Carmati

CARMATI. - In a generic and improper sense, "C." is one of the various names (Ismailis, Bāṭinites, etc.) by which, both in the East and in Europe, a sectarian tendency of extreme Shi'ism is designated. In a more precise sense, they are the organizers and followers of the great revolt against the Sunni Islamic caliphate in the 9th-10th centuries of our era, which had important repercussions on the Fāṭimid caliphate of Egypt.

The name of the sect of the C. comes from Ḥamdān, a fanatical proselyte of the Ismaili 'Abdallāh, who lived in the 9th century of our era and had the nickname Qarmat, of uncertain etymology and meaning. In the movement of the C., among other things, a clear expression was found for the contrast between the native peasant element (Qarmat was a peasant from Mesopotamia) and the Semitic rulers who had come from the deserts of Arabia. It is significant that Qarmat is said to have become convinced, for astrological reasons, that the Iranians would take their revenge and reconquer the empire of the Arabs.

The founder of the sect, who had his headquarters near Kufa, organized a highly skillful propaganda especially among the masses of non-Arab peasants and artisans. Nevertheless, some Arabs also joined Qarmatism.

It is not easy to grasp what, doctrinally, distinguishes the C. from other similar religious movements (v. ISMAILIS, etc.), also because of their doctrines what remains above all are the interested and malicious expositions made by their adversaries, nor are their relations with the Fāṭimids, who at a certain point seemed to fight them, very clear. Nevertheless, they are distinguished from other extreme Shiites both by a more marked intellectualism in their doctrines and because they seem to have held that in order to be mahdi (v.) it was not necessary to be descended by blood from 'Alī. Their communist tendencies are typical and universally acknowledged: the head of the Qarmatian state was a primus inter pares, assisted by a kind of senatorial body (the 'iqdānijjah). Heavy land taxes and tolls, in addition to war booty, provided annually about 1,500,000 dīnār. Moreover, all the faithful ceded a fifth of their possessions to the community, which then redistributed them. The leaders generally did not avoid battles and were in the front line in the most difficult expeditions. Revolts such as those of the C. had, at least at the beginning, a clearly anti-Arab character. A tradition reported by Niẓām al-Mulk has an extremist Shiite "subversive" say: "Mazdak (the well-known pre-Islamic Persian communist reformer) was a Shiite!", while a C. is said to have said: "Three persons have ruined humanity: a shepherd (Moses), a physician (Jesus) and a camel driver (Muhammad). And the latter was worse than all of them."

From the theological point of view, the doctrine of the C. is a mystical-emanationist doctrine not unlike that of other extreme Shiite sects, such as the Druzes, the Assassins, the Nuṣayrīs, etc., considered "heretical" even by the "orthodox" Twelver Shiites. For them the universe is a great play of appearances that repeat themselves cyclically. The intellectual entities that are the actors of this continuous drama are always the same and invariable in number: such intelligences truly recognize themselves in their real essence only through the annihilation of the material veil that obscures them and at the same time apparently multiplies them: only then does the intelligence truly reborn ("second creation") and conform itself to that pure and impersonal thought that is God. The C. thus come logically to deny every divine attribute and to posit God as an empty assertion of intelligibility devoid of all content.

External worship is thus practically devalued as well: true worship consists in knowing how to ascend backward through the various stages of the emanationism that shatters God in the world, up to the punctual and undifferentiated unity of the Divine. The divine sparks are temporarily particularized in two "hierarchical" series: the descending one of the initiators (nāṭiq, ṣāmit, bāb), and the ascending one of the initiated (dā'i, ḥuǧǧah, imām). Such intelligences have only the appearance of personality, and it is therefore not said that in subsequent cycles, parallel to the great astral cycles, upon their reappearing in the world they find again the same personality.

Compared with other extreme sects, the C. are more clearly intellectual: for them there does not even exist the material and sometimes crudely understood metempsychosis almost universally accepted by heretical Shiites, inasmuch as one cannot speak of metempsychosis with intelligences that are impersonal.

Among other things, the C. restore to the prophet Muhammad the primacy over 'Alī, which some Shiite sects denied him, admit initiation also for women, and emphasize the idea of the fundamental equality of all religions.

One of the most interesting sides of the C. movement is the great development they gave to workers' and artisans' associations; indeed, according to some scholars such as Massignon, medieval craft guilds and Freemasonry would go back to a C. influence.

The C., who consider it legitimate to shed the blood of their adversaries, even if Muslims, constituted a very grave danger for orthodox Islam. In 899 they succeeded in founding an independent state on the western shore of the Persian Gulf, with its center at al-Aḥṣā, from which they set out periodically to devastate the neighboring countries. In the year 903 the C. al-Ġannābī subdued the Yamāmah and invaded 'Oman. The raids of the C. reached their maximum point when in 930 they occupied Mecca and carried off the black stone from the Ka'bah (v.). Only in 951 was the black stone brought back to Mecca by order of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Manṣūr. Even distant Ḥorāsān became, through the work of Qarmatian propaganda, a dangerous hotbed of revolt. Only in 1077-78 could the Qarmatian state of al-Aḥṣā be overthrown.

But if Qarmatism was destroyed politically, it was not destroyed spiritually, and the religious mentality that had been the essence of this singular movement lived again, with greater or lesser changes, in various other sects. Bābism itself (v.) is ultimately linked to conceptions proper to the extreme Shi'ism of all epochs.

Qarmatism also had a notable influence on the philosophical, dogmatic and especially mystical development of Islam.

Alessandro Bausani