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SHI'ITE IRAN: THE KEY TO THE MIDDLE EAST
PART I. to the end of World War I
by Lewis Lipkin
Since America toppled Sadaam Husein's Iraqi regime, the most powerful man in the Middle East is the little known Ayatollah al-Udma Sayyid Ali Khamenei. He is effectively the absolute ruler of a country with the largest natural gas reserves in the world, one of the largest oil production potentials and one which may or may not be forging a more than a symbolic nuclear weapons capacity.[1][2]
The Ayatollah Khamenei sits at the center of a web of Shi'ite-based power that not only covers Iran and Iraq, but also Lebanon and parts of Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Threads from this web extend into Western Europe and even into America itself. The likelihood that Khamenei will continue in this position is much greater, now that the "elections" of Feb 2004 have resulted in a "conservative" majority which is to take effect in Parliament in June. Prospects for a counterrevolution before then are not very bright, and are even less so thereafter.
Khomeini's theory of governance is scarcely a de novo creation. It had its origins 1400 years ago, when, following the death of Mohammud, the controversy arose over the succession to the leadership. At first it was purely political. The majority of the Companions supported Abu Bakr, the Prophet's father-in-law as the first elected Caliph, while a minority believed he had designated his son-in-law Ali, and it is in the beliefs of this minority that Khomeini's theory has its roots. Almost immediately, the leadership role to be played by a Caliph expanded from a merely political-military one. The Quran in and of itself was of insufficient detail to prescribe the behavior of a Moslem under varied circumstances. This made it necessary that the Caliph also function as an expounder of Islamic law.
The majority of the Companions went along with most Moslems and supported a Caliphate that was largely secular and elective. (Subsequently, it became hereditary - but not in the family of Ali.) They constituted the Sunni sect.
Ali and a few of the original Companions were the first Shi'ias - a name that means the party of Ali. To understand the Khomeini theory of government, it is important to clarify what was meant by the Prophet's designation of Ali as his successor. Ali was - according to Shi'ite legend - his first male convert. Ali was also the husband of Mohammud's favorite daughter, Fatima. Their marriage produced two of the Prophet's grandsons, Hasan and Hussain. Ali's family and their descendants were termed the the Ahlul Bayt, the family of the Prophet. Mohammud's wives (his beloved first wife Khadidja was already dead) were specifically NOT included in the line that was to give rise to the Shi'ia Imams. Click here for information on the Ahlul Bayit.
In the genesis of Islam, Mohammud has a dual role. Initially he was the receiver of the final revelation, the one which superseded previous books by lesser prophets such as Moses and Jesus. His second role is as a dispenser and teacher of law. This function he filled by explicit spoken comments on Quranic material and also by the rules implicit in the example of his behavior under various conditions. The latter is termed the Sunna while the records of his remarks and actions are.embodied in the Hadith.
Since Mohammud declared that the Quran was the final revelation, the only non-military, non-political duty for his successor would be to explicate Islamic law for hitherto untreated situations. The adoption of Ali and his descendants as empowered successors lends legitimacy to this "non-political" aspect of leadership.
Even in Ali's time, there was a certain epiphany embodied in the Imam. In successive generations, the information said to be passed down to each successor Imam was believed to be more transcendant and esoteric. Some of the later Imams were believed to be only intermittently of a corporeal nature, and only a few ordinary mortal believers were selected to receive communications from them. Finally the last of them, the 12th Imam (some time after 874), did not die but went into the Great Occultation. He is the Mahdi (the closest approximation is "saviour"). He will return when he and/or Allah wills.
But in the meantime... Who will explicate? Who will judge? Who will punish? The Sunni Caliphs, who rejected the idea of the Imamate, had their subordinate, though frequently learned, judges and legal scholars. For the Shi'ia, the growing years of absence of the power to put true spiritual authority into effect was a disaster. Temporal rulers, especially in the post-medieval nation building years, took advantage of the hiatus. The effective policy was to postpone everything inconvenient and significant until the coming of the Mahdi. Of course much that had been covered by the law of Islam could be now subsumed under the civil law, created and administered by the temporal authorities. Increasingly the principles of Islamic law and its true implementation, were bypassed in favor of new civil and business laws adapted to the needs of rulers and the foreign, imperialist element.
The diminished status of Islam as perceived by Iranians and the
almost universal rage against the infidel West were major generating
factors in the Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the Shah. However, it
is not likely that shame and rage would have been sufficient as
stand-alone processes to initiate, much less win, the struggle.
Additional forces played roles of varying significance. There were the
forces of the Left, not all of which were simply classical Marxist,
Maoist or Social Democratic - radical theories from the Algerian and
Vietnamese liberation movements also contributed. There were also
out-of-favor, out-of-office members of the educated elite with
personal as well as economic scores to settle with the Pahlavis. There
was the uniquely Iranian segment of the middle class - the
bazaaris
- closely cooperative with the clerics, with their
own reasons for urging the Shah's departure. Nonetheless, Khomeini
was, in effect, the commanding general of the decisive battles of the
Revolution and the Shi'ia were his shock troops.
Historically, a great many threads have interwoven to form the post Khomeini Iranian world. A Shi'ism as ancient as Islam itself has alternatively been brought to support a secular authority or found itself objecting to perversions of their view of Islam perpetrated by an imperial government. Centuries of intermittent warfare against neighboring Moslem and non-Moslem countries have preserved the core extent of the ancient kingdom, but at great costs. Of those, in particular the increasing dependence on foreign, Russian or Western elements for much of the tools of government - money, credit, trade - had a particularly searing effect on Iranian memory. Privileged foreigners who were corrupt and corrupted Iranian officialdom under the Shahs have been succeeded by priviledged Shi'ia clericals who are corrupt and continue the corruption of Iranian officialdom. The British and Russians - once de facto occupiers of the country - have been replaced as generators of xenophobia and rage by the Americans. For the Iranians, even now, 25 years after the episode of the American Embassy hostage crisis, the presence of American troops in Afghanistan and in Iraq continues the seeming unending sequence of largely uninvited foreign interference and illegal threat.
The complexity of the diplomatic-military-sociologic-economic interface that Iran presents to the Western world can not be dismissed as some quaint vagaries of an oriental fundamentalism, to be dealt with by the usual tunnel-visioned State department mavens. All of us must acquire some view of the multifaceted forces which have shaped the present government and its internal antagonists and supporters. Attempts to influence internal Iranian affairs, from their possible nuclear capability to their policy toward women, are hazardous and if attempted should be based on at least a minimal understanding of the background. This is too important to leave to an unmonitored State Department.
At the begining of the 16th century, the new Safavid dynasty, in the person of Ismail I, rescued Iran from the results of preceeding centuries of chaotic Mongol and Timurid rule. His early conquests consolidated the fragments of the Persian domain left by the Timurids. By 1503 he had added Baghdad and Mosul in the West. By the end of the decade, Khorosan and the Trans-Oxus territories in the east were added to complete the area that corresponded to the classic empire.
Ismail I's almost precipitous rebuilding of the Iranian State was based on the efforts of several previous Safavid clan leaders. The major surviving employable tool of government remaining from the shards of Mongol/Timurid society was the ethnic Turkish uymaq, a sort of household state or prototypic war-lordship. It was essentially a military structure, held together by the reputation and/or proclaimed attributes of the chief, commonly ruling from a hilltop tower. The shifting forces at the chief's disposal were used to extort or collect taxes and further solidify or expand the uymaq. Subchieftains were added and their retinues retained as long as it was to their and the chieftains advantage. The chiefship was the key to revenue collection - tribute, taxes and bribes.
Most importantly for the Safavids, the uymaq, largely those lordships of the western provinces, were the major source for the elitist qizilbash warriors. They were totally committed Sufi disciples of the Safavid masters. Later the fundamental problem of integrating qizilbash elements with slave soldiery to build an effective military became the stone on which many of the shahs, Safavid and later, stumbled and fell.[3]
Almost at the moment of his triumphal entry to Tabriz in 1501, Ismail was confronted by the problem and the potential opportunity set by the appearance of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. Their aggressive and arrogant pursuit of profit in the lucrative spice trade was an early instance of Western provocation and unprincipled extraction of Middle Eastern resources. It was of course just the beginning of a European aggrandizement, repeatedly applied and repeatedly deeply resented. Specifically, the Portuguese early on seized a base and established a factory (the European term for trading post) at Hormuz. Ismail was without a navy and even if he had one, unless the ships and crews were themselves Portuguese, there could be no hope of success in battle. It was only at the end of the century that the lesson was learned: to counter the Europeans, it was necessary to employ other Europeans, especially the English.[4]
The country's relative helplessness in the face of European encroachment persisted in Iranian foreign relations until the Revolution in 1979. The dependency on the infidel for aid - military, financial and particularly technologic - puzzled the Iranians, in view of their almost universally-held belief in fabeled historical Islamic superiority. Not only was it misunderstood, it was deeply resented.[5]
What was not recognized early enough was the direction the route to power was taking. Further, the penalty that change exacted from the country's resources for delay in turning, grew month by month and year by year.
The Safavids began by promoting Farsi in place of Arabic as the national language. Perhaps the most significant change instituted by the Safavids was the planned conversion of Iran's then predominantly Sunni Moslems to Shi'ia. The Safavids themselves were originally Sunni adherents of the Sufi (Tasawwuf) brotherhood which developed in 14th century Ardebil (the Safavid home in northwestern Iran) under the founder, Shykh Saf al-Din. Click here for information on Sufism.
The Sufi founder's son, Sadr al-Din, raised the ante. He claimed descent from the Prophet. Finally, his descendant, Ismail I, declared his adherence to Shi'ia Islam before his final victory, in 1503. At the same time he
"...proclaimed himeslf the hidden imam, the reincarnation of Ali and an epiphany of the divine being. Ismail claimed to be descended from the seventh imam, and to be the seventh descendant in the Safavid line, each successive imam the bearer of the divine fire passed down from generation to generation. Ismail, leaning on the religious syncretisms of almost two centuries of Sufi movements in northwestern Iran and Anatolia, and combining diverse religious influences including Shi'ism, Sunni messianism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, also proclaimed himself the incarnation of Khidr, the bearer of ancient wisdom and the spirit of Jesus..." [Lapidus, 2002, p. 234]
In the centuries before the Turkish and Mongol incursions, much of Iran had been Shi'ia. It became Sunni as a result of Turkish/Mongol occupation for several centuries. Most ethnic Turkish peoples in central and western Asia are Sunni. Shi'ism was made the official state religion on the accession of the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century. This was more than a simple, pro forma declaration. The Shi'ia heresy was promoted by means of persuasion, applied economic pressure and sometimes by the examples of execution of resistors. Safavid statecraft saw so much to its advantage in converting the town dwellers and peasants that it went so far as to punish, exile or execute some of their old persistent non-converting Sufi supporters, even loyal members of the qizilbash. As usual in the Moslem Middle East, reasons of state (the immediate needs of the ruler) took precedence over ancient alliances and faithful friendships.
Despite later and multiple changes in dynasty, occupation by foreigners, and the unvarying hostility of Wahhabist Sunnis, Iran remains independent and overwhelmingly Shi'ite. They are more than 90% of the Muslims in the country.
Most Iranian Shi'ites are "Twelvers" - those who believe that the 12 Imams were both the legal and spiritual successors of Mohammud. Because of this succession by descent, the Imams were endowed with many gifts such as their unique ability to rightly interpret the Koran and hadith (tradition). To Shia'as, the Imams were the perfect adherents of the faith and as free of sin as was their ancestor, Mohammud, the Messenger of Allah. Click here for information on Shi'ism.
Iran's western neighbor, the Ottoman Empire, was a world-power. Its political concern with the status of the Iraqi and Adjerbaizanian provinces of Iran was perhaps more of a determining factor in its hostility than was their reaction, as Sunnis, to Ismail's Sufi/Shi'ia heresy. In 1524, Sultan Selim I, at the head of a technologically superior Turkish force, succeeded in capturing the Safavid capital of Tabriz. Though the Ottomans were forced to leave within a year, the damage to the myths of Ismail's invincibility and semi-divinity were irreversible. The new empire entered a state of decline, until its resurgence at the end of the century under Shah Abbas I.
After decades of rule by a succession of harem-bound voluptuary Shahs, the regeneration of the military and its equipment in 1586 was Abbas' first priority. Its funding was in part supported by the new merchantilism which Abbas fostered. He intended that Iran would no longer be merely a way station on the spice trade routes. Abbas developed a domestic silk industry, and made it a royal monopoly. It produced varying silk textiles that created and then met a rapidly-developing European demand for the novel fabrics. The Persian carpet industry becaame centralized in factories in Isfahan. Competition to Chinese porcelains was promoted in a Shah-initiated pottery industry. Persian ceramic exports long antedated the English midlands proto-industrial products.
Understanding their role in international trade, Abbas promoted the Armenian merchant middle men, who flocked to manage buying and selling in a burgeoning artery of trade.
Abbas built a new capital, Isfahan, which was to act as both the center for his newly restructured administration and as the site for the great bazaar. The latter was his key to financial growth and the nodal point of Iranian trade with the world. The Shah tried to make Isfahan an artistic and intellectual center as well.
The brilliance of his immediate success cannot obscure his deeper failure. Isfahan did not function in Iran as contemporary London did in England or Paris in France. Perhaps it never could have, although examples of both Western and Asiatic contrived commercial centers (Tel Aviv or Singapore, for example) spring to mind. Abbas' Iran has been called a glorified household state, a super uymaq and as such did not (could not?) have the stability to mature into a nation state in the Western sense. This failure to attain real as opposed to nominal independence was, of course, the major factor in Iran's reduction to the lowly role of buffer imposed on her by the Great Powers during the 19th and early 20th centuries.[6]
The resurgence of the Safavid empire under Abbas I could not be maintained. Once again, successive Shahs became less concerned with statecraft and more devoted to their pleasures - mostly those of the harem - in the manner of traditional oriental monarchs. They could always busy themselves with the problem of preempting the rivalry of a sibling for the throne. They could make sure that things were done in an Islamic moral manner: blinding by ennucleation or by burning the open eye was preferred to the more reprehensible simple assassination. Each of this line of rulers disregarded responsibilities of rulership until, inevitably, the dynasty, in 1722, was overthrown. By this time, of course, armies were unsupervised, internal improvements were decayed and most benefits of the laboriously developed international trade were lost to Iran, with the real profits of all that remained reverting to the European merchants, especially the English.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, under the Safavids, the foundations underlying the religious and nationalist mystique characteristic of today's post-Khomeini Iran were laid. In the 19th and early 20th century, under the Qajar dynasty, Russia and Britain, in playing out their "Great Game", assured the growth of a huge crop of virulent Iranian xenophobia and the resentment of the West on which the Khomeini myth of the "Great Satan" could be based - a development not limited to the upper or official classes.[7]
The struggle between the Russian Bear and the British Lion was not a new thing in the Qajars' immediate post Napoleonic World. The English had been nibbling at the Indian Ocean coastline since the 1520s. By 1815, when Europe could breathe easily with Napoleon in St. Helena, the entire Near and Middle Eastern south coast - from Aden to Bombay - was exclusively under British control. The Persian Gulf, except for the pirates, was the preserve of the Royal Navy and even before the Indian Mutiny, the government of the subcontinent was effectively English. Later on, British "influence" (or less commonly, outright sovereignty) would extend in-land. It might start from a coastal trading post factory and grow landward to what might become a client Arab Emirate. Now, in the 1820s the northward edging of the Indian frontier and the resurgent northwestward thrust from India into Iranian markets would begin the opportunities and dangers of conflict with the then Czarist Empire.
If the game can be said to have been opened officially, it was by the Duke of Wellington, in 1829. In a prescient moment as prime minister he started Cabinet discussions about how to protect the routes of access to India from Russia. The immediate anxiety was the possibility of a Russian descent from the mountains of Afghanistan to the plains of India. A reflexive solution - at least for the English - was to push for the occupation of of Afghanistan. The pattern of future British strategy in the Middle East was set for almost 100 years. The technique was, as David Fromkin sums it up:
"...to employ the decaying regimes of Islamic Asia as a gigantic buffer between British India and its route to Egypt, and the threatening Russians. This policy was associated especially with the name of Lord Palmerston who developed it during his many years as Foreign Minister (1830-4, 1836-41, and 1846-51) and Prime Minister (1855-8 and 1859-65)" [Fromkin 1989 p.28]
Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, Aden, the Southern Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea were the vital stations along what 19th Century Britain perceived as the life-line of its Empire. The "native" regimes that in general lay to the north of the line were objects of particular British concern. As Fromkin aptly puts it:
"Britain's response [to a threat] was to support the native regimes of the Middle East against European expansion. She did not desire to control the region, but to keep any other European power from doing so. Throughout the nineteenth century, successive British Governments therefore pursued a policy of propping up the tottering Islamic realms in Asia against European interference, subversion and invasion. In doing so their principal opponent soon became the Russian Empire. Defeating Russian designs in Asia emerged as the obsessive goal of generations of British civilian and military officials. Their attempt to do so was, for them, 'the Great Game' in which the stakes ran high. George Curzon, the future Viceroy of India, defined the stakes clearly: 'Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaucasia, Persia - to me, I confess, they are the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world..."[Fromkin p. 27]
As for the Iranians, at the start of the 19th century the main object of the second Qajar Shah, Fathli, was the recovery of the southwestern provinces bordering on the Caspian from the Russians. These had been gradually acquired by Peter the Great and his successors over the course of the previous century. At first he sought French aid, but after the agreement of Napoleon and Czar Alexander on the raft at Tilsit, his only recourse was to solicit Britain. But Iran was not important enough for the English to stress the growing British-Russian rapproachment. This grew as Napoleon's hostility to Russia proceeded toward the debacle of 1812. Even during the Napoleonic invasion, while a prudent Britain stood by, the Russians were able to defeat the Iranian forces. The Shah was forced to agree to the permanent cession of Adzerbaijan including Derbend and Baku. Russian terms included the degrading total prohibition of Iranian vessels in the Caspian Sea. Qajar hopes for restoration of the ancient lands on the west Caspian shore and Transcaucasus would have to be indefinitely delayed. Much later the Russians would keep their side of the Iranian buffer of manageable size by forcing formal treaty surrender of Uzbek and other ethnic Turkish lands on Iran's eastern frontiers abutting Central Asia
In contrast to this outcome in the west, on the eastern frontiers 15 years later, it was the Russians who were able to assist the Iranians in the recovery of traditional territory, in this case portions of Iranian Afghanistan occupied by British clients in the early 1830s. Despite Russian backing, the Afghan war dragged on for years with shifting fortune, much heroics and much misery. The English retained a foothold in Afghanistan. The brief Persian war of Iran with the British Raj in 1856 was started by the attempted retaking of Herat by Iranian forces. As a telling counter thrust, British forces landed at Bushire and the Persians were "brought to their senses". By the end of the century despite Iranian feelings, Afghanistan was acknowledged by the Russsians to be a completely British preserve. Iran's opinion was not sought in this, as in so many areas, since it did not really matter one way or the other.
In the long history of the Great Game (even in its American post World War II continuation) there was no direct military engagement of the forces of the principals, if the Crimean War is excepted. This war of Russia versus England, France, the Ottoman Empire and the House of Savoy in 1853 was the first break in European great power peace since the defeat of Napoleon 40 years before. Appropriately viewed, the precipitation of a crisis by Tzar Nicholas I (he attempted to extract the "right of protection" of all the Greek Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire from the Sultan) was stupid and ill-timed. He was opposed by the British Ambassador, Lord Stratford and Prime Minister Palmerston.
At the same time, the Tsar expressed his dismal view of the health of the Ottoman Empire. He fell just short of proposing a bit of vivisection (e.g., the removal of Constantinople into the Russian Empire), which the English were not having at all. Any breaking off of pieces of the Ottoman Empire would be done only under Britain's eye and in her good time. This British reluctance for change in the Near East was, in Palmeston's eyes, the logical position for defending the Afghan and Iranian pieces, which in turn were the protectors of India.
After nearly a year of varying international tension and naval maneuvers, the annihilation by the Russians of a Turkish fleet in its home Black Sea waters provoked mass jingoism in a long conditioned anti-Russian England over the so-called Sinope massacre which practically rendered the war inevitable. The two years of struggle, limited to the Crimea, had no direct effect on the status of Afghanistan and Iran. The "health" of the Sultan and his empire was not much changed. The latter of course survived to provide England with so many new acquisitions at its breakup at the end of WW I that she could not long retain them all.
Fath Ali Shah and his successor Mahommed Shah both faced overwhelming problems in their intermittent attempts to turn Iran into a modern state. Their power was absolute but the perennial Iranian problem of the military and its relation to the tribal chiefs was insoluble. Troops remained ununiformed and without regular training. Formal and flexible military organization from platoon grade up was lacking. Progressive technological inferiority added to the spread between Iranian military power and that of the Great Powers. Consequently Iran's ability to resist the increasing foreign dominance of her internal affairs deteriorated still further. The situation invited British, Russian and, less commonly, French and German entrepreneurs to take advantage of lack of liquid credit and revenue. The (inadequate numerically for a modern state) bureaucracy was a perhaps more corrupt portion of a corrupt upper class.
At mid-century the new Shah, Nasru ed-Din Mizra, made the final Qajar attempt at forming a modern state apparatus. Most significantly among many reforms, new training schools for the elite authorities were instituted by the prime minister. He led an enforced reduction in the governmental role of Shi'ia clergy. Sadly, the Shah felt no more secure in his thinking than the majority of his predecessors. When he became suspicious of ministerial success, he had the man executed. The parlous internal and external plight of the nation continued unmitigated.
Very late in the game reforming pressure arose within the official class. The following extract from the Library of Congress-Country Study-Iran, paints the picture of efforts at reconstruction:
"In 1858 officials like Malkam Khan began to suggest in essays that the weakness of the government and its inability to prevent foreign interference lay in failure to learn the arts of government, industry, science, and administration from the advanced states of Europe. In 1871, with the encouragement of his new prime minister, Mirza Hosain Khan Moshir od Dowleh, the shah established a European-style cabinet with administrative responsibilities and a consultative council of senior princes and officials. He granted a concession for railroad construction and other economic projects to a Briton, Baron Julius de Reuter, and visited Russia and Britain himself. Opposition from bureaucratic factions hostile to the prime minister and from clerical leaders who feared foreign influence, however, forced the shah to dismiss his prime minister and to cancel the concession. Nevertheless, internal demand for reform was slowly growing. Moreover, Britain, to which the shah turned for protection against Russian encroachment, continued to urge the shah to undertake reforms and open the country to foreign trade and enterprise as a means of strengthening the country. In 1888 the shah, heeding this advice, opened the Karun River in Khuzestan to foreign shipping and gave Reuter permission to open the country's first bank. In 1890 he gave another British company a monopoly over the country's tobacco trade. The tobacco concession was obtained through bribes to leading officials and aroused considerable opposition among the clerical classes, the merchants, and the people. When a leading cleric, Mirza Hasan Shirazi, issued a fatva (religious ruling) forbidding the use of tobacco, the ban was universally observed, and the shah was once again forced to cancel the concession at considerable cost to an already depleted treasury. "[Library of Congress: A Country Study Iran http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query2/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+ir0020)]
Despite appreciable early progress, too much of the burden was as usual borne by the peasantry. Like the oriental despot he remained, the Shah's self-indulgence is said to have diminished any enthusiams for rebuilding. Particularly after his last trip abroad (and in the absence of the tutelary British minister), the Shah committed several religious blunders with serious economic consequences. These included granting a tobacco monopoly and a concession for a Lottery. (Smoking and gambling are serious sins for all Moslems.) Scandals such as the supposed abduction of an English girl by a Kurd, a cholera epidemic and an unfavorable exchange of territory in the east with the Russians, discolored the Shah's last years of power.
In 1886 the "Shadow of God on Earth" was assassinated while at prayer.[8]
By 1898, financial difficulties, in some part precipitated by the new Shah's (Muzaffur ad-Din) health made a huge loan necessary. A group of London bankers were willing to float the loan of more than 1 million sterling, but the conditions were not only severe, they were embarassing. The premium was more than 18% and with interest at 5% and the pledge of the revenues of 2 provinces for repayment. In the end, it was a Russian loan of more than 2 million sterling that was finally granted the shah's government. The customs reciepts of ALL of Irans provinces except for the British dominated Gulf provinces and Fars in the south provided the surety for repayment.
Fiscal irresponsibility continued unabated. By 1903 the Russian Persian Bank had lent Iran more than 4 million sterling of which fully half was for the Shah's personal requirements. At the same time, debt to English and Indian agencies totaled almost as much and was rising at a rapid rate.
For a period in 1902-1903 British-Russian rivalry threatened to become open hostility as the English perceived the Russians to be pressing toward the British preserve of the Persian Gulf.
Fortunately for Britain, Russia's international situation was weakened by her defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1903. The menace of a Russian presence in the Persian Gulf was avoided by diplomacy, and a series of commercial understandings effectively partitioned Iran. A gaggle of Anglo-Indian commercial missions in the next year produced a series of evaluations of economic possibilities in Iran. The Gleadower-Mewcpmen Report found what it termed "civilized government" sufficient to support commerce to be practically absent in the regions visited. The immediate consequence was a Anglo-Russian agreement (of course without consultation with the Iranians) to operationally partition Iran into 3 spheres of influence: the northern to be Russian, the Southern British and a central one in which trade was open without special privilege to both powers. This was the infamous Russo-British Convention of 1907. It remained in effect until the Bolshevik October Revolution left Britain in control, by default, of the entire country.
The first Iranian parliament, the Majlis, was the result of agitation for a constitution fueled by popular anger against the Shah and his court and high officials. The pattern of protest and agitation tended to follow the example of Russia's 1905 revolution. The Shah, Muzaffar ad-Din did not long survive the opening of the Majlis in 1906, dying 5 days after signing the constitution. He was succeeded by his son, Mahommed Ali Shah, who pledged support of the new constitution, but who was in fact determined to crush both the constitution and the incipient revolution. He used his specially trained brigade of so-called Persian Cossacks to bomb the Chamber and arrest the members of the Majlis. He held the capital for nearly a year but failed when revolutionaries from other cities took control of Teheran. The Shah went into exile. A failed Russian-supported attempt by Mahommed Ali Shah to regain the throne in 1910 was followed by a few years of somewhat chaotic government, still legally under the Qajar dynasty.
What there was remaining of effective governmental force in Iran attempted to maintain neutrality in the Great War. Most of those in authority were pro-German and, after intermittent internecine fighting, fled the capital and set up a provisional government in Bakhtaran (about 150 miles North East of Baghdad but within the country).
The last series of Western power administered episodes of national degradation which served as building bricks for Khomeini's later Great Satan myth was almost exclusively a British operation.
As a result of the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917, England found herself in complete de facto control of Iran - not merely the southern parts, those adjacent to Baluchistan in India, but also of the previously Russian sphere of influence in the North. The "equal opportunity" midsection, which had been shared by Bear and Lion, was now England's by default.
The war had done nothing to alter England's exclusive control of Afghanistan, the center of the board in the Great Game.
To the West, at war's end, Mesopotamia, that other key to the security of the Raj, was to become the protected British kingdom of Iraq. In fact the only part of the Middle East that was in one way or another not under British control was Syria.
Britain thus found herself in a golden predicament. The gold was in the future exploitation of the new lands; the predicament was immediate. There was no possibility that a war weary England or the Dominions could or would provide the money or manpower necessary to assure the peaceful occupancy and development of such massive additions to the Empire. A frustrated War Minister, Winston Churchill, was forced to contemplate the winning of the Great Game as possibly merely a transient victory, with likely losses enforced surrenders and reversals in the all too near future.
Earl Curzon, a former viceroy of India, and now Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was determined to avoid such reversals and brought all of his very great influence in the Lloyd George government to keep Persia and Mesopotamia solely British and keep them as major defensive elements of the British Raj. He thought that perhaps a "pump-priming" loan and the temporary detailing of some Anglo-Indian officers could start the show on the road. Of course the Persians in the end would pay for the foreign management of their finances and the foreign domination of their military.
One gets a good idea of Curzon's program for Iran from his "Memorandum to the Cabinet on the Persian Agreement". [August 9 1919, - #710 of Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939 First Series, volume IV. Serial 114911/150/34] He coolly outlines the new relationship with Iran as negotiated by the incredible Sir Percy Cox: [the reader should take each sentence with at least several grains of salt]
"...not that Persia has handed over to us any part of her liberties; not that we are assuming fresh and costly obligations which will place a great strain upon us in the futrure; but that the Persian Government, realising that we are the only neighbouring Great Power closely interested in the fate of Persia, able and willing to help her, and likely to be disinterested in that object, have decided of their own free will to ask us to assist Persia in the rehabilitation of her fortunes.""If it be asked why we should undertake the task at all, and why Persia should not be left to herself and allowed to rot into picturesque decay, the answer is that her geographical position, the magnitude of our interests in the country, and the future safety ouf our Eastern Empire render it impossible for us now - just as it would have been impossible for us at any time during the past fifty years - to disinterest ourselves from what happens in Persia. Moreover, now that we are about to assume the mandate for Mesopotamia, which will make us coterminous with the western frontiers of Persia, we cannot permit the existence, between the frontiers of our Indian Empire in Baluchistan and those of our new Protectorate, of a hotbed of misrule, enemy intrigue, financial chaos, and political disorder. Further, if Persia were to be left alone, there is every reason to fear that she would be overrun by Bolshevik influences from the north. Lastly, we possess in the south-western corner of Persia great assets in the shape of the oilfields which are worked for the British Navy and which give us a commanding interest in that part of the world."
Obviously British disinterestedness on Persia's behalf had limits. One of these is spelled out later in Curzon's memorandum
"...the Treasury has agreed to make an advance to the Persian Government of [pounds sterling] 2,000,000, to be shared equally by the Government of India and the Treasury, and to be secured upon the Persian customs revenues, in order to allow the Persian Government to initiate the reforms which are in contemplation. It is formally stipulated that the first installment of this shall not be paid until the British financial adviser has assumed his duties..."[emphasis added]
Percy Cox, Curzon's prime agent, was very able in manipulating the preferences of middle and upper class Iranians. Even he, however, met with occasional recalcitrants. His management of the Prime Minister in the matter of the persistent few opponents of the loan and the new "regime" is mentioned in a later letter [#767 in the same series of foreign office documents] to Curzon:
"...He [the Prime Minister of Persia] considered he had given them sufficient rope and in interests of country he now proposed to suppress their mischievieous [sic] activities. The same evening the five principal non-clerical agitators were apprehended and sent off by automobile to Kashan; and about fifteen smaller fry were placed under police surveillance. Effect of this step has been excellent and is regarded by public and press with relief and approbation. On this occasion neither of Mujtaheds [clerical leaders] was included but they were warned that if they interfered any further in politics they would be served likewise. ..."
Incidently, Cox used the same technique of abduction and exile of contrary-minded politicians a few years later in his quite successful managing of the elevation of the Hashemite, Feisal, to the throne of Iraq.
Fortunately for Iran, Curzon's plans were stillborn. The Anglo-Iranian agreement scheme had disregarded the constitutional requirement for Majlis approval. Bribery proved ineffective, opposition mounted, approval was denied and, by Jan 1921, it was all over. British forces had left Iran by the end of the year, but the outrage was not forgotten.
Part II of this survey will continue from the revolt of the first Pahlehvi to the February 2004 Iranian Majlis elections. It will contain suggestions as to the probability of an anti-clerical counterrevolution, as well as some implicit suggestions to men in the field for American-Iranian relations in and around Iraq.
A complete Bibliography will be found at the end of Part 2.
[1.] The reader is likely to be confused by the names of recent ruling and high level officials in post-revolutionary Iran. Several of the most prominent last names begin with 'K'.
1. Khomeini - Ruhollah al-Moosavi al-Khomeini.
2. Khamenei - Ayatollah Ali Khamenai - Khomeini's successor as Supreme Leader
3. Khatami - Mohammud Khatami- President of Iran - effectively politically subordinate to Khamenei and to higher clerical councils
4. Karoubi - Meloudi Karoubi - Speaker of Majlis
5. Kharrai - Kamal Kharazzi - Foreign Minister
[2.] The following abbreviations are sometimes employed following the names of Allah or Moslem clerics. They usually appear in parenthesis immediately following the name. In general we will omit them from quoted material
- SWT = "Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala" = Exalted He is (used for Allah)
- PBUH&HF = Peace be upon him and his family (used for Prophet Muhammad)
- AS = "Alayhi al-Salam" = Peace be upon him (used for the prophets and the Imams)
- RA = "Radhiyallah Anh/Anha" = may Allah be pleased with him/her
Dates in parenthesis, e.g., (620), are dates C.E. unless otherwise specified.
[3.] Iran is a very old country. While few authorities would insist on a historically continuous polity persisting since the Achaemenian Empire (Darius, Xerxes, Cyrus) to the 20th century Palahvis, most would acknowledge that a country with fluctuating borders has existed in Central Asia between a Turkish Empire to the west and an Indian empire on its east for more than a millenium. It is the fluctuating borders of this Islamic, but non Arab heartland, that is of peculiar interest. On present-day maps, the land immediately to the west of Iran is Iraq. Iraq is a relative parvenu among nations. Iraq is the major chunk of Ottoman Mesopotamia carved out by the British 80 years ago as a buffer kingdom to protect the land route to India and as partial payoff a Hashemite Arab adherent. Centuries ago the now Iraqi cities of Karbala and al Najaf were part of Persia. After the hajj to Mecca, the most important Iranian Shi'ite place of pilgramage is Karballa. It was there that Mohammud's grandson, Hussein, the 3rd Imam, was martyred. An-Najaf is the locus of the tomb of Ali himself. Today it is the site of the major Shi'ite learning center, where Khomeini taught for 13 years of exile, prior to the Revolution. For centuries, the Caliphate was headquartered in a sometimes politically, more frequently culturally, Persian Baghdad. Under the Abbasids, the Caliphate was effectively Iranian. To the north of Tabriz, an ancient Persian capital, much of what is now Adzerbaijan was a part of Sassanid and later Safavid Persian kingdoms. Along the western shore of the Caspian sea, Baku marked a classical northern limit to Persia. Far to the east, the territory up to the Oxus river was a part of the Empire. The northeast and northwest of these border-marches held ethnic Turkish majorities who contributed both military manpower and refreshing new strains of personnel to the warrior and upper classes of Iran.
[4.] Two English "Merchant Adventurers", the brothers Sherley, paved the way for the East India Company. Britain had been probing for weak points in the Portuguese overseas trading empire for more than half a century with the objective of obtaining direct access to the spice and luxury goods trade. In addition to the products of India and the East Indies, the later Safavids had built up the Iranian domestic silk and ceramic industries. In return for the right to trade freely in Iran for these luxuries, the East India company helped the Safavid Shah, Abbas I, to expel the Portuguese from their factory at Hormuz. They further collaborated in the construction of a new Persian Gulf port, Bandar Abbas, for the direct Indian-Persian trade, of which they took control. This success prompted the entry of competitors such as the Dutch and French, so that the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean became a commercial battleground that the British finally secured only toward the end of the 18th century.
[5.] how did the infidel get to be so superior? Bernard Lewis comments, not so much on Western advances, but on the role played in Islamic backwardness by centuries of Islamic indifference to what was going on in the West. In his book, What Went Wrong, he says:
"...Renaissance, the Reformation, the technological revolution passed virtualy unnoticed in the lands of Islam, where they were still inclined to dismiss the denizens of the lands beyond the Western frontier as benighted barbarians, much inferior to the more sophisticated Asian infidels to the east. These had useful skills and devices to impart; the Europeans had neither. It was a judgement that had for long been reasonably accurate. It was becoming dangerously out of date. [Bernard Lewis, 2002, p.7]."
Not so incidently the Chinese might have asked the same questions, perhaps for the same reasons.
As to the West, I know of no treatment of What Went Right that is independent enough of Western nationalistic chauvinism to validly explain the whys of the Industrial Revolution, Capitalism and Colonialism and their evolution into the Global Economy.
[6.] The administrative, economic and military innovations may have been collectively too great a burden for Shah Abbas. There were occasionally undeniable indications of emotional instability.
"He seems to have laboured under real fears of plots and assassination. He had his eldest son killed because he thought he was planning to assassinate him and the two remaining sons were then blinded to render them unfit to rule the country. We are told Abbas suffered terrible remorse for these deeds. He ordered his son's executioner to kill his own son, so that he would share Abbas' feelings. Subsequently he developed an unnatural affection for his grand-daughter, Fatima. Her father killed her and then poisoned himself to frustrate Abbas' desires." [http://isfahan.apu.ac.uk/glossary/abbas/abbas1.html]
[7.] The Iranian 18th century, while as eventful as the others, gave rise to few developments that added uniquely to the condition of present day Iran. Among the scattered transitory "dynasties" of this period of effective interregnum, perhaps the career of Nadir Shah should be noted. His conquests and temporary restoration of parts of the imperium also included a rapid, non-permanent invasion of northern India. Of potentially greater significance was his failed attempt to convert Iran back to the Sunni faith. His murder in 1747 put an end to both conquests and attempted reconversion.
[8.] The assassin, Mirza Reza, was a tradesman, who had been recruited duing a brief stay in Constantinople. His teacher and controller was Kemalu ed-Din, who had escaped from his native Iran after preaching revolution and anarchy in Teheran. The assassin Reza claimed that he had been sent by Kemalu ed-Din and had acted at his orders. Since the latter was an Iranian subject the new government attempted to have him extradited, but Kemal died during negotiations with the Sublime Porte. Mirza Reza was hung without preliminary torture.
Lewis Lipkin is a member of the editorial staff and a frequent contributor to Think-Israel.
Shi'ites encompass a very wide variety of Islamic Sects. In the context of Iran, where the vast majority of Muslims are "Twelver" Shi'ites, it is to their history and beliefs that this section is directed, unless another subsect is specifically denoted. The full meaning of the term "Twelver" will become apparent.
Mohammud's period of prophecy lasted a little more than 20 years. By the time of his death, the seeds of Shi'ite heresy were already sprouting doctrinal differences from mainline Sunni Islam. For one, the choice of the sucessor to Mohammud was a major dividing issue.
To his Companions, it seemed obvious that the leadership should be elective and the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, was chosen in Medina by the Companions in the (connived) absence of Ali.
A few of the Prophet's intimates,however, held a contrary belief: that during his life time the Prophet had denoted his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, as his successor. The relevant portions of the Quran and Hadith (especially some Shi'ite recensions) recount Mohammud's singling out his daughter Fatima, Ali and his two grandsons as the valid line of succession, calling them the Ahlul Bayit. (legitmate family). One hadith, known as the Tradition of the Cloak (Hadith al-Kissa), is supposedly related by Ai'isha (Mohammud's favorite wife, daughter of Abu Bakr, and declared enemy of Ali).
"Narrated Aisha [sic]:
One day the Prophet came out [in the] afternoon wearing a black cloak (upper garment or gown; long coat), then al-Hasan Ibn Ali came and the Prophet accommodated him under the cloak, then al-Husain came and entered the cloak, then Fatimah came and the Prophet entered her under the cloak, then Ali came and the Prophet entered him to the cloak as well. Then the Prophet recited: "Verily Allah intends to keep off from you every kind of uncleanness O' People of the House (Ahlul-Bayt), and purify you a perfect purification (the last sentence of Verse 33:33)."
[http://www.islamic-paths.org/Home/English/Sects/Shiite/Encyclopedia/ Chapter_1a_Part03.htm]
In connection with this tradition, there is also the express rejection of Mohammud's then current wives as members of the Ahlul-Bayt. Inclusion of Fatima. the Prophet's daughter, seems obviously to completely define the line from which Husein and Hasan and their descendents are to form and to exclude Ali's other sons.
There are also several additional Quranic passages and Hadith which indicate or support the claim that Ali is Mohammud's intended (by Allah as well) sucessor. A large number are dated from the last year of Mohammud's life and are part of the account of his farewell Meccan pilgramage.
Sufism is not a sect. It is a collective term for the wide variety of mystical tendencies in Islam. These vary from asceticism, quietism to a pantheism that at times was so extreme as to be seemingly anti-Islamic. Thus a Sufi might be a Sunni or a Shi'ia in his prayer and belief, and follow the road to salvation which their particular school of mysticism directed.
One can detect Sufi tendencies in the earliest days of Islam. Asceticism and quietism were frequently adopted as a simple man's abreaction to the wars of conquest, the internecine struggles around the Caliphate and progressive luxury in the upper classes. Islam's threat of hell-fire in the next life pushed men to follow uncannonical routes to salvation. The early mystics did not anticipate troubles from the administrative authorities, perhaps believing that their voluntary poverty rendered them innocuous. They were soon disabused, and many Sufis were persecuted, exiled, or executed for their pursuit of union with the deity.
Women Sufis were not uncommon and they contributed particularly to the flowering of Iranian mysticism before the Mongol period, a mysticism which also produced uniquely beautiful poetry. Recitation of such poetry, often extolling forbidden wine, the seductive behavior of the cup bearer and even semi explicit sensuality became a part of the ritual at some Sufi assemblies.
Baghdad, the capital of the Caliphate, bcame the center of Muslim mysticism in the 9th century. The incorporation of Greek philosophy into Arabic culture had opened Sufism to much neoplatonic and other classical mystic elements. Sufism ceased to be a purely individual phenomenon. Outstanding Sufis, designated masters, had one or more disciples. They were not only his students, but at the same time, followers and supporters as well.
The idea of master and disciple appeared well before the Mongol period. It led to the peculiar prominence in Islam of military mystical orders as opposed to its relative rarity in the mystical systems in other religions.
The succession which most saw then as essentially political divergence very soon acquired serious doctrinal overlays, which in short decades assumed an importance that dwarfed the mere question of political military-political leadership. To follow the "Messenger" the Caliph would have to provide guidance in valid Islamic procedure. Like some other sacred texts, the Quran is at best a sketchy outline of what constitutes proper Moslem behavior under various circumstances. Under the first three Caliphs, the memories of the Companions of the Prophet (preserved at first orally, and later in writing, the Hadith) as to how the Prophet behaved and what he said during his life time became the basic cannon of Sunni Islamic behavior, and is termed the Sunna.
Two Caliphs, Umar (Omar) and Uthman, were elected after Abu Bakr's short reign of only two years. Theirs was the time of explosive Moslem conquests in the Middle East and in Africa. All the while, Ali waited. Although not Caliph, to the Shi'ia he was already the first Imam.
When Ali finally attained the Caliphate after the murder of Uthman in 656 (Some Sunnis accuse Ali of complicity) he found himself possessed of only incomplete power. Almost immediately he was threatened by a semi-farcical attack led by Ai'isha, the Prophet's wife, which he defeated easily at the battle of the Camel. Ali's generosity was remarkable for the time and place: he provided her with an escort and a pension and sent her back to the Hijaz.
He was not nearly as effective against Syrian Ummayad opposition. Uthman's cousin, Mu'awiya, in 657 confronted him at Siffin. Nearly two months of intermittent battle was almost concluded in Ali's favor. However, foolishly, Ali essentially surrendered a strong bargaining position by submitting to a trumped-up arbitration panel that held Uthman's murder unjustified. This by implication cut the ground from Ali's Caliphate, practically insuring the necessity for a new election, which Mu'awiya would certainly win.
To the strictest of early Muslims, Ali's failure to maintain his just position was as much a breach of Shar'ia as Mu'awiya's duplicity. Accordingly, during open war with Mu'awiya, a Karijite killed Ali. The Kharijites were a very early Wahhabbi-like sect, who held that a Caliph was not a necessity. The murder seems an almost dramatic necessity as the only fitting end to the Shi'ite legend of Ali, the warrior, saint and progenitor of the almost divine and and frequently martyred line of Imams.
Only 2 of Ali's 14 sons and none of his 17 (maybe more) daughters were of the Ahlul Bayit. The eldest, Hassan, was in youth a bit of a loner and scarcely Ali's favorite. Hassan is said to have contracted as many as 100 marriages, and was further disliked since the many consequent divorces led to difficulties for his Arab, devotedly Islamic father. Curiously, while he was present at the disasterous, prolonged battle of Siffin, he did not seem to take an active part. With Ali's murder he was immediately proclaimed "Caliph" by the Shi'ites. There were still Shi'ite hopes of attaining the military-political leadership, while exercising the exclusive judicial role which was the evolving domain of an Imam. However, Ali was to remain the only Shi'ite who actually reigned as the supreme political as well as judicial leader of Islam.
Hussein was so forcibly urged to continue the war against the Ummayads by his father's old retainers that he suffered physical injury at their hands. It is said that thereafter his prime objective was to come to terms with Mu'awiya. Finally his willingness to renounce sovereignty was rewarded by a fantastic sum of 5 million dirhems plus the annual revenues of an entire Iranian province.
Hassan died of what was called consumption. Of course some Shi'ia attempted to attribute his death to poisoning at Mu'awiya's behest. This seems unlikely because, following Hassan's capitulation, he was ignored by Mu'awiya for the remainder of his life.
The Shi'ia propagate the tradition of Caliphs murdering Imams, often by poisoning. Even in cases where the evidence is at best weak, nonetheless, the Caliph in question is condemned for his hostility and suppression of the politically self-effacing Imam.
Husain, the 3rd Imam remained quietly at Medina until Caliph Mu'awiya's death. Supporters of the family of Ali, mostly Iraqi, convinced him that he could move successfully against the new Caliph Yazid. His advance guard, sent to Kufa, was trapped and executed. Unaware of this, Hussain proceeded to a confrontation. The expected local support promised by the people of Kufa came nowhere near expectations and Hussain's small party was surrounded and trapped at Karbala. There in 680 after 10 days of tormenting starvation and thirst, their numbers were reduced to perhaps 200. The final massacre was followed by a march across the desert to Damascus. The women and children were forced to accompany the bearers of the spear-mounted severed heads of the Imam's supporters. Hussain's decapitated and mutilated body was trampled into the earth at Karbala, which has become a primary goal of Shi'ia pilgrimage.
For all Islam, but particularly for Shi'ias, Hussein is the martyr extraordinaire. For the first 10 days of the first month of the Moslem year, the anniversay of Karbala, he is the object of a most profound mourning, the subject for passion plays, and the occasion for expiatory public self-inflicted flagellation and mutilation. Karbala in Iraq remains one of the two or three holiest sites of Shi'ia Islam. Indeed in the eyes of some Shi'ia, it is a more important site for pilgrimage than Mecca itself.
The fourth Imam, Zayn al-Abidin, who survived Yazid's Damascus dungeon, returned the direction of the Imamate line to one of religious devotion and the formulation of religious principles. In his time, the denial of the legitimacy of the Sunni Caliphs became bedrock in Shi'ia belief. The policy of self-imposed politic shyness passed to his son Muhamaed al-Biqr along with the mantle of the Imamate. His Immanate was challenged by a younger brother, who held with many Shi'ia that in order to assume the Imamate, it is required to publicly claim all its attendant rights, and more, to lead the struggle for them.
Jafar al-Sadiq, the 6th Imam, developed and taught the doctrine of nass, the specific testamentary designation of the successor and its consequences. The exercise of nass caused the successor to "inherit" much secret knowledge. At this period, the belief grew that the Imam actually was, or embodied, the Mahdi - the messiah, and that the messiahship passed from Imam to Imam. In addition, he received a unique ability to formulate the law; the Imam exercised what Khomeini would, centuries later, call the duties of the competant jurisconsult.
It was at Jafar al-Sadiq's death that a deep and major split in Shi'ite ranks occurred. One of Jafar's sons, Musa al-Kazim, as 7th Imam, continued what became the line of "Twelver" Imams. By that time (800) the Shi'ia were well established in the capital of Baghdad. While still professedly apolitical as far as pretensions to the Caliphate, they nevertheless had access to the court. Their growth steadily progressed among the merchants and the administrators of the imperial government
Another large group of Shi'ia considered Ismail, Jafar's other son, as the true 7th Imam. This group, in contrast to Twelver quietism, was made up of activist believers in practical and immediate freedom and justice. They were populists and revolutionaries pushing their religio-political agendas widely from Iran, Arabia, Egypt and North Africa. The heresy gave rise to the line of Fatimid Caliphs in Egypt and the Assassins of Central Asia. Ismail and his successors also claimed the "mahdihood" and that was the source of the messiahship claimed to be inherited by the first of the Safavid shahs, in his early days before the mass Iranian conversion to Twelver Shi'ia.
The line of Twelver or Imamate Imams, continued. One Abbasid Caliph, concerned with Shi'ite numbers and influence, considered including the 8th Imam, 'Ali al-Rida, at some upper level of government, perhaps preparing him for succession.. While campaigning in the far east of Iran, the Caliph invited al-Rida to court. al-Rida died - the Sunnis say by natural causes, the Shi'ia say as a result of poison. In any case, he is considered a great martyr in the Shi'ia pantheon. His tomb at Meshed is one of the holiest places in Iran. His wife, Fatima, died at about the same time while traveling east to join her husband and the Caliph. She is entombed, again as a martyr, in Qom, which is the other major holy city in Iran.
With the death of the 11th Imam, Hasan al-Askari, in 874, the critical stage for Twelver Shia is reached. The child, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who had been hidden from the murderer-agents of the Abbasid Caliphs, and who was the 12th Imam by virtue of his father's nass, disappeared. According to Shi'ia doctrine this "Lesser Occultation" involved his physical presence in the world, but invisibility to all but a few favored "agents" with whom he would communicate in fulfillment of his legal functions as Imam. With the death of the last of these agents in 944, the mahdi is in the "Greater Occultation." His actual physical presence in what state and in what world is the subject for mystico-religious speculation. What is important is that at some future time that is right for him and for Allah, he will return as the messiah.
For the 10th century, Baghdad, the center of the Caliphate, was also the center of Shi'ia differentiation in the absence of a perceivable Imam. As Lapidus points out:
"With the loss of direct divine guidance the Baghdadi Shi'ia began to codify their religious and cultural heritage and organize a new communal life to compensate for the missing imam. In the late decades of the tenth century they began the public ritual cursing of Mu'awiya, the enemy of Ali, made a public holiday of mourning for the death of Hussayn [sic] at Karbala ('ashura), and a day of celebration for Muhammad's adoption of Ali as his successor (jghadir khumm). Pilgrimage to the tombs of Ali at Nsjaf, Husayn at Karbals, and Ali al-Rida at Mashhaed [Meshed] became important rituals. The passionate mourning for Husayn, identification with suffering of the martyr, and the messianic hopes implicit in the commemoration of Karbala gave emotional and religious depth to 'Twelver'Shi'ism."In the same period, 'twelver' teaching in hadith, law and theology also took definitive form. The first formal compilation of Shi'ia hadith ritual, and law was made by al-Uyani (d. 940). The concept of the imam was reformulated in neo-Platonic and gnostic terms which provided a new metaphysical context and opened the way within imami [Twelver] Shi'ism for gnostic as well as ritual forms of religious experience. Later scholars debated whether their beliefs were based solely on the teachings of the imams or whether iftihad, the exercise of individual judgement in matters of law was permissible. The imam came to be understood as an emanation of the divine being, the 'aql-al-kull, the universal intelligence and thus a bearer of direct knowledge of the secret truths and states of spirituality that lead to the reunion of the soul of man with God.
"By the mid eleventh century the imami Shi'ia had created a worldly life lived in perpetual expectation of the world to come. In permanent opposition to the established political regimes, imamism had become a religion of salvation. This salvation might be attained by living in accordance with the hadith of the Prophet and the imams, by emotional absorption into their martyrdom, or by gnostic vision and mystical identification with the emanations of the divine being. With the consolidation of their doctrinal beliefs in written form, the development of a public ritual life and political recognition by the reigning authorities, the Baghdadi Shi'ia emerged as a sectarian community within the body of Islam." [Lapidus 2002 p. 134]
The Occultation has until now deprived all Twelver Shi'ia of a universally acceptible source of valid legal development. Only the more uncommitted Twelver of the past could be persuaded to accommodate a Shah by effectively delaying law until the Mahdi. Alternatively the ploy of declaring it not so absolutely necessary that an Imam decide the thus far undecided has been to put Twelver Shia at the service of the Shah's government. Such fundamentally irreligious (in Shi'ia eyes) efforts to cope have frequently been attributed to the machinations of the Shahs, and even to promptings and plots of their foreign supporters.
Even within the decade following the death of the Prophet, the rapidly developing Shi'ia theory was that Ali was the sole recipient from Mohammud of knowledge of the esoteric side of Islam which the other followers could not understand. Subsequent Imams, the descendents of Ali, INHERIT this secret knowledge. This is supposed to give the current Imam the SOLE right to give final and binding legal interpretations. The Imam is infallible. He was conceived as being an emanation of divinity. For some, he partakes of the neoplatonic Intelligence which was a part of creation. Alternatively;
"According to the Shi'a point of view, the Imamate, like Prophethood, is divine vicegerency. Just as it is God Almighty Who chose one from amongst His servants for the rank of Prophethood or Messengership, in the same way it is God Who chooses the Imams. God Almighty Himself commanded His Prophet to announce the Imamate (spiritual leadership) of the selected person before his death. The Prophet, according to divine command, chose a leader for mankind to protect and complete the religious code. The only difference between a Prophet and an Imam is that the Prophet receives "wahy" (revelation) from God, while the Imam, through a special blessing, receives commands from the Prophet. So the Prophet is the messenger of God and the Imam is the messenger of the Prophet." [The Origin of Shi'ite Islam and Its Principles http://home.swipnet.se/islam/shia-origin.htm ]
At a more mundane level, the Shi'ite Encyclopedia gives some attributes required for the Imam, which it contrasts with Sunni requirements for the Caliphate.
"Shiats say that Imam must be appointed by God; that appointment may be known through the declaration of the Prophet or the preceding Imam. The Sunni scholars say that Imam (or Caliph, as they prefer to say) can be either elected, or nominated by the preceding Caliph, or selected by a committee, or may gain the power through a military coup (as was in the case of Muawiyah). Shia scholars say that Imam must be sinless. The Sunni scholars (including Mutazilites) say that sinlessness is not a condition for leadership. Even if he is tyrant and sunk in sins (like in the case of Yazid, or Today's King Fahd), the majority of the scholars from the shools of Hanbali, Shafi'i, and Maliki discourage people to rise against that Caliph. They think that they should be preserved. Shiats say that Imam must possess above all such qualities as knowledge, bravery, justice, wisdom, piety, love of God, etc. The Sunni scholars say it is not necessary. A person inferior in these qualities may be elected in preference to a person having all these qualities of superior degree." [Shi 'ite Encyclopedia-Chapter 9 Section 1 Outline of Differences http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter9/1.html]
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