The Discovery, Description and Publication of the Manuscripts of Two Major Nizari Ismaili Texts from the Alamut Period: The Haft Bab and the Diwan-i Qa'imiyyat of Hasan-i Mahmud-i Katib
Book Chapter in "Texts, Scribes and Transmission: Manuscript Cultures of the Ismaili Communities and Beyond"
“Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib, author of the books introduced here, was, until the publication of his compendium of poems, namely the Poems of the Resurrection (Dīwān-i Qāʾimiyyāt) and his Seven Chapters (Haft bāb), an enigmatic or more precisely an ‘unknown’ figure among the Ismaili authors and the classical Persian poets. He was born in the second half of the 6th/12th century probably around the year 555/1160, since the date of the compilation of his Haft bāb is 595/1199, compiled during the imamate of Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad II (d. 607/1210). At the time, judging from the contents of the Haft bāb and his notes on Nizārī Ismail history, he must have been well versed in Ismaili history and theology of his time and in particular the doctrine of the Resurrection (daʽwat-i qiyāmat). In the Haft bāb he speaks of the doctrine of the Qiyāmat in a vague and elusive manner hinting to his being either present when the doctrine was launched, or at least being born before the event, that is, 17 Ramaḍān 559/8 August 1164. Marshall Hodgson describes the Haft bāb as a text that ‘[r]epresents the full blown Qiyāma doctrine, as developed under the son of ʿAlā-Dhikri-his-Salām and unchanged as yet by the grandson’s policies of Satr.’
A talented poet, he might have composed poems very early in his life but apart from his compendium of poetry and a few scattered quotations resembling his style, so far nothing has come to light from him, which implies that either he did not bother to preserve them, or if he did, he may have destroyed them at a later stage. It is in the Qāʾimiyyāt that we face a master poet, comparable only to Nāṣir-i Khusraw among the Ismaili poets, and more importantly, a poet whose output represents the best poetic specimens of 7th/13th-century Iran. Being well informed about the doctrine of the Qiyāmat, he not only witnessed its dismissal by Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan (d. 618/1221), but also its refinement and gradual return as a dominant, and wide-ranging theological norm during the imamate of ʿAlā al-Dīn Muḥammad (d. 653/1255). Composed at various times, the poems of the Qāʾimiyyāt reflect Ḥasan’s involvement in the shaping of what Hodgson describes as the doctrine of satr. It is apparent that satr or transition from the Qiyāmat to the Sharīʿa, while maintaining a balance between the two, did not take place instantly or without an insightful preparation demanding the input of the highest ranks of the daʽwat organisation and the competent scholars living in Alamūt, or other Ismaili fortresses scattered over a wide territory from present day Afghanistan to the Mediterranean Sea.” (S. J. Badakhchani)
Author: S. J. Badakhchani
Link to Full Chapter: Texts, Scribes and Transmission: Manuscript Cultures of the Ismaili Communities and Beyond