da'wat-e jadid
), opted for a hidden Imam with a visible Proof (
hujja
) as
the head of the mission and for supreme authority in the authoritative teaching
(
ta'lim
) of the adepts. The Nizaris, who called each other ‘comrade’ (
rafiq
),
held a number of impregnable fortresses in the mountains of Iran and Syria
which they used for training the zealous devotees (
fida'i
) and developing the
technique of political assassination in the revolutionary struggle against the
Seljuq empire.
122
On
August
/
th of Ramadan
, the ruler of Alamut and other
Nizari Isma'ili fortresses, Hasan II b. Muhammad b. Buzurg-Umid, pro-
claimed the Resurrection as the Deputy (
khalifa
) and Proof (
hujja
) of the
Imam and the Riser of the Resurrection (
qa'im al-qiyama
).
123
He was evidently
impatient with the calculations of the Brethren of Purity, and refusing to
wait until their appointed time, which was the end of the Islamic millennium,
had used a different horoscope.
124
This meant that the era (
dawr
) of the Law
and external reality had come to an end and the era of inner reality had
begun. All believers could know God and the cosmic mysteries through the
Imam, and God would constantly be in their hearts.
Hasan II was fatally stabbed in January
, but his son Muhammad II
confirmed the continuation of the Resurrection which lasted for a total of
forty-six years to
. The mission was now ‘the call to [or, preaching of ]
Resurrection (
da'wat-e qiyamat
),
125
and the Nizaris considered themselves ‘the
saved community of the Qa'imites (
qa'imiyin
)’.
126
As time went on, the doctrine
of the Resurrection as developed by Muhammad II, who claimed Imamate
for himself and his father as putative descendants of Nizar, made the Imam
the manifestation of the word and command of God through whose vision
the believers could find themselves in Paradise. He added the Sufi level of
truth (
haqiqa
) to the Isma'ili levels of external and inner reality and identified
it with the Resurrection.
127
Hasan II, ‘upon whose mention be peace’, was now considered the Qa'im
as well as the Imam, but the meaning of the term changed radically because
of the declaration of Resurrection. A treatise written some forty years into
the Resurrection reaffirmed the old Isma'ili idea that 'Ali was the Qa'im of the
125
Messianism, Millennialism and Revolution
Resurrection, but also asserted that ‘all the Imams are 'Ali (bless him) himself,
and will be’.
128
It is true that the Qa'im of the Resurrection, ‘in this period
of ours … in the clime of the sun … in the land of Babylon among the lands
of the 'Ajam (non-Arabs) … in the midst of the Jabal (mountainous region)
… at the castle of Alamut, he was Our Lord [Hasan II]’.
129
But the Qa'im is
no longer restricted to that particular incarnation. He is the eternal Imam and
the primordial Adam who completes the cycle of revelation (
kashf
).
130
With
the Resurrection, the Qa'im as the New Adam is and ever will be in the heart
of the people of truth, imparting to them the authoritative teaching (
ta'lim
)
that transcends the duality of external and inner reality and makes possible
the full pantheistic plenitude of existence.
131
By completing the cycle of
revelation (
kashf
), the Great Resurrection is the apocalyptic appropriation of
the world through the universal integration of saving knowledge into the daily
lives of the people of truth. With this kenosis of the apocalyptic into Sufi
mystical pantheism, the ‘realized apocalypticism’ of the Isma'ilism took the
form of mystical life in what purported to be post-history.
Epilogue
The apocalyptic perspective that underlies both political messianism and
astrological millennialism was integrated into pristine Islam by Muhammad.
I have surveyed the unfolding of political messianism and astrological millen-
nialism in revolutionary action and their subsequent containment with regard
to the rise of Islam, the Abbasid and Isma'ili (Fatimid) revolutions, and the
development of the doctrine of occultation in Twelver Shi'ism. Each time,
with the realization of the apocalyptic vision, messianism and millennialism
in history, the apocalyptic perspective was temporarily closed, but the closure
could never be definitive. The apocalyptic, messianic and millennial elements
remained contained in the Islamic tradition, but as can be seen in chapters
and
by Bashir and Cole, could always be reactivated under favourable
conditions.
I I I
Medieval and Early
Modern Periods
129
7
Medieval Europe: Religious Enthusiasm
and Social Change in the ‘Millennial
Generation’
R. I. Moore
The apathy and despair in which the expectation of the end of the world had
held the spirits of the tenth century were dissipated, to give way to prodigious
activity which imparted an entirely new impulse to the arts and literature.
The social entity which is called France was formed, came into existence, only
at the end of the tenth century … this development deserves, for the first time,
the name of French civilization.
1
Without reviving the romantic fantasy of ‘the terrors of the year
’ – that
is, the anticipation of the end of the world at the millennium of the in-
carnation (or the resurrection) of Christ, according to the prophecy of St John
the Divine – discarded by the scientific historians of the later nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, the last fifteen or twenty years have seen a dramatic revival
of interest in the millennium; the millennium, that is, in the most literal
possible sense, the years between
and
and the decades perceived by
many as leading up to and away from them. Put as simply as possible – and
therefore, no doubt too simply – two questions about the first millennium are
being discussed increasingly furiously. First, is it indeed the case that the
course of European history changed sharply – so sharply as to imply a
‘revolution’ or at least, in the phrase popularized by Poly and Bournazel,
2
a
‘mutation’ – at that time? Second, if so was there a connection between the
change and the date? That is, did thoughts, anxieties and expectations
associated with the millennium make a significant, even an indispensable
contribution to that change?
Historiographically, the two questions have rather different lineages. The
first, in its modern form, has arisen from the work of Georges Duby, quite
130
Medieval and Early Modern Periods
independently of interest in the millennium as such, and in contexts which
accord if not marginal, certainly secondary importance to the history of ideas
and of popular religious convictions. In
and
Duby published the
results of his ‘researches on the evolution of judicial institutions in southern
Burgundy’,
3
showing that Carolingian public justice remained effective in the
region around Mâcon throughout the tenth century, only to collapse with
great suddenness between
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