Historiographic Components of Muhammad Ibn Ishāq Hamawi in Anis al-Mu'minin

Anīs al-Mu’menīn is the Name of an old, little-known book by Mohammad ibn Ishaq Hamawi (938 AH), who is known as "Fażluddīn Abharī". This book is one of the prominent examples of Imams' biographies in the early Safavid period, in which the author appeared as a competent historian-theologian and wrote the Imams' life history according to his needs of time. Therefore, the present article tried to understand the components of Fażluddīn's historiography by reading the text of Anīs al-Mu’menīn with a descriptive-analytical method. The question was whether there was a connection between the way of his historiography in the book of Anīs al-Mu’menīn with the political and cultural conditions of the time when the text was written. The results of this analysis showed that the text of Anīs al-Mu’menīn focused on the three components of establishing legitimacy of the Imamate of the Imams (AS) by focusing on proving the legitimacy of Imam Ali's (AS) succession, secularization of Sunnis by marginalizing the caliphs, especially the first three caliphs, and alienation of the Sufists based on the marginalization of Abu Muslim and its narrators. These components were strongly influenced by the events of Hamavi's era, such as the religious unification policy of the Safavids, the need for the Iranian society to recognize the virtues and callings of Imams (AS), the disagreement between Shia and Sunni discourse, and the competition between Shia scholars and jurists with Sufis Qezelbash or in other words, the confrontation between Feqahati Shia and popular or Sufi Shia in the first half of the 10th century of Hijri.