Grief and loss in Shiʿi thought: Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī’s (d. 965/1558) Musakkin al-fuʾād

Abstract

ABSTRACT Within scholarship on Islamic ethics, writings on consolation (taʿāzī) are a largely neglected genre. This article is a start on making good this scarcity in the secondary literature. It studies Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī’s (d. 965/1558) Musakkin al-fuʾād, a treatise on the grief over the loss of a child and consolations for it. Al-ʿĀmilī’s contribution to the genre presents a Shiʿi view, inflected by a Muʿtazilī understanding of divine justice and theodicy. According to this view, divine recompense (ʿiwaḍ) is offered to the bereaved on the condition of patient resignation with appreciation of the loss in relation to the ordeal and death suffered by the fourteen ‘Infallibles’ (al-maʿṣūmīn). Al-ʿĀmilī’s disparaging outlook on the world (al-dunyā) encourages abandonment of its material attachments through ideal modes of patience (al-ṣabr) and contentment (al-riḍāʾ). Musakkin al-fuʾād imagines a system of reward and loss, calibrated to the lessons of sacred texts. I examine al-ʿĀmilī’s use of these sources, including prophetic narratives, parables, and traditions (aḥādīth), to explore their implications for an idealized expression of Muslim mourning. From these examples, the personal becomes universal, generating moral criteria for an attitude to life, and necessitating appropriately modified responses to death.