, "ought to be the reverse of one another", (89) i.e. the act of abolishing and reintroducing the shari'a, the entrance in to and exit from, the Qiyâma. So, Leach states, B.'s "logically ritual behaviour ... would be to play normal life back to front:" (90) Indeed, the law-less transcendence of the Qiyâma is just that: shari'a does not belong outside of time, only within it. Time-ruled existence as such. Ismâilism states, covers up Reality, haqiqa. When man is no longer man, i.e. in the Qiyâma, it is blasphemous to try, through shari'a, to reach the Imâm, for he is present in a non-symbolic, direct manner. As Kalâmi Pîr has it: action belongs to the profane world, word to the Qiyâma. Leach's "time out of time" in B. corresponds to the temporal aspect of V. Turner's key-term communilas. Turner's theories of communitas offer Borne pertinent tools for the present study. The term designates the collective experience of dropping the ordinary social structure. Through this process, the members collectively find themselves in a position where social structure as well as individual personality are temporaly suspended. According to Turner's definitions the Nizâris experienced communitas in the Qiyâma. Turner specifies the order of communitas experienced by the Nizâris as a communitas of withdrawal or retreat from a world which is conceived of as a "sort of permanent disaster area." (91) Turner immediately continues, "This communitas tends to be more exclusive in membership, disciplined in its habits, and secretive about its practices [than the apocalyptic genre...]" (92) Furthermore, he observes: Wisdom is always to find the appropriate relationship between structure and communitas under the given circumstances of time and place, to accept each modality when it is paramoutn wityhout rejecting the other, and not to cling to one when it present impetus is spent.(93) This statement convers (as do those of Leach) a sense of the dynamics in religion, a sense which I find missing in the views of most scholars specializing in Ismâilism. In the case of the Qiyâma-doctrine, dualistic models give a static and therefore incomplete, impression, while the tripartite ones, compatible with Leach's and Turner's theories, reveal movement and dynamics. This difference is essential in the task of interpret- ing the significance of the Qiyâma. Traditional scholarship often distrust change as such within religious traditions, and Ismâ'ilism affords an almost excessively dramatic example in this regard. The dynamics of this religion reveals the true significance of the patterns of syzygies vs. the tripartite models. The abolition of the individual in communitas (exemplified particularly in Tûsi's interpretation) is eloquently expressed in a passage in Kalâmi Pîr. After stating that the shari'a is the "veil" of the Qiyâma, the text continues, "There is no great distance between this world and that, but on the road there, there is a wall which is thy own existence." (94) At Hasan II's decree the participants in the Qiyâma broke through that wall. They returned to the road, however, forty-seven years later, as Hasan III re-erected the wall. The full demolition of the wall is to corne at the final end of time and of the world. Jorunn J. BUCKLEY (Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S.A.) |