Abbas Amanat, Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shifiism. 2009.

London: I.B. Tauris, 286 pp. ISBN 978 1 84511 124 3

The title of this collection of essays by Abbas Amanat

of Yale University is at once inviting and somewhat
misleading: inviting, in that the subject matter it
proclaims is of great historical and topical importance,
but misleading, in that several of its chapters have little
if any connection to apocalypticism. Insofar as a
connecting thread is to be discerned among its parts, it is
a recurrent and sustained polemic against Twelver Shifiism,
the Usuli school of jurisprudence, and the Islamic
Revolution of 1978-9, in ascending order. The only doctrine
to gain Amanat’s approval consists of Babism and its
contorted prolongation in Baha’ism (see pp. 53-60, 111-
123). It is not therefore surprising that he sees, in the
Qur√anic designation of the Prophet as “seal of the
prophets”, “a troubling assertion” (p. 61). Similarly, with
obvious frustration, he remarks of Mulla Sadra and the
school of philosophy descended from him that they “remained
essentially loyal to the doctrine of Islam’s perfection and
finality” (p. 51). This polemical purpose of Amanat’s book,
combined with frequent recourse to innuendo and
untrammelled speculation, tends to diminish its scholarly
value. Given the lasting significance of many subjects
treated in the book, and the wide readership it is likely
to attract, an extensive review of its contents seems
nonetheless in order.

*
* *
*
 2

Amanat launches his collection with the account of a

2005 visit to Kashan where he saw scrawled on the side of a
nakhl (a structure used in fiAshura commemorations) the
slogan, intizar mazhab-i mast, translated by him as
“yearning is our faith” (“expectation” might be a better
rendering). He is surprised to see this allegedly
“subversive message,” and begins speculating about the
person who wrote it, “possibly in haste” (p.viii). In point
of fact, there would have been no need for the writer to
scurry away, for the slogan implies absolutely nothing
subversive of the Islamic Republic; it expresses simply the
centrality to Shifiism of awaiting the return of the Twelfth
Imam and acting in accordance with one’s religious duties
while doing so, a theme emphasised in numerous traditions
1
from Imam Muhammad al-Baqir and Imam Jafifar al-Sadiq. This
is the first of the questionable speculations that
proliferate throughout Amanat’s opus.

The opening chapter first provides an overview of

apocalypticism in the Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian and
Islamic contexts, as well as contemporary, non-religious or
pseudo-religious predictions of the End. Zoroastrianism is
indeed the first of the traditions in which the theme of a
messiah is propounded and it is entirely legitimate to draw
attention to similarities and continuities, as Amanat
frequently does. Post hoc does not always, however, amount
to propter hoc. Occasionally his invocation of the pre-
Islamic past to explain a historical or contemporary

1
See references given in the article “Intizar” in Da√irat al-
Mafiarif-i Tashayyufi (Tehran: Nashr-i Shahid Safiid Muhibbi, 1375
Sh./1996), II, pp. 539-540.
 3

phenomenon, is entirely unconvincing; a case in point being

the suggestion that archetypes ultimately derived from the
Avesta and Manicheism have helped determine the foreign
policy of the Islamic Republic (p. 209). On occasions such
as this, Amanat seems to subscribe to the belief in a
suprahistorical Persian essence, a fantasy beloved of Henry
Corbin and his regrettably numerous Iranian admirers.

* *
* *

Chapter Two, “The Resurgence of Apocalyptic in Modern

Islam,” stretches the meaning of “apocalyptic” to have it
include “experiences and movements” that proclaimed a new
era of “rejuvenated faith” (p. 41); these are surely the
opposite of the dire predictions of imminent doom that are
commonly associated with the concept of “apocalypse.” The
predominantly Sunni belief in tajdid, the divine
appointment of one who will renew the faith and practice of
the community at the turn of each century, has in common
with certain genuinely apocalyptic movements only a precise
attention to the calendar.2 Further, tajdid cannot be
treated as more or less synonymous with islah, “reform,” a
concept which contrary to Amanat’s assertion was “foreign
to Islamic thought in earlier times,” emerging only in the
nineteenth century as a calque of “reform” in European
languages (p. 42). The perceptions of political decline

2
A partial exception is provided by a figure left unmentioned by
Amanat: Shehu Osman dan Fadio of Hausaland (d. 1232/1817) who
proclaimed himself the last mujaddid before the emergence of the
Mahdi. See Mervyn Hiskett, The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times
of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio (New York: Oxford University Press,
1973), p. 66.
 4

that began to appear among Muslim statesmen in the late

eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries found little if
any immediate reflection on the purely religious plane, and
no trace of them is to be found in the origins of the three
North African “proto-messianic” Sufi orders Amanat
summarily reviews. He pairs Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (d.
1033/1624), founder of the Mujaddidiyya (more properly,
Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya), with Muhammad b. fiAbd al-
Wahhab (d. 1206/1792), the originator of Wahhabism, as a
source of inspiration for the orders in question: the
Tijaniyya, the Idrisiyya, and the Sanusiyya. Sirhindi
hardly qualifies, for the “reformist” dimension of his
teachings has been much exaggerated in recent times, and to
the degree that it existed, it related exclusively to his
Indian environment. More to the point, although the
influence of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya was widespread
throughout India, Central Asia and Ottoman Turkey, it was
almost entirely unknown in North Africa. It is true that
Muhammad fiAli al-Sanusi, eponym of the Sanusiyya, had a
Mujaddidi lineage, but simply as one of the forty initiatic
chains he cited in support of a claim to have inherited
the entirety of the Sufi tradition.3 It is this claim that
is implied in the formula, al-Tariqat al-Muhammadiyya, “the
Muhammadan Path,” not a proto-Salafi denunciation of
perceived deviances from the Prophet’s model as Amanat
would have it (pp. 42-43).4 As for Wahhabism, it has next

3
See his Salsabil al-Mafiin fi al-Tara√iq al-Arbafiin, in al-
Majmufiat al-Mukhtara (Beirut, n.p.: 1388/1962).
4
It also implies beholding the Prophet, initially in dreams,
then while dozing, and finally while fully awake. See Muhammad
fiAli al-Sanusi, al-Manhal al-rawi al-ra√iq in al-Majmufiat al-
Mukhtara, pp. 49-50.
 5

to nothing in common with the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya,

coming onto the scene as it did a hundred and fifty years
later and in an entirely different environment. It was (and
remains) squarely opposed to Sufism in all its forms, and
it had no impact on the three tariqas Amanat discusses.5 Far
from being influenced by Muhammad b. fiAbd al-Wahhab, Ahmad
b. Idris remarked of him that his career was “sullied by
excess”, and he condemned him for declaring Muslims to be
unbelievers and allowing them to be killed without
justification.6 Nor was the impetus for the rise of the
three tariqas political, although later the Tijanis found
themselves fighting the French in Senegal, and the Sanusis,
the Italians in Libya. Amanat’s treatment of these “proto-
messianic” movements reflects a simple acceptance of the
thesis that the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries was marked by the emergence of a “Neo-Sufism” of
reformist bent, a thesis that is coming increasingly under
question.7
*
* *
In Chapter Three, Amanat heads back to the Safavid
period to describe and analyse the Nuqtaviyya. Founded by a
certain Mahmud Pasikhani, this was indeed a millennarian

5
On Wahhabi attitudes to Sufism, see Esther Peskes, “The
Wahh�biyya and Sufism in the Eighteenth Century,” in Frederick de
Jong and Bernd Radtke, eds., Islamic Mysticism Contested:
Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1999), pp. 145-161.
6
See R. S. O’Fahey, Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the
Idrisi Tradition (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 199), p. 105.
7
R.S. O’Fahey and Bernd Radtke, “Neo-Sufism Reconsidered,” Der
Islam 70:1 (January, 1993) , pp. 52-87.
 6

movement emphasising a Persian identity. Amanat bases

himself essentially on Sadeq Kia’s Nuqtaviyan ya
Pasikhanian, published in 1941, being apparently unaware of
the fuller treatment more recently accorded the subject by
fiAliriza Qaraguzlu’s Junbish-i Nuqtaviya (Qum: Nashr-i
Adyan, 1383 Sh./2004). With respect to the sources of
Nuqtavi doctrine and practice, Amanat speaks first of
“ancient Greco-Persian beliefs” (p.74) and then proposes a
concoction of Byzantine reminiscences and “eastern Buddhist
(or even Manichean) influence that was rampant under the
religiously tolerant Mongols” (p. 77). One wonders what
memories of Byzantium might have been lurking in the
forests of Gilan where the Nuqtaviyya originated. Further,
the re-emergence of Buddhism in Iran during the early
Mongol period hardly qualifies as“rampant,” for it was
shortlived and confined to the Mongol court and military
aristocracy; nor were the Ilkhanids renowned for a
sustained interest in Manicheism. Amanat is of course on
firmer ground when he points to the commonalities,
doctrinal and historical, between the Nuqtaviyya and
Isma’ilism (pp. 83, 89).

Discussing the curious episode in which Shah fiAbbas

vacated his throne for three days in favour of a Nuqtavi
adept, Amanat suggests that “it aimed at preventing
celestial misfortunes from falling on the real shah” (p.
85). It is far more likely that the purpose was to
discredit the astrological predictions made by the
Nuqtavis, as well as providing the notoriously sadistic
Shah fiAbbas with entertainment: the temporary shah was put
to death as soon as he descended from the throne.
 7

While tracing the later fortunes of the Nuqtaviyya in

Mughal India, Amanat follows Kaykhusrau Isfandiyar’s
Dabistan-i Madhahib in taking the opening line of a poem by
Hafiz lauding the banks of the Aras river as possible
evidence for Nuqtavi sympathies on the part of the poet (p.
88).8 Hafiz’s mention of this river in Azerbayjan is
admittedly enigmatic. Hafiz cannot, however, have been
inclined to the Nuqtaviyya or even aware of it for one
simple reason: it was not until 800/1397, some seven years
after the death of the poet, which is generally placed in
792/1390, that Pasikhani launched his movement and the
Nuqtaviyya came into being. Furthermore, the primary
association of the Aras with Mahmud Pasikhani is that he
chose to drown himself in its waters in the year 831/1427-
28, at which point Hafiz had been dead for close to forty
years. Amanat nonetheless proceeds to suggest that his
Divan is sufficiently replete with references to nuqta and
scepticism with respect to creation and resurrection “to
merit a separate study” (p. 88).
* *
* *
8
See Isfandiyar, Dabistan-i Madhahib, ed. Rahim Rizazada Malik
(Tehran: Tahuri, 1362 Sh./1983), I, p. 277. The line in question
reads: “O zephyr, if you pass by the shore of the River
Aras,/plant a kiss on the soil of that valley and perfume your
breath with musk” (Divan-i Hafiz, eds. Muhammad Qazvini and Qasim
Ghani [Tehran: Kitabkhana-yi Zuvvar, n.d.] p. 181. It is
possible, fiAllama Tabataba√i suggests, that what is intended is
not the river itself, but the city of Tabriz, some twenty
farsangs distant from its banks; and that the “beloved”
separation from whom he bewails, is a person resident there and
mentioned by name elsewhere in his Divan, such as Fakhr al-Din
fiAbd al-Samad and Kamal Khujandi Masfiud (Jamal-i Aftab, ed. fiAli
Safiadatpur [Tehran: Ihya-yi Kitab, 1379 Sh./2000], VI, pp. 161-
162. There are, however, a whole series of towns directly on the
banks of the Aras, one of which Hafiz might have had in mind for
reasons destined to remain unknown.
 8

Chapter Four takes us back to late Timurid Herat and

the career of Husayn Vafiiz Kashifi (d. 910/1504-5) , author
of Rauzat al-Shuhada√, the most popular Persian text ever
written on the martyrdom of Imam Husayn. The justification
for Amanat’s inclusion of this piece in his volume is
simply the assertion that Kashifi was a Shifii, for as he
admits, the Rauzat al-Shuhada√ is “decidedly unapocalyptic”
(p.108). It is true that in his own lifetime Kashifi’s
sectarian affiliation was a matter of occasional doubt and
dispute. He was a native of Sabzavar, a principal outpost
of Shifiism in pre-Safavid Iran that was also home to a
Sunni minority. In Sabzavar, it is reported, he was viewed
with hostility as a Sunni, while in Herat he was suspected
of Shifiism.9 The confusion, both in Kashifi’s time and
later, arose from a phenomenon distinctive of the period:
an enhanced veneration of the Ahl al-Bayt on the part of
several Sufi orders that retained and even polemically
emphasised their Sunni identity. One of the orders
manifesting this combination was precisely the
unambiguously Sunni Naqshbandiyya to which Kashifi gave his
allegiance in Herat. His hope had been to join the
following of Safid al-Din Kashghari, whom Amanat erroneously
describes as “successor to Baha√ al-Din Naqshbandi [sic;
the name should read Naqshband]” (p. 93); in fact, he was
separated from the eponym of the order by one link in the
initiatic chain, fiAla√ al-Din fiAttar. Kashghari died
shortly before Kashifi arrived in Herat, so he gave his
allegiance instead to Kashghari’s foremost disciple, the

9
Hamid Algar, “Naqshbandis and Safavids: A Contribution to the
Religious History of Iran and Her Neighbors,” in Michel Mazzaoui,
ed., Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors (Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press, 2003), p. 30.
 9

great poet and polymath, fiAbd al-Rahman Jami. A perfect

exemplar of Naqshbandi devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt, Jami
went so far as to deny Shifiism any connection with the
Twelve Imams.10 Kashifi did not follow him in this regard,
but there is no reason at all to designate him as “pro-
Shifii” (p. 94) or the sermons he gave in Herat as “crypto-
Shifii” in content, as does Amanat (p. 95). Nor can the
combination of professed fealty to the Ahl al-Bayt with
Sunni identity that characterised the early Naqshbandiyya
be regarded as a concession to the particular circumstances
of Herat as Amanat implies; it is also expressed in Fasl
al-Khitab, the major work of Khwaja Muhammad Parsa (d.
822/1418), a principal successor of Khwaja Baha√ al-Din
Naqshband resident in Bukhara.11

In regarding Kashifi as a crypto-Shifii practising

taqiya – “his ancestral creed allowed him to practise
dissimulation” (p. 92) -- Amanat cites an illustrious
predecessor, Qazi Nurullah Shushtari (d. 1019/1610), who
includes mention of Kashifi in the Majalis al-Mu√minin.
There he chides him, however gently, for pursuing “worldly
interests” in Herat, a choice that compelled him to endure
“the torment” of Amir fiAlishir Nava√i’s company.12 It was,
however, the modus operandi of Shushtari to appropriate for
Shifiism a wide range of personalities who had expressed
10
See Algar, “Naqshbandis and Safavids: A Contribution to the
Religious History of Iran and Her Neighbors,” pp. 29-30.
11
Fasl al-Khitab, ed. Jalil Misgarnizhad (Tehran: Markaz-i
Nashr-i Danishgahi, 1381 Sh./1982), pp. 395-398.
12
Qazi Nurullah Shushtari, Majalis al-Mu√minin (Tehran:
Kitabfurushi-yi Islamiya, 1377 Sh./1999), I, p. 114. Amanat
erroneously gives the page reference as 548; see p.262, n. 36 of
his work.
 10

loyalty to the Ahl al-Bayt and to dismiss as taqiya any

signs they exhibited of Sunni identity; Amanat does
precisely the same with respect to Kashifi.

Assumptions and conjectures stacked on top of each

other preface Amanat’s discussion of the Rauzat al-
Shuhada√. “It is quite conceivable,“ he writes, that
Kashifi was aware of Shah Ismafiil’s conquest of Tabriz one
year earlier; “plausible” that Sayyid fiAbdullah Mirza
patronised the work “in order to honour the memory of his
own Shifii descent” (by this Amanat means his claim to a
Hasani lineage, which does not necessarily qualify as
“Shifii descent”); and further, “he may have intended to
enhance his prospects for succession” (p. 97). The upshot
of all this is that “we may safely assume” that the
composition of the Rauzat al-Shuhada√ was “facilitated by
the patronage of a prince who pursued a political end” (p.
98). Somewhat later Amanat concedes, however, that “there
is no explicit evidence to suggest any ideological urgency
for production of Kashifi’s account” which he regards as
“an unfettered Shifii presentation” (pp. 99-100). It is, of
course, true that the Rauzat al-Shuhada√ became one of the
chief props of popular piety in the Safavid period and
beyond, and there is a certain irony in that this key text
should have been written by a Sunni. The devotional
attitudes and practices of Sunnism – or, for that matter,
Shifiism – have not, however, remained static over the
centuries, and if now most Sunnis pay little attention to
the Ahl al-Bayt, this was not always so; in the midst of
their sectarian wars against Safavid Iran, the Ottomans
 11

would regularly commemorate fiAshura√ with the recitation of

texts influenced precisely by the Rauzat al-Shuhada.13

Amanat also cites another work of Kashifi,

theFutuvvat-nama-yi Sultani, as evidence for a concealed
Shifii identity and states erroneously that the work was
dedicated to Imam Riza (p. 93).14 Even if that were the
case, it would be no proof of affiliation to Shifiism.

Finally with respect to late Timurid Herat, Amanat

also proposes to include Qasim-i Anvar (d. 1433) in what he
calls its “fifteenth-century Shifii symbiosis” (p. 94).15 As
he points out, this Sufi poet was indeed expelled from
Herat and had links to Shaykh Sadr al-Din (d. 794/1392),
head of the Safavid family in Ardabil. It was, however, an
ecstatic antinomianism, reaching hyperbolic proportions
among his followers, that prompted the expulsion, not Shifii
or pro-Shifii tendencies on his part.16 Equally relevant is
that in the time of Shaykh Sadr al-Din, the Safavids had

13
Some echo of this tradition can be discerned in the heartfelt
address delivered by Turkish prime minister Erdoπan on the
occasion of fiAshura√ in 1432/2010.
14
He wrote it rather for the administrators of the Imam’s shrine
in Mashhad, which is a different matter. See Maria Subtelny,
“K�¸sefı, Kam�l–al-Dın ˘osayn W�e÷,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, XV,
pp. 658-661, for further arguments in favour of a Sunni identity
for Kashifi.
15
Amanat omits the izafa in his name, without which its
sense,“distributor of lights,” is lost, and he even abbreviates
it to Anwar.
16
See Jami’s careful analysis in Nafahat al-Uns, ed. Mahmud
fiAbidi (Tehran: Intisharat-i Ittilafiat, 1370 Sh./1991), pp. 590-
593.
 12

not yet made the transition from Sunnism to Shifiism that

preceded their ascent to monarchical power. Qasim-i Anvar
also had stray contacts with Naqshbandis and Khalvatis, of
no particular importance; he was essentially a freelance
operator.

* *
* *
In Chapter Five, we are transported to the early Qajar
period with a short piece on the Bayan, the book presented
by Sayyid fiAli Muhammad “Bab” as the scriptural foundation
of his new dispensation. Not only did he wish his
production to abrogate or supersede earlier scriptures, the
Qur√an included; he even ordered all copies of those books
destroyed, as Amanat reports (p. 120).17 Despite this
injunction, Amanat attributes to the Bab a “nonviolent
disposition” (p. 119). In addition, he discerns in him
“an endogenous ‘modern’ answer to the crisis of confidence
which has lurked behind the political, economic and moral
fabric of Iranian society” (p. 111) (Why “modern” is
enclosed in quotation marks is unclear, unless it be an
acknowledgement that the word is, in fact, close to
meaningless in this context). He derives this endogenous
approach to “modernity” from the Bab’s principle of
cyclical progression, encapsulated in the phrase, dawr dar
taraqqist (p. 111) (The actual word in the text is kawr,
one of the numerous misprints that irritate the reader).
The belief in cyclical progression had a long history,
however, and it is not clear how its articulation in Babism

17
Elsewhere Amanat suggests that the Bab’s criterion for books
to be burnt was being “contrary to the essence of the Bayan” (p.
56), which may, of course amount to the same thing.
 13

was distinctively “modern,” as Amanat insistently

maintains. Much of the Bayan is governed by numerological
considerations (especially the notorious nineteen, used to
construct a most curious calendar) and similar
peculiarities, and as Amanat concedes, the book “barely
provides a comprehensive social program or even a coherent
vision of communal life” (p. 114). Wherein, then, lies the
modernity? One element appears to be that the Bab upgraded
the status of women by designating them “possessors of the
circles” (dhawat-i dawa√ir); another that he recommended
the Bayan be printed, to ensure wider circulation; a third
that he admired the efficiency of European postal services;
and most significantly, that he produced a version of the
Bayan in Persian, a sign of democratizing religion in the
manner of the European Reformation (pp. 111, 119). Amanat
suggests, too, that the Bab’s choice of Persian “signaled a
budding sense of national awareness,” (p. 123), as if a
sense of national identity – rooted precisely in Twelver
Shifiism – were not already firmly in place. However, the
Persian of the Bayan had been preceded by an Arabic
version, which appears essentially to have been a crude
imitation of the Qur√an; when the Bab was interrogated by
the fiulama of Tabriz in 1848, among the many matters where
he was found at fault was his command of Arabic grammar.18
It was perhaps this, rather than any proto-Lutherizing
tendency, that caused the Bab to switch to Persian. The
Persian Bayan, as Amanat describes it, combines plain, not
to say colloquial, language with “obscure, technical

18
As reported by Amanat himself, in his Resurrection and
Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 390.
 14

terms,” a concoction Amanat suggests “may best be called

postmodern” (p. 117).19 The Bab thus emerges as not only a
“modern” figure, but also a precursor of postmodernism.

Amanat concludes his presentation of the Bayan with a

truly fantastic suggestion: that its “essentially
progressive, rather than regressive, historical perspective
… offered revolutionary potential for the moral and
material transformation of Iranian society, a potential
that remained unfulfilled even in the twentieth century”
(p. 123). In other words, by failing to pay due attention
to the Bayan, Iranians in their collective obtuseness
squandered a unique opportunity for comprehensive national
renewal.20
*
* *
Very little of an apocalyptic nature is to be
discerned in Chapter Six, an account of the fruitless
missionary activities undertaken in Shiraz by an obstinate
Anglican clergyman, the Reverend Henry Martyn. The
refutations his writings elicited were numerous and
diverse, testimony not to any danger of mass conversion but
to a lasting interest in traditions other than Islam;

19
Insofar as much postmodernist literature is marked by
bewildering incoherence, Amanat’s characterization may actually
be defensible.
20
Amanat’s lament that his countrymen missed the transformative
opportunity proffered them by the Bab becomes more comprehensible
if we bear in mind that according to his colleague, Juan Cole, a
professor at the University of Michigan, “he has said repeatedly
and publicly that he is ‘in love with the Bab.’” See message
posted on:
www.newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Talk/talk.religion.bahai/200
5-2008/msg00053.html
 15

refuting the reverend seems to have become something of a

hobby for the learned.21 (Amanat mistranslates the title of
one of the treatises in question: Irshad al-Mudillin means
“Guiding those who lead others into error,” not “Guide to
the Erroneous” (p. 138). He nonetheless sees manifest in
these varied productions an absence of awareness of coming
waves of European onslaught, perhaps too much to expect in
treatises focused entirely on central questions of
religious belief; and in Martyn’s frustrated attempts at
discrediting Islam and the Prophet “a European movement of
religious awakening,” which is surely too much to read into
this obscure episode (pp. 136-7). He also remarks of the
rejoinders to Martyn that they “barely crossed the
permitted boundaries of Islamic orthodoxy” (p. 139); why
they should have been expected to do so, is entirely
unclear.

A minor error on the part of Amanat is the

identification of Tokat (not Tukat, as he spells it) where
Martyn breathed his last as an Armenian city. More
significant is that according to Amanat, while calumniously
accusing the Prophet of lustful indulgence, Martyn makes
mention of Mariya, “the Coptic wife of Muhammad’s adopted
son” (p. 136). In point of fact, Mariya was not married to
the Prophet’s “adopted son” or anyone else before she came

21
The degree of tolerance with which Martyn’s fulminations was
met is truly remarkable; it would probably not be available in
present-day Shiraz, not that it necessarily should be. Muslims
were not the only target of his vehement evangelism; he records
in his dairy for April 7, 1812: “Observing a party of ten or a
dozen poor Jews with their priest in the garden, I attacked them,
and disputed a little with the Levite on Pslams ii, xvi. and
xxiv.” (Journals and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D., ed.
S. Wilberforce [London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1837], p.
393).
 16

to him. She was one of two Coptic sisters sent to the

Prophet by the ruler of Egypt; she bore him a son, Ibrahim,
who died in infancy. The other, Sirin, was assigned to
Hassan b. Thabit.22 Zaynab bint Jahsh, not Mariya the Copt,
was the wife that the Prophet did take after she had been
divorced by an “adopted son,” Zayd b. Haritha.23 Amanat’s
sentence represents the conflation of two separate
instances frequently mentioned by Christian polemicists. It
is, however, the Yale academic who is responsible for the
confusion, not the Anglican divine; Martyn cites the two
proofs of the Prophet’s alleged “lustful disposition”
separately.24 It is not, of course, that the reverend’s
fulminations deserve to be treated with reverence; simply
that even authors such as he should be cited correctly.

Truly remarkable are the conclusions Amanat draws from

the episode of Henry Martyn’s sojourn in Shiraz. The most
modest, perhaps, is that Martyn’s Persian translation of
the New Testament “for the first time made available an
alternative scripture to the Qur√an” (p. 145). This is not
true: a translation of the Four Gospels had already been
made by Mir Muhammad Baqir Khatunabadi (d. 1127/1715).25
Amanat claims that the appearance of Martyn’s “widely

22
See Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest
Sources (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 277, 286,
315, 325.
23
Lings, Muhammad, pp. 212-213.
24
Henry Martyn, Controversial Tracts on Christianity and
Mohammedanism, ed. S. Lee (Cambridge: J. Smith, Printer to the
University, 1824), pp. 105-113.
25
Khatunabadi, Tarjuma-yi Anajil-i Arba’a, ed. Rasul Jafifarian
(Tehran: Miras-i Maktub, 1375 Sh./1996).
 17

accessible and easily comprehendible [sic]” translation was

“a turning pointing [sic] in the Persian religious and
literary scene” (p.145). To suggest that it had any impact
whatsoever on Persian literature – however broadly
literature be defined – is entirely fantastic.

The responses to the reverend’s arguments against

Islam included, naturally enough, acknowledgement of the
missions of prophets such as Jesus who preceded the Seal
of the Prophets, while emphasising the temporal limitation
of their validity – hardly a novel doctrine, for it flows
ineluctably from the Qur√an. In a typical piece of
speculation, Amanat nonetheless suggests that “such
historical relativism … could potentially question the
suitability of Islam for all ages and of Muhammad as the
seal of the Prophets” (p. 148). Further, “it could
encourage Muslims, and Shifiis in particular, to look for
not only a messianic (or more correctly Mahdistic)
manifestation but for an occurrence of a prophetic renewal.
One can almost detect in such polemics the intellectual
origins of Babi doctrine, and later the message of
progressive revelation [by which Amanat must mean
Baha√ism]”(p. 148). In short, Amanat would have us believe
that although Henry Martyn failed to bring anyone into the
fold of Anglican Christianity, he might take posthumous
comfort in knowing that he had helped lay the foundations
of Babism. For, he additionally argues, “it is not sheer
accident perhaps” (p. 148) that it was precisely in Shiraz
that Sayyid fiAli Muhammad was born and proclaimed himself
 18

the Bab.26 This presupposes that Martyn’s stay in Shiraz had

profound effects that lasted for a full thirty-two years,
from 1812 to 1843 when Sayyid fiAli Muhammad put forth his
claims, an assumption for which Amanat presents no
evidence.

Still bolder and more questionable is another

connection Amanat seeks to make between Martyn’s stay in
Shiraz and a much later development. He claims that the
rejoinders to Martyn manifested a “doctrinal impasse”
indicating “the acute problem of scholastic Usuli Shfiism to
modernize its theological discourse, perhaps all the way to
the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9.” Why? Because “Ayatollah
Khomeini’s ideology of wilayat-i faqih is rooted in [Ahmad]
Naraqi’s concept of jurists’ wilayat, possibly an answer to
the issue of prophetic leadership articulated in his
response to Martyn” (p. 148). Certainly Khomeini
acknowledged Ahmad Naraqi as a significant predecessor in
expounding wilayat-i faqih, but it is an exaggeration to
say that it was “rooted” in his writings.27 More
importantly, Amanat is suggesting here the following chain
of cause and effect: Martyn’s polemics against Islam> the
allegedly inadequate response made by the Usuli scholars of

26
This is not the only geographic coincidence Amanat finds
significant. The distance in time and belief between the two
individuals notwithstanding, Khomeini is deemed worthy of
comparison with Hasan-i Sabbah in part because the former spent
much of his life in Qum and the latter was born there (p. 3).
27
See translation of Hukumat-i Islami by Hamid Algar in Imam
Khomeini, Islam and Revolution (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), pp.
82, 100, 107, 124. For a summary of Naraqi’s elaboration of
vilayat-i faqih, see Sayyid Ahmad Kazimi Musavi, “Zindagi va
Naqsh-I Faqahati-yi Mulla Ahmad Naraqi,” Nashr-i Danish (4:3,
Farvardin-Urdibihisht 1363/April-May, 1984), pp. 4-8.
 19

the period> a dim awareness of such inadequacy on the part

of Ahmad Naraqi> his coining of wilayat-i faqih because of
this awareness> the adoption of wilayat-i faqih by Imam
Khomeini more than one hundred and forty years later. Henry
Martyn thus emerges as a distant ancestor of the Islamic
Revolution, probably not a role to which he aspired during
his stay in early Qajar Shiraz.

* *
*
The nineteenth century brings us to the consolidation
of the Usuli legal school in Iran and the development of
its patterns of authority, important topics that Amanat
addresses at various points in the book. He dislikes the
Usulis thoroughly, accusing them of – among many other
things -- fostering the clashes between the Nifimati and
Haydari factions that had been endemic in Iranian cities
since Safavid times; no evidence is provided (p.11). More
justifiably, he emphasizes the practical inadequacy of
“being the most learned” (afilamiyat) as the criterion for
identifying the best candidate for supreme authority, and
he goes so far as to suggest that the muqallid was “the
ultimate arbiter” in such matters. Amanat also lays
justifiable stress on the role of the mercantile class – as
well as occasionally the state -- in providing the fiulama
in Qajar Iran with a sound material basis; less sound is
his conclusion that this link resulted, more or less
consistently, in fiulama subordination to the merchants, for
it rested at least as much on their responsiveness to
popular concerns as on financial need. He suggests that in
the aftermath of the Babi insurrections and their
suppression clerical prestige witnessed a “gradual
 20

diminution” so that not until the episode of the Tobacco

Monopoly in 1891-1892 did the fiulama venture a major
confrontation with the government” (p. 163). This assertion
overlooks, among other incidents, Haji Mulla fiAli Kani’s
successful campaign in 1872 for the cancellation of the
Reuter Concession and the dismissal of Mirza Husayn Khan
Sipahsalar, the minister under whose auspices it had been
granted. It was, claims Amanat, the “aspiration for a
morally reformed leadership” of the religious institution
that ultimately led to the emergence of Mirza Hasan Shirazi
as the most prestigious leader of the religious
institution; he offers, however, no evidence whatsoever
that such an aspiration existed.

He summarises his survey of the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries with a typical non sequitur: that
Khomeini’s formulation of vilayat-i faqih was in part a
revolt “against the hegemony of the followers” (p. 178).
This suggestion that vilayat-i faqih was even to a
secondary degree motivated by a desire to invert relations
of authority between the marjafi and his followers is
plainly untenable; it cannot be reasonably deduced either
from Khomeini’s lectures on the subject or from the
contexts in which they were delivered and their message was
implemented.
Amanat’s unqualified hostility to the revolution and
its leader leads him to a number of errors and judgements
approaching the ludicrous. Symptomatic is his inability
even to ascertain the year of Khomeini’s birth; he was born
not in 1900, as Amanat would have it (p. 209), but in 1902,
on 24 September of that year (corresponding to 20 Jumada
al-Thani 1320), to be precise. Ever alert to alleged echoes
 21

of pre-Islamic Iran, Amanat maintains that the archetypes

represented by Ahriman of Avestan fame and evil as
perceived by Manicheism remained alive into the twentieth
century, and that Khomeini’s “personal history” offers an
example of their ability to affect the subconscious (p.
209). Attempting to relegate Khomeini’s understanding of
modern Iranian history to the realm of pure superstition,
he attributes to him the view that it was “an unfolding
drama of swarming satanic spirits and polluting substances
descending on pure and pious but helpless Muslim souls.”
The only evidence he is able to muster in support of this
notion is Khomeini’s mention of a map he was shown, drawn
up by foreign hands, indicating the location of mineral
resources in Iran.28 For the “relative calm and security”
Khomeini found in Qum, “he should have been thankful to
Pahlavi rule,” Amanat maintains (why?); but instead “he
developed a profound dislike of the secularizing policies
of the Pahlavi era” (p. 210). All he could do under the
circumstances was, however, to compose writings which were
fully “traditional,” a damning epithet whenever used by
Amanat (p. 211).

Again with respect to Khomeini’s pre-revolutionary

years in Qum, Amanat identifies him as “more of a teacher
of Greco-Islamic philosophy than a teacher of
jurisprudence,” and claims that vilayat-i faqih “had an
unmistakable mystico-philosophical core that was externally
colored by Shifii legal trappings” (p. 190), and that, “no
doubt,” Ibn fiArabi was a source of inspiration for him in
its articulation (p. 194). Now it is plain that among the

28
See Khomeini, Hukumat-i Islami (Najaf, np., n.d.), pp. 114-115.
 22

qualities that distinguished Khomeini from the quasi-

totality of his colleagues in Qum was a profound and
lasting commitment to the study and exposition of fiirfan,
including the ideas of Ibn fiArabi. But it is impossible to
discern traces of Akbari thought in Hukumat-i Islami;
certainly Amanat fails to identify any. Part of the error
lies in Amanat’s failure adequately to distinguish from
each other the various meanings of vilayat and valayat,
especially vilayat-i tashrifii and vilayat-i takvini; it is
the former that is at issue in Hukumat-i Islami, while the
latter finds expression in another of Khomeini’s works,
Misbah al-Hidaya ila √l-Khilafa wa √l-Wilaya.29 Equally
relevant, however, is his portrayal of Khomeini as “a
reluctant jurist who was anxious to overcome his marjafi
rivals through the philosophical backdoor,” one, moreover,
whose juristic qualifications were “meager” (p. 189); one
wonders on what basis of erudition in fiqh Amanat makes
this determination. Supposedly Khomeini himself was
uneasily aware of his deficiency, for in articulating his
theory of governance he used the term faqih instead of
mujtahid or marjafi, titles to which, Amanat suggests, he
was not fully entitled (p. 191). There is, however, no
mystery here: faqih is the term occurring in the traditions
on which Khomeini draws and it is necessarily inclusive of
both mujtahid and marjafi. By way of further untenable
speculation, Amanat claims that Khomeini drew upon “the
Sunni reformist milieu [and] the notion of Islamic

29
Published in 1372 Sh./1994 by Mu√assisa-yi Tanzim va Nashr-i
Asar-i Imam Khomeini, Tehran, with an introduction by Jalal al-
Din Ashtiani. See further Akiro Matsumoto, “Ayatollah Khomeini
and the Concepts of Wilayah and Walayah,” Journal of Shifia
Islamic Studies, 3:1 (Winter 2010), pp. 5-23.
 23

government” as set forth by Rashid Rida and Abu √l-Afila

Mawdudi” (pp. 189-190).

Amanat also suggests a Sunni origin for the

application of the title “Imam” to Khomeini; for this
possibility, he offers not even circumstantial evidence.
Similarly, the claim that Khomeini “assumed” it in his
capacity of vali-yi faqih is groundless; the most that can
be said is that he did not prohibit its application to him
(p. 192). Quite apart from anything else, Amanat correctly
locates the first known application of the title “Imam” to
Khomeini in a panegyric composed in 1970 – before, that is,
the Islamic Revolution or the political theory undergirding
it became widely known in Iran (p. 193). The poet has not
remained “unidentified,” however, as Amanat claims; it was
Nifimat Mirzazada, with the penname M. Azarm. The
explanation is surely quite simple: Khomeini was seen by
his compatriots (and many others besides) to embody a
comprehensive leadership that went far beyond the primarily
juristic functions associated with the title Ayatullah;
hence the choice, Imam, which certainly had echoes of the
Twelve Imams but was never understood to imply Khomeini’s
possession of fiismat, hostile propaganda to the contrary
notwithstanding. Also mischievous and unfounded is Amanat’s
claim that “the Islamic Republic came to supplant the
authority of the Mahdi with the “authority of the jurist,’
as Khomeini stated” (p. 67).

It is of course clear that the Islamic Revolution

indeed had “messianic” dimensions, for it was seen as
foreshadowing the return of the Sahib al-Zaman and as
enjoying his support. The slogan, “O God, o God! Preserve
 24

Khomeini until the revolution of the Mahdi,” spoke clearly

to the connection between what was implicitly viewed as a
provisional and limited revolution and the ultimate and
universal triumph of justice. Enough books on the subject
of the Mahdi were published in 1979 to warrant an entire
exhibition in Tehran, which the present writer had the
opportunity to visit in December of that year. This is a
different matter, however, from Amanat’s claim that in his
1970 lectures in Najaf on Islamic government Khomeini
identified “a set of pre-apocalyptic signs” in support of
his call for an Islamic government, thereby arrogating to
himself – allegedly -- the function of the Occulted Imam.
Further, his use of the expression, “events of the time,”
Amanat continues, implies “a clear apocalyptic undertone”
(p. 66). On this occasion as on many others, he fails to
give a precise or even approximate reference to the actual
words of Khomeini. Why Khomeini’s analysis of the various
ills besetting Iranian society qualifies as “pre-
apocalyptic” is entirely unclear, unless it be that any
such critique is ipso facto a warning of imminent
apocalypse. “Events of the time” probably represents
Amanat’s understanding of the term, havadis-i vaqifia, which
Khomeini cites in the context of establishing the authority
of the fuqaha√ during the occultation and interprets as
“newly arising situations and problems that affect the
people and the Muslims.”30 Nothing “apocalyptic” or even
“pre-apocalyptic” is to be discerned here.

Amanat is particularly discomforted by the foreign

policy of the Islamic Republic, which he ingeniously if

30
Hukumat-i Islami, pp. 103-104; translation in Islam and
Revolution, p. 85.
 25

unconvincingly likens to the dualistic geopolitical

worldview of the pre-Islamic period, when Iran saw itself
in virtuous competition with aniran (p. 208). But then on
the other hand, he alternatively suggests, opposition to
American policies may simply have been a cynically
conceived tactic of political mobilization; in either case,
it would appear totally unconnected to empirical reality.
An antagonist was needed, and no longer could “an
apocalyptic beast” serve the purpose. Hence Khomeini
“assured his crowd” (when and where is not specified by
Amanat) that “the Great Satan was to be revoked (sic) by
hysterical calls of ‘Death to America’ almost as if it were
a demon-repelling chant” (p. 69).31 Noteworthy here is
Amanat’s determination, as elsewhere in the book, to
discern superstitious undertones of spirits, demons and the
need to exorcise them, rather than inescapable political
realities. Supposedly Khomeini had an “exaggerated fear of
U.S. covert operations” after the overthrow of the Pahlavi
regime (p. 200); “a vigilant awareness,” might be closer to
the truth. It is true, Amanat concedes, that the United
States befriended Saddam Husayn (something of an
understatement), but this was “in order to counterbalance
Iranian revolutionary zeal” (p. 201).

Amanat finds worthy of quite lengthy analysis the

designation of the United States as the Great Satan in the
lexicon of the Islamic Revolution. His discussion of
Qur√anic verses concerning Satan leads him to the

31
The literal translation of marg bar Amrika is somewhat
misleading, for the slogan signals a desire for the diminution of
American power, not for broad devastation of the country.
 26

conclusion that there is no hierarchy among devils; the

fact, however, that in sixty-eight verses shaytan is
preceded by the definite article does suggest that one
among them incorporates satanic qualities more fully than
the others. He then moves on to a consideration of the
polluting qualities of Satan as detailed in Majlisi’s
Hilyat al-Muttaqin and a reminder that in Zoroastrianism
the believer must preserve himself from Ahrimanic
befoulment. But, he informs us, there is a source closer in
time for this particular revolutionary slogan -- Radio
Moscow. For Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
recalls in his memoir, Strange Lands and Friendly People,
that after he visited Iran in 1949 and 1950, Radio Moscow
denounced him as “the Big Devil” and his son as “the Little
Devil.” Now, surmises Amanat in characteristic fashion,
“it is safe to assume that the mullas in Qom were
listening” to the broadcasts of Radio Moscow (p. 215).32 The
implied conclusion is that “the mullas,” their ears glued
to the radio, were so impressed by Moscow’s description of
Justice Douglas that they thought it might come in useful
one day, which indeed it did, thirty years later on the
occasion of the Islamic Revolution. Thus does Radio Moscow
join the Reverend Henry Martyn as a remote and unsuspected
source for the Islamic Revolution.

Amanat’s ruminations on Satan also lead him to a

consideration of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. With
respect to the verses intended by the title of this trashy

32
Earlier in the book (p. 66), Amanat similarly hypothesizes
that the epithet, Great Satan, was “probably adopted from
Marxist-Leninist propaganda of earlier decades.”
 27

abomination, Qur√an, 53:19-20, Amanat remarks only that

Muslim commentators viewed them as the result of a
temporary lapse on the part of the Prophet; he leaves
unmentioned the far more numerous, plausible and convincing
explanations offered by other scholars, classical and
modern.33 Entirely unconvincing are his speculative musings
on the underlying theme of Rushdie’s book. The title and
content of the work, so he claims, are “a deliberate
allusion to Khomeini’s Great Satan.” For, he continues, “if
Khomeini wishes to indict the United States … as the Great
Satan, Rushdie seems to imply, he should first look back at
the phenomenon of extremist Islam and then specifically at
the message alluded to in the Qur’an’s so-called Satanic
verses” (pp. 201-2). Imam Khomeini’s indictment, “Rushdie
seems to have been suggesting … was a paradigmatic act of
renouncing the polluting lure of the West after he has been
compromised by it.” How, when, and where such
“compromising” had taken place is entirely unclear. This
“subtle allegory” was “of course incomprehensible to
Khomeini,” unlike the clairvoyant scholar from Yale;
missing the point, he condemned Rushdie simply for his
defamation of the Prophet.

The last chapter of the book is, perhaps, its most

interesting and informative, for it is based in part on
observations made by the author during the same visit to
Iran that he mentions in the preface. Amanat suggests that
recent manifestations of Mahdism in post-Khomeini Iran are
in part due to the still resonating message of the
Hujjatiya, a now defunct organization that laid heavy

33
For a summary of Muslim scholarship on the matter, see Hµseyin
Hatemi, ≈Seytan Rivayetleri (Istanbul: I≈saret Yayªnlarª, 1989).
 28

emphasis on messianic expectations. This message, he

continues, was then taken up with some modification by the
clerical opposition to the “reformist” agenda of President
Muhammad Khatami (p. 225). The vast expansion of the shrine
at Jamkaran near Qum from onwards and the beliefs and
practices associated with it are indeed remarkable (pp.
227-232). Also fairly recent in origin are attempts at
widespread dissemination of Mahdism beyond the boundaries
of Islam and Shifiism by means of periodicals, websites, and
– unmentioned by Amanat-- conferences held under the rubric
of “Bright Futures.”

The depiction of contemporary Mahdism is then rounded

out by a discussion of President Ahmadinejad’s celebrated
address to the United Nations in October 2005 and other
invocations of the Sahib al-Zaman on his part. Despite
Ahmadinejad’s interpretation of that much awaited re-
emergence in a sense favorable to global justice and peace,
Amanat remarks that his “deep commitment” to Iran’s nuclear
program is “often presented by his critics in the West as a
dangerous symptom of his apocalyptic aspirations” (p. 242).
Perhaps Amanat has in mind here the prediction made five
years ago by Bernard Lewis, the favorite authority of the
Neocons on all matters Islamic and Middle Eastern, that
Ahmadinejad would launch an attack on the Zionist entity on
August 22, 2006, with the intention of bringing about the
end of the world.34 Needless to say, the day in question
came and went without anything remarkable occurring; a

34
See his piece, “August 22: Does Iran have something in store?”
in Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2006. As Thomas Greene, a
blogger on The Register, commented on August 23, 2006, “the
nuclear apocalypse was milder than expected.”
 29

clear case of “failed apocalypticism” on the part of the

Princeton professor. As for the hostility to Zionism
expressed by Ahmadinejad and other contemporary exponents
of Mahdism, Amanat suggests that this is a disguise for
anti-Semitism (p. 236). If such be the case, the
participation of Orthodox rabbis in a number of official
conferences recently held in Iran on messianism and other
subjects becomes difficult to explain, unless one
subscribes to the Zionist thesis that Jews opposed to
Zionism are “self-hating Jews.”

Amanat fails to provide a coherent explanation for

these and other ongoing manifestations of Mahdism. Are they
a last-ditch attempt to rekindle revolutionary enthusiasm
after the passing of Khomeini from the scene? Are they the
result of discontent with the difficulties, divisions and
disappointments of present-day Iran, a desire to escape the
misery of everyday life? (pp. 228, 246) Or are they, on the
contrary, an attempt to quell such discontent by diverting
attention to a distant but anticipated goal, the result of
“demagogy and cynicism” on the part of the clerics of Qum?
All of the above, Amanat might respond, for he is never
short on contempt for the masses of the Iranian people.

Anticipations of the return of the Sahib al-Zaman in a

near future, Amanat remarks, always have a “limited shelf
life,” and are liable to produce “an apocalyptic movement
of incalculable proportions.” In the case of present-day
Iran, he hopefully predicts, there may emerge “a powerful
movement of popular protest capable of challenging the
Islamic Republic and its leaders” (pp. 250-251). And then,
in the last sentence of the book, Amanat comes to his own
 30

apocalyptic – not to say apoplectic -- climax by

speculating that “current engagement with the myth of the
Mahdi” foreshadows the quest for “a collective, perhaps a
more democratic, savior” (p. 251). An alternative
prediction might be that however the Islamic Republic
evolves, the normative equilibrium between patient
endurance of the Occultation and aspiring actively for its
termination will continue to be maintained. We shall see.

[TO COME AFTER ENDNOTES]

We append here a small sample of the misspellings,

mistranslations, and associated errors of language that
pervade the work; we leave unnoticed numerous errors of
English grammar and usage.

p. 3 Nazari should be Nizari

p. 11 Mutisharrifia should be Mutasharrifia
p. 45 faki is a modified form not of faqir but of faqih
p. 49 al-Sahib al-Zaman should be Sahib al-Zaman
p. 50 al-Bihar al-Anwar should be Bihar al-Anwar
p. 59 taharri-yi haqiqat does not mean “truth liberation”
but “searching for the truth”; here, Amanat has confused
taharri with tahrir, which is derived from an entirely
different triliteral root. He does, however, translate the
word correctly on p. 224 as “investigation.”
p. 59 Ederna should be Edirne
p. 62 rawh should be ruh
p. 95 Mawira√ al-Nahr should be Mawara√ al-Nahr
p. 114 man uzhurullah should be man yuzhiruhu√llah
p. 134 khatam al-nabi√in should be khatam al-nabiyin
 31

p. 153 al-a’lam fi al-a√lam should be al-afilam fa √l-afilam

(meaning “the most learned, and then the next most
learned”)
p. 155 Bushher should be Bushehr (or the Anglicized form of
the name, Bushire)
p. 156 muqtadi should be muqtada
p. 161 Mufitamid al-Dawla should be Mufitamad al-Dawla
p. 175 marajifi-i fiuzam should be marajifi-i fiizam
p. 181 afidal not “most judicious” but “most just” or, in
this context, “most morally upright”
p. 189 Sangilagi should be Sanglaji
p. 202 nijasat should be najasat
p. 35 fisaha should be fasaha
p. 203 Muna should be Mina
p. 218 dalla means not “despicable”, but “misguided”
p. 224 afilaim should be fiala√im
p. 224 muballiq should be muballigh

As for the maze of misprints found in the endnotes, we

content ourselves with a mention of the comical downgrading
of Nikki Keddie, emerita professor of Near Eastern History
at UCLA, to “Kiddie” (p. 271, n. 66)