The Background Motives of the Qarmaṭī Policy in Baḥrain

Thanks to the combined influence of Hāriğite doctrines, Mu‘tazilite practical theology and late Hellenistic and Neo-Platonic philosophies, significant changes took place in the ideology of the opposition Šī‘ite groups that manifested their social discontent at the time of the disintegration of the late ‘Abbāsid caliphate in the middle of the 3rd/9th century. As a result of these ideas, communities of a new type arose within the Šī‘ite milieu which supported their radical political and military behaviour by the proclamation of the immediate advent of a theocratic and charismatic leader, the Imām-Mahdī ‘from the Prophet’s house’ (min ahl al-bayt). Later the large-scale ideological and political movement of the Ismā‘īliya led to the formation of two Šī‘ite statehoods in the territory of the Muslim Empire, one the Fāṭimids in North Africa in 298/910, the other the Qarmaṭīs in Eastern Central Arabia, in Baḥrain in 281/894.

They based both their legitimacy and their policy aimed at overthrowing the ‘Abbāsids on the representation of this theocratic and charismatic leader, the Imām-Mahdī. The presumed ideological-political relations of the two Šī‘ite states referred to in the contradictory medieval Arabic sources and brought to light by modern research have attracted considerable attention, and widespread polemics have developed around them. So much importance was attributed to Fāṭimid-Qarmaṭī relations in medieval chronicles and polemical treatises as well as in scholarly research, that external relations of the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrain which did not concern the Fāṭimids were disregarded both in sources and publications. The paper discusses the formation of the Qarmaṭīs’ non-Fāṭimid external relations as well as the development of the Qarmaṭī community and statehood concerning background motives, as far as these can be inferred from the sources.