© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi �0.��63/�9585705-� �34�3�� Studia Islamica ��0 ( �0 �5) �-80 brill.com/si An Early Shīʿi Cosmology Kitāb al-ashbāḥ wa l-aẓilla and its Milieu Mushegh Asatryan Introduction One of the chief theological controversies in the Shīʿi community of Iraq in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries revolved around the nature of the Imams. Part of their followers viewed them as knowledgeable leaders of the community, while another attributed to them divine characteristics, viewing them at times as God’s appointees charged with the mission to regulate the affairs of the world, and at times as God’s incarnations on earth.1 By the out- siders, these ardent followers of the Imams were called with the Arabic term ghulāt (pl. of ghālin) i.e. “extremist,” for their “extreme” devotion to the Imams. *  I researched and wrote most of this article while working at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in 2013; I would like to thank my colleagues at the Institute for their help and support throughout this process. In particular, I am grateful to Shah Hussein for providing me with manuscripts and printed materials from the Institute’s library, and Asma Hilali for her help with several difficult passages. My friend Hussein Abdulsater went through the arduous process of carefully reading the entire critical edition, and I am grateful to him for suggesting numerous valuable readings and insights. 1  On this controversy, see Hossein Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shiʿite Islam, Princeton, Darwin Press, 1993, pp. 19-51; William F. Tucker, Mahdis and Millenarians: Shīʿite Extremists in Early Muslim Iraq, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008; Marshall Hodgson, “How Did the Early Shîʿa Become Sectarian?” Journal of the American Oriental Society 75.1 (1955), pp. 4-10; id.; “Ghulat,” EI 2, vol. 2, p. 1093; Mushegh Asatryan, “Kitāb al-aẓilla, Nuṣayrī Literature, and the Transmission of Texts from Iraq to Syria in the Tenth Century,” in Texts in Transit in the pre-Modern Eastern Mediterranean, eds. Tzvi Langermann and Robert Morrison (forthcoming); on the views of the “moderate” camp of Shīʿis, who considered the Imams as mere humans, see Tamima Bayhom-Daou, “The Imam’s Knowledge and the Quran according to al-Faḍl b. Shādhān al-Nisābūrī (d. 260 AH/854 AD),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 64.2 (2001), pp. 188-207; for an analysis of the idea of the Imams’ divinity among early Shīʿis, see Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Remarques sur la divinité de l’imam,” in La religion discrète: croyances et pratiques spirituelles dans lʾislam shiʾite, Paris, Vrin, 2006, pp. 89-108; translated into English as “Some Remarks on the Divinity of the Imam,” in The Spirituality of Shiʿi Islam London, New York, I. B. Tauris, 2011, pp. 103-32.