The Prophet Muḥammad in Imāmī Shīʿism

Abstract

In Imāmi or Twelver Shīʿism, the Prophet Muḥammad is inseparable from his Holy Family, the ahl al-bayt, i.e. his cousin and son-in-law ʿAlī (the first Imām), his daughter Fāṭima, his two grandsons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn (the second and the third Imāms); just as the Prophecy (nubuwwa) is inseparable from the divine Alliance (walāya) which is the mission and nature proper to the Imām. From the Shīʿī perpsective, the Prophet and his mission, like all sacred things, have both an apparent, exoteric and historical dimension (ẓāhir), and an invisible, esoteric and metaphysical dimension (bāṭin), which this article will study successively. The Shīʿī account of the Prophet’s life, reported from the Imāms and developed by medieval historians, focuses on certain episodes, from Muḥammad’s birth to his death, all interpreted in a particular doctrinal sense. This is based on esoteric conceptions of the Prophet’s eternity, spiritual nature and cosmic function, present in the oldest Imāmi ḥadīths, and which are being thought of at new expense after the integration of a certain Sufism, notably that of Ibn ʿArabī, by late Shīʿī thinkers. The figure of the Prophet, in its historical representation as well as in its metaphysical attributes, appears therefore unique without ever being separated from that of the Imām.