Agents of the Hidden Imam

Edmund Hayes is researcher at Radboud University, Nijmegen. He has authored numerous articles at the intersection between the intellectual, religious, and social history of early Islam, including on the institutions of the Shiʿi Imamate, Islamic revenues, charity and taxation, excommunication, ethnicity and gender and sexuality.

• Introduction; 1. The rise of the agents in the late Imamate (830-874 CE); 2. The crisis before the crisis. The feud between Imamic contenders and the power of the agents; 3. Crisis! The mother, the brother, the concubine and the politics of inheritance; 4. The agents of the Nāḥiya in the era of perplexity; 5. The creation of an envoy: The rise of Abū Jaʿfar al-ʿAmrī; 6. Rise and fall: Ibn Rawḥ, Shalmaghānī, and rise and collapse of the envoyship; Conclusion.

'This book studies a crucial yet poorly understood period in the history of Imami Shiʿsim. Hayes has produced a compelling historical narrative out of a difficult and fragmentary record. Significantly, he reminds us that doctrine is never sui generis, and that to understand doctrinal history, we must keep in mind the social and the political.' Mushegh Asatryan, University of Calgary