To cite this: Virani, Shafique N. “Ahl al-Bayt.” In Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. 198-199. New York: Macmillan, 2005. www.academia.edu/37219447/Ahl_al-Bayt www.shafiquevirani.org 198 HL AL-BAf Txs, byond the Tts, edited by Michael Witzel, pp. 207-234 (Cambridge 1997). Details on the Jain point of viw and elaboration of he ahiisi concept are included in the chapters of Padmnabh S.Jaini's hefainaPath ofPu­ iiaion (Berkeley, Calif., 1979). The reader will ind many relections in Gandhi's autobiography: in Gujarati, Mohan­ das Karamcand Gandhi's ayani pyo ahaa amakathi, 2 vols. (hmedabad, 1927-1928); in English, An Auobiog­ phy, or he oy ofMy peimens with Tuth, translated by Mahadev Desai and Pyarelal Nair (1927-1929; 2d ed., Ahmedabad, 1940). COEIE IUAT (1987 ND 2005) HL -BAT. The conception ofthe ahl al-bayt, "peo­ ple of the house," "family," or "household" of the prophet M.ammad pls a vital role in Islamic thought and piety. In the tshahhud portion of the ritual prayers, Muslims of all persuasions supplicate daily, "O God! Bless M.ammad and his family (i), as you blessed Abraham and his family." Qur'anic prophetology is pregnant with the notion of a hallowed lineage. God's chosen messengers among the Isra­ elites are believed to he been descended rom one another, as the ur'an states: "Truly, God chose Adam, Noah, the family of braham, and the family of 'Imran above all the worlds, ofspring, one ater the oher" (IIl:33-34). The ur'an portrys the chosen among the families and descen­ dants (i, ah, qub, and dhurya) of the prophets as sup­ portive of the messengers during their missions and included in God's merciul protection. Thy are oten the prophets' material and spiritul legatees, heirs with respect to kingship (mu), rule (Jukm), wisdom (Jikm), the book (kiti) and the imamate (N:54, l:84-91, X:27, VIl:76-77, Lll:26). As with the families of the previous prophets, M.ammad's family is accorded a special status in the ur'an, the prophetic tradition (J), and the schools of religious law. At the outset of M.ammad's mission, God commands him: "Warn your nearest kin (al-aqabfn), and lower your wing to the faithul who ollow you" l:21215). The Qur'an lso makes certain monetary consider­ ations or the Prophet's relations (hi'l-qurb) VIIl:41, LC:7), and on account of the sanctiied status of the pro­ phetic family, Muslim legal practice dictates that Mu)ammad and his clan not touch the alms of the commu­ nity, lest such deilements (awsi) pollute them. The purity of the family is most fmously attested to in the verse known as athr (puriication): "God desires only to remove impuri­ y rom you, 0 People of the House (ahl al-bayt), and to pu­ riy you completely" (XIIl:33). Muslim tradition, in accordance with the widely report­ ed /dith al-ksi' or al- 'abi', enerally identiies M.ammad himself; his daughter, Fatima; her husband and the cousin of the Prophet, 'Ali; and the Prophet's two grand­ sons by this marriage, al-Hasan and l-lusayn, as the nude- us of the "house." Shiism also allows or the imis and, in a looser sense, other righteous progeny descended rom 'Ali and Fatima to be accounted as part ofthe family, while some SunnI reports expand the term to include the Prophet's wives or the collateral branches of his relations, such as, the 'Abbasids or even the Umayyads. Al-NabhnI provides a sur­ vey of reports on who is included among the ahl al-bayt (al­ Shaf al-mu'abbad i-il uJamm, Cairo, 1381/1961, pp. 10-34). It is, howver, in light of the /dith al-ksl or al- 'abi', the "tradition of the mantle," that both ShI'I and SunnI commentators ovewhelminly intepret the verse of ahr. According to this account, the Prophet wrapped him­ self and the other our members of his family in his mantle, solemnly declaring, "O God, these are the People of my House (ahl bayt)!" He then recited the Qur'anic verse of pu­ riication. Frequently this incident is connected with the epi­ sode of mubihaa (mutul imprecation), which relates to the visit of a delegation of Christians rom Najran in the year 631632. The accounts relate hat here was a dispute re­ garding Christology and it was decided to resort to the ritual of "mutual imprecation" to decide which party was in the right, that ofM.ammad or that ofthe Christian delegation. Thus M.ammad is commanded in the ur'an III:61: "If anyone dispute with you in this matter [concening Jesus] ater the knowledge that has come to you, sy: Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves, then let us swear an oath and place the curse of God on those who lie." Accordingly, the ive members of the ahl al-bayt gathered or the ritual. However, the mubihaa is said to he been averted when the Christian side reached a conciliation with the Prophet. In traditions recorded in both ShI'I and SunnI sources, the Prophet likens his family to Noah's ark, sying: "Among you, my ahl al-bayt is like the Ark of Noah. Whoso embarks therein is saved and whoso lags behind is drowned." In the well-known report known as the /adith al-thqaayn (the tra­ dition of the wo weighty things), likewise ound in both ShI'I and SunnI sources, he is reported to he said: "Verily, I am leaving with you two weihty hings, the Book of God and my progeny, my ahl al-bay. So long as you cling to these wo, you will never go astray. Truly, thy will not be parted rom each other until thy join me at the ountain [in paradise]." In the Qur'an Lil:23, M.ammad is commanded to address his disciples as ollows, "Say: I do not ask you or any recompense or this [the apostleship] save love or the kins­ olk (al-qurb)." Here, "kinsolk" is largely understood to be the Prophet's kinsolk, thouh divergent interpretations exist as well. The general attitude is well represented in a state­ ment of l-Shi'I (d. 820), the eponmous ounder of one of the our predominant SunnI schools of jurisprudence, who is quoted as saying: "O members of the House of the Prophet, love or you is a duty to God hat He has revealed in the Qur'an. ith respect to your great magniicence, it suices to say that anyone who does not invoke blessins or ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION HL AL-BAT you has not performed the daily pryer" (al-NabhanI, p. 184). long the same lines, Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 765), a de­ scendnt of the Prophet and one of the ShI'I iis, de­ clares: "Everything has a oundation, and the oundation of Islam is loving us, the Prophet's family" (imad b. Mubammad al-BarqI, itab al-maJsin, Najf, 1964, p. 113). Certainly primarily ShI'I, traditions also ssign a nu­ minous role to the family.The ive family members are envi­ sioned s beings of light, existing in pre-creation, whose names are derived rom God's most beautiul names (see, or example, Furat b. Ibrhim b. Furat al-KuI, Tair uat al-Kul, Najaf: al-Marba'a al-iaidaria, n.d., p. 11). Such reports provided ecund material or mystical speculation. In his Gujarati composition Muman Chiveii, or example, the ourteenth-century Ismaili sage Pir Sadr al-Din interprets this idea by describing how the Almighy placed the pole star (qu), luminous by the light of the ive holy ones, in the ir­ mament at the time of creation. Its brilliance was so over­ whelming, howver, that the hevens begn to tremble un­ controllably. Only when the name 'lI was written on the coners of the universe was stabiliy restored ( o munar moti, Mumbai: DhI Khoja SindhI Chhapkhanul, 1905, p. 3). A number of designations, rougly synonymous with the term ahl al-bay, became popular in the Muslim world. In the more restrictive sense, terms such as ahl (or a4 al-ksa (or al- 'aba1, "the people of the mantle," or in Persian­ speaking and Persian-inluenced ares, paj an-i pak, "the ive pure ones," are prevalent, while in the more general sense of the descendants of the Prophet, epithets such s al al-nabi, al al-rsul or al ysin are widespread. Throughout Islamic history, the descendants of the Prophet, oten styled as says or hari, hve been the ocus of particular respect. ShI'I imas, along with many SufI shaykhs, SunnI politicl leaders and Muslim religious schol­ ars of various persuasions, hve oten drwn tremendous le­ gitimacy and authoriy rom heir illustrious descent rom the Prophet. In modern times one my cite he iim of the lsmailis, Prince Karim Aga Khan, and the ruling families of Morocco and Jordan as cases in point. he descendants of the ahl al-bayt he requently ormed a distinct social clss in Muslim societies, sometimes even recognizable by distin­ guishing orms of dress, the green turban being particularly notworthy. At the same time, a conception exists of a spiri­ tual ahl al-bayt, sometimes referred to as the bayt al-waJy, "the house of prophecy," into which the devotees of the pro­ phetic family my be initiated, hile unrihteous blood rela­ tions my be xcluded. Thus one has the Prophet's celebrat­ ed dictum about his Persian disciple: "Salman is one of us, the ahl al-bayt." The theme of devotion to the members of the mily has touched many aspects of Islamic piey, literature, architec­ ture, iconograpy, and mystical thought hrough the ages. For xample, he great poet 'bd al-.man Jami (d. 1492), an initiate of the Naqshbandi SufI order, declares 199 that praise of the ahl al-bayt ennobles the encomiast (Mahnawha-yi Hat Awang, Tehran, 1351 S/1972, p. 145), while Sana'I (d. 1121), in a section of his fdiqa, pleads or divine pardon in the name of his love or the Prophet's kinsolk (fdiqat /-Jaqa wa shari'at al-ariq, ed. Mudarris Ralawi, Tehran, 1329 S/1950, pp. 642-643). Remrkably, domestic architecture in parts ofTajikistan and injiang is centered on ive columns, interpreted by the in­ habitants as representative of the ive puriied ones of the Prophet's amily. In the early tweny-irst centuy the mem­ bers of the Prophet's household continue to be celebrated in songs and invoked in pryers and are even the subjects of nu­ merous web pages on the internet. BIBIOGPY Scholarly research on the concept of the ahl al-bayt has over­ whelmingly concentrated on the political implications of this term in the early Muslim community. In this connection see Moshe Sharon's Back Bannersrom the Est (Leiden, 1983); "Ahl al-bay-People of the House," esaem Sdies in Aa­ bic andIsam 8, no. 2 (1986): 169-184; and "The Umayads as ahl al-bayt," esaem Sdies in Aabic and sam 14 (1991): 115-152. n rlier but widely quoted study by udi Parer sugested that the term ahl al-yt in the Qur'an referred to he adherents of the cult of the House, that is, the Ka'bah. See his "Der Plan einer neuen, leicht kommentierten Koranibersetzung," in Oienalssche Sudien Enno Lit­ mann zu seinem 60. ebuag, edited by R. Parer (Leiden, 1935). Wilord Madelung provides a meticulous and in­ depth examination of previous opinion and articulates his own conclusions in he ucsion o MuJammad (Cam­ bridge, U.K., 1997). rly Shi'I traditions, including of course those related to the ahl al-bay, are examined in Mo­ hammad li mir-Moezzi, Le Gue Divin Dam Le hi' sme Oiinei translated as The Divine Guie in Eary Shi'sm (Al­ bany, N.Y., 1994); ynda G. Clarke, "Early Doctrine of the Shi'ah, According to the Shi'i Sources" (Ph.D. diss., McGill Uniersiy, 1994); Meir M. Bar-Asher, Scipure and ss in ary Iami Shism (Leiden, 1999); and S. Husain M. ]ri, Oiis andary Deveopment o/hi'a Isam (London, 1979). The incident of the mubihaa is dealt ith in Louis Massignon, "La Mubahala de Medine et l'hperdulie de Fatima," reproduced in Opera Minor, Tome I, pp. 550-572 (Beirut, Lebanon, 1963); bdelmadjid Mez­ iane, "Le sense de la mubahala d'apres la tradition is­ lamique," samo-hsana 2 (1976): 5967; and udolph Strothman, "Die Mubhala in Tradition und Liturgic," sam 33 (1957): 5-29. Massinon's article "Salman Pak et !es premices spirituelles de l'Islam Iranien," reproduced in Opea inor, Tome I, pp. 443483 (Beirut, Lebanon, 1963), discusses the role of Salman's initiation in Islamic piety. The appearance of the ahl al-bayt in Persian iconogra­ phy is daborated in Maria ittoria Fontana, "lconograia dell'Ahl al-Bat: immagini di arte persiana dal XII al X se­ colo" (Naples, Italy, 1994) (Supplemento n. 78 ali Annali vol. 54 [1994], uc. 1). Reerence ro he most important pri­ mary source materials may be ound in the above-cited txts, and in the articles in this encyclopedia on 'Ali, Iusayn, and Fatima. SFIQUE N. INI (2005) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION