The Islamic and Babi background of the خطبة Khuṭba
Stephen N. Lambden (UC-Merced)
Theخطبة khutba can be an Islamic literary form as well as an important Islamic oration or sermonic prsentation which is often delivered weekly in an Islamic mosque centered context. In is central within both Shi`ism and the Bābī religion often indicating an Arabic literary `oration' which is more than just a sermonic, homiletic type discourse. It can be and often is a weighty composition of theological magnitude.
Among the important Shi`i Khuṭbas known to the Bab and influential upon his early claims is the doctrinally weighty Khuṭbat al-ṭutunjiyya (Sermon of the Gulf). This quasi-ghuluww ("extremist") sermon is believed to have been delivered between Kufa and Medina by the first Imam `Alī b. Abi Ṭālib (d. 40/66)(Rajab al-Bursī, Mashāriq , 166). It commences as follows:
الحمد لله الذى فتق الاجواء وخرق الهواء وعلق الارجاء
واضاء الضياء واحيى الموتى وامات الاحياء
Praise be to God! Who hath cleft the firmaments asunder (cf. Q 21:30), split up the atmosphere, suspended the margins of the heavens (Q. 69:17), caused the solar luminary [sun] (ḍiyā') to shine forth, quickened the dead and made the living to die....
These opening lines of the Khuṭbat al-ṭutunjiyya (Sermon of the Gulf) echo portions of the first khuṭbah of `Ali in the Nahj al-Balagha (Path of Eloquence) compiled in about 400/1009-10 by Sharīf al-Radī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mūsawī (d.406/1015) and are similar to those of the خطبة الجدة Khuṭba jiddah of the Bāb where we read:
