Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Chapter Two: Holy Women in Holy Texts

One of the most important goals of comparative religion is not simply to detail historical similarities and differences in religious systems but to discover new ways of understanding them.1 To that end scholars often assign categories or topical classifications to specific cultural elements, for example, ritual, myth, or mysticism.2 Hagiography and gender also serve as comparative categories, although they pose a set of unique problems.

Employing hagiography as a comparative tool is difficult first and foremost because of the debate over how to define this genre, as well as use it as source material. Hagiography in its broadest sense is symbolic literature that presents the holy (Greek, hagios) to both popular and elite audiences in a variety of forms.3 Medieval hagiographies were read aloud, memorized, proliferated by scholars, and displayed in pictorial or symbolic compositions for the illiterate population.4 In written, oral, and visual form, hagiographies praised the virtues and damned the vices of heroic persons set forth as didactic exempla; yet these texts reviewed the miraculous happenings involving more than just holy people. Hagiography celebrated sacred locales, architectural structures, and holy objects: early Christian hagiographers, for example, popularized Jerusalem as a holy site, the Holy Sepulcher as a holy structure, and bits of the true cross as holy relics.5 Jerusalem was not unique in this respect; almost every Christian town publicized its local saint’s site. Shi`ite communities likewise celebrated the Imams’ lives by recounting their miracles and visiting their shrines.6 Holiness in one form or another permeated the learning and the physical landscape of medieval life for both Christians and Shi`ite Muslims.

As literature intended to depict cultural ideals symbolically, hagiography is a complex genre in terms of both substance and agenda. On the surface hagiography appears biographical and descriptive; it speaks of life and death, joy and suffering. However, it was not intended primarily to preserve and communicate a historical kernel of truth or recount an objective chronicle of events. Gregory of Tours opted to name his hagiographic collection “Life [Vita] of the Fathers” rather than “Lives [Vitae] of the Fathers.” Gregory explained that “there is a diversity of merits and virtues among [the saints], but the one life of the body sustains them all in this world.”7 In Gregory’s compendium the saints’ differences and distinctions disappear as he reveals the underlying holiness that unites them all.

Hagiography is thus fundamentally didactic: it edifies through exemplary displays of piety and holiness; it promulgates sacred narratives and then explains the moral and theological imperatives embedded in them; and it models proper modes of ritual and other cultic practices. Hagiographic discourse aims to resurrect and then reconstruct for its audience examples of holiness or ideal modes of being intended for pious imitation. With this functionalist definition of hagiography in mind, scholars should expect that any hagiographic tradition would be radically determined by the canon of values, beliefs, and authoritative texts particular to the cultural context from which it emerges. This certainly holds true for early Christian and Islamic hagiographic texts, which reflect their (sometimes) radically different ideals of the holy.

Hagiography also includes idealizations of masculine and feminine piety that modern readers might find distressingly misogynistic. Literate men mostly constructed these gender paradigms as very few texts by women exist. These male-authored texts provide the only substantive view of women (and expectations of women) in early Christian and Shi`ite religious communities. By using gender as a point of comparison, it becomes clear that theologians and hagiographers in both traditions limit holy women’s miraculous actions and proscribe holy women’s miraculous bodies to the domestic sphere.

Medieval and Modern Audiences: Christianity Late antique and early medieval Christian hagiographers transformed their saintly characters and sacred landscapes in accordance with Greco-

Roman and biblical formulas.8 Some of the most influential early Christian hagiographies sprang from Syria and Egypt during the fourth and fifth centuries.9 These texts applauded the efforts of holy men and women who surrendered mundane existence for a higher, angelic life. The era of Christian martyrs had all but ended as Roman emperors legalized Christianity throughout the empire. As martyrs became increasingly unnecessary, ascetics supplied another model of Christian heroism: they mortified their bodies and sought to transcend the problems of the flesh as they struggled against their spiritual enemy, Satan, and his demonic forces.10

Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373) constructed one of the most important Christian hagiographies in his Life of Anthony, an Egyptian recluse who haunted nearby deserts and caves.11 Athanasius describes a vicarious martyr, guarding the periphery of human existence against evil while struggling against his interior lusts and desires. In the end Anthony provides his audience with a new Christ figure who prays in the desert, casts out demons, heals the sick, and raises the dead.12 Anthony’s hagiographer produces a hero-hermit much like the biblical Elijah, reconstructed in the fourth century, intended to model the miracles and grace of Christ. Indeed, one of the greatest signs of sanctity was imitatio Christi (the imitation of Christ) wherein holy men and women performed Christ’s miracles after symbolically sharing in his suffering by means of ascetic feats.

As Christianity expanded from the Syrian and Greek East to the Gallo-Roman/Latin West, hagiographers encountered a new audience.13 It proved difficult if not impossible to transform urban Gaul into a physical wasteland of caves and demon-inhabited deserts. Western hagiographers thus created a spiritual desert and challenged the Roman elite and Mediterranean nobility to convert to Christianity and to live as Christ through renunciation of wealth and status. Women proved particularly important in this newly imagined desert as the viable patrons of the church who gladly distributed their Roman patrimony among ecclesiastical authorities.14 Hagiographers in Gaul expressed innovative ideals of holiness for a new constituency of sinners.

The fourth-century author Sulpicius Severus created perhaps the most influential hagiography in early medieval Gaul. His Life of Martin of Tours transformed a Roman soldier known for his valor into an Old Testament prophet, traveling and preaching throughout Gaul, who only reluctantly accepted the bishop’s office of Tours.15 Martin’s life became the hallmark of Western hagiography: the loyal Roman citizen forsakes his mundane wealth to serve his heavenly king. Martin, in typical fashion, healed the sick, exorcised the demon possessed, and practiced profound charity and kindness. At the same time, he assumed the bishop’s mantle and dutifully acknowledged the church’s authority. The hagiographer modified his wandering holy man at first reminiscent of the eastern Anthony into a stable bishop ever mindful of his parish and his flock. A pious Christian but also a good Roman, Martin embodied the ideals of hierarchy and structure.16

Merovingian hagiographers inherited the model of Martin and effectively blended their new bishops with this very Roman ideal: Frankish clergy promoted order and hierarchy within both church and state. Merovingian hagiographers were aware also of the saint cults that proliferated throughout Gaul as they addressed popular audiences who increasingly committed themselves to local saints, both living and dead. Merovingian hagiography thus served a pastoral purpose, aimed directly at teaching and educating a general constituency about the developing protocols for the veneration of saints.

Linguists in particular first recognized the pastoral function of Merovingian texts by their distinctive Latin vocabulary: the language is both colloquial and active.17 Merovingian hagiographers focused on how to venerate local holy figures and what miraculous results might be expected. They provided models instructing pious petitioners to gather remnants from the cells of saints such as ash, candle wax, or oil; through these contact relics, miraculous healing followed and the saints’ fame spread.18 These instructive texts compare dramatically with the later Carolingian hagiographies intended for monastic use; Carolingian Latin indicates more interior action such as meditation and prayer.19 In contrast, Merovingian hagiography speaks to a nonmonastic audience, defining innovative notions of holiness associated with the spread of saint veneration.

There is considerable disagreement among modern scholars of medieval Christianity as to what to do with hagiography as a source. European intellectuals generally scoffed at Christian hagiographic sources during the Enlightenment period. Scholars of the ancient world such as David Hume and Edward Gibbon dismissed hagiography as an irrational literature confined to the lower classes that recounted fanciful miracle stories and fantastic displays of a misnamed polytheism.20 Beginning only in the 1930s, scholars and theologians began to mine hagiography for details about life, society, and intellectual history. Hippolyte Delehaye and the Bollandists, a group of Jesuit priests dedicated to recovering and categorizing hagiographies, led this movement, although much of their work still attempted to separate the factual from the spurious, the believable from the unbelievable.21

During the past two decades, hagiologers have generally disregarded the fact or fiction debate and gleaned information about cultural milieus and gender roles from holy texts.22 Most scholars now agree that hagiography was not just a literature intended for a lay, mostly illiterate population; instead, wealthy and poor audiences alike shared a hagiographic corpus that greatly defined their experiences. This literature provided the system of cultural symbols that united western Christendom.

Medieval and Modern Audiences: Islam

Early Shi`ite hagiography reveals an equally dynamic symbolic system at least during the late eighth and ninth century. Shi`ite notions of power and authority increasingly considered `Ali and Fatima’s descendants Imams responsible for their community’s spiritual guidance. Hagiographies explained the Imams’ miraculous births, their infallible lives, and their sublime wisdom. These models of holiness inspired ritual activities surrounding the Imams’ tombs and shrines. Shi`ite hagiographers, for example, encouraged devotees to visit holy places on pilgrimages (ziyara).23 Most Shi`ites turned their attention to the shrine of Husayn, `Ali and Fatima’s son who died a martyr’s death at Karbala. Husayn’s body was interred at Karbala, but tradition also placed his head at Karbala, Damascus, Najaf, and Cairo.24 All these locales remain important pilgrimage sites where Shi`ites venerate their third Imam.

Locating the mainstream notion of sanctity is more difficult in Islam than in early Christianity. Many Muslim theologians avoid the elevated designation of sainthood, stressing instead that every individual maintains direct access to Allah, thus disallowing the need for a saintly intercessor.25 Qur’an 39.44 declares, “To Allah belongs exclusively the right to grant intercession. To Him belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth: in the end, it is to Him that you shall be brought back.” Thus in Islam no centralized clergy propagates and authorizes a genre of literature akin to Christianity’s saints’ lives. Saintly canonization is almost completely within the province of hagiographers and reader response to their products (both oral and written).

Medieval Muslims nonetheless maintained a definite notion of holiness (wilaya) and disseminated those sacred ideals through their own, distinct forms of hagiography. These sacred collections included biographies of the Prophet, battlefield accounts, or, for Shi`ites, descriptions of the Imams and their miraculous powers. The earliest known biography of the Prophet, for example, resembled early Christian tales of desert saints.26 Bedouin tribes on the edges of the Arabian peninsula certainly were familiar with Christian veneration of desert holy men and their miracles: historical records indicate that they shared the same deserts and caves as Christian hermits, witnessed their fame, and heard about their miraculous powers. The Prophet’s biographer cast him as a functioning holy man to his community: Muhammad healed the sick, provided righteous judgments, and multiplied food.27 Many of the Prophet’s friends and family described in the biographical materials also served as pious models intended for emulation and edification.

While Muslim hagiography might vary in intent and audience - for example, some collections, qisas al-anbiya, or “Tales of the Prophets,” featured miracle stories of the same prophets shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims - most of it has the same format. Accounts of holiness are usually recorded as hadith, one of two genres of sacred texts in Islam, the other being the Qur’an.

Like Christianity, Islam is a religion of the book and reveres a sacred and revealed scripture. The Qur’an confers the direct revelation of Allah through his final messenger, Muhammad. The holy text describes humanity’s virtues and vices, directs the actions of the community (umma), and offers a glimpse of an impending apocalypse.28 It also presents a series of prophets and holy men and women for pious Muslims to imitate.29

The hadith collections advance their own notions of holiness. Hadith (used here as a collective noun; the proper plural is ahadith) are traditions that relate back to the Prophet Muhammad’s own lifetime, describing his actions and utterances as well as those of his friends, family, and other contemporaries.30 The hadith literature functions as hagiography when read as a means of resurrecting a pristine past and endowing Muslims with models of holiness and virtue. Read in this way, hadith literature allows scholars and others to eavesdrop on the earliest Muslim community: the Prophet’s lifestyle and the faithfulness of his friends and family (and the perfidy of his enemies), and directives and patterns outside the Qur’anic framework. Taken together the Qur’an and hadith (the “trodden path,” or sunna), provide models for emulation; scholarly exegesis (tafsir) then attempts to explain and contextualize the sunna so that pious Muslims may follow them.

Islamicists approach hadith literature as carefully as medievalists approach Christian hagiography, and this is not a recent methodological problem. Medieval Muslims themselves devoted an entire science to proving or disproving hadith authenticity. To do this they focused most strenuously on the chain of transmitters, or isnad. The hadith consists of two parts: the tradition itself (matn) and a detailed list of individuals who observed or transmitted the Prophet’s advice or actions (isnad). Scholars and linguists identified the transmitters, reconciled their death dates with times of transmission, and located the hadith in an elaborate spectrum of categories ranging from sound (sahih) to weak (da`if), from precious (`aziz) to forged (mawdu`).

Medieval hadith collections contributed more than personal models of piety and words of wisdom from the Prophet. The central role of hadith was to lay the foundation of Islamic law: Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) carefully reasoned what was obligatory (fard), recommended (mandub), neutral (mubah), reprehensible (makruh), and forbidden (haram). By the late ninth and early tenth century, Islamic scholars generally accepted as canonical the six rigorously scrutinized compendia composed by separate hadith critics: al-Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Da’ud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nisa’i, and Ibn Hanbal. Other scholars compiled their own hadith collections, but these six became the pillars of Sunni piety and law.

Shi`ite Muslims, on the other hand, esteem additional hadith collections as authoritative.31 The Shi`ites value above all the traditions that relate back to the Prophet’s family. For Twelver Shi`ites, this includes the twelve Imams, among them `Ali himself. Since the Shi`a regarded `Ali and the Imams as Muhammad’s rightful successors, they gathered accounts of the Imams’ deeds and sayings for both political and spiritual guidance.32

Shi`ites maintain that `Ali and Fatima’s descendants, beginning with their sons Hasan and Husayn, became the sources of true spiritual sustenance to the Islamic community. According to one tradition, Husayn (quoted by Ja`far al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam) proclaimed:

“God created His servants solely that they might know Him, for when they know Him they worship Him and thus free themselves from the worship of anything that is not Him.” Someone then asked: “What is knowledge of God?” “It is, for the people of each age, knowledge of the Imam to whom they owe obeisance.” 33

For Shi`ites recognition of and dependence on the Imams equaled knowledge of God himself. It was irrelevant if the ruling Umayyad or `Abbasid dynasty acknowledged the Imams as the community’s rightful leaders. Allah required the Shi`a itself to identify the Imam and maintain his sublime teachings through its collective memories and records.

Many Shi`ite hadith collections function, therefore, as a form of political and spiritual rhetoric explaining the cosmological link between the Prophet’s beloved family and the community.34 These hadith demonstrate the Shi`a’s sublime authority in heaven even if it is not always recognized on earth.35 They also offer adoptive membership into the ahl al-bayt for those who recognize the Imam’s authority. The hadith function as hagiography because they outline a mode of holiness (acceptance into the family), reveal moral and theological imperatives (allegiance to the family), and supply holy models to imitate (the prophets, Imams, and early community members). Like Merovingian hagiography, hadith reconstruct a sacred past in their own dynamically changing context to promote a new identity, namely, the identification of the Imams and an evolving Shi`ism as it distinguished itself from Sunni Islam.

As in Christian hagiography, there exist equally contentious debates about how to use hadith as hagiography. Many Muslims view the Prophet Muhammad with esteem and adoration and therefore strive to achieve a real view of him and his community. Hadith accepted as authentic are windows into that reality and afford a genuine depiction of the Prophet. Many Muslim scholars maintain the historicity of hadith transmission and argue that the earliest community assured hadith veracity. These scholars admit that hadith evolved from an oral to a written genre, but they also insist that skilled, literate scholars held the transmissions to high standards of authentication.36

The question of veracity has plagued non-Muslim and secular scholars as well. Since the early twentieth century some Islamicists have recognized that formally written hadith compilations only circulated in the late eighth century. They have argued that these hadith reveal more about eighth-century life than about Muhammad’s own community.37 This approach fundamentally questions the hadith’s reliability as a historical source for the earliest Islamic period; and, for Muslims, this critique challenges hadith as an authoritative source of sublime direction and models of piety. Other Islamicists have forged a middle ground: hadith reflect the Prophet’s own lifetime, but the standardized method of transmission and compilation must be dated much later. According to this argument, it remains impossible to demonstrate absolutely the hadith’s historicity.38

I avoid the question of hadith veracity altogether; instead of expecting the hadith to betray an objective historical reality, I see them as revealing important cultural symbols and notions of holiness relevant to their medieval audiences.39 If hadith were deemed important enough to copy, memorize, and scrutinize, then they must disclose valuable clues about the community that treasured them. Even the more obscure, “weak” hadith that “sound” compendia often fail to include are important; they help to recapture the evolutionary nature of Muslim identity by revealing the developing hagiographic tradition. As in Christianity, theology and religious identity evolved over the centuries as leaders, theologians, and scholars formulated and answered questions important for their nascent communities. Even those hadith that were later rejected or considered spurious by Shi`ite scholars reflect the stages of that evolutionary process.

Classical Shi`ite sources are especially difficult to date and ascribe to specific compilers. Although the hadith format provides lists of transmitters, the editors themselves sometimes evade designation. Some extant compendia do give the names of editor and author, such as the tenth-century Kitab al-Irshad (Book of Guidance into the Lives of the Twelve Imams) by Shaykh al-Mufid. Other hadith survive only in later compilations such as that of the seventeenth - century Safavid scholar Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi, Bihar al-anwar (Sea of Lights). Although this collection is rather late, it is indispensable to scholars of Shi`ite Islam.

With the help of scholars such as al-Majlisi, the seventeenth-century Safavids of Persia launched a prolific religious campaign against Sunni and Sufi piety.40 Al-Majlisi’s job as a member of the `ulama´ was to collect and distribute hadith that illustrated Shi`ite identity and the holy family’s election since before created time. He intended his collections to serve as a type of propaganda, popularizing a legalistic form of Twelver Shi`ism while disavowing Sunnism and some Sufi orders. He was the first scholar to translate a large number of hadith collections, theologies, and histories into Persian for greater availability to a general audience.

Al-Majlisi’s collection is important for another reason: it includes both the widely accepted, sound hadith and the potentially spurious (or weak) traditions. For example, al-Majlisi repeated many of the earliest Shi`ite sources from al-Kulayni and Ibn Babawayh, renowned tenth-century Shi`ite scholars,41 some of which are extant only through his encyclopedic collection. But he also chose hadith that were not included in ordinary compilations of Shi`ite texts. Because of this broad inclusiveness, some scholars doubt its historical veracity. (One colleague referred to the Bihar al-anwar as the “great trash heap of Shi`ite traditions.”)42 Because al-Majlisi cast such a wide net in collecting his hadith, he provides scholars with an opportunity to view Shi`ism as it developed and blossomed throughout the classical and medieval periods.

Al-Majlisi quite naturally focused on the Prophet’s family and particularly his daughter Fatima to prove Shi`ite Islam’s superiority over Sunnism and Sufi sm. The traditions range from those of the most mystical bent (which define the holy family in terms of pure light with absolute knowledge)43 to those of more practical application (which define the twelfth Imam as the source of all spiritual authority).

This grand collection of hadith also certainly added authority to al-Majlisi’s own position. According to Twelver doctrine, the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, did not die but went into a sublime hiding, or occultation. During this period of hiddenness, the Shi`ite community relies on the scholars to discern the Imam’s justice. Al-Majlisi was just such a scholar who implicitly designated himself as one of the twelfth Imam’s spokesmen until the final, apocalyptic return. Through his hadith compilations, al-Majlisi justified his own political station while constructing a hagiographic edifice praising the holy family’s spiritual status.44

Sources and Gender

As Merovingian Christians and Shi`ite Muslims sought to make sense of their world and to delineate their place in it, they devised and articulated dynamic notions of holiness. For the people of Gaul, the changes in their world involved the political transition from late Roman to Merovingian rule and the spiritual acculturation to a new, unifying Christendom. Shi`ite communities, in many cases bereft of political ascendancy because of a Sunni majority (except for a brief interim in the mid-tenth century), articulated their unique cosmology and loyalties to the Imam and the holy family. In both these cases, discussions of sanctity in hagiographic sources betray both theological and political agendas. On closer examination it becomes clear that gender expectations and the introduction of feminine ideals signaled radical changes in society as well. Both Christian and Muslim cultures supported and preserved the literary products of a male elite, which constructed paradigms of community and holiness via women, in particular Mary and Fatima.

Most extant Christian texts from late antiquity originate from the ecclesiastical sphere. Theologians such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome charted the twists and turns Christian theology would take in terms of asceticism, ideals of marriage, the Trinitarian debate, and the path of Christ’s church (ecclesia).45 Late antique authors both reflected and refuted beliefs about the Virgin Mary popularized by anonymous, apocryphal texts. They absorbed, for example, the precept of Mary’s perpetual virginity (both before, during, and after Christ’s birth), yet some cautioned against Mary’s Immaculate Conception, or birth free from sin.46 Marian theology, and Christian theology in general, was only slowly evolving.

The early Middle Ages yield a wider variety of sources, although most still come from the ecclesiastical sphere: church councils left records of decisions and debate; bishops wrote histories of their bishoprics (which were more like family trees); priests and popes wrote hagiographies;47 and holy men crafted monastic rules for female religious to follow. One of the most prolific authors of Merovingian Gaul was Gregory of Tours; he provided a veritable who’s who among Merovingian bishops in his Ten Books of History and numerous hagiographies of male and female saints.48 In early Christian hagiography, few texts written by women survive, and only one of those has a self-identified female author (Baudonivia, who wrote her saint’s life only to complement an earlier redaction by a man, Fortunatus).49 Scholars suspect other works might be written by women, especially nuns who had firsthand knowledge of their saint-abbesses.50 In most cases male clergy wrote about women.

A similar case arises in classical Islam. Women may have lent considerable time, faith, and even wealth to their respective traditions, but they remained largely silent in the sources. Muslim women’s social expectations depended largely on the geographic locale and ruling elite; yet in most cases women played a sizable role in the establishment of schools and the transmission of knowledge. Like female patrons of Christianity, wealthy wives and mothers commissioned schools and donated land for educational institutions, and with those same sources of wealth, many women acquired personal tutors and received competitive educations.51 Also as with Christianity, tradition largely circumscribed women’s practical role in the public classroom as teachers or students; modes of formal education, including Qur’anic studies, remained confined to males.52 Any formal training or introduction to Islamic jurisprudence and hadith studies also remained a mostly masculine domain.

Although Muslim scholars restricted women from formal educations, they did not release them from the burden of learning and studying the hadith and models of holiness. Theoretically, women bore the same responsibility as men to understand and follow Islamic teaching. Hadith scholars even recognized several women of the early community as worthy transmitters. Many of these women, such as `A’isha, the Prophet’s youngest wife, lived with Muhammad and had intimate dealings with him. These women like none other could transmit information about the Prophet’s actions, words, and directives because of their association in the domestic sphere.53 Women’s official roles largely ended in the domestic sphere, however; while many women acted as hadith transmitters, there are no extant compilations by female scholars and no information about them. Thus our medieval sources are once again written by men about women.

In these male-authored medieval texts about women, gender, and holiness, hagiographers and theologians transformed Mary and Fatima into champions for their pious agenda. Mary marked the boundaries between Christianity and heresy; Fatima led her family to paradise and consigned her enemies to hell. Both communities fashioned a view of piety, politics, and family by manipulating traditional gender roles while still assigning their heroines to the domestic sphere as miraculous mothers and virgins. Today’s readers might be tempted to dismiss much of the hagiographers’ works as too proscriptive if not blatantly misogynistic, but closer examination reveals a more complex agenda.

Chapter One: Holy Women in Context

Hagiographers certainly embellished Mary and Fatima’s roles in Christianity and Shi`ite Islam for rhetorical purpose. Throughout sacred texts these women perform various miracles such as healing the (pious) sick and punishing the (heretical) evildoers with righteous anger. Historians, on the other hand, have struggled to locate Mary and Fatima chronologically, in their sociopolitical contexts. Although their historical personae might be forever shrouded in sacred memory, scholars can identify some of the pivotal moments in theological debates and dynastic lineages when Mary’s and Fatima’s veneration proliferated most fervently.

Late antique Christian theologians, for example, invoked the Virgin Mary as an image of orthodoxy; Mary’s body displayed the church’s purity and incorruptibility. Battling theologians, arguing most ardently over Christ’s nature, articulated their ideas by describing Mary’s nature. Early medieval dynasties depended on the same didactic technique. Families such as the Merovingians aligned themselves with the Blessed Virgin and orthodox Christianity against their barbarian counterparts (who adhered mostly to Arian Christianity; i.e., those Christians who denied that Jesus was cosubstantial with the Father).

In a similar fashion, the evolving shi`at `Ali (party of `Ali) came to define themselves through their connection with Fatima. While all Muslims esteemed Fatima as the Prophet’s daughter, she uniquely symbolized the reverence for and status of the Prophet’s family among the early Shi`a. Shi`ite theologians developed a distinctive notion of authority that they believed passed from the Prophet to `Ali and his descendants (the Imams) through Fatima. Fatima’s maternity became increasingly important as Shi`i scholars defined her miraculous, pure, and intercessory capacities to strengthen a definition of power imbued with spiritual significance and unique to `Ali’s patriline and Fatima’s matriline. As Fatima’s descendants became more privileged, various Shi`ite groupings emerged, sometimes arguing over the Imams’ true identity and then forging separate dynastic claims.

The historical personae of both Mary and Fatima thus may be hidden within layers of hagiographic formulas and sacred memory, but the socio political contexts from which they emerge can be reconstructed to some degree. Hagiographers and theologians, Christians and Shi`ites, retold and reformulated the women’s lives to reflect and refine emerging notions of sanctity, community, and dynastic authority. Mary and Fatima, shaped and reshaped through time, demonstrate the importance of women in constructing a sense of historical anamnesis and identity.1

Mary, the Church, and the Merovingians

Mary’s greatest contribution to Christian theology is perhaps that she literally conferred flesh upon Jesus, the Christ. Yet early Christian sects considered this seemingly basic point the most controversial; many groups argued over the exact nature of Jesus well into the fourth and fifth centuries. Gnostic groups questioned whether Divinity could be encapsulated in flesh; Arian Christians suggested Jesus was created in time and thus was unlike God the Father. Only by the fifth century did an emerging Christian orthodoxy firmly claim that Christ, fully divine and equal to the Father, bore a human body composed of flesh and blood that suffered and died at Calvary. Theologians made such assertions by designating Mary Theotokos, or God-bearer, to prove Christ’s unique composition.2 Nestorian Christians quickly countered this claim and forced the church to finally, and very distinctly, define the God-Man’s nature and birth.

The church confirmed Mary as Theotokos at the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE (although the title had appeared throughout theological discourse since the time of Origen, d. 254 CE). The council acted after a heated dispute developed between two important church leaders. Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, considered the title Theotokos an infringement on the God-Man’s divinity.3 The appellation, he feared, implied that the deity required a natural birth, a mundane gestation; to suggest that Mary contained God within her womb bordered on paganism. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, insisted that Mary as Theotokos verified the unity of Christ. The Marian appellation showed clearly, he believed, that Christ was God and Man simultaneously. At the hastily convened council, church leaders sanctioned Cyril’s position, condemned Nestorius, and presented Mary’s new title to a boisterous crowd.

The Council of Ephesus generated Marian devotion almost as a byproduct of Christological explanation. Popular piety had already revealed a vibrant Marian devotion evidenced in prolific tales of her infancy and childhood, yet theologians also harnessed the image and popularity of Mary in their emerging orthodoxy regarding both Christ and his church. Mary functioned as a proof text for Christ’s unique nature as well as a metaphor for the church itself. Both Mary and the ecclesia evoke the image of a spotless, pure virgin and a fecund mother producing Christian offspring.

Church officials’ use of Mary to craft a Christian orthodoxy corresponded with the Roman Empire’s political transformation. During the fifth and sixth centuries, Germanic kingdoms replaced the (once) more ecumenical Roman administration with local kings, bishops, and priests who wielded substantial local power. Holy men, in particular, served as theologians as well as political figures because the church easily appropriated local vestiges of Roman authority.4 Theological resolutions and even political might came to reside more in the church than traditional political offices. These church officials appeared particularly powerful as they defended their communities not against external, foreign enemies but against the internal abominations of heresy.

By the late fifth and early sixth century, for example, the Gallo-Roman population no longer feared barbarian onslaughts, ethnic contamination,5 or usurpation by Germanic overlords; in fact, Gregory of Tours considered most freemen of Gaul as Franks, even if they descended from the indigenous Gallo-Roman population.6 If they felt secure in some ways, however, they were not free from perceived threats of spiritual contamination. Church leaders viewed Arianism and Judaism as threats to Christian theology and life itself. The general Frankish population of Gaul identified their barbaric enemies not only in terms of ethnic or linguistic otherness but also as threats to Catholic orthodoxy.7

It is important to remember, too, that theological orthodoxy was not considered part of an elite culture accessible only to a literate scholarly class.8 Theologians and laypersons alike debated many issues. While it would be difficult to find a sixth-century theologian of Augustine’s or Ambrose’s caliber, Christian orthodoxy was nonetheless felt and lived in every social stratum partly by way of the cult of saints, devotions promoted by the clergy and taken up avidly by the laity. Ideas about orthodoxy were not located primarily in theological treatises or formulaic accounts of Trinitarian disputes. They were found in complex diatribes against heresy, which, in turn, were embedded in a variety of popular devotions, many of which centered on the figure of Mary.9

Orthodox Christianity, unlike its heretical counterparts, necessitated the union of humanity and divinity in the God-Man, Jesus. Judaism denied Jesus as the Messiah, and Arianism questioned the full divinity of Christ, thinking him a creature and therefore not on the order of the Creator. Both refused the Christian claim that in Jesus the human and divine were united in one person and thus denied that the vast chasm between God and humanity could be bridged.

Orthodox (or “right”) Christianity, in contrast, maintained that Christ could and did breach the abyss separating heaven and earth. Christ was not only a divine person capable of uniting humanity and divinity within himself; he afforded a model for others to follow. Accordingly, saints, by imitating Christ, could themselves transcend the human condition after death by taking on immortality in an eternal paradise. The power of the Jesus story and those of the saints animated the landscape of medieval Gaul. In the experiences of ordinary people, the divine touched their lives every day, every moment, through miraculous healings, exorcisms, and intercession.10 Catholic orthodoxy and its prolific hagiography confirmed miraculous displays of divine power and effectively denounced Arianism and Judaism.

Such imagery was not unexpected as Merovingian (and later Carolingian) historians assimilated their past to a biblical framework and renamed themselves the “new Israel.”11 Gregory of Tours recognized the Frankish struggle to establish its kingdom and spread Christianity as one ordained by God.12 The Franks’ eventual triumph was simply a matter of divine providence as they banished heresy (i.e., Arianism instead of the Israelites’ Canaanite enemies) and preached orthodox Catholicism. In his Ten Books of Histories, Gregory recasts Merovingian kings in the guise of Old Testament heroes. As Frankish warriors struggled against Goths and unruly offspring, they became new Davids braving the Philistine threat.13

Within the Merovingians’ early alignment with Israel, Mary takes on the role of Eve’s righteous counterpart. Extant Merovingian missals (books describing the liturgy of the mass), for example, emphasize perfected Christianity as compared to imperfect Judaism.14 The Bobbio Missal and the Missale Gothicum rely on temple ritual language to demonstrate the superiority of Christ, the sacrificial lamb, who completes the Old Covenant and initiates the New. In this system of salvation, the missals juxtapose the sinful Eve to the redemptive Mary while also affirming Mary’s perpetual virginity.15 Mary’s obedience to God’s will and miraculous parturition provide the mode of Christ’s birth, proof of his unique nature, and the foundation of Merovingian orthodoxy.

Merovingian devotion to Mary is manifest in a number of other ways. First, Frankish Christians celebrated at least two masses dedicated to Mary, one being the Feast of the Assumption, during the liturgical calendar.16 This feast recognized Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven without physical death, a theological point that became official doctrine only in 1950. Second, Merovingian holy men gained prestige through the procurement and possession of Mary’s relics. As the Franks accepted Mary’s bodily ascension, these relics probably related to her clothing or physical remains such as hair or breast milk.

The cult of relics in general signified the church’s power on earth; miracles, exorcisms, and divine displays ratified God’s presence and provided a framework for Frankish communities to make sense of their world.17 Merovingian royalty and aristocrats certainly understood the importance of relics as symbols of both authority and heavenly mandate. By the sixth century, aristocratic families also sought prominent bishoprics throughout Gaul. Local authority, now centralized in the church offices instead of senatorial clout or ancestral prestige, provided a substantial source of sociopolitical ascendency.18 The ownership or even the discovery of saintly relics only added to aristocratic fame in the competition for episcopal title.19

Saint cults and relics also enhanced royal authority in Gaul. The two Merovingian queens Brunhild and Balthild consolidated their position at court not only by supervising the appointment of bishops but also by managing local saint cults.20 Brunhild sponsored Saint Martin’s local clique, and Balthild procured several different saints’ relics for her monasteries.21 Merovingian kings and queens rendered themselves conduits of heavenly power by (ideally) appointing bishops sympathetic to their royal agendas and proving themselves appointees of the saints. These early medieval saint cults, in comparison with those of the later period, remained mostly localized and regional while at the same time the belief and rituals surrounding the living dead provided a kind of unity. Gregory of Tours could discuss northern Gaul’s practices and saint figures with a sense of familiarity because of his experiences in central and southern Gaul. Some cults transcended local boundaries and proliferated through all the Gallic provinces. Relics of Saint Martin of Tours, for example, spread throughout Gaul and attracted cultic practices from many towns (this, of course, required some clever stories about his travels and adventures to account for how his relics ended up in so many different areas).

Gregory of Tours also suggests that most Franks adored other common saintly figures identified in the Scriptures, such as Peter, John the Baptist, and Paul. He even boasts of Marian relics, although he is vague in identifying exactly what type of relics he owned. Gregory is usually noted as the first Western hagiographer to describe Mary’s corporal assumption into heaven just before her death, so it is doubtful that he would refer to her dead body parts as he might refer to John the Baptist’s head or Saint Denis’s arm.22 He does describe, however, the miracles performed by her relics both in Jerusalem and in Gaul.

When Gregory begins his discussion of various Marian miracles, he includes Saint Mary’s church in Jerusalem as a place-relic. He explains that the emperor Constantine had commissioned the edifice, but the building required supernatural facilitation. According to Gregory, the architects and workmen proved unable to move the massive columns intended for the church’s support. Mary, as a sublime engineer, appeared to the architect in a dream and explained how he should construct appropriate pulleys and scaffolding to aid in the job. The next day the architect followed Mary’s instructions. He summoned three boys from a nearby school (instead of the grown men previously employed), and they raised the columns without incident.23 Gregory establishes Jerusalem as one of the first focal points of Marian piety.

Gregory then explains how many Marian relics found their way into Gaul. In one narrative, Johannes, a pious pilgrim, traveled to Jerusalem to be healed of his leprosy. While in the Holy Land he received the Virgin’s relics and then proceeded home via Rome. On his journey highwaymen ambushed him and stole his money and reliquary. After they beat Johannes, they discovered that the reliquary contained nothing of value (such as gold) and tossed it into a fi re. Johannes later retrieved the relics, miraculously preserved in their linen cloth, and advanced safely to Gaul where the relics continue to work miracles.24

Gregory himself boasted of owning Marian relics and carrying them in a gold cross (around his neck) along with relics of Saint Martin and the holy apostles. These relics, in fact, once saved a poor man’s house from burning. Gregory explained, “Lifting the cross from my chest I held it up against the fi re; soon, in the presence of the holy relics the entire fi re stopped so [suddenly], as if there had been no blaze.”25 While the poor man’s family had been unable to quench the flames that would consume his home, the simple presence of the bishop’s relics brought relief.

Gregory’s attestation to the presence and power of Marian relics not only boosts his own authority, but also the authority of Gaul as a locus of religious piety. He introduces Marian miracles at Jerusalem and then follows the transmission of her relics to his own land. In this way, Gregory is transforming Gaul into a biblical Jerusalem, comparing Mary’s miracles and cures in the Holy Land to her current residence in Gaul.26 Instead of traveling to Jerusalem on a holy pilgrimage, the pious could simply tour Mary’s relics at Clermont. Gregory proclaims Gaul as a spiritual center equal to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, operating freely from the constraints of Rome.27

Gregory, like his late antique and Merovingian counterparts, transformed the Virgin Mary - a woman barely mentioned in the Christian canon - into a champion of orthodoxy and even prestige. Patristic authors constructed their evolving Mariology to bolster the church’s evolving Christology. Merovingian theologians, bishops, and kings relied on the saints, including Mary, to warrant their expanding spiritual (and political) authority.

Fatima, the Holy Family, and Shi`ite Dynasties

Just as Christianity transformed the Virgin Mary, Shi`ite hagiographers and theologians transformed Fatima into a symbol of orthodoxy and dynastic mandate. Fatima’s authorization of the Imamate enables the designation of those within the shi`at `Ali and the other. As with the Virgin Mary also, exposing the exact historical persona of the Prophet’s daughter proves elusive. Shi`a date their emergence to the moment of Muhammad’s death (632) when some of the community allied themselves with Abu Bakr instead of the Prophet’s chosen successor and son-in-law, `Ali, Fatima’s husband.

Historically, `Ali’s party certainly emerged at a specific moment, usually identified as 656, when `Ali became the fourth caliph. This precipitated the first civil war in the Islamic community as `Ali defended himself against his predecessor `Uthman’s kin and those who generally rejected his election. Yet those who endorsed `Ali as the community’s leader, and subsequently distinguished Fatima as the mother of the Shi`ite Imams, hardly composed a monolithic group.

The earliest shi`at `Ali were certainly political; that is, they supported `Ali as the community’s leader. After the death of `Ali and his son Husayn, however, the party began to assume religious implications. A member of the Kharijites, an early `Alid (pro-`Ali) sect, assassinated `Ali in 661 because the group disagreed with his arbitration with those who opposed him.28 After `Ali’s death, Mu`awiya (`Uthman’s kinsman) declared himself caliph and ushered in the Umayyad caliphate. `Alids turned first to his son Hasan for leadership; Hasan refused to rebel against Mu`awiya’s forces and instead retired from public life.29 After Hasan’s death in 669, `Ali’s supporters (and the Umayyad’s opponents) turned to `Ali’s second son, Husayn, for guidance. Husayn finally decided to make a public bid for power against Mu`awiya’s successor-son, Yazid, after hearing rumors of tyranny and receiving pledges of support.

In 680 pious Muslims in Kufa (present-day Iraq) appealed to Husayn to lead their community against the caliph Yazid. Husayn agreed after thousands of Kufans professed their loyalty; he set out from Mecca to meet them. Before he arrived the caliph tamed any threat of revolt through terror tactics and bribery. When Husayn and his party (numbering seventy-two armed men plus women and children, including his own family) reached the plain of Karbala outside Kufa, they met a detachment assembled by `Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad, the commander sent by the caliph.

On the tenth day of Muharram, 680 CE, after several days of siege in desert terrain, Husayn and his companions fell to the Umayyad forces. Husayn was decapitated and his head returned to Kufa where `Ubaydullah publicly struck the lips of the Prophet’s own grandson. Husayn’s martyrdom became a central point in Shi`ite theology representing suffering, penance, and redemption: Shi`ites continue to re-create the martyrdom at annual ta`ziya ceremonies, demonstrate repentance for deserting Husayn, and finally gain redemption through symbolic participation in Husayn’s sufferings.

After Husayn’s death, leadership of the shi`at `Ali became much more complex. `Alids disagreed over who inherited the Prophet’s son-in-law’s position of authority and exactly what type of authority was involved. The Shi`a then began to craft their own kind of orthodoxy wherein Fatima’s maternity proved particularly important. In the midst of a blatant patrilineal system of descent, Shi`ite theologians uniquely transformed Fatima’s motherhood into the corner stone of the Imamate, the system of Shi`ite authority. The Shi`ites argued, over time, that Fatima transcends the importance of her mother, Khadija (the Prophet’s first wife); Maryam, the mother of Jesus (or `Isa); and `A’isha, the Prophet’s beloved wife. They effectively placed Fatima in a singular position as the mother of the Imams.

Unfortunately it is almost impossible to discover the exact historical evolution of such traditions and theologies. Some historians date Fatima traditions and the importance of her bloodline to the earliest community, apparent during the Prophet’s own lifetime (d. 632). A second group situates Fatima’s popularity and evolving Shi`ite identity in the period surrounding the `Abbasid revolution (750) and subsequent consolidation of `Abbasid authority that usurped the Umayyad caliphate.30 A third group of historians describes the proliferation of Fatima traditions as slowly evolving throughout the first several centuries of Islam as a rejoinder to extremist (ghuluww) doctrine.

The first theory, favored by most pious Shi`ite Muslims, accepts traditions that limit the ahl al-bayt to Fatima’s children (which, in turn, emphasizes Fatima’s unique status) and that allegedly date to the Prophet’s own lifetime and certainly to the time of Husayn’s martyrdom (i.e., seventh century).31 One such tradition defined Muhammad, `Ali, Fatima, Hasan, and Husayn as the specific “people of the cloak,” or ahl al-kisa´.32

According to the “cloak” hadith, Muhammad met a group of Christians at Narjan, a town located on the Yemeni trade route, and attempted to convert them. After some debate, the Christians agreed that Jesus foretold the Paraclete, or Comforter, whose son would succeed him. They agreed that since Muhammad had no son he could not be the fulfillment of such a prophecy. The Christians also consulted a collection of prophetic traditions titled al-Jami`, which referred to one of Adam’s visions wherein he encountered one bright light surrounded by four smaller lights. God revealed to Adam that these were his five beloved descendants.

Although the Christians rejected Muhammad at Narjan, they were nonetheless intrigued by his message and later sent a delegation of scholars to Medina to question the Prophet further and engage in mubahala (mutual cursing).33 When Muhammad arrived, he had `Ali, Fatima, Hasan, and Husayn with him wrapped in a cloak. The Christians identified the family with the prophetic chapter of al-Jami` and quickly withdrew from the contest.

Various Shi`ite traditions directly relate the people of the cloak to the ahl al-bayt and say that Muhammad repeated the Qur’anic verse 33.33 as he wrapped the holy family in his mantle: “Allah only wishes to remove all abomination from you, members of the family, and to make you pure and spotless.” This asserts the (eventual) Shi`ite notion of the Imams’ infallibility and ultimate ritual purity.

The traditions attesting to the holy family’s supremacy encountered some resistance. A set of countertraditions, usually transmitted by prominent Umayyads, erupted that placed others under the cloak with Fatima’s family such as the Prophet’s servant, Wathila b. al-Asqa`, and wife, Umm Salama.34 These traditions denying the exclusivity of the ahl al-bayt allegedly predate the `Abbasid revolution and at the least recognize the controversy surrounding the meaning of the ahl al-bayt. This challenges, then, the second theory of Fatima tradition that places her sublime status (as well as her family’s) as only an `Alid rejoinder to `Abbasid denigrations.

This second theory, favored by most historians, emphasizes the propaganda potential of Fatima imagery when employed by sectarian leaders. The early `Abbasid movement, so this argument holds, merged forces with the Hashimiyyah, a Shi`ite sect originating with Mukhtar ibn Abu `Ubayd al-Thaqafi (d. c. 686) as it prepared to usurp the ruling Umayyad dynasty. Mukhtar had arrived in Kufa around 680, just after Husayn’s tragic martyrdom under Caliph Yazid. Mukhtar, acting as a prophet of sorts, proclaimed Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, Imam `Ali’s third son by a woman of the Hanifa tribe (and not Fatima) as the Mahdi (anointed one). As Mahdi, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya would restore peace and order to the Kufan community and relieve Umayyad oppression. After both Mukhtar and Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya died, a group of supporters called the Kaysaniyya continued their adoration by proclaiming that the Mahdi had entered occultation (ghayba), a type of hiding or sublime stasis, instead of truly dying.35

The Kaysaniyya was not a monolithic sect. After Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya entered occultation, the group split into separate branches. One of these branches, the Hashimiyya, taught that Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya did indeed die after relegating his authority and divine knowledge to his son, Abu Hashim. The `Abbasids later asserted that Abu Hashim conferred his Imamate on Muhammad ibn `Ali (the greatgrandson of al-`Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle) and, thereby, the descendants of al-`Abbas (with no bloodline through Fatima). The `Abbasids identified themselves with the Hashimiyya and, by association, the “party of `Ali” because `Ali was Abu Hashim’s grandfather through the Hanafite woman. The `Abbasids advanced their revolution by harnessing the discontent of the early shi`at `Ali against the ruling Umayyad dynasty.

After the `Abbasids firmly established their own caliphate, however, their propaganda machine disassociated themselves from the Hashimiyya and the `Alids (and also persecuted the Shi`a who refused to recognize their authority). By al-Mansur’s caliphate (c. 754-775), the `Abbasids stressed their relation to Muhammad’s uncle al-`Abbas instead of their connection to `Ali and the Banu Hashim. They argued that Allah favored the male relative, in this case the paternal uncle, over inheritance through a female (implying, of course, Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima). Court clerks circulated Mansur’s declarations against the `Alids:

As for your assertion that you are direct descendants of the Prophet, God has already declared in His Book, “Muhammad was not the father of any of your men” (33.30); but even though you be descended from the Prophet’s daughter, which is indeed a close kinship, this still does not give you the right of inheritance. 36

`Ali and Fatima’s family, according to the `Abbasids, held no esteemed position among the community.

The `Abbasids also questioned the very meaning of the ahl al-bayt and its association with `Ali and Fatima’s progeny. Caliph Mahdi (d. 785), Mansur’s son, circulated various hadith and poetic verses promulgating a distinctively anti-Shi`a interpretation of the people of the cloak.37 According to these traditions, the people of the cloak instead included Muhammad’s uncle `Abbas and his descendants:

The Prophet came to `Abbas and his sons and said: “Come nearer to me.” They all pushed against each other. He then wrapped them in his robe and said: “O, Allah, this is my uncle and the brother of my father, these are my family; shelter them from the fi re in the same manner that I shelter them with my robe.” 38

This understanding of the ahl al-bayt promoted the house of `Abbas while challenging the notion of the infallible Imamate as well as Fatima’s unique status.39

The `Alids responded to these `Abbasid claims, first, by pointing out that `Abbas was only Muhammad’s half uncle and that Abu Talib, `Ali’s father, was Muhammad’s full uncle. `Ali’s relationship as the Prophet’s cousin therefore outweighed any claims of `Abbas.40 Second, the `Alids punctuated their direct descent through Fatima. A proliferation of traditions proclaiming the predestined status of Fatima and the ahl al-bayt ensued.41 Historians then might view Fatima hagiographies as the `Alids’ political rejoinder to `Abbasid claims of ascendancy.

A third group of historians consider Fatima traditions and the ahl al-bayt’s glorification as a response to extremist theologies (or ghulat sects) within the Shi`a instead of an overtly political move.42 Many `Alid scholars advertised mystical traditions that promoted divinely inspired reason (`aql) instead of logical rationality, the esoteric (batin) above the exoteric (zahir), and cosmogonic links between the Imams and humanity.43 Shi`ite theology that evolved during the ninth and tenth centuries represents a process of mitigating, negotiating, and eventually integrating some of these mystical views.

The emerging orthodox traditions, for example, define the Imams as the divine light (nur) and Fatima as the Confluence of the Two Lights (majma` al-nurayn; i.e., her husband’s and her father’s light). Fatima resides as the nexus between Muhammad (exoteric knowledge) and `Ali (esoteric knowledge), where the sublime meets the human. In a sense Fatima manages to bridge the great chasm between Allah and humanity just as the Christian saints and Mary do; she exists as part of Allah’s light (divine nur), yet she is the attending mother, flesh and blood, beckoning her extended (and spiritual) family to her care. Fatima traditions display Shi`ite scholars’ careful incorporation of esoteric cosmology in an evolving, rational theology. These traditions directly deny some of the ghulat ’s more extreme assertions that the Imams themselves (such as the sixth Imam, Ja`far al-Sadiq) were incarnations of Divinity.

Whatever the genesis of Fatima traditions, whether in political discourse or in esoteric theology, Fatima remains a signal throughout for the orthodox (right) community. Sometimes that might be interpreted as the `Alid claims against the `Abbasids, as the Banu Hashim against the Umayyads, and perhaps even the Shi`ite theologians against extremist sects. From a more general perspective, Fatima always symbolizes Shi`ism against the other. Beginning in the late ninth century (and the solidification of an Imami orthodoxy, or rightness), Fatima’s image provided a powerful proof for theologians as well as future dynastic leaders.

As Shi`ite theologians eventually came to recognize `Ali and Fatima as the Imamate’s progenitors and bestowed spiritual potencies on the Imams themselves, they disagreed as to the Imam’s designation process. These disagreements continue to distinguish Shi`ite sects today: many Shi`a recognize five initial Imams (Zaydis); some, seven (Isma`ilis); and others, the majority of the Shi`ite world, twelve (Ithna-`Ashariyya, or Twelvers). The different groups accepted different descendants of `Ali and Fatima as Imams. According to Twelver Shi`ite traditions, the fifth and sixth Imams (Muhammad al-Baqir [d. 731] and Ja`far al-Sadiq [d.765]) addressed the problem by carefully articulating the theory of nass, the process by which the current Imam designates his son (the Prophet’s bloodline) and bestows on him `ilm (authoritative knowledge). The problem lies, however, in which son the community recognizes as having received nass.

By the mid-tenth century, most of these Shi`ite groups had control of substantial geographic regions. The Buyid dynasty (Twelvers) controlled much of Iraq and Iran, although they allowed the `Abbasid caliph to reign as a figurehead; the Isma`ilis established the Fatimid dynasty in North Africa and founded Cairo; and the Zaydis controlled areas of northern Iran and Yemen.44 By the tenth century there is a true flowering of Fatima traditions in Shi`ite theological texts. As Buyids came into power, they had to articulate what distinguished them from their Isma`ili competitors. Zaydi Shi`ites explained their unique view of the Imamate: the Imam must be descended from `Ali and Fatima, but he must also make a public claim for power and oppose illegitimate rulers. As Shi`ite dynasties seized leadership throughout the Middle East, Shi`ite identity became increasingly distinct from Sunni Islam.

Fatima proved important to theologians of all these Shi`ite groupings because she gave birth to the Imams; through this Mother, the Imamate’s authority flowed from husband/ `Ali and father/Muhammad.

For the majority of Shi`ite Muslims (Twelvers), that authority ended with the twelfth Imam’s great occultation in 941 CE. Until his return at the end of time, Shi`ite clerics and theologians speak in his stead, drawing on the traditions of the ahl al-bayt and the Imams for guidance.

Mary and Fatima, as they appear in late antique and early medieval sources, must be placed in the historical contexts from which they emerge. Theological disputes, dynastic authority, and shifting lines of community certainly affected the interpretive tradition that perpetuated their legacies. Whether through the writings of patriarchs or bishops, Twelvers or Isma`ilis, Mary’s and Fatima’s lives helped to shape historical memory and communal identity. Their stories are told most fully not only in theological tracts and historical chronicles but also in hagiography. Hagiographers fully defined Mary’s and Fatima’s status in their respective communities by assessing their miraculous and intercessory powers. Comparative hagiography provides a glimpse at the various and contrasting ways these male authors refashioned their holy women to fit their rhetorical strategies.