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Sacred Time in Shi’a Islam

Shreyas Shivakumar
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Q. What role does sacred time (or “hiero-history”) play in Shi’a worldview? How does sacred time
differ with linear (or “secular” conceptions of) time and how does this impact Shi’a interpretations of
history, justice, and the ideal society? Please provide several examples.

There exists ‘secular’ and theological readings of Islam. One can study Islam from a detached
purely academic perspective. Or one can see Islam from its own Islamic perspective. One
way to enter the secular or religious/theological debate is the idea of time. To illustrate this:
Islam says the first thing God created was Prophet Muhammad. He was the first and last
prophet. According to secular or exoteric time, a human being named Muhammad was born
who lived in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. But from the perspective of sacred or
esoteric time the Prophet or the subsequent Imams are not mere occurrences—they do not
simply arrive at a particular understanding of what exoteric time is. They precede it, and their
appearance constitutes a deeper symbolism meaning that must be interpreted.

Sacred time is an important aspect of the Shi’a worldview/cosmology. In general terms,

sacred time differs from time as it passes in the ordinary world. Linear or ordinary time flows
from one event to the next successive event while sacred time does not move in one and only
one direction. Sacred time in fact does not move one way or the other, it exists outside of
linear time. Another example of sacred time or hiero-history is tied to the Imamate. As it is
known, Imams are heads of the Muslim ummah, a hereditary position largely descended from
the children of Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima. From the outside, the role of Imams is
straightforward—be a physical representative of Muslims. The esoteric meaning of Imamate
is far deeper. To be an Imam, one acts not just as a leader but an example for Muslims as a
whole. The Imam’s thought, word and deed reflects everything a Muslim should and would
emulate, in accordance with the Qur’an. In the best of times, the Imam is Islam embodied in
one person.

A third example of sacred time is through the idea of the Mahdi. After the death of the
eleventh Imam al-Hasan, existing Shi’a groups at that time conflicted and debated on who
would succeed Hasan and lead the Muslim community as the Imam produced no male heir.
According to Halm (28), one Shi’a sect argued that the eleventh Iman did bring forth an heir.
However, the child was intentionally kept hidden by his father to save him (the child) from
the caliph. Most Shi’a believe that to this day, the child, also known as the twelfth Imam,
lives but is hidden somewhere on the earth until time comes for him to take his rightful place
for the ummah. This is the exoteric/outer understanding of the Mahdi. The esoteric meaning
of this example of sacred time, like other ‘end time theories’ present in other religions, is that
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of providing salvation. The Twelfth Imam would arrive with Prophet Jesus at the end times,
ushering in an era of permanent prosperity and bliss. The particularity of the Mahdi in the
Shi’a idea of salvation is the emphasis on leadership; what is crucial here is that by salvation,
the Mahdi also ‘saves’ the community.

Thus, sacred time constitutes an “inner meaning” a believer has to discern with respect to
acute historical events that occur in a religion. For Shi’a Islam, the life of Prophet
Muhammad and prophethood, the line of Imamate and Caliphs, and the Mahdi are some of
these decisive events that generate inner meanings.