For the one and only Shāh of Khurāsān
In the hope that you come to the aid of your most humble servant
in his day of need
Introduction
When our Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (d. 381) journeyed to Naysābūr in the year 352, he went to the house of a Sunni Ḥākim (judge) by the name of Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Bayhaqī[1] with only one request: He had gotten news that the Ḥākim had access to Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-Ṣūlī’s (d. 335) biography of al-Riḍā and wanted him to transmit it to him[2]. The Ḥākim did as requested and al-Ṣadūq made use of it as one of his sources when authoring ʿUyūn Akhbār al-Riḍā.
This is how Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī’s biography[3] of al-Riḍā has survived and can be reconstructed. The biography consists of, by my count, 46 reports which al-Ṣadūq scatters throughout his ʿUyūn Akhbār al-Riḍā all beginning with an identical lower chain: al-Ṣadūq > al-Ḥākim al-Bayhaqī > al-Ṣūlī > […].
What follows is a study of al-Ṣūlī’s biography which I believe provides a unique glimpse into al-Riḍā’s personality as well as giving us a sense of what it was like being drawn into the orbit of the Imam.
Who was Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī?
This is how Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 380), a much younger contemporary of al-Ṣūlī, introduces him:
Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā [b. ʿAbdallāh] b. al-ʿAbbās al-Ṣūlī. A refined Adīb (man of letters) and collector of books[4].
He served as a Nadīm (boon companion) to al-Rāḍī (r. 322-329) and was his tutor before that, and he had served as a Nadīm to al-Muktafī (r. 289-295) and al-Muqtadir (r. 295-320) without cessation.
His life is too conspicuous, well-known and recent for us to need to go into much detail.
He was one of the best chess players of his time[5]
He possessed upstanding chivalry[6]
Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463), writing a generation later, describes al-Ṣūlī as follows:
Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-ʿAbbās b. Muḥammad b. Ṣūl. Famously known as al-Ṣūlī.
A learned scholar in all the Funūn al-Ādāb (literary arts).
He was well acquainted with the accounts of kings, chronicles of Caliphs, deeds of nobles, and classes of poets.
He was prolific in transmission, possessing a good mastery of the Ādāb (literary arts), ingenuous at composing books and arranging the material within in their appropriate places.
He was a Nadīm to a number of Caliphs. He recorded their biographies and collected their poems.
He wrote down the accounts of earlier and later poets, viziers, secretaries, and administrators.
He was correct in belief, beautiful in etiquette, pleasant in speech.
He had distinguished forefathers, for his ancestor Ṣūl and his family were rulers of Jurjān, then his (i.e. Ṣūl’s) descendants after him presided over the Kitba (secretarial department) and undertook Aʿmāl al-Sulṭāniyya (governmental tasks).
To Abu Bakr al-Suli belong a lot of poems in Madḥ (eulogy), Ghazal (romance) and other (genres)[7]
The picture that emerges is that of an erudite courtier[8], adept at the literary arts, especially poetry, hailing from a well-connected family with a long-record of service to the Abbasids[9].
Now being a Nadīm meant always being by the Caliph’s side and Abu Bakr al-Ṣūlī was at the side of three successive Abbasid Caliphs, ready to regale the Caliph with an impromptu poetic composition, engage him with sophisticated conversation, recount a long forgotten accomplishment of an ancestor, or play a game of chess to keep the bored Caliph entertained.
But all the while that al-Ṣūlī was doing this, he was hiding a dark secret that if exposed could cost him his life.
The Book with Many Pages
We have already encountered al-Ṣūlī’s reputation as a biographer of the Caliphs and indeed out of the many works that he is said to have authored[10] it is Kitāb al-Awrāq fī Akhbār al-Khulafāʾ wa-l-Shuʿarāʾ which must be considered his magnum opus.
In Kitāb al-Awrāq, al-Ṣūlī took up the ambitious task of chronicling the biographies of all former Abbasid Caliphs and prominent poets up to his own day. He called the work al-Awrāq ‘pages’ because he devoted many ‘pages’ to the biography of each subject.
The significance of this work is that Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī, who was always in the company of a number of Caliphs, was an eye-witness to much of what he wrote[11], but he could also draw on a vast network of informants among the courtier class (including family members) who remembered serving past Caliphs.
Now Kitāb al-Awrāq survives partially[12] and speaks to the prodigious skill of al-Ṣūlī as a historian[13], so can it be expected that al-Ṣūlī, someone who wrote biographical accounts of the Caliphs and other influential figures, would not have penned ‘pages’ on al-Riḍā? After all, al-Riḍā was at one point in time the appointed crown-prince, second in the land only to the Caliph al-Maʾmūn!
It is my contention that al-Ṣūlī did indeed pen a biography of al-Riḍā which can be recovered from al-Ṣadūq’s ʿUyūn.
Two Worlds Collide
Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī did not meet al-Riḍā as the Imam was before his time, but when al-Riḍā (d. 203[14]), who was living in Medina like all his illustrious ancestors, was fatefully summoned to Marw by the Caliph al-Maʾmūn (d. 218) in the year 200[15] he came into contact with a wholly different class of people – the courtiers of the Abbasid court. And if there was one family of courtiers that for several generations was a mainstay at court it was the Ṣūlīs.
Thus we find that one of al-Ṣūlī’s informants in the biography is his own grandmother, a slave-woman named Ghadr who had been brought to court for the pleasure of the Caliphs and whom al-Maʾmūn gifted to al-Riḍā and whose house-hold she joined for a time.
The main source, however, for al-Ṣūlī’s portrayal of al-Riḍā is his grand-uncle (his grandfather’s younger brother) by the name of Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās al-Ṣūlī (d. 243). Ibrāhīm was a courtier to al-Maʾmūn, being an accomplished poet[16] in his own right, as well as a Kātib (secretary) in the administration[17]. He was an eye-witness to much of the Imam’s stay in Khurāsān and had some important exchanges with him.
Figure 1: The Ṣūlī Family-tree
Another important source is the ambitious[18] courtier Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. Abī ʿAbbād (henceforth Ibn Abī ʿAbbād) who joined the Imam’s household after being assigned to it by the vizier al-Faḍl b. Sahl ostensibly to serve as a Kātib (secretary) for al-Riḍā but likely spy on him[19]. This assignment meant that Ibn Abī ʿAbbād spent a long time with the Imam and was there with him in some of his private moments.
Fragments from a Biography
I quote, in what follows, a few fragments from al-Ṣūlī’s biography, whether relayed from these three aforementioned sources or others:
- His Daily Routine
Abu Bakr al-Ṣūlī said: My grandmother, the mother of my father, and her name was Ghadr[20] narrated to me:
I was bought together with a number of other slave-girls from Kufa, and it is where I was born.
We were carried off to al-Maʾmūn and it was as if we were in paradise in his household with plenty of food, drink, perfume, and Dīnārs.
Then al-Maʾmūn gifted me to al-Riḍā so when I joined his household I lost all the luxuries I used to enjoy. There was a forewoman who used to wake us up at night and instruct us to pray. That was the most difficult thing for me and I used to wish to leave his household.
Then he (i.e. al-Riḍā) gifted me to your grandfather ʿAbdallāh b. al-ʿAbbās so when I came to his house it was as if I had been made to re-enter paradise again!
Abu Bakr al-Ṣūlī comments:
I have never seen a woman with more perfect intellect than this grandmother of mine nor one who was more generous in giving.
She died in the year 270 when she was around a hundred years old.
She used to be asked about al-Riḍā a lot, so she would say, ‘I do not recall much about him, except that I used to see him perfuming himself with incense of fine Indian sandalwood, and then putting on rose-water and musk.
After he finishes the dawn prayer – and he used to pray it at its earliest without any delay – he would prostrate and not raise his head until the sun rises high, then he would stand and sit to meet the people or he would ride out.
No one was allowed to raise their voice in his house, whoever they may be, all the people would talk slowly slowly’[21]
I say to her: Alas O Ghadr – you who were named ‘treachery’ because of your surpassing beauty – if only you really knew whose house you were in! Your only concern was the world thus he did not spare you a second glance! If he had given you his full attention you would have known what paradise really is!
Having said that, everything about this report speaks to its authenticity. The woman does not make any extraordinary claims about her own privileged status nor does she put on the façade of the pious. She admits to have preferred the life of luxury and extravagance that al-Maʾmūn or her later master, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbās al-Ṣūlī, could provide for her. She clearly hated being woken up for Ṣalāt which the Imam ordered in accordance with a Qur’anic verse.
Yet her brief tenure in al-Riḍā’s household had left its mark and she still remembered a few things about it, including the overwhelming piety, simplicity and hygiene of our Master al-Riḍā.
Ghadr’s description of the Imam’s austere home-life is complemented by another account which Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī narrates via one intermediary from the courtier Ibn Abī ʿAbbād who was daily in the Imam’s presence and spent a lot of time with him:
In the summer, al-Riḍā would sit on a straw mat, and in the winter on a woolen mat. His clothes were coarse, unless he comes out to the people so he would adorn himself for their sake[22]
- His Knowledge
Abu Bakr al-Ṣūlī quotes his grand-uncle Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās al-Ṣūlī (via one intermediary) as saying:
I never saw al-Riḍā being asked about anything – ever – except that he possessed knowledge about it. I never saw one more learned than him regarding what had happened in earlier times up to his own day and age. Al-Maʾmūn would test him with questions on all topics and he would answer him in them[23]
- His Relation with the Qur’an
Al-Riḍā had a very intimate relation with the Qur’an.
Ibrāhīm states:
All his speech, responses, and examples were derived from the Qur’an. He would complete reciting the whole Qur’an every three days, and he would say, ‘If I wanted to complete it in a shorter time than three days I could do so, but I do not pass by a verse except that I reflect on it, and on the reason for why it was revealed, and in what hour (it was revealed), and that is why it takes me three days to complete it’[24]
I say: Anyone who studies the reports of al-Riḍā will observe the truth of these words. All our Imams would cite the Qur’an in their responsa, of course, but it is my observation that the reports from al-Riḍā do this to an exceptional degree.
The extent to which the Imam’s language was suffused with the Qur’an can be demonstrated with the incident below.
The courtier Ibn Abī ʿAbbād reports:
I heard al-Riḍā say one day ‘O lad – bring me the meal’ so it was as though I objected to it (as being ineloquent) and that objection was apparent in me (on my face), so he recited “He said to his servant, ‘bring us our meal’” (18:62) so I said, ‘The Amīr is the most knowledgeable of all people and the best among them’[25]
- His Poetry
The reason the courtier Ibn Abī ʿAbbād took exception to the Imam’s expression is because courtiers, in general, thought very highly of their literary skills and the eloquence of their speech.
They were bound to judge al-Riḍā, a man who was summoned to court from the back-waters of Medina, and who, as far as they could tell, did not have an education in Adab as all future Caliphs including al-Maʾmūn had been given, to see whether he could compare.
Ibn Abī ʿAbbād tells us that al-Riḍā ‘was not given to quoting poetry’ as indeed was the case with all his righteous ancestors, but he once heard al-Riḍā reciting these few hauntingly beautiful lines:
كُلُّنَا نَأْمُلُ مَدّاً فِي الْأَجَلِ وَ الْمَنَايَا هُنَّ آفَاتُ الْأَمَلِ
لَا تَغُرَّنَّكَ أَبَاطِيلُ الْمُنَى وَ الْزَمِ الْقَصْدَ وَ دَعْ عَنْكَ الْعِلَلَ
إِنَّمَا الدُّنْيَا كَظِلٍّ زَائِلٍ حَلَّ فِيهِ رَاكِبٌ ثُمَّ رَحَلَ
We all hope for a respite from death When death itself is the scourge of all hope
Let not vain hope deceive you Pursue the straight path and abandon excuses
The world is like a flittering shadow A rider disembarks under it only to depart
Ibn Abī ʿAbbād says that he asked the Imam:
To whom does this verse belong – may Allah honour the Amīr?
The Imam said:
To one of your Iraqis
Ibn Abī ʿAbbād says:
Abū al-ʿAtāhiyya recited this for me as his own composition
At which point the Imam immediately interjected:
Mention him by his name and leave this practice (of giving nick-names to others)! Allah Glorified and Exalted says “Do not insult one another by (calling) nicknames” (49:11) and perhaps the man detests this[26]
I say: How exacting you were when it came to following Qur’anic principles! How considerate that you even had in mind to preserve the honour of this poet whom everyone calls by that degrading name even to this day![27]
Being a poet himself, Ibrāhīm was very interested to hear poetry from the Imam and he narrates the following original composition of the Imam which seems to have been his favourite.
Al-Riḍā would repeatedly recite:
إِذَا كُنْتَ فِي خَيْرٍ فَلَا تَغْتَرِرْ بِهِ وَ لَكِنْ قُلِ اللَّهُمَّ سَلِّمْ وَ تَمِّم
When enjoying a blessing do not be deceived Rather say: O Lord preserve and perfect[28]
- His Egalitarianism
What becomes readily apparent from studying al-Ṣūlī’s biography is that if there was one thing the Imam despised at court it was the hierarchical court culture in which there existed a stark division between the ‘elite’ and the ‘nobodies’ on the basis of worldly parameters such as ‘lineage’, ‘riches’ and ‘closeness to the Caliph’.
Thus when a man once said to al-Riḍā:
I swear by Allah that there is no one on the face of the Earth who has a more honourable ancestry than you!
The Imam responds:
It is Taqwa that made them (i.e. my forefathers) honourable and it is obedience to Allah that raised them in status[29]
When another man said:
You are – I swear by Allah – the best of all men!
The Imam responds:
Do not swear O man!
Better than me is one who has more Taqwa of Allah the Exalted and is more obedient to Him.
I swear by Allah that this verse “And We made you into nations and tribes so that you may recognize one another, surely the most honourable of you with Allah is the one with the most Taqwa” (49:13) has not been abrogated![30]
Ibrāhīm heard al-Riḍā say:
I do swear an oath of manumission – and I would never swear an oath to manumit without (actually) setting free a slave – to set free after this (oath) all that I possess (of slaves) if I thought I was better than this one – [pointing to a black slave among his servants] – just because of my close blood-relation to the Messenger of Allah, unless I have more righteous deeds so I would be better than him because of that[31]
- His Sayings
Ibrāhīm recalls some of al-Riḍā’s ‘famous aphorisms’:
Small sins are pathways to greater ones
The one who does not fear Allah in less will not fear him in more
If Allah had not threatened the people with Paradise and Hell it would still be obligatory on them to obey him and not to rebel against him because of His favours on them, and His kindness to them, and His blessings which he bestowed from Himself and which they do not deserve[32]
A Change of Heart
Who could help themselves from falling in love after coming into close contact with the personality described above?
Ibrāhīm was no different.
It was not only the knowledge that al-Riḍā exhibited in his audiences with al-Maʾmūn but also his superior character which was plain for him and all others to see. This exalted view of al-Riḍā would have only been confirmed by al-Maʾmūn’s choice of al-Riḍā as the most eligible candidate for the Caliphate from both the Alid and Abbasid houses[33].
Now al-Maʾmūn’s choice of al-Riḍā was part of his wider pro-Alid policy (whether genuine or feigned) and even included a declaration of ʿAlī as the best companion after the prophet over and above Abū Bakr and ʿUmar[34]
So the Imam took advantage of his new-found status and the much friendlier environment at court by partially abandoning Taqiyya and beginning to expose the true status of the Ahl al-Bayt and their centrality to salvation.
Thus al-Ṣūlī’s biography preserves the following speech which ‘a man’ heard al-Riḍā give:
All praise belongs to Allah who preserved through us what the people had abandoned, and raised through us what the people had put down, until we were cursed on the pulpits of disbelief for a period of eighty years, our merits were concealed, and much wealth was expended in lying about us, but Allah the Exalted refuses (anything else) on our behalf except to exalt our mention and manifest our merit.
I swear by Allah that this (favour from Allah) is not due to us (i.e. something we deserve on our own), rather it is due to the Messenger of Allah and our close-relation to Him, until our lives and what we narrate from him (i.e. the Messenger) in regard to future events that will transpire after us became one of the greatest signs and proofs of his prophethood[35]
Another report found in Ṣūlī’s biography quotes Ibrāhīm as saying:
We were once in the presence of ʿAlī b. Mūsā when he said to me, ‘There does not exist in the Dunyā (material world) a blessing in the true sense’
So one of the jurists who was attending to him said, ‘Allah Mighty and Majestic says: “You will be questioned concerning the blessing on that day” (102:8) – isn’t this blessing in the world? And it refers to cool water’
Ibrāhīm recalls that al-Riḍā raised his voice at this point and said:
That is how you (pl.) have interpreted it and made different types of it, so a group said: “It refers to cool water” while others said: “It refers to pleasant food” and yet others said: “It refers to pleasant sleep”.
However, my father narrated to me from his father Abī ʿAbdillāh al-Ṣādiq that these interpretations of yours were mentioned to him in regard the words of Allah the Exalted: “You will be questioned concerning the blessing on that day” (102:8) so he grew angry and said, ‘Allah Mighty and Majestic will not question His slaves concerning the favours He bestowed on them, nor will he remind them of that, reminder of favours is reprehensible when coming from fellow creatures so how can that which the creatures themselves disdain be attributed to the Creator Mighty and Majestic?!
In fact, ‘the blessing’ is our love the Ahl al-Bayt and our Wilāya[36].
Allah will question His slaves concerning it after Tawḥīd and after Nubuwwa, because if a slave fulfills that it leads him to the blessing of Paradise which does not come to an end.
This was narrated to me by my father from his father from his forefathers from the Commander of the Faithful who said: The Messenger of Allah said: “O ʿAlī, the first thing which a slave will be asked after his death is testimony that there is no god but Allah, and that Muḥammad is the Messenger of Allah, and that you are the Walī of the believers as per Allah’s appointment and my appointment of you, so whoever acknowledges that and believes in it he will arrive at the blessing which has no end”[37]
One can only imagine the impact these words must have had on Ibrāhīm.
Then came the day when allegiance was formally paid to al-Riḍā as the crown-prince. Ibrāhīm was present and expressed much delight at the accession for it seemed that there was now only one short final step before such a man would get to rule.
Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī reports via one intermediary that both Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās and Diʿbil b. ʿAlī al-Khuzāʿī (who we are told were inseparable friends[38]) came to al-Riḍā after allegiance had been paid to him and recited poetry in his praise.
Diʿbil recited his famous poem which begins:
مَدَارِسُ آيَاتٍ خَلَتْ مِنْ تِلَاوَةٍ وَ مَنْزِلُ وَحْيٍ مُقْفِرُ الْعَرَصَاتِ
Schools of divine verses bereft of recitation
and the descending place of revelation with desolate courtyards
But less well-known is Ibrāhīm’s poem which began:
أَزَالَتْ عَنَاءَ الْقَلْبِ بَعْدَ التَّجَلُّدِ مَصَارِعُ أَوْلَادِ النَّبِيِّ مُحَمَّدٍ
The distress of the heart has receded after enduring
the repression against the sons of Muḥammad the prophet
al-Riḍā congratulated both poets and:
Gifted them 20,000 Dirhams from the Dirhams that had his (i.e. al-Riḍā’s) name on them and which al-Maʾmūn had ordered to be coined to mark that occasion[39].
As for Diʿbil then he took the 10,000 which was his share to Qum and sold every single Dirham for 10 Dirhams thus he acquired 100,000 Dirhams[40]
As for Ibrāhīm then the the coins remained with him, after he had gifted away some and distributed some among his family members, until he died – may Allah have mercy on him – and his shroud and funerary preparations were from them[41]
The way Ibrāhīm dealt with those coins to the end of his life indicates to me that he did not consider them a normal gift from an ordinary patron but rather a memento from a worthy Imam.
Ibrāhīm seems to have undergone a change of heart. This courtier’s true allegiance had shifted from the Abbasid pretenders to the Alids.
But this was a dangerous attitude to have at court!
A Case of Blackmail
The dark secret that Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī was hiding while at court and which he reveals in this biography is that his grand-uncle’s admiration for al-Riḍā had grown to such an extent that he had begun using coded language in his poems to extoll the Alids over the Abbasids, favourably comparing al-Riḍā to al-Maʾmūn in some of them.
Soon al-Riḍā had to leave Khurāsān in the company of al-Maʾmūn who claimed to want to make a joint entry with him into a restive Baghdad[42]. But a cold political recalculation was made on the way. Al-Riḍā was gotten rid off[43] and all hopes of an Alid Imam restored to the Caliphal seat were dashed[44].
A stunned Ibrāhīm would continue to remain in the Abbasid bureaucracy for the rest of his life but his poems on al-Riḍā were now a dangerous liability which would come back to bite.
You see, state policy had moved on from the days of al-Maʾmūn who had sought Alid rapprochement and things really came to a head when a tyrant Nasibi like al-Mutawakkil (r. 232-247) became Caliph as this account which Abu Bakr al-Ṣūlī narrates from two of his sources demonstrates[45]:
Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās was a friend of Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm the secretary famously known as Zamin. He (i.e. Isḥāq) had written down for him (i.e. Ibrāhīm) his poems on al-Riḍā at the time of his (i.e. al-Riḍā’s) departure from Khurāsān, and in it (i.e. the manuscript) were some (i.e. poems) in his (i.e. Ibrāhīm’s) own hand, and the manuscript was with him (i.e. Isḥāq).
Until the time came when Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās took charge of the Dīwān al-Ḍiyāʿ (Department of Lands) on behalf of al-Mutawwakil, and they (i.e. Ibrāhīm and Isḥāq) had become estranged, so he (i.e. Ibrāhīm) dispossessed him (i.e. Isḥāq) of some lands which were in his possession, made an official demand of the return of some wealth from him and generally made life difficult for him.
Isḥāq called one of those whom he trusted and said to him, ‘Go to Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās and inform him that his poems on al-Riḍā are all with me, some in his own hand and others not – if he does not cease his demand I will send them to al-Mutawakkil!’
The middle-man went to Ibrāhīm with the message and it was as if the world had caved in on him (i.e. Ibrāhīm)!
He was forced to abandon the demand before taking back all that he (i.e. Isḥāq) possessed of his poetry after they both swore a mutual oath among themselves (i.e. not to use this against each other).
Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī quotes one Yaḥyā b. ʿAlī the astrologer (another profession popular at court) as saying:
I was the middle-man between them (i.e. Isḥāq and Ibrāhīm). I took possession of the poems (from Isḥāq) and Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās burnt them all in my presence[46]
This anecdote typifies the cut-throat culture at court. Every little minion was trying to curry favour with the Caliph and seek an advantage even if it was through betraying ones ‘supposed friend’. An atmosphere of blackmail and the fear of losing all those ill-gained riches pervaded the place.
AL-Mutawakkil, in particular, had a vicious anti-Alid policy.
Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī quotes an intermediary as saying:
Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās had two sons who were named al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn and had the Kunya Abī Muḥammad and Abī ʿAbdillāh respectively, but when al-Mutawakkil began to rule – he (i.e. Ibrāhīm) renamed the elder Isḥāq and gave him the Kunya Abī Muḥammad, and he renamed the younger ʿAbbās and gave him the Kunya Abī al-Faḍl – in fear (of al-Mutawwakil).
So palpable was Ibrāhīm’s fear at potentially being exposed that he over-compensated by beginning to participate in the more lewd aspects of court-culture like attending gatherings where slave-girls sung and danced while courtiers entertained themselves by drinking Nabīdh.
Abu Bakr al-Ṣūlī quotes another intermediary as saying:
Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās and Mūsā b. ʿAbd al-Malik (i.e. another courtier) never drank Nabīdh until al-Mutawakkil began to rule, then they both began to drink it.
They would deliberately gather together promiscuous girls and eunuchs and drink in their midst, thrice every day, so that the news of them drinking could spread around
It speaks volumes about the moral degradation at court that suspicion would fall on the one who abstains from such ‘entertainment’ as opposed to one who participates in them![47]
Unravelling the Mystery of al-Ṣūlī’s Death
It is clear that Abu Bakr al-Ṣūlī could not have narrated this biography of al-Riḍā with the implicating information it contains while still at court.
But then, and after a long period of service of almost 40 years at court, al-Ṣūlī found himself newly unemployed when the new Caliph al-Muttaqī made it clear upon his accession in the year 329 that he would no longer be requiring the services of the former Caliph al-Rāḍī’s Nudamāʾ (boon companions)[48].
Disaster struck when his house in Baghdad was ransacked in the same year by Daylamite bandits who carried away most of his valuable possessions not sparing even ‘a portion of my notebooks, which they pillaged’.
Describing his fallen state in an auto-biographical note in the last part of al-Awrāq he states:
I am impoverished from that point onwards. I have no regular income, nobody to give me gifts or secure my advantage. I survive on the worth of my notebooks and the proceedings from the sales of a garden of mine which was my life and Paradise[49]
Al-Ṣūlī’s attempts to find patronage with various powerful officials were largely unsuccessful.
It is these financial problems which made al-Ṣūlī leave his hometown of Baghdad once and for all.
Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī quotes al-Ṣūlī’s younger contemporary and fellow chronicler Ṭalḥa b. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar (d. 380) as saying:
He left Baghdad because of misfortune that engulfed him[50]
The last two years of Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī’s life would be spent in Basra, far away from court, earning a modest income by transmitting his numerous works to students until his death[51].
But there is something of a mystery surrounding al-Ṣūlī’s death which for some reason other early historians who profiled him are silent about and which only Ibn al-Nadīm hints at.
Countless scholars have come across the following statement by Ibn al-Nadīm in his entry on al-Ṣūlī:
He died in hiding in Basra, because he narrated a Juzʾ on ʿAlī, peace be upon him, so both the Khāṣṣa (ruling elites) and the ʿĀmma (ordinary masses) sought him out to kill him[52]
But no one to my knowledge, in the long history of scholarship, has been able to identify what this Juzʾ was.
As the Italian scholar Letizia Osti states in her 2022 monograph on al-Ṣūlī:
This is the portrayal of a dismal situation: while living in Basra in reduced circumstances, al-Sụ̄lī had produced a piece of scholarship which had upset many people and was forced to hide. We have details of al- Sụ̄lī’s financial situation which will be explored in Chapters Two and Three. The problematic juzʾ, on the other hand, remains elusive[53]
Until now.
It is my proposal that al-Ṣūlī, in his final years in Basra, drawing on intimate family tradition and making use of his private notes, authored and transmitted his small biography on al-Riḍā which caused an uproar against him, forcing him to hide.
All those reading Ibn al-Nadīm’s entry have naturally assumed the ‘ʿAlī’ named therein to be a reference to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, it has never crossed anyone’s mind that it could be referring to ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā![54]
A Debate
Why did al-Ṣūlī’s biography cause an uproar?
What has been quoted from it so far has been fairly innocuous[55], no one would take issue with the praise of al-Riḍā that it contains, and as for Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbbās al-Ṣūlī’s ‘traitorous’ poetry, this was surely old news with all the major protagonists of that episode long dead and with al-Ṣūlī far away from court[56].
Indeed, we know that al-Ṣūlī’s biography was well-transmitted in Sunni circles as sparse independent quotations from it can be found in their corpus: al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādi (d. 463) quotes from it in his entry on Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās al-Ṣūlī[57], so does Ibn al-Najjār (d. 643) in his addition to the Taʾrīkh[58], and al-Mizzī (d. 742) makes use of it in his profile of al-Riḍā[59].
So why the uproar?
There is one report found in it which no Sunni can find palatable to this day, what to speak of Basra in those days!
Al-Ḥākim Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Bayhaqī narrated to us. He said: Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-Ṣūlī narrated to me. He said:
A report with variant wording is quoted from al-Riḍā. It has not been transmitted down to me with a chain that I can act upon[60]. The wording of those who narrate it differ, but I will reproduce it while preserving its meaning even if its wording is not exact:
Al-Maʾmūn would secretly love for al-Riḍā to falter and for a debater to get the better of him even if he made a show of the opposite in public.
Many jurists and theologians were once gathered in his (i.e. al-Maʾmūn’s) presence so he (i.e. al-Maʾmūn) sent them a private message (saying), ‘Debate him in Imāma’
Al-Riḍā said to them, ‘Limit yourself to one (representative) among you who is bound by what you are bound (i.e. with whom you share a common stance)’
They chose a man who was known as Yaḥyā b. al-Ḍhaḥḥāk al-Samarqandī and there was no one in all of Khurāsān who was his equal.
Al-Riḍā said to him, ‘Ask whatever you wish O Yaḥyā’
He (i.e. Yaḥyā) said, ‘We should speak on Imāma. On what basis did you uphold (the Imāma of) one who did not get to rule (i.e. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib) and discard the one who actually came to rule and gained acceptance (Riḍā)?’
He (i.e. al-Riḍā) said to him, ‘Inform me, O Yaḥyā, about the one who believes a man who is lying about himself, or disbelieves a man who is speaking the truth about himself – will such a one be correct in doing so or mistaken?’
Yaḥyā kept silent.
Al-Maʾmūn said to him, ‘Answer him’
He said, ‘The Commander of the Faithful should excuse me from answering’
Yaḥyā had glimpsed where the Imam was going with this and pulled out of the debate but al-Maʾmūn said:
Inform us – O Abā-l-Ḥasan (i.e. al-Riḍā) – the motive behind this question
Al-Riḍā said:
Yaḥyā has no option but to declare on behalf of his Imams either that they lied about themselves or spoke the truth.
So if he asserts that they lied then there is no trusting a liar!
And if he asserts that they spoke the truth then the first one of them (i.e. Abū Bakr) had said ‘I have been made a ruler over you while I am not the best of you’[61] and the one who followed him (i.e. ʿUmar) had said ‘The pledge of allegiance to him (i.e. Abū Bakr) was abrupt (falta), so the one who repeats a thing like it then kill him!’[62] By Allah he was not satisfied with any other punishment for the one who acts in the way they themselves acted except to be put to death!
So the one who is not the best among people – and being the best depends on certain criteria, such as knowledge, Jihād, and other merits and he did not possess them – and the one whose pledge of allegiance was abrupt (falta), death being the only punishment for someone who pulls off something similar to it, how can his transfer of power to another be accepted when his own status is like this?!
Then he (i.e. Abū Bakr) says on the pulpit, ‘I have a devil who possesses me, so if I am made to incline then set me aright, and if I make a mistake then correct me’[63]
So they are not Imams by their own words, whether they were speaking the truth or lying, and Yaḥyā does not have an answer to this!
The unnamed narrator concludes:
Al-Maʾmūn was much impressed by his words and said, ‘There is no one on Earth who is better at this than you O Abā-l-Ḥasan!’[64]
To use a chess term that the chess-master al-Ṣūlī would readily understand, the Imam had just used against Yaḥyā what is called the Zugzwang – a play which forces your opponent to make a move but whichever legal move they choose will only worsen their position.
It is my contention that it is this report which caused the uproar leading to al-Ṣūlī going into hiding and which Sunni scholars who had access to the biography went on to suppress for obvious reasons.
Conclusion
While al-Ṣūlī and his grand-uncle Ibrāhīm were fervent admirers of ʿAlī al-Riḍā and other Alids they cannot be counted as being Imāmīs in the proper sense of recognizing a line of successive Imams who are divinely appointed as the sole Hujja of God on Earth[65].
Despite this, the reports on al-Riḍā in al-Ṣūlī’s biography align completely with our own perception of the Imam as peerless in his knowledge and character. Al-Riḍā is also shown to be an open supporter of al-Maʾmūn’s policy of Tafḍil (ʿAlī as the most superior companion) and espousing vitriol against the Shaykhayn which should put to bed any claims that the Twelver Imams were Sunni as held by the naïve. The repressive anti-Alid policy depicted in it, especially by al-Mutawakkil, sheds further light on the requirement for Taqiyya in the times of the later Imams.
Footnotes
Shiitic Studies 