Leader of Ghulat (al-Mughıra b. Saıd)

The most prominent of these ghulat is al-Mughıra b. Saıd. The following paragraphs are taken from: The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines by Farhad Daftary (Page 69)

He seems to have combined a variety of pre-Islamic beliefs of the Near East into his teaching, reflecting particularly the influences of Mandaean and Manichaean gnostic doctrines. Indeed, al-Mughıra, with his emphasis on spiritualism and pronounced dualism, has been credited with being the first Shıı gnostic.

One of the most distinctive features of his teaching was his anthropomorphic description of God. He asserted that God is a man of light with a crown of light on his head, a concept closely resembling the Mandaean doctrine of their deity, referred to as the ‘king of light’.

He further added that God has limbs which correspond to the letters of the Arabic alphabet, and that these letters (huruf ) themselves derived from the Greatest Name of God, spoken at the time of creation. These ideas are clearly reminiscent of the teaching of Marcus the Gnostic, one of the leading exponents of Valentinian Gnosticism, for whom the body of the ‘supreme truth’ (Aletheia) was composed of the letters of the Greek alphabet.

 Al-Mughıra may probably be considered as the first Shıı, or the first Muslim for that matter, who thought about the mystical and symbolic nature of the alphabet and thus anticipated the more elaborate views of the later Ismaılıs. It was possibly also due to al-Mughıra’s ideas, further developed by others, that the extremist Shııs came to attribute certain occult properties to the twenty-eight letters of the Arabic alphabet.

Al-Mughaira is equally noted for his theory of the creation of the world and the first beings. His cosmogony, too, reflects the influence of ancient gnostic systems and, like his anthropomorphism, seems to have been inspired by the allegorical or symbolic interpretation (tawıl) of certain Quranic passages, a method which was to become more distinctively associated with the Ismaılıs.

The fundamental aspect of this cosmogony is its gnostic dualism, characterized by the eternal conflict between light and darkness which, in close affinity with the basic tenet of Manichaeism, symbolize good and evil. In time, al-Mughıra acquired followers of his own in Kufa, from amongst both the Arabs and the mawalı. They became known as the Mughıriyya, representing one of the most important of the ghulat groups. Al-Mughıra imbued his followers with a sense of exclusiveness and devotion to his leadership, which may explain why they were also referred to as the Wusafa, the Servants.