Eschatological Yearnings of the Great Resurrection

Eschatological Yearnings of the Great Resurrection: Examining Theological and Societal Transformation Among Islamicate Communities

While calls to the transcendent have been ever-present in human history, five centuries after the death of the prophet, Muḥammad (d. 632) why were there urgent yearnings for an eschatological saviour among several Islamicate communities? How did such transcendent thought—frequently conflating socio-political, religious and salvific authority with regnal sovereignty—transform respective societies? 

Focussing on the Shiʿi communities of the Nizari Ismailis, this project examines the declaration, in 1164, of the Qiyāmat-i Buzurg (The Great Resurrection) and its aftermath. The immediate consequences of this chiliastic event were: i) the manifestation (kashf, ẓuhūr) of the Nizari imam as the Qāʾim (Resurrector) and ii) transformations of cosmological and soteriological doctrines which led to re-orientations of Nizari societies.

Following the writings of Sunni chroniclers, modern scholarship has construed the declaration of the Qiyāma as an abrogation of the shariʿa (religious law) and a turning away from and abandonment of the world unwilling to accept Nizari notions of post-prophetic authority and esoteric interpretations of the Qurʾanic revelation. For the Nizaris, the Qiyāma meant nothing less than the manifestation of Truth (ḥaqīqa). Paradise was actualised in this world; the elect among humanity would rise to spiritual levels of existence, transcending from ẓāhir (exoteric) to bāṭin (esoteric), from sharīʿa to haqīqa (reality, truth), a shift from the literal interpretations of religious law to constancy and steadfastness to its spirituality and eternal truths. 

This research examines the socio-political factors which precipitated theological transformations and how factionalism among the Nizaris may have catalysed doctrinal change. It examines the Nizari syntheses and reformulations of earlier (tenth-eleventh century) Ismaili thought infused with Neoplatonic cosmology along with later theological developments into the doctrines of transcendence.

The second part of this research will survey comparands in other faith communities—particularly during the formative Middle Periods (900-1500) of Islamicate history and how such movements conceived eschatological events and their responses to the earthly passing of such Eschatons. The third part will examine the processes by which calls to the transcendent by individuals entice and engulf large collectives of adherents and transform their societies.

The paramount questions to be explored are: Why did/does ultimate transcendence and transformation in eschatological soteriologies (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian ...) necessitate a human being to “perfect” Divine creation? And what happens to these cosmologies when humans encounter non-terrestrial sapient beings. 

Project point person: Shiraz Hajiani, Alwaleed Bin Talal Postdoctoral Fellow in Islamic Studies