Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Chapter Five: Sacred Art and Architecture

Holy Women in Built Form Early medieval Christians and Muslims created artistic images to illustrate their cosmologies and theologies in the social sphere. Much like hagiographers and theologians, artists and architects employed Mary and Fatima as symbols in their chosen space to depict constantly shifting theologies, political agendas, and gender expectations.1 Material culture - including Christian churches, Muslim mosques, and Shi`ite amulets - conveyed these cues that continuously shaped and reinforced communal identity. As early Christian artisans pictured Mary holding Jesus instead of oriental gods and goddesses and Safavid royalty commissioned the ahl al-bayt’s names engraved in mosques, they effectively evoked a religious orthodoxy for their communities to recognize.2

The creation of such visual displays and material culture did not proceed without considerable debate and even bloodshed. Since each group was rooted in monotheism and revered the commandment that proclaimed God’s oneness and prohibited strange gods, each had to negotiate the conflict between its desire for certain representations and this ancient law against them.3 In the end, they came to different conclusions: Christians allowed material and artistic displays because they saw their pedagogical value.4 Muslims rejected images as idolatrous, holding essentially the same ideals that one can find in ancient Judaism, although eventually Islam found a way to translate its beliefs into built form.5 Where Christians used statues and icons; Muslims defined sacred space and piety in calligraphy, geometric and floral designs, and grand architectural schemes.

When Christians and Muslims in the early medieval period searched for appropriate ways to “picture” their relationships with God, they were drawn to Mary and Fatima whose stories and reputed powers linked them and their families with intercessory and religious authority. Although their theologies and traditions had different approaches to the use of religious images, architects and artists transformed these holy women into holy heroines of visual culture. The hagiographic tales and rhetorical twists narrated by medieval texts came alive in pictorial displays, sculpture, religious artifacts, amulets, and architecture.

Christian and Islamic artists and architects emphasized their particular theologies as they transformed Mary and Fatima into visual form. Some of the earliest Western depictions of Mary appear in the third-century Roman catacombs and the Italian basilica Santa Maria Maggiore. This church contains fifth-century mosaics of both Old and New Testament scenes that either foreshadow or reveal Christ’s birth along with Mary’s miraculous participation. Unfortunately, no Merovingian counterparts survive aboveground. Several hagiographies, however, do describe architecture and artifacts dedicated to Mary, and many of the chapels boasted of Marian relics.

Shi`ite artists and architects presented Fatima in much more symbolic terms and usually along with the ahl al-bayt’s other members. In some hadith Fatima assumes the function of a mihrab (the prayer niche in mosques that points toward Mecca). According to one transmission, Fatima stood in her prayer chamber and emitted a light that permeated the city. Muhammad instructed his community to orient themselves toward Fatima’s light while praying.6 This miracle illustrates one of Fatima’s most famous epithets, Fatima al-Zahra (the Radiant). Some Shi`ite hagiographers later associated that mysterious light with the lamps that hang from prayer niches in mosques.7 Fatima, symbolized by the lamp, also marks the way to the Ka`ba. She stands in the space between the profane and the sacred, the supplicant and Allah, earth and paradise.

Shi`ite calligraphers recalled the holy family’s sublime authority by inscribing Qur’anic verses, prayers, Shi`ite hadith, and the Imams’ names throughout mosques. Two Iranian mosques constructed in the medieval period provide evidence of Shi`ite Muslims’ adoration for the holy family. The mosque/mausoleum Gunbad-i `Alawiyan at Hamadan incorporates popular Shi`ite verses into its architectural design; and Fatima al-Ma`suma’s shrine (the eighth Imam’s sister) also contains calligraphic inscriptions praising the ahl al-bayt.8

Shi`ites also celebrated the family’s power in a (perhaps) less subtle manner; amulets of the human hand signified their status and served as talismans against malevolent forces, or, more specifically, the evil eye. In Middle Eastern culture, the evil eye is associated with envy, much like the envy Eve cast to Fatima’s preexistent form in paradise. According to Shi`ite interpretation, each digit on the talisman represents a family member: Muhammad, Fatima, `Ali, Hasan, and Husayn. These amulets, popularizing the holy family’s authority, appear on everything from legal documents to jewelry.

Whether in churches or mosques, relics or amulets, Mary and Fatima enshrined basic issues of theology, politics, and gender designation. Their depictions in social (and sacred) space elevated these holy women as symbols of sublime truth, representatives of God, and promises of paradise.

Images or Idols?

It might at first seem odd to find amulets, statuary, and some representational images of holy men and women in traditions that were rooted in a radical monotheism that recognized and worshiped only one God and forbade graven images. Yet for both Christians and Muslims, intent ultimately defined the image as licit or illicit. In early Christianity licit use enhanced the petitioner’s memory of God and the saints, whereas illicit images distracted from God and pointed to another (usually demonic) source of power.9 Christian apologists even argued that God sanctified matter as witness to his divinity: pieces of the true cross provided the most popular case in point. Jesus’ direct contact transformed these bits of wood into holy relics. While the Jews might view them as wooden idols, Christian theologians argued that the wooden slivers were licit because of their allusion to the crucifixion. Any aspect of material culture could ultimately serve as a medium for the creature to worship the creator.

Unlike Christianity, Islam regarded any human or animal figures in sacred space (both public and private) as illicit10 and promoted geometric, floral, and epigraphic ornamentation as its own distinctive pattern of symbols.11 This rejection of figural displays reveals much about Islamic theology and society beginning with its most holy text, the Qur’an.12 The Qur’an, unlike the Christian Bible, lacks a principal narrative strain. Because it contains discriminate injunctions, poetry, laws, and fragmented tales of prophets and pious heroes, the Qur’an does not lend itself readily to pictorial display. The Bible, on the other hand, tells a series of stories that beg to be transformed into visual form. The Qur’an is experienced most profoundly in an aural medium - hearing the word of Allah, memorized and recited aloud.

Islam (as both a religious and social movement) burst onto the historical stage as a world power in the seventh and eighth centuries. Maturing alongside the Byzantine Empire, Muslim theologians and lawgivers considered similar questions to those that vexed the Byzantines.13 At that historical moment, the iconoclast movement split the political and theological Byzantine world into opposing groups. Muslim theologians, after observing their neighbors’ strife, discouraged the fabrication of images. One collection of hadith recounts:

The angels will not enter a house in which there is a picture or a dog. Those who will be most severely punished on the Day of Judgement are the murderer of a Prophet, one who has been put to death by a Prophet, one who leads men astray without knowledge, and a maker of images or pictures. .. The Sorcerer is he who has invented lies against God; the maker of images or pictures is the enemy of God; and he who acts in order to be seen of men, is he that has made light of God. 14

Theologians thus doomed the image maker, whether Arab or Greek, to Allah’s eternal wrath. In so doing, the Islamic empire further segregated itself from the Byzantine world.

By rejecting images and icons, Islamic theologians were not simply joining the ranks of the iconoclasts. Islam opposed not so much the image as the image maker. In several diatribes on images, Muslims argued that the creators of images or icons actually competed with Allah as the sole fashioner of creation.15 To generate an image impinged on Allah’s Oneness (tawhid) in the grave sin of idolatry (shirk). The Islamic community thus articulated both theological and political tenets through its artistic displays. Its distinctive, aniconic theology distinguished it from its Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian competitors. Through material culture, the Islamic community discovered another venue to both formulate and assert its identity.

Mary in Built Form

Some of the earliest images of Mary in Western art functioned in just such a way by alluding to biblical narratives and theological orthodoxy. Some historians claim that early Christianity borrowed symbols from ancient mother-goddesses in an attempt to acclimate pagan audiences to this new religion.16 The Virgin, so the argument goes, replaced the feminine principle that pagan religions associated with the earth and fertility cults; her image, a new Divine Mother, made Christianity familiar and more attractive to prospective converts. The earliest images of the Madonna and Child, for example, bear a striking resemblance to Isis and Horus effigies: Isis, the Egyptian goddess who resurrected her murdered husband, Osiris, with her beloved son, a god of the underworld, Horus.17

While ancient goddesses might serve as prototypes for Marian images, Mary certainly represented something very different for her Christian audience. The earliest Western representation of the Madonna and Child is found in the Priscilla catacomb in Rome, a fresco presumably constructed in the third century. In this depiction Mary as Mother holds the Christ child, apparently nursing him at her breast (fi g. 1). This portrayal suggests an intercessory function; Mary, the mother of God, provides a type of bridge that reaches from divinity to humanity.18 Not only did her Son fill that abyss, but the supplicant can also reach the Divine through the mother’s intercession. The cult of Mary’s breast milk confirms her intercessory role - this relic probably circulated as early as the seventh century.19 Through adoration of the Mother’s milk, pious Christians gained access to the throne of God.

Figure 1. Fragment of fresco with Madonna, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome.

Photo courtesy of Art Resource.

Marian imagery continued to proliferate throughout the early medieval period and benefited from the artistic influences of northern Africa and the Greek East. These influences, including some distinctively Greek aspects of Marian iconography, make early medieval architecture particularly diverse. Early medieval architects, for example, included several variations on the standard T-model basilica - a central nave divided by four aisles and a long, narrow transept ending with the apse - first appearing in St. Peter’s Basilica.20 Santa Maria Maggiore provides a perfect example of early medieval variance as it surrendered its transept and introduced new forms of adornment.21

Santa Maria Maggiore, a grand Italian edifice dedicated to the Virgin Mary by Pope Sixtus III (432-40),22 celebrated the recent Council of Ephesus’s pronouncement that Mary was indeed the Theotokos. According to tradition, Mary also played a part in the church’s construction; she appeared to a patrician Roman couple and instructed them to erect a church dedicated to her. The morning after that miraculous encounter, August 5, the couple found snow on the Esquiline hill. The Virgin had also visited Pope Liberius (352-66), who marked the outlines of the original church in the snow and then ordered its completion. Pope Sixtus III later carried out the sublime request. The church’s construction, and the original mosaics that survive, might be viewed as the pope’s public declaration of Christianity’s triumph over pagan and Jewish heresies alike.23

Unlike its Roman counterparts, Santa Maria Maggiore did not limit pictorial displays to the apse area but contained rows of mosaics along the nave itself. These mosaics displayed in built form the once- prophesied and then fulfilled Christian theology. The basilica’s upper nave originally contained forty-two mosaics depicting various scenes from the Old Testament lives of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, among others.24 As worshipers walked through this holy space, they witnessed the most important themes of salvation history: promise and sacrifice.25 Old Testament figures either prophesied or signified the most pivotal moment in human history - the coming of the Messiah. The arch showed this promise fulfilled with illustrations of Christ’s nativity, including the Annunciation and various events in the God-Man’s childhood. These images operated not only as a perspective into human history, reminding the viewer that all human experience culminated in Christ, but also as an affective visual devise transporting the viewer from fifth- century Rome to biblical Palestine.26 The images, in a sense, created their own holy place (loca sancta) to review the biblical moments of Mary’s obedience and Christ’s conception.

These nave images, largely limited to Abraham, Moses, and Joshua, demonstrated the Old Testament’s prefiguring of New Testament events. In one mosaic Melchizedek extends bread and wine to Abraham as an ancient symbol of the Eucharist;27 there stands a chalice in front of Melchizedek to emphasize the sublime analogy (fi g. 2). Another image introduces the ark of the covenant, a seemingly heavy burden borne by Jews. This image might prefigure the God-Man held within Mary’s womb; the ark, like Mary’s container-womb, contains the Manna and Law for humanity (fi g. 3).

The nave led to the apse where, no longer extant, Mary probably sat on a throne holding Christ on her lap, surrounded by angels, martyrs, and Pope Sixtus himself.28 Santa Maria Maggiore celebrated Mary’s participation in Christ’s miraculous birth, successfully translating early Christian theology about Mary into visual, built form.

Merovingian artistic and architectural references to Mary are more difficult to trace as few survive. According to hagiographic accounts, many abbesses enhanced and even justified their authority by aligning themselves with the Virgin Mary in heaven. They built churches dedicated to Mary; they advertised personal miracles that Mary performed for them in the holy spaces they constructed; and they contended for the prize burial positions nearest the front altars usually dedicated to Mary and the apostles.

Several Merovingian queens and abbesses abandoned their worldly stations to construct churches and monasteries where they planned to govern as spiritual mothers in imitation of Mary. Eustadiola of Bourges (c. 594-684) converted all of her homes to Marian basilicas and then built a monastery for herself and her maids. At the churches she offered great riches: gold and silver vessels, chalices, beautiful crosses and candelabra.

In her own monastic house, God’s handmaid attracted several followers and became a “mother of the monastery.”29 In the poetic description of her maternal sacrifices, Eustadiola resembled a new Mary, actively governing her spiritual family in imitation of her heavenly prototype.

Many other Merovingian queens constructed Marian edifices and then boasted personal miracles performed by the Holy Mother. Saint

Figure 2. Abraham and Melchizedek. Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.

Photo courtesy of Art Resource.

Figure 3. The Ark of the Covenant being carried across the Jordan. Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. Photo courtesy of Art Resource.

Clothild commissioned a Marian church to be built on the Seine where many miracles occurred;30 Radegund finally gained her freedom from King Clothar at an oratory dedicated to Mary;31 and Rusticula was buried in Saint Mary’s Basilica, to the altar’s right hand.32 In all these instances, holy women sought association with Marian edifices where miracles immediately followed. Because of that alliance both the Marian cult and the holy women themselves gained spiritual prestige.

Spiritual authority did not simply end at death, however. According to her hagiographers, immediately after her death Rusticula’s soul ascended to Christ’s right hand, although her corpse remained at the right side of Mary’s altar in a Marian basilica. Rusticula had finally joined the heavenly “chorus of virgins in which the Blessed Virgin Mary holds first place.”33 Yet Rusticula was not absent from her community; even from heaven she guarded her flock as a pious mother. In many of her postmortem miracles, she cured the sick “handmaids of Christ” at her convent. Her hagiographer noted that even after death this holy mother (Rusticula, not the Virgin Mary) “exercised the same care and solicitude as when she was living in the body.”34

Glodesind, abbess at Metz, also governed her convent from beyond the grave. Her biographer recognized that the abbess, after her body’s interment at a Marian church, “still rules though she rests in her grave.”35 Monastic families were thus seldom separated; earthly virgins identified with the chorus of heavenly virgins singing at the throne of God while their spiritual mothers sat by Mary’s right hand. Marian altars and basilicas were visual reminders of her sublime position, as well as her authority, an authority that could sometimes be lent to prominent abbesses who governed in her name.

Many abbesses were not satisfied with sitting at Mary’s right hand in heaven; they also wanted their bodies to rest near the high altars of their churches. This sometimes required miraculous intervention because the male clergy, as altar servants, ultimately controlled the altar and its surrounding sacred space. The clergy’s authority only multiplied as the attention to relics and dead body parts proliferated throughout Merovingian Gaul.

As saint veneration became more popular in the early Middle Ages, church architecture had to change. Late antique church styles had limited the number of people who could directly encounter the holy relics; but by the fifth century more people wanted greater access to the holy. Church councils soon encouraged all altars to include relics of a saintly bishop or martyr; the Fifth Council of Carthage in 401 even declared that altars without dead body parts should be destroyed.36 Pious congregations also required that saints’ relics be visible and accessible: Christians desired admittance to the relics in order to kiss, touch, or bow to them. The Church of Mary’s Tomb in Gethsemane provided a series of slots so that pilgrims could insert their hands and feel the sarcophagus.37 Close proximity to the holy was indeed a prized treasure, and early Medieval architectural innovations had to allow some direct access (however limited).

Merovingian architects had to contend first with the issue of space. The earliest church altars had restricted any direct contact between petitioners and holy relics because they were constructed over the lower levels of catacombs. Priests conducted mass over the small crypts, but only small groups of people entered the modest space. As the saints’ popularity grew, architects incorporated shafts that reached from the altar on the main level to the tombs below.38 Pious petitioners could communicate with the saints down the shafts or lower items to touch the holy crypts (thus creating contact relics).39 With the Merovingians, church builders moved the tombs to the main levels and displayed the holy relics in the church’s holy space. Hagiographers often characterized the saint’s presence as a celestial light permeating the room; and, they claimed, this radiance touched not only the heart but also the soul. Gregory of Tours described Mary’s relics as a “radiating light” from the altar at Clermont.40 Everyone in the vast space then had virtual proximity to the holy.

The clergy, however, did not surrender control of the relic itself. Either in a barricaded oratory or through an enclosed shaft, the church tightened its regulation of the saint cults (thereby further mystifying the holy). This trend only accelerated. Whereas Merovingian hagiography encouraged its audience to kiss and touch holy items, Carolingian authors betrayed the impossibility of such proximity. By the late eighth century, Carolingian hagiographers enjoined their audience to gaze upon the holy wonders and glittering spectacles of the distant sarcophagi.41

In this hierarchical schema, with the most holy on display to the most pious, prominent bishops, abbots, and holy figures competed for eternal rest beside the high altar. Beginning in the sixth century, holy men and women might be interred within the church walls, but after miraculous signs their bodies could advance toward the high altar. This prestigious spot was of course the place of great honor, and several saints expressed their desire to be promoted through miraculous visions. After proper exhumation, the saintly bodies (usually churchmen and abbesses from royal stock) could be moved down the aisle symbolically closer to Christ.42 Saint Germanus of Paris (d. 576), for example, appeared to a pious woman two hundred years after his first burial and requested better accommodations behind the main altar.43

Glodesind of Metz also ordered (posthumously) that a church be erected to the Blessed Virgin Mary near her convent. After the church’s construction, the abbess’s body was disinterred and moved to its second resting place within the Marian church’s walls (ca. seventh century). Later, in 830, the bishop of Metz noticed that Glodesind’s tomb emerged from the earth. He reckoned this portent signaled Glodesind’s desire to move yet again. After much prayer the priests moved the holy corpse to a third and final resting place “in the monastery’s older church behind the altar which had been built and consecrated in praise of the Holy Mother of God, Mary, and Saint Peter, the Prince of the Apostles.”44 After this final translation, Glodesind worked many miracles that attracted many pilgrims and enjoyed an even more revered status among her family’s dead.45 By the seventh century holy bodies such as Glodesind’s could be moved at will to illustrate their celestial status but only after the approval of the male episcopacy.

Fatima and the ahl al-bayt in Built Form

Muslim artists neither decked walls with Fatima mosaics nor constructed statues in her likeness; yet Shi`ite material culture certainly realized her sublime station as mother and intercessor. One of the most poignant displays of Fatima’s sublime authority is present in the mosque itself. Some Shi`ite exegetes correlate Fatima with the mosque’s prayer niche, or mihrab. This architectural design might signify for a Shi`ite audience a visual metaphor for Fatima’s intercessory powers.

The mihrab is one among many architectural designs that delineate and adorn the mosque as sacred space. The boundaries of that sacred space often shifted, however; the medieval mosque functioned equally as a civic structure. Caliphs and local political authorities made public speeches from its stages; in the daytime it sometimes hosted trade shows; and at night it provided a shelter for the local homeless.46 The mosque did maintain one distinct spiritual function: it offered a place of prayer (masjid, a place of prostration).47

As a sacred place of prayer, the mosque exhibited Qur’anic verses and prayers inscribed in Arabic calligraphy, a medieval art form in its own right.48 This calligraphy was intended not only as decoration but also as a focus of meditation. The mosque also contained architectural styles that distinguished its spiritual function. The imam, or prayer leader (distinct from the Shi`ite Imams, descendants of `Ali and Fatima), usually stood at a pulpit (minbar) to deliver his Friday sermon; ablution pools conferred ritual purity; and the Qur’an rested upon a chair (kursi) in high honor. All these elements might have contained elaborate calligraphic or even geometric ornamentation, or they might have remained quite plain. One of the true focal areas of the mosque was the mihrab, which functioned as a pointer of sorts; it oriented the worshiper toward Mecca for obligatory prayers.

The mihrab has a complicated history. Its basic design, ascertained from both textual description and archaeological evidence, contains an arch, supporting columns, and the empty space between them.49 Most scholars agree that in pre-Islamic Arabia the mihrab designated a place of royal ascendancy or a place of honor in palaces.50 In religious contexts the mihrab referred to a sanctuary or holy place that probably housed cultic images. In ancient Semitic cultures it was probably portable; Bedouin tribes used it to transport their gods and, for early Jewish tribes, to orient themselves toward Jerusalem.51 The mihrab in its religious function symbolized a doorway from the mundane to the sacred, from this world to the next.

Shi`ite hagiographers assimilate Fatima to this doorway, this empty space. In one hadith mentioned above, Fatima stands illuminating the Muslim community with her sublime light at times of obligatory prayer. Her father, Muhammad, commands his community to orient themselves toward her. She becomes the mihrab, pointing her people toward Mecca.52 Traditional mosque design places a hanging lamp within that mihrab and engraves either on the lamp itself or somewhere nearby the very pertinent Qur’anic Light Verse (24.35):53

Allah is the Light of the heavens and earth. The parable of His Light is as if there were a niche and within it a lamp: the lamp enclosed in glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star.

The mihrab’s design, as a visual metaphor, correlates the hanging lamp with Fatima, who contains within herself the light of the Imams (often associated with the star). Just as Mary provided an empty space for God to dwell, Fatima’s body enclosed the nur of the Imams. Residing in the symbolic portal between heaven and earth, Fatima offers the hope of intercession and prayer on behalf of her adopted kin.

All Muslims, Sunni and Shi`i, associate the mihrab as a prayer portal pointing toward Mecca; but for Shi`ite viewers, the mihrab lamp might also signify Fatima’s intercessory station. Often Shi`ite artists chose to present the entire holy family rather than the holy mother alone. Throughout Iran and Iraq, for example, five hanging lamps often adorn a central mihrab symbolizing the five members of the ahl al-bayt.54 Calligraphic inscriptions of the Twelve Imams’ names and their miracles might also outline the mihrab, further identifying its Shi`ite audience.55

The association between Fatima and the mihrab, however symbolic, also resonates with Islamic traditions about Mary and her own mihrab.56 According to the Qur’an, Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father) cared for Mary after her parents dedicated her to the Temple. Each time Zechariah would visit his charge in her mihrab, he found her miraculously supplied with food (Qur’an 3.36-37). Muslim exegetes as early as the eighth century linked Mary’s mihrab with the Bayt al-Maqdis, a mosque in Jerusalem.57 Mary was believed to have lived in the mosque’s inner sanctum and there received food from Allah. By the eleventh century, pilgrimage guides combined Mary’s mihrab with `Isa’s (Jesus’) cradle, both located on the Temple platform.58 Ottoman Turks later engraved the verse describing Mary’s mihrab above their own mosques’ mihrabs. Mary, along with Fatima in Shi`ite tradition, remained closely linked with this prayer portal.

Until recently most art historians have failed to appreciate fully the distinctions between Sunni and Shi`ite material culture. They have instead marginalized Shi`ism as a heterodoxy and categorized its styles as exceptional. Yet there is evidence that many forms of Islamic architecture held different meanings for Shi`ite communities and their Sunni counterparts. Mausoleums constructed for the Imams and their families, for example, played an important part in defining holy space. When Sunni Muslims conquered Shi`ite areas, they usually first sacked the shrines as a symbol of Shi`ite defeat, both physical and theological. While Shi`ite architects constructed and transformed mausoleums in a variety of patterns, they also built some with twelve sides representing the Twelve Imams. Distinctively Shi`ite interpretation of Islamic art and architecture has yet to be fully explored.

One current study has attempted to fill that scholarly lacuna by examining the mosque /mausoleum Gunbad-i `Alawiyan at Hamadan, Iran.59 Through comparative analysis, the work isolated some basic Shi`ite architectural and commemorative patterns. First, at the Hamadan mosque twelve arches line the interior lower division; this might refer to the Twelve Imams. Each of the corner towers contain a series of five arched units that might signify the ahl al-bayt.60 Second, the interior and exterior walls incorporate popular Qur’anic verses among Shi`ite mosques.61 Qur’an 5.55, for example, explains:62

Your [real] friends are [no less than] Allah, His Messenger, and the Believers - those who establish regular prayers and pay zakat [or tithes] and they bow down humbly [in worship].

At first this verse appears rather nonsectarian: it repeats the basic formulation of the faith (shahada) by reaffirming Allah and his messenger, Muhammad; and it introduces some of the basic tenets of ritual praxis (prayer, tithing, etc.). According to the twelfth-century Shi`ite exegete al-Fadl ibn al-Hasan al- Tabarsi, this passage discloses an esoteric message commending `Ali and the ahl al-bayt.63 The “believers,” says al- Tabarsi, should be read in the singular, and that singular believer refers to `Ali: “Your (real) friends are (no less than) Allah and His messenger and `Ali.” According to this interpretation, Allah ordained `Ali (and his implied family) as his intercessor just as the prophet Muhammad. The Shi`ite exegete and the calligraphic inscription reminds the viewer of the family’s exalted status.

Finally, the Hamadan mosque/mausoleum incorporates a mihrab adorned in a Shi`ite pattern. Like most other prayer niches, even those of Sunni persuasion, this mihrab includes the Throne Verse (Qur’an 2.255):

He knows what (appears to His creatures as) before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He wills. His Throne does extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them.

For a non-Shi`ite Muslim, this verse confirms Allah’s expansive power; his throne symbolizes the beginning and end of all creation and the cosmos.

Shi`ite viewers (especially those in the medieval period), however, might associate the throne with the Imams as well: they existed, engraved on the throne of God, since before created time.64 The verse thus links the Imams’ authority directly with Allah’s celestial realm.

Other art historians have suggested that Islamic art and architecture might reveal a sectarian split in subtler ways, particularly during the eleventh- and twelfth-century Sunni revival. During these centuries, Sunni (particularly Seljuk Turk) authorities encouraged a more uniform Islam not only through legal and theological argument but also through material culture. Calligraphic inscriptions at mosques and madrasas (theological colleges) emphasized Sunni, particularly Ash`ari, ideals with increasingly standardized forms.65 Calligraphic script, for example, shifted from the largely illegible Kufic style to a legible cursive. This script subtly challenged the Shi`ite recognition of both esoteric (batin, or hidden) and exoteric (zahir, or external) truth; with the new script, only one reading and one interpretation prevailed.66

The Safavid regime, in contrast, devoted considerable means to building pilgrimage sites and shrines to the Imams and their families, demonstrating their Shi`ite identity. Safavid royal women in particular endowed the shrine of Fatima al-Ma`suma, the eighth Imam `Ali b. Musa al-Reza’s sister, in Qum. Shi`ite Safavids widely recognized Fatima al-Ma`suma as the principal intercessor for women. According to tradition, she arrived in Qum in 817 on her way to visit her brother-Imam, but she became ill and requested burial there in the cemetery gardens. The shrine built at her tomb became a popular pilgrimage site by the ninth and tenth centuries.67 Several Safavid women identified themselves with Fatima al-Ma`suma and her namesake, Fatima (Muhammad’s daughter). Histories and hagiographies alike celebrated their reputations as pious mothers, daughters, and brides.

With the contributions of Safavid queens and royalty, Fatima al-Ma`suma’s dome was rebuilt and calligraphic inscriptions adorned the courtyard and inner tomb chamber. These inscriptions included hadith that threatened with hellfire anyone who opposed the ahl al-bayt and likened the holy family to Noah’s ark. The inscriptions also awarded the Safavid donors epithets similar to their heavenly prototype, Fatima al-Batul (the Virgin) and Fatima al-Zahra (the Radiant).68

The holy family’s fame extends beyond the mosque, madrasa, and shrines into many homes as artists inscribe the names of the ahl al-bayt and the Twelve Imams as a type of magical formula on wall hangings or even domestic items.69 Scholars typically sanction such practices as long as the articles refer to Allah and Muhammad’s family, although religious authorities strictly forbid any illustration that appeals to alternate powers such as the jinn, demons, or false gods. Among Shi`ite communities, amulets and sacred artifacts usually entreat the holy family to intervene against the evil eye. The most common symbol of this sacred mediation is the human hand.70 Because it recalls Allah and the Imams as authorities, it remains licit for most Shi`ite communities (fi g. 4).71

The hand amulet as it is used in various cultures also seems to challenge traditional gender expectations. Most good luck talismans throughout the Middle East and Africa appeal to masculine, phallic imagery.72 The hand amulet, however, alludes to a mother and her family, and it is equally popular among both genders, in both public and private space. While women often wear the symbol as jewelry, men invoke its powers as symbolic stamp or insignia: it is used in official business transactions, on modes of transportation (camels or automobiles), and on entrances to homes and offices. The holy family’s authority, with Fatima at its nexus, supersedes traditional gender designations and promises active intercession available through a mother, bride, and daughter.

Despite the disparate theologies surrounding images and pictorial displays, both Christian and Shi`ite artists managed to reveal Mary’s and Fatima’s sublime authority in built form. Artists and architects situated both women’s imagery in sacred space: Mary was both prefigured and depicted in Santa Maria Maggiore’s mosaic cycle, and later priests associated her with the high altar. Fatima’s authority might be symbolized in mosque lamps as well as the mihrab itself. In both traditions, these

Figure 4. Khamsa pendant. Courtesy of author.

holy women symbolically if not literally illuminated their communities. Mary’s relics emanated light from the altar at Clermont, and Fatima’s nur pointed pious Muslims toward Mecca. The holy mothers’ presence allowed pious petitioners to gain access to the throne of God and the mercies of Allah.

Marian imagery flourished in early Christianity: third-century catacombs bore a Madonna and Child; church mosaics celebrated her participation in Christ’s birth; and Merovingian holy women commissioned countless edifices and altars dedicated to their holy mother. Such artifacts emphasized Mary’s role as intercessor and sublime matriarch; Merovingian women sought to share in her authority by affiliating themselves with her sacred spaces.

Shi`ite Muslims also promoted Fatima’s intercessory position between heaven and earth and her pivotal role in the ahl al-bayt. Mosque lamps and Qur’anic verses attested to the family’s divine light (nur) and perhaps their primordial existence on God’s throne. Mosques and shrines alike included symbols of the family’s authority either through architectural innovation or through calligraphy. Amulets of the human hand allowed Shi`ites continual access to the family for supplication and protection against evil.

Both religious systems enshrined their holy women in built form without seriously compromising conservative gender designations. A male hierarchy continued to arrogate to itself the authority of Christian sacred space; only male priests serve as altar servants in churches. Fatima remained inextricably tied to her male counterparts: she served as intercessor not only to Allah but also to her father, husband, and sons.

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.