10:00-11:20 AM, TTh, 214 McKenzie

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1 HIST : SHI ISM ISM AND REVOLUTION EVOLUTION, :00-11:20 AM, TTh, 214 McKenzie This course explores the historical connection between Shīʿī sectarianism (broadly defined) and the revolutionary movements it produced from the origins of Islamic history until the 20 th century. The focus of the course is broad in scope and, in the first half the class, will fall on revolutionary movements during the formative period of Shīʿsm, from the 6th to the 11th centuries C.E. In the la<er half of the course we will also explore subsequent periods as well: the rise of Ṣafavid state and the conversion of Iran to Shī ism in the 15 th century, the Iranian revolutions of the 20th century and the rise of Shīʿism political activism in its various modern guises throughout the modern Arab World. Throughout this historical overview, we explore issues such as the relationship of sectarianism and apocalypticism to political activism, religious discourse and state ideology, and the ramifications of Shīʿī revolutions for the path of Islamic history more generally speaking. INSTRUCTOR: SEAN ANTHONY Office: 309 McKenzie Hall Office Hours: MW, 12:00-3:00pm; or by appointment Course Website. Please consult the course website regularly for announcements. The website is accessible via UofOs Blackboard system (see The site contains general course information, reading assignments, research guides, lecture handouts, study questions for discussion, paper assignments, visual images, links to other sites, etc. REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING The course consists of two 80 minute meetings per week; normally, Monday will be dedicated to lectures, with Wednesday set aside for half-lectures and discussions (some weeks may vary). Please read the assigned materials during the week they are assigned, and come to discussions prepared with questions and observations on the readings. Readings: Assigned readings for each week are indicated on the attached schedule of lectures. All books on the syllabus been placed on reserve at the library; all articles and primary readings can be found online at the library website via e-reserve. There is also a link to these e-reserves on blackboard. Reading assignments given by author only on the syllabus (e.g., Momen, 1-25 ) refer to the books listed below, which are available for purchase from the university bookstore. 1 S y l l a b u s

2 Momen, Moojen. An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shiʿism. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1987) Arjomand, Said Amir. The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford, 1989) Norton, Augustus Richard. Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2009) In addition to the assigned readings, a number of other works have been placed on reserve in the library. Some of these may be of assistance to you if you wish to explore particular subjects in more detail. Discussions: Pay special attention to the readings marked off in bold throughout the syllabus, as these readings are primary sources in translation, and to the study questions found on the course website. Also, be prepared to discuss these sources in class on the appropriate days. Papers: Two short papers on assigned topics will be required. These stand in lieu of essay questions on an examination. The purpose of these papers is two-fold: 1) to stimulate you to think more carefully about certain questions covered in the course and to formulate your ideas on them; 2) to exercise your skills in writing an historical essay. Your first paper will be a historical biography of a revolutionary individual from Shi ite history. I will post a list on blackboard on which you can sign up for a specific person. There will be 4 stages to this assignment: 1) you will hand in a bibliography of sources to be checked by me; 2) you will submit a draft of your paper for peer review to your classmates; 3) you will write a peer reviews for a select number of your classmates papers (randomly assigned); and 4) you will revise your paper and hand it in to me for you final grade. Your second paper will be your opportunity to weigh in on the central question of this course: Is Shi ism a religion of revolution and/or protest? Emphasis in grading will be placed on clarity of thought, clarity of expression, written polish, and effective support of your arguments with available evidence. Assigned readings given throughout the quarter should provide adequate material for you to formulate and substantiate your ideas on this topic; use of outside material is welcome, but receives no extra credit even (though such sources will likely aid you in achieving full credit). Papers must be handed in punctually. Papers may be submitted until 4:00pm on the days indicated in the syllabus below at my office of in MacKenzie Hall. Please also submit to me an electronic copy of your paper, as a Word file, by ing it to Islamic.history.papers@gmail.com by 4:00pm Pacific Standard Time on the due date. (This is an address to which only I have access to and utilize to keep my Oregon mailbox from getting cluttered.) Delays are unacceptable; they not only complicate grading but are unfair to others who have striven to submit their essays on time. For this reason, penalties will be assessed for lateness. Please do not ask for extensions: if you have sports or work commitments or requirements for other courses, you are expected to plan ahead and manage your time 2 S y l l a b u s

3 effectively so that the assignment can be submitted on time. If you have legitimate concerns, please contact me well in advance (at least 2 weeks). Final Grade Tally: Course grades will be computed as follows: Class Participation, 10%; Bibliography 10%; Peer Review of Historical Biography, 15%; Historical Biography, 30%; Final Paper, 35%. REFERENCE WORKS A selection of basic reference dealing with Islamic history and civilization be found at the Knight Library and accessed via the library s online resources. Below is a list of the most authoritative and useful: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 nd edition ; the gold standard of Islamic studies and abbreviated as EI 2, it s also available online via the library s proxy Encyclopaedia of Islam THREE; the third edition of EI 2 is underway but still in its infancy, most including articles falling under the letter A. Encyclopedia Iranica; an undertaking even more massive than EI 2, EIr covers the entirety of Iranian history and culture. Although its printed version has only reached the initial parts of K, a great deal of important articles to appear in print in the future can still be accessed online via New Cambridge History of Islam, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010); abbr. NCHI Cambridge History of Egypt Cambridge History of Iran Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World; an accessible alternative to the above, with a more modern focus, I recommend beginning here. Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought; brief, accessible entries on the basic institutions, ideas, and personalities of Islamic political thought from the origins to the present day. JSTOR: useful for essentially any class you ll take here at UOregon, by logging into jstor.org via Oregon s proxy server and/or at the library, you have access to a wealth of scholarly articles on Islamic history and civilization. If you re looking for a place to find sources on the Internet, this should be one of your first stops (Wikipedia tends to be VERY unreliable and/or ideological for early Islamic history). 3 S y l l a b u s

4 Week 1 Apr 01 Apr 03 LECTURE AND READING SCHEDULE SPRING 2014 Organization/What is Shiʿite Islam? Who are the Shiʿa? Momen, chs. 2-4; Bruce Lincoln, Introduction, in B. Lincoln, ed., Religion, Rebellion, Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1985), The Discontents of Fāṭima and ʿAlī, or Was ʿAlī a Revolutionary? W. Madelung, Shīʿism in the Age of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, in L. Clarke, ed., Shīʿite Heritage (Binghamton, NY, 2001), 9-18; selections from Maʿmar ibn Rāshid, R Kitāb al-maghāzī Maghāzī,, trans. S. Anthony; an early sermon attributed to ʿAlī, trans. S. Anthony further readings: Kh. Y. Blankinship, Imārah, Khilāfah, and Imāmah: The Origin of the Succession to the Prophet Muḥammad, in L. Clarke, ed., Shīʿite Heritage (Binghamton, NY, 2001), Week 2 Apr 08, Apr 10 al-ḥusayn at Karbalāʾ: From Tragedy, to Myth, to Cult EIr, s.v. al-ḥosayn b. ʿAli, (W. Madelung, J. Calmard, and P. Chelkowski) 1 ; Yitzhak Nakash, An Attempt to Trace the Origin of the Rituals of ʿĀshūrāʾ. Die Welt des Islams 33.2 (1993): ; 2 The Martyrdoms of Mītham al-tammār and Rushayd al-hajarī, trans. S. Anthony Week 3 Apr 15 Umayyad Shiʿism and ʿAbbāsid Daʿwa (Historical Biography Bibliography Due) EIr, s.v. Kaysāniya (S. Anthony) 3 ; F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 2 nd ed. (Cambridge, 2007), 52-86; Excerpt from the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays,, trans. P. Crone Apr 17 ʿAbbāsids and the Shiʿa S y l l a b u s

5 N. Haider, Zaydism: A Theological and Political Survey, Religion Compass 4.7 (2010): ; D. Tor, An Historiographical Re-Examination of the Appointment and Death of ʿAlī al-riḍā, Der Islam 78 (2001): ; 4 Letters attributed to Zaydī rebel Muḥammad al-nafs al-zakiyya and the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-man Manṣūr, trans. Jane D. McAuliffe Week 4 Apr 22, Apr 24 Revolution of the Mind: Occultation and Shiʿi Apocalypticism Momen, Shiʿism, ; EIr, art. Ġayba (S. Arjomand); 5 Hussein Ali Abdulsater, Dynamics of Absence: Twelver Shiʿism during the Minor Occultation, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 161 (2011): Two disputations on the ghayba written by Ibn Qiba. Week 5 Apr 29 May 01 The Ismāʿīliyya and the Fāṭimid Caliphate P. Walker, The Ismāʿīlī Daʿwa and the Fāṭimd Caliphate, in C. F. Petry, ed., Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, (Cambridge, 1998), ; selections from Ibn al- Haytham, Kitāb al-munā Munāẓarāt arāt,, trans. W. Madelung and P. Walker; selections from al-qā Qāḍī ī al- Nuʿm ʿmān, Iftitāḥ al -daʿwa ʿwa,, trans. H. Haji Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ and the Assassins F. Daftary, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and the Origins of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī Movement, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), ; selection from Ḥasan asan-i Ṣabbā abbāḥ, al-fu Fuṣūl al-arba arbaʿa ʿa,, trans. M.G.S. Hodgson; Marco Polo on The Old Man of the Mountain from Travels,, trans. H. Yule Week 6 May 06 The Ṣafavī Mystical Order and Its Empire (Biography Due for Peer Review) S. A. Arjomand, The Rise of Shah Esma il as a Mahdist Revolution, Studies in Persianate Societies 3 (2005): 44-65; The Poetry of Shah Ismāʿīl I Khaṭāʾī, trans. V. Minorsky S y l l a b u s

6 May 08 WATCH Ṣafavids and Iranian Shiʿism Momen, , ; R. Abisaad, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire (New York, 2007), Rudi Mathee, Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan : Week 7 May 13 Iran s First Constitutional Revolution, (Peer Review of Hist. Bio. Due) May 15 Arjomand, Turban and Crown, 11-58; Jamāl al-dīn al-afghānī, The Reign of Terror in Persia ; Shaykh Fażl Allāh Nūrī against Constitutionalism, trans. A-H. A Hairi Qumm and Najaf Ch. Mallat, "Religious Militancy in Contemporary Iraq: Muhammad Baqer as-sadr and the Sunni-Shi'a Paradigm,"Third World Quarterly 10.2 (1988), ; selections from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Islamic Government and from Muhammad Baqir al-sadr, The General Framework of Islamic Economics, Week 8 May 20 : 1979 s Unthinkable Revolution Arjomand, Turban and Crown, ; Ali Shariati, Civilization and Modernisation May 22 A Gendered Revolution? (Final Draft of Hist. Bio Due) J. Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran, chs. 9,10; excerpt from Murtaza Mutahhari, The Human Status of Woman in the Qurʾān ān; ; Sediqah Dawlatabadi: An A Iranian Feminist, trans. M. Ettehadiah Week 9 May 27 Hezbollah and the Lebanese Shiʿa (Final Paper Assigned) May 29 Norton, Hezbollah; Muhamamd Husayn Fadlallah, Islamic Unity and Political Change and September 11 th, Terrorism, Islam, and the Intifada Revolutionary Gender: Women s Public Shiʿi Piety in Lebanon and Political Activism 6 S y l l a b u s

7 L. Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shiʿi Lebanon (Princeton, 2006), ch. 3, 4, 6 Week 10 June 3 June 5 The New Shiʿi Politics of Iraq Fanar Haddad, Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2011), Is Shiʿism a Religion of Protest? Arjomand, Turban and Crown, ; Bruce Lincoln, Notes Towards a Theory of Religion and Revolution, in B. Lincoln, ed., Religion, Rebellion, Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1985), ; Nikki Keddie, Shīʿism and Revolution, in Lincoln, ed., op. cit., (Final Paper due in Exam Week: to islamic.history.papers@gmail.com by Thursday, March 22, 5p.m.) 7 S y l l a b u s