Sulaym revisited

I've lately been redirected to Sulaym bin Qays, rather to the Shī'ī tract (kitāb) ascribed to him. Today I found Tamima Bayhom-Daou, "Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays revisited", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 78 (2015), 105-19. (That DOI is 10.1017/s0041977x14001062.) The title refers to what happened to the text before our version got loose.

TBD assumes Patricia Crone that the kitāb is composite, compiling earlier content. Building from that, TDB goes into the second section. This deals with the tract's Qur'ānic epistemology. In fact here are two -ologies: in one, the Aimmāt (without hamza) own perfect knowledge of God's Word and transmit that to their sons, each an Imām upon adulthood. The problems for Sulaym's Imāmate start with 'Alī the Ridā, "Reza" to Iranians. When Reza died 203 AH (AD 818, AG ~1130) his oldest son was a child. Bring on the second -ology: a secret tafsīr in written form existed, available to the Prophetic Family - which we plebs didn't get to read. Problem solved: the son can be Imām without direct Imāmic instruction. TBD believes that the second -ology is, indeed, secondary; tacked onto the original take.

(Note how this neatly explains how come Shī'ī qirāāt cluster in Ibn Mas'ûd codices far more than in codices ascribed to 'Alī or to his family directly. It just hadn't occurred to the Family that a written codex existed. That's the problem with an apocalyptic movement . . .)

Crone had figured upon a basic tract in which the 'Alids still approved the 'Abbāsite dawla. This tract had forged some documents of its own, like a letter from amir Mu'āwiya to his walī Ziyād (pt 4 hadith 23). But this was an early forgery! Such a forgery would not be possible after the Hasanid failure 145/762.

The whole sect, Hasanites and Husaynites alike, might allow for the secret-teaching doctrine. That much isn't easily datable. Only the replacement of secret-teaching to a secret-writing would be constrained; for the Imāmīs who gave us Sulaym, to the third century.

NAHJ 11/28: Amina Inloes found, not long after TBD, that the Nahj is antiwoman by contrast to Sulaym, so probably shouldn't be cited as canon.