Breaking Open the Seal: Saʿd al-Din Hamuye's Messianism and the Endtime

Scholars of Persian Sufism have argued that Saʿd al-Dīn Hamūye’s (fl. 13th CE.) works reflect Shīʿī leanings because of his messianic views on the “seal of the friends of God” (khatm al-awliyā’) and the identity of the Mahdi. On the basis of the Miṣbāḥ al-Tasawwuf and Kitāb al-Maḥbūb, my paper proposes that Ḥamūye’s teachings on walāyah and the seal of God’s friends integrate specific Ismāʿīlī concepts within the framework of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī’s treatment of the Endtime in the Khatm al-Awliyā’. The contours of Ḥamūye’s engagement in the on-going debate about the seal and the identity of the Mahdi is in part due to the reception of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings. His contribution also re-frames messianic considerations. Significantly, the Kitāb al-Maḥbūb gained traction in 13th-century intellectual circles and shaped the messianism and eschatology of the later Persianate Sufi tradition. Furthermore, Ḥamūye’s messianic views and explicit predictions of the End time represent a clear departure from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s works.
Ḥamūye writes independently of most 13th-century Shīʿī discussions of Qā'im-ology with respect to the form of the manifestation of the Mahdi. This paper will argue that Hamūye’s letter mysticism and how he structures walāyah working throughout prophetic history to the Endtime shares similar eschatological registers with Ismāʿīlī works from the late Fāṭimid period and post-Fāṭimid period. This period includes the Haft Bāb-i Bābā Sayyid-nā, a text that revisits after the fact the Ismāʿīlī “proclamation” of the qiyāmah in 1164 CE., and which juxtaposes prophetic types and prophetic opponents to explain the “realized apocalypse” of the Ismāʿīlī qiyāmah. According to Ḥamūye, the typologies of prophetic types and opponents represent the messianism of cumulative walāyah. Ḥamūye’s views on messianism rely extensively on a theory of how prophetic types and their opponents together culminate in the seal of God’s friends and the manifestation of the Mahdi. Throughout prophetic history, the opponents’ violation of religious law constitutes the secret of walāyah and how the seal of walāyah will be broken open at the end of time. This doubling of walāyah temporarily stabilizes another register of esoteric knowledge as hidden and inaccessible until the time of the Mahdi.