Al-Mufaddal ibn Umar al-Ju'fi

rdf:langString Al-Mufaddal ibn Umar al-Ju'fi

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rdf:langString al-Mufaḍḍal ibn ʿUmar al-Juʿfī

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rdf:langString Teleological argument Influenced:

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rdf:langString before 748

rdf:langString before 799

rdf:langString divinization of the Imam

rdf:langString early Shi'ism /

rdf:langString pre-existent shadows

rdf:langString seven degrees of spiritual perfection

rdf:langString Mufaddal Tradition

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rdf:langString Born

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rdf:langString Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Mufaḍḍal ibn ʿUmar al-Juʿfī (Arabic: أبو عبد الله المفضل بن عمر الجعفي), died before 799, was an early Shi'i leader and contemporary of the Imams Ja'far al-Sadiq (c. 700–765) and Musa al-Kazim (745–799). He belonged to those circles in Kufa (Iraq) whom later Twelver Shi'i authors would call ghulāt ('exaggerators', singular ghālin) for their 'exaggerated' veneration of the Imams. As a money-changer (ṣayrafī), al-Mufaddal wielded considerable financial and political power. He was likely also responsible for managing the financial affairs of the Imams in Medina. For a time he was a follower of the famous ghālin Abu al-Khattab (died 755–6), who claimed that the Imams were divine. Later accounts differ in their interpretation of this: whereas early Imami heresiographers and Nusayri sources regard al-Mufaddal as having championed Abu al-Khattab's ideas and even as having started his own movement (the Mufaḍḍaliyya), Twelver Shi'i sources instead report that after Ja'far al-Sadiq's repudiation of Abu al-Khattab in 748, al-Mufaddal cut of all contact with him and was charged by the Imam with bringing Abu al-Khattab's followers back on the right path. A number of writings—collectively known as the Mufaddal Tradition—have been attributed to al-Mufaddal, most of which are still extant. They were likely falsely attributed to al-Mufaddal by later 9th–11th-century authors. As one of the closest confidants of Ja'far al-Sadiq, al-Mufaddal was an attractive figure for authors of various Shi'i persuasions: by attributing their own ideas to him they could invest these ideas with the authority of the Imam. The writings attributed to al-Mufaddal are very different in nature and scope, but one common feature is that Ja'far al-Sadiq is the main speaker in most of them. A major part of the extant writings attributed to al-Mufaddal originated among the ghulāt, an early branch of Shi'i Islam that was widespread in the 8th/9th century but which is now nearly extinct. One text, the Kitāb al-Haft wa-l-aẓilla ('Book of the Seven and the Shadows'), is an elaborate account of the ghulāt myth of the world's creation through the fall from grace of pre-existent 'shadows'. The Kitāb al-Haft wa-l-aẓilla also contains references to the concept of tanāsukh (metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls) and to the idea of seven primordial Adams who rule over the seven heavens and inititiate the seven historical world cycles (adwār). Consisting of at least eleven different layers which were added between the 8th and the 11th centuries, the work was widely influential in various Shi'i circles, including among the Isma'ilis, by whom it was eventually also preserved. The Kitāb al-Ṣirāṭ ('Book of the Path', written c. 874–941) deals with the concept of an initiatory 'path' (ṣirāṭ) leading the adept on a heavenly ascent towards God, with each of the seven heavens corresponding to one of seven degrees of spiritual perfection. Those who do not attain the mastery of religious belief and knowledge needed to climb the upwards path are reborn into human bodies (tanāsukh), while unbelievers travel downwards on the chain of being, reincarnating into animal (maskh), vegetable, or mineral bodies (raskh). Those who reach the seventh and highest degree of spiritual perfection (that of Bāb or 'Gate') enjoy a beatific vision of God, and share with God the power to manifest (tajallin) themselves to ordinary beings in the world of matter. Among the extant non-ghulāt texts attributed to al-Mufaddal, most of which were preserved in the Twelver Shi'i tradition, two treatises stand out for their rationalistic, Mu'tazili-inspired, and philosophical content. These are the Tawḥīd al-Mufaḍḍal ('al-Mufaddal's Tawhid') and the Kitāb al-Ihlīlaja ('Book of the Myrobalan Fruit'), both of which feature Ja'far al-Sadiq presenting al-Mufaddal with a proof for the existence of God. The teleological argument used in the Tawḥīd al-Mufaḍḍal is inspired by Syriac Christian literature (especially commentaries on the Hexameron), and ultimately goes back on Hellenistic models such as the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo ('On the Universe', 3rd/2nd century BCE) and Stoic theology as recorded in Cicero's (106–43 BCE) De natura deorum. The dialectical style of the Kitāb al-Ihlīlaja is more typical of early Muslim speculative theology (kalām), and the work may originally have been authored by the 8th-century scribe . Both works may be regarded as part of an attempt to rehabilitate al-Mufaddal among Twelver Shi'is, to whom al-Mufaddal was important as a narrator of numerous hadiths from the Imams Ja'far al-Sadiq and his son Musa al-Kazim.

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