Ibn al-Tiqtaqa's end of history: the just ruler according to an Imami Shiite after the fall of Baghdad

The work of Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqa, al-Fakhrī fī’l-ādāb al-sulṭāniyya wa’l-duwal al-islāmiyya, written in 1302 for the ruler of Mosul, seems to be a paradox: how can a Shiite – that is to say an adherent of a doctrine that, apparently more than others in Islam, founded itself on a connection between theology and politics – authored a political guide for the rulers of the time focused on the moral virtues of the Sunni rulers of the past, just starting from those caliphs who suppressed the accomplishment of the Shiite expectation of a just ruler? Actually, Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqa is more concerned about siyāsa and mulk than sharī‘a, and in his narrative focused on the good ruler rather than the just ruler he seems to overcome the classical oppositions established by the current political theories (sharīa‘a/siyāsa, khilāfa/salṭana). Probably the response to Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqa enigmatic attitude lies in a positive Shiite reaction to the fact that the ideal state, governed by a charismatic imām, the only legitimate interpreter of the sharī‘a, since centuries is a politically hopeless aim which only a faithful perspective of messianism can still keep alive. If the theological tension which should underpin the ideal state is not possible to realize, Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqa’s unusual political philosophy – who read on one hand al-Māwardī and, on the other, al-Fārābī – recognize mulk and siyāsa as the space where a ruler can make better his own subjects. Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqa shows an understanding of the realities of power and state, especially in the period he lives in, after the fall of the Abbasid rule. Being more concerned about the figure of the ruler than the state as a political institution, he does not develop a political theory like that of Ibn Khaldun – of whom he seems to anticipate the idea of history, or better: political history, as a philosophical meditation on the past. His being shiite probably emerges, between the lines of his history of rule in the Islamic lands from the beginnings up to the last of the Abbasid caliphs, as an untold reflection upon a long history of failures, entirely observed within a shiite perspective which from the very beginning has seen consummed the capital tragedy on which Imamite Shiism has edified its silent dissent.