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powerful protector had pacified Iraq, but the
chief reason for appointing him disappeared when it became clear that his
status would not make him an automatically acceptable ruler. The belief
persisted down the centuries that Ma'mun grew to resent Imam-Riza as a
potential rival to himself, but this actually makes little sense, since when
Imam- Riza died he had conspicuously failed to win the support of the region
he had been chosen to rule. We will never know whether Ma'mun poisoned him
or not; it may simply have been that Imam-Riza died suddenly and, as often
happens throughout history, his sudden death gave automatic rise to
suspicion of poison. In any case, politics raised Imam-Riza to his elevated
position and politics subsequently kept his name alive and greatly enlarged
his cult as time went on.
A great deal of Iranian history flowed under the surface of my family's
journey to the shrine. I did find in Mashhad that the local inhabitants made
relatively little use of their own proximity to the shrine. Most people to
whom I talked admitted they never went to visit it more than once a year. On
the other hand, it was of enormous advantage to them, both in focusing
attention on so remote a part of Iran, and in bringing in extensive and
consistent income through the endless stream of pilgrims.
Western Christian readers may find interesting parallels between the cult of
Imam-Riza, as a religious leader rejected by his own people as a result of
which he was supposedly killed by an alien ruler, and the Gospel narratives
of the life of Jesus Christ. Christians have consistently spoken of Christ
as having been rejected by the Jews, his own people: in fact all of his
initial supporters were Jews, and while the majority of Jews did not accept
him as the Messiah, only very few had any responsibility for his death. It
is a truly dreadful thought that the hideous history of Christian
persecution of the Jews has so consistently been undertaken in the name of
punishment for this supposed rejection, mingled with allegations of
blood-guilt on the Jews for Jesus's death. This persecution culminated in
the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War. The subsequent Western burden
of guilt has continued to the present day. It has played a part in their
condoning Israeli treatment of the Palestinian Arabs.
Of course, the cult of Imam-Riza has been used in various ways. The antiIraq
element, or, on its positive side, the emphasis on the unity of a far-flung
Iran, was what particularly appealed to politicians. Even after our
pilgrimage I have seen further workings-out of this; the late Shah, who was
overthrown in 1979, gave additional golden doors to parts of the shrine in
place of their gates, with an inscription that these were His Majesty's
gift. On the other hand the mullahs were if anything inclined to stress the
lessons of the story as a warning against secular rulers. I often heard them
narrate their version of the circumstances of Imam-Riza's death. He and
Ma'mun were sitting together, and grapes (which had been dipped in poison)
were brought in. Ma'mun offered the grapes to Imam-Riza. Imam-Riza knew they
were poisoned, and refused. Ma'mun insisted. Imam-Riza could not withstand
him, and said, "This is my destiny. I have come from Allah, and I am
returning to Allah." Imam-Riza then went to his house and asked his servant
to bring a big bowl, into which he quickly vomited his liver, corroded into
pieces. This story, whether told in our house or to crowds, would make us
very sad, and very angry towards Ma'mun and the Baghdad caliphs, and
suspicious of rulers in general.
Later on in my life, when I was away from Iran, my sisters told me that my
mother used to talk about the similarity of my name to that of ImamRiza, and
speak of his having died in a strange land. She would grow anxious about me,
and used to pray to Allah, "Oh Allah, for the honour of his name, make my
son healthy and successful and do not let him suffer through poverty in a
strange land."
While in Mashhad, we stayed in the rented house of my father's uncle. It had
two rooms with one kitchen and one vestibule. There was also a little yard,
surrounded by vines, with a pool in the middle. It was a very pleasant place
for me to play by myself, or sit and chat with my grandmother while my
parents were at the shrine and my father's uncle's wife (an old lady) was
busy in the kitchen. My father's uncle sold sweets in front of cinemas and
schools: Sadeq, my father's cousin, used to make them in a workroom a few
doors from the house. The sweetmeat was a kind of toffee made with a mixture
of chocolate and milk. I called my father's uncle "Great-uncle" - I did not
know his name - and called his wife "Wife of my uncle". They were both about
60 years of age.
Great-uncle used to take the sweets around every morning and evening. One
day I insisted he should take me with him. After passing a few alleys, we
came to the main street, which was facing the big gate of the shrine. We
went to a cinema where Great-uncle started selling sweets. Before we had
arrived at the cinema it started to rain and he immediately put his
handkerchief over the sweets and put the sweets next to the wall, took off
his coat and placed it over me to prevent my getting wet saying, "If you
catch cold, your father will tell me off." The coat was so long that it was
like an overcoat for my eight-year-old size and its sleeves were hanging
over my hands. I was very pleased with what he did, and I felt proud that he
had put his coat over me. But when he was busy s_lling sweets and crowds
were gathering, I lost him. After looking here and there and not finding
him, I decided to return home by myself. In fact the big gate of the shrine
and the clock over it helped me to find my direction. I went directly to
that gate and from it I found the house. After an hour or so he returned,
shocked and worried. When he found me in the house he was relieved and
delighted that I had found my way back, and admired the way I did it.
My respect and love for Great-uncle increased during our stay in Mashhad,
because he introduced me to children of the area and also walked with me
round the city, which my parents would not bother to do. But my father took
me to the fruit market and the bazaar several times, and I remember we
bought plenty of grapes and melons. Although we had sweet melons in Tabriz,
I thought I had never tasted melons so sweet as those of Mashhad. I well
remember that I ate so many that it affected my tongue and my lips, which
became almost burned by the sweetness: but I did not tell my parents what
had happened, and did not mind.
One day I asked Great-uncle to take me to Sadeq's factory to show me how
they made the sweets. So he took me to there, where we found Sadeq was
making the sweet mixture in huge bowls and pouring it out into tin trays.
Some of them were cold and ready to be sliced, so he cut them into cube
shapes by a hand-operated machine. He offered me some sweets: of course I
had already had plenty from Great-uncle, so it was not quite so great a
privilege as Sadeq might have imagined, but I was pleased just the same. At
the time I thought it was a great job to be a sweet-seller and to make
people happy by what one sold, and I had great admiration for Greatuncle for
all the happiness he must bring. It often happened that children did not
have enough money, and Great-uncle never refused a child, and gave them a
full measure however little they had.
I had thought, before I met Great-uncle, that he was much more prosperous
than in fact he was. It was not that we did not have some relatives who were
poorer than my father, for example Izzat, and I had already seen the tragic
proof of the difference in income creating class barriers within the family.
But I had heard that Great-uncle was a substantial businessman, who traded
extensively with Russian Turkestan, travelling for a long time to and from
Ashqabad. Ashqabad was not far from Mashhad, only a little over 150
kilometres, much nearer than the distance from Tabriz to the nearest point
on the Caspian Sea or from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. But after the Russian
Revolution the border gradually closed. British forces attacked Ashqabad
after the Revolution, using the support of the powerful Alam family, the
most prominent family in Khorasan (Asadullah Alam, from the younger
generation, was subsequently Prime Minister under the last Iranian Shah but
covertly also protected Ayatollah Khomeini in 1963 - it was a family long
skilled in planning ahead to allow for possible political vicissitudes). The
Russians repulsed them, but no longer trusted their southern neighbours, and
the extensive coming and going between Russian Turkestan (Turkmenistan) and
Iran ended.
After Reza Shah came to the throne in 1925 he specifically forbade all
communication with the USSR, all the more because refugees from Iran had
fled there. Great-uncle was no longer able to trade and sojourn in Ashqabad,
and was forced to live in much poorer conditions working as a streetvendor
for his cousin Sadeq. For family as well as financial reasons Greatuncle was
anxious to entertain and please my father, but while Father bought presents
for the house, Great-uncle was a man of such powerful personality that I do
not think he would have accepted any cash payment for his hospitality, and I
saw no sign of anything of that kind. I had wondered why Great-uncle never
visited us in Tabriz during my childhood, in view of the close links among
Eastern families, much closer than is known in the West. But I now realise
Great-uncle would have been much too proud to bring his poverty into the
house of my wealthy father, and in fact I have since noted how difference in
income cuts off members of my own brothers and sisters from one another
apart from meetings at Nawruz.
About a year after we returned to Tabriz I heard that Great-uncle's wife
died, and again a year or so after that I heard he himself had died also.
But five or six years after that, Sadeq realised that he in his turn was
dying, and returned to Tabriz to die there. It was from Tabriz that
Great-uncle had started out at the beginning of the century: but his
poverty, and not the journey, prevented his ever seeing it again once he had
lost his main source of income. When members of a family go from one Iranian
city to another far-distant one as Great-uncle had done, those who remain
behind tell glorious stories about how well the emigrant has done and how
much property and wealth he has accumulated. Those who really do make money
and keep it will return to their native city, but those who are less
fortunate never come back, wishing to save their faces and not confront the
great stories of their success with the tragic reality of their material
failure. So children like myself assumed that a far-distant uncle must be
rich, although no doubt our parents and older relatives would have a much
clearer idea of the reality, deducing this from the failure to visit if not
from actual concrete information. In material terms, Great-uncle was a
failure. To me he was and is one of the kindest and finest people I have
ever known.
We took a more southern route on our return: it would bring us home by the
south instead of the north side of the Elburz mountains, and it gave me my
first sight of Nishapur, about 40 kilometres from Mashhad. It was here,
somewhere between 850 and 900 years before our visit, that Omar Khayyam was
born.
What, without asking, hither hurried Whence? And, without asking, ,Whither
hurried hence Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of
that insolence!
In the eleventh century Khayyam lived in a society that was suppressive and
potentially destructive to human thought. Local rulers had, for the time
being, apparently succeeded in stifling all philosophical and political
activities. They employed, first, the Ghaznavid and then the Saljuq Turks as
tools for this policy of suppression. Khayyam and his famous contemporary,
the philosopher Muhammad AI-Ghazzali (who was born and died in Tus,
10597-1111) had been the final flowering of that vigorous growth of freedom
of thought which had sprung up in Iran, particularly in Khorasan, since the
eleventh century.
Now both Ghazzali and Khayyam, during the succeeding period of repression,
had to submit to an oppressive authority in one way or another. A letter
from AI-Ghazzali to Sultan Sanjar (1O87?-1l57) of Khorasan has come down to
us in which he says:
I have sat in a corner for twelve years. I avoided the people. Then Fakhr
al-Mulk, God bless him, insisted that I go to Nishapur. The present day, I
answered, cannot stand what I say. For if anyone teaches philosophy at this
time all the doors and walls rise against him in enmity. "The King is just,"
said Fakhr al-Mulk, "and I would support you. . . . Nowadays the situation
has changed so much that I hear certain words which, if I had dreamed them,
I would call confused dreams. . . Please excuse me from teaching in Nishapur
and Tus so that I can live in my own safe corner because the present time
cannot endure my words."
Khayyam, who was a more progressive thinker than Ghazzali, sensed the danger
of reactionary power to an even greater extent. AI-Qifti (1172-1248)
described Khayyam's dark days in his History of Philosophers:
His contemporaries began criticising him and talked about his religion and
beliefs so that Khayyam became terrified. He silenced his tongue and pen and
left Nishapur for the pilgrimage to Mecca. After his return from Mecca he
tried to hide his thoughts and became a devout follower of religion to all
outward appearance.
From these examples we can gain some idea of the atmosphere of the time and
the naturally pessimistic reaction of the philosophical thinkers towards
this atmosphere.
Khayyam's revolt against the existing philosophical system shows itself in
his work in two ways: one is his satire of the whole universe and its
doubtful creator and the other is his philosophy of materialism formed in
opposition to the selfishness of "spiritualism".
What do we mean when we say that Khayyam is a materialist philosopher? In
Khayyam's time the accepted philosophical doctrine taught that the source of
all life is the spiritual world. Love of God and the spiritual world was
regarded as good, and love of the material world and bodily desire were
considered evil. Orthodox religion and philosophy, while living amid wealth
and worldly riches, taught self-denial and the love of God. Orthodox Islam,
like orthodox Christianity, advocated self-restraint, warned of "Hell" on
the one hand and on the other hand promised "Heaven" in the afterworld.
Opposing these abstract teachings, Khayyam wrote:
They say there will be a heaven and houris
within it,
There will be wine, milk and honey.
Then if we have already chosen wine and a mistress, there's no need to
worry,
Because the end of the affair will be just this.
For how long
shall I lay clay bricks on the sea,
I am fed up with the idolators of the synagogue.
Khayyam, who said there will be a Hell?
Who went to Hell and who came from Heaven?
Rejecting the idea of predestination -
that some are born for "Heaven" and some for "Hell" he wrote:
I do not know at all whether he who moulded me
Made me one of the inhabitants of Heaven or Hell.
A bowl of wine, a beautiful woman and music in a garden,
Give me these in cash and you can take Heaven in credit.
Khayyam stressed the importance of the material world. It is necessary for
human existence. He regarded abstract religious teachings as a cunning
deceit to deprive humanity of the pleasure and enjoyment of life. Attacking
the hypocrisy of the ruling system and its use of the prohibition of wine as
a. means to vilify its opponents, he remarked:
If you do not drink wine do not speak about drinkers sarcastically.
Do not lay a foundation of deceits and tales.
Do not be proud for not drinking.
You devour one hundred mouthfuls, so that my drinking is nothing in
comparison.
Although Khayyam was philosophically a materialist, morally he was a
spiritualist and humanist. He asserted the importance of the material world
but criticised selfishness. The material world is not evil but evil can
exist in the nature of human relationship with the material world. The man
who sits with his mistress in a garden and drinks wine is not committing a
sin. But he who forbids drinking while accumulating his wealth at the
expense of others, is sinful:
For how long
will you spend your life in selfishness
Or worrying about having this and not having that?
Cease your greed for this world and live happily.
Cut yourself away from good and evil,
Take wine and a mistress
For these few days would pass quickly.
In the following century, the twelfth,
perhaps some years before Omar Khayyam died in Nishapur, it was again the
birthplace of a poet, Farid udDin Attar whose poem Manteq al-teir (The
Conference of Birds) is at last becoming widely known in the West.
Attar (1120-1215) was more directly concerned with spiritual questions in
The Conference of Birds. |