Muhammad II of Alamut
Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad II or ʾAʿlā Muḥammad was the Nizari Isma'ili Imām of Alamūt who reigned the longest period out of any Lord of Alamut, forty-four years. He affirmed the policies of his father, Hassan Ala Dhikrihi's-Salam, who had been stabbed to death a year after proclaiming [Islamic eschatology|Qiyāma], or Resurrection.
Name and honorifics
He is known as "‘A'lā’ al-Dīn" in some manuscripts of Kalam-i Pir and by some other historians. Other manuscripts of Kalam-i Pir have him as Diya al-Dīn. Rashid al-Dīn Hamadani has him as Nūr al-Dīn, but Hodgson is of the opinion that this is dubious.Biography
Nur al-Din Muhammad, surnamed Ala, also called Ala Muhammad or Muhammad bin Hasan, was born around 550/1155 or 553/1158 in Alamut. He is also known as Muhammad II, and sometimes as Ziaruddin Muhammad. His mother related to the Buwahid family. Immediately upon his accession, he arrested Hasan bin Namavar and his relatives and sentenced them to death.Bernard Lewis writes in "The Assassins" that, "Hassan was succeeded by his son Muhammad, who proceeded to confirm that his father and therefore he himself were descendants of Nizar, and subsequent Imams. He is said to have been a prolific writer, and during his long reign, the doctrine of the Resurrection was developed and elaborated." B. Hourcade writes that, "Hassan's son, Nur al-Din Mohammad II, consolidated the work of his father, whom he pronounced the true Imam, the secret son of a descendant of Nizar who had hidden at Alamut.".
Ala Muhammad was greatly engaged in his interest on philosophy and esoteric doctrines. His literary output was voluminous and had compiled several books on Koranic exegesis to broach the doctrines of the Ismailis. He was well steeped in Arabic and composed many proverbs and poetry in Arabic, whose fragments had been into the memories of the Muslims in Qazwin. Few misconception had started among the Muslims during his period about the qiyama in Iran and Syria, therefore, Ala Muhammad wrote several tracts to justify the doctrines of qiyama. In his elaboration of the doctrine of qiyama, he also assigned as usual a central role to the Imam. It further implied a complete personal transformation of the Ismailis who henceforth were expected to see nothing but the Imam and the manifestation of the divine truth in him. The Imam was defined in his essence as the epiphany of God on earth.
The period of Ala Muhammad was longer, in which there had been no war between the Ismailis and neighbouring rulers. It is possible that the Abbasid and Seljuq powers were at their downfall, and were incapable to attack the Ismaili castles.
Meanwhile, an important political change took place in Iran and other eastern lands. The Seljuqs disintegrated after Sanjar's death in 552/1157, being replaced by the Turkish amirs and generals. It must be remembered that Tughril Beg had founded the Seljuqid empire in 447/1055 and was declined in 590/1194. This dynasty produced 15 rulers belonging to seven generations.
Towards the end of the twelfth century a new power emerged in the east. South of the Aral sea lay the land of Khawaraz in Central Asia, the seat of an old civilisation, whose hereditary rulers assumed the old title of the kings as the Khwarazmshahs. In about 586/1190, the Khawarazmshah Alauddin Tekish occupied Khorasan, thus becoming master of eastern Iran. The Khawarazmians soon came to have an impressive empire of their own, stretching from the borders of India to Anatolia. The Seljuq dynasty came to an end everywhere except in Anatolia when Alauddin Tekish defeated Tughril III at Ray in 590/1194. The triumphant Khawarazmshah was the obvious ruler to fill the vacancy created by the Seljuqs, and in the following year, the Abbasid caliph Nasir invested Alauddin Tekish with the sultanate of western Iran, Khorasan and Turkistan.
We come across an instance of Ustandar Hazarasf bin Shahrnush, the Baduspanid ruler of Rustamdar and Ruyan, who had harboured himself at Alamut. According to "Jamiut-Tawarikh", Hazarasf had cemented his close relation with the Ismailis residing at Rudhbar and granted them few castles in his territories. When his relation deteriorated with his superior, Husam ad-Dawla Ardashir, the Bawandid Ispahbad of Mazandarn, he took refuge at Alamut as a result. In due course, Hazarasf raided his former territories with the help of the Ismaili fidais and killed an Alid ruler of Daylaman. He was at last arrested and killed by Ardashir in 586/1190.
The hostile Sunni rulers had maintained the tradition of occasionally massacring the Ismailis. It is reported, for instance, according to Ibn Athir that a bulk of people accused of Ismailism were killed in lower Iraq in the year 600/1204.
Succession
Nūr ad-Dīn Muḥammad II was born in Alamut Castle. When he ascended to leadership of Alamūt, he immediately avenged his father's death by executing his father's killer, Hasan ibn Namawar and the latter's relatives upon succeeding his father at nineteen years old. This act put to rest all of the remaining members of the Buyids.Doctrinal development and elaboration
Muhammad II is known to have been a prolific writer, and he developed and elaborated on his father's doctrine of the Qiyāma. He explicitly confirmed that his father had been in fact a Nizārī Ismā'īlī Imām, and that he himself was an Imām as well. Whereas the founder of the Qiyāma doctrine Hassan Ala Dhikrihi's-Salam is believed to have only claimed to have been an Imām in hāqiqā and in the batin, not claiming to be the zahir Imām actually descended from Ali and the Nizārī Ismā'īlī Imāms. Nūr ad-Dīn Muḥammad II claimed an alternate genealogy for his father and himself which denied descent from Muhammad b. Buzurg-Ummid, who was only an apparent father, but rather insisted that his father was "the son of a descendant of Nizar who had secretly found refuge in a village near Alamūt." The Nizārī Ismā'īlīs accepted the line of Imāms starting with Hassan Ala Dhikrihi's-Salam and understood them as having come out in the open once again after seventy years. One of the most important things that Qiyāma meant on a practical level was the nullification of Islamic law, since the batin had been unveiled by the Nizārī Ismā'īlī Imāms, and the true "meanings hidden behind" the law had become manifest. The early chroniclers of this period cite this overturning of the law as the main reason that the Nizārī Ismā'īlīs were further condemned and considered malāhīda, a condemnatory term that could mean heretic or non-believer, for instance.It is claimed that Nūr ad-Dīn Muḥammad II insisted that the Ismaili believers could see Allah in the Imām. In other words, "the present Imām became the manifestation of the divine word or order to create, that is to say the cause of the spiritual world" and the Ismailis, through viewing the universe through the Imām, could in fact reach "a third level of being", seeing the batin of the batin, or the haqiqa, "a realm of spiritual life and awareness". Moreover, the Imām became known as identical to Ali, with every believer being associated in the spiritual relationship as roughly equivalent to Salman the Persian. Thus, he took Ismaili doctrine to a more esoteric place by expanding on the doctrines of his father Hassan Ala Dhikrihi's-Salam. It is tough to definitively distinguish what Hassan Ala Dhikrihi's-Salam proclaimed compared to his son Nūr ad-Dīn Muḥammad II because the latter only began to rule a year and a half after he Festival of Qiyāma, and we do not have a source about this from Hassan Ala Dhikrihi's-Salam with which to compare the words of Nūr ad-Dīn Muḥammad II.