Qiyama (Nizari Isma'ilism)

On 8 August 1164, Ḥasan II assembled a public gathering at the fortress of Alamūt in order to deliver a message from the imām, who was believed to be in hiding at the time. At this ceremony, Ḥasan II announced that the community had arrived at the time of qiyāma, and that he himself had been designated as the imām’s khalīfa.^[1] Similar ceremonies were held at the Mu'min-Abad Castle and the Masyaf Castle to promulgate the abrogation in Quhistan and Syria, respectively.

In October 1164, Ḥasan II once again assembled a public gathering at Alamūt and

Qiyama in the Nizari Ismaili tradition symbolizes spiritual transformation. According to the Ismaili interpretation of sharīʿa (Islamic law( as possessing a distinct duality. The rational shari’a refers to civil legal mechanisms, including property laws, marriage laws, and laws against murder or theft.^[3] The imposed shari’a, meanwhile, concerns matters of religious law and ritual practice, including fasting, pilgrimage, and ablution.^[4] Upon the proclamation of qiyama, the rational shari’a remained in place as a central element of upholding lawful societal order. Then imposed shari’a, however, was transformed to reflect a more spiritual form of ibadat, further reflecting the Ismaili tradition’s emphasis of the esoteric significance of shari’a, or the knowledge that the acts outlined within the imposed shari’a symbolize.^[5] In this regard, the imposed shari’a itself was not abrogated, but many of its elements were formally altered. Under qiyama, the ritual shari’a now reflected more esoteric interpretations and practices of the five pillars of Islam. Specific times of worship (including the five daily prayers), for example, were abolished in favor of a more esoteric form of salat, in which a believer was to assume a perpetual state of prayer by remembering God and obeying the Imam.^[6] Rather than physical fasting during Ramadan, the “true” fast was interpreted in an esoteric sense as the surrender of one’s faculties to the command of God for the entire year.^[7] Similarly, the requirement of the ritual practice of Hajj was supplanted by the practice of an esoteric Hajj, in which a believer sought to abandon the perishable world for the sake of the eternal world.^[8] In this regard, qiyama signified the elevation of ritual worship to a more spiritual level, emphasizing the practice of the bāṭin, the esoteric dimension of the Ismaili tradition.^[9]

The significance of qiyama also lies within its connection to the notion of the cycles of Prophecy and Imamah within the Ismaili tradition. Verse 7:54 of the Holy Qur’an makes mention of the “Six Days” of Creation, which, according to the

Relying heavily on Ismaili

taqiyya ("religious dissimulation"), had been abrograted to accommodate the ḥaqīqa ("divine truth"). As Marshall Hodgson explains:

The end of the rule of taqiyya followed naturally from the coming of the Qâʾim, whose manifest and universal power would make taqiyya unnecessary for the protection of the faithful. But its meaning here was no longer simply the guarding of the inner religious truth of the mission of ʿAlî from prying Sunnî eyes. All those outer forms which the Shîʿa shared more or less with the Sunnîs had come to be lumped together in popular Ismâʿîlî consciousness as being enforced by taqiyya. In the Qiyâma now the learned Ismâʿîlî tradition, in the person of Ḥasan II, was indirectly admitting the validity of their notion. The lifting of taqiyya was made to involve the rejection of all the outer ritual law. The imâm was now of his mercy granting permission to live without cult, in the spirit alone, which he had formerly forbidden. The end of the sharîʿa could conceivably have been presented as itself a natural consequence of the Resurrection—and no doubt it was so taken in part: there will be no laws in Paradise.^[18]