Khalid the Hasanist

For the Shiites and moderate skeptics in my audience, Torsten Hylén of Uppsala has now published The Karbala Story and Early Shi'ite Identity through Norse colony Edinburgh. I somewhat wish I'd had it earlier because I have Editorial Comments. My largest nit may as well get a picking, here.

Hylén's book deals with Karbala and then with the Tawwab "penitents". I am no expert on either. My research in that 60s/680s decade went more into what Muslims consider their aftermath, the Zubayrid Fitna which I handled a decade ago in House of War. That entailed some disentanglement... which (I think) Hylén is leaving entangled.

Hylén for Karbala sees three basic strands, which entered Tabarî thence Mas'ûdî (without crediting Tabarî, as Hylén complains). Tabarî's main source was Ibn al-Kalbî < Abû Mikhnaf Lot, which he supplemented by "imam Bâqir" (I'll get to him) and one other guy who wasn't Shiite. Hylén argues for their mutual independence.

I think that's a tough call. If the imamate - often a shadow caliphate - had a Story, Abû Mikhnaf and Ibn al-Kalbî between them should have ferreted it out, like Tabarî will. Also I'd think the Shi'a should have transmitted Bâqir's account through, say, his son Ja'far and even Reza. Where's that? Tabarî doesn't bother; he relates from some Khâlid who'd claimed Duhnî (d. AD 750). Mas'ûdî aside this can be crosschecked, for which Hylén brings Abû'l-Faraj Isfahânî.

Per Hylén page 72: In summary, I would place the origin of the version ascribed to al-Bāqir in Medina at the turn of the second/the first decades of the eighth century. That is, that al-Bâqir really said all this. Let's investigate.

Duhnî would have seen the deaths of Bâqir 735 and then of his brother and supposed successor Zayd 740, followed by the 'Abbâsî takeover of the Iraq 747. I don't read these tropes in what Tabarî gives us. I see other tropes, though. Those are interesting - because they're not Shi'a.

In Khâlid's account, Husayn took refuge in Mecca from the devil Yazîd. This actually has a contemporary historical valence: but it was the Zubayrids who'd claimed that sanctuary. Abû Mikhnaf couldn't avoid this and, to his credit, did not; he says that Husayn and Ibn al-Zubayr did this together. ... Really?

Couple of points, here. First: Abû Mikhnaf knew Bâqir's tradition, as Khâlid taught it. Second: Khâlid has taken the Zubayrid tropes to apply to a Shi'ite figure. You know who else did this? Muhammad the Hasani called Nafs al-Zakiya. He rebelled AH 145/AD 762, after Duhnî was long gone. There's a whole scholarly literature on how his propagandists appropriated the Zubayrid biography. (Independent of Mehdy Shaddel: House of War has an appendix.)

Those apocalypse(s) which forced the Hasani upon the Zubayrid template annoyed the wider Shi'a, who by now could recall what Mus'ab had done to the Mukhtâr in al-Kufa; and the mainline Shi'a far-as-I-know didn't transmit the Zubayrid apocalypses. I propose that Khâlid transmitted such a Karbala account as would make of Husayn Martyr that Hasani prefigure, without Zubayr. Not ~110/730; more like 140/760.