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The story of Narjis' marriage to Imâm 'Askarî and the

birth of the promised Mahdî

From Byzantium to Samarra

Translated from : Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. IV, pp. 309-322

The traditional account of the beginnings of the 12th Imâm's hagiography begins with the story
of a young Christian princess from Byzantium, in whom the love of an Isolde blossoms, but an
Isolde called upon by her love to miraculously give birth to a divine Child. This theme of the
Divine Child is well known in the history of religions; however, Shi'ite texts on this point have
been little studied. We'll just mention the essentials here.

The 10th Imâm, 'Alî Naqî, who became Imâm at the age of seven and died in 254/868, aged
barely forty, had to suffer particularly from the suspicions and harassments of the Abbasid
caliph. The latter had turned Samarra, some one hundred kilometers north of Baghdad, into a
military city [1]. He held the Imâm more or less prisoner there for twenty years. It was there, in
231/845, that the Imâm's son, Hasan, nicknamed for this reason Hasan 'Askarî (an adjective
derived from the word 'askar, army), was born. It was also here, on the 15th of the month of
Sha'bân in the year 255 (August 3, 868), that Hasan's son, the twelfth and last Imâm, was
born.

Instructed by a divine gift of prescience, Imâm 'Alî Naqî directed all things so that his son
could marry the woman destined to become the mother of the XIIth Imâm. This is where
hierohistory begins. It brings into play a supernatural synchronism between the Imâm's
prescience and the experience, which we must call initiatory, through which the young
Christian woman, future mother of the Imâm to come, passed in a series of visionary dreams.
What we have said above about the Cycle of Prophecy and the recurrences of the Pleroma of
the Twelve, gives us a clearer idea of the possibilities of an esoteric ecumenism. At the same
time, the thematization of the events expresses the way in which Shi'ism conceives its
relationship with Christianity, and it's not without moving effect.

Accounts of the 12th Imâm's birth and brief appearance on earth have been coordinated and
arranged since the first generation of great Shî'ite theologians. These accounts can be traced
back to contemporary witnesses who took part in the events. Here, we mainly follow the
writings of the great theologian Ibn Bâbuyeh of Qomm, nicknamed Shaykh Sadûq [2]. This
article is a verbatim report of the account given by a familiar and intimate companion of the
two Imams 'Alî Naqî and Hasan 'Askarî, at their forced residence in Samarra; his name was
Bashar ibn Solayman Nahâs. On a certain day, Imam 'Alî Naqî sent for him through his
servant Kafûr. When he had taken his place before the Imam, the latter addressed him in
solemn terms: "O Bashar! you are our friend. You and your people have always professed the
same devotion to the members of the Prophet's family. I want to honor you with a privilege that
will confer on you a rank of friendship without precedent among our Shi'ites. I'm going to
entrust you with a secret and send you on a mission to bring a certain young girl here."

The Imâm then wrote a letter in Greek in his own hand, affixed his seal, placed it in a red
leather pouch with the sum of two hundred and twenty dinars, and gave Bashar the following
instructions. He will go to Baghdad. He will be at such and such an hour on the bank of the
river, at the port where the ships carrying the captives dock. The only potential buyers will be
agents of the Abbasid Caliph. Bashar will have to spend the whole day observing events from
afar on a ship belonging to a certain 'Amr ibn Yazîd. At one point, he will notice that the latter is
showing the buyers a young girl with such and such characteristics. She will be wearing a
double silk garment to avoid the gaze and touch of men's hands. "You will hear her exclaim
aloud in the Greek language, from beneath her fragile veil. Know that what she will say is this:
Cursed be the man who unveils my eyebrows!" Then one of the men, moved by this young
girl's chastity, will say his great desire to acquire her. But she will say to him, "Even if you
possessed all the glory and wealth of Solomon, son of David, I would never feel love for you.
So beware of wasting your fortune."

The ship's master, not wanting to do her any violence, will admit his extreme embarrassment;
it has to be done anyway. Why this hurry?" she tells him. I must choose for myself the one
who will acquire me, so that my heart may find peace in the trust and fidelity I would have
towards him."

"At that moment, O Bashar, come forward near 'Amr ibn Yazîd and say to him: I am the bearer
of a letter in Greek language and script (rûmîya), written by a noble man; it shows his
generosity his loyalty and his liberality. Give this letter to this young girl; let her meditate on it
and understand the character of the man who wrote it. If she feels an inclination for him and is
satisfied with it, I am her qualified representative to deal on her behalf."

Everything went according to the Imâm's plan in the future tense, and Bashar complied with all
his instructions. When the young girl read the letter written by the Imâm, she involuntarily let
out a loud exclamation and told the shipowner that if he refused to give her up to the author of
the letter, she was ready to kill herself. But the outcome was as he wished, and Bashar had
only to take the girl to his residence in Baghdad, before setting off with her for Samarra. He
notices that she is all smiles and happiness, and that she frequently removes the letter from
her breast to bring it to her lips, eyes and eyebrows. He can't help but say to her, "I'm amazed
at your behavior; you bring to your lips a letter whose author you don't know!" But she says:
"O weak man of little faith! May the knowledge of the spiritual rank of the Prophet's Children
dispel the doubts of your heart."

Now, let's hear the wonderful story. Right from the start, we'll notice that the young girl's
genealogy corresponds well to what is initially required by the continuous recurrence of the
pleroma of the Twelve. The girl continues: "Know that in truth I am a princess. I am the
daughter of Yeshû'a, son of the Emperor of Byzantium. My mother is a descendant of the
apostles of Christ; her lineage goes back to Sham'ûn (Simon-Peter), the wasî (spiritual heir,
Imâm) of the lord Christ. Let me tell you my extraordinary story. My grandfather, the emperor,
wanted me to marry his nephew. I was thirteen. He gathered an imposing assembly in his
palace. Clerics and monks, three hundred people; members of the high nobility, seven
hundred people; officers and chiefs of the army and rural nobility, four thousand people (five
thousand people in all). Within the palace precincts, he erected a throne, encrusted with
jewels and all manner of precious stones, at the top of forty steps. He seated his nephew on
this throne, and all around, a great gathering of icons (bot-hâ, idols). The Christian priests
stood before this throne with supreme reverence. The Gospels were opened, but suddenly the
idols collapsed and the columns of the throne shattered. My cousin was thrown to the ground
with the throne and fainted. Then the great and the notables were seized with fear; their faces
were altered by fright. The foremost among them declared: "O King! spare us from facing
these fateful omens, for such an event bears in itself the clue to the decline and
disappearance of the Christian religion. My grandfather, deeply disturbed by the event, gave
his orders: "Put the columns of the throne back upright. Gather the icons at its summit. Bring
my unfortunate nephew back to me, so that I can celebrate his marriage to this young girl, and
so that these sinister omens may turn away from us. But just as the ornamental figure took his
place in the assembly for the second time, the same catastrophe occurred. This time, the
frightened people scattered in all directions. My grandfather the emperor, worried and sad,
gave up and retired to his private apartments."

Following these impressive omens, a series of visionary dreams begins, bringing about the
spiritual initiation of the young Byzantine princess. The first scene in her account is only
understandable if we bear in mind the law of homology that determines the permanence of the
Twelve's pleroma, from period to period of prophecy. Wherever this pleroma appears, it carries
with it the same secret of the same initiatory religion. What's significant about the event that
this representation brings to Shi'ite consciousness is that the passage from the Pleroma of the
Twelve of the Christian period to the Pleroma of the Twelve of the Mohammadian period is
completed and sealed by the mediation of the mother of the 12th Mohammadian Imâm.
Through this mediation, in the person of the Byzantine girl, the initiation of Christianity into
Islam, or rather into Islamic gnosis, is accomplished, and this mediation is the fruit of a
mystical and passionate love, hatched in sloge. The law of homology, so fundamental to
Shi'ite thought, is further illustrated by the simultaneous presence of Fâtima, the mother of the
holy Imâms, and Maryam, the mother of Christ. Here, in the visionary dream, Fâtima assumes
the role that extreme Shî'ite gnosis assigns to her, when it designates her as Fâtima-Fâtir,
Fâtima-creator (in the masculine form). She is the Initiation in person.

The night after these events," the girl tells Bashar, "in the world of visions I saw the lord Christ
with the group of his apostles, inside the emperor's palace, on the very spot where, the day
before, the throne had been erected; on this very spot they erected a pulpit (minbar) all in light.
Just then, Mohammad, his wasî and a group of his glorious children (i.e. the holy Imâms)
entered the palace. Then Christ came forward and embraced Prophet Mohammad. He said:
"O Spirit of God (Rûh Allah)! I have come to ask you for the princess, daughter of your wasî
Sham'ûn (Simon-Peter), for my own son. And he gestured to Imâm Hasan 'Askarî. Christ took
a long look at Sham'ûn, and said to him: "Distinguished honor and nobility have come to you.
Tie this bond between your own family and the family of Mohammad. And Sham'ûn said: It is
done. Then, all together (Mohammad and his Imâms, Christ and his apostles) climbed to the
top of the steps of the pulpit of light; and there, Mohammad pronounced a magnificent sermon
to celebrate the nuptial union of his son and myself, our unon of which Mohammad and his
children (the holy Imâms) and the apostles of Christ were together the witnesses."

Here, the imagination takes pleasure in recreating the grandiose scene that took place in the
temple of Saint Sophia in Constantinople. The Shi'ite sentiment expressed in this dream is the
same that inspired a great 10th-century Ismaili theosophist, Abû Ya'qûb Sejestânî, to
recognize in the sign of the Christian cross and the Islamic statement of the attestation of the
One the same meaning and structure. Because they go to the hidden depths, only true
esotericists seem able to profess this true ecumenism. Looking back on the conditions that
have prevailed over the centuries of external history, the religious scholar will perhaps see in
this dream a sign as shattering as the vision of the unknown emblem: the roses entwined with
the Cross, was for Brother Marcus in Goethe's poem quoted below.

The young Byzantine princess continues her story as follows:

"When I awoke from this dream, I was frightened; I was careful not to tell anyone about it, lest
my father and brother should kill me. So I kept my secret without telling anyone, so much so
that the love of Imâm Hasan 'Askarî continued to grow in my heart, to the point of preventing
me from eating or drinking anything. I lost weight, fell ill and suffered greatly. There was not a
doctor left in the cities of the empire whom my father had not consulted about how to cure me.
One day when my father was in despair, he said to me: O light of my eyes! Is there a desire in
your heart that I can satisfy? I said to him: The gates of joy are closed to me. Yet, if you free
the Muslim prisoners, there is hope that Christ and his mother will come to my aid. When my
father had granted my wish, I showed some signs of renewed health and began to eat again.

"Fourteen nights later, I had another dream. Behold, the sovereign of feminine humanity [3],
Fatima the Radiant, visited me. Maryam, along with a thousand young women from among the
houris of Paradise, accompanied her. Maryam said to me: "This is the queen of women and
the mother of your husband, Imâm Hasan 'Askarî. I grabbed the hem of her dress and began
to sob. I complained that Imâm Hasan was acting so cruelly in denying me his sight. But His
Lordship (Fâtima) said to me: "How can my child come to see you when you make God
several gods by persisting in the Christian religion? This is my sister Maryam. She has made
herself free for God, by freeing herself from the religion that you still profess. If you wish to be
an object of complacency towards God, Maryam and Christ and if you wish to see Imâm
Hasan 'Askarî then pronounce: I attest that there is no god but God, and that Mohammad is
the Envoy of God. When I had pronounced these two excellent words, Fâtima, the queen of
women, drew me against her and embraced me tightly. She said to me: "Now wait for my
child's visit, I'm going to send him to you.
"When I awoke, my tongue was still articulating the two excellent words, and I was looking
forward to meeting my Imâm [4]. When night had come and I had again left for the world of
visions, behold the sun of the beauty of His Lordship rose. I said to him: O my beloved! after
your love has made my heart its captive, why have you refused me until now the sight of your
beauty? And he said to me: If I was so long in coming to you, it was because you made God
into several gods. Now that you've become a moslima, I'll be with you every night, until the
moment when God will make you and me meet, uncovered and without a veil, and our
separation will be followed by our reunion. Then, from that night until now, not a single night
has passed without my beloved bringing a remedy for the suffering of separation, the bevrage
of union.

This is the secret of which Bashar, the trusted confidant of the holy Imâms, becomes the
confidant here. He is familiar with the supernatural circumstances of life; it is not these that he
questions. It is a very material question that preoccupies him: "How did you manage," he asks
the young girl, "to fall among the captives? - One night," she told him, "Imâm Hasan 'Askarî
had informed me that my grandfather, the emperor, was going to launch an army against the
Muslims. He suggested that I disguise myself so as not to be recognised, take some of my
wives with me and follow the army at some distance. So I did. Soon, as luck would have it, an
advance guard of Muslims met us and took us captive. And my affair took the turn you see. No
one but you knows that I am the daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium. A shaykh who had
shared me when I was captured asked me my name. Stripping off my real name, I replied: "My
name is Narcissus (Narkès)".

Faced with the marvellous story of a woman who, supernaturally called to become the
companion of an Imâm, exposed herself to the fate of a captive out of pure love, Bashar can
only maintain a respectful silence. However, one last question preoccupies him, a practical
one at that, so he dares to ask: "You're Greek; how come you know Arabic so well?" Narcissus
explains: "My father was very keen to give me a high culture; he entrusted me to the care of a
woman who was very expert in various languages; morning and evening she gave me lessons
in Arabic, so that I ended up being very well versed in that language."

This concludes what we might call the prologue to the mystery of the birth of the twelfth Imâm.
We shall now enter into the actual action of the mystery. When the princess Narcissus (Narkès
Khâtûn) is presented to Imâm Alî Naqî in Samarra, the following dialogue takes place between
them.

Imâm Alî Naqî : In what way has God made known to you the glory of the Islamic religion and
the fault of the Christian religion, the eminence of the Prophet and the members of the
prophetic family (the holy Imâms)?
Narcissus : How shall I describe to you, O child of the Envoy of God, something that you know
much better than I do?
The Imâm : I would like to welcome you with the honours of hospitality. Would you like to tell
me which you would prefer: either that I give you a gift of twenty thousand dinars, or that I give
you good news accompanied by eternal glory?
Narcissus : It is this good news that I desire. I don't care about fortune.
The Imâm : Well then, let the good news be announced to you: a son will be born to you
whose reign will cover the East and the West and who will fill the earth with peace and justice
as it is today filled with violence and tyranny.
Narcissus : Whose husband will this child be?
The Imâm: The one for whom, on such and such a night in such and such a month in such
and such a year, the prophet Mohammad asked you to marry him. To whom did Lord Christ
and his wasî grant you marriage?
Narcissus : To marry your son, Imâm Hasan 'Askarî.
The Imâm : So you know him?
Narcissus: Since the night when I made my profession of Islam at the hands of the sovereign
of women (Fâtima), not a night has passed without him showing himself to me.

Then the Imâm called his servant Kafûr: Go and ask my sister, Hakima Khâtûn (the "wise",
Sophia, or Halîma, according to one variant, the "merciful") to come. When she came in, the
Imâm said to her: Here is the young girl I told you about Hakîma tenderly embraced
Narcissus. Then the Imâm said to her: "O daughter of the Messenger of God! Take Narcissus
with you to your home. Instruct her in our traditions, teach her all that the wife of Imâm Hasan
'Askarî, the mother of the Resurrector, should know."

It is precisely to the testimony of this venerable person, Hakîma Khâtun, sister of Imâm 'Alî
Naqî and aunt of the young husband, Imâm Hasan 'Askarî, that we now owe the knowledge of
the circumstances of the birth of the derneir Imâm and Imâm to come. She herself, according
to tradition, related the following: "On the night (of Thursday) of mid-Sha'bân (of the year 255
h/3 August 868) I went to the house of my august nephew, Imâm of the time, Hasan 'Askarî.
When I wished to take my leave, His Lordship said to me: O aunt! stay with us this night, for
this night the most noble child will be born, through whom God will make the Earth live through
knowledge, faith and spiritual rectitude, after it has died through misguidance and
monstrosities. I asked: My Lord, from whom was this birth? - From Narcissus! - Then I looked
at Narcissus, and I really couldn't see any sign that she was expecting a child. I was
astonished. His Lordship the Imâm smiled and said to me: O aunt! when the morning comes,
a sign will be visible. It will be as in the case of the mother of Moses who, until the time of her
birth, showed no sign of such an expectation, in order to escape the measures decreed by
Pharaoh, who had women in her case killed [5]."
But it's not just a question of escaping Pharaoh, or the Abbasid caliph who represents him so
well. Or rather, escaping Pharaoh means escaping all the consequences that would result
from any confusion of divine anthropomorphosis in the person of the Imâm with a
materialisation of the divine in the flesh and in history. All the details that the venerable
Hakîma will now relate show us how Shî'ite imâmology reproduces the essential and
characteristic traits of a gnostic Christology. Because it is a question of a theophany, not an
Incarnation or a hypostatic union bringing about the fusion of two incommensurable natures,
the vision that the Shi'ite consciousness gives itself of its Imâm is presented under features
that correspond to those of a Christology different from the official Christology; it is the one
that, from the Valentinian Gnostics to Master Valentin Weigel, considered it blasphemous to
consider anything other than a caro Christi spiritualis. People talk about docetism, but
docetism, whether in Marcion or anyone else, does not abolish the reality of the event; it does
not turn it into a myth or a phantom. It simply perceives it at a level of spiritual reality where
materialisation and secularisation, that is to say reduction to the level of empirical evidence,
are radically impossible. It is because they are situated above the plane of common evidence
that the features of such a vision are so many paradoxes. These are precisely the features
through which Shi'ite imâmology reveals its Gnostic inspiration. There are many instructive
comparisons to be made. We will confine ourselves here to reporting texts that are still little
appreciated in the general history of religions.

The venerable Hakîma Khâtûn has reported to us at length the following [6]: "Imâm Hasan
used to say to me: We, the heirs (awsiyâ) of the Envoy of God, our mothers do not carry us in
their wombs but in their sides; we do not come out of their wombs but from their femurs,
because we are the Lights of the Most High God and He has removed from us all defilement
and impurity.

"So I went to Narcissus and talked with her about these things. She said to me: O Khâtûn! I do
not notice any sign in me. - However, I decided to stay there all night; I ate the evening meal
and slept next to Narcissus. Every hour I worried about his condition; that night, more than any
other night, I repeated all the watch prayers. When I got to the witr prayer, Narcisse woke up.
She did her ablutions, recited the dawn prayer and as I watched her, the deceptive morning
had dawned. It was not long before doubt was awakened in my heart as to the time limit within
which His Lordship the Imâm had enclosed his promise. Suddenly Imâm Hasan shouted to me
from his room: Do not doubt, for the time has come. At that moment I noticed a certain
agitation in Narcisse. I took her in my arms and recited the Divine Name over her. The Imâm
shouted at me: Recite over her the sura: We sent it down on the Night of Destiny (97:1) [7].
Then I asked her what she was feeling. It seems," she said, "that the sign of what my Lord has
announced is manifesting itself. When I had begun to recite Sura al-Qadr, I heard the child in
his mother's womb reciting it with me and uttering a greeting to me. I became frightened.
Then, from his room, the Imâm shouted at me again: Do not be surprised at the divine power
which has made us capable of articulating its wisdom and has made us its Guarantors on
earth. When the Imâm had finished saying these words, Narcissus disappeared from my sight.
It was as if a veil came between her and me. I ran to the Imâm lamenting. He said to me: Aunt,
go back. You will find Narcissus in his place.

"When I returned, the veil had disappeared and Narcissus shone with a light that dazzled my
eyes. And I saw His Lordship, Sâhib al-Amr (i.e. the twelfth Imâm who had just been born
supernaturally) who, facing the Qibla, kneeling on the prayer mat, his two index fingers raised
towards Heaven, recited: 'I testify that there is no God but God, that my grandfather is the
messenger of God and that my father, the Emir of the Believers, is the Guide to God (Walî
Allah, 'the Friend of God'). Then one by one, he listed all the other Imâms, until he came to
himself. Then he said: O my God! Be faithful to the promise you made to assist me; make my
quality of Imâm perfect, establish my steps and fill the Earth with justice through me.

"At that moment Imâm Hasan called out to me: Aunt! take the child in your arms and bring him
to me. When I took him in my arms, I found him already circumcised, his umbilical cord cut,
perfectly clean and pure. On his right arm was written: "The truth has appeared, the lie has
vanished: the lie was destined to disappear" (17:83). When I carried this blessed child to his
father, his gaze fell on the latter and he uttered a greeting. His Lordship the Imâm took him in
his arms, placed his blessed lips on his two eyes, on his mouth and on his two ears. He traced
a sign in the palm of his left hand, placed his most pure hand on the child's head and said to
him: "O my child! O my child! speak, by the power of God. Then His Lordship Sâhib al-Zamân
(i.e. the child Imâm, "master of this time") said: "In the name of God the Compassionate, the
Merciful! We will give our favour to the group of those who have been oppressed by tyrants on
earth. We will make them the Imâms of religion. We will make them heirs. We will establish
them on Earth and We will show Pharaoh, Haman and their armies what they feared." (28:4-
5). This was a verse of the Book which accords perfectly with our hadith concerning His
Lordship and His fathers.

"Forty days later I went to my nephew's house. When I entered his house, I saw a child
walking around the house. The Imâm smiled and said: "The children of prophets and awsiyâ,
when they are Imâms, grow in a different way from other children. A month for them is as
much as a year for others. They speak while still in their mother's womb; they recite the Qorân
and perform their divine service to the Lord. When they are still in their infancy, the Angels
instruct them every morning and descend to them every evening.
"His Lordship then pronounced blessings on the Prophet, the Emir of the Believers and all the
Imâms up to his august father. At that moment, a flock of birds appeared on the Child's head.
Imâm Hasan called one of these birds and said to it: Take this child, take good care of him and
bring him to us every forty days. The bird took the Child and flew into Heaven [8]. The Imâm
made the same recommendation to the other birds, and they flew away. Then he said: I
entrust you to the same one to whom his mother entrusted Moses. Then Narcissus wept. But
the Imâm said to him: Calm yourself! He won't taste the milk of anyone but you. Soon they will
bring him back to you, just as Moses was returned to his mother. As the verse says, "We
restored Moses to his mother so that her eyes might be filled with light through him" (28:12).
Who is this bird," I asked, "to whom you have entrusted the Child? The Imâm replied: It is the
Holy Spirit, he to whom the Imâms are entrusted; it is he who communicates divine assistance
to them, preserves them from all error and gives them high knowledge as an ornament.

"Every forty days, I came to see him, during all the time that Imâm Hasan 'Askarî lived, until
the last days before his death. I happened to meet him (the Child, the twelfth Imâm) looking
like a Perfect Man (mardî kâmil) [9]. I did not recognise him and I said to my nephew: Who is
this man you are inviting me to sit next to? - But he is the child of Narcissus," he said. He will
be my successor when I leave you in a little while. You must accept his word and obey his
orders. It was a few days later that Imâm Hasan left for the holy world. And now every morning
and every evening I attend the service of the Imâm of that time; he instructs me on any
question I ask him. Sometimes, without my even having formulated the question I had
intended to ask, he gives me the answer."

Obviously, this last statement by the venerable Hakîma alludes to certain privileged modes of
manifestation of the Hidden Imâm, particularly during the time of the Great Occultation. But
what we must remember first of all is the allusion to the last moments of Imâm Hasan 'Askarî,
who died in his youth, barely twenty-eight years old, in 260/873-74. We owe the account of his
last moments to Isma'îl Nawbakhtî (the name of one of the oldest Iranian Shî'ite families). It is
an account of extreme importance for the Shi'ite religious conscience, for alongside the
collection of hadîth in which, over the course of some five years, Imâm Hasan is shown to
have presented the Child to a Shi'ite elite of around forty people, the account of the last
moments of the eleventh Imâm also bears double witness to the existence and investiture of
the twelfth Imâm.

On the eve of his departure, Imâm Hasan expressly invested his son, the little Imâm
Mohammad, as his successor. "Isma'îl ibn 'Alî Nawbakhtî reported the following [10]: I went to
visit Imâm Hasan during his last illness, and I sat next to him. He said to 'Aqîd, his servant:
prepare me an infusion of lentisque, - while the mother of Sâhib al-zamân brought the bowl
and put it in the hands of Hasan 'Askarî. But when he tried to drink, his hand trembled so
much that the bowl hit his teeth. He put it aside and said to 'Aqîd: Go into the next room and
bring the Child who is praying there to me. When I entered the room," said 'Aqid, "I saw the
Child on his prayer mat, his two index fingers pointing towards Heaven. When I greeted him,
he cut short his prayer and said to me: Peace be upon you. I said to him: My master asks you
to come to him. At that moment his mother came and took him by the hand and led him to his
father. The child's grace shone with light, with his curly hair and the smile that parted his lips.
When the dying Imâm had fixed his gaze on him, he wept and said: "O you who are
henceforth to be the head of the Prophet's family, give me a drink yourself, for I am going to
return to my Protector. The child took the bowl of mastic infusion (âb-e mastakî), moved his
lips in invocation and gave it to his august father. When he had drunk, he said: "Prepare me
for prayer. A hand towel was brought. The Child gave his father the ritual ablutions and
anointed his head and feet. And the dying Imâm said to him: O my noble Child!You are now
the lord of this time, you are the Mahdi, the Guide, you are the Guardian of God on this earth.
My child, my wasî, you were born of me, you are MHMD ibn Hasan, you are the child of the
Envoy of God. You are the Seal of the last of the Immaculate Imâms. The Envoy of God
announced your coming to men. He mentioned your name and patronymic (konya). It is the
promise made to my father and my fathers that has reached me. And with these words, the
Imâm emigrated to paradise."

Such is the account of Isma'îl Nawbakhtî, which now appears in all books of Shî'ite theology or
edification. And it was very soon after the death of his young father, Imâm Hasan, or even in
the hours that followed, that the child Imâm also disappeared. Let us not demand too many
material details; Shi'ite books are sober, and can only be very sober on this point. Since, in
essence, the passage to the state of occultation (ghaybat) abolishes traces in the physical
space of the material world, how can we look for traces of this passage in the material world?
In reality, it is a question of a double occultation or an occultation with two levels. There is the
one that Shi'ite theologians call the "Minor Occultation" (ghaybat soghrâ). It began in the year
in which Imâm hasan died (260/873-74) and lasted until 329/940-41. And there is the one that
began on that very date, which Shi'ite theologians refer to as the "Major Occultation" (ghaybat
kobrâ) and which is still continuing.

[1] We recall here the etymology of the word Samarra, a contraction of Sarra man ra'a,
Blessed is he who sees [it] ! As for the word 'askar, it designates an army, a troop. Hence the
nickname of the 10th and 11th Imâms "al-'Askarî" alludes to the forced stay of the two Imâms
in this military city.
[2] Cf. volume XIII of Majlisî's encyclopedia (entirely devoted to the 12th Imâm); a Persian
translation has been given by Moh. Hasan Walî Arûmiyeh, Tehran 1373/1953, see pages 5-13;
also Majlisî's Persian work Haqq al-Yaqîn, ed. Tehran 1332 h. s., pp. 336-382, 'Emâd-Zâdeh
Ispahâni Zendeganî-e Hazrat-e... Mahdî al-Qâ'im, Tehran 1335/1956, pp. 16 ff, 57 ff. All these
texts are based ultimately on Shaykh Sadûq Ibn Babûyeh's Kitâb al-ghayba. The Persian
translation given by Majlisî himself is more literary than that of his own translator. Remember
that the anniversary of the 12th Imâm's birth is one of the most important festivals of the Shî'ite
year, marked in Iran by a public holiday. Cf. our article Sur le Douzième Imâm in "La Table
Ronde" February 1957, pp. 7-20.
[3] On this designation of Fatima as "sovereign of feminine humanity" or "in the feminine", see
in particular the texts analysed in our book Terre céleste, pp. 115-120 ("Fatima et la Terre
céleste").
[4] By a pious oversight, the text here bears the konya of the Imâm "Abû Mohammad" (father
of Mohammad), a designation he could not in fact receive until after the birth of his son, the
twelfth Imâm Mohammad al-Mahdî.
[5] Majlisî, Haqq al-Yaqîn, pp. 358-359; 'Emâd-Zâdeh Ispahâni, Zendegânî-e Chahârdeh
Ma'sûm (Biographies of the Fourteen Infaillibles), Tehran 1334, vol. II, p. 597
[6] Majlisî, Haqq al-Yaqîn, pp. 359 ff.
[7] "We sent it down on the Night of Destiny (laylat al-Qadr)... On this night, the Angels and the
Spirit descend upon the world...It is a peace that lasts until the rising of the dawn" (97:1-5).The
spiritual hermeneutic of duodeciman shî'ism represents the "Night of Destiny" as being the
person of Fâtima; cf. Jamât al-Kholûd, ed. Tehran 1378, p. 18, bottom line 3.The Ismaili
hermeneutic of this verse is in perfect accord: the Night of Destiny is typified in the person of
Fâtima, daughter of the Prophet and source of the lineage of the holy Imâms; the rising of the
dawn is the advent of the Perfect Child, the Imâm to come; cf. earlier here, book I, p. 282, n.
265 and our Trilogie Ismaélienne, index 8. v.
[8] We are reminded here of an episode from the heroic epic of ancient Iran, from which
Sohrawardî drew a mystical meaning: the episode of Zâl being fed and raised by the Simorgh,
the mysterious bird homologated elsewhere with the dove as the emblem of the Holy Spirit.Cf.
earlier here, liv. II, chap. v, 4- We should also note the recurrence of the number forty in all the
phases of the story of Hakîma Khâtûn.
[9] The number forty obviously has an archetypal value here in relation to the idea of the
Perfect Man. As for the "metamorphoses of theophanic visions", see our study Épiphanie
divine et naissance spirituelle en gnose ismaélienne (Eranos-Jahrbuch XXIII/1955), pp. 141 ff.
[10] Testimony preserved by Shaykh Abû Ja'far Tûsî (Moh. ibn Hasan, 460/1067), another
great figure of Shî'ite theology at that time; Majlisî, Haqq al-Yaqîn; pp. 351-352. On the person
and considerable role of Abû Sahl Isma'îl ibn 'Alî Nawbakhtî (237-311 h.), cf. 'Abbâs Eqbâl,
Khândân-e Nawbakhtî, Tehran 1311, pp. 96 ff.