Volume 93, Issue 2 - Special Issue: The Religious and Intellectual History of Rayy from 900 Through the Seljūq Period

Abstract: Historically, the years between the start of the tenth century AD and the mid-twelfth century witnessed dramatic socio-political and religious convulsions and transformation. This article first adumbrates the political role of Rayy, then gives an overview of the major trends in the religious history of the Seljūq period. These included the promotion and spread of the madrasa, with its accompanying madhhab -based ʿaṣabiyya and violence; paradoxically, a reduction in the level of violence against dhimmīs and Shiʿites; the final acceptance of Sufism and its incorporation into mainstream religious life, including court life; and, above all, the close tying, and subsequent subservience, of the Sunni ʿulamāʾ to the government.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to give a short sketch of the linguistic history of Rayy from ancient times through the early Islamic period. The language of Rayy in the Old Iranian period must have been Median. The only traces of Median are a few loanwords identified in Old Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, Elamite tablets, Aramaic documents, and Greek texts. The language of Rayy in the Middle Iranian period seems to have been very close to the well-documented northwestern Middle Iranian language spoken in Parthia, known as Parthian or Arsacid Pahlavi. The Iranian dialect of Rayy in the Islamic period, known as the Rāzī dialect, was in fact the natural continuation of Middle Median. The only Rāzī texts available are a small number of poems by Bundār, a Shīʿīte poet at the court of Majd al-Dawla, the Buwayhid ruler of Rayy. In addition, scanty information about the Rāzī dialect can be obtained from a few classical Islamic sources and some of the Persian texts written in Rayy by Rāzī-speaking writers.

Abstract: The study of urbanisation processes in an ancient city also defines aspects of social, political and religious features of a society. While the impulse to urbanise issued from the politico-religious and cultural background of the society in question, the act and very form of urbanising is mostly connected with a selected territory and its morphology. This article attempts to reconstitute the urban plan of a major medieval capital of Iran, Rayy, during the Seljūq period. Thanks to satellite views, photos from the 1950s, the Pascal Coste plan and a newly discovered drawing by him, as well as several surveys conducted since 2005, a plausible map of the medieval Seljuq city can be attempted.

Abstract: In the last decades of the 3rd/9th and the first decades of the 4th/10th centuries, the city of Rayy seems to have been an important center of Ismāʿīlī missionary activity not only in West Persia, but also in Mesopotamia, in Khurāsān and the southern region of the Caspian Sea (Daylam). Organized as a secret society, the Qarmaṭian mission in Rayy, preparing the advent of the Mahdī Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, left only a few traces in Ismāʿīlī sources, but has been described by hostile authors trying to prove that the Ismāʿīlī movement is the offshoot of an old Zoroastrian conspiracy against Islam. When, during the 4th/10th century, the daʿwa in Rayy recognized the authority of the Fāṭimids in Cairo, it still remained a secret organisation shrouded in obscurity. Dating from this period, however, we have an important document, al-Mīmadhī’s Risāla ilā jamāʿat ahl al-Rayy . The seize of Rayy by the Seljūqs in 446/1054 coincides with the birth of Ḥasan al-Ṣabbāḥ, the founder of Nizārī Ismailism, who profoundly reformed the Fāṭimid doctrine and transformed the daʿwa into an activist and military movement whose aim it was to create a Nizārī state inside the Seljūq empire.

Abstract: During the 6th-century AH, under Seljūq rule, Rayy was a center of learning, attracting many Ḥanafīs as well as Shāfiʿīs, Zaydīs, Imāmīs, and Muʿtazilīs from other regions. Nevertheless, because of the conflicts during that period between Ḥanafīs and Shāfiʿīs, as well as between Shīʿīs and Sunnis, and then the Mongol invasion, only a handful of sources survive describing the activities of the Sunni scholars of Rayy and their relationships with one another and also with the Zaydīs and the Imāmīs. Contrary to expectation, some of the most valuable sources on the Sunnis of this era are writings by Shīʿī authors, one of the most important of which is the Kitāb al-Naqḍ by ʿAbd al-Jalīl al-Qazwīnī al-Rāzī. What emerges from these sources is a portrait of a city in which Zaydīs, Imāmīs, Ḥanafīs, and Shāfiʿīs lived together, albeit in separate quarters of the city, and while their coexistence sometimes erupted into bloody conflict, at the same time their scholars engaged with one another in theological debate, learning, collecting Hadith, and taking part in various rites, including the commemoration of ʿĀshūrāʾ, as described by Qazwinī.

Abstract: It was only in the 3rd/9th centuries that Rayy came to figure prominently in the fortunes of the Iranian Zaydī community. The leaders of the community were at this time largely drawn from refugees seeking respite from the relentless ʿAbbāsid persecution of the ʿAlids. In 250/864‒5 resentment against the depredations of the Ṭāhirids along the border between Ṭabaristān and Daylam led the local population to give their allegiance to al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, a Medinese ʿAlid residing in Rayy. Under al-Ḥasan (d. 270/884) and his brother Muḥammad (d. 287/900) Rayy was captured a number of times but not held for any significant length of time. Despite their prominence in the early history of Caspian Zaydism neither of the brothers was held in the highest esteem by later Zaydīs, unlike their successor, the highly respected jurist al-Nāṣir al-Uṭrūsh (d. 304/917), the ancestor of a long line of Caspian imams Al-Nāṣir’s cousin al-Ḥasan b. al-Qāsim (d. 316/928), the imam al-Dāʿī ilā al-Ḥaqq, ruling from Āmul, captured Rayy and had designs on Baghdad itself. With the rise of the Būyids from among al-Dāʿī’s commanders, the Zaydī imamate was reconfigured to reflect its subordinate role, and with this reconfiguration a new model of the Zaydī imam emerged, beginning with al-Dāʿī’s son Muḥammad (d. 359/970). The imam now drew a large measure of his influence among his followers from the respect in which he was held by the non-Zaydī political and intellectual elite outside of his Caspian domain. This development reached its peak with the two imāms al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh (d. 421/1030) and his brother al-Nāṭiq bi-l-Ḥaqq (d. 422/1031), both prominent members of the circle of al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/995) in Rayy.

Abstract: This article takes a new look at the Seljuq migration into Transoxiana, and in doing so, discusses the theses recently put forward by Richard Bulliet in his Cotton, Climate, and Camels. In particular, it raises the question of where the Seljuq Ghuzz – pastoral nomads after all – had their pasture grounds and which animals they herded. The result is that they had only limited access to pasture (in particular summer pasture) and were looking for new places. Their herd was a mixed herd of the well-known Central Asian type, with sheep, horses, and camels; cows were largely absent. This is contrasted with one element in Bulliet ’s argument about the reasons for the Ghuzz-Seljuq migration: Bulliet sees the Seljuq Ghuzz as camel breeders. In a second step, the question of the relation between this migration and climatic conditions in northern Transoxiana are discussed, in contrast to another element in Richard Bulliet ’s argument. Paleoclimatic evidence is adduced, showing that there was climate change in the 10th-11th centuries, notably a cooling of the summer temperature and a marked desiccation. But winter temperatures remained more or less constant – no marked chilling of the winters took place. In all, the article rejects Bulliet ’s causation chain and proposes that the Ghuzz-Seljuq migration into Transoxiana was due to political reasons rather than induced by climate change.