“Smash His Head with a Rock”: Imāmic Excommunications and the Production of Deviance in Late Ninth-Century Imāmī Shīʿism

ABSTRACT In this article, I study how Imāmī imams ʿAlī al-Hādī (d. 868 CE) and al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (d. 874 CE) attempted to police boundaries. While their excommunications have hitherto been treated through the lens of doctrinal discipline, I argue that we should not situate doctrine within practice. Religious leaders like the Imams used the politics of boundaries in order to meet challenges to their authority. By studying acts of excommunication we get a more precise sense of where the practical power of the imams lay: their ability to mobilise figures of localised authority in the far-flung communities that recognised the imamate. Such mediatory figures were needed to gain assent for imamic commands within their networks. Conversely, local actors were also constantly constructing their own sense of deviance autonomously. This could conflict with imamic commands, or could be confirmed by an imamic imprimatur. The construction of deviance was a multi-polar process.