ÚL﷓E ¿ABAÚ, “The Family of the Cloak,” i

AÚL-E ¿ABAÚ, “The Family of the Cloak,” i.e., the Prophet Moháammad, his daughter Fa@táema, his cousin and son-in-law ¿Al^, and his grandsons H®asan and H®osayn. The designation is generally held to derive from an incident recorded in both Sunni and Shi¿ite books of Tradition: Wearing a striped cloak of black camelhair, the Prophet went out one day and encountered first H®asan, then H®osayn, then Fa@táema, and finally ¿Al^. He took each in turn under his cloak, and when all were gathered beneath it, the Koranic verse 33:33 was revealed to him: “God wishes only to remove taint from you, people of the Household, and to make you utterly pure” (see, for example, Sáahá^há Moslem, English tr. by A. H. Siddiqui, Lahore, 1975, IV, pp. 1293-94). The context in which this fragment of revelation was placed relates in general to the wives of the Prophet, but Shi¿ite commentators are unanimous in taking the incident of the cloak as proof that the expression, “People of the Household,” includes only ¿Al^, Fa@táema, and their descendants (see S. M. H®. T®aba@táaba@÷^, al-M^za@n f^ tafs^r al-Qor÷a@n, Beirut, 1393/1973, XVI, p. 311). Sometimes the designation, “the Family of the Cloak,” is also connected with the moba@hala, the occasion on which the Prophet challenged a delegation of Christians from Naèra@n to invoke God's curses on whichever of the two parties present—Muslim and Christian—erred in its doctrine concerning Jesus (Koran 3:61), for then, too, the Prophet was accompanied by ¿Al^, Fa@táema, H®asan and H®osayn (see L. Massignon, La Mubahala de Me‚dine et l'hyperdulie de Fatima, Paris, 1935; idem, “Muba@hala,” EI¹, supplement, p. 150). The incident of the cloak later came to serve as archetype for initiatic investiture with a cloak in Sufism. According to S. H. Nasr (Sufi Essays, London, 1972, p. 109), it signified “the transmission of universal wala@yah [sainthood] of the Prophet in the form of the partial wala@yah to Fa@táimah.”

Finally, the following Hadith recorded by T®abara@n^ may be noted: “I, ¿Al^, Fa@táema, H®asan, and H®osayn will be gathered in a single dome close to the divine throne” (quoted in Mosátáafa@ Kama@l-al-d^n Bakr^, al-Sáalawa@t al-ha@me¿a, ed. A. Fikri Yavuz, Istanbul, 1967, p. 290). In the light of this Hadith, the incident of the cloak may be seen as a terrestrial anticipation of the gathering beneath the dome.