Behind Enemy Lines: An Account of a Secret Conversion to Shiism in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Aleppo

Abstract

This study examines a work by Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿĀmilī (918–984/1512–1576) in which he provides the supposed transcript of a private debate he held with a Ḥanafī jurist in Aleppo in 951/1544–45. In it, Ḥusayn claims to have converted his Sunni acquaintance to Shiite Islam through skilled argument and adduction of proof. It is argued here that he modified what may originally have been a debate on the relative merits of the Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafī legal schools to focus on Sunni-Shiite polemics, including the relative merits of the Jaʿfarī legal school and the status of the Companions of the Prophet. He probably recorded the debate in 961–63/1554–56, shortly after his arrival in Safavid territory, in an attempt to curry favour with and attract the patronage of Shah Tahmasb or other Safavid officials.