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The Ḥaydarī-Niᶜmatī Conflicts in Iran
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
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From earliest times, religion has always been one of the most important factors in social cohesion and at the same time a major cause of urban factionalism and strife. The existence of opposing sects in the same city has invariably provided a breeding ground for economic, social, and political differences in the guise of sectarian disputes.
The basic elements of urban organization in the Islamic period were local government (ḥukūmat), religious solidarity (ummat), professional associations (the craft guilds, aṣnāf), and the city wards or quarters (maḥallāt). Occasionally, other social organizations rose to prominence such as esoteric fraternities, mystical and dervish orders, and chivalrous and paramilitary associations (futuvvat, Cayyārān); these too formed part of the overall social life of the city. The wards or city quarters were the centers of group activity based on kinship, or ethnic or sectarian affiliation. Iranian cities during the Islamic period saw political and social activities by the followers of the four rites of the Sunna--Shāfiᶜī, Ḥanbalī, Ḥanafī, and Mālikī--and by Shi'ite and other dissident sects such as the Zaydīs, Carmathians, Mu'tazilites, and Ismāᶜīlīs.
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References
Notes
1. E.g., Iṣṭakhrī writes of Bam: “On Fridays, three mosques are in use--the Khārijite mosque in the bazaar, the Sunnī mosque in the drapers’ quarter, and a third one in the citadel” (Al-Masālik wa'l-Mamālik, ed. Afshār, Īraj [Tehran, 1957], p. 143).Google Scholar
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11. Zāva had not yet developed into anything resembling a town by the early 7th century A.H. (early 13th A.D.); in the geographical works prior to the Mongol invasions the cultivated area now comprising the town and its fields was included in the district of Khwāf, and only with the growth of a settlement round the nucleus of Quṭb al-dīn Ḥaydar's tomb did the present town, renamed for the Sẖaykh, come into being. See ᶜAbd al-Ḥamid Mawlavī, Aār-i Bāstānī-yi Khurāsān (Tehran, 1976), I, p. 3.Google Scholar
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13. Khwāndamīr, Ḥabīb al-Siyar III, p. 332. Khwāja Rukn al-dīn, with the laqab Shāh Sanjān, was a leading poet and mystic of the 6th/14th century; see Mustawfī, Ḥamdullāh, Tārīkh-i Guzīda, ed. Strange, Le (Leiden, 1917), p. 793Google Scholar; Jami, Nafaḥāt al-Uns, ed. Tawḥīdīpūr, M. (Tehran, 1968), p. 374.Google Scholar
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15. ᶜAmīd al-dīn Zakariyā ibn Muḥammad al-Qazvīnī, Āār al-Bilād wa Akhbār al-ᶜIbād (Beirut, 1969), pp. 382–83.Google Scholar
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18. Ibid.
19. Shūshtarī, Qāżī Nūrullāh, Majālis al-Mu'minīn (Tehran, 1958) II, p. 51.Google Scholar
20. Ibid., p. 82.
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25. Muḥammad Ḥasan Khān Ṣanīᶜ al-dawla, Eᶜtemād al-salṭana, Mir'āt al-Buldān-i Nāṣirī (Tehran, 1874) I, p. 55.Google Scholar The physical description of the dervishes, though attributed by the author to Chardin, appears in fact to be a slightly garbled version of Kaempfer's description (see below and note 34).
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28. Shūshtarī, Majālis al-Mu'minīn II, p. 82.
29. From the time of Shaykh Ḥaydar, the father of Ismāᶜī I Ṣafavī (907-930/1502-24), there arose in several provinces of Anatolia an extreme Shi'ite sect known as Ḥaydarīya, which is not the same as our Ḥaydarīya. So fanatical were they that they considered the killing of one Sunnite to be as meritorious as the slaying in battle of five pagans, and held that the divine nature had been incarnated in ᶜAlī, and ultimately in the Safavid Ḥaydar (see Falsafī, Naṣrullāh, zindigānī-yi Shāh ᶜAbbās-i Avval, [Tehran, 1956-76], V, pp. 32–34).Google Scholar
30. Tâci-zâde Sa'di Çelebî, Münṣeât, ed. Lugal, N. § Erzi, A. (Istanbul, 1956), p. 28.Google Scholar
31. “Narrative of the Most Noble Vicentio D'Alessandri,” tr. Gray, Charles, in A Narrative of Italian Travels in Persia (London, 1873), Hakluyt Society Ser. 1, Vol. 49, p. 224.Google Scholar The names of the factions appear here as Nausitai and Himcaivatu, which forms are however more recognizable than many others of D'Alessandri's transcriptions of Persian names. His statement that when Shāh Ṭahmāsb was still resident in Qazvin (i.e., between 1524 and about 1533) the feud had already lasted thirty years lends support to the view that it probably predated the establishment of the Safavid dynasty. See also Jean Chardin, Voyages (Amsterdam, 1711) II, p. 316.
32. Tavernier, Jean Baptiste, Les Six Voyages (Paris, 1677) I, p. 396.Google Scholar
33. Chardin, VIII, pp. 11, 13.
34. Kaempfer, Engelbert, Am Hofe des Persischen Grosskönigs, German edition by Hinz, W. (Leipzig,1940), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar This description appears to have found its way in part into the Mir'āt al-Buldān (see above and note 25).
35. D'Alessandri, Kaempfer, ibid.; Chardin, VIII, p. 13.
36. Valle, Pietro della, Voyages dans la Turquie, l'Egypte, la Palestine, la Perse, les Indes orientales et autres lieux (Rouen,1745) III, p. 42.Google Scholar
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39. Ibid., pp. 91-93.
40. Kaempfer, p. 111.
41. Qājār, Nādir Mīrzā, Tārīkh va Jughrāfiyā-yi Dār al-Salṭana-yi Tabrīz (Tehran, 1972), p. 192.Google Scholar
42. “…bezanīd pidar-i Niᶜmatīhā dar ārīd!” I owe this anecdote to my friend the poet ᶜAlī Maẓāhirī, who heard it from a village headman of Isfahan.
43. Tavernier, I, p. 388.
44. Chardin, VII, pp. 12-13.
45. Chardin, II, p. 316.
46. Ḥusaynī Fasā'ī, Ḥājjī Mīrzā Ḥasan, Fārsnāma-yi Nāṣirī (Shiraz, 1933), II, p. 22.Google Scholar Note that Fasā'ī's geographical location of the factions is opposite to that of Chardin (VIII, p. 11), who places the Niᶜmatullāhīs in the eastern half and the Haydarīs in the western half of Isfahan.
47. Watson, Robert, A History of Persia (London, 1866), p. 110.Google Scholar
48. Sayyid ᶜAbdullāh Dāᶜī-yi Dizfūlī, Taẕkirat al-Akhyār wa Majmaᶜ al-Abrār (Ahwaz, 1826)Google Scholar, passim.
49. SirMalcolm, John, History of Persia (London, 1829), II, p. 429.Google Scholar
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52. This information was supplied by Muḥammad Ḥusayn Anṣārī Ardakānī, a history student at the University of Isfahan.
53. The materials relating to Julga-yi Rū-dasht were supplied by Nādir ᶜAlī Nāẓiriān Jazzī, a geography student at the University of Isfahan.
54. Reported by Majīd Hāshimī Ardakānī, local high school teacher. This place is not the Ardakān of Yazd mentioned above.
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