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TANĀSOḴ. The term tanāsoḵ (metempsychosis) refers to the idea of
transmigration of souls in Islam. This idea, although not part of mainstream Muslim
beliefs, has been held by numerous “heterodox” Muslim groups for centuries. The
Islamic belief in metempsychosis has precedents, and was possibly influenced by the
5 beliefs of pre-Islamic Arabs, the Manicheans, and the Mazdakites, as well as other
religious currents that existed in the Middle East prior to the emergence of Islam
(Asatryan and Burns, pp. 74-75; Jackson, pp. 253-55; Crone, pp. 233-52, 303-10;
Hoheisel; Foltz, p. 14 [Q. 1: Foltz is not mentioned in Bibliography!]).
One of the earliest and richest attestations of this belief is found among the so-
10 called “extremist” Shiʿites (ḡolāt, q.v.), who lived in the 8th-10th/13th-15th centuries in
Iraq, and among their contemporaries, the Ḵorramis (q.v.) of Iraq and Iran, who
professed beliefs similar to those of the ḡolāt. One of the earliest ḡolāt groups to profess
transmigration of souls were the Moḡiriya, the followers of Moḡira b. Saʿid (d. 119/737),
followed slightly later by the Moʿammariya, a splinter group of the Ḵaṭṭabiya movement
15 (q.v.; Nawbaḵti, p. 55; Baḡdādi, p. 248; Ašʿari, p. 11; Malaṭi, p. 16; Tucker, 52-70;
Wasserstrom; cf. Rāzi, pp. 308-10). The followers of ʿAbd-Allāh b. Moʿāwia (q.v.), who
rebelled in Iran in 127/744, taught that the souls of the god-fearing were continuously
reborn into better forms until they became angels and assumed luminous bodies; those
who disobeyed, on the other hand, would be reborn into the bodies of dogs, pigs, and
20 monkeys (Nāšeʾ, p. 38; Nawbaḵti, 35-36; Ašʿari, p. 6; Baḡdadi, p. 246; Crone, pp. 92-95,
233-51; cf. Yarshater, pp. 1010-12).
The ḡolāt and Ḵorramis used the term tanāsoḵ as also denoting the transfer of
God’s spirit through the chain of prophets and Imams into some of their leaders (this
process is also termed ḥolul). Bayāniya, the party of Bayān b. Samʿān Tamimi (d.
25 119/737), another Shiʿi extremist of the late Omayyad period, believed that the divine
spirit transmigrated (tanāsaḵat) through the prophets, the Imams, and Abu Hāšem (Q.
2: Do you mean Abu Hāšem, son of Moḥammad b. Ḥanafiya?) into him, making him
divine (Baḡdādi, pp. 237, 255, 272; Ašʿari, p. 14), and a similar belief is recorded for
Bayān’s near-contemporary ʿAbd-Allāh b. Moʿāwia (Baḡdādi, p. 246; Nāšeʿ, p. 37). In
30 view of the Ḵorramis, God was a light that moved from body to body (Qomi, p. 64; cf.
Malaṭi, p. 19; Crone, pp. 129, 221-32). Despite the opposition from mainstream forms of
Islam, the idea that God manifests in human form survived to the present day and is
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recorded among the teachings of several late medieval and modern Turkish and Iranian
groups, such as the Bektāšiya (q.v.), the Horufis (q.v.), the Ahl-e Ḥaqq (q.v.), and the
35 ʿAlawis (Ocak, pp. 198-99; Kehl-Bodrogi, pp. 140-44; Doja, p. 473; Bashir, p. 80 and
passim).
The belief in metempsychosis persisted in the doctrines of the 3rd/9th and
4th/10th century ḡolāt. Writing at the turn of the 3rd/9th century, Shiʿi heresiographer
Saʿd b. ʿAbd-Allāh Qomi stated that the Moḵammesa (q.v.) ḡolāt believed that sinners
40 were reborn into human and sub-human bodies, while believers went through seven
degrees of spiritual perfection (Qomi, pp. 58-59; Madelung, 1967, p. 38). Well-known
Shiʿi “extremist” Moḥammad b. ʿAli Šalmaḡāni (d. 322/934), who claimed the position of
the Hidden Imam’s legatee (safir), believed that truth is one while its shirts (qomoṣ, sg.
qamiṣ) are different (Ṭusi, 1965, p. 251). In the context of ḡolāt terminology, no doubt
45 this refers to the incarnation of the divine spirit, or human soul, in different bodies,
which in ḡolāt texts are often called “shirts.”
From among the few surviving original ḡolāt texts, the richest documentation of
ideas about tanāsoḵ is found in the Ketāb al-haft and the Ketāb al-ṣerāṭ (for more
examples of texts, see Asatryan, pp. 149-54). Ketāb al-ṣerāṭ, a pseudo-epigraphic work
50 attributed to Imam Jaʿfar Ṣādeq’s companion Mofażżal Joʿfi, written between late 8th
and early 9th centuries (MOFAŻŻAL al-JOʿFI), presents the notion of the transmigration
of souls as part of the larger discussion of man’s place in the universe (Joʿfi, 2004, pp. 97,
99, 129, and passim). Humanity is an intermediate position between the higher
luminous (ʿolwi nurāni) world that consists of a path (ṣerāṭ) of seven consecutive
55 degrees, and between the lower (sofli) world of animals, plants, and inanimate beings.
Good deeds and effort move one up that path and closer to God, while unbelief and the
rejection of His call result in continuous rebirth into human or subhuman forms. Souls
that do not merit ascent into higher realms become reborn in material form, including
human, animal, plant, and mineral. Like the degrees of the upper world, the different
60 types of transformations are arranged in a hierarchical order. The lightest of
punishments in its suffering is rebirth into other human bodies called nasūḵiya and
nasḵ, derivatives of the same Arabic root as tanāsoḵ. It is followed by others, leading to
lower degrees of existence, such as animals (masḵ, masūḵiya), plants, and minerals
(rasḵ).
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65 The Ketāb al-haft, also attributed to Mofażżal, is a composite work of many
textual layers, dating anywhere from the 8th to the 11th centuries (Asatryan, pp. 13-
42). It further elaborates the notion of transmigration, introducing the idea that
transmigration can occur across the sexes. The discussion here is based on the two
premises that, first, “women are inferior to men” and, second, that believers only
70 become transformed into “shapes that are better, and move to stations that are higher,”
while unbelievers only descend into lower forms. Following this logic, a believing man
cannot be transformed into a woman, but a believing woman does indeed become a man
in her path to perfection, never to return into female body again. Unbeliever men then
may become reborn into women on their downward path, whereas unbelieving women,
75 unable to ascend, never become men. The Ketāb al-haft then moves on from
transgendered humans to animals. Here, however, the logic is different. Whereas in
humans, male is better than female, in animals, edible is better than inedible. Hence, the
edible animals become reborn into the opposite sex of the same species to preserve this
superior quality of theirs, whereas the inedible ones become reborn into the same sex of
80 increasingly lower forms. Eventually, this second type becomes degraded to a degree
where other animals dread and hate it more than even the believers and unbelievers
hate each other, ending up as fire-breathing sea monsters (Joʿfi, 2007, pp. 147, 149, 151-
52; cf. Omm al-ketāb, p. 23).
The notion that human souls could be reborn into non-human bodies was rather
85 common among early Muslims (Cook, 1986, p. 231; Idem, 1999, pp. 51-57;
Lichtenstadter, p. 175). The Qur’an contains several verses which explicitly speak of
rebirth into non-human species (2:65; 5:60; 7:166), and the interpretations given by
commentators, together with a number of Hadith, reveal that the belief was accepted in
various Islamic circles from the earliest Islamic centuries onwards (ʿAyyāši, I, p. 64;
90 Ṭusi, 1988, VIII, p. 473; Kolayni, I, p. 350 [Not included in Bibliography]; Ebn Bābawayh,
III, pp, 213, 218; Moslem, II, p. 70). However, while most of these accounts contain
stories about some well-known individuals who were transformed into a limited
number of animals and objects (e.g., lizards, geckos, pigs, monkeys, etc.), the early ḡolāt
held that virtually everyone can be transformed into a lower being as a punishment
95 from God.
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Despite its popularity among early Shiʿi groups, the belief in reincarnation
remained outside the pale of Twelver Shiʿism. Among the Imami thinkers who
inveighed against it was, 10th-century heresiographer and theologian Ḥasan b. Musā
Nawbaḵti (q.v.), who wrote an entire treatise, now lost, titled Radd ʿalā aṣḥāb al-tanāsoḵ
100 (Ebn al-Nadim, p. 225, tr., p. 441). A century later, Imami theologian Shaikh Mofid (d.
1022) strongly opposed the same idea in some of his writings (McDermott, pp. 362-65;
Walker, 1991, 229-30).
Reminiscent of the ḡolāt teachings on metempsychosis were the ideas of several
9th-century Moʿtazeli thinkers. Aḥmad b. Ḵābeṭ and Fażl Ḥadaṯi held that human souls,
105 possessed of intellect and God’s knowledge, initially dwelt in a blessed abode enjoying
God’s bounty. Upon receiving His commands, some of them obeyed completely and
stayed in the blessed place, while some completely disobeyed and were thrown into
Hell. Those who partly obeyed and partly disobeyed were cast into the material world,
donning material bodies, described as “solid molds” (qawāleb kaṯifa). Depending on the
110 degree of one’s disobedience, the bodies he assumed, animal and human alike, would be
“fairer” (aḥsan) or “uglier” (aqbaḥ). The person was then continuously reborn into
these forms, once again, depending on the degree of his obedience, until the sum total of
his obedience or disobedience would land him, respectively, back in the blessed abode
or in Hell. Aḥmad b. Mānuš, contemporary of Aḥmad Ḵābeṭ and Fażl Ḥadaṯi, presented a
115 similar picture, adding that one’s obedience could eventually elevate him to the degree
of prophets or angels (Baḡdādi, pp. 274-76; Šahrastāni, pp. 54-55; Ebn Ḥazm, pp. 33-34
[Not included in Bibliography]; van Ess, I, pp. 430-36, 441-44; Freitag, pp. 113-27;
Walker, 1991, pp. 226-27).
The Noṣayris (q.v.), heirs to much of the literary lore of the ḡolāt in Syria (Ḥasan
120 b. Šoʿba Harrāni, p. 12; Halm, p. 255; Asatryan, pp. 123-35), inherited the full gamut of
ḡolāt ideas about reincarnation. Noṣayri literature contains numerous descriptions of
all types of rebirth, which are very similar to the teachings of the “extremists”
(Moḥammad b. Noṣayr, 2006a, pp. 186; idem, 2006b, p. 213). A detailed account of
various types of rebirth is found in 10th-century author Ḥosayn b. Ḥamdān Ḵaṣibi’s
125 mystical treatise Resāla rāstbāšiya. Calling them collectively tanāsoḵ, Ḵaṣibi (q.v.)
classifies the types of metempsychosis according to the body into which the souls of
sinners are reborn, including, much like in the Ketāb al-ṣerāṭ, human and animals
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bodies, plants, minerals, etc. (Ḵaṣibi, pp. 60-65). A “scientific” explanation, backed by
Qurʾanic quotations, is presented by Noṣayri author ʿAli b. Ḥamza Ḥarrāni, who possibly
130 lived in the late 10th to early 11th centuries (ʿAli b. Ḥamza Ḥarrāni, pp. 265, 268-69;
Friedman, p. 266 [Not included in Bibliography]). Noṣayri ideas about reincarnation
have persisted for centuries and have most recently been attested in the exposition of
Noṣayri religion by 19th-century apostate from Noṣayrism Solaymān Aḏani (Aḏani, pp.
6, 61; Tendler, p. 199).
135 Among the Ismāʿilis (q.v.), traces of tanāsoḵ are found in the doctrine of famous
10th-century dāʿi from Iran, Abu Yaʿqub Sejestāni (q.v.). Although explicitly refuting
that souls can transmigrate across different species, he does not deny the possibility of
tanāsoḵ within one. This, together with the allegations of other authors, makes Abu
Yaʿqub’s belief in the latter type of reincarnation quite plausible (Madelung, 1990;
140 Landolt, II, p. 77; cf. Walker, 1993, pp. 98-99).
In Syria, the Nezāri Ismaʿilis came into contact with the Noṣayris, from whom
they possibly borrowed elements of their teaching about metempsychosis. Nezārī chief
dāʿi, Rāšed-al-Din Senān (d. 1193), for example, is said to have believed that some
animals are reincarnated humans (Abu Ferās Maynaqi, pp. 482-84; Dussaud, p. 66;
145 Besterman, pp. 137-38). More than a century later, Šehāb al-Dīn ʿOmari reports that
Nezāri ideas about tanāsoḵ entailed the belief that human souls are trapped in bodies
and are charged with the obedience of an imam. If they leave the body in obedience,
they move toward “higher lights” (al-anwār al-ʿolwia), whereas if they leave in
disobedience, they plunge into “lower darknesses” (al-ẓolomāt al-soflia; ʿOmari, pp. 77-
150 78; Qalqašandi, pp. 237-38; Daftary, pp. 371-72).
Among the Druze, the belief in reincarnation has been an integral part of their
doctrine from the founding of their religion up to this day. The Druze religion emerged
in Fāṭemid Egypt in the early decades of the 11th century around the figure of Fāṭemid
caliph Ḥākem be-Amr Allāh (r. 996-1021), who claimed divinity in the final years of his
155 rule. The religion spread into the Levant, where most of its followers nowadays live
(Firro, 3; Betts, p. …? [Q. 3: Please add page reference!]). The Druze developed a
Neoplatonic theology similar to the Ismaʿili one, with a reincarnationist teaching of their
own. Human souls, according to their religious writings, were created at once from the
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light of the Universal Intelligence (ʿaql kolli) and have a fixed number (de Sacy, II, p. 411;
160 Firro, p. 11). Whenever a person dies, his soul immediately travels into the body of a
newborn. Human souls pass through a number of such reincarnations (called qamiṣ,
“shirt,” as among the ḡolāt), the souls of believers reborn as believers, and those of
unbelievers reborn as infidels (de Sacy, II, p. 411). The chain of reincarnations
ultimately leads the soul toward greater perfection, to the knowledge of God, and to
165 unity with Him, whereby the chain of rebirths ceases (de Sacy, II, pp. 444-45; Resāla
dāmeḡa, p. 278; Freitag, p. 139; cf. Firro, p. 12). The notion that souls are reborn
immediately upon leaving the deceased body had to be reconciled with the reality of
changing demographics, and a curious theological solution has been offered. A 19th-
century account states that the Druze believe that there will be another community of
170 their coreligionists in China. When the death toll among them supersedes the number
of newborns, the excess souls, they said, are reborn into Chinese Druze (Freitag, p. 140;
Hitti, p. 82; Besterman, p. 148). Ideas about reincarnation among the Druze have not
always been uniform and have changed depending upon historical circumstances. Thus,
rebirth into non-human forms as a punishment for misdeeds has been vehemently
175 rejected in an anti-Noṣayri epistle attributed to one of the founders of the religion,
Ḥamza b. ʿAlī (d. after 1021), and called Resāla dāmeḡa le’l-fāseq (pp. 277-78; cf. Bar-
Asher and Kofsky, pp. 160-61). This type of rebirth, which the author calls with the
term tanāsoḵ, would undermine God’s wisdom and justice, as it would hamper an
individual’s ability to learn and repent, since the sub-human forms into which his soul
180 would be entrapped possess no intellect. The refutation of this particular Noṣayri
doctrine is part of a larger attack that the epistle’s author levels against the Noṣayris,
probably in response to tensions between the two communities (cf. Friedman, pp. 43-
44). A later Druze catechism, on the other hand, does state that the souls of unbelievers
and apostates are reborn as dogs and swine (Hitti, p. 80). Belief in reincarnation is still
185 widely held among the Druze, serving as a mechanism of communal cohesion and a
marker of identity (Bennett, pp. 87 ff.).
The idea of metempsychosis was accepted by several representatives of the
Illuminationist philosophy (see ILLUMINATIONISM). Šehāb al-Din Yaḥyā Sohravardi (d.
587/1191) never openly committed to the idea, at times rejecting it and at times
190 supporting it tacitly, which becomes apparent in his discussion of the views of earlier
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thinkers who taught the reincarnation of souls (Schmidtke, p. 242; cf. Smith, p. 354).
On the other hand, a representative of his school, Šams-al-Din Moḥammad Šahrazuri,
openly accepted the idea, stating that, upon death, the souls perfect in happiness and
those intermediate in happiness escape their material bodies, while the perfect in
195 misery transmigrate into bodies of animals in order to become purified. Emāmi author
Ebn Abi Jomhur Aḥṣāʾi (q.v.; d. after 1499), finally, also taught that imperfect souls
transmigrate into animals that correspond to the degree of their imperfection. As their
purification progresses, they become reborn into nobler animals, eventually to become
elevated to the lower levels of Paradise (Schimdtke, pp. 244-51; Freitag, pp. 188-94).
200 Among late-medieval Iranian religious groups, the Noqṭawis were known for
believing in reincarnation. Founded by Maḥmud Pasiḵāni (d. 1427), the Noqṭawi
movement acquired a large following in Iran and became influential to the extent that,
in the end of the 16th century, Safavid king Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1588-1629; q.v.), trying to
exterminate them, massacred many and drove others to Mughal India (Babayan, pp. 3-
205 6). The Noqtawis developed a mystical theology and cosmology based on the symbolism
of the point (noqṭa), whence their name and a cyclical view of history (Amanat, pp. 285-
90). Human souls, they taught, could be reborn and preserve the memory of their past
experiences (Babayan, pp. 107-08; Kiā, p. 48). Echoing the teachings of earlier Islamic
groups, some Noqtawi authors imagined rebirth as the shedding of old garments and
210 the donning of new ones (Qarāgozlu, p. 189).
The Ahl-e Ḥaqq (q.v.), a religious group, which populates Western Iran and parts
of Iraq to this day, have developed their own views on metempsychosis, while retaining
elements from the beliefs of earlier Islamic currents. Apart from God’s sevenfold
manifestation in human form throughout history, the cornerstone of their belief, they
215 hold that human souls also reincarnate in successive bodies, which are compared to
garments called dun or jāme (Ḥājj Neʿmat-Allāh, p. …? [Q. 4: Please add page
reference!]). Šāhn-āma-ye ḥaqiqat, one of their religious texts written in Persian by Ḥājj
Neʿmat-Allāh Jayḥunābādi (d. 1920), presents the following picture of rebirth: Each soul
passes through a series of 1001 reincarnations, and, depending on the degree of the
220 person’s righteousness, the body into which a person reincarnates will feel pain or
pleasure. Each new rebirth cancels a past sin, until a soul is eventually reborn as a child
“without suffering” (bedun-e ʿaḏāb). After the last rebirth, the soul is judged and its sins
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weighed against its good deeds to determine its final destination (Neʿmat Allāh, pp. 177-
82; cf. Taḏkera-ye aʿlā, pp. 122-23, 168; Freitag, 236-37). After all the people have
225 completed the cycle of 1001 rebirths, God creates another group to undergo the same
trial (Freitag, p. 236). Following a well-known motif, other texts present punishment as
rebirth into sub-human forms and reward as ascent along the spiritual hierarchy
(Minorsky, p. 251; Ḏayl-e Taḏkera-ye aʿlā, p. 168).
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395 (Mushegh Asatryan)
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