CEMALEDDİN GAZNEVÎ’S APPROACHES OF IMAMETE AND PROPHETY

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Abstract

In the History of Islamic Sects, the issue of prophethood and imamate has been among the discussed topics from the early period until today. It seems that these discussions are mostly between Ahl al-Sunnah and Shia. As a matter of fact, according to Ahl al-Sunnah, while the issue of prophethood is considered one of the basic principles of the Islamic creed, imamate is a human phenomenon created for Muslims to fulfill their religious and worldly duties comfortably. Shia, on the other hand, saw imamate as a continuation of prophethood and considered it one of the basic principles of religion, such as the concepts of monotheism, prophethood and afterlife.For this reason, they accepted the imamate as a continuation of prophethood. While scholars belonging to other theological formations other than Shia, especially Ahl al-Sunnah, accept prophethood as one of the basic codes of faith, they see the concept of imamate as a fiqh and social phenomenon. One of these scholars is Cemaleddin Gaznevi. In this research, we investigated Ghaznavi's views on the concepts of prophethood and imamate. As a result, we determined that, according to Ghaznavi, prophethood is a divine duty and imamate is a human and social phenomenon.