The termdār al-hijra (Arabic:دار الهجرة,lit. 'place of exile/refuge/migration') was originally applied toMedina, the city whereMuhammad and his followers sought refuge when exiled fromMecca in 622 (Hijrah). The term was accordingly later adopted by radical Islamic sects, most notably theIsma'ilis, for their strongholds, which were to serve both as bases of operations and as nuclei of 'true' Islamic communities.
The exile, or migration, ofMuhammad and his followers in September 622 fromMecca toMedina was a seminal event in the history ofIslam. This event was namedhijra, originally meaning "the breaking of the ties of kinship or association", and those Meccan supporters who followed Muhammad into exile—as well as those who had earlier goneinto exile in Abyssinia—became known as themuhājirūn, a title that acquired enormous prestige in later years.[1] In theQuran, thehijra is considered as an obligation of all Muslims, notably in the injunction that all Muslims residing in the lands of non-believers (thedār al-ḥarb) and thus unable to practice their religion freely and be liable to commit wrong-doing, should migrate to Islamic lands; else they are to be condemned to hell.[2][3]
As a result, in early Islam, following the rapidMuslim conquests, the newgarrison towns where the Arab Muslims settled were often referred to as the "places of migration" (dār al-hijra). This use did not last long, however. As the historian Alan Verskin remarks, "hijra was a useful concept for a minority community with limited political power that was in the process of establishing itself", while the Muslims held political power and quickly became the dominant group in the lands they had conquered.[4] Consequently, while mostSunni jurists came to accept that the Quranic injunction only applied to the Meccans of Muhammad's time, and consider it to have been abrogated thereafter,[3][5] the term was in turn "seized upon by minority Islamic opposition groups [...] who sought divine justification for their actions", such as theKharijites andZaydi Shi'a.[5] Thus, in the 680s, during the civil war of theSecond Fitna, the Kharijite leaderNafi ibn al-Azraq, "held that only those who actively supported him were genuinely Muslims, and spoke of them asmuhājirūn, who made thehijra to his camp, which wasdār al-hijra" (W. Montgomery Watt).[6]
In the 9th century, the greatZaidi imam and theologianal-Qasim al-Rassi (785–860) considered the Muslim rulers of his time as illegitimate tyrants, and the lands they ruled as "abode of injustice" (dār al-ẓulm). Consequently, according to al-Rassi, it was the duty of every faithful Muslim to emigrate.[7] In the words of the historianWilferd Madelung, "The Quranic duty of hijra, imposed initially on the faithful in order that they should dissociate from thepolytheists, was permanent and now applied to their dissociation from the unjust and oppressors".[7]
The first Isma'ilidār al-hijra was established in 885 by the missionary (dāʿī)Ibn Hawshab inYemen, at the fortress of Bayt Rayb in the Maswar mountains nearSana'a, as a centre of operations for the Isma'ili missionary activity (daʿwa).[8] The historianHeinz Halm described this event thus:
This name recalls the Hijra, the emigration of the Prophet [Muhammad] from pagan Mecca to Medina, and with it the founding of the original Islamic community, which soon began to expand militarily: as the Prophet abandoned the corrupt Mecca and made a new beginning with a few loyal followers in exile, thus the followers of thedaʿwa, the true "believers" or "friends of God", now abandoned the corrupted community of the Muslims, who had become unbelievers, to begin, in thedār al-hijra, the creation of an Islam renewed from its very foundations.
— Heinz Halm,Das Reich des Mahdi, pp. 56–57
The analogy was furthered by giving the name ofmuhājirūn to those who abandoned their homes to join Ibn Hawshab in thedār al-hijra. Likewise, those followers who remained behind were referred by the term "helpers" (anṣār), originally given to the Medinans who were converted to Islam by Muhammad.[9] This model was soon emulated inIraq, where the first Isma'ilidār al-hijra was founded in 890 or 892, at the village of Mahtamabad in thesawād ofKufa,[9][10] and shortly after by thedāʿīAbu Abdallah al-Shi'i inIfriqiya, who established hisdār al-hijra atTazrut,[11][12] and by thedāʿīAbu Sa'id al-Jannabi atal-Ahsa inBahrayn.[13][14] Likewise, during the period whenMultan was the seat of a pro-Fatimid Isma'ili principality, Multan was thede factodār al-hijra for the local Isma'ilis.[15]
The concept continued to be used by the Isma'ilidaʿwa, especially inPersia, where in the 11th century the various Isma'ili cells succeeded in acquiring control over several mountain fortresses (seelist) by exploiting the rivalries of the localSeljuq commanders.[16] After the Persian Isma'ilis broke away from theFatimid Caliphate as a result of theNizari–Musta'li schism of 1095, these scattered fortresses formed the nucleus of an independentNizari Isma'ili state and itsOrder of Assassins.[17]