Zaydī Theology Popularised: A Hailstorm Hitting the Heterodox

This article examines the apocalyptic interpretation of natural phenomena in Islam, analyzing the religious and political aspects of a story about a hailstorm hitting a village in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula sometime around 1205–1210. According to certain contemporary Zaydī interpretations, through this catastrophe God was directly intervening in order to punish the followers of a sub-branch of Zaydism in Yemen, the so-called Muṭarrifiyya. Whereas the Zaydī imam al-Manṣūr ʿAbdallāh b. Ḥamza and his followers argued that God would repeatedly intervene in the natural world, statements ascribed to the Muṭarrifiyya assert that he would only start the process of creation, with the physical world transforming itself on a continuous basis thereafter. Because the imam and his followers would interpret natural phenomena as signs sent by God, the hailstorm was considered to be a punishment of the village’s inhabitants, the Muṭarrifīs, who subscribed to practising the wrong creed. After having met their resistance, the imam had declared previously the Muṭarrifīs to be unbelievers. In doing so, he used the imagery of the End Times to legitimise his attack and the confiscation of their property. This article analyses in detail the story about the hailstorm, which was written by a secretary of the imam, and connects it to other contemporary texts. It demonstrates how scholarly categories of theology and cosmology were popularised and politicised in order to create communities and hierarchies and to draw boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.