From Testimony to Martyrdom

The contents of two Arabic lexemes šāhid and šahīd correspond to each other in early Islam. Šahīd means ‘martyr for the faith’ in several āyats of the Qur‘ān. This paper deals with changing the meaning ‘witness’ to ‘confessor, martyr’. At-Ṭabarī’s Tafsīr shows the equalization of šahīd and šāhid. Šahīd is rarely encountered there in meaning ‘martyr’.In al-Bukharī and Muslim’s ḥadīth, the concept of ‘martyr’ begins to acquire a specific topic. The idea of martyrdom gained in combat is being actively introduced. There appears a division of martyrs into categories.Some ḥadīth claimed that martyrs can be considered not only those who were slain in battle for their beliefs, but also pious people who died a violent death or even naturally.The issue of martyrdom was particularly urgent for the Shiʿite tradition, which gradually focused on the aspect of the martyrdom of righteous imāms. However, the early Shiʿite classical tafsīrs paid little attention to it. In the Shiʿite ḥadīth collections of al-Kulīnī and Ibn Bābūya, the idea is formalized that the šuhadāʾ as witnesses and at the same time confessors are imāms. This idea found expression in the eschatological dimension: the imāms witnessed over their community on the Judgment Day. The ḥadīth develops the idea that the ‘confessors’ are the ḥujja (proof of God for people). These texts associate witnesses in the earthly world and intercessors (šufaʿāʾ) in the afterlife. Šuhadāʾ of the ḥadīth often correlate with the ‘righteous’. The idea is emerging that ordinary Shiʿites are also martyrs because of their virtuous lives. The concept of the imām as a witness of God has been developed in further Shiʿite thought

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