al-ḥudūd

al-ḥudūd, in the Druze religion, five cosmic principles that are emanations from God, the One. Al-Ḥākim, the 11th-century Fāṭimid caliph of Egypt deified by the Druzes, stands at the centre of the universe as the embodiment of the One. Ḥamzah ibn ʿAlī, a contemporary of al-Ḥākim, systematized the Druze religion and presented himself as the direct human link to the One; he then established a hierarchy of universal principles, or al-ḥudūd, that would span the distance between the One and the mass of Druze believers.

Each principle had a human counterpart from among al-Ḥākim’s contemporaries. Ḥamzah himself became the first principle, or ḥadd, Universal Intelligence (al-ʿAql); al-ʿAql generated the Universal Soul (an-Nafs), embodied in Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad at-Tamīmī. The Word (al-Kalimah) emanates from an-Nafs and is manifest in the person of Muḥammad ibn Wahb al-Qurashī. The fourth successive principle is the Preceder (as-Sābiq, or Right Wing [al-Janāḥ al-Ayman]), embodied in Salāmah ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as-Sāmirrī; and the fifth is the Succeeder (at-Tālī, or Left Wing [al-Janāḥ al-Aysar]), personified by al-Muqtanā Bahāʾ ad-Dīn. Each of these principles, the true ḥudūd, also had false counterparts, in turn embodied by various contemporaries of al-Ḥākim. The tension between the two sets of ḥudūd represented the conflict of good and evil in the world, to be resolved by al-Ḥākim’s eventual support of the true ḥudūd. See also Ḥākim, al-.