Imagining the End: Visions of

ex eventu

 prophecy that fixed the number of  the

imams permanently at twelve.

92

 In the second half  of  that century, the Shaykh

al-Sadiq, Ibn Babuya, greatly developed the analogy between the occultation

of  the Imam and the absence of  the prophets; and the rationalist doctors of

the eleventh century, the Shaykh al-Mufid, the Sayyid al-Murtaza and the

Shaykh al-Ta'ifa al-Tusi, vigorously rebutted the charge that the occultation

of  the Imam meant the abeyance of  the divine law, and recast the explanation

of  the 

ghayba

 within the framework of  their Mu'tazilite-inspired nomocratic

theology. Occultation was no longer a cause for perplexity because, thanks to

the divine law and grace (

lutf

), the believer knew what to do in the absence

---

119

Messianism, Millennialism and Revolution

of  the Imam. The hidden Imam would perpetually rule the world through

the visible hierocracy of  'ulama.

93

Medieval Trends

While the Imami hierocracy was beginning to contain political messianism

through a quietistic transformation of  the idea of  occultation, Shi'ite political

messianism erupted in the shape of  the Isma'ili revolutionary movement, and

with it came a pronounced millennialism in the form of  political astrology.

From the typological point of  view, it is particularly felicitous to end this

essay on medieval Islamic history with a brief  examination of  the Isma'ili

movement as Isma'ilism combined political Messianism, or Mahdism, and

millennialism within a firmly apocalyptic worldview.

Apocalyptic revelation of  a new creation here and now transforms the

present into a moment of  revolutionary liminality, of  the great opening and

freedom from tradition.

94

 Liminal anxiety generated by apocalypticism is a

source of  constant pressure for certainty, and results in the reification of  the

apocalyptic future. The oldest techniques for the fabrication of  predetermined

futures are numerology and astrology. Numerology is the oldest technique for

the calculation of  the predetermined future. Its reception in Islam as the

science of  

jafr

 is quite early, that science being attributed to Daniel but also

to the Sixth Shi'ite Imam, Ja'far b. Muhammad, presumably on account of

the red leather bag known as the 

jafr

. The Shi'ites believed that it contained

secret scrolls as well as the weapons of  the Prophet and was in the possession

of  Ja'far al-Sadiq, who had inherited it from his father and grandfather.

95

The distinctive Muslim science for the prediction of  the predetermined

future, however, is what I would call political astrology. This science for the

astral determination of  political upheavals was developed with the hindsight

of  the Abbasid revolution. It adopted the Sasanian astrological techniques for

predictions of  dynastic change on the basis of  Ptolemaic astronomy, super-

imposed on Zoroastrian millennialism.

96

 It was developed by Masha'Allah, the

Jewish astrologer who, together with the Zoroastrian astrologer Nawbakht,

advised the second Abbasid Caliph, Mansur, on the time and location of  the

new City of  Peace (

madinat al-salam

, Baghdad) in 



, and by his disciple

Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (d. 886).

97

 A practitioner of  this science who was a

contemporary of  Abu Ma'shar, Ibn Abu Tahir Tayfur (d. 



), saw the

heavenly revolution of  stars replicated in a great revolution in