Nuqtavis, Safavids and Shi'ism in the 9th–11th/15th–17th Centuries
Book Chapter in "The Renaissance of Shiʿi Islam: Facets of Thought and Practice"
“Much scholarly attention has been paid recently to the relationships between the Safavids, and more specifically Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 996–1038 /1588–1629), and the Nuqṭavīs, a mystical and messianic movement founded by Maḥmūd Pasīkhānī (d. 830/1427). This interest is mostly due to the importance of the Safavid-Nuqṭavī connection in our understanding of the Safavid religious policies. However, many aspects of these policies, as well as issues related to the balance of political forces within the Safavid structure of power, remain insufficiently explained.
It should be noted that all existing studies relied heavily on historical sources written by non-Nuqṭavī authors, most of whom were indeed openly hostile to the Nuqṭavīs. The input of Nuqṭavī sources has been disproportionately low and is generally limited to excerpts from an unidentified Nuqṭavī treatise published by Ṣādiq Kiyā as an appendix 132to his ground-breaking monograph. To this has been added some information about Nuqṭavī doctrinal views derived from the Dabistān-i madhāhib, an Adhar-Kayvānī source composed in India in the 11th/17th century.
This almost complete dearth of information about the Nuqṭavī doctrinal positions has inevitably caused some distortion in the analysis of Safavid-Nuqṭavī relationships. First, it led to inaccurate and sometimes simply erroneous assumptions – based mainly on non-Nuqṭavī sources – regarding the theoretical basis of the Nuqṭavī ideology, as well as the confessional identity and possible political aspirations of this group. Consequently, some potentially important factors in the evaluation of the motivations of the Safavid-Nuqṭavī relationships have been overlooked. Second, hostile historical accounts have drawn scholarly attention to the negative aspect of the Safavid-Nuqṭavī relationship, namely, the rejection and persecution of the Nuqṭavīs as dangerous heretics. No serious exploration has taken place of the positive aspect of this relationship, that is, the Nuqṭavī doctrinal points that could have found favour with the Safavid rulers as politically viable ideologies.” (Orkhan Mir-Kasimov)
Author: Dr. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov
Link to Full Chapter: The Renaissance of Shiʿi Islam: Facets of Thought and Practice