Ismaili History and Intellectual Traditions 1138288098, 9781138288096

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Ismaili History and Intellectual Traditions

The Ismailis represent an important Shiʿi Muslim community with rich ­intellectual and literary traditions. The complex history of the Ismailis dates back to the second/ eighth century when they separated from other Shiʿi groups under the leadership of their own imams. Soon afterwards, the Ismailis organised a dynamic, revolutionary movement, known as the daʿwa or mission, for uprooting the Sunni regime of the Abbasids and establishing a new Shiʿi caliphate headed by the Ismaili imam. By the end of the third/ninth century, the Ismaili dāʿīs, operating secretly on behalf of the movement, were active in almost every region of the Muslim world, from Central Asia and Persia to Yemen, Egypt and the Maghrib. This book brings together a collection of the best works from Farhad Daftary, one of the foremost authorities in the field. The studies cover a range of specialised topics related to Ismaili history, historiography, institutions, theology, law and philosophy, amongst other intellectual traditions elaborated by the Ismailis. The collation of these invaluable studies into one book will be of great interest to the Ismaili community as well as to anyone studying Islam in general, or Shiʿi Islam in particular. Farhad Daftary is currently Director and Head of the Department of Academic Research and Publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. An authority in Ismaili studies, he has written more than 200 articles and encyclopaedia entries and 20 acclaimed books which have been translated into numerous languages.

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Ismaili History and Intellectual Traditions

Farhad Daftary

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Farhad Daftary The right of Farhad Daftary to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the ­Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Daftary, Farhad, author. Title: Ismaili history and intellectual traditions / Farhad Daftary. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017011572 | ISBN 9781138288096 (hbk) | ISBN 9781138288102 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315268095 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Ismailites. | Shi’ah–History. | Islamic sects–History. | Islamic countries–Intellectual life. Classification: LCC BP195.I8 D3238 2018 | DDC 297.8/2209–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011572 ISBN: 978-1-138-28809-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-28810-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-26809-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Front cover: An 11th/17th-century illustration from a Safavid copy of the Khamsa of Ni āmī Ganjawī (d. 605/1209) showing Hermes, in front of ­Alexander the Great, and the Greek scholars who disagreed with him. Source: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, Ms. W.612, folio 345b. Licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-­NonCommercialShareAlike 3.0. Unported Access Rights

Contents

Acknowledgementsvii Reference abbreviations viii Introduction

1

 1 Shiʿi communities in history

10

  2 The study of the Ismailis: Phases and issues

45

  3 Ismaili history and literary traditions

63

 4 Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn and medieval Ismaili historiography

92

  5 A major schism in the early Ismāʿīlī movement

100

 6 Ismaili daʿwa under the Fatimids

113

  7 The concept of ḥujja in Ismaili thought

127

  8 Cyclical time and sacred history in medieval Ismaili thought

137

 9 ʿAlī in classical Ismaili theology

144

10 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Ismāʿīlī law and Imāmī Shiʿism162

vi  Contents

11 The Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism

170

12 The medieval Ismāʿīlīs of the Iranian lands

181

13 The ‘Order of the Assassins’: J. von Hammer and the orientalist misrepresentations of the Nizari Ismailis

212

14 Ismaili-Seljuq relations: Conflict and stalemate

223

15 Sinān and the Nizārī Ismailis of Syria

238

16 Hidden imams and Mahdis in Ismaili history

248

17 Religious identity, dissimulation and assimilation: The Ismaili experience

265

Index 

281

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following institutions and publishers for their kind permission to reprint the studies collected in this volume: I. B. Tauris, London (for Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 14); G. P. Maisonneuve-Larose, Paris/E. J. Brill, Leiden (5 and 12); Peeters, Leuven (6, 8); Ergon, Würzburg (7); Turkish Historical Society, Ankara (9); Brepols, Turnhout, Belgium (10); Vostochnaya Literatura Publishers, Moscow (11); Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Oxfordshire (13); Edizioni Q, Rome (15); Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago (16); and Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh (17).

Reference abbreviations

The following abbreviations have been used for certain periodicals and encyclopaedias cited in some of the chapters: BSOAS: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. EI2: The Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. H. A. R. Gibb et al. New ed., Leiden, 1960–2005. EIR: Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. E. Yarshater. London and New York, 1982–. JRAS: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Introduction

The Ismailis represent an important Shiʿi Muslim community with rich i­ntellectual and literary traditions. The complex history of the Ismailis dates back to the second/eighth century when they separated from other Shiʿi groups under the leadership of their own imams. Soon afterwards, the Ismailis organised a dynamic, revolutionary movement, known as the daʿwa or mission, for uprooting the Sunni regime of the Abbasids and establishing a new Shiʿi caliphate headed by the Ismaili imam. The religio-political message of the movement was disseminated by dāʿīs, missionaries trained as theologians. By the end of the third/ninth century, the Ismaili dāʿīs, operating secretly on behalf of the movement, were active in almost every region of the Muslim world, from Central Asia and Persia to Yemen, Egypt and the Maghrib. The early success of the Ismaili daʿwa culminated, in 297/909, in the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate headed by the Ismaili imam. This was a great achievement for the Ismailis, who had now come to possess a major state of their own where they could practise their faith openly without any fear of persecution. The Fatimid period also represented the golden age of Ismaili thought and literature. The Ismaili dāʿīs, who were at the same time the scholars of their community, now produced the classical texts of Ismaili literature on a variety of exoteric (z.āhirī) and esoteric (bā.tinī) subjects, especially taʾwīl or esoteric exegesis which became the hallmark of Ismaili thought. The Fatimids also established institutions of learning such as the Dār al-ʿIlm (House of Knowledge) and al-Azhar in Cairo, which also served the daʿwa. Indeed, during the Fatimid period of their history, the Ismailis made significant contributions to Islamic thought and culture. In early Fatimid times, Ismaili law was codified through the efforts of al-Qād. ī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974) and became the law of the land throughout the Fatimid dominions. However, the Ismailis continued to form a minority religious community within the Fatimid state, where the bulk of their subjects adhered to Sunni

2  Introduction

Islam (in Egypt) and the Khārijī interpretations of Islam (in North Africa), with a significant community of Christian Copts (in Egypt). Strangely, the Ismaili daʿwa found its greatest and most lasting success outside Fatimid dominions, in generally hostile regions which were already familiar with different Shiʿi traditions. The daʿwa achieved particular success in Iraq, Persia and Transoxania through the work of a number of highly learned early dāʿīs, such as Muh.ammad b. Ah.mad al-Nasafī (d. 332/943), Abu- a H . ātim Ah.mad al-Rāzī (d. 322/934) and Abu- Yaʿqu-b Ish.āq al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971). Subsequently, other dāʿīs of the Fatimid period, including H . amīd al-Dīn Ah.mad al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 411/1020), al-Muʾayyad fi’lDīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078) and Nās.ir-i Khusraw (d. after 465/1072), contributed significantly to the success of the daʿwa in the Iranian world. It was under such circumstances that the dāʿī H . asan-i s.abbāh. (d. 518/1124) designed his own revolutionary strategy for uprooting the Sunni Saljuqs, the new masters of the Abbasid caliphate. Providing a focus for the dissatisfactions of the Persians of different social classes with the alien rule of the Saljuq Turks, while working in the service of the Ismaili daʿwa, H . asan received much popular support in Persia and succeeded in establishing a territorial state in the midst of the Saljuq Empire. This state, with its network of fortresses and a number of towns in several regions of Persia, and a subsidiary in Syria, struggled for survival against formidable adversaries. H . asan did not attain his primary objective of defeating the Saljuqs, and the latter also failed to dislodge the Ismailis from their fortresses in Persia. In fact, Ismaili-Saljuq relations were soon characterised by stalemate. Meanwhile, in the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism that occurred in 487/1094 in the Ismaili community, upon the death of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustans.ir, H . asan-i s.abbāh. upheld the succession rights of the heir-designate Nizār, who had been set aside by the all-powerful Fatimid vizier in favour of his brother al-Mustaʿlī. By this decision, H . asan had also founded the Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa, independently of the Fatimid regime. The Ismailis of the Iranian world and Syria gave their allegiance to this daʿwa and the line of the Nizārī Ismaili imams who later emerged at the fortress of Alamu-t, the headquarters of the Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa and state. The Nizārī Ismailis, too, developed their teachings and intellectual traditions in response to changing circumstances, while struggling for their survival in hostile milieus. They also extended their patronage of learning to outside scholars, such as Nas.īr al-Dīn al-T. u-sī, who lived in their fortress communities for extended periods. The Nizārī Ismaili state was eventually destroyed by the all-conquering Mongol hordes in 654/1256. Thereafter, those scattered Nizārī Ismailis who had survived the Mongol massacres lived as religious minorities in different regions, observing taqiyya or precautionary dissimulation under a variety of external guises, notably Sufism, to protect themselves against rampant persecutions. In modern times, the Nizārī Ismailis have emerged as a progressive Muslim community with high standards of education and welfare. They also represent the only Muslim community within which women have attained full emancipation. These achievements have been made possible through the enlightened leadership of the modern-day Ismaili imams who are internationally known under their

Introduction  3  

hereditary title of Aga Khan. After leaving Persia, their ancestral home, in 1841, the imams settled in India, where their followers were known as the Khojas. Possessing an indigenous religious tradition designated as the Satpanth, or true path to salvation, the Khojas had also developed a distinctive devotional literature, the ginans. By the early decades of the twentieth century, the Ismaili imam of the time, Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III (1877–1957), a Muslim reformer, had established residences in Europe. He was succeeded in 1957 by his Harvard-educated grandson, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, who has continued and substantially expanded the modernisation policies of his predecessor, also initiating numerous new initiatives and institutions of his own. Indeed, the present imam of the Nizārī Ismailis, the 49th in the series, has created a complex institutional network, known as the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which implements projects in a variety of social, economic, environmental and cultural domains. Meanwhile, the Mustaʿlian Ismailis who recognised the later Fatimids (after alMustans.ir) as their imams had found their permanent stronghold in Yemen. There, they flourished under the initial protection of the s.ulayh.id dynasty. Mustaʿlian Ismailism has survived only in its T.ayyibī form, under the leadership of dāʿīs, because their imams have remained in concealment since 524/1130. The T.ayyibī Ismailis, who are known as Bohras in South Asia, have subdivided into several groups due to periodic disputes over the rightful leadership amongst the dāʿīs. However, all T.ayyibī groups have remained rather traditional in their outlook. The T.ayyibī Ismailis have also preserved a good portion of the Ismaili literature of the Fatimid period in addition to producing a substantial literature of their own. Similarly, the Nizārī Ismailis, especially those of Badakhshān (now divided between Afghanistan and Tajikistan), have preserved the Nizārī texts of the Alamu-t period and later times, all of them written in Persian which was chosen as the religious language of the Persian-speaking Nizārī Ismailis by H . asan-i s.abbāh. himself. Despite their rich literary heritage and varied contributions to Islamic culture, the Ismailis were, until recent times, studied and perceived almost exclusively on the basis of the evidence collected or fabricated by their detractors. This was due to the fact that Ismaili texts were not generally available to outsiders and, more importantly, because the Ismailis had been targeted from early on by a successful defamatory campaign launched by the Abbasid establishment. In the aftermath of the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate, the Abbasids and their Sunni scholars launched what amounted to an official anti-Ismaili propaganda campaign. The overall aim of this campaign was to discredit the entire Ismaili movement from its origins so that the Ismailis could readily be condemned as heretics (malāh. ida) or deviators from the ‘true religious path’. Muslim authors of different disciplines participated variously in this hostile campaign. In particular, Sunni polemicists fabricated the required evidence that would lead to the condemnation of the Ismailis on specific doctrinal grounds. They concocted detailed accounts of the alleged sinister objectives, immoral teachings and libertine (ibāh. ī) practices of the Ismailis, while refuting the ʿAlid genealogy of the Fatimid caliph-imams. By the end of the fourth/tenth century, a ‘black legend’ had been created against the Ismailis, and this fictitious

4  Introduction

account with its elaborate details and stages of initiation, culminating in atheism, was accepted as an accurate description of Ismaili beliefs and practices. As such, its details were used as source materials by Muslim heresiographers, theologians, jurists and anyone else interested in writing about the Ismailis. Such travesties, in turn, led to further anti-Ismaili polemical writings and also intensified the animosity of other Muslims towards the Ismailis. By the end of the fifth/eleventh century, the widespread literary campaign against the Ismailis had been astonishingly successful throughout the central Muslim lands. The revolt of the Persian Ismailis, led initially by H . asan-i s.abbāh., against the Sunni Saljuq Turks called forth another prolonged and vigorous Sunni reaction against the Ismailis in general and the Nizārī Ismailis in particular. The new literary campaign, accompanied by military attacks on the Nizārī strongholds in Persia, was initiated by Niz.ām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), the Saljuq vizier and virtual master of Saljuq dominions for more than two decades. An outspoken enemy of the Ismailis, Niz.ām al-Mulk devoted a long chapter in his Siyāsat-nāma (The Book of Government) to the condemnation of the Ismailis. Soon afterwards, Abu- H . āmid Muh.ammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), the most renowned contemporary Sunni theologian, was commissioned by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustaz.hir (487–512/1094– 1118) to write a major treatise in refutation of the Bāt.inīs, another designation meaning Esotericists coined for the Ismailis by their detractors. In this widely circulating book, commonly known as al-Musta z.hir ī, al-Ghazālī elaborated his own derogatory ideas of a supposed Ismaili system of graded initiation leading to the ultimate stage of atheism. Indeed, the Ismailis continued to be misrepresented by Muslim authors throughout the centuries until modern progress in Ismaili studies. Meanwhile, medieval Europeans had embarked on producing their own fanciful accounts of the Nizārī Ismailis. The Crusaders seized Jerusalem, their primary target, in 492/1099. Subsequently, they founded four principalities in the Middle East and had numerous military and diplomatic encounters with the Fatimids in Egypt and the Nizārī Ismailis in Syria. In particular, the Crusaders had numerous confrontations with the Syrian Nizārīs, dating to the opening decade of the sixth/ twelfth century, which had important consequences in terms of the distorted image of the Nizārīs in Europe. The Syrian Nizārīs attained the peak of their power and fame under Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān, who was their chief dāʿī for three decades until his death in 589/1193. It was in the time of Sinān, the original Old Man of the Mountain of Crusader fame, that occidental chroniclers of the Crusades and certain European travellers and emissaries wrote about the Nizārī Ismailis, who were designated as the Assassins. The Crusaders and their chroniclers remained completely ignorant about Islam as a religion and its internal divisions despite their proximity to Muslims. Nonetheless, medieval Europeans began to fantasise about the secret practices of the Nizārīs, and they were responsible for fabricating and disseminating in the Latin Orient as well as in Europe a number of legends about secret Nizārī practices. The Crusaders had been particularly impressed by the highly exaggerated reports and rumours of the Nizārī assassinations and the daring behaviour of their fidāʾīs, the devotees

Introduction  5  

who carried out these missions in public places. This explains why these legends revolved around the recruitment, training and indoctrination of the fidāʾīs – fictions, which were meant to provide satisfactory explanations for behaviour that would otherwise seem strange to the medieval European mind. These so-called Assassin legends consisted of a number of interrelated tales, including the ‘hashish legend’ and the ‘death-leap legend’. The legends finally culminated in a synthesised version, with its “secret garden of paradise”, that was popularised by Marco Polo (d. 1324). By the early decades of the eighth/fourteenth century, the Assassin legends, rooted in imaginative ignorance, had acquired wide currency and were accepted as reliable descriptions of secret Nizārī Ismaili practices, reminiscent of the manner in which the earlier anti-Ismaili ‘black legend’ of Muslim polemicists had been treated as an accurate explanation of Ismaili teachings. It is important to note that none of the Assassin legends are to be found in contemporary Muslim sources despite their hostility towards the Ismailis. Be that as it may, henceforth, the Nizārī Ismailis were portrayed in medieval European sources as a sinister order of drugged assassins bent on senseless murder and mayhem. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, European knowledge of the Ismailis had not essentially advanced beyond what the Crusaders and other occidental sources had transmitted on the subject. However, the orientalists now began to produce more scholarly works on the basis of Islamic manuscripts that were then available in European libraries. A. I. Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), doyen of the orientalists of the time, produced important studies on the early Ismailis as background materials to his lifelong interest in the Druze religion. He also studied the Nizārī Ismailis, now identified correctly as Shiʿi Muslims. However, relying on hostile Sunni sources and the fanciful accounts of the Crusaders, de Sacy unwittingly endorsed, at least partially, the medieval anti-Ismaili ‘black legend’ of the Sunni polemicists and the Assassin legends of the Crusader circles. Indeed, de Sacy set the stage for the Ismaili studies of the later orientalists. The most widely read amongst such early orientalist studies was a book, published in German in 1818, by the Austrian orientalist-diplomat Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856). This book, translated into French and also into English under the title of The History of the Assassins (London, 1835), for the first time, traced the entire history of the Persian Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamu-t period. Endorsing the Assassin legends, this work achieved great success in Europe and continued to be treated as the standard history of the early Nizārīs until the 1930s. Orientalism had thus given a new lease of life to the myths and misrepresentations surrounding the Ismailis. The long-awaited breakthrough in Ismaili studies resulted from the recovery and study of genuine Ismaili texts on a large scale. These manuscript resources had been preserved in numerous private collections in Yemen, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Central Asia and South Asia. A few Ismaili sources of Syrian provenance had already surfaced in Europe during the nineteenth century, and some fragments of these texts were edited and published. More Ismaili manuscripts preserved in the remote mountain regions of Yemen and Badakhshān in Central Asia

6  Introduction

were ­recovered in the opening decades of the twentieth century, and they were ­subsequently added to the collections of the Ambrosian Library in Milan and the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg. However, by the 1920s, the number of Ismaili titles known to orientalists was still very meagre. Modern scholarship in Ismaili studies was properly initiated in the 1930s in India, where significant collections of Ismaili manuscripts have been preserved in the Ismaili Bohra community, concentrated in Bombay and Gujarat. This resulted mainly from the pioneering efforts of Wladimir Ivanow (1886–1970), the renowned Russian orientalist, and a few Ismaili Bohra scholars, notably Asaf A. A. Fyzee (1899–1981), H . usayn F. al-Hamdānī (1901–1962) and Zāhid ʿAlī (1888–1958), who each based their original studies on their family collections of manuscripts. These pioneers of modern Ismaili studies also collaborated with Ivanow, who settled in Bombay in 1931 and through his own connections with the Nizārī Ismaili community also gained access to Persian Nizārī literature preserved in Central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Consequently, Ivanow compiled the first detailed catalogue of Ismaili works (A Guide to Ismaili Literature, London, 1933), citing some 700 separate titles attesting to the, hitherto unknown, rich and diverse nature of Ismaili literature and intellectual traditions. This catalogue provided for the first time a scientific framework for research in Ismaili studies. Ismaili scholarship received a major boost in 1946 through the establishment of the Ismaili Society in Bombay under the patronage of Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III, the contemporary imam of the Nizārī Ismailis. Ivanow played a key role in the creation of the Ismaili Society, which was also equipped with a major library of Ismaili manuscripts. By 1963, when Ivanow published an expanded edition of his catalogue (Ismaili Literature, Tehran, 1963), many more titles had become known and progress in Ismaili scholarship had become truly astonishing. Meanwhile, by the 1950s, progress in Ismaili studies had enabled Marshall Hodgson (1922–1968), of the University of Chicago, to produce the first scholarly study of the Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamu-t period (The Order of Assassins, The Hague, 1955). Soon others, representing a new generation of scholars, notably Samuel M. Stern (1920–1969) and Wilferd Madelung, produced major studies on the early Ismailis, also shedding light on the origins of Ismailism. Progress in Ismaili studies has proceeded at a rapid pace during the last few decades through the efforts of further generations of scholars, as partly reflected in I. K. Poonawala’s monumental catalogue (Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature, Malibu, CA, 1977), which identifies some 1,300 titles. Many Ismaili texts have now been published in critical editions, along with several thousand secondary studies on various aspects of Ismailism. My own interest in Ismaili studies dates back to the mid-1960s when I was studying for my doctorate in economics at the University of California, Berkeley. I was taught by a number of distinguished economists, amongst whom was the future Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. At the time, modern scholarship in Ismaili studies was still relatively new, and only a handful of contemporary scholars had established themselves in this field, after the earlier work of the orientalists. Wladimir Ivanow stood out amongst this select group of pioneers. And it was this Russian scholar,

Introduction  7  

destined to spend the bulk of his life in exile in the East, who kindled my interest in Ismailism. Through the maternal side of my family I had always seen photographs, letters and documents related to the Aga Khans, the spiritual leaders of the Ismaili Muslims. My mother was a great-granddaughter of Sardār Abu’l-H . asan Khān (d. 1297/1880), younger brother of H . asan ʿAlī Shāh Aga Khan I (1804–1881) and commander of his forces. However, it was at Berkeley that I found access for the first time to numerous Ismaili works, part of the university’s vast collection of Islamic works, and learned about the complex history of this community. From then on, I systematically pursued my interest in Ismaili history, starting with reading all of Ivanow’s Persian and English works, published mainly by the Ismaili Society of Bombay, the first research institution of its kind established two decades earlier in 1946. The Central Library of the University of California, Berkeley, also held complete sets of all the major periodicals on Islamic studies. This also made it possible for me to read the earlier literature produced by the orientalists of the nineteenth century, such as A. I. Silvestre de Sacy, E. Quatremère (1782–1857), C. F. Defrémery (1822–1883), M. J. de Goeje (1836–1909), S. Guyard (1846–1884) and Max van Berchem (1863–1921). Many of these studies had appeared in Journal Asiatique, published in Paris. I also embarked on the ambitious task of acquiring, in original or photocopy, all Ismaili publications available in European languages as well as in Arabic and Persian. At the same time, I studied the works of the more recent authors, such as R. Strothmann, P. Kraus, H . . al-Hamdānī, M. Canard, A. A. A. Fyzee, B. Lewis, S. M. Stern, M. Hodgson and W. Madelung. Substantial works of Henry Corbin (1903–1978), who collaborated with Ivanow and published his own series, Bibliothèque Iranienne, simultaneously in Paris and Tehran, were of particular significance at the time. Muh.ammad Kāmil H . usayn (1901–1961), an Egyptian scholar, had also published critical editions of a number of Ismaili texts in his Silsilat makht.u-t.āt al-Fāt.imiyyīn series in Cairo, while ʿĀrif Tāmir (1921–1998), later a friend, had published a few Ismaili texts of Syrian provenance. By the end of the 1960s, there was already in existence a small corpus of published Ismaili works from the Fatimid and other periods in Ismaili history. I acquired copies of these works as I had started building up my own library of Ismaili sources and studies. Before long, two of the younger contemporary scholars died prematurely, Hodgson in 1968, at age forty-six, and Stern the following year in 1969, at age forty-eight. Ivanow himself died in 1970. It did not take me long to realise that this was a field of enquiry with as yet numerous unexplained aspects and obscure issues. Meanwhile, I found out that Ivanow had then recently settled in Tehran. While I was collecting Ismaili sources, I corresponded with Ivanow and received further encouragement from him. Thus, I was initiated into Ismaili studies by its foremost modern pioneer. From early on, I was also interested in compiling a comprehensive bibliography of Ismaili works, a task finally realised some four decades later in 2004 with the publication of my Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies, attesting to incredible modern progress in the field. Meanwhile, my interest in

8  Introduction

Ismaili studies had gradually turned from a hobby into an all-absorbing activity and a highly structured project of collecting the sources and studying them. I returned to Iran in 1972, after spending almost two decades in Europe and America, and embarked on a professional career in economics in government as well as academia. With the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s, the circumstances of my life changed drastically. It was under such circumstances that I finally decided the time had come to write a comprehensive history of the Ismailis, something that still did not exist. I then set about to respond to this intellectual challenge and devoted my full attention to it. At the same time, I began to visit the fortresses of Alamu-t and Lamasar as well as other sites of Ismaili heritage in Iran, such as the monuments and mausolea in Anjudān, Kahak, and so on. It took me some eight years to complete the first draft of my intended book, covering all periods in Ismaili history as well as the various Ismaili communities. I was clearly aware that this task could not be properly accomplished in isolation and that the work in progress required academic endorsement by established scholars in the field. For this purpose, I corresponded with Wilferd Madelung, the then Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford University and the foremost authority in Ismaili studies. He kindly agreed to read the chapters of my book as I wrote them. In 1985, I had the opportunity to visit Professor Madelung at Oxford and share several chapters with him. Subsequently, I received positive comments from him and was encouraged to continue along the lines I had set for myself. Professor Madelung’s reviews of the chapters continued and he later kindly contributed a foreword to the book, which was eventually published by Cambridge University Press in 1990 under the title of The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, with a revised second edition published in 2007. I was delighted and honoured, in due course, to witness the favourable reception of this book by both the academic community and the Ismailis themselves. Meanwhile, I had moved to London, where I have been associated, since 1988, with the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Founded by Aga Khan IV in 1977, this institution is now playing a key role in furthering Ismaili scholarship, not only through its own programmes of research and publications, but also by making its vast collections of Ismaili manuscripts available to scholars worldwide. This volume brings together a collection of my studies that have previously appeared as articles or book chapters in a variety of publications which are not always easily accessible, including contributions to several Festschrifts in honour of colleagues and friends such as C. Edmund Bosworth (1928–2014), Urbain Vermeulen (1940–2016), Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, Heinz Halm, Carole Hillenbrand, Etan Kohlberg, Charles Melville and Paul E. Walker. These studies cover a range of specialised topics related to Ismaili history, historiography, institutions, theology, law and philosophy, amongst other intellectual traditions elaborated by the Ismailis. The first chapter contextualises the Ismailis along with other major Shiʿi communities in history. The chosen topics for this collection are treated in greater detail in these chapters than in my previous books on the Ismailis; several of them, including chapter 9 on ʿAlī in classical Ismaili theology, chapter 10 on al-Qād.ī al-Nuʿmān, chapter 13 on Ismaili-Seljuq relations and chapter 17 on

Introduction  9  

religious identity and dissimulation, also cover new ground or interpretations. It remains for me to express my gratitude to the editors and publishers of the journals and books in which these studies first appeared for their kind permission to reprint them in this volume. I would also like to thank Nadia Holmes, who patiently contacted all the relevant publishers and collected the scattered materials for this publication.

1 Shi‘i communities in history

Islam is a major world religion, with some 1.3 billion adherents scattered in almost every region of the globe, especially in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Currently, around 15 per cent of the Muslim population of the world belongs to various communities of Shi‘i Islam, with the Sunni Muslims accounting for the remaining 85 per cent.* The Shi‘i Muslims themselves are comprised of a number of major communities, including the Ithna‘asharis or Twelvers, who account for the largest numbers, the Ismailis and the Zaydis. In addition to their significant numbers, around 200 million, Shi‘i Muslims have played a key role, proportionately much greater than their relative size, in contributing to the intellectual and artistic accomplishments of Islamic civilisation. Indeed, Shi‘i scholars and literati of various communities and regions, including scientists, philosophers, theologians, jurists and poets, have made seminal contributions to Islamic thought and culture. There have also been a multitude of Shi‘i dynasties, families or individuals who variously patronised scholars, poets and artists as well as numerous institutions of learning in Islam. Amongst such major Shi‘i dynasties, particular mention should be made of the Buyids, the Fatimids, the Hamdanids and the Safawids, as well as a host of lesser dynasties of North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. In sum, the Shi‘i Muslims have contributed significantly over the entire course of Islamic history to the richness and diversity of Islamic traditions, enabling Islam to evolve not merely as a religion, but also as a major world civilisation. The unified nascent Muslim community, or umma, of the Prophet Muhammad’s time soon split into numerous rival factions and lesser groups, as Muslims disagreed on a range of fundamental issues after the death of the Prophet in 632. Modern scholarship has shown that at least during the first three centuries of their history, marking the formative period of Islam, Muslims lived in an intellectually dynamic and theologically fluid milieu, characterised by a multiplicity of communities of

Shi‘i communities in history  11  

interpretation and schools of thought with a diversity of views on a range of religiopolitical issues. The early Muslims were confronted by many gaps in their religious knowledge and understanding of the Islamic revelation, which revolved around issues such as the attributes of God, the nature of authority and the definitions of true believers and sinners, amongst other theological concerns. It was during this formative period that different groups and schools of thought began to articulate their doctrinal positions and gradually acquired their distinctive religious identities and designations. In this effervescent atmosphere, Muslims engaged in lively discourses and disputations on a variety of religio-political issues, while ordinary Muslims as well as their scholars moved rather freely between different communities of interpretation. In terms of theological perspectives, which remained closely linked to political loyalties, pluralism in early Islam ranged from the stances of those Muslims, later designated as Sunnis, who endorsed the historical caliphate and the authority-power structure that had actually emerged in Muslim society to various religio-political communities, notably the Shiʿa and the Khawarij, who aspired towards the establishment of new orders and leadership paradigms. In this emerging partisan context, the medieval religious scholars (ulama) of the Sunni Muslims produced a picture of early Islam that is at great variance with the findings of modern scholarship on the subject. According to this Sunni narrative, endorsed unwittingly by the earlier generations of orientalists, Islam was from the beginning a monolithic phenomenon with a well-defined doctrinal basis from which different groups deviated over time. In other words, Sunni Islam was portrayed by its exponents as the ‘true’ interpretation of Islam, while all non-Sunni Muslim communities of interpretation, especially the Shiʿa, who had supposedly ‘deviated’ from the right path, were accused of heresy (ilhad), innovation (bid‘a) or even unbelief (kufr). The Shiʿa, who elaborated their own paradigmatic model of ‘true Islam’, soon disagreed among themselves, however, regarding the identity of the legitimate spiritual leaders or imams of the community. As a result, the Shiʿa were soon subdivided into a number of major communities as well as several minor groupings. In such a milieu of theological pluralism and diversity of communal interpretations, abundantly recorded in the heresiographical tradition of the Muslims, a general consensus could obviously not be attained on designating any one interpretation of Islam as the ‘true Islam’. To make matters more complicated, different regimes lent their support to particular doctrinal positions that were legitimised in their state by their ulama, who in turn were accorded a privileged social status in society. It is important to bear in mind that many of the original and fundamental disagreements among Sunnis, Shi‘is and other Muslims will in all likelihood never be satisfactorily explained and resolved, mainly because of a lack of reliable sources, especially from the earliest centuries of Islamic history. Needless to add that the later writings of the historians, theologians, heresiographers and other categories of Muslim authors display variegated ‘sectarian’ biases. In spite of its relative significance, however, Shi‘i Islam has received very little scholarly attention in the West. And when it has been discussed, whether in general

12  Shi‘i communities in history

or in terms of its subdivisions, it has normally been treated marginally, often as a ‘heterodoxy’, echoing the attitude of Sunni Muslims, who have always accounted for the majority share of Muslim society. Scientific orientalism, based on the study of textual evidence, began in Europe in the nineteenth century. European scholars had now started to produce their studies of Islam on the basis of manuscripts which had been written mainly by Sunni authors and reflected their particular perspectives. Consequently, the orientalists, too, studied Islam according to the Sunni stances of their original sources, and, borrowing classifications from their own Christian contexts, they treated the Sunni interpretation of Islam as ‘orthodoxy’, in contrast to Shi‘ism, which was taken to represent ‘heterodoxy’, or at its extreme a ‘heresy’. The Sunni-centric approach to the study of Islam has continued to hold prominence to various degrees in Western scholarship on the subject. At the same time, Shi‘i studies have also remained extremely marginalised in Muslim countries outside Iran and Iraq with their vibrant religious seminaries and Shi‘i theological traditions as well as massive collections of Shi‘i manuscripts. Increased accessibility to Shi‘i texts, during more recent times, promises to bring about drastic revisions in the approaches of Western scholars to Islamic studies.

Origins and early history of Shi‘i Islam The origins of Islam’s main divisions into Sunni and Shi‘i may be broadly traced to the crisis of succession to the Prophet Muhammad, who died in 632 after a brief illness. The successor to Muhammad could not be another prophet or nabi, as it had already been made known through divine revelation that Muhammad was the ‘seal of the prophets’ (khatam al-anbiya). However, a successor was needed in order to ensure the continued unity of the nascent Islamic community. According to the Sunni view, the Prophet had left neither formal instruction nor a testament regarding his succession. Amidst much ensuing debate, this choice was resolved by a group of Muslim notables who elected Abu Bakr, a trusted Companion of the Prophet, as successor to the Messenger of God (khalifat rasul Allah), a title which was soon simplified to khalifa (whence the word ‘caliph’ in Western languages). By electing the first successor to the Prophet, these Muslims had now also founded the distinctive Islamic institution of the caliphate (khilafa). Abu Bakr and his next two successors, Umar and Uthman, belonging to the influential Meccan tribe of Quraysh, were among the earliest converts to Islam and the Prophet’s Companions. Only the fourth of the so-called ‘rightly guided caliphs’, Ali b. Abi Talib (r. 656–661), who occupies a unique position in the annals of Shi‘i Islam, belonged to the Prophet’s own clan of Banu Hashim within the Quraysh. Ali was also very closely related to the Prophet, being his cousin and son-in-law, bound in matrimony to the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. It is the fundamental belief of the Shiʿa of all branches that the Prophet had designated Ali as his successor, a designation (nass) instituted through divine command and revealed by the Prophet at Ghadir Khumm shortly before his death. The Shiʿa have also interpreted certain Qurʾanic verses in support of Ali’s d­ esignation.

Shi‘i communities in history  13  

Ali himself was firmly convinced of the legitimacy of his own claim to M ­ uhammad’s succession, based on his close kinship and association with him, his intimate knowledge of Islam as well as the merits of his early deeds in the cause of Islam. Indeed, Ali made it plain in his speeches and letters that he considered the Prophet’s family or the ahl al-bayt to be entitled to the leadership of the Muslims as long as there remained a single one of them who recited the Qurʾan, knew the sunna and adhered to the religion of the truth.1 And from early on, Ali did have a circle of supporters who believed that he was better qualified than any other Companion to succeed the Prophet. This minority group expanded in time and in Ali’s brief caliphate became generally designated as the shi‘at Ali, or the ‘party of Ali’, and then simply as the Shiʿa. The Shiʿa also held a particular conception of religious authority that set them apart from the other Muslims. They believed that Islam contained inner truths that could not be understood directly through human reason. Thus, they recognised the need for a religiously authoritative guide, or imam, as the Shiʿa have traditionally preferred to call their spiritual leader. In addition to being the guardian of the Islamic revelation and leader of the community, as perceived by the majority of the Muslims, the succession to the Prophet was seen by the Shiʿa as having a key spiritual function connected with the elucidation and interpretation of the Islamic message. And for the Shiʿa, the Prophet’s family or the ahl al-bayt, provided the sole authoritative channel for elucidating fully the teachings of Islam. These ideas, which may not be attributed entirely to the earliest partisans of Ali, eventually found their full elaboration in the central Shi‘i doctrine of the imamate. Pro-Ali sentiments and broad Shi‘i tendencies persisted in Ali’s lifetime, and the early Shiʿa survived Ali’s murder in 661 and numerous subsequent tragic events. After Ali, his partisans in Kufa, to where Ali had transferred his capital to confront a challenge to his authority by Mu‘awiya, the governor of Syria, recognised his eldest son al-Hasan as his successor to the caliphate. Under obscure circumstances, al-Hasan abdicated a few months later in favour of Mu‘awiya, whose power had become unchallengeable. Mu‘awiya was speedily recognised as the new caliph, and he was to found the first dynasty in Islam, the Umayyads, which stayed in power for nearly a century. Meanwhile, following his peace treaty with Mu‘awiya, al-Hasan had retired to Medina and abstained from any political activity. However, the Shiʿa continued to regard him as their imam after Ali. After al-Hasan’s death in 669, the Kufan Shiʿa revived their aspirations for restoring the caliphate to the Prophet’s family and invited al-Hasan’s younger brother al-Husayn, their new imam, to rise against the Umayyads and restore the legitimate rule of the ahl al-bayt. Having declined to pledge allegiance to Mu‘awiya’s son Yazid, al-Husayn finally responded to these summons and set out from the Hijaz for Kufa. On 10 Muharram 61/10 October 680, al-Husayn and his small band of relatives and companions were ruthlessly massacred at Karbala, near Kufa, where they had been intercepted by an Umayyad army. The martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, together with numerous other members of the ahl al-bayt, infused a new religious fervour in the Shiʿa and contributed significantly to the consolidation of

14  Shi‘i communities in history

the Shi‘i ethos and identity. It also led to the formation of radical trends among the Shiʿa. The earlier Kufan Shiʿa had remained relatively moderate in their stance on the historical caliphate. Henceforth, the passion motif and the call for repentance and martyrdom became integral aspects of Shi‘i spirituality. Later, the Shiʿa began to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam al-Husayn annually on 10 Muharram, known as Ashura, with special ceremonies and the so-called taziya performances. During its first half-century, Shi‘ism remained unified, and maintained an almost exclusively Arab composition with a limited appeal to non-Arab Muslims, the so-called mawali. These features changed with the next important event in the early history of Shi‘i Islam, the movement of al-Mukhtar b. Abi Ubayd al-Thaqafi, who launched his own Shi‘i campaign with a general call to avenge al-Husayn’s murder. Winning the support of the majority of the Kufan Shiʿa, al-Mukhtar claimed to be acting on behalf of Ali’s then only surviving son, Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya, whose mother hailed from the Banu Hanifa; he was half-brother to al-Hasan and al-Husayn, Ali’s sons by Fatima. Ibn al-Hanafiyya, who declined to assume the active leadership of the movement and remained in Medina (the traditional residence of the Alids), was proclaimed by al-Mukhtar as the imam and Mahdi, or the ‘divinely guided one’, the messianic saviour imam and restorer of true Islam who would establish justice on earth and deliver the oppressed from tyranny. The concept of the Mahdi was a very important doctrinal innovation, and proved particularly appealing to the mawali, the Aramean, Persian, Berber and other non-Arab converts to Islam who, under the Umayyads, were treated as second-class Muslims. As a large and underprivileged social class, and aspiring for the establishment of an order based on the egalitarian precepts of Islam, the mawali provided a major recruiting ground for any movement opposed to the exclusively Arab hegemony of the Umayyads. They became particularly drawn to al-Mukhtar’s movement and Shi‘ism, calling themselves the shi‘at al-mahdi, or ‘party of the Mahdi’. With the help of the mawali, al-Mukhtar readily won control of Kufa in an open revolt in 685. The Shiʿa now avenged Imam al-Husayn, killing those responsible for the massacre at Karbala. However, al-Mukhtar’s success was short-lived. In 687, he was defeated and killed together with thousands of his mawali supporters. But the movement founded by al-Mukhtar survived his demise. The 60-odd years intervening between the revolt of al-Mukhtar and the Abbasid revolution mark the second phase in the early history of Shi‘i Islam. During this period, different Shi‘i groups, consisting of both Arabs and mawali, came to coexist, each one having its own line of imams and propounding its own doctrines. Furthermore, the Shi‘i imams now hailed not only from the major branches of the extended Alid family, namely the Hanafids (descendants of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya), the Husaynids (descendants of al-Husayn b. Ali) and, later, the Hasanids (descendants of al-Hasan b. Ali), but also from other branches of the Prophet’s clan of Banu Hashim. This is because the Prophet’s family or the ahl al-bayt, whose sanctity was supreme for the Shiʿa, was then still defined broadly in its old Arabian tribal sense. It, therefore, covered the various branches of the Banu Hashim, including the Alids as well as the descendants of the Prophet’s two paternal uncles,

Shi‘i communities in history  15  

namely, the Talibids, descendants of Abu Talib through both of his sons Ali and Ja‘far al-Tayyar (d. 629) and the Abbasids, descendants of al-Abbas (d. 653). In sum, the Fatimid and non-Fatimid Alids as well as many non-Alid Hashimids, all belonging to the Banu Hashim, apparently qualified as belonging to the ahl al-bayt. It was after the Abbasid revolution that the Shiʿa came to define the ahl al-bayt more restrictively to include only the Fatimid Alids, covering both the Husaynids and the Hasanids. In this fluid and often confusing setting, Shi‘ism evolved in terms of two main branches or factions, the Kaysaniyya and the Imamiyya, each with its own internal divisions; and, later, another Alid movement led to the foundation of yet another major Shi‘i community, the Zaydiyya. There were also those Shi‘i ghulat, individual theorists with small groups of followers who existed in the midst or on the fringes of the major Shi‘i communities. For information on these early Shi‘i groups and their subdivisions, we must rely mainly on the heresiographical literature of the Muslims produced by later generations of scholars with their own sectarian perspectives. A radical branch, in terms of both doctrine and policy, evolved out of al-Mukhtar’s movement and accounted for the majority of the Shiʿa until shortly after the Abbasid revolution. This branch, breaking away from the religiously moderate attitudes of the early Kufan Shiʿa, was generally designated as the Kaysaniyya by the heresiographers. The Kaysaniyya, comprising a number of interrelated groups, recognising various Hanafid Alids and other Hashimids as their imams, drew mainly on the support of the mawali in southern Iraq, Persia and elsewhere, though many Arabs were also among them. Heirs to a variety of pre-Islamic traditions, the mawali played a crucial role in transforming Shi‘ism from an Arab party of limited size and doctrinal basis to a dynamic movement. In the ideas expounded by the Kaysani Shi‘i groups we have the first Shi‘i statements of the eschatological doctrines of ghayba, the absence or occultation of an imam whose life has been miraculously prolonged and who is due to reappear as the Mahdi, and raj‘a, the return of a messianic personality from the dead, or from occultation, sometime before the Day of Resurrection (qiyama). The closely related concept of the Mahdi had now acquired a more specific eschatological meaning as the messianic deliverer in Islam, with the implication that no further imams would succeed the Mahdi during his occultation. On Ibn al-Hanafiyya’s death in 700, the bulk of the Kaysaniyya recognised his son Abu Hashim as their next imam. And on Abu Hashim’s death in 716, a majority of his Kaysani followers, known as the Hashimiyya, acknowledged the Abbasid Muhammad, a great-grandson of the Prophet’s uncle al-Abbas, as their new imam. This party continued to be known as the Hashimiyya and later also as the Abbasiyya, and it served as the main instrument of the Abbasid movement, which succeeded in overthrowing the Umayyads. Meanwhile, there had appeared another major branch or faction of Shi‘ism, later designated as the Imamiyya, the common heritage of the Twelver and the Ismaili Shi‘is. The Imami Shi‘is, who like other Shi‘i Muslims of the Umayyad period were centred in Kufa, adopted a quiescent policy in the political field while

16  Shi‘i communities in history

doctrinally they subscribed to some of the radical views of the Kaysaniyya, such as the condemnation of the early caliphs before Ali. The Imamiyya traced the imamate through al-Husayn b. Ali’s sole surviving son, Ali b. al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin, the progenitor of the Husaynid line of the Alid imams. He retired to Medina and adopted a quiescent attitude towards the Umayyads, and later towards al-Mukhtar’s movement. It was after Zayn al-Abidin’s death around 714 that the Imamiyya began to gain some importance under his son and successor Muhammad b. Ali, known as al-Baqir, who engaged in active Shi‘i teachings in the course of an imamate of some 20 years. Imam Muhammad al-Baqir concentrated on teaching and expounding the rudiments of the ideas that were to become the legitimistic principles of the Imami branch of Shi‘i Islam. Above all, he seems to have concerned himself with the religious rank and spiritual authority of the imams who possessed what was considered to be a divinely inspired knowledge (ilm). He taught that the world was in permanent need of such an imam. He is also credited with introducing the principle of taqiyya, the precautionary dissimulation of one’s true religious belief and practice that was to protect the imam and his followers under adverse circumstances. This principle was later adopted by the Twelver and Ismaili Shi‘is, while it did not find any particular prominence in Zaydi doctrine. Imam al-Baqir’s legal and ritual teachings comprised many of the features that were later regarded as distinctive aspects of Imami Shi‘i law.2 On Imam al-Baqir’s death, around 732, the majority of his Imami Shi‘i followers recognised his eldest son Ja‘far, later called al-Sadiq (the Trustworthy), as their new imam, being designated as such by the nass of his father. The Imamiyya expanded significantly and became a major religious community during the long and eventful imamate of Ja‘far al-Sadiq, the foremost scholar and teacher amongst the Husaynid Alids. In the earlier years of Imam al-Sadiq’s long imamate, the movement of his uncle Zayd b. Ali Zayn al-Abidin, al-Baqir’s half-brother, was launched in 740 with some success, leading to the formation of the Zaydiyya community of Shi‘i Islam. Meanwhile, the Abbasids had learned important lessons from all of the abortive Kaysani Shi‘i revolts against the Umayyads. Consequently, they paid particular attention to developing the organisation of their own movement. The Abbasid da‘wa was cleverly preached in the name of al-rida min al Muhammad, an enigmatic phrase which spoke of an unidentified person belonging to the Prophet’s family. This slogan aimed to maximise support from the Shi‘is of different groups who commonly upheld the leadership of the ahl al-bayt. However, the Abbasid victory in 750 proved a source of utter disillusionment for the Shiʿa, who had all along expected an Alid, rather than an Abbasid, from the ahl al-bayt to succeed the Umayyads to the caliphate. The animosity between the Abbasids and the Alids was accentuated when, soon after their accession, the Abbasids began to persecute many of their former Shi‘i supporters and the Alids. Shi‘i disappointment was further aggravated when the Abbasids renounced their own Shi‘i past and became the spiritual spokesmen of Sunni Islam. With these developments, many of those remaining Kaysani Shi‘is who had not been absorbed

Shi‘i communities in history  17  

into the Abbasid movement now rallied to the side of Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq, who thus emerged as the main rallying point for Shi‘is of diverse backgrounds, apart from the Zaydi Shi‘is who followed their own imams. Meanwhile, Imam al-Sadiq had gradually acquired a widespread reputation as a religious scholar. He was a reporter of hadith, and was later reported as such in the chain of authorities accepted by Sunni Muslims as well. He also taught fiqh, or jurisprudence, and has been credited with founding, after the work of his father, the Imami Shi‘i school of religious law (madhhab), named Ja‘fari after him. Imam alSadiq was accepted as a teaching authority not only by his Shi‘i partisans but also by a wider circle that included many of the piety-minded Muslims of Medina and Kufa, where the bulk of the Imamiyya had continued to be located. In time, a noteworthy group of scholars assembled around him, comprising some of the most eminent jurist-traditionists and theologians of the time, such as Hisham b. al-Hakam (d. 795), the foremost representative of Imami scholastic theology (kalam). Indeed, the Imami Shi‘is now came to possess a distinctive body of ritual, as well as ­theological and legal doctrines. As a result of the intellectual activities of Imam al-Sadiq and his circle of learned associates, the basic conception of the Imami Shi‘i doctrine of the imamate was now elaborated. This doctrine, expressed in numerous hadiths reported mainly from Imam al-Sadiq, is preserved in the earliest corpus of Imami hadith compiled by al-Kulayni (d. 940).3 This central Imami Shi‘i doctrine, which was essentially retained by the later Ithna‘asharis and Ismailis, was founded on a belief in the permanent need of mankind for a divinely guided and infallible (ma‘sum) imam who, after the Prophet Muhammad, would act as the authoritative teacher and guide of men in all their spiritual affairs. Although the imam, who can practise taqiyya when necessary, is entitled to temporal leadership as much as religious authority, his mandate does not depend on his actual rule. The doctrine further taught that the Prophet himself had designated Ali b. Abi Talib as his legatee (wasi) and successor by an explicit designation (nass) under divine command. However, the majority of the Prophet’s Companions had ignored this designation. After Ali, the imamate was to be transmitted by the rule of the nass from father to son through the descendants of Ali and Fatima; and after al-Husayn b. Ali, it would continue in the Husaynid line until the end of time. This Husaynid Alid imam, the sole legitimate imam at any time, is in possession of special knowledge (ilm), and has perfect understanding of all aspects and meanings of the Qurʾan and the message of Islam. Indeed, the world could not exist for a moment without such an imam, who is the proof of God (hujjat Allah) on earth. The imam’s existence is so essential that recognition of and obedience to him were made the absolute duty of every believer (mu’min). Having established a solid doctrinal basis for Imami Shi‘ism, Imam Ja‘far alSadiq, the last of the early Shi‘i imams recognised by both the Ithna‘asharis and the Ismailis, and counted as the sixth for the former and the fifth for the latter, died in 765. The dispute over his succession caused historic divisions in the Imami Shi‘i community, leading to the eventual formation of independent Ithna‘ashari and Ismaili communities.

18  Shi‘i communities in history

The Twelvers On Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq’s death in 765, his succession was simultaneously claimed by several of his sons. As a result, the Imami Shi‘is now split into various groups, one of which eventually acquired the designation of the Ithna‘ashari or Twelver, recognising a line of 12 imams, starting with Ali b. Abi Talib and ending with Muhammad b. al-Hasan, who was acknowledged as the eschatological Mahdi. The majority of Imam al-Sadiq’s Imami partisans recognised his eldest surviving son Abd Allah al-Aftah as his successor to the imamate. And when Abd Allah died a few months later, many of his followers turned to his younger half-brother Musa al-Kazim, who already had an Imami following of his own. Musa al-Kazim, later counted as the seventh imam of the Twelvers, soon received the allegiance of the majority of the Imami Shiʿa, including the most renowned scholars in al-Sadiq’s entourage. Imam Musa al-Kazim strengthened and further developed the rudimentary organisation of his Imami group by appointing agents to supervise his followers in different localities. However, in line with the tradition established by his predecessors, he too refrained from all political activity. Nevertheless, he was not spared the persecutions of the Abbasids. He was arrested several times and banished to Iraq on the orders of the fifth Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), who had retained the anti-Shi‘i policies of his predecessors. Imam al-Kazim died in 799 in a Baghdad prison, perhaps due to poisoning, as the Twelvers claim in the case of almost all of their imams. On Musa al-Kazim’s death, his Imami Shiʿa split into several sects. A significant group now acknowledged his son Ali al-Rida as their next imam, later counted as the eighth in the line of the Twelver imams. The contemporary Abbasid caliph, al-Ma’mun, attempted to achieve reconciliation between the Abbasids and Alids by appointing Ali al-Rida as his heir apparent in 816. This attempt proved futile, however, as Ali died in 818 in Khurasan, where he had joined the entourage of al-Ma’mun. A new city near Tus, called Mashhad (the martyr’s place), grew up around Ali al-Rida’s tomb and became the most important Shi‘i shrine in Persia. A group of Imam al-Rida’s Shiʿa traced their imamate for three more generations in his progeny down to their eleventh imam, al-Hasan al-Askari, with minor schisms. These imams, too, were brought to Baghdad or Samarra (for a while the Abbasid capital) and were watched closely by the agents of the Abbasid regime. On Imam al-Hasan al-Askari’s death in 874, his Imami Shiʿa partisans experienced a serious crisis of succession, and subdivided into numerous splinter groups, of which only one (the Imamiyya proper) was to survive as the Twelver Shiʿa.4 This main body, later designated specifically as the Ithna‘ashariyya, eventually held that a son named Muhammad had been born to al-Hasan al-Askari in 869 and that the child had been kept hidden out of fear of Abbasid persecution. They further held that Muhammad had succeeded his father to the imamate while remaining in concealment as before. Identified as the Mahdi and his equivalent qa’im (the ‘riser’), Muhammad was expected to reappear in glory before the final Day of Judgement to rule the world in justice.

Shi‘i communities in history  19  

According to the Twelver Shi‘i tradition, the occultation of Muhammad al-Mahdi fell into two periods. During his initial ‘lesser occultation’, covering 874– 941, the hidden imam remained in regular contact with his community through four successive representatives, who acted as intermediaries between him and his followers. But in the ‘greater occultation’, initiated in 941 and still continuing, the hidden imam has chosen not to have any representative while living on earth and participating in worldly experience. The Mahdi enjoys a miraculously prolonged life, as explained in numerous Twelver theological treatises. Twelver Shi‘i scholars have written extensively on the eschatological doctrine of the occultation (ghayba) of their twelfth, hidden Imam-Mahdi and the conditions that would need to prevail before his return (raj‘a). By the first half of the tenth century, when the line of the 12 imams had been identified, those Imami Shi‘is believing in that series of imams became known as the Ithna‘ashariyya or Twelvers, and as such they were distinguished from all earlier or contemporary Imami Shi‘i groups. In the first phase of their religious history, stretching from its origins to the occultation of the twelfth imam, the Imami (Ithna‘ashari) Shiʿa benefited from the direct spiritual guidance and teachings of their imams. It was in the second phase of their history, from around 874 until the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, that Twelver scholars (ulama) emerged as influential guardians and transmitters of the teachings of their imams, compiling collections of Imami hadith and formulating Imami law. This phase coincided with the rise of the Buyids in Persia and Iraq as overlords of the Abbasids. The Buyids were originally Zaydi Shi‘is from Daylam in northern Persia, but after establishing their own dynasty, they supported Mu‘tazilism and Shi‘ism without allegiance to any specific branch, though they may have been more inclined towards Twelver Shi‘ism. The earliest comprehensive collections of the sayings and teachings of the Twelver imams, which were first transmitted in Kufa and elsewhere, were compiled in Qumm in Persia. By the ninth century, Qumm was already the chief centre of Imami Shi‘i learning, whereas in Kufa the Shiʿa were divided into many rival factions, including the Zaydis in particular. It was thus in Qumm that the traditions of the Imami Shi‘i imams were first collected systematically by al-Kulayni (d. 940) in his Kitab al-kafi, which came to be recognised as the first of the four canonical collections of Imami hadith. These works deal with Imami theology and jurisprudence. The traditionist school of Qumm, which rejected all forms of kalam theology based on the extensive use of independent reasoning (aql) and instead relied on the traditions of the Prophet and the imams, reached its peak in the works of Ibn Babawayh (d. 991), also known as Shaykh al-Saduq. In the course of the tenth century, the traditionist school of Qumm began to be overshadowed by the rise of a rival school – the school of Imami theology (kalam) in Baghdad, which adhered to the rationalist theology of the Mu‘tazila and also produced the principles of Imami (Twelver) Shi‘i jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) based on a legal methodology opposed to unqualified adherence to hadith.5 The school of Baghdad thus assigned a fundamental role to reason (aql) in theology and jurisprudence. The first leader of the ‘rationalist’ Imami school of Baghdad was Shaykh

20  Shi‘i communities in history

al-Mufid (d. 1022), who criticised Ibn Babawayh’s emphasis on hadith and rejection of reasoning. In contrast, al-Mufid argued for the methodology of kalam, religious disputation or reasoned argumentation, a methodology developed by the Mu‘tazili theological school in Baghdad. Shaykh al-Mufid was succeeded as chief authority of the Baghdad school and head of the Imami Twelver community by his student Sharif al-Murtada Alam al-Huda (d. 1044), a descendant of Imam Musa al-Kazim and also head (naqib) of the Alid family. He went further than al-Mufid and insisted, like the Mu‘tazila, that the basic truths of religion could be established by reason (aql) alone. Even the transmitted hadiths were to be subjected to the test of reason rather than being accepted uncritically. Sharif al-Murtada’s younger brother Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015) is responsible for having compiled the Nahj al-balagha (The Way of Eloquence), an anthology of the letters and sermons of Ali b. Abi Talib, which is regarded as one of the most venerated books of the Twelvers. Other Shi‘i communities also hold this book in high esteem. Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Tusi (d. 1067), known as Shaykh al-Ta’ifa, was another prominent member of the Baghdad school, and he became the most authoritative early systematiser of Twelver law. He also partially rehabilitated the school of Qumm and its reliance on traditions. However, the school of Qumm itself disintegrated in the eleventh century, and its traditionist focus remained dormant in Twelver Shi‘i thought until it was restated vigorously by Muhammad Amin al-Astarabadi (d. 1624), the reviver of the so-called Akhbari school. Meanwhile, Twelver Shi‘i communities had appeared in many parts of the Iranian world, not only in Qumm and Rayy, but also in different towns of Khurasan and Transoxania, as well as in central Persia, including Kashan, Isfahan, Hamadan and Qazwin. Minority Twelver communities also existed in Khuzistan and in the coastal region of northern Persia. The tombs of sayyids and descendants of the imams were now widely scattered throughout Persia, demonstrating that Twelver Shi‘ism was well established, mainly in terms of small minority communities, in much of the Iranian world before the Mongol invasions. Outside Persia, too, Shi‘i Islam received a serious blow when the Sunni Saljuqs succeeded the Shi‘i Buyids. But the situation of the Shiʿa improved when the non-Sunni Mongols established their rule in southwestern Asia. By then, a number of local dynasties in Iraq and Syria adhered to Twelver Shi‘ism and patronised the efforts of their ulama. With the collapse of the Qarmati state of Bahrayn in 1077, a number of Twelver communities also began to gain influence in eastern Arabia and other localities around the Persian Gulf. Foremost among these local Twelver dynasties were the Mazyadids who had their capital at Hilla on the banks of the Euphrates. Indeed, from the beginning of the twelfth century, Hilla was established as an important centre of Shi‘i activity, and it later superseded Qumm and Baghdad as the main centre of Twelver scholarship. Meanwhile, Sharif al-Murtada’s basic approach to kalam, holding that reason was the sole source of the fundamentals of religion, had become widely accepted in Twelver Shi‘i circles. The same approach was later basically adopted by Khwaja Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), then the chief exponent of Imami kalam, and his

Shi‘i communities in history  21  

disciple Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli (d. 1325), who represented the last school of original thought in Twelver theology. Subsequently, with a few exceptions, Twelver scholars mainly produced commentaries (sharh) on, or restatements of, the earlier teachings. Indeed, with the Mongol invasions and the work of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi a third phase was initiated in intellectual history of Twelver Shi‘ism, which lasted until the advent of the Safawid dynasty in 1501. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, who spent some three decades in the fortress communities of the Nizari Ismailis of Persia and temporarily converted from Twelver to Ismaili Shi‘ism, was the first Imami scholar to have been at once a theologian and a philosopher, having been particularly influenced by the philosophy of Ibn Sina (d. 1037), known in Europe as Avicenna. In this third phase, the influence of alTusi in both theology and philosophy was a key factor, while close relations also developed between Twelver theology and the Sufism of Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240). Al-Tusi’s student Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli had lasting influence on the development and theoretical foundations of Twelver jurisprudence. Having argued against the unreliability of hadith, and following in the tradition of the Baghdad school, he then reorganised jurisprudence so as to make reason its central focus, as well as introducing new principles of legal methodology. Indeed, he provided a theoretical foundation for ijtihad, the principle of legal ruling by the jurist (  faqih) through reasoning (aql). In his Mabadi al-wusul, Allama al-Hilli expounds the principle of ijtihad, which is exercised by mujtahids who, he argues, are fallible, unlike the ­infallible imams. A mujtahid can, therefore, revise his decision. Ijtihad also allowed for ikhtilaf, or differences of opinion, among mujtahids. Allama al-Hilli’s acceptance of ijtihad represents a crucial step towards the enhancement of the authority of the ulama in Twelver Shi‘ism in the absence of a manifest imam. Ijtihad also gained importance within Zaydi Shi‘ism, but it was rejected by the Ismailis. It should also be added here that a major difference between the later Twelver Shi‘i doctrine of ijtihad and the Sunni doctrine is that Twelver Shi‘is do not allow for the ijtihad of the jurists who are no longer alive or of their books. Shi‘i tendencies had been spreading in Persia and Central Asia since the thirteenth century, creating a more favourable milieu in many predominantly Sunni regions for the activities of the Shiʿa (both Twelvers and Ismailis) as well as a number of movements with Shi‘i inclinations. In this connection, particular reference should be made to the Hurufi movement, whose doctrines were later adopted by the Bektashi dervishes of Anatolia, and the Nuqtawis who split off from the Hurufis. There were also the Twelver-related Musha‘sha‘ who ruled from Khuzistan, and under whose persecutory policies Hilla lost its prominence as a centre of Twelver learning to Jabal Amil in Lebanon. These movements normally entertained chiliastic or Mahdist aspirations for the deliverance of the oppressed and underprivileged groups. Instead of propagating any particular form of Shi‘ism, however, a new syncretic type of popular Shi‘ism was now arising in post-Mongol Central Asia, Persia and Anatolia, which found its culmination in early Safawid Shi‘ism. Marshall Hodgson designated this as ‘tariqah Shi‘ism’, as it was transmitted mainly through a number of Sufi orders (tariqas) then being formed.6 These Sufi orders remained

22  Shi‘i communities in history

outwardly Sunni, while being particularly devoted to Ali and the ahl al-bayt. Ali was in fact included in the chains (silsilas) of the spiritual masters of these Sunni Sufis. In this atmosphere of religious eclecticism, Alid loyalism became more widespread, and Shi‘i elements began to be superficially imposed on Sunni Islam. It was under such circumstances that close relations developed between Twelver Shi‘ism and Sufism, and also between Nizari Ismailism and Sufism in Persia. A fourth phase may be identified in the historical development of Twelver Shi‘ism, from the establishment of Safawid rule in 1501 to around 1800. PostMongol Persia was politically fragmented, while Shi‘i sentiments and Alid loyalism had continued to spread, especially through the Sufi orders. One of the Sufi orders that played a leading role in spreading Shi‘ism in predominantly Sunni Persia was the Safawiyya tariqa, founded by Shaykh Safi al-Din (d. 1334), a Sunni Muslim. The Safawid order spread rapidly in Adharbayjan, eastern Anatolia and other regions, acquiring influence over several Turcoman tribes. Subsequently, the order was transformed into a militant revolutionary movement. A later Safawid master, Shaykh Haydar (d. 1488), was responsible for instructing his Sufi soldier followers to adopt the scarlet headgear of 12 gores commemorating the 12 imams, for which they became designated as the Qizilbash, a Turkish term meaning redhead. The eclectic Shi‘ism of the Qizilbash Turcomans became more clearly manifested when the youthful master of the Safawiyya, Isma‘il, presented himself to his Qizilbash followers as the representative of the hidden imam, or even the awaited Mahdi himself, also claiming divinity. With the help of his Qizilbash followers, Isma‘il seized Adharbayjan from the Aq Qoyunlu dynasty and entered their capital, Tabriz, in 1501. He now proclaimed himself shah (king), and at the same time declared Twelver Shi‘ism the official religion of his newly founded Safawid state. The Safawids, as noted, originally adhered to an eclectic and extremist type of Shi‘ism, which was gradually disciplined and brought into conformity with the ‘mainstream’ of Twelver Shi‘ism. However, in order to enhance their legitimacy, Shah Isma‘il (r. 1501–1524) and his immediate successors claimed variously to represent the hidden Mahdi, in addition to constructing an Alid genealogy for their dynasty, tracing their ancestry to Imam Musa al-Kazim. Shi‘i Islam was imposed over the subjects of Safawid Persia rather gradually. As Persia did not have an established class of Twelver religious scholars, however, the Safawids were obliged for quite some time to invite theologians and jurists from the Arab centres of Twelver scholarship, notably Najaf, Bahrayn and Jabal Amil in southern Lebanon, to instruct their subjects. Foremost among these Arab Twelver ulama, mention should be made of Shaykh Ali al-Karaki al-Amili (d. 1534), known as the Muhaqqiq al-Thani, who adhered to the Hilla school of Imami kalam theology with its recognition of ijtihad for the qualified scholars, combined with taqlid, or authorisation of the majority who emulated the mujtahids. Shaykh al-Karaki also ruled emphatically against the permissibility of following a dead mujtahid, as practised in Sunni Islam. The Safawids encouraged the training of a class of Twelver legal scholars, who could consider themselves empowered by the hidden imam, and transferred some of his functions to themselves. The training of the Twelver scholars was facilitated

Shi‘i communities in history  23  

through the establishment of a number of religious colleges. By the time of Shah Abbas I (r. 1587–1629), the greatest scion of the dynasty who established the Safawid capital at Isfahan, Twelver Shi‘i rituals and practices, such as regular visitations (ziyara) to the shrines of the imams and their relatives at the atabat, including Najaf, Karbala and other shrine cities in Iraq as well as in Mashhad and Qumm in Persia, had gained wide currency. The Safawid period witnessed a renaissance of the Islamic sciences and Shi‘i scholarship. Foremost among the intellectual achievements of the period were the original contributions of a number of Twelver scholars belonging to the so-called ‘school of Isfahan’.7 These scholars integrated a variety of philosophical, theological and gnostic traditions within a Shi‘i perspective into a metaphysical synthesis known as al-hikma al-ilahiyya, divine wisdom or theosophy. The founder of this school was Muhammad Baqir Astarabadi (d. 1630), better known as Mir Damad, a Twelver theologian and philosopher who was also the shaykh al-Islam, or chief religious authority, of Isfahan. However, the most important representative of the ‘school of Isfahan’ in theosophical Shi‘ism was Mir Damad’s principal student, Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi (d. 1640), better known as Mulla Sadra. He produced his own synthesis of four major schools of Islamic thought, namely, kalam theology, Avicennan peripatetic philosophy, the illuminationist philosophy of Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and gnostic-mystical traditions (irfan), particularly the Sufism of Ibn al-Arabi. The Twelver ulama, especially the jurists (fuqaha) amongst them, played an increasingly prominent religio-political role in the affairs of the Safawid state. This trend reached its climax under the last Safawids, with Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi (d. 1699), who held the highest clerical offices and consolidated the influence of the Twelver hierocracy. The author of an encyclopaedic Imami hadith collection, the Bihar al-anwar (Seas of Lights), al-Majlisi, like many other jurists, was opposed to philosophers and Sufis. The Twelver ulama also disagreed among themselves on certain theological and juristic issues, and now became particularly divided into two opposing camps, generally designated as Usuli and Akhbari, reflecting their stances on the role of reason versus traditions (hadith or akhbar) in religious matters. From early on, opposition to traditionist and rationalist trends had existed within Twelver Shi‘ism, as expressed by the schools of Qumm and Baghdad. As noted, the traditionist Akhbari school of Qumm lost its early prominence to the rationalist Usuli school of Baghdad that adopted Mu‘tazili kalam principles. However, by the early seventeenth century, Mulla Muhammad Amin al-Astarabadi (d. 1624) had articulated the Akhbari position afresh, and effectively became the founder of the revived Akhbari school. He sought to re-establish Shi‘i jurisprudence on the basis of traditions (akhbar) rather than the rationalist principles (usul) of jurisprudence used in ijtihad. Indeed, al-Astarabadi attacked the very idea of ijtihad and branded the Usuli mujtahids as enemies of religion. Al-Astarabadi recognised the akhbar of the imams as the most important source of law, required also for correct understanding of the Qurʾan and the Prophetic traditions, because the imams were the divinely appointed and infallible interpreters of these sources.

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The Akhbari school flourished for almost two centuries in Persia and the shrine cities of Iraq. In the second half of the eighteenth century, when Twelver Shi‘ism was already widespread in Persia, the Usuli doctrine found a new champion in Muhammad Baqir al-Bihbahani (d. 1793), who defended ijtihad and successfully led the fight against the Akhbaris in Persia and Iraq. Thereafter, the Akhbaris rapidly lost their position to the Usulis, who now emerged as the prevailing school of jurisprudence in Twelver Shi‘ism. The re-establishment of the Usuli school led to an unprecedented enhancement in the authority of the Twelver ulama under the Qajar monarchs of Persia and in modern times. Meanwhile, Twelver Shi‘ism had also spread in southern Lebanon and certain regions of the Indian subcontinent. It was during the fifth and final phase of Twelver history, stretching from around 1800 to present times, that Twelver Shi‘is jurisprudence acquired its current form, advocating the Usuli doctrines of ijtihad and taqlid. The victory of the Usuli ulama was accompanied by the development of the religious scholars into a hierarchical class of mujtahids in Qajar Persia during the nineteenth century. A group of qualified Twelver scholars selected on the basis of their knowledge of the principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) were now widely permitted to practise ijtihad, reaching binding decisions. At the same time, ordinary Twelver Shi‘is were to follow a qualified mujtahid designated as marja‘-i taqlid (Arabic, marja‘ al-taqlid), the ‘source of emulation’ or the ‘supreme exemplar’. The triumph of the Usuli school thus divided the Twelver Shi‘i community into muqallids, persons obliged to practise taqlid, and mujtahids, those qualified to practise ijtihad. In principle, every mujtahid could be a marja‘-i taqlid, but in practice only one or very few at any time have been recognised as such. By the final decades of the Qajar period (1779–1925), the Twelver clergy had evolved into an important social class in Persia with much influence and active participation in the country’s public affairs. Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty of Persia (1925–1979), as part of his modernisation policies, systematically curtailed the privileged position of the Twelver ulama in Persian society. In particular, he excluded them from the country’s judiciary and educational systems, fields previously under the control of the clergy. Under Reza Shah’s son and successor, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941–1979), the clergy gradually regained, at least partially, some of their traditional privileges in Persia, more commonly designated as Iran in the West since 1936. By the 1960s, a strand of clerical opposition to the regime in Iran had become solidified under the leadership of Ayatullah Sayyid Ruhullah Khumayni (d. 1989), who articulated the doctrine of vilayat-i faqih (Arabic, wilayat al-faqih), or ‘guardianship of the jurist’, holding that the Twelver ulama/fuqaha were effectively heirs to the political authority of the 12 imams. He argued that the right to rule devolves from the imams to the jurists during the occultation of the twelfth imam, because they are best qualified to comprehend the divine revelation of the shari‘a; and this right would devolve to a single jurist (faqih) if he succeeded in establishing a government. It was on such a doctrinal basis that Ayatullah Khumayni organised and led a revolutionary movement establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

Shi‘i communities in history  25  

The historical evolution in the authority/power paradigm of the Twelver ulama from the first articulation to the principle of ijtihad had thus reached its extreme and ultimate conclusion in the establishment of a theocratic Islamic state with its leader (rahbar) as the vali-yi faqih (the ‘guardian jurist’), conceived as the full representative of the hidden Mahdi of the Twelver Shiʿa. In such a state, the Twelver ulama in general, and the vali-yi faqih in particular, would enjoy a unique constitutional position of religious authority with unlimited political power.

The Ismailis Representing the second most important Shi‘i community, the Ismailis have had their own complex history. The history of the Ismailis as an independent Shi‘i community may be traced to the dispute over the succession to Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq, who died in 765. As related in the majority of the available sources, Imam al-Sadiq had originally designated his second son, Isma‘il, the eponym of the Isma‘iliyya, as his successor to the imamate by the rule of nass. According to the Ismaili religious tradition, Isma‘il survived his father and succeeded him in due course. However, most non-Ismaili sources relate that Isma‘il predeceased his father. At any rate, Isma‘il was not present in Medina or Kufa at the time of Imam al-Sadiq’s death, when three of his brothers simultaneously claimed the succession. As noted above, this confusing succession dispute split the Imami Shiʿa into several groups, two of which may be identified with the earliest Ismailis. One group denied the death of Isma‘il in his father’s lifetime, maintaining that he was the true imam after al-Sadiq. Designated as al-Isma‘iliyya al-khalisa, or the ‘Pure Ismailis’, these Imami Shi‘is now awaited Isma‘il’s return as the Mahdi. A second group of the earliest Ismailis, known as the Mubarakiyya, affirmed Isma‘il’s death during the lifetime of his father, and now recognised his son Muhammad as their imam after al-Sadiq.8 Before long, Muhammad b. Isma‘il, the seventh imam of the Ismailis, went into hiding, marking the initiation of the dawr al-satr, or period of concealment, in early Ismaili history, which lasted until the emergence of the Ismaili imams as Fatimid caliphs in 909. It is certain that for almost a century after Muhammad b. Isma‘il, who died around 795, a group of Ismaili leaders worked secretly for the creation of a unified revolutionary movement against the Abbasids. These leaders did not openly claim the imamate for three generations. Abd Allah, the first of these leaders, had in fact organised his campaign around the central doctrines followed by the bulk of the earliest Ismailis, who had eventually acknowledged Muhammad b. Isma‘il as the awaited Mahdi. As explained later by the Ismaili imams, this was a taqiyya tactic adopted to safeguard the early leaders of the movement, who were Alid imams descended from Ja‘far al-Sadiq, against Abbasid persecution. At any rate, Abd Allah eventually found refuge in Salamiyya, in central Syria, disguising himself as a merchant. Henceforth, Salamiyya served as the secret, central headquarters of the early Ismaili movement. The Ismailis now referred to their movement as al-da‘wa al-hadiya (the rightly guiding mission) or simply as the da‘wa.

26  Shi‘i communities in history

The sustained efforts of Abd Allah and his successors began to bear fruit in the early 870s, when numerous Ismaili da‘is appeared in southern Iraq and other regions. In 874, Hamdan Qarmat was converted to Ismailism in the Sawad of Kufa. Hamdan and his chief assistant Abdan organised the da‘wa in southern Iraq and adjacent regions, where the Ismailis became generally known as the Qaramita, after their first local leader. The da‘wa in Yemen was initiated in 881 by Ibn Hawshab Mansur al-Yaman (d. 914). By 893, the da‘i Abu Abd Allah al-Shi‘i (d. 911) was already active among the Kutama Berbers of North Africa. Meanwhile, Abu Sa‘id al-Jannabi had been active as a da‘i in eastern Arabia, then known as Bahrayn. It was also in the 870s that the Ismaili da‘wa was initiated in the Jibal, the west-central and north-western parts of Persia, where the da‘is adopted a new conversion policy, targeting the elite and the ruling classes. The same policy was later adopted successfully, at least temporarily, by the da‘is of Khurasan and Central Asia.9 By the early 890s, a unified and expanding Ismaili movement had replaced the earlier Kufan-based splinter groups. This movement was centrally directed from Salamiyya by leaders who made every effort to conceal their true identity. The leaders of the early Ismaili da‘wa were, however, in contact with the da‘is of different regions, propagating a revolutionary religio-political message in the name of the hidden Imam-Mahdi Muhammad b. Isma‘il, whose advent was then anticipated. Centred on the expectation of the imminent emergence of the Mahdi, who would establish the rule of justice in the world, the Ismaili da‘wa of the ninth century had a great deal of messianic appeal for underprivileged groups of diverse social backgrounds. The early Ismaili da‘wa also achieved particular success among those Imami Shi‘is of Iraq and elsewhere who had hitherto acknowledged Musa al-Kazim and some of his descendants as their imams. It was particularly in the confusing circumstances following the death of al-Hasan al-Askari in 874, later counted as the eleventh imam of the Twelvers, that large numbers of these Imamis responded to the summons of the Ismaili da‘wa. Indeed, most of the early Ismaili da‘is hailed from such Imami Shi‘i backgrounds. In 899, soon after Abd Allah al-Mahdi, the future Fatimid caliph, had succeeded to the central leadership of the da‘wa in Salamiyya, Ismailism was torn apart by a major schism.10 Abd Allah had now felt secure enough to claim the imamate openly for himself and his predecessors, the same individuals who had organised and led the early Ismaili da‘wa. Later, he explained that, as a form of taqiyya, the central leaders of the da‘wa had adopted different pseudonyms, also assuming the rank of hujja (proof or full representative) of the absent Muhammad b. Isma‘il. Abd Allah further explained that the earlier propagation of the return of Muhammad b. Isma‘il as the Mahdi was itself another dissimulating measure, and that the Mahdi was, in fact, a collective codename of every true imam in the progeny of Ja‘far al-Sadiq. Abd Allah al-Mahdi’s reform split the then unified Ismaili da‘wa and community into two rival branches. One faction remained loyal to the central leadership and acknowledged continuity in the Ismaili imamate, recognising Abd Allah al-Mahdi and his Alid ancestors as their imams, which in due course became the official Fatimid Ismaili doctrine. On the other hand, a dissident faction, originally led by

Shi‘i communities in history  27  

Hamdan Qarmat (d. 933) and Abdan (d. 899), rejected the reform and m ­ aintained their belief in the Mahdism of Muhammad b. Isma‘il. Henceforth, the term Qarmati came to be applied more specifically to the dissident Ismailis who did not acknowledge Abd Allah al-Mahdi and his predecessors as well as his successors in the Fatimid dynasty, as their imams. The dissident Qarmatis acquired their most important stronghold in Bahrayn, where a Qarmati state was founded in the same eventful year 899 by Abu Sa‘id al-Jannabi (d. 913). Soon after these events, Abd Allah left Salamiyya and embarked on a historic journey which ended several years later in North Africa where he founded the Fatimid caliphate. The early Ismailis elaborated the basic framework of a system of religious thought that was further developed or modified in the Fatimid period, while the Qarmatis followed a separate doctrinal course. Central to the Ismaili system of thought was a fundamental distinction between the exoteric (zahir) and the esoteric (batin) aspects of the sacred scriptures, including the Qurʾan, as well as the religious commandments and prohibitions of the law. They further held that the zahir, the religious laws enunciated by the prophets, underwent periodical changes, while the batin, containing the spiritual truths (haqa’iq), remained immutable and eternal. These truths, representing the message common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, were explained through ta’wil, or esoteric interpretation, which often relied on the mystical significance of letters and numbers. The esoteric truths (haqa’iq) formed a gnostic system of thought for the Ismailis, representing a distinct world view. The two main components of this system were a cyclical history of revelations or prophetic eras (dawrs) and a cosmological doctrine. The Ismaili cyclical conception, applied to Judaeo-Christian as well as several other pre-Islamic religions, was developed in terms of seven eras of different speaker-prophets (natiqs) recognised in the Qurʾan. This view was also combined with the Ismaili doctrine of the imamate which had been essentially inherited from the earlier Imamiyya.

The Fatimid phase in Ismaili history The Fatimid phase represents the ‘golden age’ of Ismaili Shi‘ism, when the Ismailis possessed a state of their own and Ismaili scholarship and literature attained their summit.11 The foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in 909 in Ifriqiya, covering modern-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria in North Africa, marked the crowning success of the early Ismailis. The religio-political da‘wa of the Isma‘iliyya had finally led to the establishment of a state or dawla headed by the Ismaili Imam Abd Allah al-Mahdi (r. 909–934). The new dynasty came to be known as Fatimid (Fatimiyya), derived from the name of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima, to whom al-Mahdi and his successors traced back their Husaynid Alid ancestry. In line with their universal claims, the Fatimid caliph-imams did not abandon their da‘wa activities on assuming power, as they aimed to extend their rule over the entire Muslim umma. However, they mainly concerned themselves with the propagation of the Ismaili da‘wa after transferring the seat of the Fatimid state in

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973 to Egypt, where Cairo was founded in 969 as their new capital city. The ­religio-political messages of the da‘wa were disseminated by networks of da‘is within the Fatimid dominions as well as in other regions, referred to as the jaza’ir. Indeed, it was in non-Fatimid regions, especially Yemen, Persia and Central Asia, that the Fatimid Ismaili da‘wa achieved its lasting success. The Ismailis constituted a minority within Fatimid Egypt where the bulk of the subjects remained Sunni with a significant community of Coptic Christians. However, the Fatimid da‘wa was particularly concerned with educating the Ismaili converts in esoteric doctrines, known as hikma or wisdom. As a result, a variety of lectures, known as the majalis al-hikma, or ‘sessions of wisdom’, were organised for the Ismaili initiates. Many of these majalis delivered by the chief da‘i (da‘i al-du‘at) were in due course collected and committed to writing, such as the Ta’wil al-da‘a’im of al-Qadi al-Nu‘man (d. 974) and the Majalis of al-Mu’ayyad fi’l-Din al-Shirazi (d. 1078). Another of the main institutions of learning founded by the Fatimids was the Dar al-Ilm, the House of Knowledge. This institution, founded in Cairo in 1005, taught a variety of religious and non-religious subjects, and it was also equipped with an extensive library. Many da‘is received at least part of their education at Dar al-Ilm. The Ismaili da‘wa also paid special attention to the selection and training of the da‘is, who became scholars in theology and other  subjects.12 It was during the Fatimid phase that the Ismaili da‘is, who were at the same time the learned scholars of their community, produced what were to be regarded as the classical texts of Ismaili literature, dealing with a multitude of exoteric and esoteric subjects as well as ta’wil, which became the hallmark of Ismaili thought.13 In the course of the tenth century, the da‘is of the Iranian lands set about harmonising Ismaili Shi‘i kalam theology with Neoplatonism and other philosophical traditions into complex metaphysical systems of thought. This led to the development of a unique intellectual tradition of ‘philosophical theology’ within Ismaili Shi‘ism. The major early proponents of this tradition were the da‘is Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Nasafi (d. 943), Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 934), Abu Ya‘qub al-Sijistani (d. after 971) and Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. after 1020).14 These Iranian da‘is wrote for the elite and the educated strata of society, aiming to attract them intellectually. This may explain why they expressed their theology, always revolving around the central Imami Shi‘i doctrine of the imamate, in terms of the then most fashionable intellectual themes, yet without compromising the essence of their religious message. Nasir-i Khusraw (d. after 1070), who spread the da‘wa in Badakhshan (now divided between Tajikistan and Afghanistan), was the last eminent member of this ‘Iranian school’ of Ismailism.15 From early on, the Fatimids also concerned themselves with legal matters. The process of codifying Ismaili law had already started in Abd Allah al-Mahdi’s reign when the precepts of Imami Shi‘i law were put into practice. However, at the time, there still did not exist a distinctly Ismaili madhhab or school of jurisprudence. The promulgation of an Ismaili madhhab resulted mainly from the efforts of al-Qadi Abu Hanifa al-Nu‘man b. Muhammad (d. 974), the foremost Ismaili jurist, who

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was officially commissioned to prepare legal compendia. He codified Ismaili law by systematically collecting the firmly established hadiths transmitted from the ahl al-bayt, drawing on existing collections. Al-Qadi al-Nu‘man’s efforts culminated in his Da‘a’im al-Islam (The Pillars of Islam), which served as the official code of the Fatimid state. The authority of the infallible Alid imam and his teachings became a principal source of Ismaili law, after the Qurʾan and the sunna of the Prophet.16 In comparison with the Twelver and the Zaydi Shi‘i madhhabs, the legal literature of the Ismaili Shi‘is is extremely meagre. The Fatimid caliph-imam al-Hakim’s reign (996–1021) witnessed the opening phase of what was to become known as the Druze religion. A number of da‘is who had come to Cairo from Persia and Central Asia, notably al-Akhram (d. 1018), Hamza and al-Darazi (d. 1019), began to propagate certain extremist ideas regarding al-Hakim and his imamate. Drawing on the traditions of the Shi‘i ghulat and the eschatological expectations of the early Ismailis, these da‘is founded a new religious movement proclaiming the end of the era of Islam and the abrogation of its shari‘a. By 1017, the opening year of the Druze era, Hamza and al-Darazi also publicly declared al-Hakim’s divinity. It was after al-Darazi that the adherents of this movement later became known as Daraziyya or Duruz, hence their general designation as Druzes. The Fatimid da‘wa organisation in Cairo launched a campaign against this movement, and, subsequently, the Druzes were persecuted in Fatimid Egypt. The Druze movement eventually found its greatest success in Syria. Ismaili da‘wa activities reached their peak, especially outside the Fatimid dominions, in the long reign of al-Mustansir (r. 1036–1094), even after the Sunni Saljuqs had replaced the Shi‘i Buyids as overlords of the Abbasids in 1055. The da‘is won many converts in Iraq, Persia, Central Asia and Yemen, where the Sulayhids ruled as the vassals of the Fatimids from 1047 until 1138. One of the most eminent da‘is of al-Mustansir’s time was Nasir-i Khusraw (d. after 1070), who spread the da‘wa in Central Asia. Meanwhile, by the time local tribes had uprooted the Qarmati state of Bahrayn in 1077, other Qarmati groups in Persia, Iraq and elsewhere had either disintegrated or switched their allegiance to the Ismaili da‘wa of the Fatimids. On al-Mustansir’s death in 1094, the unified Ismaili da‘wa and community split into two rival factions, as his heritage was claimed by two of his sons. The deceased caliph-imam’s original heir-designate, Nizar (d. 1095), was deprived of his succession rights by the all-powerful Fatimid vizier al-Afdal, who installed Nizar’s younger half-brother on the Fatimid throne with the title of al-Musta‘li bi’llah (r. 1094–1101). The imamate of al-Musta‘li was also recognised by the Ismaili communities of Egypt, Yemen and western India. On the other hand, the Ismailis of Persia, then led by Hasan-i Sabbah, supported the succession rights of Nizar and his descendants. The two factions were later designated as the Musta‘liyya and the Nizariyya. The Musta‘lian Ismailis split into Hafizi and Tayyibi branches on the assassination of al-Musta‘li’s son and successor al-Amir in 1130. Al-Amir’s successor on the Fatimid throne, al-Hafiz (d. 1149), and the later Fatimid caliphs were acknowledged as imams by the da‘wa headquarters in Cairo and the Musta‘lian Ismailis of

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Egypt and Syria and by part of the community in Yemen. These Musta‘lian ­Ismailis, known as the Hafiziyya, did not survive long after the downfall of the Fatimid dynasty in 1171. On the other hand, the Musta‘lian community of Sulayhid Yemen recognised the imamate of al-Amir’s infant son al-Tayyib and became known as the Tayyibiyya. Indeed, with the demise of the Fatimid dynasty, Musta‘lian Ismailism survived only in its Tayyibi form.

The Tayyibi Ismailis Tayyibi Ismailism found its permanent stronghold in Yemen, where it received the initial support of the Sulayhid dynasty. Queen Arwa (d. 1138), then the effective ruler of Sulayhid Yemen, became the leader of the Tayyibi da‘wa and severed her ties with Cairo and the Fatimid regime. Nothing is known of the fate of al-Tayyib, who was probably murdered on the orders of the Fatimid caliph, al-Hafiz. According to Tayyibi tradition, however, al-Amir had earlier placed his infant son in the custody of a group of trusted da‘is, and they in due course succeeded in hiding alTayyib, making it possible for the Tayyibi imamate to continue in his progeny. The Tayyibi Musta‘lian Ismailis are of the opinion that their imamate has been handed down among al-Tayyib’s descendants to the present time, with all these Tayyibi imams having remained in concealment. The history of Tayyibi Ismailism in Yemen is a history of the activities of the various da‘is who led the da‘wa in the absence of their imams, and their relations with the Zaydis and other local dynasties of medieval Yemen. The Tayyibi da‘wa received its initial support from the Sulayhid queen al-Sayyida Arwa, who had been looking after the affairs of the Ismaili da‘wa in Yemen for some time, with the help of the da‘i Lamak b. Malik al-Hammadi (d. ca. 1098) and then of his son Yahya (d. 1126). It was soon after 1132 that the Sulayhid queen broke off relations with the Fatimid regime and declared al-Dhu’ayb b. Musa al-Wadi‘i (d. 1151) as al-da‘i al-mutlaq, or da‘i with absolute authority, to lead the Tayyibi da‘wa on behalf of the hidden imam, al-Tayyib. This marked the foundation of the independent Tayyibi da‘wa. Al-Dhu’ayb’s successors have retained the title of da‘i mutlaq to the present day. Idris Imad al-Din (d. 1468), the nineteenth da‘i al-mutlaq of the Tayyibis, was also a major Ismaili historian; his works include the ‘Uyun al-akhbar, a comprehensive seven-volume history of Ismailism from its beginnings until the opening phase of Tayyibi Ismailism. The Tayyibis have preserved a good portion of the Ismaili literature of the Fatimid period, and in the doctrinal domain they have maintained many of the Fatimid traditions. They also retained the established interest of the Ismailis in cyclical sacred history and cosmology, which served as the basis for their gnostic, esoteric haqa’iq system of religious thought with its distinctive eschatological and salvational themes. The Tayyibis have continued to use al-Qadi al-Nu‘man’s Da‘a’im al-Islam, regarding it as their most authoritative legal compendium. Meanwhile, the Yemeni da‘is had maintained close relations with the Tayyibi community of western India, where the Ismaili converts of mostly Hindu descent

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had become known as Bohras. The head of the Indian Tayyibi da‘wa was regularly appointed by the da‘i mutlaq residing in Yemen. With the establishment of Mughal rule in India in 1572, the Bohras began to enjoy a certain degree of religious freedom, and they were no longer severely persecuted or forced to convert to Sunni Islam. On the death of the 26th da‘i mutlaq, Da’ud b. Ajabshah, in 1589, a heated dispute over his succession led to the permanent Da’udi-Sulaymani schism in the Tayyibi da‘wa and community, reflecting Indian-Yemeni rivalries. By then, the Tayyib Bohras in India, who outnumbered their Yemeni co-religionists, desired to attain their independence from Yemen. Henceforth, the Indian Bohra Tayyibis, known as Da’udis, and the Yemeni Tayyibis, known as Sulaymanis, followed different lines of da‘is, starting with their 27th da‘i. The Da’udi da‘is continued to reside in India, while the headquarters of the Sulaymani da‘wa remained in Yemen. The Sulaymanis represent a minority within the Tayyibi community. Subsequently, the Da’udi Bohras themselves were further subdivided because of periodic challenges to the authority of their da‘i mutlaq. For all branches, the da‘is are designated, like the imams, by the nass of their predecessor. Since the 1920s, Bombay (Mumbai) has served as the administrative headquarters of the Da’udi da‘i. The Sulaymani Tayyibis of Yemen have not experienced succession disputes and schisms, and since the middle of the seventeenth century, their leadership has remained hereditary in the same Makrami family. The traditional seat of the Sulaymani da‘is was located in Badr, Najran, in north-western Yemen, which was annexed to Saudi Arabia in 1934.

The Nizari Ismailis The Nizari Ismailis have had their own complex history and distinctive doctrinal development. From early on, the Nizari Ismailis, who had broken away in 1094 from the Fatimid regime, were preoccupied with their revolutionary campaign and their survival in an extremely hostile environment. Accordingly, they produced military commanders rather than highly trained da‘is addressing a host of intellectual issues, as did the Ismailis of the Fatimid period or the Tayyibis of Yemen. Furthermore, adopting Persian as the religious language of the community, the early Nizaris (those outside Syria) did not have ready access to the Ismaili literature of earlier times which had been written in Arabic. The early Nizari Ismailis of the Alamut period (1094–1256) did, nevertheless, maintain a sophisticated intellectual outlook and a literary tradition, propounding their teachings in response to changing circumstances. By the time of the Nizari-Musta‘li schism of 1094, Hasan-i Sabbah (d. 1124), who preached the Ismaili da‘wa within the Saljuq dominions in Persia, had already emerged as the leader of the Persian Ismailis. Originally a Twelver Shi‘i, Hasan had operated as a da‘i in Persia after his conversion. His seizure of the fortress of Alamut in 1090, in northern Persia, had in fact signalled the foundation of what would become the Nizari Ismaili state of Persia; it also marked the initiation of the open revolt of the Persian Ismailis against the oppressive rule of the Sunni Saljuqs. This revolt, cleverly organised and led by Hasan from Alamut, was also an expression

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of Persian ‘national’ sentiments, as the alien rule of the Saljuq Turks was greatly detested by Persians of different social classes. In the dispute over the succession to al-Mustansir, as noted, Hasan-i Sabbah supported Nizar’s cause and severed his relations with the Fatimid regime. By this decision, Hasan had now also founded the independent Nizari Ismaili da‘wa on behalf of the Nizari imams, who after Nizar remained inaccessible for several decades. Nizar himself was captured by the Fatimid forces after the failure of his revolt and was then executed in Cairo in 1095. Soon Hasan-i Sabbah acquired a network of fortresses in several regions of Persia, which served as bases for operations against the Saljuqs. And later, by the opening decade of the twelfth century, he extended his activities to Syria by sending da‘is there. However, Hasan did not succeed in uprooting the Saljuqs who, despite their much superior military power, failed to dislodge the Nizaris from their mountain strongholds. By the final years of Hasan-i Sabbah, Ismaili-Saljuq relations had entered a phase of stalemate, which lasted even under the Saljuqs’ successors in Persia.17 Hasan-i Sabbah was also a learned theologian and is credited with restating in a more rigorous form the old Shi‘i doctrine of ta‘lim, or authoritative teaching by the ‘imam of the time’. He expounded this doctrine in a Persian treatise entitled al-Fusul al-arba‘a (The Four Chapters), which was preserved fragmentarily in Persian and in Arabic by al-Shahrastani (d. 1153).18 Emphasising the autonomous teaching authority of each imam in his own time, the doctrine of ta‘lim became the central doctrine of the Nizaris who, henceforth, were often designated as the Ta‘limiyya. The intellectual challenge posed to the Sunnis by the doctrine of ta‘lim, which also refuted the legitimacy of the Abbasid caliph as the spiritual spokesman of all Muslims, brought a reaction from the Sunni establishment. Many Sunni scholars, led by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), sought to refute this Ismaili doctrine. Meanwhile, the Nizaris had been eagerly expecting the emergence of their imam, who had remained inaccessible since Nizar’s demise in 1095. The fourth lord of Alamut, Hasan II (r. 1162–1166), to whom the Nizaris refer with the expression ‘ala dhikrihi’l-salam (on his mention be peace), declared the qiyama or Resurrection in 1164, initiating a new phase in the religious history of the Nizari community. Relying extensively on Ismaili ta’wil and earlier traditions, however, Hasan II interpreted the qiyama, the long-awaited ‘Last Day', symbolically and spiritually. Accordingly, the qiyama meant merely the manifestation of unveiled truth (haqiqa) in the person of the Nizari imam; and it represented a spiritual resurrection only for those who acknowledged the rightful imam of the time and were thus capable of understanding the truth, or the esoteric essence of Islam. The imam proclaiming the qiyama would be the qa’im al-qiyama or the ‘lord of resurrection’, a rank higher than that of an ordinary imam. In due course, Hasan II himself was recognised as the imam and qa’im. Henceforth, the Nizaris acknowledged the lords of Alamut as their imams, descendants of Nizar b. al-Mustansir. In the reign of Ala al-Din Muhammad (r. 1221–1255), the penultimate lord of Alamut, the Nizari leadership made a sustained effort to explain the different doctrinal declarations and religious policies of the lords of Alamut within the terms of a coherent theological framework. It is mainly in the Ismaili works written or

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supervised by the eminent Shi‘i philosopher and theologian Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), who spent some three decades during this time in Nizari fortress communities and converted to Ismailism, that we have an exposition of the Nizari thought of the Alamut period.19 The surrender of the fortress of Alamut to the all-conquering Mongol hordes led by Hülegü himself, in 1256, sealed the fate of the Nizari state. Rukn al-Din Khurshah, the Nizari imam and the last of the lords of Alamut, was murdered in Mongolia in 1257, where he had gone to see the Great Khan. The Mongols now massacred large numbers of Nizaris, also destroying their fortresses in Persia. In Syria, where the Nizaris attained the peak of their power and fame under their most eminent da‘i, Rashid al-Din Sinan (d. 1193), the sectarians attracted the attention of the Crusaders, who made them famous as the Assassins. The ­Syrian Nizaris were spared the Mongol debacle. However, by 1273, all the castles of the Syrian Nizaris had fallen into Mamluk hands. The Syrian Nizaris were permitted to remain in their traditional abodes as loyal subjects of the Mamluks and Ottomans. In the post-Alamut phase of their history, the Nizari Ismaili communities, scattered from Syria to Persia, Central Asia and South Asia, elaborated a diversity of religious and literary traditions in different languages. They also resorted to widespread taqiyya practices under Sunni, Twelver Shi‘i, Sufi and Hindu guises, in addition to guarding secretly their limited literature. For several of the early centuries of this period, when the Nizaris of various regions were effectively deprived of any systematic form of central leadership, their communities developed independently under the local leadership of their own da‘is, now also designated as pirs, shaykhs and khalifas, who established their own hereditary dynasties. Meanwhile, a group of Nizari dignitaries had managed to hide Rukn al-Din Khurshah’s son, Shams al-Din Muhammad (d. ca. 1310), who in due course succeeded to the imamate. An obscure dispute over his succession split the line of the Nizari imams and their followers into the Qasim-Shahi and Muhammad-Shahi (or Mu’mini) branches. The Muhammad-Shahi imams transferred their seat to India in the sixteenth century, and by the end of the eighteenth century, this line had become discontinued. Nizari Ismailism has survived mainly through its QasimShahi faction, represented in modern times by their imams known as the Aga Khans. In the early post-Alamut centuries, the Persian Nizaris disguised themselves especially as Sufis, without establishing formal affiliations with any of the Sufi orders then spreading across Persia and Central Asia. By the middle of the fifteenth century, Ismaili-Sufi relations had become well established throughout the Iranian lands. Indeed, a type of coalescence had emerged between these two independent esoteric traditions in Islam that shared common doctrinal grounds. This explains why the Persian-speaking Nizaris have regarded some of the greatest mystic poets of Persia, such as Farid al-Din Attar and Jalal al-Din Rumi, as their co-religionists. Soon, the dissimulating Persian Nizaris adopted more visible aspects of the Sufi orders. Thus, the imams appeared to outsiders as Sufi pirs or masters, while their followers adopted the typically Sufi appellation of murid or disciple.

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By the middle of the fifteenth century, the Nizari imams of the Qasim-Shahi line had emerged in the village of Anjudan, near Qumm, in Central Persia, initiating the so-called Anjudan revival in Nizari da‘wa and literary activities. Imam Mustansir bi’llah (d. 1480), who carried the Sufi name of Shah Qalandar, is the first of the Nizari imams of his line to be definitely settled in Anjudan. The imams now successfully began to reorganise their da‘wa activities and reassert their authority over various Nizari communities, especially in Central Asia and India. The imams gradually replaced the local hereditary leaders with their own loyal da‘is. The Anjudan period in Nizari history, lasting until the end of the seventeenth century, also witnessed a revival in the literary activities of the Nizaris. Many authors, notably Abu Ishaq Quhistani (d. after 1498), now began to produce doctrinal works. The post-Alamut Nizaris essentially retained the teachings of the Alamut period, especially as elaborated after the declaration of the qiyama. With the advent of the Safawids, who proclaimed Twelver Shi‘ism as their state religion in 1501, the Persian Nizaris also successfully adopted Twelver Shi‘ism as another form of disguise. The Nizari da‘wa of the Anjudan period achieved particular success in the Indian subcontinent, where the Hindu converts originally belonging to the Lohana caste became generally known as Khojas. The Nizari Khojas developed an indigenous religious tradition known as Satpanth or ‘true path’ (to salvation), as well as a devotional literature, the ginans. Composed in a number of Indic languages, the hymnlike ginans were transmitted orally for several centuries before they were recorded, mainly in the special Khojki script developed in Sind within the Khoja community. The authorship of the great majority of the ginans is traditionally attributed to a few early da‘is, such as Shams al-Din and Sadr al-Din, more commonly referred to in India as pirs.20 By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Qasim-Shahi Nizari imams had transferred their seat to the province of Kirman, closer to the pilgrimage route of the Khojas who then regularly travelled to Persia to see their imam and deliver their religious dues. The Khojas were by then acquiring increasing significance in the Nizari Ismaili community, in terms of both their numbers and financial contributions to the treasury of the da‘wa. In Kirman, the imams also became involved in political activities. The 44th Imam, Abu’l-Hasan Ali, was appointed around 1756 to the governorship of Kirman by Karim Khan Zand, founder of the Zand dynasty of Persia. The Nizaris and their imams now had also developed close relations with several leading Ni‘mat Allahi Sufis and supported the revival of the order’s activities in Kirman. The modern period in the history of the Nizari Ismailis commenced with Hasan Ali Shah (1804–1881), who succeeded to the imamate of the Nizaris in 1817 as their 46th imam. He was given the honorific title of Agha Khan (Aga Khan), meaning lord and master, by Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), the second Qajar monarch of Persia, who also appointed the youthful imam to the governorship of Qumm. Later, Hasan Ali Shah, Aga Khan I, was appointed to the governorship of Kirman by Fath Ali Shah’s grandson and successor, Muhammad Shah Qajar (r. 1834–1848). Subsequently, after some prolonged confrontations between the Nizari imam and

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the Qajar establishment, Aga Khan I left Persia permanently in 1841. He eventually settled in Bombay in 1848. In India, Aga Khan I devoted much of his time and resources to defining the distinctive religious identity of his Khoja following, who had dissimulated for centuries under various guises. In 1866, matters were eventually brought before the Bombay High Court, which legally established the status of the Nizari Khojas as a community of ‘Shiʿa Imami Ismailis’. Aga Khan I’s grandson, Sultan Muhammad Shah, Aga Khan III (1877–1957), led the Nizaris as their 48th imam for 72 years. Aga Khan III, too, made systematic efforts to set the identity of his followers apart from that of other religious communities, particularly the Twelver Shi‘is, who for long periods had provided dissimulating covers for the Nizari Ismailis of Persia and elsewhere. The Nizari identity was defined and explained in numerous constitutions that the imam promulgated for his followers, especially in India, Pakistan and East Africa. Furthermore, he increasingly concerned himself with reform and modernisation policies that would benefit not only his own followers but other Muslims as well. Aga Khan III worked vigorously to reorganise the Nizari Ismailis into a modern Shi‘i Muslim community with high standards of education, health and social well-being, for both men and women, and also developed a network of councils for administering the affairs of his community. On his death in 1957, Aga Khan III was succeeded by his grandson Prince Karim, Aga Khan IV, known to his followers as Mawlana Hazar Imam Shah Karim al-Husayni. The present Harvard-educated Imam of the Nizari Ismailis, the 49th in the series, has substantially expanded the modernisation policies of his predecessor, also developing a multitude of new programmes and institutions of his own for the benefit of his community. At the same time, Aga Khan IV has concerned himself with a variety of social, economic and cultural issues and initiatives which are of wider interest to Muslims and developing countries. Indeed, he has created a complex institutional network, generally referred to as the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), for implementing numerous projects in a wide variety of domains.21 In the field of higher education, his major initiatives include the Institute of Ismaili Studies, the Aga Khan University, the University of Central Asia and the Global Center for Pluralism. As an impressive Muslim leader, Aga Khan IV has also devoted much of his resources to promoting a better understanding of Islam, not merely as a religion with a multiplicity of expressions and interpretations but also as a major world civilisation with its plurality of social, intellectual and cultural traditions. In pursuit of these aims, he has founded an apex institution known as the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). The AKTC’s mandate now covers a host of initiatives, projects and institutions, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and the Aga Khan Museum, established in Toronto in 2014. The Nizari Ismailis have emerged as progressive Shi‘i Muslim minorities in more than 25 countries of the world. And in every country of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America where they live as religious minority communities and loyal citizens of their adopted states, they generally enjoy exemplary standards of l­iving

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while retaining their distinctive religious identity as well as devotion to their ‘imam of the time’.

The Zaydis The Zaydis represent another major Shi‘i community. The general influence and geographic distribution of the Zaydiyya branch of Shi‘i Islam, named after their fourth imam, Zayd b. Ali Zayn al-Abidin (d. 740), have been relatively more restricted compared with those of the Twelvers and the Ismailis.22 In fact, after some initial success in Iraq, the Zaydi Shi‘i imamate remained mainly confined to the Caspian region in northern Persia, and then, more importantly, to Yemen, where Zaydis have continued to live up to the present. The Zaydis have produced an impressive volume of literature over the centuries, which remains largely unpublished.23 The Zaydi branch of Shi‘i Islam developed out of Zayd’s abortive revolt. While Muhammad al-Baqir was acknowledged by the majority of the Imami Shiʿa as their imam, his half-brother Zayd too acquired a reputation for his religious learning and he transmitted hadith from his father, amongst others. Subsequently, the Kufan Shiʿa, who had never lost hope of uprooting the Umayyads, contacted Zayd and promised him extensive support if he rose against the Umayyads. However, when the battle was finally joined in 740, as had happened in the past, only a fraction of the number expected actually responded to Zayd’s call to arms. In the event, the revolt was brutally suppressed in Kufa and Zayd was killed, his end reminiscent of the fate of his grandfather, Imam al-Husayn. A Zaydi movement developed out of Zayd’s revolt, and eventually crystallised as the Zaydi branch of Shi‘i Islam. The movement was initially led by Zayd’s eldest son Yahya, who fled from Kufa to Khurasan and concentrated his activities in that eastern region remote from the centre of the Umayyad administration. Yahya found some support amongst the local Shiʿa who had been exiled to Khurasan by successive governors of Iraq. Counted as one of the Zaydi imams, whose list has never been completely fixed, Yahya was eventually tracked down by the Umayyads and killed in battle in 743. Subsequently, the early Zaydis were led by another of Zayd’s sons, Isa (d. 783), and others recognised as their imams. In early Abbasid times, groups of Zaydis participated in a number of abortive Alid, mainly Hasanid, revolts in the Hijaz, Iraq and elsewhere. By the middle of the ninth century, however, the Zaydis had shifted their rebellious activities to the mountainous region of Daylam in northern Persia, and to Yemen, remote from the centres of Abbasid power. Soon, the Zaydis actually succeeded in establishing two territorial states in these regions. Zaydi Shi‘ism was initially formed during the eighth century by the merger of two currents in Kufa, designated in heresiographical literature as the Batriyya and the Jarudiyya, also referred to as the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ traditions. The two groups disagreed especially with regard to the legitimacy of the rule (or imamate) of the caliphs preceding Ali, and the significance of the special knowledge a­ ttributed

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by the Shiʿa to the ahl al-bayt. Representing the moderate faction of the early ­Zaydiyya, the Batriyya upheld the caliphates of Abu Bakr and Umar. They argued that though Ali was the most excellent (al-afdal) of Muslims to succeed the Prophet, nevertheless, the caliphates of his first two predecessors who were less excellent (al-mafdul) were valid, because Ali himself had pledged allegiance to them. In the case of the third caliph, Uthman (r. 644–656), the matter was more complicated. The Batri Zaydis either abstained from judgement or repudiated him for the last six years of his caliphate. The Batriyya, by contrast to Jarudiyya, did not ascribe any particular religious knowledge to the ahl al-bayt, or to the Alids, and accepted the knowledge (hadith) transmitted in the Muslim community generally. They also allowed the use of individual reasoning (ijtihad or ra’y) in religious matters in order to establish legal precepts. Furthermore, the Batriyya were indeed closely affiliated to the Kufan traditionist school, and with the latter’s absorption into Sunni Islam in the ninth century, the Batri Zaydi tradition also disappeared. Thereafter, the more radical views of Jarudiyya on the imamate prevailed in Zaydi Shi‘ism. The Jarudiyya adopted some of the more radical doctrines of the Imami Shi‘is. Thus, they rejected the legitimacy of the caliphate of the caliphs before Ali. They held that the Prophet himself had designated Ali as his legatee (wasi) and implicitly as his successor, and that the majority of the Companions had gone astray for not supporting Ali’s legitimate imamate. Consequently, the Jarudi Zaydis rejected the hadiths transmitted by these Companions and the Sunni traditionists as sources of the law, accepting only those handed down by the Fatimid (Hasanid and Husaynid) Alids. The Jarudiyya also ascribed superior knowledge in religious matters to the ahl al-bayt. However, in contrast to the Imami Shi‘is, they did not confine legal teaching authority to their imams only, but accepted in principle the teaching of any member of the ahl al-bayt qualified by his religious learning. By the tenth century, Zaydi doctrine, influenced by Jarudi and Mu‘tazili elements, had been largely formulated. The Zaydis were less radical than the Imami Shi‘is in their condemnation of the early caliphs and the Muslim community at large. Initially, the Zaydis did not confine the legitimate imams to descendants of Ali, and accepted other Talibids, descendants of Ali’s father Abu Talib, as suitable for their imamate. By then, however, the majority of the Zaydis considered only the Fatimid Alids, descendants of al-Hasan and al-Husayn, as legitimate candidates for their imamate. They also held that the first three imams, Ali, al-Hasan and alHusayn, had been imams by designation (nass) of the Prophet himself. However, the designation had been unclear and obscure, khafi or ghayr jali, so that its intended meaning could be understood only through investigation. After al-Husayn, the imamate could be claimed by any qualified descendant of al-Hasan and al-Husayn who was prepared to launch an uprising (khuruj) against the illegitimate rulers and issue a formal summons (da‘wa) for gaining the allegiance of the people. Religious knowledge, ability to render independent ruling (ijtihad) and piety were emphasised as the qualifications of the imam, in addition to his Alid ancestry. Whilst the Zaydis did not generally consider their imams as divinely protected from error and sin (ma‘sum), they later attributed such immunity to the

38  Shi‘i communities in history

first three imams. There were periods without any Zaydi imam, and, in practice, at times there was more than one. Due to high requirements in terms of religious learning, the Zaydis often backed Alid pretenders and rulers as summoners (da‘is) or as imams with restricted status (muhtasibun or muqtasida) rather than as fully authoritative imams, known as sabiqun (sing. sabiq). Thus, the Zaydis elaborated a doctrine of the imamate that clearly distinguished them from Imami Shi‘ism and its two subsequent branches, the Twelvers and the Ismailis. In line with the points mentioned previously, the Zaydis did not recognise a hereditary line of imams, nor did they attach any significance to the principle of the nass, which was central to the Imami doctrine. Initially, as noted, the Zaydis were prepared to accept any member of the ahl al-bayt as an imam, but later their imams were restricted to Fatimid Alids. According to Zaydi doctrine, if an imam wished to be recognised he would have to assert his claims publicly in a rising (khuruj) and sword in hand if necessary, in addition to having the required religious knowledge (ilm) and other qualifications. Many Zaydi imams were, therefore, learned scholars and authors. Indeed, the Zaydis were not prepared to acknowledge quiescent claimants to the imamate. This explains why they did not recognise Zayd’s father, Ali Zayn al-Abidin, or Zayd’s brother, Muhammad al-Baqir, as imams. For the same reasons, in contrast to the Twelvers and the Ismailis, the Zaydis excluded the imamate of minors. They also rejected the eschatological idea of a concealed Mahdi and his return (raj‘a) in the future. As a result, messianic tendencies remained rather weak in Zaydi Shi‘ism. Their emphasis on activism also made the observance of taqiyya generally alien to Zaydi teachings. The Zaydis did, however, develop a doctrine of hijra, the obligation to emigrate from lands under the domination of unjust, non-Zaydi rulers. In theology, the Kufan Zaydiyya, like the early Imamiyya, were predestinarian and strongly opposed to the Qadariyya and the Mu‘tazila. However, they later developed, similarly to the Imamis, closer relations with the Mu‘tazili rationalist school of kalam theology. By the tenth century, the Zaydis had adopted practically all of the principal Mu‘tazili tenets, including the unconditional punishment of the unrepentant sinner – a tenet rejected by the Twelvers and the Ismailis, for whom the imam plays a key role as intercessor for his followers. In religious law, the Zaydis initially relied on the teachings of Zayd himself and other early Alid ­authorities, such as Ja‘far al-Sadiq. They also relied on the claimed consensus of the ahl al-bayt. By the end of the ninth century, however, four Zaydi legal schools (madhhabs) had emerged on the basis of the teachings of four different Zaydi authorities, including Imam al-Qasim b. Ibrahim al-Rassi (d. 860), founder of the school that later prevailed in Yemen as well as among a faction of the Caspian Zaydis. Zaydi Shi‘ism and Alid rule became closely intertwined in the mountainous provinces of Tabaristan, Gilan and Daylaman, in the Caspian region of northern Persia. Zaydi doctrines were first effectively disseminated in northern Persia by some of the local followers of the Hasanid Alid Zaydi Imam al-Qasim al-Rassi, who lived and taught on the Jabal al-Rass near Medina. As a result, al-Rassi’s theological and legal teachings, which were only partially in agreement with Mu‘tazili

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tenets, were spread in western Tabaristan (today’s Mazandaran) in the Caspian region, known in medieval times as Daylam. In 864, the Hasanid Alid al-Hasan b. Zayd led the local Daylamis in a revolt against the region’s Tahirid governor, who ruled on behalf of the Abbasids, and established the first Zaydi Alid state in Tabaristan with its capital at Amul. On his death in 884, al-Hasan b. Zayd was succeeded by his brother Muhammad; these two Alid brothers, who adopted the regnal title of al-Da‘i ila’l-Haqq, were not generally recognised as full imams, as there were some doubts regarding the justice of their rule. The first period of Zaydi Alid rule in Tabaristan came to an end in 900, at least temporarily, when Muhammad b. Zayd was defeated and killed in battle by the Samanids, who restored Daylam to their Sunni rule. In 914, Zaydi Alid rule was re-established in Tabaristan by the Husaynid al-Hasan b. Ali al-Utrush (d. 917), known as al-Nasir li’l-Haqq. He had earlier converted many Daylamis and Gilis, and was generally recognised as an imam. In fact, al-Nasir became the founder of the Nasiriyya school of Zaydi Shi‘ism, which was unique to the western Caspian region, as distinct from the older school of ­Qasimiyya prevalent in Daylam and later Yemen. A learned scholar with numerous works on theology and law, al-Nasir’s legal and ritual teaching, reflecting his own ijtihad, differed somewhat from the doctrine of Imam al-Qasim al-Rassi, which had been adopted earlier by the Zaydis of the Caspian region. Henceforth, the Caspian Zaydis became divided into two rival schools (madhhabs) and communities, designated after their founders as Nasiriyya, concentrated in eastern Gilan and most of Daylaman (or Rudbar), and Qasimiyya, located mainly in western Tabaristan and Ruyan. There was much antagonism between the two Caspian Zaydi communities, who often supported different imams, da‘is or amirs. Matters were further complicated by ethnic differences and the close ties existing between the Caspian Qasimiyya and the Zaydis of Yemen. Prolonged Zaydi sectarian hostilities finally ceased in the Caspian region when around the middle of the tenth century, Muhammad al-Mahdi li-Din Allah (d. 970), an imam of the Qasimiyya ruling from Gilan, declared both doctrinal schools as equally valid, because they were based on the ijtihad of legitimate imams. This ruling became generally accepted by the Caspian Zaydis who, nevertheless, remained divided in terms of their adherence to the two schools. In the meantime, after the collapse of the second Zaydi Alid state of Tabaristan in 928 under Samanid attack, other Alid rulers had appeared in the Caspian provinces. In 932, Hawsam, and later Lahijan in Gilan, became the seats of the Zaydi Alid dynasty of the Tha’irids, who reigned as amirs without claiming the Zaydi imamate, as well as other Alid rulers supporting the Nasiriyya school. At the same time, a number of Alids recognised as Zaydi imams by the Qasimiyya were active in Daylaman, with their seat at Langa. However, in the course of the twelfth century, the Caspian Zaydis lost much of their prominence to the Nizari Ismailis, who had then successfully established themselves in Daylaman with their seat at Alamut. Subsequently, the Zaydis, now restricted mainly to eastern Gilan, were further weakened by incessant factional fighting and Alid rivalries. However, minor Zaydi

40  Shi‘i communities in history

Alid dynasties and Zaydi communities survived in the Caspian region until the ­sixteenth century, when Persian Zaydis converted to Twelver Shi‘ism under Safawid rule over Persia. Henceforth, Zaydi Shi‘ism was confined to Yemen. In Yemen, Zaydi rule and an imamate were founded in 897 by the Hasanid Alid Yahya b. al-Husayn, grandson of Imam al-Qasim al-Rassi, who had the honorific title of al-Hadi ila’l-Haqq. With the help of some local tribes, he established himself at Sa‘da, in northern Yemen, which remained the stronghold of Zaydi Shi‘ism, da‘wa activities and scholarship in Yemen. Soon, the Yemeni Zaydis came into conflict with the Ismailis, and Zaydi-Ismaili adversarial relations persisted throughout the centuries in Yemen. Imam al-Hadi expanded the Zaydi community in Yemen, also receiving support from groups of Caspian Zaydis who migrated to Yemen from 898. Imam al-Hadi’s theological doctrine was generally very close to the views of the contemporary Mu‘tazili school of Baghdad. Concerning the imamate, he adopted the radical Shi‘i stance of the earlier Jarudi Zaydis, condemning the early caliphs before Ali. In religious law, al-Hadi’s teachings were essentially based on the doctrine of his grandfather, Imam al-Rassi. Imam al-Hadi’s legal doctrine was further elaborated by his sons, Muhammad al-Murtada (d. 922) and Ahmad al-Nasir li-Din Allah (d. 934), who were consecutively recognised as imams. Imam al-Hadi’s legal teachings, collected and further developed later, provided the foundation of the Hadawiyya legal school, named after him, which became the only authoritative madhhab for the Zaydis of Yemen, and was adopted also in parts of the Caspian Zaydi community. Having firmly established the Zaydi imamate in Yemen, which was to continue until 1962, Imam al-Hadi died in 911. His descendants, after his two sons, quarrelled incessantly among themselves and failed to be acknowledged as imams amongst the Yemeni Zaydis. The Zaydi imamate of the Rassid line was restored in Yemen in 999 by al-Mansur bi’llah al-Qasim al-‘Iyani (d. 1003), a descendant of Imam al-Rassi. Al-Mansur’s son and successor al-Husayn, also recognised as an imam, made the unusual Zaydi claim of being the promised Shi‘i Mahdi, adopting the title of al-Mahdi li-Din Allah. He was killed in battle in 1013, but his remaining Zaydi followers denied his death and awaited his return, as traditionally expected from the Mahdi. These schismatic Zaydis, known as the Husayniyya, survived until the fifteenth century; they were led by the relatives of al-Husayn, who did not claim the imamate since the Mahdi could not be succeeded by any further imam. These Rassid Alids, who ruled merely as amirs awaiting the return of al-Husayn al-Mahdi, had numerous confrontations with the Ismaili Sulayhids who ruled over parts of Yemen as vassals of the Fatimids. A second splinter Zaydi sect, known as the Mutarrifiyya, appeared in northern Yemen in the course of the eleventh century. Named after its founder, Mutarrif b. Shihab (d. 1067), the Mutarrifiyya represented a pietist and ascetic, rather than a revolutionary, Zaydi movement. Mutarrif recognised the Zaydi teachings of the earlier imams and authorities, but rejected those of the contemporary Zaydi imams as well as the doctrines of the Caspian Zaydiyya. Furthermore, the ­Mutarrifis

Shi‘i communities in history  41  

i­nterpreted the acceptable Zaydi teachings in an arbitrary manner and developed a theology that deviated significantly from the Mu‘tazili theology incorporated widely into Zaydi Shi‘ism. The Mutarrifiyya founded numerous hijras or ‘abodes of emigration’, where they engaged in worship and ascetic practices. The Mutarrifi Zaydis, too, disappeared by the fifteenth century. Meanwhile, the Zaydi imamate and fortunes were once again restored in Yemen by al-Mutawakkil Ahmad b. Sulayman (r. 1138–1171), who favoured the unity of the Zaydi communities and, therefore, recognised the equal legitimacy of the Yemeni and Caspian imams and their teachings. As a result, certain Yemeni imams were now acknowledged by the Caspian Zaydis, and numerous Zaydi texts of ­Caspian provenance were brought to Yemen. A key role was played in these unifying developments by Shams al-Din Ja‘far b. Abi Yahya (d. 1178), a Zaydi jurist and scholar who originally adhered to Ismaili Shi‘ism. He founded a Zaydi school that held that the Zaydi imams of the Caspian provinces were equal in their authority to those in Yemen. The Zaydi imamate prevailed in Yemen even after the occupation of southern Arabia by the Sunni Ayyubids in 1174, though the power of the Zaydi imams was now considerably curtailed. Under these changed circumstances, the Yemeni Zaydis were at times obliged to cultivate better relations with the Sunni Muslims through modifying some of their own doctrines. For instance, Imam al-Mu’ayyad bi’llah Yahya b. Hamza (r. 1329–1349) praised the early caliphs as the Companions of the Prophet and deserving of respect equal to that accorded to Ali. In later centuries, especially as the Zaydi imams extended their rule to the predominantly Sunni lowlands of Yemen, the Zaydis attempted in a more sustained fashion to achieve a certain doctrinal rapport with their Sunni subjects. In particular, they favoured the ‘neo-Sunni school’ that emerged in Yemen out of the teachings of Sayyid Muhammad b. Ibrahim al-Wazir (d. 1436), and, later, Muhammad b. Ali al-Shawkani (d. 1834). This ‘neo-Sunni school’ was primarily influenced by Sunni traditionalism, the Hanbali Sunni school of jurisprudence and the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). On the other hand, the Yemeni Zaydis maintained their perennial hostility towards the Sufis, even though an ascetic Zaydi school of Sufism had been founded in Yemen in the fourteenth century.24 The Yemeni Zaydis also had prolonged conflicts with the Yemeni Ismailis, and wrote polemical treatises refuting their doctrines. The final phase of the Zaydi imamate in Yemen commenced with al-Mansur bi’llah al-Qasim b. Muhammad (r. 1597–1620), founder of the Qasimi dynasty of Zaydi imams who ruled over much of Yemen until modern times. He branded the Sufis, like the Ismailis, as the Batiniyya and qualified them to be considered as ‘heretics’. The Zaydi persecution of the Sufis in Yemen continued until the abolition of the Zaydi imamate in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, after the first Ottoman occupation of Yemen ended in 1636, San‘a served as the capital of an independent Zaydi state and imamate for more than two centuries until 1872, when Yemen once again became an Ottoman province. During this period, marked by rivalries over the succession in the Qasimi Zaydi dynasty as well as incessant tribal conflicts,

42  Shi‘i communities in history

the Zaydi imamate itself was transformed into a form of dynastic rule. The Zaydi rulers and imams now succeeded one another normally on a dynastic basis, without possessing the required religious knowledge and other qualifications expected of the imams according to Zaydi tradition. The imams, thus, effectively became kings or sultans, lacking the charisma and spiritual qualities enjoyed by the earlier Zaydi imams. In its final stage lasting until 1962, the Zaydi rule and imamate were handed down amongst the members of the Hamid al-Din family of the Qasimis, starting with al-Mansur Muhammad b. Yahya Hamid al-Din (r. 1890–1904). Al-Mansur was succeeded by his son al-Mutawakkil Yahya, who pursued a policy of complete isolation; and on his assassination in 1948, he was succeeded by his son al-Nasir Ahmad, who ruled until his own death in 1962. Ahmad’s son, Muhammad al-Badr, ruled for only one week before he was deposed by a group of army officers who declared a republic in Yemen. The Zaydi imamate has not been claimed since Muhammad al-Badr’s death in 1996 while in exile in England, which is a permissible state of affairs according to Zaydi doctrine. Thus, the Zaydi Shi‘is currently remain without an imam of any status, while the very nature of Zaydi Shi‘ism has undergone a fundamental transformation, largely characterised by Sunnification. The modern Yemeni state has in fact pursued an anti-Zaydi policy in the guise of Islamic reform. The official ideology in Yemen has favoured the neo-Sunni school while marginalising the Zaydi ulama who have effectively lost their influential position in the state.

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in F. Daftary, A. B. Sajoo and S. Jiwa, ed., The Shi‘i World: Pathways in Tradition and Modernity (London: I. B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2015), pp. 169–209.   1 W. Madelung has produced an exhaustive analysis of the historiography on this subject in his The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge, 1997).   2 See A. R. Lalani, Early Shi‘i Thought: The Teachings of Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (London, 2000), especially pp. 84–95, 114–126.   3 See Abu Ja‘far Muhammad b. Ya‘qub al-Kulayni, Kitab al-hujja, the first book of his al-Usul min al-kafi, ed. A. A. al-Ghaffari (Tehran, 1388/1968), vol. 1, pp. 168–548.   4 See Abu Muhammad al-Hasan b. Musa al-Nawbakhti, Kitab firaq al-Shi‘a, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931), pp. 79–94; Sa‘d b. Abd Allah al-Qummi, Kitab al-maqalat wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkur (Tehran, 1963), pp. 102–116; and E. Kohlberg, ‘From Imamiyya to Ithna‘Ashariyya’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 39 (1976), pp. 521–534; reprinted in his Belief and Law in Imami Shi‘ism (Aldershot, 1991), article XIV.   5 See W. Madelung, ‘Imamism and Mu‘tazilite Theology’, in T. Fahd, ed., Le Shî‘isme Imâmite (Paris, 1970), pp. 13-28; reprinted in his Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam (London, 1985), article VII.   6 M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 493ff.   7 See H. Corbin, Islamic Philosophy, trans. L. Sherrard (London, 1993), pp. 338–348, and S. H. Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from its Origins to the Present (Albany, NY, 2006), pp. 209–233. For selected works in translation of several key members of this school, see S. Hossein

Shi‘i communities in history  43  

Nasr and M. Aminrazavi, ed., An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia: Volume 5, From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century (London, 2015), pp. 119–368.  8 Al-Nawbakhti, Firaq, pp. 57-62 and al-Qummi, Kitab al-maqalat, pp. 80–81, 83.   9 S. M. Stern, ‘The Earliest Isma‘ili Missionaries in North-West Persia and in Khurasan and Transoxania’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 23 (1960), pp. 56–90; reprinted in his Studies in Early Isma‘ilism (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1983), pp. 189–233. 10 See F. Daftary, ‘A Major Schism in the Early Isma‘ili Movement’, Studia Islamica, 77 (1993), pp. 123–139; reprinted in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London, 2005), pp. 45–61. 11 The historiography of this phase is fully discussed in Paul E. Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and Its Sources (London, 2002). 12 For more details, see Ahmad b. Ibrahim al-Nisaburi, al-Risala al-mujaza al-kafiya fi adab al-du‘at, ed. and trans. V. Klemm and P. E. Walker as A Code of Conduct: A Treatise on the Etiquette of the Fatimid Mission (London, 2011); H. Halm, The Fatimids and Their Traditions of Learning (London, 1997), pp. 23–29, 41–45, 71–78; and P. E. Walker, ‘Fatimid Institutions of Learning’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 34 (1997), pp. 179–200; reprinted in his Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine (Aldershot, 2008), article I. 13 See I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Isma‘ili Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977), pp. 31–132. 14 P. E. Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abu Ya‘qub al-Sijistani (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 67–142. 15 See, for instance, ed., Nasir-i Khusraw, Kitab jami‘ al-hikmatayn, ed. H. Corbin and M. Mu‘in (Tehran and Paris, 1953); English trans., Between Reason and Revelation: Twin Wisdoms Reconciled, trans. E. Ormsby (London, 2012). 16 I. K. Poonawala,‘The Evolution of al-Qadi al-Nu‘man’s Theory of Ismaili Jurisprudence as Reflected in the Chronology of His Works on Jurisprudence’, in F. Daftary and G. Miskinzoda, ed The Study of Shi‘i Islam: History, Theology and Law (London, 2014), pp. 295–351. 17 See C. Hillenbrand, ‘The Power Struggle between the Saljuqs and the Isma‘ilis of Alamut, 487–518/1094–1124: The Saljuq Perspective’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Isma‘ili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 205–220 and F. Daftary, ‘IsmailiSeljuq Relations: Conflict and Stalemate’, in E. Herzig and S. Stewart, ed., The Age of the Seljuqs (London, 2015), pp. 41–57. 18 Abu’l-Fath Muhammad b. Abd al-Karim al-Shahrastani, Kitab al-milal wa’l-nihal, ed. A. M. Wakil (Cairo, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 195–198 and S. J. Badakhchani, ‘Shahrastani’s Account of Hasan-i Sabbah’s Doctrine of Ta‘lim’, in M. A. Amir-Moezzi, ed., Islam: Identité et altérité. Hommage à Guy Monnot (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 27–55. 19 See especially Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Rawda-yi taslim, ed. and trans. S. Jalal Badakhchani as Paradise of Submission: A Medieval Treatise on Ismaili Thought (London, 2005). 20 See A. Asani, Ecstasy and Enlightenment: The Ismaili Devotional Literature of South Asia (London, 2002). 21 For details, see M. Ruthven, ‘The Aga Khan Development Network and Institutions’, in F. Daftary, ed., A Modern History of the Ismailis (London, 2011), pp. 189–220 and F. Daftary and Z. Hirji, The Ismailis: An Illustrated History (London, 2008), pp. 176–245. 22 This section draws extensively on the work of Professor Wilferd Madelung, especially his Der Imam al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim und die Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen (Berlin, 1965), a major study of early Zaydi history and thought. 23 See S. Schmidtke, ‘The History of Zaydi Studies: An Introduction’, Arabica, 59 (2012), pp. 185–199. 24 See W. Madelung, ‘Zaydi Attitudes to Sufism’, in F. de Jong and B. Radtke, ed., Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden, 1999), pp. 124–144; reprinted in his Studies in Medieval Shi‘ism (Farnham, 2012), article VI.

44  Shi‘i communities in history

Further reading Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali, The Spirituality of Shi‘i Islam: Beliefs and Practices, trans. H. Karmali (London, 2011). Crone, Patricia, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh, 2004). Daftary, Farhad, The Isma‘ilis: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2007). Daftary, Farhad, A History of Shi‘i Islam (London, 2013). Daftary, Farhad and Miskinzoda, Gurdofarid (ed.), The Study of Shi‘i Islam: History, Theology and Law (London, 2014). Haider, Najam, Shi‘i Islam: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2014). Halm, Heinz, Shi‘ism, trans. J. Watson and M. Hill (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 2004). Kohlberg, Etan (ed.), Shi‘ism (Aldershot, 2003). Madelung, Wilferd, Studies in Medieval Shi‘ism, ed. S. Schmidtke (Farnham, UK, 2012). Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Zaydiyya’, EI2, vol. 11, pp. 477–481. Modarressi, Hossein, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shi‘ite Islam (Princeton, 1993). Momen, Moojan, An Introduction to Shi‘i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi‘ism (New Haven, 1985). Newman, Andrew, Twelver Shi‘ism: Unity and Diversity in the Life of Islam, 632 to 1722 (Edinburgh, 2013). Qutbuddin, Tahera, ‘The Da’udi Bohra Tayyibis: Ideology, Literature, Learning and Social Practice’, in F. Daftary, ed., A Modern History of the Ismailis (London, 2011), pp. 331–354. Sobhani, Ja‘far, Doctrines of Shi‘i Islam: A Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices, trans. and ed. Reza Shah-Kazemi (London, 2001).

2 The study of the Ismailis Phases and issues

The Ismailis represent an important Shiʿi Muslim community. In the past, despite their minoritarian status within the broader Muslim society, the Ismailis succeeded in founding their Shiʿi Fatimid caliphate in rivalry with the Sunni Abbasid caliphate.* The Fatimid caliphate, ruled by the Ismaili Imams, grew into a major empire, stretching from North Africa to Syria, making significant contributions to Islamic thought and culture. It was also in the Fatimid period that Ismaili thought and literature attained their summit. The Ismaili dāʿīs or missionaries, who were also the scholars and authors of their community, produced what became known as the classical texts of Ismaili literature on a variety of exoteric (z.āhirī) and esoteric (bāṭinī) subjects, including taʾwīl or esoteric exegesis of Qurʾanic passages, the hallmark of Ismaili thought. In 487/1094, the Ismailis were split into Nizārī and Mustaʿlian branches, with further subsequent subdivisions. This major schism occurred in the aftermath of the Fatimid Imam-caliph al-Mustanṣir’s death and his succession dispute. The Mustaʿlian Ismailis, who recognised al-Mustanṣir’s son al-Mustaʿlī and the later Fatimid caliphs as their Imams, eventually found their permanent stronghold in Yemen, and later in South Asia. On the other hand, the Nizārī Ismailis, who recognised the imamate of al-Mustanṣir’s original heir Nizār and his successors, were initially concentrated in Persia and Syria, but later came to represent significant communities in Central Asia and South Asia. The Nizārī Ismailis also established a state of their own in Persia with a subsidiary in Syria under the initial leadership of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124). This state, founded in the midst of the ardently Sunni Saljūq sultanate, was eventually uprooted by the Mongol hordes in 654/1256. Subsequently, the Nizārī Ismailis, devoid of any political prominence, survived as minority religious communities. Today, the Ismailis are scattered in more than 25 countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America. The bulk of the Ismailis of the world, belonging to the Nizārī branch, now recognise His Highness Prince Karim

46  The study of the Ismailis

Aga Khan IV as their 49th and present Imam. The Mustaʿlian ­Ismailis, who belong exclusively to the Ṭayyibī branch, have not had a manifest Imam since 524/1130; and in the absence of an Imam, the Ṭayyibīs (now subdivided into Dāʾūdī, Sulaymānī and ʿAlawī factions known as Bohras in South Asia) have been led by lines of dāʿīs with full authority.1 In medieval times, the Ismailis posed serious challenges to the religio-political Sunni order established under the Abbasids. The Ismailis were, indeed, perceived by the Abbasids as their chief adversary. This explains why the Abbasids launched a prolonged literary campaign against the Ismailis, who were maliciously misrepresented in Sunni polemical writings as the arch enemies of Islam. The Crusaders, who remained ignorant of the religious identity of the Ismailis, added their own contributions to the misrepresentations and legends surrounding the Ismailis. As a result, the Ismailis were generally perceived by Sunni Muslims as deviators from the rightful religious path while the medieval Crusader circles depicted them fancifully as a band of religious fanatics bent on senseless murder. The medieval misrepresentations of the Ismailis did not undergo significant revisions at the hands of orientalists of the nineteenth century, even as they became much better informed about Islam and its internal divisions on the basis of the Islamic manuscripts available to them. The breakthrough in the study of the Ismailis had to await the recovery of a large number of authentic Ismaili texts in modern times, making it possible for scholars to embark on the process of deconstructing and dispelling the medieval and orientalistic misrepresentations of the Ismailis. In this chapter, we shall review the key developments in each of the three main phases in the perception and study of the Ismailis, namely, the medieval Muslim and European perceptions, and the orientalistic studies, as well as the major steps in modern progress in Ismaili studies. Medieval Muslim perceptions As the most revolutionary wing of Shiʿism with a religio-political agenda that aimed to uproot the Abbasids and restore the caliphate to a line of ʿAlid Imams acknowledged by them, the Ismailis from early on aroused the hostility of the Sunni establishment of the Muslim majority. With the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa in 297/907, the Ismaili challenge to the established order had become actualised, and thereupon the Abbasid caliphs and the Sunni ʿulamā launched what amounted to a widespread and official anti-Ismaili campaign. The overall aim of this systematic and prolonged literary campaign was to discredit and defame the entire Ismaili movement from its origins in the middle of the second/ eighth century, so that the Ismailis could be readily classified and condemned as malāḥida, that is, heretics or deviators from the true religious path. Sunni polemicists, starting with Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Rizām al-Kūfī, better known as Ibn Rizām, who lived in Baghdad during the first half of the fourth/tenth century, now began to fabricate the necessary evidence that would lend support to the condemnation of the Ismailis on specific doctrinal grounds. Ibn

The study of the Ismailis  47  

Rizām’s anti-Ismaili treatise does not seem to have survived, but it was used extensively a few decades later by another polemicist, Sharīf Abu’l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, better known as Akhū Muḥsin, whose own anti-Ismaili work written around 372/982 has not survived either. However, these early anti-Ismaili accounts have been preserved fragmentarily by several later authors, notably al-Nuwayrī (d. 733/1333), Ibn al-Dawādārī (d. after 736/1335) and al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442).2 At any rate, the polemicists cleverly concocted detailed accounts of the sinister teachings and practices of the Ismailis, while also refuting the ʿAlid genealogy of their Imams as descendants of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765). Anti-Ismaili polemical writings provided a main source of information for Sunni heresiographers, such as al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1037),3 who produced another important category of writings against the Ismailis. A number of polemicists also fabricated travesties in which they attributed a variety of shocking doctrines and practices to the Ismailis. And, oddly enough, these forgeries circulated as genuine Ismaili treatises and were used as source materials by subsequent generations of polemicists and heresiographers. One of these forgeries in particular, the anonymous Kitāb al-siyāsa (Book of Methodology), acquired wide popularity as it contained all the ideas needed to refute the Ismailis as ‘heretics’ on account of their libertinism and atheism. This book, or perhaps another forgery entitled Kitāb al-balāgh (Book of Initiation), was seen shortly afterwards by Ibn al-Nadīm, who cites it in his famous catalogue of Arabic books completed in 377/987.4 The Kitāb al-siyāsa, which has been preserved only fragmentarily in later Sunni sources and was partially reconstructed by S. M. Stern,5 reportedly expounded the intricate procedure used by Ismaili dāʿīs for winning new converts and instructing them through some seven stages of initiation or balāgh leading ultimately to unbelief and atheism. Needless to add that the Ismaili tradition knows of these fictitious accounts only through the polemics of its adversaries. Be that as it may, the polemical and heresiographical works, in turn, influenced the Muslim historians, theologians and jurists who had something to say about the Ismailis. The Sunni authors who were generally uninterested in collecting accurate information on the internal divisions of Shiʿi Islam and treated all Shiʿi interpretations of Islam as deviations from the truth or ‘heresies’ also readily availed themselves of the opportunity to blame the Fatimids and the entire Ismaili community for the atrocities perpetrated by the Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn.6 The Qarmaṭīs, as it is now known, seceded from the rest of the Ismaili community in 286/899 and never recognised continuity in the imamate which was the central doctrine of the Fatimid Ismailis. The Qarmaṭīs continued to await the return of their seventh and final Imam, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, who would then initiate the final era of human history. At any rate, in 317/930, the Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn attacked Mecca, massacred the pilgrims there and then carried away the Black Stone (al-ḥajar al-aswad) to their own capital, al-Aḥsāʾ, in eastern Arabia, presumably to symbolise the end of the era of Islam. The sacrilege of the Qarmaṭīs at Mecca shocked the entire Muslim world. At any rate, the dissemination of hostile accounts and misrepresentations contributed significantly to turning the Sunni Muslims at large against the Ismailis.

48  The study of the Ismailis

By spreading defamations and forged accounts, the anti-Ismaili authors, indeed, produced a ‘black legend’ in the course of the fourth/tenth century. Ismailism was now depicted as the arch-heresy of Islam, cleverly designed by a certain ʿAbd Allāh b. Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ or some other non-ʿAlid impostor, or possibly even a Jewish magician disguised as a Muslim, aiming to destroy Islam from within.7 By the fifth/eleventh century, this anti-Ismaili fiction, with its elaborate details and stages of initiation, had been accepted as an accurate and reliable description of Ismaili motives, beliefs and practices, leading to further anti-Ismaili polemics and heresiographical accusations as well as intensifying the animosity of other Muslims towards the Ismailis. It is interesting to note that the same ‘black legend’ served as the basis of the famous ‘Baghdad manifesto’ issued in 402/1111 against the Fatimids.8 This declaration, sponsored by the Abbasid caliph al-Qādir (381–422/991–1031), was essentially a public refutation of the ʿAlid ancestry of the Fatimid Imam-caliphs. This manifesto was read in mosques throughout the Abbasid realm, to the deep annoyance of the then reigning Fatimid Imam-caliph, al-Ḥākim (386–411/996–1021). In addition, al-Qādir commissioned several theologians, including the Muʿtazilī ʿAlī b. Saʿīd al-Iṣṭakhrī (d. 404/1013), to write treatises condemning the Fatimids and their doctrines. The revolt of the Persian Ismailis led by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124) against the Saljūq Turks, the new overlords of the Abbasids, called forth another vigorous Sunni reaction against the Ismailis in general and the Nizārī Ismailis in particular. The new literary campaign, accompanied by military expeditions against Alamūt and other Nizārī fortresses in Persia, was initiated by Niz.ām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), the Saljūq wazīr and virtual master of their realm for more than two decades. Niz.ām al-Mulk devoted a long chapter in his Siyāsat-nāma (The Book of Government) to the condemnation of the Ismailis who, according to him, aimed to “abolish Islam, to mislead mankind and cast them into perdition”.9 But the earliest polemical treatise against the Persian Ismailis and their central doctrine of taʿlīm, propounding the necessity of authoritative teaching by the Ismaili Imam of the time, was written by no less a figure than Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), the most eminent contemporary Sunni theologian and jurist. He was, in fact, commissioned by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustaz.hir (487–512/1094–1118) to write a major treatise in refutation of the Bāṭinīs, another designation meaning ‘esotericists’ coined for the Ismailis by their adversaries who accused them of dispensing with the z.āhir, or the commandments and prohibitions of the sharīʿa, because they claimed to have found access to the bāṭin, or the inner meaning of the Islamic message as interpreted by the Ismaili Imam. In this widely circulating book, completed around 488/1095 and generally known as al-Mustaz.hirī, al-Ghazālī fabricated his own elaborate ‘Ismaili system’ of graded initiation leading to the ultimate stage of atheism.10 Subsequently, al-Ghazālī wrote several shorter works in refutation of the Ismailis,11 and his defamations were adopted by other Sunni writers who, like Niz. ām al-Mulk, were familiar with the earlier anti-Ismaili ‘black legend’ as well. The Nizārīs themselves never responded to al-Ghazālī’s polemics, but a detailed refutation of al-Mustaz.hirī was written much later in Yemen by the fifth Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian dāʿī muṭlaq, ʿAlī

The study of the Ismailis  49  

b. Muḥammad Ibn al-Walīd (d. 612/1215).12 The Sunni authors, especially Saljūq chroniclers, participated actively in the renewed propaganda campaign against the Ismailis, while Saljūq armies failed to dislodge the Nizārīs from their mountain fortresses despite their far more superior military power.

Medieval European perceptions Soon the Ismailis found a new enemy in the Christian Crusaders who had supposedly arrived in the Holy Land to liberate their own co-religionists. The Crusaders seized Jerusalem, their primary target, in 492/1099 and subsequently engaged in extensive military and diplomatic encounters with the Fatimids in Egypt and the Nizārī Ismailis in Syria, with lasting consequences in terms of the distorted image of the Nizārīs in Europe. The Syrian Nizārī Ismailis attained the peak of their power under the leadership of Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān, who was their chief dāʿī for some three decades until his death in 589/1193. It was in the time of Sinān, the original ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ or ‘Le Vieux de la Montagne’ of the Crusader sources, that occidental chroniclers of the Crusades and a number of European travellers and diplomatic emissaries began to write about the Nizārī Ismailis, designated by them as the ‘Assassins’. The very term Assassin, based on the variants of the Arabic word ḥashīshī (plural, ḥashīshiyya) that was applied to the Nizārī Ismailis in a derogatory sense of ‘irreligious social outcasts’ by other Muslims, was picked up locally in the Levant by the Crusaders and their European observers. At the same time, the Frankish circles and their occidental chroniclers, who were not interested in collecting accurate information about Islam as a religion and its internal divisions despite their proximity to Muslims, remained completely ignorant of Muslims in general and the Ismailis in particular. In fact, the Syrian Nizārī Ismailis were the first Shiʿi Muslim community with whom the Crusaders had come into contact. However, the Crusader circles remained unaware of the religious identity of the Ismailis and had only vague and erroneous ideas regarding the Sunni-Shiʿi division in Islam. Indeed, there is no evidence to suggest that even the most learned of the Crusader historians who spent long periods in the Latin Orient, where they had continuous contact with the local Muslims, made any serious efforts to gather details on the Muslim communities of the region. Ironically, some of these occidental historians, such as William of Tyre (d. ca. 1184) and James of Vitry (d. 1240), were theologians who served as bishops and archbishops in the Crusader states and also aimed at converting local Muslims into Christians. The Crusaders obviously also failed to realise that the Fatimids and the Syrian Nizārīs then belonged to rival wings of Ismailism, which itself represented a major branch of Shiʿi Islam. It may be noted here that Sinān had made attempts to establish peaceful relations with his Christian Crusader neighbours through exchanging emissaries with Amalric I (d. 1174), king of the Latin state of Jerusalem. On this occasion, too, the Crusaders did not obtain any information on Ismaili beliefs. Instead, William of Tyre curiously relates that it was at the time of this embassy that the Syrian Nizārīs proposed to collectively embrace Christianity.13 Needless to say, this story, reflecting a basic

50  The study of the Ismailis

misunderstanding of Sinān’s intentions, may be regarded as purely fictitious. It was under such circumstances that the Frankish circles themselves began to fabricate and put into circulation both in the Latin Orient and in Europe a number of sensational tales about the secret practices of the Nizārī Ismailis. It is significant to note that none of the variants of these tales are to be found in contemporary Muslim sources, including the most hostile ones written during the sixth–seventh/twelfth– thirteenth centuries. The Crusaders were particularly impressed by the highly exaggerated reports and rumours of the assassinations attributed to the Nizārīs, and the daring behaviour of their fidāʾīs, self-sacrificing devotees who carried out such missions in public places and normally lost their own lives in the process. It should be recalled that in the sixth/twelfth century, almost any assassination of any significance committed in the central Islamic lands was readily attributed to the daggers of the Nizārī fidāʾīs. This explains why these imaginative tales came to revolve around the recruitment and training of the would-be fidāʾīs – because they were meant to provide satisfactory explanations for behaviour that would otherwise seem irrational or strange to the medieval European mind. These so-called Assassin legends consisted of a number of separate but interconnected tales, including the ‘ḥashīsh legend’, the ‘paradise legend’ and the ‘death-leap legend’. The tales developed in stages, receiving new embellishments at each successive stage, and finally culminated in a synthesis popularised by Marco Polo (d. 1324).14 The Venetian traveller added his own original contribution in the form of a ‘secret garden of paradise’, where bodily pleasures were supposedly procured for the fidāʾīs with the aid of ḥashīsh by their mischievous leader, the Old Man, as part of their indoctrination and training.15 Marco Polo’s version of the Assassin legends, offered as a report obtained from reliable contemporary sources in Persia, was reiterated to various degrees by subsequent European writers, such as Odoric of Pordenone (d. 1331), as the standard description of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain and his Assassins’. However, it did not occur to any European that Marco Polo may have actually heard the tales in Italy after returning to Venice in 1295 from his journeys to the East – tales that were by then quite widespread in Europe and could be traced back to European antecedents on the subject – or that the Assassin legends found in Marco Polo’s travelogue may have been entirely inserted, as a digressionary note, by Rustichello of Pisa, the Italian romance writer who was responsible for committing the account of Marco Polo’s travels to writing. No more can be said on this subject at the present state of our knowledge, especially as the original version of Marco Polo’s travelogue written by Rustichello in a peculiar form of old French mixed with Italian has not been recovered. In this connection, it may also be noted that Marco Polo himself evidently revised his travelogue during the last 20 years of his life, at which time he could have readily appropriated the popular Assassin legends regarding the Syrian Nizārī Ismailis then current in Europe. In fact, it was Marco Polo who transferred the scene of the legends from Syria to Persia. The contemporary Persian historian ʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī (d. 681/1283), an avowed enemy of the Nizārīs who accompanied the Mongol conqueror Hūlāgū to Alamūt in 654/1256 and

The study of the Ismailis  51  

personally inspected that fortress and its famous library before their destruction by the ­Mongols, does not report discovering any ‘secret garden of paradise’ there, as claimed in Marco Polo’s popular account. Starting with Burchard of Strassburg, who visited Syria in 570/1175 as an envoy of Frederic of Barbarossa, the Hohenstaufen emperor of Germany, European travellers, chroniclers and envoys to the Latin Orient who had something to say about the ‘Assassins’ participated in the process of fabricating, transmitting and legitimising the legends. Subsequently, different Assassin legends or components of particular tales were ‘imagined’ independently and at times concurrently by different European authors, such as Arnold of Lübeck (d. 1212), the German abbot and historian, and James of Vitry (d. 1240), the French bishop of Acre and Crusader historian. The legends were embellished over time and followed an ascending tendency towards more elaborate versions. They culminated in the version attributed to Marco Polo, which combined a number of such legends in an integrated manner with an additional component in the form of a ‘secret garden of paradise’. By the eighth/fourteenth century, the legends had acquired wide currency and were generally accepted as reliable and accurate descriptions of Nizārī Ismaili teachings and practices, in much the same way as the earlier anti-Ismaili ‘black legend’ of the Muslim writers. Henceforth, the Nizārī Ismailis were portrayed in Late Medieval European sources as a sinister order of drugged ‘assassins’ bent on indiscriminate murder and terrorism. In the meantime, the word ‘assassin’, instead of signifying the name of a community in Syria, had acquired a new meaning in French, Italian and other European languages. It had become a common noun designating a professional murderer. With the advent of this usage, the origin of the term was soon forgotten in Europe, while the ‘oriental group’ designated earlier by that name in the Crusader sources continued to arouse interest among Europeans, mainly because of the enduring popularity of the Assassin legends which had acquired an independent life of their own. At the same time, a number of European philologists and lexicographers had begun to collect the variants of the term ‘assassin’, such as assassini, assissini and heyssessini, occurring in medieval occidental sources, also proposing many strange etymologies. By the twelfth/eighteenth century, a multitude of etymologies of this term had been proposed, while the Ismailis had received a few more notices from travellers and Christian missionaries sent to the Orient.16 All in all, by the beginning of the thirteenth/nineteenth century, Europeans still perceived the Ismailis in utterly confused and fanciful manners.

Orientalistic studies of the Ismailis A new phase in the study of Islam, and to some extent the Ismailis, occurred in the nineteenth century with the increasing access of the so-called orientalists to the textual sources of the Muslims – Arabic and Persian manuscripts that were variously acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and other major European libraries. Scientific orientalism had been initiated in France with the establishment in 1795

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of the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris. Baron Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), the most eminent orientalist of his time, became the first Professor of Arabic in that newly founded School of Oriental Languages; he was also appointed in 1806 to the new chair of Persian at the Collège de France. In due course, de Sacy acquired the distinction of being the teacher of the most prominent orientalists of the first half of the nineteenth century. At any rate, the orientalists, led by de Sacy, now began their more scholarly study of Islam on the basis of manuscripts that were written mainly in Arabic by Sunni authors. Consequently, they studied Islam according to Sunni perspectives and, borrowing classifications from Christian contexts, treated Shiʿism as the ‘heterodox’ interpretation of Islam, or even a ‘heresy’, by contrast to Sunnism which was taken to represent Islamic ‘orthodoxy’. Indeed, Western scholarship on Islam has continued to be shaped variously by its Arabo-Sunni perspectives. It was mainly on this basis, as well as the continued attraction of the seminal Assassin legends, that the orientalists launched their own studies of the Ismailis. It was de Sacy, with his lifelong interest in the Druze religion,17 who finally solved the mystery of the name ‘Assassin’ in his famous Memoir.18 He showed, once and for all, that the word Assassin was connected with the Arabic word ḥashīsh, referring to Indian hemp, a narcotic product of Cannabis sativa. More specifically, he convincingly argued that the main variant forms of this term (such as Assassini and Assassini) occurring in base-Latin documents of the Crusaders and in different European languages, were derived from the Arabic word ḥashīshī (plural, ḥashīshiyya or ḥashīshiyyīn); and he was able to cite Arabic texts, such as the history of the contemporary Syrian chronicler Abū Shāma (d. 665/1267), in which the Nizārī Ismailis were called ḥashīshī (plural, ḥashīshiyya). A few contemporary Muslim historians occasionally used the term ḥashīshī (ḥashīshiyya) in reference to the Nizārī Ismailis of Syria and Persia without any derivative explanation. This name seems to have been applied to the Nizārīs as a term of abuse and reproach. The Nizārīs were already a target for hostility by other Muslims and they would readily qualify for every sort of contemptuous judgement on their beliefs and behaviour. In other words, it seems that the pejorative term ḥashīshiyya, designating people of lax morality, reflected a criticism of the Nizārīs rather than an accurate description of their secret practices. And it was the name that gave rise to imaginative tales that supplied some explanation of the behaviour that would otherwise seem rather incomprehensible to ill-informed Europeans. Be that as it may, although de Sacy and other orientalists now correctly identified the Ismailis as a Shiʿi Muslim community, they were still obliged to study them on the basis of the hostile Sunni sources and the fictitious occidental accounts of the Crusader circles. Consequently, de Sacy and others endorsed, to various degrees, the anti-Ismaili ‘black legend’ of the medieval Sunni polemicists and the Assassin legends of the Crusaders. De Sacy’s deficient, albeit unintentional, evaluation of the Ismailis set the frame within which other orientalists of the nineteenth century studied the medieval history of the Ismailis. It was under such circumstances that misrepresentation and

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plain fiction came to permeate the first European book devoted exclusively to the history of the Persian Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamūt period written by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856). This Austrian orientalist-diplomat endorsed Marco Polo’s narrative in its entirety as well as all of the medieval defamations levelled against the Ismailis by their Sunni detractors. Originally published in German in 1818, this book achieved great success in Europe and continued to be treated as the standard history of the Nizārī Ismailis until at least the 1930s.19 With a few exceptions, European scholarship made little further progress in the study of the Ismailis during the second half of the nineteenth century, while Ismaili sources still remained generally inaccessible to orientalists. The outstanding exception was provided by the historical studies of the French orientalist Charles François Defrémery (1822–1883), who collected a large number of references from various Muslim chronicles on the Nizārīs of Persia and Syria.20 The Ismailis continued to be misrepresented to various degrees by orientalists, such as Michael J. de Goeje (1836–1909), who made valuable contributions to the study of the Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn but whose erroneous interpretations of FatimidQarmaṭī relations were generally adopted.21 There also appeared for the first time a history of the Fatimids by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (1808–1899), a compilation from various Arabic chronicles with no extracts from any Ismaili source.22 The lack of significant progress in the study of the Fatimids is clearly revealed by the fact that the next Western book on the subject, written some four decades later by De Lacy O’Leary (1872–1957) of Bristol University, still did not make any references to Ismaili sources.23 Orientalism, thus, gave a new lease of life to the myths surrounding the Ismailis; and this deplorable state of Ismaili studies remained essentially unchanged until the 1930s. Even an eminent orientalist of the calibre of Edward G. Browne (1862–1926), who covered the Ismailis only tangentially in his magisterial survey of Persian literature, could not avoid reiterating the standard orientalistic tales of his predecessors on the Ismailis.24 This should not cause any particular surprise, however, as very few Ismaili sources had been available to the orientalists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Meanwhile, Westerners had continued to refer to the Nizārī Ismailis as the Assassins, a misnomer rooted in a medieval pejorative neologism. The breakthrough in Ismaili studies had to await the recovery of genuine Ismaili texts on a large scale. A few Ismaili manuscripts of Syrian provenance had already surfaced in Paris during the nineteenth century, and some fragments of these texts were studied and published by Stanislas Guyard (1846–1884) and other orientalists.25 Another small group of Ismaili texts, again of Syrian provenance, had been sent by a Protestant missionary to America.26 At the same time, Paul Casanova (1861–1926), who would produce important studies on the Fatimids, was the first European orientalist to have recognised the Ismaili affiliation of the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), a portion of which had found its way to Paris.27 Earlier, the German orientalist Friedrich Dieterici (1821–1903) had published many parts of the Rasāʾil, with German translation, without realising their Ismaili connection.28 These early discoveries of Ismaili sources were, however, few

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and far between, and it was largely the scholars working in Paris, the capital of orientalism in the nineteenth century, who had access to these codices. Other types of information on the Ismailis had now also started to appear. While travelling in Syria in 1895, the Swiss orientalist Max van Berchem (1863–1921) read almost all of the epigraphic evidence of the Syrian Nizārī fortresses.29 Paul Casanova also became the first orientalist to have produced the earliest study of the Nizārī coins minted during the Alamūt period.30 Much information on the Nizārī Khojas of South Asia and the first of the modern Nizārī Imams to bear the title of the Āghā Khān (Aga Khan), originally bestowed by the Qājār monarch of Persia, became available in the course of a complicated legal case investigated by the High Court of Bombay, culminating in the famous judgement of 1866.31 More Ismaili manuscripts preserved in Yemen and Central Asia began to be recovered in the opening decades of the twentieth century. In 1903, Giuseppe Caprotti (1869–1919), an Italian merchant who had spent some three decades in Yemen, brought a collection of Arabic manuscripts to Italy and sold it to the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. The Ambrosiana’s Caprotti Collection of codices was later found to contain several Ismaili texts.32 Of greater significance were the efforts of some Russian scholars and officials who, having become aware of the existence of Ismaili communities within the Central Asian domains of the Russian Empire, now attempted to establish direct contacts with them. The Central Asian Ismailis, it may be recalled, all belong to the Nizārī branch and have been concentrated mainly in the Badakhshān mountainous region, now divided by the Oxus River (Āmū Daryā) between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Russians travelled freely in the Upper Oxus region on the right bank of the Panj River, a major upper headwater of the Oxus. Count Alexis A. Bobrinskiy (1861–1938), a Russian scholar who studied the inhabitants of the Wakhān and Ishkāshim districts of Badakhshān in 1898, published the first account of the Nizārīs living there.33 Subsequently, in 1914, Ivan I. Zarubin (1887–1964), the eminent Russian ethnologist and specialist in Tajik dialects, acquired a small collection of Ismaili manuscripts from the western Pamir districts of Shughnān and Rūshān in Badakhshān, which were presented to the Asiatic Museum of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.34 In 1918, the Asiatic Museum received a second collection of Persian Nizārī texts.35 These manuscripts had been acquired a few years earlier, from the Upper Oxus region, by Aleksandr A. Semenov (1873–1958), a Russian pioneer in Ismaili studies from Tashkent. These Ismaili manuscripts of Central Asian provenance are currently part of the collections of the Russian Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg. The generally meagre number of Ismaili titles known to orientalists by the 1920s is well reflected in the first Western bibliography of Ismaili works prepared by Louis Massignon (1883–1962), the foremost French pioneer in Shiʿi and Ismaili studies.36 Little further progress was made in the study of the Ismailis during the 1920s, aside from the publication of some of the works of the Persian dāʿī, poet and philosopher Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070), while European orientalist studies on the subject essentially continued to display the misrepresentations of the ­Crusaders and the

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defamations of medieval Sunni polemicists. Nevertheless, the ground was rapidly being prepared for the initiation of a totally new phase in the study of the Ismailis – the modern phase based increasingly on Ismaili textual materials.

Modern progress in Ismaili studies Modern scholarship in Ismaili studies, founded on the recovery and study of genuine Ismaili sources on a large scale, was actually initiated in the 1930s in India, where significant collections of Ismaili manuscripts have been preserved. This breakthrough resulted mainly from the efforts of Wladimir Ivanow (1886–1970), and a few Ismaili Bohra scholars, notably Asaf A. A. Fyzee (1899–1981), Ḥusayn F. al-Hamdānī (1901–1962) and Zāhid ʿAlī (1888–1958), who produced their pioneering studies using their family collections of Ismaili manuscripts. Subsequently, these collections were donated to various academic institutions, including in particular the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and, thus, were made available to scholars at large.37 Asaf Fyzee, who studied law at Cambridge University and belonged to the most eminent Sulaymānī Ṭayyibī family of Ismaili Bohras in India, in fact, made modern scholars aware of the existence of an independent Ismaili madhhab or school of jurisprudence. Among his numerous studies on Ismaili law,38 Fyzee produced a critical edition of the Daʿāʾim al-Islām, the major compendium of the foremost Ismaili jurist al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), which served as the legal code of the Fatimid state and is still used by the Ṭayyibī Ismailis of South Asia and Yemen.39 Ḥusayn al-Hamdānī hailed from a distinguished Dāʾūdī Ṭayyibī family of scholars with Yemeni origins. He received his doctorate from London University’s School of Oriental (and African) Studies, and was a pioneer in producing a number of Ismaili studies based on a collection of manuscripts which had been developed by several generations of his ancestors in Yemen and Gujarāt;40 he also called the attention of modern scholars to the existence of this literary heritage,41 and made readily available the manuscripts in his possession to numerous scholars, such as Paul Kraus (1904–1944), who were then producing their own original studies. Zāhid ʿAlī, who was from another learned Dāʾūdī Bohra family, was for many years the principal of the Niz. ām College at Hyderabad after receiving his doctorate from Oxford University, where he produced a critical edition of the Dīwān of Ibn Hāniʾ (d. 362/973), the foremost Ismaili poet of classical times, as his thesis.42 Subsequently, Zāhid ʿAlī was to become the first author in modern times to have written, in Urdu, on the basis of a vast variety of Ismaili sources, a scholarly work on the Fatimid dynasty.43 Wladimir Ivanow was a major moving force behind the modern progress in Ismaili studies.44 Born in 1886 in St. Petersburg, Ivanow joined the Asiatic Museum in 1915 as an assistant keeper of oriental manuscripts, and in that capacity travelled widely in Central Asia, acquiring more than a thousand Arabic and Persian manuscripts for the Museum. It was at the Asiatic Museum that Ivanow had his first contact with Ismaili literature, his main research interest in later years. Ivanow, who

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eventually settled in Bombay after permanently leaving his native Russia in 1918, collaborated closely with the aforementioned Bohra scholars and a few emerging European scholars in the field. Meanwhile, he had established relations with some Nizārī Khojas of Bombay who, in turn, introduced him to Sultan Muhammad (Mahomed) Shah Aga Khan III (1877–1957), the 48th Imam of the Nizārī Ismailis. In 1931, the Ismaili Imam employed Ivanow on a permanent basis to conduct research into the literature, history and doctrines of the Ismailis. Henceforth, Ivanow also found ready access to the private collections of Ismaili manuscripts held by the Nizārī Ismailis of India, Badakhshān and elsewhere. It was in Bombay of the early 1930s that this small group of pioneers, led by Ivanow, brought about the breakthrough of modern Ismaili studies. In 1933, Ivanow produced the first detailed catalogue of Ismaili works, citing some 700 separate titles written by a multitude of Ismaili authors such as Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934), Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. ca. 346/957), al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad (d. 363/974), Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971), Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1020), al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078), Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070), and many later authors who lived in Yemen, Syria, Persia and other regions. This catalogue attested to the hitherto unknown richness and diversity of Ismaili literary and intellectual traditions.45 The initiation of modern scholarship in Ismaili studies may indeed be traced to this very publication, which provided for the first time a scientific framework for research in this new field of Islamic studies. In the same year, Ivanow founded in Bombay the Islamic Research Association with the collaboration of Asaf Fyzee and other Ismaili friends. Several Ismaili works, including Ivanow’s own editions of a number of Persian Nizārī texts and his major study of early Ismailism,46 appeared in the series of publications sponsored by this institution. In 1937, Ivanow discovered the tombs of several Nizārī Imams in the villages of Anjudān and Kahak, in central Persia, enabling him to fill certain gaps in the post-Alamūt history of the Nizārī Ismailis.47 In fact, Ivanow himself succeeded in identifying what he termed the ‘Anjudān revival’, an important period stretching from around the middle of the ninth/­fifteenth century to the later eleventh/seventeenth century, representing a revival in the daʿwa and literary activities of the Nizārī Ismailis. Ismaili scholarship received a major boost through the establishment in 1946 of the Ismaili Society in Bombay under the patronage of Aga Khan III. Ivanow also played a crucial role in the creation of the Ismaili Society, whose various series of publications were devoted mainly to his own monographs as well as editions and translations of Persian Nizārī texts. Ivanow acquired a large number of Arabic and Persian Ismaili manuscripts for the Ismaili Society’s library, which were transferred in the early 1980s to the Institute of Ismaili Studies Library in London. These manuscript sources were also initially made available to a group of Western scholars, including Henry Corbin (1903–1978), who were then developing an interest in Ismaili studies.48 By 1963, when Ivanow published a revised edition of his Ismaili catalogue, many more textual sources had become known and progress in Ismaili studies had

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gained momentum.49 In addition to many studies by Ivanow and the Bohra pioneers, as well as those of a dozen European scholars such as Rudolf Strothmann (1877–1960), Marius Canard (1888–1982), Paul Kraus (1904–1944) and Bernard Lewis, numerous Ismaili texts had now begun to be critically edited, preparing the ground for further progress in the field. In this connection, particular mention should be made of the Ismaili texts of Fatimid and later times edited together with French translations and analytical introductions by Henry Corbin, and published simultaneously in Tehran and Paris in his ‘Bibliothèque Iranienne’ series, and the Fatimid Ismaili texts published by the Egyptian scholar Muḥammad Kāmil Ḥusayn (1901–1961) in his ‘Silsilat Makhṭūṭāt al-Fāṭimiyyīn’ in Cairo. ʿĀrif Tāmir (1921– 1998), who belonged to the small Muʾminī Nizārī community in Syria, also made a number of Ismaili texts available to scholars, albeit often in defective editions. The groundbreaking efforts of Ivanow in making the bulk of the Nizārī literature available to modern scholars had meanwhile enabled Marshall Hodgson (1922–1968) to produce the first comprehensive and scholarly study of the Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamūt period,50 a work that finally replaced J. von Hammer-Purgstall’s nineteenth-century orientalist monograph on the subject. Modern scholars now also acquired a much better understanding of the nature of the pre-Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa and community and the proper place of the Qarmaṭīs within early Ismailism, thanks to a number of studies by Samuel M. Stern (1920–1969) and Wilferd Madelung.51 Later, Madelung summed up the contemporary state of scholarship on Ismaili history in his article ‘Ismāʿīliyya’, published in 1973 in the new edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Meanwhile, a number of Russian scholars had maintained the earlier interests of A. Semenov and their other compatriots in Ismaili studies, though often limiting themselves to a Marxist class-struggle analytical framework. Among such scholars, particular mention should be made of Andrey E. Bertels (1926–1995) and Lyudmila V. Stroeva (1910–1993).52 Stroeva produced the only modern Russian account of the history of the Nizārī Ismaili state in Persia.53 Driven by her Marxist framework, however, Stroeva was obliged to draw significantly different conclusions compared to Hodgson’s treatment of the same subject. At the same time, several Egyptian scholars with interests in the medieval history of their country, especially Ḥasan Ibrāhīm Ḥasan (1892–1968), Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl (1911–1967), Muḥammad Jamāl al-Dīn Surūr (1911–1992) and ʿAbd al-Munʿim Mājid (1920–1999), made further contributions to Fatimid studies. Indeed, the Fatimid period remains the best documented era of Ismaili history. Progress was equally astonishing in broader areas of Ismaili studies, such as the enigmatic Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ and their enyclopedic Rasāʾil, though controversies regarding the identity of these authors and the date of composition of their 52 epistles remain unresolved. Yves Marquet (1911–2008) produced a vast corpus of studies on the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, while Alessandro Bausani (1921–1988) and Carmela Baffioni, amongst others, have also contributed to this field. Abbas Hamdani has expounded his own distinct hypothesis on the authorship and dating of the Rasāʾil in his numerous studies. Professor Hamdani essentially maintains that these epistles

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were composed by a group of Ismaili dāʿīs shortly before the foundation of the Fatimid state in 297/909.54 There are still other scholars, such as Ian R. Netton, who altogether dispute the Ismaili connection of the Rasāʾil.55 Amongst the various regional Ismaili traditions that have received scholarly attention in recent decades, particular mention may be made of the contributions of Azim Nanji and Ali Asani to the study of the Satpanth tradition of South Asian Nizārī Khojas, as reflected in their ginān devotional literature. Progress in Ismaili studies has proceeded at a rapid pace during the last few decades through the cumulative efforts of yet another generation of scholars, such as Ismail K. Poonawala, Heinz Halm, Paul E. Walker, Hermann Landolt, Thierry Bianquis, Michael Brett, Pieter Smoor, Yaacov Lev, Farhat Dachraoui, Mohammed Yalaoui and Ayman F. Sayyid, some of whom have devoted their attention mainly to Fatimid studies. There are also newcomers to the field, such as Christian Jambet, Daniel de Smet and Paula Sanders, who are making contributions to different aspects of Ismaili studies. Progress in the recovery of Ismaili literature is well reflected in Professor Poonawala’s monumental catalogue, which identifies some 1,300 titles written by more than 200 authors.56 Many Ismaili texts have already been published in critical editions, while an increasing number of secondary studies on various aspects of Ismaili history, thought and traditions have been produced by at least three generations of modern scholars, as documented in this author’s Ismaili Literature published in 2004. Modern progress in Ismaili studies has received steady impetus from the recovery, or better accessibility, of yet more Ismaili manuscripts, including various library holdings such as those of the American University of Beirut and Tübingen University, amongst others. The vast Arabic manuscript collections of the Dāʾūdī Bohra libraries at Sūrat, in Gujarāt, and Bombay (Mumbai) remain under the strict control of that community’s leadership and are generally inaccessible to scholars. The bulk of the extensive Persian manuscript sources preserved by the Central Asian Nizārīs have now been identified, and they are largely accessible to scholars. Several hundred Ismaili manuscripts held by the Nizārī Ismailis of Tajik Badakhshān were recovered between 1959 and 1963,57 and subsequently many more titles were identified in Shughnān and other districts in both Tajik and Afghan Badakhshān through the efforts of the Institute of Ismaili Studies. The Institute now holds the largest collection of Arabic and Persian Ismaili manuscripts in the West, as well as some 650 manuscripts of gināns, written mainly in the Khojkī script developed within the Nizārī Khoja community of South Asia. Scholarship in Ismaili studies is set to continue unabated as the Ismailis themselves are becoming increasingly interested in studying their history and literary heritage, an emerging phenomenon attested by the growing number of Ismaili-related doctoral theses written in recent decades by the Ismailis. In this context, a major contribution is currently being made by the Institute of Ismaili Studies, established in London in 1977 by H. H. Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the 49th and current Imam of the Nizārī Ismailis.58 This academic institution is already serving as the central point of reference for Ismaili studies while making its own c­ ontributions through various

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programmes of research and publications. Amongst these, particular mention should be made of the monographs appearing in the Institute’s ‘Ismaili Heritage Series’, which aims to make available to wide audiences the results of modern scholarship on the Ismailis and their intellectual and literary traditions, and the ‘Ismaili Texts and Translations Series’, launched in 2000 and in which critical editions of Arabic and Persian texts are published together with English translations and contextualising introductions. Numerous scholars worldwide participate in these programmes, as well as in the series devoted to a complete critical edition and annotated English translation of Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), launched in 2008, and many more benefit from ready access to the Institute’s collections of Ismaili manuscripts. With these modern developments, based on the accessibility of Ismaili textual materials, the sustained scholarly study of the Ismailis promises to deconstruct and dissipate the remaining misrepresentations of the Ismailis rooted in the ‘hostility’ or the ‘imaginative ignorance’ of earlier generations.

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in F. Daftary and G. Miskinzoda, ed., The Study of Shiʿi Islam: History, Theology and Law (London: I. B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2014), pp. 47–65.   1 For brief overviews of Nizārī and Mustaʿlian Ismaili history, see F. Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 120–193.  2 Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab, vol. 25, ed. M. J. ʿA. al-Ḥīnī et al. (Cairo, 1984), pp. 187–317; Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar wa-jāmiʿ al-ghurar, vol. 6, ed. Ṣ. al-Munajjid (Cairo, 1961), pp. 6–21, 44–156; and Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz. al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār al-aʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ, vol. 1, ed. J. al-Shayyāl (Cairo, 1967), pp. 22–29, 151–207; ed. A. F. Sayyid (Damascus, 2010), vol. 1, pp. 173–237; partial English trans., Towards a Shiʿi Mediterranean Empire: Fatimid Egypt and the Founding of Cairo, trans. S. Jiwa (London, 2009), pp. 122–187.  3 Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Qāhir b. Ṭāhir al-Baghdādī, al-Farq bayn al-firaq, ed. M. Badr (Cairo, 1328/1910), pp. 265–299; English trans., Moslem Schisms and Sects, part II, trans. A. S. Halkin (Tel Aviv, 1935), pp. 107–157.   4 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-fihrist, ed. M. R. Tajaddud (2nd ed., Tehran, 1973), pp. 238, 240.   5 S. M. Stern, ‘The Book of the Highest Initiation and Other Anti-Ismāʿīlī Travesties’, in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1983), pp. 56–83.   6 See especially W. Madelung, ‘The Fatimids and the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 21–34, 37–39, 41–42, 46–56. See also F. Daftary, ‘A Major Schism in the Early Ismāʿīlī Movement’, Studia Islamica, 77 (1993), pp. 123–139; reprinted in an abridged version in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London, 2005), pp. 45–61.   7 W. Ivanow produced a number of studies on this ‘black legend’; see especially his The Alleged Founder of Ismailism (Bombay, 1946).  8 The text of the manifesto, with slight variations, may be found in Ibn al-Jawzī, alMuntaz.am, ed. F. Krenkow (Hyderabad, 1357–1362/1938–1943), vol. 7, p. 255; Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa’l-Qāhira (Cairo, 1348–1392/1929– 1972), vol. 4, pp. 229–231; and al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz., ed. al-Shayyāl, vol. 1, pp. 43–44; ed. Sayyid, vol. 1, pp. 42–43.  9 Niz. ām al-Mulk, Siyar al-mulūk (Siyāsat-nāma), ed. H. Darke (2nd ed., Tehran, 1347/1968), p. 311; English trans., The Book of Government, or, Rules for Kings, trans. H. Darke (2nd ed., London, 1978), p. 231.

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10 Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, Faḍāʾiḥ al-Bāṭiniyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (Cairo, 1964), especially pp. 21–36. 11 See F. Daftary, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies (London, 2004), p. 177. 12 ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Ibn al-Walīd, Dāmigh al-bāṭil wa-ḥatf al-munāḍil, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1403/1982), 2 vols. See also H. Corbin, ‘The Ismāʿīlī Response to the Polemic of Ghazālī’, in S. H. Nasr, ed., Ismāʿīlī Contributions to Islamic Culture (Tehran, 1977), pp. 69–98, and F. Mitha, Al-Ghazālī and the Ismailis: A Debate on Reason and Authority in Medieval Islam (London, 2001). 13 See William of Tyre, Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 954–956; English trans., A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. E. A. Babcock and A. C. Krey (New York, 1943), vol. 2, pp. 392–394. See also J. Hauziński, ‘On Alleged Attempts at Converting the Assassins to Christianity in the Light of William of Tyre’s Account’, Folia Orientalia, 15 (1974), pp. 229–246, and M. Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 100–104. 14 For a survey of these legends, see F. Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʿilis (London, 1994), pp. 88–127. 15 Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, ed. and trans. H. Yule, 3rd revised ed. by H. Cordier (London, 1929), vol. 1, pp. 139–146. 16 See, for instance, C. Falconet (1671–1762), ‘Dissertation sur les Assassins, peuple d’Asie’, in Mémoires de Littérature, tirés des registres de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 17 (1751), pp. 127–170; English trans., ‘A Dissertation on the Assassins, a People of Asia’, in John of Joinville, Memoirs of Lord John de Joinville, trans. T. Johnes (Hafod, 1807), vol. 2, pp. 287–328, and S. Assemani (1752–1821), Ragguaglio storico-critico sopra la setta Assissana, detta volgarmente degli Assassini (Padua, 1806). 17 Silvestre de Sacy, Exposé de la religion des Druzes (Paris, 1838), 2 vols. 18 Silvestre de Sacy, ‘Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins, et sur l’étymologie de leur nom’, Mémoires de l’Institut Royal de France, 4 (1818), pp. 1–84; reprinted in B. S. Turner, ed., Orientalism: Early Sources: Volume I, Readings in Orientalism (London, 2000), pp. 118–169; English trans., ‘Memoir on the Dynasty of the Assassins, and on the Etymology of Their Name’, in Daftary, Assassin Legends, pp. 129–188. 19 J. von Hammer-Purgstall, Die Geschichte der Assassinen aus morgenländischen Quellen (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1818); English trans., The History of the Assassins, Derived from Oriental Sources, trans. O. C. Wood (London, 1835; reprinted, New York, 1968); French trans., Histoire de l’ordre des Assassins, trans. J. J. Hellert and P. A. de la Nourais (Paris, 1833; reprinted, Paris, 1961). See also F. Daftary, ‘The “Order of the Assassins”: J. von Hammer and the Orientalist Misrepresentations of the Nizari Ismailis’, Iranian Studies, 39 (2006), pp. 71–81. 20 C. Defrémery, ‘Nouvelles recherches sur les Ismaéliens ou Bathiniens de Syrie, plus connus sous le nom d’Assassins’, Journal Asiatique, 5 série, 3 (1854), pp. 373–421, and 5 (1855), pp. 5–76, and his ‘Essai sur l’histoire des Ismaéliens ou Batiniens de la Perse, plus connus sous le nom d’Assassins’, Journal Asiatique, 5 série, 8 (1856), pp. 353–387 and 15 (1860), pp. 130–210. 21 See M. J. de Goeje, Mémoire sur les Carmathes du Bahraïn et les Fatimides (Leiden, 1862; 2nd ed., Leiden, 1886), and his ‘La fin de l’empire des Carmathes du Bahraïn’, Journal Asiatique, 9 série, 5 (1895), pp. 5–30; reprinted in Turner, Orientalism, vol. 1, pp. 263–278. 22 F. Wüstenfeld, Geschichte der Faṭimiden Chalifen nach den arabischen Quellen, in Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Historisch-Philologische Classe, 26, band 3 (1880), pp. 1–97, and 27, band 1 (1881), pp. 1–130, and 27, band 3 (1881), pp. 1–126; reprinted together (Hildesheim and New York, 1976). 23 De Lacy Evans O’Leary, A Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate (London, 1923). 24 E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia (London and Cambridge, 1902–1924), vol. 1, pp. 391–415 and vol. 2, pp. 190–211, 453–460.

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25 S. Guyard, ed. and trans., Fragments rélatifs a la doctrine des Ismaélîs (Paris, 1874), and his ‘Un grand maître des Assassins au temps de Saladin’, Journal Asiatique, 7 série, 9 (1877), pp. 324–489. 26 E. E. Salisbury (1814–1901), ‘Translation of Two Unpublished Arabic Documents Relating to the Doctrines of the Ismâʿilis and other Bâṭinian Sects’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2 (1851), pp. 259–324. 27 See P. Casanova, ‘Notice sur un manuscrit de la secte des Assassins’, Journal Asiatique, 9 série, 11 (1898), pp. 151–159. 28 See Daftary, Ismaili Literature, pp. 168, 170–171. 29 M. van Berchem, ‘Épigraphie des Assassins de Syrie’, Journal Asiatique, 9 série, 9 (1897), pp. 453–501; reprinted in his Opera Minora (Geneva, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 453–501; also reprinted in Turner, Orientalism, vol. 1, pp. 279–309. 30 P. Casanova, ‘Monnaie des Assassins de Perse’, Revue Numismatiques, 3 série, 11 (1893), pp. 343–352. 31 ‘Judgement of the Honourable Sir Joseph Arnould in the Khodjah Case, otherwise known as the Aga Khan Case...’ (Bombay, 1867); see also Bombay High Court Reports, 12 (1866), pp. 323–363. This case has been summarised in Asaf A. A. Fyzee, Cases in the Muhammadan Law of India and Pakistan (Oxford, 1965), pp. 504–549. The Aga Khan Case has been analysed in A. Shodan, A Question of Community: Religious Groups and Colonial Law (Calcutta, 1999), pp. 82–116. 32 See E. Griffini (1878–1925), ‘Die jüngste ambrosianische Sammlung arabischer Hand­ schriften’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 69 (1915), especially pp. 80–88. 33 A. A. Bobrinskiy, ‘Sekta Ismailiya v Russkikh i Bukharskikh predelakh Sredney Azii’, Étnograficheskoe Obozrenie, 2 (1902), pp. 1–20. See also B. M. Zoeggeler et al., ed., Graf Bobrinskoj. Der lange Weg vom Pamir in die Dolomiten/Il Conte Bobrinskoj: Il lungo Cammino dal Pamir alle Dolomite (Bozen, 2012). 34 See V. A. Ivanov, ‘Ismailitskie rukopisi Aziatskago Muzeya. Sobranie I. Zarubina, 1916 g.’, Bulletin de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de Russie, 6 série, 11 (1917), pp. 359–386. 35 A. A. Semenov, ‘Opisanie ismailitskikh rukopisey, sobrannïkh A.A. Semyonovïm’, Bulletin de l’Académie des Sciences de Russie, 6 série, 12 (1918), pp. 2171–2202. 36 L. Massignon, ‘Esquisse d’une bibliographie Qarmaṭe’, in R. A. Nicholson and T. W. Arnold, ed., A Volume of Oriental Studies Presented to Edward G. Browne on His 60th Birthday (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 329–338; reprinted in L. Massignon, Opera Minora, ed. Y. Moubarac (Paris, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 627–639. This bibliography does not include the Asiatic Museum’s then recently acquired Ismaili texts. 37 Asaf Fyzee donated some 200 manuscripts to the Bombay University Library; see M. Goriawala, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Fyzee Collection of Ismaili Manuscripts (Bombay, 1965), and A. A. A. Fyzee, ‘A Collection of Fatimid Manuscripts’, in N. N. Gidwani, ed., Comparative Librarianship: Essays in Honour of Professor D. N. Marshall (Delhi, 1973), pp. 209–220. Ḥusayn al-Hamdānī also donated part of his family’s collection to the Bombay University, while another portion remained in the possession of his son, Professor Abbas Hamdani, who donated the bulk of these manuscripts in 2006 to the Institute of Ismaili Studies Library; see F. de Blois, Arabic, Persian and Gujarati Manuscripts: The Hamdani Collection in the Library of the Institute of Ismaili Studies (London, 2011). The Zāhid ʿAlī Collection of some 226 Arabic Ismaili manuscripts was also donated in 1997 to the Institute of Ismaili Studies; see D. Cortese, Arabic Ismaili Manuscripts: The Zāhid ʿAlī Collection in the Library of The Institute of Ismaili Studies (London, 2003). 38 See F. Daftary, ‘The Bibliography of Asaf A. A. Fyzee’, Indo-Iranica, 37 (1984), pp. 49–63. 39 Al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. Asaf A. A. Fyzee (Cairo, 1951–1961), 2 vols.; English trans., The Pillars of Islam, trans. A. A. A. Fyzee, completely revised by I. K. Poonawala (New Delhi, 2002–2004). 40 See Daftary, Ismaili Literature, pp. 287–288.

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41 See Ḥ. F. al-Hamdānī, ‘Some Unknown Ismāʿīlī Authors and their Works’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1933), pp. 359–378. 42 Ibn Hāniʾ, Tabyīn al-maʿānī fī sharḥ Dīwān Ibn Hāniʾ al-Andalusī al-Maghribī (Cairo, 1352/1933). 43 Zāhid ʿAlī, Taʾrīkh-i Fāṭimiyyīn-i Miṣr (Hyderabad, 1367/1948), 2 vols; see also his work on Ismaili doctrines entitled Hamāre Ismāʿīlī madhhab kī ḥaqīqat awr uskā niz.ām (Hyderabad, 1373/1954). 44 See F. Daftary, ‘Bibliography of the Publications of the Late W. Ivanow’, Islamic Culture, 45 (1971), pp. 55–67 and 56 (1982), pp. 239–240, and his ‘Ivanow, Wladimir’, EIR, 14, pp. 298–300. 45 W. Ivanow, A Guide to Ismaili Literature (London, 1933). 46 W. Ivanow, Ismaili Tradition Concerning the Rise of the Fatimids (London, etc., 1942). 47 W. Ivanow, ‘Tombs of Some Persian Ismaili Imams’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, 14 (1938), pp. 49–62. For Ivanow’s archaeological studies, see his Alamut and Lamasar: Two Medieval Ismaili Strongholds in Iran (Tehran, 1960). For the most recent study of these and other Nizārī castles of Persia and Syria, see Peter Willey (1922–2009), Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria (London, 2005). 48 For some interesting details, see S. Schmidtke, ed., Correspondance Corbin-Ivanow: Lettres échangées entre Henry Corbin et Vladimir Ivanow de 1947 à 1966 (Paris, 1999). See also Daniel de Smet, ‘Henry Corbin et les études Ismaéliennes’, in M. A. Amir-Moezzi et al., ed., Henry Corbin: Philosophe et sagesses des religions du livre (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 105–118. 49 W. Ivanow, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliographical Survey (Tehran, 1963). See also F. Daftary, ‘Ismaili History and Literary Traditions’, in H. Landolt, S. Sheikh and K. Kassam, ed., An Anthology of Ismaili Literature (London, 2008), pp. 1–29. 50 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs against the Islamic World (The Hague, 1955; reprinted in New York, 1980). This book was based on the author’s doctoral thesis presented to the University of Chicago in 1951. 51 See particularly the following works of S. M. Stern: ‘Heterodox Ismāʿīlism at the Time of al-Muʿizz’, BSOAS, 17 (1955), pp. 10–33, and ‘Ismāʿīlīs and Qarmaṭians’, in L’Élaboration de l’Islam (Paris, 1961), pp. 99–108, both reprinted in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism, pp. 257–288 and 289–298, respectively. Professor Madelung’s contributions, based on his doctoral thesis presented to the University of Hamburg in 1957, are to be found in two substantial articles: ‘Fatimiden und Baḥrainqarmaṭen’, Der Islam, 34 (1959), pp. 34–88; slightly revised English trans., ‘The Fatimids and the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought, pp. 21–73; and ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 43–135. See further J. D. Latham and H. W. Mitchell, ‘The Bibliography of S. M. Stern’, Journal of Semitic Studies, 15 (1970), pp. 226–238; reprinted with additions in S. M. Stern, Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry: Studies by Samuel Miklos Stern, ed. L. P. Harvey (Oxford, 1974), pp. 231–245, and F. Daftary, ‘Bibliography of the Works of Wilferd Madelung’, in F. Daftary and J. W. Meri, ed., Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honour of Wilferd Madelung (London, 2003), pp. 5–40. 52 See Daftary, Ismaili Literature, pp. 223–224 and 398–401. 53 L. V. Stroeva, Gosudarstvo ismailitov v Irane v XI–XIII vv. (Moscow, 1978). 54 For a listing of A. Hamdani’s relevant studies, see Daftary, Ismaili Literature, pp. 285–287. 55 I. R. Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ) (London, 1982), especially pp. 95–108. 56 I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977). Professor Poonawala is currently working on a revised edition of this work with many additional titles. 57 See, for instance, A. E. Bertel and M. Bakoev, Alphabetic Catalogue of Manuscripts found by 1959–1963 Expedition in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, ed. B. G. Gafurov and A. M. Mirzoev (Moscow, 1967). 58 See P. E. Walker, ‘The Institute of Ismaili Studies’, EIR, 12, pp. 164–166.

3 Ismaili history and ­literary ­traditions

Representing a major Shiʿi Muslim community, the Ismailis have had a complex history dating back to the formative period of Islam.* Currently, the Ismailis, who belong to the Nizārī and Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian branches, are scattered as religious minorities in more than 30 countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America. Numbering several millions, the Ismailis also belong to a diversity of ethnic groups and speak a variety of languages, including Arabic, Persian and Indian languages, as well as a number of lesser-known dialects of Central Asia and South Asia, and several European languages. The Ismailis have produced a relatively substantial and diversified literature, in Arabic, Persian and a number of South Asian languages, on a multiplicity of subjects and religious themes in different periods of their long history. These texts, now preserved in numerous private and public manuscript collections in Yemen, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Central Asia, India and northern areas of Pakistan, range from a few historical and biographical treatises of the sīra genre, legal compendia and elaborate works on the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate to complex esoteric and metaphysical treatises culminating in the gnostic-esoteric ḥaqāʾiq system of medieval Ismaili thought with its distinctive cyclical conception of sacred history, cosmology, eschatology and soteriology. From early on, however, a good portion of Ismaili literature related to taʾwīl or esoteric and allegorical interpretations of the Qurʾanic passages as well as commandments and prohibitions of the Islamic law as interpreted by the Ismailis. Ismaili literature is also rich in religious and devotional poetry. The bulk of classical Ismaili literature produced in Fatimid and earlier times was written in Arabic, with the major exception of the writings of Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070), the Persian poet, dāʿī, theologian, philosopher and traveller who is regarded by the Central Asian Ismailis as the founder of their communities. More specifically, the Persian Ismaili literary tradition relates almost exclusively to

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the Nizārī Ismailis of Persia, Afghanistan, Central Asia and northern areas of ­Pakistan. The Nizārīs of these regions have produced and preserved a variety of Persian Ismaili texts written during the Alamūt and subsequent periods of their history. The Nizārīs of South Asia, where they are known as Khojas, have elaborated in Gujarati and other Indian languages, a distinctive literary tradition in hymnlike devotional poems known as gināns. The gināns have been preserved in writing mainly in the Khojki script developed by the Khojas themselves. The Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlians, who in South Asia are designated as Bohras, have preserved in Yemen and India numerous Arabic Ismaili texts of the Fatimid period in addition to producing a significant body of literature during the Yemeni period of their own history. Until the middle of the twentieth century, these Ismaili manuscript sources were by and large not accessible to scholars. As a result, the Ismailis had continued to be studied almost exclusively on the basis of evidence collected or fabricated by their detractors. In modern times, the recovery and study of genuine Ismaili texts on a large scale has provided the basis for a breakthrough in Ismaili studies, a process which is continuing unabated.

Early Ismaili traditions The earliest Ismailis separated from the rest of the Imāmī Shiʿis on the death of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in 148/765. They traced the imamate in the progeny of Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, the eponym of the Ismāʿīliyya. Soon the Ismailis organised a dynamic, revolutionary movement designated by them as al-daʿwa al-hādiya, or ‘the rightly guiding mission’. The ultimate aim of this religio-political mission, disseminated by a network of dāʿīs or missionaries, was to invite Muslims everywhere to accord their allegiance to the ʿAlid imam recognised by the Ismailis. By the late third/ninth century, Ismaili dāʿīs were operating in many regions from North Africa and Yemen to Central Asia and Sind on the Indian subcontinent. The early Ismailis elaborated the basic framework of a system of religious thought, which was further developed or modified in the Fatimid period. As only a handful of Ismaili texts have survived from this period, it is not possible to trace the development of early Ismaili thought in any great detail. Central to the early Ismaili system of thought was a fundamental distinction between the exoteric (z.āhir) and the esoteric (bāṭin) aspects of the sacred scriptures and religious commandments and prohibitions. Accordingly, the Ismailis held that the Qurʾan and other revealed scriptures, and their laws (sharīʿas), had their apparent or literal meaning, the z.āhir, which had to be distinguished from their inner meaning hidden in the bāṭin. They further held that the z.āhir, or the religious laws enunciated by the prophets, underwent periodical changes while the bāṭin, containing the spiritual truths (ḥaqāʾiq), remained immutable and eternal. These truths, indeed, represented the message common to the religions of the Abrahamic tradition, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, the truths hidden in the bāṭin of these monotheistic religions had been veiled by different exoteric laws or sharīʿas, as required by different temporal circumstances. The hidden truths were explained through the methodology

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of taʾwīl or esoteric interpretation, which often relied on the mystical significance of letters and numbers. In every age, however, the esoteric truths would be accessible only to the elite (khawāṣṣ) of humankind as distinct from the ordinary people (ʿawāmm), who were only capable of perceiving the apparent meaning of the revelations. Consequently, in the era of Islam, the eternal truths of religion could be explained only to those who had been properly initiated into the Ismaili daʿwa and as such recognised the teaching authority of the Prophet Muḥammad and, after him, that of his waṣī, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, and the rightful imams who succeeded him; these authorities were the sole possessors of taʾwīl in the era of Islam. The centrality of taʾwīl for the Ismailis is attested by the fact that a good portion of the literature produced by them during the early and Fatimid times, notably the writings of Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman and al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, comprises the taʾwīl, genre, which seeks justification for Ismaili doctrines in Qurʾanic verses. Initiation into Ismailism, known as balāgh, was gradual and took place after the novice had taken an oath of allegiance known as ʿahd or mīthāq. There were, however, no fixed seven or more stages of initiation as claimed by anti-Ismaili polemicists. The initiates were obliged to keep secret the bāṭin imparted to them by a hierarchy (ḥudūd) of teachers. Such ideas provided the subject matter of the Kitāb al-ʿālim waʾl-ghulām, one of the few surviving early Ismaili texts attributed to Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman. By exalting the bāṭin aspects of religion, the Ismailis came to be regarded by the rest of the Muslim community as the most representative of the Shiʿis propounding esotericism in Islam and, hence, attained their common designation as the Bāṭiniyya. This designation was, however, used in a derogatory sense accusing the Ismailis of generally ignoring the z.āhir, or the sharīʿa. The available evidence, including the fragmentary texts of the Ismaili oath of allegiance, clearly shows that the early Ismailis were not exempted in any sense from the commandments and prohibitions of Islam. Indeed, early Ismaili teachings accorded equal significance to the z.āhir and the bāṭin and their inseparability, ideas that were further elaborated in the Ismaili teachings of the Fatimid period. Such generalised accusations of ibāḥa or antinomianism against the Ismailis seem to have been rooted in the polemics of their enemies, who also blamed the entire Ismaili movement for the anti-Islamic views and practices of the Qarmaṭīs, the dissidents who seceded from the early Ismaili community. The esoteric truths or ḥaqāʾiq formed a gnostic system of thought for the early Ismailis, representing a distinct worldview. The two main components of this system, developed by the 280s/890s, were a cyclical history of revelations or prophetic eras and a gnostic cosmological doctrine. The Ismailis applied their cyclical interpretation of time and the religious history of humankind to Judaeo-Christian revelations as well as a number of other pre-Islamic religions such as Zoroastrianism with much appeal to non-Muslims. This conception of religious history, reflecting a variety of influences such as Hellenic, Judaeo-Christian and Gnostic, as well as eschatological ideas of the earlier Shiʿis, was developed in terms of the eras of different prophets recognised in the Qurʾan. This cyclical conception was also combined with the Ismaili doctrine of the imamate inherited from the Imāmīs.

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Ismaili traditions of the Fatimid period The Fatimid period represents the ‘golden age’ of Ismailism, when the Ismailis possessed an important state of their own and Ismaili scholarship and literature attained their summit. The foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909 in North Africa indeed marked the crowning success of the early Ismailis. The religiopolitical daʿwa of the Ismāʿīliyya had finally led to the establishment of a state or dawla headed by the Ismaili imam. In line with their universal claims, the Fatimid caliph-imams did not abandon their daʿwa activities on assuming power. They particularly concerned themselves with the affairs of the Ismaili daʿwa after transferring the seat of their state to Egypt. The daʿwa achieved particular success outside the domains of the Fatimid state, and, as a result, Ismailism outlived the downfall of the Fatimid dynasty and caliphate in 576/1171, also surviving the challenges posed by the Sunni revival of the fifth–sixth/eleventh–twelfth centuries. Be that as it may, Cairo, founded by the Fatimids on their conquest of Egypt in 358/969, became the headquarters of a complex hierarchical Ismaili daʿwa organisation in addition to serving as the capital of the Fatimid state. In Egypt, the Fatimids patronised intellectual activities. They founded major institutions of learning and libraries in Cairo, and the Fatimid capital soon became a flourishing centre of Islamic scholarship, sciences, art and culture, in addition to playing a prominent role in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean trade and commerce. All in all, the Fatimid period marked not only a glorious age in Ismaili history, but also one of the greatest eras in Egyptian and Islamic histories – a milestone in the development of Islamic civilisations. It was during this period that the Ismaili dāʿīs, who were at the same time the scholars and authors of their community, produced what were to become the classical texts of Ismaili literature dealing with a multitude of exoteric and esoteric subjects, as well as taʾwīl which became the hallmark of Ismaili thought. The dāʿīs of the Fatimid period elaborated distinctive intellectual traditions. In particular, certain dāʿīs of the Iranian lands amalgamated Ismaili theology with Neoplatonism and other philosophical traditions into elegant and complex metaphysical systems of thought as expressed in numerous treatises written in Arabic. Only Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the last major proponent of that Iranian Ismaili school of philosophical theology, produced all of his works in Persian. The genuine and spurious works attributed to Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070) have been preserved throughout the centuries by the Ismailis of Badakhshān (now divided between Tajikistan and Afghanistan) and their offshoot communities in the Hindu Kush region, now situated in Hunza and other northern areas of Pakistan. Nāṣir-i Khusraw was, indeed, one of the most prominent Ismaili dāʿīs of the Fatimid period, and he played a key role in propagating Ismailism in the remote eastern regions of the Iranian world. Fleeing persecution, Nāṣir-i Khusraw took refuge in the valley of Yumgān in Badakhshān, where he spent the final decades of his life. It was during his period of exile in Yumgān that Nāṣir produced most of his poetry and prose, including several theological works such as the Zād al-musāfirīn and the Jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn, his latest known composition completed in 462/1070

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at the request of his Ismaili patron in Badakhshān, amir Abu’l-Maʿālī ʿAlī b. Asad. Amongst his other Ismaili works preserved in Central Asia, mention may be made of the Gushāyish va rahāyish, the Shish faṣl and the Wajh-i dīn, Nāṣir’s major treatise on taʾwīl containing esoteric interpretations of a range of religious commandments such as prayer, fasting and ḥajj pilgrimage. The Wajh-i dīn is esteemed very highly by the Ismaili communities of Badakhshān, which in due course became a stronghold of the Nizārī branch of Ismailism. Nāṣir’s writings contributed significantly to shaping the later distinctive literary tradition of the Central Asian Nizārī Ismailis. Nāṣir-i Khusraw may also have been the person who translated al-Sijistānī’s Kashf al-maḥjūb (The Unveiling of the Hidden) from Arabic into Persian, the only version of the work that has actually survived. With the establishment of the Fatimid state, the need had also arisen to promulgate a legal code, even though Ismailism was never to be imposed on all Fatimid subjects as their official religion. Ismaili law, which had not existed during the preFatimid, secret phase of Ismailism, was codified during the early Fatimid period as a result of the efforts of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), the foremost jurist of the Ismailis. The Fatimid Ismailis now came to possess their own school of religious law or madhhab, similar to the principal Sunni systems of jurisprudence ( fiqh) and the Jaʿfarī system of the Imāmī (Twelver) Shiʿis. It was indeed during the Fatimid period that Ismailis made their contributions to Islamic theology and philosophy in general and to Shiʿi thought in particular. Modern recovery of their literature clearly attests to the richness and diversity of the literary and intellectual heritage of the Ismailis of Fatimid times. The Fatimid period is one of the best documented in Islamic history. Many medieval Muslim historians have written about the Fatimid dynasty and state, and there are also memoirs and a multitude of non-literary sources of information on the Fatimids. In the latter category, Fatimid monuments and works of art have been thoroughly studied, and much progress has been made on the scholarly investigations of numismatic, epigraphic and other types of evidence related to the Fatimids. There are also valuable letters, documents and other types of archival materials from Fatimid Egypt, materials which are rarely available for other Muslim dynasties of medieval times. Furthermore, the extensive Ismaili literature of the period, recovered in modern times, contains some historical details in addition to shedding light on various aspects of Ismaili doctrines propagated during this period. As a result of this relative abundance of primary sources, Fatimid history and Ismaili teachings of the Fatimid period represent the best studied and understood areas of research within the entire spectrum of modern Ismaili studies. As a rare instance of its kind in Ismaili literature, for the Fatimid period we also have a few historical works written by Ismaili authors. These include al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa (Commencement of the Mission), completed in 346/957, the oldest known historical work in Ismaili literature covering the background to the establishment of the Fatimid state, and Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitāb al-munāz.arāt on the first year of Fatimid rule in North Africa which was recently brought to light. There are also a number of short treatises on specific Ismaili events, such as

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the dāʿī Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī’s Istitār al-imām, dealing with the settlement of the early Ismaili Imam ʿAbd Allāh in Salamiyya, and the later journey of ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, the founder of the Fatimid state, from Syria to North Africa. The Fatimid caliph-imams are, of course, treated in volumes 5–7 of his ʿUyūn al-akhbār, written by Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan (d. 872/1468), the Ṭayyibī dāʿī and historian; this is a comprehensive history of the Ismaili daʿwa from its beginnings until the opening phase of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Yemen and the subsequent demise of the Fatimid dynasty in 567/1171. Aside from strictly historical sources, Ismailis of the Fatimid period produced a few biographical works of the sīra genre with great historical value. Amongst the extant examples in this category, mention may be made of the Sīras of the chamberlain Jaʿfar b. ʿAlī, the courtier Jawdhar (d. ca. 386/996), and the chief dāʿī al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078). A wide variety of archival documents, such as treatises, letters, decrees and epistles (sijillāt) of historical value issued through the Fatimid chancery of state, or dīwān al-inshā, such as al-Sijillāt al-Mustanṣiriyya, have survived directly or have been preserved in later literary sources, notably in Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Qalqashandī’s (d. 821/1418) encyclopaedic Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā. The ground for the establishment of the Fatimid state was meticulously prepared by the dāʿī Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Shīʿī (d. 298/911), who had been active among the Kutāma Berbers of the Maghrib since 280/893. Meanwhile, after leaving Salamiyya, the Ismaili Imam ‘Abd Allāh al-Mahdī had arrived in Egypt in 291/904, where he spent a year. Subsequently, he was prevented from going to the Maghrib because the Aghlabid rulers of the region had discovered the Ismaili imam’s plans and were waiting to arrest him. ‘Abd Allāh instead headed for the remote town of Sijilmāsa, in southern Morocco, where he lived quietly for four years (292– 296/905–909), maintaining his contacts with Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Shīʿī, who had already commenced his conquest of Ifrīqiya with the help of his Kutāma soldiertribesmen. By 296/908, this Kutāma army had achieved much success, signalling the fall of the Aghlabids. On 1 Rajab 296/25 March 909, Abū ‘Abd Allāh entered Raqqāda, the royal city outside of the Aghlabid capital of Qayrawān, from where he governed Ifrīqiya as al-Mahdī’s deputy for almost a whole year. In Ramaḍān 296/June 909, he set off at the head of his army for Sijilmāsa to hand over the reins of power to the Ismaili imam himself. ‘Abd Allāh al-Mahdī was acclaimed as caliph in a special ceremony in Sijilmāsa on 7 Dhu’l-Ḥijja 296/27 August 909. With these events the dawr al-satr in early Ismailism had also ended. ‘Abd Allāh al-Mahdī entered Raqqāda on 20 Rabīʿ II 297/4 January 910 and was immediately acclaimed as caliph there. A unique eyewitness account of the establishment of Fatimid rule is contained in Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitab al-munāz.arāt. The Ismaili Shiʿi caliphate of the Fatimids had now officially commenced in Ifrīqiya. The new dynasty was named Fatimid (Fāṭimiyya) after the Prophet’s daughter Fāṭima, to whom al-Mahdī and his successors traced their ʿAlid ancestry. The Fatimids did not abandon their Ismaili daʿwa on assuming power, as they entertained universal aspirations aiming to extend their rule over the entire Muslim

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community. However, the first four Fatimid caliph-imams, ruling from Ifrīqiya (covering today’s Tunisia and eastern Algeria), encountered numerous difficulties while consolidating their power with the help of the Kutāma Berbers who were converted to Ismailism and provided the backbone of the Fatimid armies. In particular, they confronted the hostility of the Khārijī Berbers and the Sunni Arab inhabitants of Qayrawān and other cities of Ifrīqiya, in addition to their rivalries and conflicts with the Umayyads of Spain, the Abbasids and the Byzantines. Under these circumstances, the Ismaili daʿwa remained rather inactive in North Africa for some time. Fatimid rule was established firmly in the Maghrib only under al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (341–365/953–975), who succeeded in transforming the Fatimid caliphate from a regional state into a great empire. He was also the first Fatimid caliph-imam to concern himself significantly with the propagation of the Ismaili daʿwa outside the Fatimid dominions, especially after the transference of the seat of the Fatimid state in 362/973 to Egypt, where he founded Cairo as his new capital city. Al-Muʿizz’s policies soon bore fruit as the Ismaili daʿwa and Fatimid cause were reinvigorated outside the Fatimid state. Most notably, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971), the dāʿī of Sīstān, Makrān and Khurāsān, who had earlier belonged to the dissident faction, transferred his allegiance to the Fatimids, and, consequently, many of his followers in Persia and Central Asia acknowledged the Fatimid caliph-imam. Ismailism also acquired a permanent stronghold in Multan, Sind, where an Ismaili principality was established for a few decades. In the course of the fourth/tenth century, the dāʿīs Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nasafī (d. 332/943), Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934) and Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī set about harmonising their theology with Neoplatonic philosophy, which led to the development of a unique intellectual tradition of philosophical theology in Ismailism. These dāʿīs wrote for the educated classes of society and aimed to attract them intellectually. This is why they expressed their theology, always revolving around the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate, in terms of the then most intellectually fashionable terminologies and themes. After the initial efforts of al-Nasafī and al-Rāzī, the Iranian dāʿīs elaborated complex metaphysical systems of thought with a distinct Neoplatonised emanational cosmology. In this cosmology, fully elaborated in al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-yanābīʿ and other works, God is described as absolutely transcendent, beyond being and non-being, and thus unknowable. These dāʿīs also expounded a doctrine of salvation as part of their cosmology. In their soteriology, the ultimate goal of salvation is the human soul’s progression towards its Creator in quest of a spiritual reward in an eternal afterlife. This, of course, would depend on guidance provided by the authorised sources of wisdom in every era of sacred history. Later, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1020) acted as an arbiter in the prolonged debate that had taken place earlier among these Iranian dāʿīs. He reviewed this debate from the perspective of the Fatimid daʿwa in his Kitāb al-riyāḍ (Book of the Meadows), and in particular upheld certain views of Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī against those of al-Nasafī in affirming the indispensability of both the z.āhir and the bāṭin, the letter of the law as well as its inner meaning.

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Neoplatonic philosophy also influenced the cosmology elaborated by the ­Ismaili-connected Ikhwān al-Safāʾ, a group of anonymous authors in Baṣra who produced an encyclopaedic work of 52 epistles, Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, on a variety of sciences during the fourth/tenth century, or just before the foundation of the Fatimid state. At any rate, the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, usually translated as the ‘Sincere Brethren’ or ‘Brothers of Purity’, drew on a wide variety of Greek and other pre-Islamic sources and traditions, which they combined with Islamic teachings, especially as upheld by the Shiʿis. Like the contemporary Iranian dāʿīs, they aimed to harmonise religion and philosophy. Indeed, the Ikhwān offered a new synthesis of reason and revelation—representing a new world order under the hegemony of the Ismaili imam reminiscent of Plato’s philosopher-king. However, the Ikhwān do not seem to have had any discernible influence on the Ismaili thought of the Fatimid period. It was only in the sixth/twelfth century that the Rasāʾil were introduced into the literature of the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian daʿwa in Yemen. Henceforth, these epistles were widely studied by the Ṭayyibī dāʿīs of Yemen and, later, by their successors in the Dāʾūdī Bohra community of the Indian subcontinent. It was also in al-Muʿizz’s time that Ismaili law was finally codified. The process had started already in ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī’s reign as caliph (297–322/909–934), when the precepts of Shiʿi law were put into practice. The promulgation of an Ismaili madhhab resulted mainly from the efforts of al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad (d. 363/974), who was officially commissioned by al-Muʿizz to prepare legal compendia. Al-Nuʿmān had started serving the Fatimids in different capacities from the time of al-Mahdī. In 337/948, he was appointed by the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Manṣūr (334–341/946–953) as chief judge (qāḍī al-quḍāt) of the Fatimid state. It is to be noted that from the time of Aflaḥ b. Hārūn al-Malūsī, the Fatimid chief judge was also placed in charge of the affairs of the Ismaili daʿwa. Thus, responsibilities for explaining and enforcing the z.āhir, or the commandments and prohibitions of the law, and interpreting its bāṭin or inner meaning, were united in the same person under the overall guidance of the Ismaili imam of the time. Al-Nuʿmān codified Ismaili law by systematically collecting the firmly established ḥadīths transmitted from the ahl al-bayt, drawing on existing collections of earlier Imāmī as well as Zaydī authorities. His initial efforts resulted in a massive compendium entitled Kitāb al-īḍāḥ, which has not survived except for one fragment. Subsequently, he produced several abridgements of the Īḍāḥ, which was treated as semi-official by the Fatimids. Al-Nuʿmān’s efforts culminated in the Daʿāʾim al-Islām (The Pillars of Islam), which was scrutinised closely by al-Muʿizz and endorsed as the official code of the Fatimid state. Similarly to the Sunnis and other Shiʿi communities, the Ismailis too now possessed a system of law and jurisprudence, also defining an Ismaili paradigm of governance. Ismaili law accorded special importance to the Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate. The authority of the infallible ʿAlid imam and his teachings became the third principal source of Ismaili law, after the Qurʾan and the sunna of the Prophet, which are accepted as the first two sources by all Muslims. In the Daʿāʾim, al-Nuʿmān also provided Islamic legitimation for an ʿAlid state ruled by the ahl al-bayt, elaborating the z.āhirī doctrinal basis

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of the Fatimids’ legitimacy as ruling imams and lending support to their universal claims. The Daʿāʾim al-Islām has continued through the centuries to be used by Ṭayyibī Ismailis as their principal authority in legal matters. Absent from Ismaili literature in general are two branches of Islamic sciences, namely, ḥadīth and tafsīr or Qurʾan commentaries. This is because the Ismailis had a living and present imam, who represented the Prophetic tradition as well as the traditions of the earlier imams. As a result, the Ismailis felt no need to compile ḥadīth collections or produce philological commentaries on the Qurʾan. And the true, inner meaning of the Qurʾan could be made available to the faithful only through taʾwīl, which was again the prerogative of the imam and the hierarchy of teachers authorised by him. Amongst numerous such Ismaili works on taʾwīl related to particular chapters of the Qurʾan, mention may be made of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Asās al-taʾwīl, and Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman’s Sarāʾir al-nuṭaqā and Kitāb al-taʾwīl al-zakāt. The Ismailis had high esteem for learning and elaborated distinctive traditions and institutions of learning under the Fatimids. The Fatimid daʿwa was particularly concerned with educating the Ismaili converts in esoteric doctrine, known as the ḥikma or ‘wisdom’. As a result, a variety of lectures or ‘teaching sessions’, generally designated as majālis (singular, majlis), were organised. The private lectures on Ismaili esoteric doctrine, known as the majālis al-ḥikma or ‘sessions of wisdom’, were reserved exclusively for the Ismaili initiates who had already taken the oath of allegiance and secrecy. The lectures, delivered by the dāʿī al-duʿāt at the Fatimid palace, were approved beforehand by the imam. Only the imam was the source of the ḥikma; and the dāʿī al-duʿāt or chief dāʿī, commonly called bāb (the gate) in Ismaili sources, was the imam’s mouthpiece through whom the Ismailis received their knowledge of esoteric doctrines. Many of these majālis were in due course collected and committed to writing, such as al- Nūʿmān’s Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim and the Majālis al-Mustanṣiriyya delivered by Abu’l-Qāsim b. Wahb al-Malījī. This Fatimid tradition of learning culminated in the Majālis al-Muʾayyadiyya of the dāʿī al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078). Another of the main institutions of learning founded by the Fatimids was the Dār al-ʿIlm, the House of Knowledge, sometimes also called the Dār al-Ḥikma. Established in 395/1005 by the caliphimam al-Ḥākim (386–411/996–1021), a variety of religious and non-religious subjects were taught at this academy, which was also equipped with a major library. Many Fatimid dāʿīs received at least part of their training at the Dār al-ʿIlm. Information on the structure and functioning of the Ismaili daʿwa organisation was among the most guarded secrets of the Ismailis. The religio-political messages of the daʿwa were disseminated by networks of dāʿīs within the Fatimid dominions as well as in other regions referred to as the jazāʾir (singular, jazīra, ‘island’). Each jazīra was placed under the charge of a high-ranking dāʿī, referred to as ḥujja; and every ḥujja had a number of dāʿīs of different ranks working under him. Organised in a strictly hierarchical manner, the Fatimid daʿwa was under the overall supervision of the imam and the dāʿī al-duʿāt, or bāb, who acted as its administrative head. The daʿwa organisation developed over time and reached its full elaboration under the caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir. It was, however, in non-Fatimid regions, the jazāʾir,

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especially Yemen, Persia and Central Asia, that the Fatimid daʿwa achieved lasting success. The daʿwa was intensified in Iraq and Persia under al-Ḥākim. Foremost among the dāʿīs of this period was Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī. A learned philosopher, he harmonised Ismaili theology with a variety of philosophical traditions in developing his own metaphysical system, presented in his Rāḥat al-ʿaql (Repose of the Intellect), completed in 411/1020. In fact, al-Kirmānī’s thought represents a unique tradition within the Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism. In particular, he expounded a modified cosmology, replacing the Neoplatonic dyad of intellect and soul in the spiritual world by a system of 10 separate intellects in partial adaptation of al-Farābī’s Aristotelian cosmic system. Al-Kirmānī’s cosmology, however, was not adopted by the Fatimid daʿwa; it later provided the basis for the Ismaili cosmology of the Ṭayyibī dāʿīs of Yemen. The Fatimid caliph-imam al-Ḥākim’s reign also coincided with the opening phase of what was to become known as the Druze religion, founded by a number of dāʿīs who had come to Cairo from Persia and Central Asia, notably al-Akhram and al-Darazī. These dāʿīs proclaimed the end of the historical era of Islam and advocated the divinity of al-Ḥākim. Al-Kirmānī was officially invited to Cairo around 405/1014 to refute the new extremist doctrines from a theological perspective. He wrote several treatises in defence of the doctrine of imamate in general and al-Ḥākim’s imamate in particular, including al-Maṣābīḥ fī ithbāt al-imāma, the Risālat mabāsim al-bishārāt and al-Risāla al-wāʿiz.a. In fact, the doctrine of the imamate provided an essential subject matter for a number of theological treatises written by the Ismaili authors of different periods. The Ismaili daʿwa activities outside the Fatimid dominions reached their peak in the long reign of al-Mustanṣir (427–487/1036–1094), even after the Sunni Saljūqs replaced the Shiʿi Būyids as overlords of the Abbasids in 447/1055. The Fatimid dāʿīs won many converts in Iraq and different parts of Persia and Central Asia. One of the most prominent dāʿīs of this period was al-Muʾayyad fiʾl-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, who after his initial career in Fārs, in southern Persia, settled in Cairo and played an active role in the affairs of the Fatimid dawla and Ismaili daʿwa. In 450/1058, al-Mustanṣir appointed him as dāʿī al-duʿāt, a post he held for 20 years, with the exception of a brief period, until his death in 470/1078. He has left an invaluable account of his life and early career in his Sīra, which reveals this dāʿī’s central role as an intermediary between the Fatimids and the Turkish military commander al-Basāsīrī who briefly led the Fatimid cause in Iraq against the Saljūqs. Al-Basāsīrī seized Baghdad in 450/1058 and had the khuṭba read there for one whole year for al-Mustanṣir before he was eventually defeated by the Saljūqs. Al-Muʾayyad established closer relations between Cairo and several jazīras, especially Yemen where Ismailism had persisted in a dormant form throughout the fourth/tenth century. By the time of al-Mustanṣir, the leadership of the daʿwa in Yemen had fallen into the hands of the dāʿī ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī, an important chieftain of the Banū Hamdān in the mountainous region of Ḥarāz. The dāʿī ʿAlī al-Ṣulayḥī rose in Ḥarāz in 439/1047, marking the effective foundation of the Ṣulayḥid dynasty ruling over different parts of Yemen as vassals of the Fatimids until 532/1138.

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Meanwhile, the Ismaili daʿwa had continued to spread in many parts of the I­ ranian world, now incorporated into the Saljūq sultanate. By the early 460s/1070s, the Persian Ismailis in the Saljūq dominions were under the leadership of ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAṭṭāsh, who had his secret headquarters in Iṣfahān, the main Saljūq capital. He was also responsible for launching the career of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, who in due course led the Ismaili daʿwa in Persia. In Badakhshān and other eastern parts of the Iranian world, too, the daʿwa had continued to spread after the downfall of the Sāmānids in 395/1005. One of the most eminent dāʿīs of al-Mustanṣir’s time, Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070) played an important part in propagating Ismailism in Central Asia as the ḥujja of Khurāsān; he also spread the daʿwa to Ṭabaristān and other Caspian provinces. During the long reign of al-Mustanṣir, the Fatimid caliphate had already embarked on its decline resulting from factional fighting in the Fatimid armies and other political and economic difficulties. The ravaging activities of the Turkish regiments, which led to a complete breakdown of law and order, finally obliged al-Mustanṣir to appeal for help to Badr al-Jamālī, an Armenian general in the service of the Fatimids. Badr arrived in Cairo in 466/1074 and soon assumed leadership of civil, judicial and religious administrations in addition to being ‘commander of the armies’ (amīr al-juyūsh), his main title and source of power. He managed to restore peace and relative prosperity to Egypt in the course of his long vizierate of some 20 years when he was the effective ruler of the Fatimid state. Badr died in 487/1094 after having arranged for his son al-Afḍal to succeed him in the vizierate. Henceforth, real power in the Fatimid state remained in the hands of viziers who were normally commanders of the armies, whence their title of ‘vizier of the sword’ (wazīr al-sayf  ), and they were normally also in charge of the daʿwa organisation and activities. Al-Mustanṣir, the eighth Fatimid caliph and eighteenth Ismaili imam, died in Dhu’l-Ḥijja 487/December 1094, a few months after Badr al-Jamālī. Thereupon, the unified Ismaili daʿwa split into two rival factions, as al-Mustanṣir’s son and original heir-designate Nizār was deprived of his succession rights by al-Afḍal who quickly installed Nizār’s younger half-brother to the Fatimid throne with the title of al-Mustaʿlī biʾllāh (487–495/1094–1101). The two factions were later designated as the Nizāriyya and Mustaʿliyya after al-Mustanṣir’s sons who had claimed his heritage. Al-Afḍal immediately obtained for al-Mustaʿlī the allegiance of the notables of the Fatimid court and most leaders of the Ismaili daʿwa in Cairo who also recognised al-Mustaʿlī’s imamate. Nizār refused to pay homage to al-Mustaʿlī and fled to Alexandria where he rose in revolt, but was defeated and killed in 488/1095. The imamate of al-Mustaʿlī was recognised by the Ismaili communities of Egypt, Yemen and western India. These Ismailis who depended on the Fatimid regime later traced the imamate in the progeny of al-Mustaʿlī. The bulk of the Ismailis of Syria, too, joined the Mustaʿlian camp. On the other hand, the Ismailis of Persia, who were then already under the leadership of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, supported the succession rights of Nizār. The Central Asian Ismailis seem to have remained uninvolved in the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism for quite some time.

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The Fatimid state survived for another 77 years after the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism of 487/1094. These decades witnessed the rapid decline of the Fatimid caliphate, which was beset by continuing crises. Al-Mustaʿlī and his successors on the Fatimid throne, who were mostly minors and remained powerless in the hands of their viziers, continued to be recognised as imams by the Mustaʿlian Ismailis who themselves soon split into Ḥāfiz. ī and Ṭayyibī branches. The Ayyūbid Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, who had acted as the last Fatimid vizier, ended Fatimid rule on 7 Muḥarram 567/10 September 1171, when he had the khuṭba read in Cairo in the name of the reigning Abbasid caliph al-Mustaḍīʾ. A few days later, al-ʿĀḍid (555–567/1160–1171), the 14th and final Fatimid caliph, died after a brief illness. The Fatimid dawla had, thus, ended after 262 years. On the collapse of the Fatimid caliphate, Egypt’s new Sunni Ayyūbid masters began to persecute the Ismailis, also suppressing the Ḥāfiz. ī Ismaili daʿwa organisation there, and all the Fatimid institutions. The immense treasures of the Fatimids and their vast libraries were also pillaged or sold.

Niza-r-ı Ismaili traditions of the Alamu-t period By the time of the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī succession dispute of 487/1094, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, who preached the Ismaili daʿwa within the Saljūq dominions in Persia, had emerged as the leader of the Persian Ismailis. He was then clearly following an independent policy, and his seizure of the fortress of Alamūt in 483/1090 had, in fact, signalled the initiation of the Persian Ismailis’ open revolt against the Saljūqs as well as the foundation of what would become the Nizārī Ismaili state. The Nizārī state, centred at Alamūt, with its territories scattered in different parts of Persia and Syria, lasted some 166 years until it was destroyed by the Mongols in 654/1256. The circumstances of the Nizārīs of the Alamūt period were radically different from those faced by the Ismailis of the Fatimid state and the Ṭayyibīs of Yemen. From early on, the Nizārīs were preoccupied with a revolutionary campaign and their survival in an extremely hostile environment. As a result, they produced military commanders rather than theologians. Furthermore, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and his seven successors at Alamūt used Persian as the religious language of their community. This made it very difficult for the Nizārīs of Persia and adjacent Persian-speaking, eastern lands to have ready access to the Ismaili literature produced in Arabic during the Fatimid period, although the Syrian Nizārīs using Arabic did preserve some of the earlier texts. At any rate, the Persian Nizārīs did not produce a substantial literature; the bulk of their literature, including the collections of the famous library at Alamūt, was either destroyed in the Mongol invasions or lost soon afterwards during the Mongol Īlkhānid rule over Persia (654–754/1256–1353). The Syrian Nizārīs were spared the Mongol catastrophe and were permitted by the Mamlūks to remain in their traditional strongholds. Subsequently, many of the literary sources, produced or preserved by the Syrian Nizārīs, perished in the course of prolonged hostilities with their Nuṣayrī (ʿAlawī) neighbours.

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The Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamūt period did, nevertheless, maintain a sophisticated intellectual outlook and a literary tradition, elaborating their teachings in response to changing circumstances. Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ himself was a learned theologian and was credited with founding an impressive library at Alamūt. Later, other major Nizārī fortresses in Persia and Syria were equipped with significant collections of books, documents and scientific instruments. In the doctrinal field, only a handful of Nizārī works have survived directly from that period. These include the Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, or the Seven Chapters of Bābā Sayyidnā, two honorific titles reserved for Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ. This is an anonymous work written around 596/1200, several decades after Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s death in 518/1124. There are also those Ismaili works written during the final decades of the Alamūt period and attributed to Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), who spent some three decades in the Nizārī fortress communities of Persia. Among the Ismaili corpus of al-Ṭūsī’s works, mention should be made of the Rawḍat al-taslīm (Paradise of Submission), which is the single most important source on the Nizārī teachings of the Alamūt period, and his spiritual autobiography Sayr va sulūk, in which al-Ṭūsī explains his conversion to Ismailism. A few Nizārī texts, which are not extant otherwise, have been fragmentarily preserved in the Kitāb al-milal waʾl-niḥal of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s contemporary, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153), the famous heresiographer and theologian who was influenced by Ismaili ideas if not an Ismaili himself, as well as in some post-Alamūt Nizārī writings. Al-Shahrastānī himself wrote several works, including a partial Qurʾan commentary called Mafātiḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār, and a philosophical treatise in refutation of Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysics, Kitāb al-muṣāraʿa, using Ismaili ideas and the methodology of taʾwīl or esoteric interpretation. The Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamūt period also maintained a historiographical tradition in Persia. They compiled chronicles in the Persian language recording the events of their state according to the reigns of the successive lords of Alamūt. This historiographical tradition commenced with the Sargudhasht-i Sayyidnā, covering the biography of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, designated as Bābā and Sayyidnā (‘our master’) by the contemporary Nizārīs, and the events of his rule as the first lord of Alamūt. All the Nizārī chronicles, kept at Alamūt and other strongholds in Persia, perished in the period of Mongol rule. However, some of these chronicles and other Nizārī documents, such as the fuṣūl or epistles of the lords of Alamūt, were seen and used extensively by three Persian historians of the Īlkhānid period, namely, ʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī (d. 681/1283), Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh (d. 718/1318) and Abu’l-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh Kāshānī (d. ca. 738/1337). The Ismaili histories of these authorities remain our main sources on the Nizārī daʿwa and state in Persia during the Alamūt period. Having joined the entourage of Hülegü, Juwaynī accompanied the Mongol conqueror on his military campaigns against the Nizārīs in 654/1256; he also participated in the peace negotiations between Hülegü and the Nizārī Imam Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh. Juwaynī received permission to visit the Alamūt library before the destruction of that fortress by the Mongols. As a result, he succeeded in saving a number of what he called ‘choice books’, including the Sargudhasht-i Sayyidnā, and

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used these Ismaili sources in writing his history of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and his ­successors at Alamūt, which he labelled the daʿwa of the ‘heretics’ (malāḥida) and the ‘new preaching’ (daʿwat-i jadīd). He composed this account soon after the fall of Alamūt and added it to the end of his Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushā on Mongol victories, completed in its present form in 658/1260. Juwaynī’s history of the Persian Nizārīs, permeated with invective and curses against them, is preceded by sections relating to the earlier history of the Ismailis, a pattern adopted by later Persian historians. Rashīd al-Dīn’s history of the Ismailis is contained in the second volume of his vast Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (Collection of Histories), completed in 710/1310. Few details are known about the life of Kāshānī, a Persian (Twelver) Shiʿi historian belonging to the Abū Ṭāhir family of leading potters from Kāshān. It is known, however, that he was associated with Rashīd al-Dīn and was probably involved in producing parts of the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh. He included a section on the Ismailis in his Zubdat al-tawārīkh, a general history of the Muslim world until the demise of the Abbasids. Kāshānī’s account, which came to light in 1964, is the fullest of the three sources. Later Persian historians who produced summary accounts of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and his successors based their work mainly on Juwaynī and Rashīd al-Dīn, occasionally drawing also on sources of a legendary nature. The Nizārīs of Syria produced their own religious literature, including numerous poetical works in Arabic, during the Alamūt period. This literature has not been sufficiently studied in modern times, as the relevant manuscript sources are not readily accessible. The Syrian Nizārīs have also preserved many of the Ismaili texts of the Fatimid period, works of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman and others. The Persian Nizārī works of the Alamūt period were evidently not translated into Arabic in Syria, and, similarly, the religious literature of the Syrian Nizārīs was not rendered into Persian, nor did the Syrian Nizārīs compile official chronicles like those produced by their Persian co-religionists. Amongst the few surviving Syrian Nizārī works, a special place is occupied by the Faṣl min allaf z. al-sharīf, which includes a biographical account of Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān (d. 589/ 1193), the most famous dāʿī of the community, in addition to sayings attributed to him. This hagiographic work containing various anecdotes based on the oral tradition of the Syrian Nizārīs may have been compiled much later by the dāʿī Abū Firās Shihāb al-Dīn al-Maynaqī (d. 937/1530 or 947/1540), or possibly by another Syrian, Abū Firās, who lived two centuries earlier. The main literary sources on the history of the Syrian Nizārīs, from the arrival of the first dāʿīs dispatched from Alamūt in the earliest years of the sixth/twelfth century until the complete subjugation of the Nizārī castles by Mamlūks in 671/1273, are the local histories of Syria as well as general Arab chronicles. Amongst the relevant authorities, the most important are Ibn al-Qalānisī (d. 555/1160), the Damascene chronicler, Ibn al-ʿAdīm (d. 660/1262), the historian of Aleppo, and Ibn al-Jawzī’s grandson, known as Ṣibt (d. 654/1256). Of particular interest here are also works of several lesser-known historians, notably al-ʿAz. īmī (d. after 556/1161). For the later decades, the histories of Abū Shāma (d. 665/1267) and Ibn Wāṣil (d. 697/1298), amongst others, are of significance.

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The non-literary sources on the Persian Nizārīs of the Alamūt period are rather insignificant. The Mongols demolished the major Nizārī fortresses of Persia, which may have provided valuable archaeological evidence. At any rate, these fortresses have not been scientifically studied, and the few excavations undertaken in modern times probably caused more damage to the sites than they yielded results. All in all, no epigraphic evidence has been recovered from the Nizārī castles of Persia, which were equipped with impressive defence and water supply systems, while relatively limited hoards of Nizārī coins minted at Alamūt have also been recovered. On the other hand, the Nizārī castles of Syria, which have been much better preserved, have yielded valuable archaeological, including epigraphic, information. By 487/1094, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, as noted, had emerged as the leader of the Persian Ismailis. As an Ismaili Shiʿi, he could not tolerate the anti-Shiʿi policies of the Saljūqs, who as the new champions of Sunni Islam aimed to uproot the Fatimids. Ḥasan’s revolt was also an expression of Persian ‘national’ sentiments, as the alien rule of Saljūq Turks was greatly detested by the Persians of different social classes. This may explain why he substituted Persian for Arabic as the religious language of the Persian Ismailis, accounting also for the popular success of his movement. It was under such circumstances that in al-Mustanṣir’s succession dispute, Ḥasan supported Nizār’s cause and severed his relations with the Fatimid regime and the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo, which had lent their support to al-Mustaʿlī. By this decision, Ḥasan founded the independent Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa on behalf of the Nizārī imam who then remained inaccessible; and, as a result, the Nizārī daʿwa survived the downfall of the Fatimid dynasty, similarly to the subsequent fate of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Yemen. Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ did not divulge the name of Nizār’s successor to the imamate. In fact, numismatic evidence shows that Nizār’s own name appeared on coins minted at Alamūt for about 70 years after his death in 488/1095, while his progeny were blessed anonymously. The early Nizārī Ismailis were, thus, left without an accessible imam in another dawr al-satr; and, as in the pre-Fatimid period of concealment, the absent imam was represented in the community by a ḥujja, his chief representative. Ḥasan and his next two successors as heads of the Nizārī daʿwa and state were indeed recognised as such ḥujjas. It seems that already in Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s time many Nizārīs believed that a son or grandson of Nizār had been secretly brought from Egypt to Persia, and he became the progenitor of the line of the Nizārī imams who later emerged at Alamūt. From early on in the Alamūt period, outsiders had the impression that the Persian Ismailis had initiated a ‘new preaching’ (al-daʿwa al-jadīda) in contrast to the ‘old preaching’ (al-daʿwa al-qadīma) of the Fatimid times. The ‘new preaching’ did not, however, represent any new doctrines; it was merely a reformulation of the old Shiʿi doctrine of taʿlīm, or authoritative teaching by the imam. It was mainly Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ himself who restated this doctrine in a more rigorous form in a theological treatise entitled al-Fuṣūl al-arbaʿa or ‘Four Chapters’. This treatise, originally written in Persian, has been preserved only fragmentarily by al-Shahrastānī and our Persian historians. This doctrine is also reiterated in Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūṣī’s ­spiritual

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autobiography. The doctrine of taʿlīm, emphasising the autonomous t­eaching ­ authority of each imam in his own time, became the central doctrine of the Nizārīs who, henceforth, were designated as the Taʿlīmiyya. The intellectual challenge posed to the Sunni establishment by the doctrine of taʿlīm, which also refuted the legitimacy of the Abbasid caliph as the spiritual spokesman of all Muslims, called forth the reaction of the Sunni establishment. Many Sunni scholars, led by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), wrote refutations of the Ismaili doctrine of taʿlīm. It is to be noted that the Nizārīs, as a matter of general policy, do not seem to have responded to these polemics. By 489/1096, when the fortress of Lamasar was seized, Ḥasan had acquired or built numerous mountain strongholds in Daylamān, the centre of Nizārī power in northern Persia. Meanwhile, the Ismailis had come to possess a network of fortresses and several towns in Quhistān, in south-eastern Khurāsān, which remained the second most important territory of the Nizārī state in Persia. Later, the Nizārīs acquired Girdkūh and other fortresses in the regions of Qūmis, Arrajān and Zagros. In the opening years of the sixth/twelfth century, Ḥasan also began to extend his activities to Syria by sending Persian dāʿīs from Alamūt, led by al-Ḥakīm ­al-Munajjim (d. 496/1103). In Syria, the dāʿīs confronted many difficulties in the initial phases of their operations in Aleppo and Damascus; and it took them several decades before they finally succeeded in various ways to acquire a network of castles, collectively referred to in the sources as the qilāʿ al-daʿwa, in the Jabal Bahrāʾ (present-day Jabal Anṣāriyya), a mountainous region between Ḥamā and the Mediterranean coastline in central Syria. These castles included Qadmūs, Kahf and Maṣyāf, which often served as the headquarters of the chief dāʿī of the Syrian Nizārīs. There, the Nizārīs confronted the enmity of various local Sunni rulers as well as the Crusaders who were active in adjacent territories belonging to the Latin states of Antioch and Tripoli. By the final years of Ḥasan’s life, however, the antiSaljūq revolt of the Nizārīs had lost its momentum, much in the same way that the Saljūqs under Barkiyāruq (d. 498/1105) and Muḥammad Tapar (d. 511/1118) had failed in their prolonged military campaigns to uproot the Persian Ismailis from their mountain strongholds. Ismaili-Saljūq relations had now entered a new phase of ‘stalemate’. On Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s death in 518/1124, Kiyā Buzurg-Umīd succeeded him as the head of the Nizārī daʿwa and state. A capable administrator like his predecessor, Buzurg-Umīd (518–532/1124–1138) maintained the policies of Ḥasan and further strengthened and extended the Nizārī state. The Ismaili-Saljūq stalemate essentially continued during the long reign of Buzurg-Umīd’s son Muḥammad (532–557/1138–1162) as the third lord of Alamūt. By then, the Nizārī state had acquired its distinctive administrative structure. Each Nizārī territory was placed under the overall leadership of a chief dāʿī appointed from Alamūt; the leader of the Quhistānī Nizārīs was known as muḥtasham. These dāʿīs as well as the commanders of major fortresses enjoyed a large degree of independence and local initiative, contributing to the dynamism and resilience of the Nizārī movement. Highly united with a remarkable sense of mission, the Nizārīs acknowledged the supreme

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l­eadership of Alamūt and obeyed without any dissent the religious policies initiated at that fortress by the imam’s ḥujjas and, subsequently, by the Nizārī imams themselves. Meanwhile, the Nizārīs had been eagerly expecting the appearance of their imam, who had remained inaccessible since Nizār’s murder in 488/1095. The fourth lord of Alamūt, Ḥasan II, to whom the Nizārīs refer with the expression ʿalā dhikrihiʾl-salām (on his mention be peace), succeeded to leadership in 557/1162 and, soon after, declared the qiyāma or resurrection, initiating a new phase in the religious history of the Nizārī community. On 17 Ramaḍān 559/8 August 1164, in the presence of the representatives of different Nizārī territories who had gathered at Alamūt, he delivered a sermon in which he proclaimed the qiyāma, the long awaited ‘Last Day’. About two months later, a similar ceremony was held at the fortress of Muʾminābād, near Bīrjand, and the earlier khuṭba and message were read out by Raʾīs Muz. affar, the muḥtasham in Quhistān. There, Ḥasan II’s position was more clearly equated with that of al-Mustanṣir as God’s caliph (khalīfa) on earth, implicitly claiming the status of imam for the lord of Alamūt. Ḥasan II relied heavily on Ismaili taʾwīl and earlier traditions, interpreting qiyāma symbolically and spiritually for the Nizārīs. Accordingly, qiyāma meant nothing more than the manifestation of unveiled truth (ḥaqīqa) in the person of the Nizārī imam; it was a spiritual resurrection only for those who acknowledged the rightful imam of the time and were now capable of understanding the truth, and the esoteric and immutable essence of Islam. It was in this sense that Paradise was actualised for the Nizārīs in this world. They were now to rise to a spiritual level of existence, transcending from z.āhir to bāṭin, from sharīʿa to ḥaqīqa, or from the literal interpretation of the law to an understanding of its spirituality and the eternal truths of religion. On the other hand, the ‘outsiders’, the non-Nizārīs who were incapable of recognising the truth, were rendered spiritually non-existent. The imam proclaiming the qiyāma would be the qāʾim al-qiyāma, ‘lord of resurrection’, a rank which in Ismaili religious hierarchy was always higher than that of an ordinary imam. Ḥasan II’s son and successor Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad devoted his long reign (561–607/1166–1210) to a systematic elaboration of the qiyāma in terms of a doctrine. The exaltation of the autonomous teaching authority of the present imam now became the central feature of Nizārī thought; and qiyāma came to imply a complete personal transformation of the Nizārīs who were expected to perceive the imam in his true spiritual reality. Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad also made every Nizārī imam potentially a qāʾim capable of inaugurating an era of qiyāma. Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad also explicitly affirmed the Nizārid Fatimid descent of his father and, therefore, of himself. He explained that Ḥasan II was in fact an imam and the son of a descendant of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir who had earlier found refuge in Alamūt. Henceforth, the Nizārīs recognised the lords of Alamūt, beginning with Ḥasan II, as their imams. Meanwhile, the Syrian Nizārīs had entered into an important phase of their own history under the leadership of Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān, their most famous leader who had been appointed as chief dāʿī in Syria by Ḥasan II soon after his own accession in 557/1162. Sinān reorganised and strengthened the Syrian Nizārī daʿwa, also

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consolidating their network of fortresses in the Jabal Bahrāʾ. Aiming to safeguard his community, Sinān entered into intricate and shifting alliances with the major neighbouring powers and rulers, notably the Crusaders, the Zangids and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. The Syrian Nizārīs had intermittent conflicts with the Templars and the Hospitallers, Frankish military orders which often acted independently in the Latin East. The only one of the Syrian dāʿīs to act somewhat independently of Alamūt, Sinān evidently taught his own version of the doctrine of qiyāma. He led the Syrian Nizārīs for almost three decades to the peak of their power and fame until his death in 589/1193. Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad’s son and successor, Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan (607–618/1210– 1221), was concerned largely with redressing the isolation of the Nizārīs from the larger world of Sunni Islam. Consequently, he publicly repudiated the doctrine of qiyāma and ordered his followers to observe the sharīʿa in its Sunni form, inviting Sunni jurists to instruct his people. Indeed, Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan did his utmost to convince the outside world of his new policy. In 608/1211, the Abbasid caliph al-Nāṣir acknowledged the imam’s rapprochement with Sunni Islam and issued a decree to that effect. Henceforth, the rights of Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan to Nizārī territories were officially recognised by the Abbasid caliph, as well as the Khwārazm Shāhs, who were then establishing their own empire in Persia as successors to the Saljūqs, and by other Sunni rulers. The Nizārīs viewed Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan’s declarations as a restoration of taqiyya, which had been lifted in the qiyāma times; the observance of taqiyya could imply any type of accommodation to the outside world as deemed necessary by the infallible imam. Be that as it may, the Nizārī imam had now successfully achieved peace and security for his community and state. Under ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad (618–653/1221–1255), Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan’s son and successor as the penultimate lord of Alamūt, gradually the Sunni sharīʿa was relaxed within the community and the Nizārī traditions associated with qiyāma were once again revived. The Nizārī leadership now also made a sustained effort to explain the different doctrinal declarations and religious policies of the lords of Alamūt. As a result, all these teachings were interpreted comprehensively within a coherent theological framework, aiming to provide satisfactory explanations for the seemingly contradictory policies adopted at Alamūt. Intellectual life indeed flourished in the long reign of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad, receiving a special impetus from the influx of outside scholars who fled the first waves of the Mongol invasions and took refuge in the Nizārī fortress communities. Foremost among such scholars, who availed themselves of the Nizārī libraries and patronage of learning, was Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), who made major contributions to Nizārī lsmaili thought of the late Alamūt period during his prolonged stay amongst them. It is mainly through al-Ṭūsī’s extant Ismaili writings, notably the Rawḍat al-taslīm, that we have an exposition of the Nizārī thought of the Alamūt period, especially as it developed after the declaration of the qiyāma. Al-Ṭūsī explained that qiyāma was not necessarily a final, eschatological event, but a transitory condition of life when the veil of taqiyya would be lifted so as to make the unveiled truth accessible. In the current cycle of history, however, the full qiyāma, or Great Resurrection

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(qiyāmat-i qiyāmāt), would still occur at the end of the era initiated by the Prophet Muḥammad. The identification between sharīʿa and taqiyya, implied by the teachings of Ḥasan II, was now made explicit by al-Ṭūsī who also identified qiyāma with ḥaqīqa. Thus, the imposition of the Sunni sharīʿa by Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan was presented as a return to taqiyya, and to a new period of satr or concealment, when the truth (ḥaqīqa) would be once again concealed in the bāṭin of religion. The condition of qiyāma could, in principle, be granted by the current Nizārī imam at any time, because every imam was potentially also an imām-qāʾim. In his integrated theological presentation, human life could alternate between periods of qiyāma, when reality is manifest, and satr, when it would be concealed requiring the observance of taqiyya. In this sense, the term satr was redefined to imply the concealment of the religious truths and the true spiritual reality of the imam, and not just the physical inaccessibility of the imam, as had been the case in the pre-Fatimid and early Alamūt times. The teachings of the late Alamūt period brought the Nizārīs even closer to the esoteric traditions more commonly associated with Sufism. Nizārī fortunes in Persia were rapidly reversed after the collapse of the Khwārazmian Empire, which brought them into direct confrontation with the invading Mongols. When the Great Khan Möngke decided to complete the Mongol conquests of western Asia, he assigned first priority to the destruction of the Nizārī Ismaili state, a task completed with some difficulty in 654/1256 by his brother Hülegü, who led the main Mongol expedition into Persia. Shortly before, in 653/1255, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad had been succeeded by his eldest son Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, who would rule for exactly one year as the last lord of Alamūt. The youthful imam engaged in a complex, and ultimately futile, series of negotiations with Hülegü. Finally, on 29 Shawwāl 654/19 November 1256, Khurshāh descended from the fortress of Maymūndiz in Rūdbār in the company of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and Nizārī dignitaries, and surrendered to the Mongols. With the fall of Alamūt a month later, the fate of the Nizārī state was sealed. Alamūt and many other fortresses were demolished, though Girdkūh resisted its Mongol besiegers for another 14 years. In the spring of 655/1257, Khurshāh himself was killed by his Mongol guards in Mongolia, where he had gone in order to meet the Great Khan. By then, the Mongols had massacred large numbers of Nizārīs who had been placed in their protective custody. In the meantime, the Syrian Nizārīs had been led by other dāʿīs after Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān. From the time of the Imam Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan’s rapprochement with Sunni Islam, relations between the Syrian Nizārīs and their Muslim neighbours had improved significantly, while periodic encounters of different kinds continued with the Franks. The last important encounter between the Nizārīs and the Crusaders, who still held the Syrian coastline, occurred in the early 650s/1250s in connection with embassies exchanged with Louis IX, the French king better known as St. Louis (d. 1270), who led the Seventh Crusade (1248–1255) to the Holy Land. John of Joinville (d. 1317), the king’s biographer and secretary, has left a valuable account of these dealings, including a curious disputation between an Arabicspeaking friar and the chief dāʿī of the Syrian Nizārīs. Subsequently, the Nizārīs

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collaborated with the Mamlūks and other Muslim rulers in defeating the Mongols in Syria. Baybars, the victorious Mamlūk sultan, now resorted to various measures for bringing about the submission of the Nizārī strongholds in Syria. Kahf was the last Nizārī outpost there to fall in 671/1273. However, the Syrian Nizārīs were permitted to remain in their traditional abodes as loyal subjects of the Mamlūks and their Ottoman successors. Having lost their political prominence, the Nizārīs henceforth lived secretly as religious minorities in numerous communities scattered in Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Post-Alamu-t Niza-r-ı Ismaili traditions The post-Alamūt period in Nizārī Ismailism covers more than seven centuries, from the fall of Alamūt in 654/1256 to the present time. The Nizārī communities, scattered from Syria to Persia, Central Asia and South Asia, now elaborated a diversity of religious and literary traditions in different languages. The first five centuries after the fall of Alamūt represent the longest obscure phase of Ismaili history. Many aspects of Ismaili activity in this period are still not sufficiently studied due to a scarcity of primary sources. A variety of factors, related to the very nature of Nizārī Ismailism of this period, have caused special research difficulties here. In the aftermath of the destruction of their state and fortress communities in Persia, the Nizārīs were deprived of the centralised leadership they had enjoyed during the Alamūt period. After Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh’s son and successor, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, there was a split in the line of the Nizārī imams and their followers, further dividing the community into rival Muḥammad-Shāhī and Qāsim-Shāhī branches. The Nizārī imamate was, thus, handed down through two parallel lines while the imams remained in hiding and were inaccessible to the bulk of their followers for about two centuries. More complex research difficulties arise from the widespread practice of taqiyya by the Nizārīs of different regions. During much of the post-Alamūt period of their history, the Nizārīs were obliged to dissimulate rather strictly to safeguard themselves against rampant persecution. They concealed their true beliefs and literature in addition to resorting to Sunni, Sufi, Twelver Shiʿi and Hindu disguises in different parts of the Iranian world and the Indian subcontinent. It is important to note that in many regions, the Nizārīs observed taqiyya for very long periods with lasting consequences in terms of their religious identity. Although this phenomenon has only recently been studied by a few scholars, notably cultural anthropologists, it is certain that long-term dissimulation under any guise would eventually result in irrevocable changes in the traditions and the very religious identity of the dissimulating community. Such influences might have manifested themselves in a variety of manners, ranging from total acculturation or full assimilation of the Nizārīs of a particular locality into the community chosen originally as a protective cover, to various degrees of interfacing and admixture between Ismaili and ‘other’ traditions without necessarily the loss of the Ismaili identity. Probabilities for complete assimilation or disintegration were particularly high during the early post-Alamūt

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times when the Nizārīs were effectively deprived of any form of central leadership, including the guidance of their imams in particular. In the event, for several centuries, the Nizārī communities developed independently of one another under the local leadership of their dāʿīs, pīrs, shaykhs, khalīfas, and so on, who often established their own hereditary dynasties. The difficulties of studying post-Alamūt Nizārī Ismailism are further aggravated by the fact that the Nizārīs produced relatively few religious texts, while, following the demise of their state in 654/1256, they had lost their earlier interest in historiography as well. In the light of these problems, further progress here would require the acquisition of a better understanding of the historical developments as well as the religious and literary traditions of major Nizārī communities of this period, especially those in South Asia and different parts of the Iranian world. The Nizārī Ismaili literature of the post-Alamūt period can be classified into four main categories, namely the Persian, the Badakhshānī or Central Asian, the Syrian, and the South Asian or the ginān corpus. The Nizārī sources produced in Persia, Afghanistan and the upper Oxus region are written entirely in the Persian language, while the Syrian texts are in Arabic. The Nizārīs of South Asia, designated as Khojas, who elaborated a distinctive Ismaili tradition known as Satpanth or ‘true path’, have used various Indian languages in committing their doctrines to writing in the form of devotional hymns known as gināns and using the Khojki script they developed themselves. The Nizārīs of Persia and adjacent regions did not produce any doctrinal works during the earliest post-Alamūt centuries. Only the versified works of Ḥakīm Saʿd al-Dīn Nizārī Quhistānī (d. 720/1320), a poet and government functionary from Bīrjand in south-eastern Khurāsān, remain extant from that period. He was also perhaps the first post-Alamūt Nizārī author to have chosen verse and Sufi forms of expression to conceal his Ismaili ideas, a model adopted by later Nizārī authors in Persia. Nizārī’s vast Dīwān, containing some 10,000 verses in ghazal form, was recently published in Tehran. The subsequent revival of the daʿwa activities during the Anjudān period also encouraged the literary activities of the community, and a number of better-educated Persian Nizārīs began to produce the first doctrinal works of the period. The earliest amongst these authors were Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī (d. after 904/1498) and Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī (d. after 960/1553), a dāʿī and poet who visited the contemporary Nizārī imam in Anjudān. The writings of these authors contain important historical references as well. Amongst later authors, mention may be made of the poet Imām Qulī Khākī Khurāsānī (d. after 1056/1646) and his son ʿAlī Qulī, better known as Raqqāmī Khurāsānī; they, too, resorted to poetry and Sufi expressions. More doctrinal works by Persian Nizārī authors appeared during the thirteenth/nineteenth century and later times, marking a modern revival in Nizārī literary activities. This revival was encouraged by the Nizārī imams following the transference of their residence to India. Amongst such works written in Persian, mention may be made of the Risāla dar ḥaqīqat-i dīn and the Khiṭābāt-i ʿāliya of Shihāb al-Dīn Shāh al-Ḥusaynī (d. 1302/1884), the eldest son of the 47th Nizārī Imam Āqā ʿAlī Shāh, Āghā Khān II, and the works of Muḥammad b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, known as Fidāʾī Khurāsānī (d. 1342/1923), who

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was also the only Persian Nizārī author of modern times to have written a history of Ismailism, entitled Hidāyat al-muʾminīn al-ṭālibīn. The Nizārī Ismailis of Badakhshān and the adjacent areas in the upper Oxus have retained their distinctive literary tradition, drawing on the Persian Ismaili literature of different periods with particular reference to the writings of Nāṣir-i Khusraw as well as the Sufi traditions of Central Asia. Consequently, the Badakhshānī Nizārīs have preserved and transmitted the anonymous Umm al-kitāb, which does not contain any specific Ismaili ideas, the genuine and spurious writings of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, all written in Persian, as well as the Nizārī literature of later times representing the coalescence of Nizārī Ismailism and Sufism; they have also preserved many anonymous works as well as the writings of the great mystic poets of Persia, who are regarded as their co-religionists. The Nizārīs of these remote regions in the Pamirs do not seem to have produced many noteworthy authors in the post-Alamūt period, with some exceptions such as Sayyid Suhrāb Valī Badakhshānī (d. after 856/1452); but they have preserved the bulk of the Ismaili literature of different periods written in Persian elsewhere. These manuscript sources have been held in numerous private collections, especially by local religious leaders known as khalīfas, in Shughnān, Rūshān, Ishkāshim and other districts of the GornoBadakhshān province of Tajikistan. The Nizārīs of Afghan Badakhshān, too, have extensive collections of manuscripts, about which information is not yet readily available. The Central Asian Ismailis concentrated in Badakhshān also have a rich tradition of oral poetry of different genres in Tajik Persian, including specifically religious poetry in praise of Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, other imams and Nāṣir-i ­Khusraw, known as maddāḥ and delivered in special ceremonies by maddāḥ-reciters and singers. They have also preserved a number of local rituals such as the Chirāghrawshan rite for the dead (based on variants of a Persian text entitled Chirāgh-nāma). The Nizārīs of Hunza, Chitral and the districts of Gilgit, now all situated in northern areas of Pakistan, have preserved a selection of Persian Nizārī works, although they themselves speak a host of local languages and dialects such as Burushaski and Wakhi rather than Persian. This literature was originally made available to them by their Badakhshānī neighbours, who themselves speak a number of local dialects, such as Shughni, in addition to a Tajik version of Persian. The Ismailis of Badakhshān do not seem to have compiled histories of their community, but there are references to Ismailis in a few local histories of the region. Small Nizārī communities have existed in Yārkand and Kāshgar, in the Sinkiang (Xinjiang) Uyghur province in the Tashkorghan region of China, about whose literary traditions no specific details are available. Ethnically defined as Tajiks, the Nizārīs of China speak mainly Sarikoli and Wakhi dialects of the Pamiri languages. They seem to have had the same religious rituals and literature as those found in the neighbouring Badakhshān. The Syrian Nizārīs, who adhered almost entirely to the Muḥammad-Shāhī branch of Nizārī Ismailism until the thirteenth/nineteenth century, developed their own limited literature in Arabic. As they also preserved some of the Ismaili works of the Fatimid period, certain earlier Ismaili traditions continued to be represented

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in the Nizārī texts of Syrian provenance. The most famous Syrian dāʿī – author of this period was Abū Firās Shihāb al-Dīn al-Maynaqī, who died in 937/1530 or 10 years later. The Nizārīs of Syria were evidently not persecuted by the Ottomans, who mention them and their castles in their land registers of the region. In fact, the Syrian Nizārīs did not attract much outside attention until the early decades of the nineteenth century, when they became entangled in recurrent conflicts with their Nuṣayrī neighbours. It was around the same time that European travellers and orientalists began to make references to them. In the 1260s/1840s, the Syrian Nizārīs successfully petitioned the Ottoman authorities for permission to restore Salamiyya, then in ruins, for the settlement of their community. Meanwhile, the Syrian Nizārīs belonging to the Muḥammad-Shāhī line had not heard, since 1210/1796, from their last known imam, Muḥammad al-Bāqir, who lived in India. As they failed to locate him, the majority of the Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs of Syria transferred their allegiance in 1304/1887 to the Qāsim-Shāhī line, then represented by Aga Khan III. An Ismaili minority, centred in Maṣyāf and Qadmūs, remained loyal to the Muḥammad-Shāhī line, and are still awaiting the reappearance of their last known imam as the Mahdi. The Nizārī Khojas of the Indian subcontinent, as noted, elaborated their own literary tradition in the form of the gināns, containing a diversity of mystical, mythological, didactic, cosmological and eschatological themes. Many gināns contain ethical and moral instructions for the conduct of religious life and for guiding the spiritual quest of the believer. As an oral tradition, some gināns also relate anachronistic, hagiographic and legendary accounts of the activities of pīrs, as the chief dāʿīs in India were called, and their converts. The gināns are composed in verse form and are meant to be sung and recited melodically. The earlier Ismaili literature, produced in Arabic and Persian, was not until recently available to the Khojas. The authorships of the gināns are attributed to Pīr Shams al-Dīn, Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn and a few other early pīrs. Originally transmitted orally, the gināns began to be collected and recorded from the tenth/sixteenth century. The gināns exist in a mixture of Indian languages, including Sindhi, Gujarati, Hindi, Panjabi and Multani. The bulk of the recorded corpus of the ginān literature, comprising about 1,000 separate compositions, has survived in the specific Khojki script developed and used extensively by the Nizārī Khojas. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, an increasing number of gināns have been published in India. In the aftermath of the Mongol debacle, the Nizārī Ismailis of Persia survived the downfall of their state. Many migrated to Badakhshān and Sind, where Ismaili communities already existed. Other isolated Nizārī groups soon disintegrated or were assimilated into the religiously dominant communities of their locality. The centralised daʿwa organisation also disappeared, to be replaced by a loose network of autonomous dāʿīs and pīrs in the various regions. Under these circumstances, scattered Nizārī communities developed independently while resorting to taqiyya and different external guises. Many Nizārī groups in the Iranian world, where Sunnism prevailed until the rise of the Safawids, disguised themselves as Sunni Muslims. Meanwhile, a group of Nizārī dignitaries had managed to hide Rukn al-Dīn

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Khurshāh’s minor son, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, who succeeded to the imamate in 655/1257. Shams al-Dīn was taken to Ādharbāyjān, in northwestern Persia, where he and his next few successors to the imamate lived clandestinely. Certain allusions in the unpublished versified Safar-nāma (Travelogue) of the contemporary poet Nizārī Quhistānī indicate that he may have seen the Nizārī imam in Tabrīz in 679/1280. Shams al-Dīn, who in certain legendary accounts has been confused with Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s spiritual guide Shams-i Tabrīz, died around 710/1310. An obscure dispute over his succession split the line of the Nizārī imams and their following into the Qāsim-Shāhī and Muḥammad-Shāhī (or MuʾminShāhī) branches. The Muḥammad-Shāhī imams, who initially had more followers in Persia and Central Asia, transferred their seat to India in the tenth/sixteenth century, and by the end of the twelfth/eighteenth century, this line had become discontinued. The sole surviving Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs, currently numbering about 15,000, are to be found in Syria, where they are locally known as the Jaʿfariyya. The Qāsim-Shāhī community has persisted to the present time, and their last four imams have enjoyed prominence under their hereditary title of Āghā Khān (Aga Khan). It was in the early post-Alamūt times that Persian Nizārīs, as part of their taqiyya practices, disguised themselves under the cover of Sufism, without establishing formal affiliations with any of the Sufi ṭarīqas then spreading in Persia and Central Asia. The practice soon gained wide currency among the Nizārīs of Central Asia and Sind as well. In early post-Alamūt times, the Nizārīs had some success in regrouping in Daylam, where they remained active throughout the Īlkhānid and Tīmūrid periods. Only a few isolated Nizārī groups survived a while longer in Daylam during the Safawid period when Alamūt was used as a prison. In Badakhshān and other parts of Central Asia, the Ismailis evidently acknowledged the Nizārī imamate only during the late Alamūt period as a result of the activities of dāʿīs dispatched from Quhistān. These dāʿīs founded dynasties of pīrs and mīrs who ruled over Shughnān and other districts of Badakhshān. In 913/1507, Shāh Raḍī al-Dīn b. Ṭāhir, a MuḥammadShāhī imam, established his rule briefly over a part of Badakhshān with the help of his followers there. Subsequently, the Badakhshānī Nizārīs were severely persecuted by the local Tīmūrid, and then, Özbeg rulers. By the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century, Ismaili-Sufi relations had become well established in the Iranian world. Indeed, a type of coalescence had emerged between Persian Sufism and Nizārī Ismailism, two independent esoteric traditions in Islam which shared close affinities and common doctrinal grounds. As an early instance of this coalescence, mention may be made of the celebrated Sufi mathnawī poem, Gulshan-i rāz (The Rose-Garden of Mystery), composed by the Sufi master Maḥmūd-i Shabistarī (d. after 740/1339), and its later commentary, Baʿḍī az taʾwīlāt-i Gulshan-i rāz, by an anonymous Persian Nizārī author. Among other examples, Central Asian Nizārīs consider ʿAzīz al-Dīn Nasafī (d. ca. 661/1262), a local Sufi master, as a co-religionist, and they have preserved his treatise Zubdat al-ḥaqāʾiq as an Ismaili work. Owing to their close relations with Sufism, the ­Persian-speaking Nizārīs have also regarded several of the great mystic poets of

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­Persia, such as Sanāʾī, ʿAṭṭār and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, as their co-religionists. The Nizārī Ismailis of ­Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia have preserved their works and continue to use their poetry in their religious ceremonies. Soon, the dissimulating Persian Ismailis adopted the more visible aspects of the Sufi way of life. Thus, the imams appeared to outsiders as Sufi masters or pīrs, while their followers adopted the typically Sufi appellation of disciples or murīds. By then, the Nizārī imams of the Qāsim-Shāhī line had emerged in the village of Anjudān, in central Persia, and initiated the Anjudān revival in Nizārī Ismailism. With Mustanṣir biʾllāh (II) (d. 885/1480), who carried the Sufi name of Shāh Qalandar, the Qāsim-Shāhī imams became definitely established in the locality where a number of their tombs are still preserved. Taking advantage of the changing religio-political climate of Persia, including the spread of ʿAlid loyalism and Shiʿi tendencies through Sunni Sufi orders, the imams successfully began to reorganise and reinvigorate their daʿwa activities to win new converts and reassert their authority over various Nizārī communities, especially in Central Asia and India where the Ismailis had been led for long periods by independent dynasties of pīrs. The imams gradually replaced these powerful autonomous figures with their own loyal appointees who would also regularly deliver the much-needed religious dues to the imam’s central treasury. The Anjudān period witnessed a revival in the literary activities of the Nizārīs, especially in Persia, where the earliest doctrinal works of the post-Alamūt period were now produced. In the context of Nizārī-Sufi relations during the Anjudān period, valuable details are preserved in a book entitled Pandiyāt-i jawānmardī, containing the religious admonitions of Imam Mustanṣir biʾllāh (II). In this book, later translated into Gujarati for the benefit of the Khojas, the Nizārīs are referred to with common Sufi expressions such as ahl-i ḥaqīqat, or the ‘people of the truth’, while the imam is designated as pīr or murshid. The imam’s admonitions start with the sharīʿat-ṭarīqat-ḥaqīqat categorisation of the Sufis, describing ḥaqīqat as the bāṭin of sharīʿat which could be attained only by the believers (muʾmins). The Pandiyāt further explains, in line with the earlier Nizārī teachings of the qiyāma times, that ḥaqīqat consists of recognising the spiritual reality of the imam of the time. The Nizārīs now essentially retained the teachings of the Alamūt period, especially as elaborated after the declaration of the qiyāma. The current imam retained his central importance in Nizārī doctrine, and the recognition of his true spiritual reality remained the prime concern of his followers. The advent of the Safawids and the proclamation of Twelver Shiʿism as the state religion of their realm in 907/1501 promised more favourable opportunities for the activities of the Nizārīs and other Shiʿi communities in Persia. The Nizārīs were, in fact, now able to reduce the intensity of their taqiyya practices. However, this new optimism was short-lived as the Safawids and their sharīʿat-minded ʿulamā soon suppressed all popular forms of Sufism and those Shiʿi movements which fell outside the confines of Twelver Shiʿism. The Nizārīs, too, received their share of persecutions. Shāh Ṭāhir al-Ḥusaynī (d. ca. 956/1549), the most famous imam of the Muḥammad-Shāhī line, whose popularity had proved unacceptable to the founder of the Safawid dynasty, was persecuted in Shāh Ismāʿīl’s reign

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(907–930/1501–1524). However, Shāh Ṭāhir fled to India in 926/1520 and ­permanently settled in the Deccan where he rendered valuable services to the Niz. ām-Shāhs of Aḥmadnagar. It is interesting to note that from early on in India, Shāh Ṭāhir advocated Twelver Shiʿism, which he had obviously adopted as a form of disguise. He achieved his greatest success in the Deccan when Burhān Niz. āmShāh, after his own conversion, proclaimed Twelver Shiʿism as the official religion of his state in 944/ 1537. Shāh Ṭāhir’s successors as Muḥammad-Shāhī imams continued to observe taqiyya in India under the cover of Twelver Shiʿism. In this connection, it is to be noted that in the Lamaʿāt al-ṭāhirīn, one of the few extant Muḥammad-Shāhī texts composed in India around 1110/1698, the author (a certain Ghulām ʿAlī b. Muḥammad) conceals his Ismaili ideas under the double cover of Twelver Shiʿi and Sufi expressions; he eulogises the Ithnāʿasharī imams whilst also alluding to the Nizārī imams of the Muḥammad-Shāhī line. Meanwhile, the second Safawid monarch Shāh Ṭahmāsp persecuted the Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārīs of Anjudān and had their 36th imam, Murād Mīrzā, executed in 981/1574. By the time of the greatest Safawid monarch Shāh ʿAbbās I (995–1038/1587–1629), the Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārīs of Persia, too, had successfully adopted Twelver Shiʿism as a second form of disguise. By the end of the eleventh/ seventeenth century, the Qāsim-Shāhī daʿwa had gained the allegiance of the bulk of the Nizārīs at the expense of the Muḥammad-Shāhīs. The daʿwa had been particularly successful in Afghanistan, Central Asia and several regions of the Indian subcontinent. In South Asia, the Hindu converts originally belonging to the Lohana caste, became known as Khoja, derived from the Persian word khwāja, an honorary title meaning lord or master corresponding to the Hindi term thākur by which the Lohanas were addressed. As noted, the Nizārī Khojas developed a religious tradition, known as Satpanth or the ‘true path’ (to salvation), as well as a devotional literature, the gināns. The earliest Nizārī pīrs, missionaries or preacher-saints, operating in lndia, concentrated their efforts in Sind. Pīr Shams al-Dīn is the earliest figure specifically associated in the ginān literature with the commencement of the Nizārī daʿwa there. By the time of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, a great-grandson of Pīr Shams, the pīrs in India had established a hereditary dynasty. Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, who died around the turn of the ninth/fifteenth century, consolidated and organised the daʿwa in India; he is also credited with building the first jamāʿat-khāna (literally, community house), in Kotri, Sind, for the religious and communal activities of the Khojas. In India, too, the Nizārīs developed close relations with Sufism. Multan and Uch in Sind, in addition to serving as centres of Satpanth daʿwa activities, were the headquarters of the Suhrawardī and Qādirī Sufi orders. Ṣadr al-Dīn was succeeded as pīr by his son Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn, who reportedly visited the Nizārī Imam Mustanṣir biʾllāh (II) in Anjudān. Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn’s brother Tāj al-Dīn was evidently the last person appointed as pīr by the Nizārī imams who were then making systematic efforts to end the hereditary authority of the pīrs in India. Periodically, the Khojas experienced internal dissensions, while many reverted back to Hinduism or converted to Sunnism, the dominant religions of the

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contemporary Indo-Muslim society. It was under such circumstances that a group of Nizārī Khojas of Gujarat seceded and recognised the imamate of Nar Muḥammad (d. 940/1533); they became known as Imām-Shāhīs, named after Nar Muḥammad’s father Imām Shāh (d. 919/1513), one of Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn’s sons who had attempted in vain to become a pīr in Sind. The Imām-Shāhīs, who produced their own ginān literature and split into several groups following different pīrs, soon denied any connections with Ismailism. Meanwhile, in the absence of pīrs, the Nizārī imams maintained their contacts with the Khoja community through lesser functionaries known as wakīls. The origins and early development of the South Asian form of Ismailism known as Satpanth remain obscure. In particular, it is not clear whether Satpanth resulted from the conversion policies developed locally by the early pīrs who operated in India at least from the seventh/thirteenth century, or whether it represented a tradition that had evolved gradually over several centuries dating further back, possibly even to Fatimid times. Be that as it may, Satpanth Ismailism may be taken to represent an indigenous tradition reflecting certain historical, social, cultural and political circumstances prevailing in the medieval Indian subcontinent, especially in Sind. On the evidence of the gināns, it seems plausible that the pīrs did attempt ingeniously to maximise the appeal of their message to a Hindu audience of mainly rural castes. Hence, they turned to Indian vernaculars, rather than Arabic and Persian used by the educated classes. And for the same reasons, they used Hindu idioms and mythology, interfacing their Islamic and Ismaili tenets with myths, images and symbols already familiar to the Hindus. The teachings of Satpanth Ismailism are clearly reflected in the ginān literature. In the meantime, with the 40th Qāsim-Shāhī imam, Shāh Nizār (d. 1134/1722), the seat of this branch of the Nizārī daʿwa, then representing the only branch in Persia, was transferred from Anjudān to the nearby village of Kahak, in the vicinity of Qumm and Maḥallāt, effectively ending the Anjudān period in post-Alamūt Nizārī Ismailism. By the middle of the twelfth/eighteenth century, in the unsettled conditions of Persia after the demise of the Safawids and the Afghan invasion, the Nizārī imams moved to Shahr-i Bābak in Kirmān, a location closer to the pilgrimage route of Khojas who then regularly travelled from India to see their imam and deliver the religious dues, the dassondh or tithes, to him. The Khojas were by then acquiring increasing influence in the Nizārī community, in terms of both their numbers and financial resources. Soon, the imams acquired political prominence in the affairs of Kirmān. The 44th imam, Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī, also known as Sayyid Abu’l-Ḥasan Kahakī, was appointed to the governorship of the Kirmān province by Karīm Khān Zand (1164–1193/1751–1779), founder of the Zand dynasty in Persia; earlier, this imam had been the beglerbegi or governor of the city of Kirmān. It was in his time that the Niʿmat Allāhī Sufi order was revived in Persia. Imam Abu’l-Ḥasan had close relations with Nūr ʿAlī and Mushtāq ʿAlī Shāh among other Niʿmat Allāhī Sufis then active in Kirmān. On Abu’l-Ḥasan’s death in 1206/1792, his son Shāh Khalīl Allāh succeeded to the Nizārī imamate and eventually settled in Yazd. Shāh Khalīl Allāh was murdered in 1232/1817, and was succeeded by his

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eldest son Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh, who was later appointed to the governorship of Qumm by Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh (1212–1250/1797–1834) and also given properties in Maḥallāt. In addition, the Qājār monarch of Persia gave one of his daughters in marriage to the youthful imam and bestowed upon him the honorific title of Āghā Khān (Aga Khan), meaning ‘lord’ or master’ — a title that has remained hereditary among Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh’s successors. This Nizārī imam, who maintained his own close relations with the Niʿmat Allāhī Sufi order, has left a valuable autobiographical account of his early life and career in Persia in a work entitled ʿIbrat-afzā. Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh was appointed to the governorship of Kirmān in 1251/1835 by the third Qājār monarch, Muḥammad Shāh. Subsequently, after some prolonged confrontations between the imam and the Qājār establishment, Āghā Khān I, also known as Āghā Khān Maḥallātī, left Persia permanently in 1257/1841. After spending some years in Afghanistan, Sind, Gujarat and Calcutta, the imam finally settled in Bombay in 1265/1848, marking the commencement of the modern period of Nizārī Ismailism. Subsequently, the Nizārī imam launched a widespread campaign for defining and delineating the distinct religious identity of his Khoja following. The contemporary Nizārī Khojas were not always certain about their religious identity as they had dissimulated for long periods as Sunnis and Twelver Shiʿis, while their Satpanth tradition had been influenced by Hindu elements. With the help of the British courts in India, however, the Āghā Khān’s followers were, in due course, legally recognised as Shiʿi Imami Ismailis. In the event, the bulk of the Khojas reaffirmed their allegiance to Āghā Khān I and acknowledged their Ismaili identity while minority groups seceded and joined Twelver Khoja and other communities. Āghā Khān I died in 1298/1881 and was succeeded by his son Āqā ʿAlī Shāh, who led the Nizārīs for only four years (1298–1302/1881–1885). The latter’s sole surviving son and successor, Sultan Muḥammad Shāh, Aga Khan III, led the Nizārīs for 72 years, and also became internationally known as a Muslim reformer and statesman. Aga Khan III, too, made systematic efforts to set his followers’ identity apart from those of other religious communities, particularly the Twelvers who for long periods had provided dissimulating covers for Nizārīs of Persia and elsewhere. The Nizārī identity was spelled out in numerous constitutions that the imam promulgated for his followers in different regions, especially in India, Pakistan and East Africa. Furthermore, the Nizārī imam became increasingly engaged with reform policies that would benefit not only his followers but other Muslims as well. He worked vigorously to consolidate and reorganise the Nizārīs into a modern Muslim community with high standards of education, health and social well-being, for both men and women, also developing a new network of councils for administering the affairs of his community. The participation of women in communal affairs was a high priority in the imam’s reforms. Aga Khan III, who established his residence in Europe in the early part of the twentieth century, has left an interesting account of his life and public career in his Memoirs. Aga Khan III died in 1376/1957 and was succeeded by his grandson, known to his followers as Mawlana Hazar Imam Shah Karim al-Husayni, Aga Khan IV.

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The present, Harvard-educated imam of the Nizārī Ismailis, the 49th in the series, has continued and substantially expanded the modernisation policies of his predecessor, also developing numerous new programmes and institutions of his own, which are of wider interest to Muslims and Third World countries at large. He has created a complex institutional network generally referred to as the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which implements projects in a variety of social, economic and cultural areas. In the field of higher education and academic institutions, his major initiatives include the Institute of lsmaili Studies, founded in London in 1977 for the promotion of general Islamic as well as Ismaili studies, and the Aga Khan University, set up in Karachi in 1985. More recently, he established jointly in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the University of Central Asia to address the specific educational needs of the region’s mountain-based societies. The Institute of Ismaili Studies is already serving as a point of reference for Ismaili studies, while making significant contributions to the field through a variety of research and publication programmes, as well as making its large collection of Ismaili manuscripts accessible to scholars worldwide. By 2007, when the Nizārī celebrated the 50th anniversary of his accession to the imamate, Aga Khan IV had established an impressive record of achievement not only as an Ismaili imam but also as a Muslim leader deeply aware of the demands of modernity and dedicated to promoting a better understanding of Islamic civilisations with their diversity of traditions and expressions.

Note * This chapter was originally published in H. Landolt, S. Sheikh and K. Kassam, ed., An

Anthology of Ismaili Literature: A Shiʿi Vision of Islam (London: I. B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2008), pp. 1–29.

4

Idris ʿImad al-Din and medieval Ismaili historiography

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the Ismailis, representing a major Shiʿi Muslim community, were studied and judged almost exclusively on the basis of evidence collected or fabricated by their detractors.* Consequently, they were persistently misrepresented and a host of myths and legends circulated about their teachings and practices. In fact, in the Sunni polemics, the Ismailis were depicted as the arch enemy of Islam, aiming to destroy Islam from within. The breakthrough in modern Ismaili studies occurred with the recovery and study of a large number of genuine Ismaili texts – manuscript sources which had been preserved in numerous private collections and copied throughout the centuries in Yemen, Syria, Persia, Central Asia and India. This progress, amounting to a revolution, was initiated in the 1940s and has been continuing at an unabated pace ever since. Many Ismaili texts have now been edited and studied, shedding light on different aspects of Ismaili history and thought, and also enabling a better understanding of the rich intellectual heritage of the Ismailis in both Muslim and Christian-European milieus. The findings of modern scholarship in Ismaili studies make this field of enquiry particularly fascinating in its own right.1 Ismaili historiography has had its own distinctive features and evolution, which have been closely related to the very nature of the Ismaili movement and the changing political fortunes of the Ismailis during the various phases of their history. Outside the territories of their states, the Ismailis were frequently persecuted by their numerous enemies, necessitating their strict observance of taqiyya or precautionary dissimulation. Furthermore, the Ismaili dāʿīs or religio-political missionaries, who were trained as theologians and at the same time functioned as the scholars and authors of their community, often operated in hostile surroundings, and they too were obliged to observe utter secrecy in their activities. Owing to their training and circumstances, these dāʿī-authors were not particularly interested in compiling annalistic or other types of historical accounts. The general lack of Ismaili interest

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in historiography is well attested by the fact that only a few historical works have been found in the Ismaili literature recovered in modern times. These texts, written in Arabic and Persian, reflect the diversity of this rich literary heritage, ranging from legal compendia, biographical works, poetry and treatises on the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate, to complex esoteric and metaphysical compendia culminating in the gnostic system of Ismaili thought, known as the ḥaqāʾiq, with its cyclical sacred history, cosmology, eschatology and soteriology.2 From early on, a good portion of the theological literature of the Ismailis was related to taʾwīl, or esoteric interpretations of passages from the Qurʾan and religious prescriptions and prohibitions, which became the hallmark of Ismaili thought. Some of the learned dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, such as Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971), Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 411/1020) and Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1072), elaborated a distinct intellectual tradition of ‘philosophical theology’ by amalgamating their Ismaili theology with Neoplatonism and other philosophical traditions. It should be noted, however, that the religious texts of the Ismailis are themselves indispensable for tracing the doctrinal history of the community at various times. In addition, some of the Ismaili works of the Fatimid period, such as the majālis collections of different chief dāʿīs, contain historical references which are not found in other sources. The majālis, representing a specifically Ismaili genre of religious literature, were normally compiled as lectures organised for the Ismailis and known more specifically as the majālis al-ḥikma or the ‘sessions of wisdom’.3 Among the few historical works written in medieval times by Ismaili authors, mention may be made of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Iftitāḥ, completed in 346/957 and covering the background to the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa in 297/909.4 This is the earliest known historical work in Ismaili literature written by the eminent jurist al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), who was also responsible for codifying Ismaili law and producing the major legal compendia of the Ismailis. And in later medieval times, only one general history of the Ismailis was written by an Ismaili author. As we shall see, this was the dāʿī Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn’s ‘Uyūn al-akhbār, which as such has a unique distinction in the entire Ismaili literature. There are also certain brief, but highly significant, accounts of particular events in Ismaili history, notably the Istitār al-imām of the dāʿī al-Nīsābūrī (d. after 386/996), relating unique details on the activities of the early Ismaili imams during the pre-Fatimid dawr alsatr, or period of concealment, in Ismaili history.5 Despite the general absence of an Ismaili historiographical tradition, there were two periods during which the Ismailis concerned themselves with historical writings, and produced or encouraged works which in a sense may be regarded as official chronicles. During the Fatimid and Alamūt periods of their history, the Ismailis possessed their own states and dynasties of rulers, whose political events and achievements needed to be recorded by reliable chroniclers. In Fatimid times (297–567/909–1171), especially after the seat of the Fatimid state was transferred from Ifrīqiya to Cairo in 362/973, numerous histories of the Fatimid caliphate and dynasty were compiled by contemporary historians, both Ismaili and ­non-Ismaili,

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such as Ibn Zūlāq (d. 386/996), al-Musabbiḥī (d. 420/1030) and al-Quḍāʿī (d. 454/1062). With the exception of a few fragments, however, none of the Fatimid chronicles survived the downfall of the Fatimid dynasty. The Sunni Ayyūbids, who succeeded the Ismaili Shiʿi Fatimids in Egypt, systematically destroyed the renowned Fatimid libraries in Cairo, including the vast collections of the Dar al-ʿIlm (House of Knowledge), and also persecuted the Ismailis and destroyed their literature.6 In addition to historical writings, the Ismailis of the Fatimid period, who enjoyed the protection of their state, also produced some biographical works of the sīra genre, and munāz.arāt works reflecting disputations between Ismaili scholars and others, with much historical value. Amongst the extant examples of such categories, mention should be made of the autobiography of al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078), who held the office of chief dāʿī in Cairo for almost 20 years and played a key role in the anti-Saljūq activities of the Turkish commander al-Basāsīrī who had the khuṭba read for one full year (450–451/1058–1059) in Abbasid Baghdad in the name of the Fatimid caliph-imam.7 Of the munāz.arāt genre, there is a book composed around 334/945 that contains the disputations of the dāʿī Ibn al-Haytham (fl. fourth/tenth century) with the dāʿīs Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī (d. 298/911), and his brother, Abu’l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad, recounting unique details of the first year of Fatimid rule in Ifrīqiya.8 Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī, it will be recalled, had prepared the ground for the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate. The Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamūt period (483–654/1090–1256), too, maintained a historiographical tradition. During this turbulent period when the Nizārīs had a territorial state in Persia centred at the fortress of Alamūt, they compiled chronicles in the Persian language recording the events of their state according to the reigns of the successive rulers, known as the lords of Alamūt.9 This historiographical tradition was initiated with a work entitled Sargudhasht-i Sayyidnā, covering the life and career of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124), the founder of the Nizārī Ismaili state and the first lord of Alamūt. Ḥasan also adopted Persian in preference to Arabic as the religious language of the Persian-speaking Nizārīs. The events of the Nizārī state in Persia during the subsequent times until the reign of the eighth and final lord of Alamūt, Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, and the Mongol destruction of that state, were compiled by other Nizārī chroniclers, such as Raʾīs Ḥasan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Munshī Bīrjandī. All the Persian Nizārī chronicles held at the libraries of Alamūt and other Nizārī fortresses in Persia perished in the Mongol invasions of 654/1256, or soon afterwards during Īlkhānid rule over Persia. However, the Nizārī chronicles and other writings were seen and used extensively by a group of three Persian historians of the Īlkhānid period, namely Juwaynī (d. 681/1283), who personally examined the library of Alamūt shortly before its destruction, Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh (d. 718/1318) and Abu’l-Qāsim Kāshānī (d. ca. 738/1337), in their own histories of the Ismailis. These histories remain our main primary sources on the Nizārī Ismaili state in Persia.10 Unlike the Persian Nizārīs, the Syrian Nizārīs as well as the Nizārī Khojas of South Asia did not elaborate any historiographical tradition. The Nizārī tradition of historiography was discontinued upon the ­destruction of the Nizārī state by the Mongols. In the turbulent conditions of the early

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post-Alamūt centuries, the Nizārīs of Persia and Central Asia once again resorted to taqiyya practices and engaged in very limited literary activities; and they did not find ready access to the Ismaili literature of the earlier times, especially the classical Arabic texts produced during the Fatimid period. The situation was quite different for the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismailis who had survived in Yemen after the downfall of the Fatimid state. The post-Fatimid Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismailis found refuge for several centuries in the Ḥarāz and other mountainous regions of Yemen, initially under the protection of the Ismaili Ṣulayḥid dynasty there. The Ṭayyibīs, who were led by a line of learned dāʿīs, also preserved a good portion of the Arabic Ismaili texts of the earlier times, in addition to producing a relatively voluminous religious literature of their own. They also maintained some of the literary and educational traditions of the Ismailis of the Fatimid period, including some limited interest in historiography. The third dāʿī muṭlaq of the Ṭayyibīs, Ḥātim b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥāmidī (d. 596/1199), had already produced a work entitled Tuḥfat al-qulūb with much information on the history of the Ṭayyibī community.11 By the nineteenth century, several Ṭayyibīs, belonging to the Dāʾūdī branch, had produced works of a strictly historical nature (some in Gujarātī but transcribed in Arabic), covering the history of their imams, daʿwa, dāʿīs and communities in Yemen and India. But in medieval times, the tradition of Ismaili historiography attained its peak in the works of the dāʿī Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī b. al-Walīd al-Anf hailed from the prominent al-Walīd branch of the Quraysh in Yemen. Members of the Walīd family led the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismaili daʿwa and community for more than three centuries from the beginning of the seventh/thirteenth century. Idrīs was born in 794/1392 in the fortress of Shibām, a high peak on the Jabal Ḥarāz and a stronghold of the Ismailis in Yemen. He succeeded his uncle, ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Walīd, as the 19th dāʿī muṭlaq or supreme leader of the Ṭayyibī Ismailis in 832/1428.12 An eminent scholar of Ismaili doctrines, Idrīs was also a politician and warrior. At the time, various Yemeni tribal confederations and dynasties were engaged in incessant confrontations with one another. Maintaining the policies of his predecessors, the dāʿī Idrīs allied himself with the Rasūlids of Zabīd, in the region of Tihāma, and participated in several battles against the Zaydīs of northern Yemen, the perennial enemies of the Yemeni Ismailis. As a result, several fortresses were acquired by the Ṭayyibīs. Idrīs also enjoyed the support of the Ṭāhirids, who replaced the Rasūlids as the masters of Aden and other parts of lower Yemen around 858/1454. Idrīs paid particular attention to the spread of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Gujarāt and during his long leadership, lasting some four decades, contributed significantly to the consolidation and expansion of the Bohra community in western India. Indeed, he prepared the ground for the subsequent transference of the central headquarters of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa from Yemen to Gujarāt in India. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn died on 19 Dhu’l-Qaʿda 872/10 June 1468 at Shibām, where he had his own headquarters. As it was already

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an established Ṭayyibī daʿwa practice, the dāʿī Idrīs had appointed his son al-Ḥasan as his successor to lead the Ṭayyibī Ismaili daʿwa and community. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn is generally considered to be the most celebrated Ismaili historian. Idrīs’ eminence as a historian was facilitated by the fact that as the dāʿī muṭlaq he had ready access to the entire contemporary literary corpus of the Ismailis then available in Yemen, texts which had been transferred gradually from Egypt to Yemen from the middle of the fifth/eleventh century onwards, many of which have not survived directly. Drawing on a wide variety of Ismaili and other primary sources, including local histories of Yemen as well as the oral traditions of the Ṭayyibī Ismailis, Idrīs wrote three historical works, which may be regarded as the main Ismaili historical sources on the Ismailis until the Nizārī-Mustaʿlian schism of 487/1094, and then as the most authoritative texts on the history of the early Mustaʿlians and (after the Ṭayyibī-Ḥāfiz. ī schism of 526/1132) the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismailis until his own time, the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century. Idrīs’ major historical work, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, in seven volumes, is the most comprehensive source on the formative period of Shiʿism, the history of the Ismaili daʿwa from its origins, and of the imams recognised by the Ismailis (including the early Shiʿi imams until Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, acknowledged also by the Twelver Shiʿis, as well as the Fatimid caliph-imams) until the second half of the sixth/twelfth century. After earlier partial editions, the critical edition of the complete set of the ʿUyūn al-akhbār has now been published by the Institute of Ismaili Studies in association with the Institut Français du Proche-Orient.13 The first volume of the ʿUyūn, on the life of the Prophet Muḥammad, is of particular significance as it reflects the Ismaili tradition on the subject. Similarly, the second and third volumes convey Ismaili perspectives on the life and times of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), and the confrontations of this first Shiʿi imam with various opponents. The fourth volume covers the biographies of the early Shiʿi imams, from al-Ḥasan (d. 49/669) and al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (d. 61/680) until al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad, the last of the hidden imams of the early Ismailis. The fifth volume covers the initiation of the daʿwa in Yemen and North Africa, the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in Ifrīqiya in 297/909 and the reigns of the first three Fatimid caliph-imams, al-Mahdī, al-Qāʾim and al-Manṣūr. The sixth volume continues the history of the Fatimids, covering the reigns of the next four members of the dynasty, al-Muʿizz, al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥākim, al-z.āhir and the early years of al-Mustanṣir’s reign (427–487/1036–1094). The seventh and final volume of theʿUyūn covers the remaining period of al-Mustanṣir’s caliphate and imamate, the establishment of Ṣulayḥid rule in Yemen, the Nizārī-Mustaʿlian schism following al-Mustanṣir’s death in 487/1094, the reigns of the next two Fatimid caliphs, al-Mustaʿlī and al-Āmir, recognised as imams only by the Mustaʿlian Ismailis, as well as the commencement of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Yemen and the collapse of the Fatimids in Egypt. This volume serves as the main primary source for the history of the Ismaili daʿwa in Yemen under the Ṣulayḥids, who initially recognised the suzerainty of the Fatimids. Idrīs began his work on theʿUyūn around 838/1434, and, as noted, used a variety of Ismaili and non-Ismaili sources, many of which are no longer extant. Amongst

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the Ismaili sources used by Idrīs, mention may be made of the writings of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī, who is regarded as the spiritual father of the daʿwa in Yemen, and numerous Ismaili sīras, including the anonymous Sīrat al-imām al-Mahdī and Sīrat Ibn Ḥawshab Manṣūr al-Yaman, which are no longer extant. He also drew on a wide range of non-Ismaili Yemeni and other sources, such as the histories of Ibn Zūlāq, al-Quḍāʿī and ʿUmāra al-Yamanī (d. 569/1174), some of which have not survived directly. Idrīs also had access to numerous archival documents, such as decrees, letters and epistles (sijillāt), which shed light on important historical aspects of the Ismaili daʿwa in Yemen and relations between the Fatimids and the Ṣulayḥids, especially under the queen Arwā, the effective ruler of Yemen from 477/1084 until her death in 532/1138. It was, in fact, this capable queen who founded the Ṭayyibī daʿwa independently of both the Fatimid and the Ṣulayḥid establishments. All of this makes the Uyūn al-akhbār an indispensable source on many aspects of medieval Ismaili history. The dāʿī Idrīs’s second historical work, Nuzhat al-afkār, in two volumes and still in manuscript form,14 deals with the history of the Ismaili community in Yemen, especially from the demise of the Ṣulayḥids, around 532/1138, until 853/1449. This is the most important source on the history of the Yemeni Ṭayyibīs during those three centuries. In this work, Idrīs also recounts important details on the Ṭayyibī daʿwa in India and the relations between the Yemeni Ṭayyibīs and their Bohra co-religionists in Gujarāt. Idrīs’s third historical work, Rawḍat al-akhbār, is a continuation of his Nuzha, in which he includes the events of his own time in Ṭayyibī history, from 854/1450 to the year 870/1465.15 The Rawḍa is an important source on Idrīs’s own period of Ṭayyibī leadership in Yemen; it is also vital for the history of the Ṭāhirids, who ruled over southern Yemen after the Rasūlids, because Idrīs was allied with them. In addition to his historical and theological works, Idrīs composed a number of polemical treatises in refutation of Sunni, Muʿtazilī and Zaydī doctrines. He was also a poet and the unpublished Dīwān of his poetry contains much historical information in addition to panegyrics of various Ismaili imams and dāʿīs. The bulk of the dāʿī Idrīs’s writings have survived, having been copied faithfully by generations of Ṭayyibī scholars and scribes. These texts are now preserved in various private and institutional collections, including those of the Institute of Ismaili Studies Library in London, and the extensive collections at the official Dāʾūdī Ṭayyibī Bohra libraries in Sūrat, Gujarāt and Bombay. A systematic evaluation of Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn’s historical writings, and the sources used therein, as well as his contribution to the Ṭayyibī esoteric system of gnostic thought, is yet to be undertaken. At any rate, he remains unchallenged as the doyen of Ismaili historians of all ages.

Notes * This chapter was originally published in R. Hillenbrand, A. C. S. Peacock and

F. Abdullaeva, ed., Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia, Studies in Honour of Charles Melville (London: I. B. Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation, 2013), pp. 52–58.

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  1 For further details, see F. Daftary, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies (London, 2004), pp. 84–93.   2 See Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Majdūʿ, Fahrasat al-kutub wa’l-rasāʾil, ed. ʿA. N. Munzavī (Tehran, 1966); W. Ivanow, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliographical Survey (Tehran, 1963), pp. 17–173; I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977), pp. 31–297; and Daftary, Ismaili Literature, pp. 104–173.   3 H. Halm, ‘The Ismaʿili Oath of Allegiance (ʿahd) and the “Sessions of Wisdom” (majālis al-ḥikma) in Fatimid Times’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 91–115; idem., The Fatimids and Their Traditions of Learning (London, 1997), especially pp. 23–29, 41–55; and P. E. Walker, ‘Fatimid Institutions of Learning’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 34 (1997), pp. 179–200, reprinted in his Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine (Aldershot, 2008), article I.  4 Al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa, ed. W. al-Qāḍī (Beirut, 1970); ed. F. Dachraoui (Tunis, 1975); English trans., Founding the Fatimid State: The Rise of an Early Islamic Empire, trans. H. Haji (London, 2006).  5 Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī, Istitār al-imām, ed. W. Ivanow, in Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, University of Egypt, 4 (1936), pp. 93–107; English trans. in W. Ivanow, Ismaili Tradition Concerning the Rise of the Fatimids (London, etc., 1942), pp. 157–183.   6 P. E. Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and Its Sources (London, 2002), pp. 152–169.  7 Al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Sīra, ed. Muḥammad K. Ḥusayn (Cairo, 1949). See also V. Klemm, Memoirs of a Mission: The Ismaili Scholar, Statesman and Poet al-Muʾayyad ­fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (London, 2003), especially pp. 19–54, 69–86.  8 Abū ʿAbd Allāh Jaʿfar Ibn al-Haytham, Kitāb al-munāz.arāt, ed. and trans. W. Madelung and P. E. Walker as The Advent of the Fatimids: A Contemporary Shīʿī Witness (London, 2000).  9 F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2007), pp. 303–310, and idem., ‘Persian Historiography of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs’, Iran, Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 30 (1992), pp. 91–97, reprinted in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London, 2005), pp. 107–123. 10 ʿAṭā-Malik b. Muḥammad Juwaynī, Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushā, ed. M. Qazwīnī (Leiden and London, 1912–1937), vol. 3, pp. 106–278; English trans., The History of the WorldConqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Manchester, 1958), vol. 2, pp. 618–725; reprinted, with an introduction by D. O. Morgan (Manchester and Paris, 1997), pp. 618–725; Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i Ismāʿīliyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh and M. Mudarrisī Zanjānī (Tehran, 1338/1959); ed. Muḥammad Rawshan (Tehran, 1387/2008); Abu’l-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī Kāshānī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh: bakhsh-i Fāṭimiyān va Nizāriyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh (2nd ed., Tehran, 1366/1987). 11 See D. Cortese, Arabic Ismaili Manuscripts: The Zāhid ʿAlī Collection in the Library of the Institute of Ismaili Studies (London, 2003), pp. 188–190. 12 For bio-bibliographical details on Idrīs, see Quṭb al-Dīn Sulaymānjī Burhānpūrī, Muntazaʿ al-akhbār, partial ed. S. F. Traboulsi (Beirut, 1999), pp. 166–175; Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Mullā Jīwābhāʾī Rāmpūrī, Mawsim-i bahār (lithographed, Bombay, 1301–1311/1884– 1893), vol. 3, pp. 107–108, 138–146; al-Majdūʿ, Fahrasat, pp. 73–77, 150–151, 239–242, 275–277; Ivanow, Ismaili Literature, pp. 77–82; Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 169–175; Delia Cortese, Ismaili and Other Arabic Manuscripts (London, 2000), pp. 23–28; idem., Arabic Ismaili Manuscripts: The Zāhid ʿAlī Collection, pp. 23–24, 37–38, 45–46, 126–127, 149–150, 191–194, 196. 13 Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār wa-funūn al-āthār, vols. 4–6, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1973–1978); portion of vol. 5, ed. F. Dachraoui as Taʾrīkh al-dawla al-Fāṭimiyya bi’l-Maghrib (Tunis, 1979); vol. 5 and part of vol. 6, ed. M. al-Yaʿlāwī as Taʾrīkh al-khulafāʾ al-Fāṭimiyyīn bi’l-Maghrib (Beirut, 1985); vol. 7, ed. A. F. Sayyid, with summary English trans. by P. E. Walker and M. A. Pomerantz, as The Fatimids and Their Successors in Yaman: The History of an Islamic Community (London, 2002); vols. 1–7, ed. A. Chleilat, M. Sagherji et al. (Damascus and London, 2007–2014), 7 vols.

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14 See, for instance, Poonawala, Biobibliography, p. 172; A. Gacek, Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of The Institute of Ismaili Studies (London, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 85–86; and Cortese, Arabic Ismaili Manuscripts: The Zāhid ʿAlī Collection, pp. 126–127. 15 Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn, Rawḍat al-akhbār wa-nuzhat al-asmār fī ḥawādith al-Yaman, ed. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Akwāʿ al-Ḥiwālī (Sanaa, 1995).

5 A major schism in the early -- Ismaʿili movement

The Ismāʿīlī movement was torn apart by a major schism in the year 286/899, shortly after ʿUbayd Allāh (ʿAbd Allāh) al-Mahdī, the future Fāṭimid caliph, had succeeded to the central leadership of the Ismāʿīlīs.* As a result of this schism, brought to the attention of modern scholars by the recent progress in Ismāʿīlī studies, early Ismāʿīlism was split into two rival factions, which later became generally designated as Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlism and Qarmaṭism. This chapter aims to investigate the circumstances and issues surrounding this schism, which centred on the variations in the doctrine of the imamate upheld by the early Ismāʿīlīs. The origins of Ismāʿīlism as a separate branch of Imāmī Shīʿism may be traced to the dispute over the succession to Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765). Often living clandestinely, and conducting their daʿwa or missionary activities secretly, in order to escape persecution at the hands of their numerous enemies, the Ismāʿīlīs have nevertheless had a very eventful history, extending over some 12 centuries and through many Muslim lands from North Africa to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The Ismāʿīlīs twice succeeded in establishing important states of their own, the Fāṭimid caliphate (297–567/909–1171) and the Nizārī state of Persia and Syria (483–654/1090–1256), in addition to winning many Muslim dynasties and individual rulers to their side. Ismāʿīlism has also undergone several major and minor schisms. The schism of the year 286/899 was the first major one in the Ismāʿīlī movement, and it had important consequences for the history of Ismāʿīlism. Early Ismāʿīlism, extending from the middle of the second/eighth century to the foundation of the Ismāʿīlī Fāṭimid state in North Africa in 297/909, is the most obscure major phase in the entire history of Ismāʿīlism. Many aspects of the early stages of the Ismāʿīlī movement will doubtless continue to be shrouded in uncertainty due to a lack of reliable sources. However, as a result of modern progress in Ismāʿīlī studies, which started in the 1930s, scholars now possess a much better understanding of the fundamental events and trends in the history of the early

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Ismāʿīlīs, who contributed significantly to the subsequent religio-political success of their movement.1 The Ismāʿīlī historiography that may be utilised for studying the schism of 286/899 is rather meagre. Preoccupied with their survival and anti-ʿAbbāsid campaigns, the pre-Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs themselves produced only a few anonymous tracts, which are rather poor in historical information. But these works, now recovered and attributed variously to the famous early Ismāʿīlī dāʿī in Yemen, Ibn Ḥawshab, better known as Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. 302/914), or to his son Jaʿfar, do contain important details on the doctrines preached by the early Ismāʿīlī daʿwa or mission.2 Similarly, the numerous extant Ismāʿīlī treatises produced in Fāṭimid times rarely contain historical references to the pre-Fāṭimid period of the movement. A few of these Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī works are, however, relevant to our investigation, especially a letter of the first Fāṭimid caliph ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī addressed to the Ismāʿīlī community in Yemen. This letter, written sometime between 297/910 and 322/934 and preserved by Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman in his Kitāb al-farāʾiḍ wa huḍūd al-dīn, is the most important Ismāʿīlī document dealing with the schism of 286/899.3 It is also worth noting that only one general history of Ismāʿīlism seems to have been written by an Ismāʿīlī author of medieval times, namely, a sevenvolume work by Idris ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan (d. 872/1468), the 19th Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq in Yemen. In the fourth volume of his history, the dāʿī Idrīs summarises the official view of the Fāṭimid daʿwa on early Ismāʿīlism without referring to the schism in question.4 It is, therefore, not surprising that non-Ismāʿīlī sources have remained rather indispensable for studying the history and doctrines of the early Ismāʿīlīs. Amongst these, heresiographies provide an important category, especially the works of the Imāmī scholars al-Nawbakhtī and al-Qummī, who wrote shortly before 286/899 and represent the earliest Shīʿī sources dealing with the opening phase of Ismāʿīlism. The writings of the polemicists provide another important category of non-Ismāʿīlī sources on early Ismāʿīlism. Though aiming to discredit the Ismāʿīlīs through their defamations and travestied accounts, the polemicists were generally better informed than al-Ṭabarī and other early Sunnī historians concerning the doctrines which they purported to refute, perhaps because at least some of the polemicists had access to contemporary Ismāʿīlī sources. In particular, the polemical writings of Ibn Rizām and Akhū Muḥsin, which have not survived directly, contain valuable details on the schism of 286/899. The anti-Ismāʿīlī treatise of Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Rizām, who flourished in Baghdad during the earlier decades of the fourth/ tenth century, is preserved fragmentarily by Ibn al-Nadīm and other later sources. But it was utilised extensively by the Sharīf Abu’l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, better known by his nickname of Akhū Muḥsin, an ʿAlid resident of Damascus who produced an anti-Ismāʿīlī polemical treatise of his own around 370/980. Substantial portions of Akhū Muḥsin’s lost treatise, which evidently contained separate historical and doctrinal parts, have been preserved mainly in the writings of three Egyptian historians, namely, al-Nuwayrī, Ibn al-Dawādārī and al-Maqrīzī. In modern times, a small group of specialists have produced important studies on the early

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Ismāʿīlīs, utilising the aforementioned categories of primary sources. After the pioneering contributions of Wladimir Ivanow (1886–1970), our knowledge of early Ismāʿīlism and the schism in question has been particularly enhanced by the original studies of Samuel M. Stern (1920–1969) and Wilferd Madelung.5 Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq had originally designated his eldest son Ismāʿīl as his successor to the imamate, by the rule of the naṣṣ. But according to the majority of the sources, Ismāʿīl predeceased his father, and subsequently, al-Ṣādiq does not seem to have openly designated another of his sons. As a result, on al-Ṣādiq’s death in Medina in Shawwal 148 AH, three of his surviving sons, ʿAbd Allāh, Mūsā and Muḥammad, simultaneously claimed his succession. At any rate, the Imāmī Shīʿī following of Imām al-Ṣādiq, centred in Kūfa, now split into six groups, two of which constituted the earliest Ismāʿīlīs. The majority of al-Ṣādiq’s followers recognised his eldest surviving son, ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ, the full-brother of Ismāʿīl, as their new imam; they became known as Faṭḥiyya or Afṭaḥiyya. When ʿAbd Allāh died a few months later, the bulk of his supporters turned to his half-brother Mūsā, the seventh imam of the Twelver Shīʿa, who had already won the allegiance of a faction of the Imāmiyya. However, many of the Faṭḥiyya continued to acknowledge ʿAbd Allāh as the rightful imam between al-Ṣādiq and Mūsā al-Kāz. im; and the Faṭḥiyya continued to represent an important Shīʿī group in Kūfa until the late fourth/tenth century.6 And it was to this ʿAbd Allāh that al-Mahdī, the founder of the Fāṭimid dynasty, later traced his ancestry in his letter to the Yemeni Ismāʿīlīs. Amongst the six groups into which the Imāmiyya split, two may be regarded as the earliest Ismāʿīlī groups, loyally supporting the claims of Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and his son Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. These groups, designated as al-Ismāʿīliyya al-khāliṣa and al-Mubārakiyya by the Imāmī heresiographers, now separated from the rest of the Imāmiyya.7 Denying the death of Ismāʿīl during his father’s lifetime, al-Ismāʿīliyya al-khāliṣa, or the ‘pure Ismāʿīliyya’, maintained that Ismāʿīl was al-Ṣādiq’s rightful successor; they in fact held that Ismāʿīl remained alive in hiding and would eventually return as the Mahdī or Qāʾim. By contrast, the Mubārakiyya, affirming Ismāʿīl’s death during his father’s lifetime, recognised Ismāʿīl’s eldest son Muḥammad as their new imam after al-Ṣādiq. It has now become evident that the name Mubārak (the ‘blessed’) was the epithet of Ismāʿīl himself and it was applied as such to him by his followers.8 In other words, it is certain that the Mubārakiyya, like the ‘pure Ismāʿīliyya’, had actually come into existence during the lifetime of Imam al-Ṣādiq, and that the Mubārakiyya were at first the followers of Ismāʿīl before tracing the imamate to his son Muḥammad in the aftermath of al-Sādiq’s death. The Mubārakiyya were, thus, obliged to elevate Ismāʿīl retrospectively to the imamate.9 There also seems to have existed some relationships between these earliest Ismāʿīlī groups and the Khaṭṭābiyya, who were originally followers of Abu’lKhaṭṭāb (d. 138/755–756), the foremost amongst the Shīʿī ghulāt in the entourage of Imam al-Ṣādiq. The origins of these relationships, generally exaggerated by the heresiographers, can be traced to the association that existed between Ismāʿīl himself and the early Khaṭṭābīs and other radical Shīʿīs for anti-ʿAbbāsid revolutionary

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purposes.10 Be that as it may, it has now become clear, despite the views of the later Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs, that Ismāʿīlism during its opening phase did not represent a unified movement; instead, it comprised at least two Kūfan splinter groups, which must have been also numerically insignificant. These features were soon accentuated when the Mubārakiyya themselves split into two groups on the death of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, who had maintained his close contacts with the Kūfanbased Mubārakiyya, even after leaving Medina and going into hiding in Iraq and then in Persia. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl seems to have spent the latter part of his life in Khūzistān, in south-western Persia, where he had some following. Though the exact year of his death remains unknown, it is almost certain that Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl died soon after 179/795–796, during the caliphate of the ʿAbbāsid Hārūn al-Rashīd (170–193/786–809). On his death, the Mubārakiyya split into two groups.11 The majority, identified by the Imāmī heresiographers as the immediate predecessors of the Qarmaṭīs, refused to accept the death of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl who, according to them, remained alive and would return in the imminent future as the Mahdī or Qāʾim. They regarded Muḥammad as their seventh and last imam. A second group, rather small and obscure, emerged from the Mubārakiyya. This group traced the imamate in the progeny of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, whose death had been acknowledged by them. As we shall see, it was the official adoption of the latter group’s doctrine of the imamate, by ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī in his capacity as the central leader of the Ismāʿīlī movement, that led to the schism of the year 286/899. Nothing is known about the subsequent fate of these earliest Ismāʿīlī groups and their leaders, until the historical emergence of a unified Ismāʿīlī movement almost a century later, shortly after the middle of the third/ninth century.12 It seems that during this obscure period, a group of leaders worked patiently and secretly for the creation of a more unified and dynamic Ismāʿīlī movement. These leaders had been originally attached to one of the earliest Ismāʿīlī groups, and were possibly the imams of one of the two subgroups into which the Mubārakiyya split on the death of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. At any rate, these leaders, observing taqiyya to safeguard themselves, did not at the time openly claim the imamate, as explained later by ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī. In the event, it may be assumed that the Mubārakī subgroup that upheld continuity in the imamate after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, and representing perhaps the smallest of the earliest Ismāʿīlī groups, soon lost the bulk of its adherents to the other two groups, if it did not disintegrate almost completely. This also explains why no particular details are given in any contemporary source on this Mubārakī subgroup; while the Imāmī heresiographers, who are well informed on Shīʿī subdivisions, are unable to name the imams of this subgroup after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. The existence of such a group of early Ismāʿīlī leaders is, indeed, confirmed by both the official view of the later Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs regarding the early history of their movement and the hostile Ibn Rizām-Akhū Muḥsin account of the same subject. Furthermore, the leaders in question clearly represented a sole group, members of the same family who succeeded one another linearly and on a hereditary basis. This is corroborated by the fact that despite minor variations, the names of these leaders

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are almost identical in the accounts of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs and the lists traceable to Akhū Muḥsin and his source, Ibn Rizām; although the same sources ultimately trace back the ancestry of these leaders to different progenitors, namely, Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq or his brother ʿAbd Allāh, or ʿAbd Allāh b. Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ.13 It is also certain that these leaders were at first based in Ahwāz and ʿAskar Mukram in Khūzistān, and then briefly operated from Baṣra before settling down permanently in Salamiyya, in central Syria, which served as their residence and headquarters until the year 289/902. The efforts of the central leaders, who had been re-organising Ismāʿīlism under utmost secrecy, finally bore fruit around the year 260/873–874, when numerous dāʿīs began to appear in Iraq and other localities, successfully winning an increasing number of converts. At the time, the daʿwa activities conducted by the dāʿīs in different regions were under the direction of the movement’s headquarters at Salamiyya, while the identity of the central leaders who resided there continued to be a closely guarded secret. In order to maximise the appeal of their movement, especially its doctrine of the imamate, which has always been the fundamental teaching of any Shīʿī group, the central leaders had found it expedient to propagate the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. This, as we noted, was the doctrine of the Mubārakī majoritarian, constituting the bulk of the earliest Ismāʿīlīs. This doctrine was also familiar to the ‘pure Ismāʿīliyya’, who had been awaiting the reappearance of their ImamMahdī, Ismāʿīl, whose name by then could easily have been replaced by that of his son Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. After all, many of the earliest Ismāʿīlīs had acknowledged the imamate of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl who had led them after Ismāʿīl and Imam al-Ṣādiq. At any rate, it was in Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl’s name that the central leaders had now decided to organise the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa. Some modern authorities, however, deny the existence of any strict historical continuity between the earliest Ismāʿīlī splinter groups, based in Kūfa, and the widespread Ismāʿīlī movement of the third/ ninth century.14 Be that as it may, a certain degree of continuity must have existed, as attested by the central role assigned to Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl in early Ismāʿīlī thought, as well as the fact that the central leaders who were responsible for organising the movement of the third/ninth century belonged to a single line of hereditary successors, through whom continuity was maintained in the leadership of early Ismāʿīlism, from the time of the earliest groups to the movement a century later. It was under such circumstances that the daʿwa was organised in Iraq in 261 AH. It was in that year that Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ was converted to Ismāʿīlism by the dāʿī al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī, who had been sent from Salamiyya to propagate the doctrines of the sect in southern Iraq.15 Ḥamdān organised the daʿwa in his native locality, the Sawād of Kūfa, and other parts of southern Iraq, appointing dāʿīs for the major districts. Ḥamdān’s chief assistant was his brother-in-law ʿAbdān, who probably came from Ahwāz and enjoyed a high degree of independence. Soon, Ḥamdān and ʿAbdān won many converts who became known as Qarāmiṭa (singular, Qarmaṭī), named after their first local leader. The same term also came to be applied to other sections of the Ismāʿīlī movement which were not organised or led by Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ.

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The Ismāʿīlī daʿwa was extended to other regions outside Iraq during the 260s/870s. In southern Persia, the daʿwa was started under the Qarmaṭī leaders of Iraq, who recruited and trained Abū Saʿīd al-Jannābī, a native of Fārs. After his initial career in southern Persia, Abū Saʿīd was despatched by Ḥamdān to Baḥrayn, where he eventually founded a state. In 266/879–880, the central leadership of the Ismāʿīlī movement recruited the famous dāʿīs Ibn Ḥawshab Manṣūr al-Yaman and ʿAlī b. al-Faḍl for propagating the daʿwa in Yemen, where they achieved long-lasting success soon after their arrival in 268/881. It was also from Yemen that Ibn Hawshab sent dāʿīs to Sind and other remote regions. Ibn Ḥawshab maintained his close relationship with the central leaders at Salamiyya and, in 279/892, he despatched Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī to the Maghrib, where Ismāʿīlism was preached successfully among the Kutāma Berbers and the ground was prepared for the establishment of the Fāṭimid caliphate. It was around 260/874 that the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa also appeared in many parts of central and north-western Persia, in the region of the Jibāl, where the dāʿīs established their local headquarters at Rayy; and about three decades later, around 290/903, the daʿwa was extended to Khurāsān and Transoxania. As noted, the doctrine of the imamate preached by the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa of the second half of the third/ninth century centred on the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. More details of the beliefs of the Ismāʿīlīs of this pre-Fāṭimid period can be derived from what al-Nawbakhtī and al-Qummī relate about the Qarmaṭīs, as these writers do not mention any other specific Ismāʿīlī group of their time and their accounts antedate the schism of 286/899.16 At the time, the Ismāʿīlīs limited the number of their imams to seven, starting with ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and ending with Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, who was the Imam al-Qāʾim al-Mahdī and also a speakerprophet or nāṭiq. The Ismāʿīlīs, in fact, recognised a series of seven such speakers or law-announcing prophets, namely, Ādam, Nūḥ, Ibrāhīm, Mūsā, ʿĪsā, Muḥammad and Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, whose return was eagerly expected. The pre-Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs had, thus, combined their doctrine of the imamate with their particular conceptions of time and religious history, which came to be manifested in terms of a cyclical prophetic view of hierohistory. They further believed that in every prophetic era or dawr, each nāṭiq would be succeeded by a waṣī, who would in turn be followed by seven imams; and the seventh imam of every era would rise in rank to become the nāṭiq of the following era, abrogating the law of the previous nāṭiq and promulgating a new one. This pattern would change only in the seventh era of history. As the seventh imam of the era of Islam, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl would, on his reappearance, become the Qāʾim and the seventh nāṭiq, abrogating the law of Islam and initiating the final eschatological era. However, he would not announce a new religious law like each of the preceding six nāṭiqs; instead, he would fully reveal the truths (ḥaqāʾiq) concealed behind all the previous messages, the common truths inherent in the messages of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Between the middle of the third/ninth century and the year 286/899, Ismāʿīlism represented a unified movement, preaching the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Aside from the testimony of the Imāmī heresiographers, this is attested by the Ibn Rizām-Akhū Muḥsin account of the doctrines of the early Ismāʿīlīs.

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The doctrine of the imamate that Akhū Muḥsin describes is in complete agreement with that ascribed to the Qarmaṭīs by al-Nawbakhtī and al-Qummī; he lists the same series of seven imams, starting with ʿAlī and ending with Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the expected Qāʾim.17 The Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl is also referred to frequently in the extant early Ismāʿīlī sources. The Kitāb al-rushd, for instance, centres on the idea of the reappearance of the Mahdī, the seventh nāṭiq whose name is Muḥammad.18 In the Kitāb al-kashf, too, the expectation of the return of the seventh nāṭiq as the Mahdī or Qāʾim, often referred to as the Sāḥib al-zamān, plays an important part.19 The matter, as we shall see, also received special attention in ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī’s letter to the Yemeni Ismāʿīlīs, in which he tried to explain how the idea of the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl had been adopted. The Ismāʿīlī daʿwa soon met with much success in different regions. In particular, it won many converts amongst the Imāmīs, who had been dissatisfied with the political quietism of their own branch of Shīʿism and who had, furthermore, been left in disarray and without a manifest imam after the year 260/874. In Iraq, one of the earliest regions penetrated by the Ismāʿīlī movement of the third/ninth century, the Ismāʿīlīs (Qarmaṭīs) had become numerous by 267/880, capitalising on the revolt of the Zanj which had prevented the ʿAbbāsids from effectively reasserting their control over southern Iraq. It was only from 278/891 onwards that the ʿAbbāsid officials at Baghdad became apprehensive of the revolutionary dangers of the Ismāʿīlī movement.20 At the time, the doctrine preached by Ḥamdān and ʿAbdān must have been that ascribed to the Qarmaṭīs by al-Nawbakhtī and al-Qummī, as confirmed by the Ibn Rizām-Akhū Muḥsin account and the early Ismāʿīlī sources. There is no indication that, from 260–286/873–899, the beliefs of the Qarmaṭīs of Iraq differed in any significant respect from those held by the Qarmaṭī (Ismāʿīlī) communities elsewhere. At any rate, the Ismāʿīlīs who were then awaiting the reappearance of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Qāʾim and the seventh nāṭiq had now begun to attract the attention of the ʿAbbāsids and the Muslims at large, under the name of al-Qarāmiṭa. Indeed, the Imāmī heresiographers, who as well-informed contemporary writers describe the situation of the Ismāʿīlīs before the year 286/899, do not refer to any Ismāʿīlī group other than the Qarmaṭīs. During that period, Ismāʿīlism represented a unified movement, centrally directed from Salamiyya by a hereditary line of leaders. These features of the early Ismāʿīlī movement, however, soon changed drastically. Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ had maintained correspondence with the daʿwa headquarters at Salamiyya, where the central leaders of the movement had continued to reside. In 286/899, shortly after ʿAbd Allāh (ʿUbayd Allāh) b. al-Ḥusayn, the future Fāṭimid caliph-imam al-Mahdī, had succeeded to the central leadership, Ḥamdān noticed some changes in the written instructions sent to him from Salamiyya. The changes alarmed Ḥamdān, because they evidently reflected significant changes regarding the doctrine of the imamate upheld hitherto by the Ismāʿīlīs. In order to obtain accurate information on this doctrinal reform, Ḥamdān despatched his closest colleague ʿAbdān to Salamiyya. This was to be the first personal contact between the important local leaders in Iraq and the central leadership, whose identity had

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remained a closely guarded secret. Indeed, it was only upon arriving at Salamiyya that ʿAbdān was informed of the recent accession of ʿUbayd Allāh to the leadership, following the death of the previous head of the movement. In his meeting with ʿUbayd Allāh, during which a number of essential doctrinal issues were discussed, ʿAbdān learned that instead of recognising the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, on whose behalf the daʿwa had been conducted, the new leader now claimed the imamate for himself and his ancestors, the same central leaders who had organised and led the Ismāʿīlī movement. Details on ʿAbdān’s mission and the information gathered by him at Salamiyya are fully related by Akhū Muḥsin, who seems to have had access to some Qarmaṭī sources in addition to Ibn Rizām’s treatise, his usual source.21 On receiving ʿAbdān’s report, which confirmed ʿUbayd Allāh’s doctrinal reform, Ḥamdān renounced his allegiance to the central leadership and the daʿwa headquarters at Salamiyya. Thereupon, Ḥamdān gathered his subordinate dāʿīs and informed them of what had transpired, also instructing them to suspend the daʿwa activities in their respective districts. Soon afterwards, Ḥamdān disappeared and was never heard of again, while ʿAbdān, who had fully endorsed Ḥamdān’s rupture with Salamiyya, was murdered at the instigation of Zikrawayh b. Mihrawayh, a dāʿī in western Iraq who remained temporarily loyal to the central leadership. Akhū Muḥsin states that all these events occurred in the year 286 AH. The reform introduced by ʿUbayd Allāh, which led to a major schism in the early Ismāʿīlī movement, essentially concerned the doctrine of the imamate. As noted, according to the Ibn Rizām-Akhū Muḥsin account, corroborated by the Imāmī heresiographers and confirmed by the few extant pre-Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī sources, the Ismāʿīlīs of the second half of the third/ninth century recognised only seven imams, the last one being Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, the expected Qāʾim and the seventh nāṭiq, on whose behalf the daʿwa had been propagated in Iraq and elsewhere. Needless to say, the belief in the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl had left no place for further imams after him. However, soon after his own accession to the leadership, ʿUbayd Allāh had felt secure enough to make an open claim to the imamate for himself and his predecessors, the same central leaders who had actually organised and directed the movement after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Thus, ʿUbayd Allāh had now introduced continuity in the imamate, which became the official doctrine of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs, who recognised a series of ‘hidden imams’ between Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl and ʿUbayd Allāh.22 As a corollary, ʿUbayd Allāh’s reform amounted to the denial of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl’s Mahdīship, the central aspect of the doctrine of the imamate hitherto upheld by the early Ismāʿīlīs. This important reform had other aspects that are dealt with in ʿUbayd Allāh’s letter to the Yemeni Ismāʿīlīs, in which an attempt is made to reconcile this doctrinal reform with the actual course of events in the history of the early Ismāʿīlīs after Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.23 Before ʿUbayd Allāh’s doctrinal reform, the central leaders of the Ismāʿīlī movement had actually assumed the rank of the ḥujja, or the full representative of the absent imam, for themselves, and they had been regarded as such by the Ismāʿīlī (Qarmaṭī) community. This is reported by Akhū Muḥsin24 and confirmed by

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c­ ertain allusions found in the early Ismāʿīlī sources.25 It was, indeed, through the ḥujja that the faithful could establish contact with the imam, and the imam referred to the hidden Qāʾim. In other words, the central leaders of the movement had at first acted as the ḥujjas of the hidden Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl and preached the daʿwa in his name. This is also explained in ʿUbayd Allāh’s letter, which states that as a form of ṭaqiyya and in order to hide their identities, the central leaders assumed various pseudonyms and also disguised themselves as ḥujjas. Thus, by his reform, ʿUbayd Allāh had openly elevated himself and his predecessors, who all along had secretly regarded themselves as imams and who may have been acknowledged as such by a few trusted associates, from the ḥujjas of the awaited Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl to actual imams. Therefore, the reform took cognisance of the actual continuity in the central leadership of the movement, while changing the status of the same leaders from ḥujjas to imams. In his letter, ʿUbayd Allāh further explains that the imams, who disguised themselves as the ḥujjas of the hidden Mahdī, had also adopted cover names or pseudonyms such as Mubārak, Maymūn and Saʿīd, as additional measures of taqiyya. In this connection, it may be added that according to Ibn Rizam and Akhū Muḥsin, the same central leaders had also claimed descent from ʿAqīl b. Abī Ṭālib, the brother of ʿAlī.26 In a recent article, H. Halm has hypothesised that ʿUbayd Allāh and his ancestors did actually have an ʿAqīlid Ṭālibid ancestry.27 It is also known that at Salamiyya the central leaders posed as ordinary Hāshimids and merchants.28 All of this evidence reveals how successful the central leaders must have been in concealing their true identity under different guises in order to escape persecution at the hands of the ʿAbbāsid officials. ʿUbayd Allāh, in effect, states that the leaders before him had been so successful in their taqiyya practices and other diversionary tactics that the Ismāʿīlīs themselves had believed in the Mahdīship of a certain Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, while the Ismāʿīlī imamate had in fact continued in the progeny of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. In this context, ʿUbayd Allāh made yet another divulgence that must have been rather startling to his followers, and which, unlike other aspects of his doctrinal reform, was not subsequently incorporated into the teachings of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīl daʿwa. In a very bold statement in his letter, ʿUbayd Allāh names his ancestors, the hidden imams, and divulges his genealogy. He does claim a Fāṭimid ʿAlid ancestry, but he traces his descent to Imām al-Ṣādiq’s eldest surviving son ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ instead of his full-brother Ismāʿīl, also explaining how the ‘misunderstanding’ concerning the imamate of Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar and the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl had evolved. He states that the legitimate successor of Imam al-Ṣādiq was his son ʿAbd Allāh, whom he regards as the Ṣāḥib al-haqq. However, he goes on to explain that for the sake of taqiyya, ʿAbd Allāh was called Ismāʿīl, and each of ʿAbd Allāh’s successors was called Muḥammad. In other words, according to ʿUbayd Allāh’s letter, the name Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl referred to all the true imams in the progeny of ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar; and, consequently, the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl had acquired a collective meaning and referred to every imam after ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar, instead of referring to the latter’s nephew Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, until the advent

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of the Mahdī. Thus, ʿUbayd Allāh denied both the Mahdīship and the imamate of the particular grandson of Imam al-Ṣādiq who had hitherto been acknowledged as the expected Qāʾim by the early Ismāʿīlīs (Qarmaṭīs) because, according to him, all the legitimate imams after ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ had adopted the name Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as a codename in addition to other pseudonyms, while also posing as the ḥujjas of the absent Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. In other words, the central leaders of the early Ismāʿīlī movement, who were actually the true imams in the progeny of ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ, had disguised themselves under the double guise of ‘ḥujjas’ of ‘Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl’, which was another collective codename for the same imams. In support of his reform, ʿUbayd Allāh attributed a tradition to Imam al-Ṣādiq, asserting that the family of the Prophet was to produce more than one Mahdī. These are essentially the same points gathered by ʿAbdān at Salamiyya, as related by Akhū Muḥsin.29 ʿUbayd Allāh’s claim to an ʿAbd Allāhid, instead of an Ismāʿīlid, ancestry may have attracted some of the Shīʿī followers of ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ, the Faṭḥiyya, who constituted a sizable group in Iraq at the time. Be that as it may, this claim, which was not accepted by ʿUbayd Allāh’s successors, is reiterated by only one non-Ismāʿīlī medieval source, namely, Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), who states that the Banū ʿUbayd (Fāṭimids) at first traced their descent to ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar, and when they realised that ʿAbd Allāh had only one daughter, they abandoned him and traced their ancestry to Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar.30 Recently, Hamdani and de Blois, accepting all of the declarations in ʿUbayd Allāh’s letter as authentic, have hypothesised that ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ was indeed the progenitor of ʿUbayd Allāh, while they also argue that the mother of the second Fāṭimid caliph-imam, al-Qāʾim, was a descendant of Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar.31 According to their hypothesis, al-Qāʾim and his successors in the Fāṭimid dynasty had, therefore, ʿAbd Allāhid as well as Ismāʿīlid ancestries. The doctrinal reform of ʿUbayd Allāh and the apostasy of Ḥamdān and ʿAbdān split the early Ismāʿīlī movement into two branches in the year 286/899. One branch accepted the reform, later incorporated partially into the official Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī doctrine of the imamate. These Ismāʿīlīs, who remained loyal to the central leadership, maintained continuity in the imamate and accepted ʿUbayd Allāh’s explanation that the imamate had been handed down amongst his ancestors, the Fāṭimid descendants of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. As a corollary, they repudiated their earlier expectation of the advent of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Mahdī. This Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī branch included mainly the Yemeni community and those founded in the Maghrib, Egypt and Sind by the dāʿīs sent from Yemen by Ibn Ḥawshab Manṣūr al-Yaman. This loyalist branch eventually succeeded in founding the Fāṭimid caliphate in North Africa. By contrast, the dissident Ismāʿīlīs who broke with ʿUbayd Allāh and refused to acknowledge his claim to the imamate retained their original belief in the Mahdīship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, as the expected Qāʾim and the seventh nāṭiq. Henceforth, the term Qarāmiṭa came to be applied more specifically to the dissident Ismāʿīlīs who did not acknowledge ʿUbayd Allāh and his predecessors, as well

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as his successors in the Fāṭimid dynasty, as imams. The dissident Qarmaṭī branch comprised the communities in Iraq, Baḥrayn and most of those in Persia, situated in the eastern Islamic lands. Ibn Ḥawqal has preserved a valuable piece of information revealing that Abū Saʿīd al-Jannābī, who established his rule over Baḥrayn in the same eventful year 286 AH, sided with Ḥamdān and ʿAbdān against the central leadership.32 The Qarmaṭī state of Baḥrayn, which survived until 470/1077, in time became the main centre of dissident Qarmaṭism and a menace to the Sunnī ʿAbbāsids as well as the Shīʿī Fāṭimids. By the end of the fifth/eleventh century, the Qarmaṭī communities outside of eastern Arabia, too, had either disintegrated or had rallied to the side of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī daʿwa. Thus, the schism of 286/899, which divided the community into two rival factions, seriously impeded the overall success of the Ismāʿīlī movement, also playing a decisive role in preventing the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī caliph-imams from uprooting the ʿAbbāsids and extending their own rule throughout the eastern Islamic lands. As noted, ʿUbayd Allāh’s doctrinal reform was not fully incorporated into the teachings of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī daʿwa. But from the time of ʿUbayd Allāh’s reform, the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs did accept continuity in the imamate. This reform, in contrast to the original belief of the early Ismāʿīlīs, also allowed for more than one heptad of imams in the era of Islam, which was subsequently propounded explicitly in the writings of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad and other Fāṭimid authors.33 In time, the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs allowed for continuity in the heptads of their imams. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Ismāʿīlī imamate has continued to the present time, and the current imam of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs, Prince Aga Khan IV, as the 49th in the series, is in fact the seventh imam of the seventh heptad of such imams. On the other hand, ʿUbayd Allāh’s explanation of his ʿAbd Allāhid ancestry was not accepted by his successors as the official genealogy of the Fāṭimid dynasty. At least from the time of the fourth Fāṭimid caliph-imam, al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (341–365/953–975), the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī daʿwa partially adopted the doctrine of the imamate of the early Ismāʿīlīs with the approval of al-Muʿizz. Al-Muʿizz acknowledged the imamate of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, to whom he traced his genealogy. In addition, as the seventh imam of the era of Islam, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl was once again acknowledged as the Qāʾim and the nāṭiq of the final era, but with a different interpretation. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl himself would not return corporeally, but his functions as the Qāʾim were to be discharged gradually by the Fāṭimid caliph-imams who were his descendants.34 All of these doctrinal modifications and partial reversions to the views of the unified early Ismāʿīlīs, however, failed to win the Qarmaṭīs, especially those of Baḥrayn, to the side of the Fāṭimid daʿwa. The Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn continued to remain hostile towards the Fāṭimids, often conducting open warfare against them. Indeed, despite their common early religious heritage, the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn, an important military power in eastern Arabia, never joined forces with the Fāṭimids against their common enemy, the ʿAbbāsids; and the divided Ismāʿīlī movement never really recovered from the schism of the year 286/899.

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Notes   * This chapter was originally published in Studia Islamica, 77 (1993), pp. 123–139.   1 See F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 17–29, 91ff.   2 See I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977), pp. 34, 73, 74; see also H. Halm, ‘Die Sīrat Ibn Ḥaušab: Die ismailitische daʿwa im Jemen und die Fāṭimiden’, Die Welt des Orients, 12 (1981), pp. 107–135.   3 The text of this letter, edited with a partial English translation by H. F. al-Hamdani, appears in his On the Genealogy of Fatimid Caliphs (Cairo, 1958). An exact translation of this letter, based on further manuscripts, together with a detailed analysis and an interesting hypothesis, may be found in A. Hamdani and F. de Blois, ‘A Re-Examination of al-Mahdī’s Letter to the Yemenites on the Genealogy of the Fatimid Caliphs’, JRAS, (1983), pp. 173–207.  4 Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-akhbār wa funūn al-āthār, vol. 4, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1973).  5 S. M. Stern’s ‘Ismāʿīlīs and Qarmaṭians’, in L’Élaboration de l’Islam (Paris, 1961), pp. 99–108, and other relevant articles are collected in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism ( Jerusalem-Leiden, 1983). Madelung’s contributions are contained in his ‘Fāṭimiden und Baḥrainqarmaten’, Der Islam, 34 (1959), pp. 34–88, and ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 43–135.  6 Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931), pp. 57, 64–67; Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran, 1963), pp. 79–80, 86–89; and W. Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany, NY, 1988), pp. 79–80.  7 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, pp. 57–58, and al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt, pp. 80–81. See also Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-zīna, vol. 3, ed. ʿAbd Allāh S. al-Sāmarrāʾī, in his al-Ghuluww wa’l-firaq al-ghāliya (Baghdad, 1988), pp. 287–289.   8 See, for example, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt al-nubūʾāt, ed. ʿA. Tāmir (Beirut, 1966), p. 190, and al-Hamdani, On the Genealogy, text p. 10.  9 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, p. 62, and al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt, p. 84. 10 For some details, see Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Kashshī, Ikhtiyār maʿrifat al-rijāl, abridged by Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, ed. Ḥ. al-Muṣṭafawī (Mashhad, 1348/1969), pp. 217–218, 244–245, 321, 325–326, 354–356, 390. See also Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr ­al-Yaman, Sarāʾir wa asrār al-nuṭaqāʾ, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1984), pp. 262–263. 11 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, p. 61; al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt, p. 83; see also ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl al-Ashʿarī, Kitāb maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1929–30), pp. 26–27, and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. ʿA. M. al-Wakīl (Cairo, 1968), vol. 1, p. 192. 12 For more details on the earliest Ismāʿīlī groups, and proto-Ismāʿīlism in general, see Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 43–54, and F. Daftary, ‘The Earliest Ismāʿīlīs’, Arabica, 38 (1991), pp. 214–245. 13 For the earliest Fāṭimid lists, see Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī, Istitār al-imām, ed. W. Ivanow, in Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, University of Egypt, 4, part 2 (1936), p. 95, and al-Mahdī’s letter in al-Hamdani, On the Genealogy, text pp. 10–12; the relevant portions of the Akhū Muḥsin-Ibn Rizām account may be found in Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-fihrist, ed. M. R. Tajaddud (2nd ed., Tehran, 1973), p. 238; Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar, vol. 6, ed. S. al-Munajjid (Cairo, 1961), pp. 17–20; and Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz. al-ḥunafāʾ, vol. 1, ed. J. al-Shayyal (Cairo, 1967), pp. 23–26. 14 Stern, ‘Ismāʿīlīs and Qarmaṭians’, pp. 100–101, reprinted in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism, pp. 290–291; Madelung, Religious Trends, p. 93; and Hamdani and de Blois, ‘A Re-Examination’, p. 200. 15 Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, vol. 25, ed. M. Jābir ʿA. al-Ḥīnī (Cairo, 1984), pp. 189ff.; Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz, vol. 6, pp. 44ff.; and al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz., vol. 1, pp. 151ff. See also Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk,

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ed. M. J. de Goeje et al. (Leiden, 1879–1901), III, pp. 2124ff.; English trans., The History of al-Ṭabarī: Volume 37, The ʿAbbāsid Recovery, trans. P. M. Fields (Albany, NY, 1987), pp. 169ff. 16 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, pp. 61–64; al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt, pp. 83–86; English translation in Stern, Studies, pp. 47–53. 17 See, for instance, al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, vol. 25, pp. 203–204, 206. 18 Ibn Ḥawshab, Kitāb al-rushd wa’l-hidāya, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn, in Collectanea, vol. 1, ed. W. Ivanow (Leiden, 1948), pp. 198ff. 19 Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, ed. R. Strothmann (London, 1952), pp. 62, 77, 103–104, 109–110, 114, 133, 135, 160, 170. 20 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, III, pp. 2126–2127; trans. Fields, pp. 171–173. 21 See al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, vol. 25, pp. 216, 227–232; Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz, vol. 6, pp. 65–68; and al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz., vol. 1, pp. 167–168. See also Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 59ff. 22 This view is summarized in Idrīs, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, vol. 4, pp. 357–367, 390–404. 23 Text of the letter in al-Hamdani, On the Genealogy, pp. 9–14; English trans. in Hamdani and de Blois, ‘A Re-Examination’, pp. 175–178. 24 See al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, vol. 25, p. 230, and Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz, vol. 6, p. 65. 25 Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, pp. 97–99, 102ff. See also Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 54–58, 61ff., and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 126ff. 26 Ibn al-Nadim, Fihrist, p. 238; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, vol. 25, p. 230; and al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz., vol. 1, p. 41. 27 H. Halm, ‘Les Fāṭimides a Salamya’, in Mélanges offerts au Professeur Dominique Sourdel (Paris, 1988), pp. 133–147. 28 Al-Nīsābūrī, Istitār al-imām, p. 95. 29 For further implications of ʿUbayd Allāh’s doctrinal reform, see Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 65–86. 30 Ibn Hazm, Jamharat al-ansāb al-ʿArab, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām M. Hārūn (Cairo, 1391/1971), pp. 59–60. See also al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt, p. 87, which somehow allows for the continuation of the imamate in the progeny of ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ. 31 Hamdani and de Blois, ‘A Re-Examination’, especially pp. 179–195. 32 Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. J. H. Kramers (2nd ed., Leiden, 1938–1939), p. 295. 33 See, for example, Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Asās al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut, 1960), pp. 316–317, 337–338. 34 See Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 86–101, and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 177ff.

6 Ismaili daʿwa under the Fatimids

On the death of Imam Ğaʿfar aṣ-Ṣādiq in 148/765, his Imāmī Šīʿī following split into several groups.* Amongst these splinter groups, some traced the imamate through aṣ-Ṣādiq’s son Ismāʿīl (the eponym of the Ismāʿīlīya), or the latter’s son Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Not much is known about the subsequent history of these proto-Ismaili or earliest Ismaili groups, which may also have had links with the Haṭṭābīya, another anti-Abbasid Šīʿī group, until about a century later.1 At any rate, ˘ Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl himself went into hiding soon after the bulk of the Imāmī Šīʿīs recognised the imamate of his younger uncle, Mūsā b. Jaʿfar aṣ-Ṣādiq, initiating the dawr as-satr or period of concealment in early Ismailism which lasted until the foundation of the Fatimid state. It seems that for about a century after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, who died not long after 179/795 in the caliphate of the Abbasid Hārūn ar-Rašīd, a group of leaders worked secretly for the creation of a unified and expanding Ismaili movement, designated as ad-daʿwa al-hādiya, the rightly guiding mission, or simply as the daʿwa. This anti-Abbasid religio-political movement aimed to install the ʿAlid imam belonging to the Prophet Muḥammad’s family (ahl al-bayt) and recognised as such by the Ismaili Šīʿīs to the leadership of the Muslim community (umma). It was on the basis of their earlier Imāmī Šīʿī heritage that the Ismaili imams claimed to be the possessors of religious authority for guarding and interpreting the message of Islam in both its exoteric (z.āhir) and esoteric (bāṭin) dimensions. The Ismailis indeed held these ʿAlid imams to be the sole legitimate spiritual guides of all Muslims and, consequently, they regarded the Abbasids as usurpers of the divinely sanctioned rights of these imams. The message of the Ismaili daʿwa was disseminated by a network of dāʿīs or summoners who invited Muslims and others to the allegiance of the Ismaili imam. By the 260s/870s, the Ismaili dāʿīs had achieved much success, and by then a unified Ismaili movement had completely replaced the earlier Kūfan-based splinter groups. This movement was then directed secretly and centrally from Salamīya in

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Syria by a group of leaders who regarded themselves as imams but guarded their identity very closely. In fact, until 286/899, these central leaders, practising taqīya or precautionary dissimulation, did not claim the imamate openly, preferring to propagate the daʿwa in the name of the hidden Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, whose advent as the Mahdi was eagerly anticipated by the bulk of the early Ismailis. However, in 286/899, ʿAbd Allāh, the future al-Mahdī and founder of the Fatimid dynasty, felt secure enough to claim the imamate for himself and his ancestors, the same individuals who had actually organised and led the Ismaili movement after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. This claim was not acknowledged by certain Ismaili groups, including those situated in Baḥrayn, in eastern Arabia. Henceforth, these dissenters, who continued to believe in the Mahdiship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, became more specifically designated as Qarmaṭīs. On the other hand, the Ismailis of North Africa, then under the leadership of the dāʿī Abū ʿAbd Allāh aš-Šīʿī, along with the Ismailis of Yemen and certain other regions, remained loyal to Salamīya, recognising the imamate of ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, as well as his predecessors and successors in the Fatimid caliphate. Abū ʿAbd Allāh aš-Šīʿī had been active as an Ismaili dāʿī among the Kutāma Berbers of the Lesser Kabylia, in present-day eastern Algeria, since 280/893. Abū ʿAbd Allāh rapidly converted the bulk of the Kutāma Berbers and transformed them into a disciplined army. By 290/903, he had commenced his conquest of Ifrīqiya, covering today’s Tunisia and eastern Algeria. The Sunni Aghlabids had ruled over this part of the Maghrib, and Sicily, since 184/800 as vassals of the Abbasids. In 296/909, Abū ʿAbd Allāh seized Qayrawān, the capital of the Aghlabids, effectively laying the foundation of what was to become known as the Fatimid caliphate.2 Meanwhile, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī had left Salamīya in 289/902 on a fateful journey that eventually ended in Ifrīqiya. Having secured his control of Ifrīqiya, Abū ʿAbd Allāh set off at the head of his Kutāma army to Sigˇilmāsa (today’s Rissani in southeastern Morocco), where ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī had anonymously spent several years, to hand over the reins of power to the Ismaili imam. ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī made his triumphant entry into Qayrawān on 20 Rabīʿ II 297/4 January 910. On the same day, he was acclaimed as ruler by the notables of Qayrawān as well as the Kutāma Berbers. The new dynasty came to be known as Fatimid (Fāṭimīya), derived from the name of the Prophet’s daughter, Fāṭima, to whom al-Mahdī and his successors traced their ʿAlid genealogy. As one of the first acts of the new dynasty, the jurists of Ifrīqiya were instructed to issue their legal opinions in accordance with the Šīʿī principles of jurisprudence, especially the teachings of Imam gˇaʿfar aṣ-Ṣādiq. The Šīʿī caliphate of the Ismaili Fatimids had now officially commenced in that remote part of the Islamic world. The foundation of the Fatimid caliphate marked the crowning success of the early Ismailis. The religio-political daʿwa of the Ismailis had finally led to the establishment of a state or dawla headed by the Ismaili imam. Indeed, this represented a great success for the entire Šīʿa, who since the time or ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), the fourth caliph and the first Šīʿī imam, had not witnessed the succession of an ʿAlid imam to the actual leadership of an important Muslim state. The Ismaili imam had always claimed to possess sole legitimate

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religious authority as the divinely appointed and infallible spiritual guide of the ­Muslims. With Fatimid victory in North Africa, new opportunities were offered to the Ismailis. By acquiring political power, and then transforming the Fatimid state into a vast empire, the Ismaili imam now actually presented his Šīʿī challenge to Abbasid hegemony and Sunni interpretations of Islam. Henceforth, the lsmaili Fatimid caliph-imam could act as the spiritual spokesman of Šīʿī Islam in general, much in the same way that the Abbasid caliph had acted as the mouthpiece of Sunni Islam. The Fatimid period is, indeed, often portrayed as the golden age of Ismailism, an interlude in Ismaili history. The Ismailis now possessed a state of their own under the leadership of their imam. Consequently, they were permitted, for the first time in their history, to practise their faith openly and without fearing persecution within Fatimid dominions, while outside the boundaries of their state they were obliged to observe taqīya as before. It was also during the Fatimid period that Ismaili thought and literature attained their summit. Educated as theologians, the lsmaili dāʿīs of this period were at the same time the scholars and authors of their community, producing what were to become the classical texts of Ismaili literature dealing with a multitude of exoteric and esoteric subjects as well as taʾwīl, or esoteric exegesis, which became the hallmark of Ismaili thought. These dāʿīs also elaborated distinctive intellectual traditions and complex metaphysical systems of thought. Modern recovery of their literature abundantly attests to the richness and diversity of the literary and intellectual heritage of the lsmailis of the Fatimid period.3 In line with their universal claims, the Fatimid caliph-imams did not abandon their daʿwa activities on assuming power. Aiming to extend their authority and rule over the entire Muslim community and others, they retained their network of dāʿīs, operating as their religio-political missionaries both within and outside the Fatimid state. However, the first three Fatimid caliph-imams, ruling from Ifrīqiya, were primarily concerned with consolidating their power. In addition to the continued animosity of the Abbasids and the Umayyads of Spain, who as rival claimants to the caliphate had their own designs for North Africa, the Fatimids had numerous military encounters with the Byzantines in Sicily and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Closer to home, the early Fatimids devoted much energy to subduing the rebellions of the Hārigˇī Berbers, especially those belonging to the Zanāta confederation, ˘ and the hostilities of the Sunni inhabitants of Qayrawān and other urban areas of Ifrīqiya led by their influential Mālikī jurists. Indeed, Šīʿī Islam had never taken any deep roots in the Maghrib, where the Berbers generally adhered to diverse scholars of Hārigˇī Islam while Sunni Arabs controlled the cities. It was in recognition of ˘ these local realities and problems that the Ismaili daʿwa remained rather inactive throughout Fatimid dominions in North Africa,4 while lsmaili dāʿīs continued to be active in Yemen, Iraq and the Iranian world. It should be noted, however, that the dāʿīs now operating outside of Fatimid territories, such as Abū Ḥātim ar-Rāzī (d. 322/934) and Muḥammad b. Aḥmad an-Nasafī (d. 332/943), belonged mainly to the Qarmaṭī wing of Ismailism that itself remained hostile towards the Fatimids and their claims.

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Fatimid rule was only firmly established in North Africa during the reign of the fourth Fatimid caliph-imam, al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (341–365/953–975). He was also the first member of his dynasty to concern himself specifically with daʿwa activities outside Fatimid dominions, aiming also to win the allegiance of the dissident Qarmaṭīs. The Qarmaṭī daʿwa activities, centred in the powerful state founded in 286/899 in Baḥrayn, but also rather widespread in Persia and Central Asia, generally undermined the Fatimid daʿwa. It was also mainly due to the teachings and practices of the Qarmaṭīs that Ismailis were accused in Sunni polemics of lawlessness and libertinism. The daʿwa policy of al-Muʿizz proved rather successful as numerous Ismaili communities now began to appear in different eastern regions of the Islamic world. For instance, Fatimid Ismailism acquired a permanent stronghold in Sind, where Ismailism has survived to our times. There, through the efforts of a Fatimid dāʿī who converted a local ruler, an Ismaili principality centred at Multan (in present-day Pakistan) was established around the year 347/958.5 On the other hand, al-Muʿizz was only partially successful in winning over the Qarmaṭī circles and neutralising their propaganda. In particular, Abū Yaʿqūb as-Sigˇistānī, one of the most learned early dāʿīs who initially belonged to the dissident Ismaili faction, was won over by the Fatimid faction. As a result, the bulk of his followers in Hurāsān, ˘ Sīstān (Arabicised, Sigˇistān), Makrān and Central Asia also switched their allegiance to the Fatimid imam. Later, after 361/971, as-Sigˇistānī was executed as a ‘heretic’ on the order of the Ṣaffārid amir of Sīstān, Halaf b. Aḥmad (352–393/963–1003). ˘ The codification of Ismaili law that resulted mainly from the efforts of al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa an-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad (d. 363/974) also reached its culmination in the reign of al-Muʿizz. As expressed in an-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām (The Pillars of Islam), which was endorsed by al-Muʿizz as the official legal compendium of the Fatimid state, the Šīʿī doctrine of the imamate was accorded a central place in Ismaili law. This doctrine finds a clear expression in the Daʿāʾim al-Islām’s chapter on walāya, emphasising the necessity of acknowledging the rightful imam of the time and providing Islamic legitimation for an ʿAlid state ruled by the family of the Prophet.6 Thus, an-Nuʿmān elaborated the doctrinal basis of the Fatimids’ legitimacy as ruling imams and provided justification for their universal claims. The Fatimids intensified their daʿwa activities, particularly after transferring the seat of their state to Cairo, founded by al-Muʿizz in 358/969 on the Fatimid conquest of Egypt. From 362/973, when al-Muʿizz himself arrived in Cairo, the new Fatimid capital in Egypt served as the central headquarters of an Ismaili daʿwa organisation that developed rapidly, now disseminating its messages both within and outside of Fatimid dominions. The organisation and functioning of what continued to be designated as ad-daʿwa al-hādiya were among the most closely guarded secrets of Ismailism. It is, therefore, not surprising that the extensive lsmaili literature of the Fatimid times, recovered in recent decades, is generally silent on this subject. Information is particularly meagre on the nature of the daʿwa organisation in hostile regions outside of Fatimid dominions, such as Yemen, Iraq, Persia, Sind and Central Asia, where Ismaili dāʿīs operated in secrecy and took every measure not to divulge details of their clandestine activities in their writings. All of this secrecy

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and lack of information provided fertile ground for numerous myths fabricated by Ismaili enemies regarding aspects of their daʿwa. Despite occasional variation in nomenclature, the term dāʿī (plural, duʿāt) came to be applied generically to any authorised representative of the Ismaili daʿwa, a religio-political summoner or propagandist responsible for spreading Ismailism through winning new converts, or followers for the Ismaili imam. He was also responsible as a teacher for explaining Ismaili doctrines to the new converts. During the Fatimid period, the dāʿī served additionally as the unofficial agent of the Fatimid dawla, promoting the Fatimid cause secretly outside their dominions. Any institutional ties between the Ismaili daʿwa and the Fatimid dawla remain obscure. It is clear, however, that in the person of the Fatimid caliph-imam, a collaborative relationship must have existed between these two spheres of activity. As in the case of the daʿwa, very little seems to have been written by the Ismaili authors of Fatimid times, or any other period, on the subject of the dāʿī. Al-Qāḍī an-Nuʿmān, a prolific author who himself headed the Fatimid daʿwa organisation, devoted only a short chapter to explaining the training qualifications and attributes of an ideal dāʿī.7 A more detailed, but still general, description of an ideal dāʿī is contained in the only known Ismaili work of the adab genre produced by the dāʿī Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm an-Nīsābūrī, who flourished under the caliph-imams al-ʿAzīz and al-Ḥākim. This text is preserved indirectly in later Ismaili works.8 According to an-Nīsābūrī, a dāʿī was appointed only by the imam’s permission (i-d n). Operating in remote regions, the dāʿīs enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, receiving only their general instructions from the central authorities of the daʿwa. In terms of their education, the dāʿīs were normally expected to have sufficient knowledge of both the z.āhir and the bāṭin dimensions of religion, or the šarīʿa and its Ismaili interpretation (taʾwīl). Outside the Fatimid state, the dāʿī also acted as a judge for his community, as Ismailis were discouraged from referring their disputes to local non-Ismaili judges. The dāʿī was, therefore, often trained in jurisprudence. In addition, the dāʿī was expected to be well versed in a diversity of other subjects, such as philosophy and the teachings of non-Islamic religions, as well as the languages and customs of the region in which he would operate. In sum, the ideal dāʿī was a highly learned and cultured individual. The Fatimids devoted particular attention to the training of their dāʿīs and founded a variety of institutions to that end, including the Dār al-ʿIlm, the House of Knowledge. Established in 395/1005 by the caliph-imam al-Ḥākim (386–411/996– 1021) in the Fatimid palace, a variety of religious and non-religious subjects were taught at this institution, which was also equipped with a major library. Eventually, the manuscript collections of the Dār al-ʿIlm’s library grew to several hundred thousand volumes. The Dār al-ʿIlm was used by scholars of different religious persuasions, and many Fatimid dāʿīs received at least part of their training there.9 In later Fatimid times, the Dār al-ʿIlm was moved to a new location in Cairo and it more closely served the needs of the daʿwa. Information on the actual methods used by Fatimid dāʿīs for winning new converts (mustagˇ ībs) and educating them is extremely rare. The few available sources

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state, however, that the dāʿīs had to be personally familiar with the individual initiates, who were to be selected with due regard to their intellectual capabilities. The Ismailis never aimed at mass proselytization, and this is why the bulk of the Fatimid subjects in Egypt continued to remain Šāfiʿī Sunnis with an important community of Christian Copts, even though Ismailism was the official ma-d hab of the Fatimid state. Under the circumstances, the dāʿī was to address himself to one prospective mustagˇ īb at a time. The act of initiation itself, known as balāġ, was perceived as the spiritual rebirth of the adept. Many Sunni sources, deriving their information chiefly from the anti-Ismaili polemical tradition, mention a system of seven stages of initiation into Ismailism, often giving each stage a distinctive designation culminating in the final stage of unbelief and atheism.10 There is no evidence of any fixed graded system in Ismaili literature, however, though a certain degree of gradualism in the initiation and education of converts must have been unavoidable. An-Nīsābūrī, for instance, does relate that the dāʿīs were expected to educate the mustagˇ ībs in a gradual manner. The dāʿī often held regular teaching sessions for the new converts and other Ismailis in his own house, evidently moving from simpler and exoteric subjects to more complex and esoteric ones. It was the duty of the dāʿī to administer to the initiate an oath of allegiance, known as ʿahd or mī-tāq, to the Ismaili imam of the time, which also involved a pledge on the part of the mustagˇ īb to maintain secrecy in what was divulged to him. The funds required by the dāʿī for the performance of his responsibilities were raised locally from members of his community. The dāʿī normally kept a portion of these funds, such as the alms tax (zakāt) and the nagˇ wā paid by every new convert, to finance his daʿwa activities, sending the remainder to the imam. For this purpose, the dāʿī used trustworthy couriers, who brought back general instructions from the central daʿwa headquarters. These couriers, notably those going to the Fatimid capital from remote daʿwa regions, also brought back Ismaili books for the dāʿīs, keeping them informed of the latest intellectual developments within Ismailism and its central daʿwa organisation. The Fatimids’ high esteem for learning and the emphasis given by the Ismaili daʿwa to the education of converts, especially in the ḥikma or ‘wisdom’ as Ismaili esoteric doctrine was known, resulted in distinctive traditions of learning and institutions. A variety of lectures or ‘teaching sessions’, generally designated as magˇ ālis (singular, magˇ lis), were organised under the auspices of the Fatimid state. These sessions, with increasing formalisation, served different pedagogical purposes and as such addressed different audiences, especially in the Fatimid capital. There were, however, basically two types of teaching sessions, namely, public lectures for large audiences on Ismaili law and other exoteric subjects, and private lectures on Ismaili esoteric doctrines reserved exclusively for the Ismaili initiates.11 From early Fatimid times until much later in Egypt, the chief qāḍī (qāḍī l-quḍāt) of the Fatimid state was at the same time in charge of the daʿwa as chief dāʿī (dāʿī d-duʿāt). This serves to underline the Fatimid concern for maintaining a balance between the z.āhir and bāṭin of religion, or the šarīʿa and its Ismaili interpretation. Ismailism was adopted as the official ma-d hab of the Fatimid state, and its legal doctrines were applied by the judiciary. However, the Ismaili legal code was

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new and its precepts had to be explained to Ismailis and other Muslims. This was ­accomplished in regular public sessions, after the midday prayers. In Ifrīqiya, these sessions were originally held in the Great Mosque of Qayrawān, and later in mosques of other Fatimid capitals there. In Cairo, public sessions on Ismaili law were held at the mosques of al-Azhar, ʿAmr and al-Ḥākim. On these occasions, excerpts from the exoteric works of al-Qāḍī an-Nuʿmān, especially his Daʿāʾim al-Islām and Kitāb al-iqtiṣār, were read to large audiences after the Friday prayers.12 The teaching sessions related to Ismaili doctrine, known as the ‘sessions of wisdom’ (magˇ ālis al-ḥikma), were organised only for the Ismaili initiates who had already taken the oath of allegiance and secrecy. These tightly controlled sessions, also referred to as the magˇ ālis ad-daʿwa, were held in a special section of the Fatimid palace, a practice established in Ifrīqiya and maintained in Egypt. The texts read at these sessions, delivered by the chief dāʿī, received the prior approval and authorisation of the imam. Only the imam was the repository of the ḥikma, and the dāʿī was merely the imam’s mouthpiece for instructing the initiates in Ismaili esoteric doctrines. The teaching sessions, too, were first systematised by al-Qāḍī an-Nuʿmān, chief qāḍī and chief dāʿī. Some of an-Nuʿmān’s lectures prepared for the magˇ ālis al-ḥikma were collected in his Taʾwīl ad-daʿāʾim, which represents the bāṭinī companion to his z.āhirī legal compendium, the Daʿāʾim al-Islām. After an-Nuʿmān, his sons and grandsons succeeded to the office of chief qāḍī, while they were at the same time in charge of the daʿwa as they held the ‘sessions of wisdom’ in the Fatimid palace in Cairo. However, from the time of al-Ḥākim, responsibility for the headship of the judiciary and the daʿwa were vested in different persons, with the chief qāḍī taking precedence in status and in ceremonials over the chief dāʿī. By then, different types of teaching sessions were organised for different categories of participants, including the initiates proper, the courtiers (hāṣṣa) and the high officials. A separate session was held for women at a­ l-Azhar, ˘ while the royal women received their instruction at the palace. At any rate, many of the lectures on Ismaili doctrine prepared by, or for, various chief dāʿīs were in due course collected and committed to writing. This Fatimid tradition of learning culminated in the Magˇ ālis al-Muʾayyadīya, a collection of 800 lectures of al-Muʾayyad fi d-Dīn aš-Šīrāzī, dāʿī d-duʿāt for almost 20 years until shortly before his death in 470/1078. Ismaili dāʿīs operated both within and outside of Fatimid dominions. The latter regions, situated beyond the confines of the Fatimid state, were known to the Fatimid Ismailis as the gˇ azāʾir (singular, gˇ azīra), literally the ‘islands’. As noted, information on the organisation of the Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa, and its hierarchical ranks (ḥudūd), is rather sparse, especially for the ‘islands’ where the daʿwa was conducted in utmost secrecy. The daʿwa was under the overall guidance of the person of the Ismaili imam, who normally authorised its policies and teachings. It is also known that the chief dāʿī (dāʿī d-duʿāt) acted as the administrative head of the daʿwa organisation. He was closely supervised by the imam and assisted by a number of subordinate dāʿīs at the central headquarters of the daʿwa. He was also responsible for the appointment of the provincial dāʿīs of the Fatimid Empire. These dāʿīs,

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­acting as representatives of ad-daʿwa al-hādiya, were stationed in several localities in Egypt, and in the main cities of the Fatimid provinces, including Damascus, Tyre, Ascalon and Ramla, as well as in the rural areas of the empire, such as the gˇabal as-Summāq in Syria.13 The chief dāʿī also played a key role in selecting the dāʿīs of the ‘islands’. The appointment of all Fatimid dāʿīs had to receive the approval of the imam. The chief dāʿī, as noted, was also responsible for delivering the magˇ ālis al-ḥikma. Not much else is known about the functions of the chief dāʿī. Even the title of dāʿī d-duʿāt, used frequently in non-Ismaili sources, rarely appears in Ismaili texts. In those Fatimid Ismaili sources which refer to different ranks in the daʿwa, the term bāb (gate), or sometimes bāb al-abwāb, is used in reference to the administrative head of the daʿwa, the dignitary immediately after the imam and the gateway to his ‘wisdom’ (ḥikma) and the Ismaili teachings emanating from that unique source. Ḥamīd al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1020), one of the most learned dāʿīs of the Fatimid period, makes various allusions to the position and importance of the bāb and his closeness to the imam.14 Organised in a strictly hierarchical fashion, the Fatimid daʿwa developed over time and reached its full elaboration under the caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir (427– 487/1036–1094).15 The daʿwa terminology evolved with different nomenclatures used in Fatimid provinces and in the ‘islands’. There are diverse partial accounts of the daʿwa ranks after the imam and his bāb. At any rate, the daʿwa organisation and its hierarchy of ranks or ḥudūd alluded to in various Ismaili texts of the Fatimid period evidently applied to an idealised or utopian situation when the Ismaili imam would rule the entire world, and not to any actual system. According to this system, the world, and notably the regions falling outside of Fatimid dominions, was divided into twelve ‘islands’ (gˇ azīras) for the purposes of propagating the daʿwa, each gˇ azīra representing a separate and somewhat independent region. Delineated on the basis of a combination of geographic and ethnographic considerations, these ‘islands’ included Rūm (Byzantium), Daylam, used for Persia, Sind and Hind (India), Ṣīn (China) and regions inhabited by Arabs, Slavs (aṣ-Ṣaqāliba), Nubians (an-Nūb), Africans (az-Zangˇ), Abyssinians (al-Ḥabaš), Khazars (al-Hazar) and Berbers ˘ (al-Barbar).16 Other classifications also seem to have been in use. Nāṣir-i Husraw ˘ (d. after 462/1070), the eminent Persian poet and dāʿī, makes numerous references 17 to Hurāsān as a distinct gˇ azīra, while Yemen, Iraq and the region inhabited by ˘ Turks were also cited as other ‘islands’. Be that as it may, each gˇ azīra was placed under the overall charge of a high-ranking dāʿī known as ḥugˇ gˇ a (proof, guarantor), also called naqīb, lāḥiq or yad in the early Fatimid period. The ḥugˇ gˇ a was the highest representative of the daʿwa in any ‘island’. Amongst the twelve ḥugˇ gˇ as serving the imam, four occupied special positions, comparable to the positions of the four sacred months among the twelve months of the year.18 The ḥugˇ gˇ a of every ‘island’ was assisted by a number of subordinate regional and local dāʿīs of various ranks, including the dāʿi l-balāġ, who evidently acted as liaison between the ḥugˇ gˇ a’s headquarters in a gˇ azīra and the central daʿwa headquarters in the Fatimid capital. There were also dāʿīs of lower ranks known as ad-dāʿi l-muṭlaq and ad-dāʿi l-maḥdūd (or al-maḥṣūr). The dāʿīs, in turn, had their

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own varieties of assistants, designated generically as al-maʾd-ūn, the licentiate. The lowest-ranking official in the daʿwa hierarchy was al-maʾd-ūn al-mukāsir, eventually called the mukāsir (breaker), whose duty was to attract prospective converts and to ‘break’ their attachment to previous religions. The ordinary initiates, the mustagˇ ībs or respondents who referred to themselves as awliyāʾ or awliyāʾ Allāh, the ‘friends of God’, did not occupy a rank at the bottom of the hierarchy. They now belonged to the ahl ad-daʿwa, or the ‘people of the mission’, representing the elite (h āṣṣa or ˘ hawāṣṣ) as compared to the common (non-Ismaili) Muslims who were called the ˘ ʿāmmat al-Muslimīn or simply the ʿawāmm. These daʿwa ranks, numbering to seven from the bāb to the mukāsir, together with their idealised functions and corresponding celestial hierarchy, are enumerated by the dāʿī al-Kirmānī, who synthesised the ideas of his predecessors.19 The Ismaili daʿwa was propagated openly within the Fatimid Empire. But with the exception of Syria, where a diversity of Šīʿī traditions existed, the success of the daʿwa remained rather limited and transitory in Fatimid dominions, stretching at various times from North Africa to Palestine and parts of Syria. In North Africa, as noted, the spread of Ismailism had always been checked by Mālikī Sunnism and Hārigˇism, notably of the Ibāḍī form. In Ifrīqiya proper, the Zīrids who governed ˘ as vassals of the Fatimids after their departure to Egypt were soon overwhelmed by the pressures of the Mālikī jurists who eventually sanctioned the massacres of the minority Ismaili communities of Qayrawān and other cities. By 440/1048, when the fourth Zīrid ruler al-Muʿizz b. Bādis switched his allegiance from the Fatimids to the Abbasids, Ismailism had practically disappeared from North Africa. In Egypt, too, the Ismailis remained a minority and their community disintegrated soon after the collapse of the Fatimid dynasty in 567/1171. It was thus in non-Fatimid territories, in the gˇ azīras, that the Ismaili daʿwa of Fatimid times achieved lasting successes. Many of these ‘islands’, scattered from Yemen to Central Asia, were already well acquainted with different Šīʿī traditions, and responded positively to the summons of the Fatimid dāʿīs. The Ismaili daʿwa activities outside of the Fatimid dominions reached their peak in the long reign of al-Mustanṣir, even after the Sunni Salgˇūqs replaced the Šīʿī Būyids as overlords of the Abbasids in 447/1055. By then, the dāʿīs had won many converts in Iraq and in different parts of Persia and Central Asia. One of the most prominent dāʿīs of this period was al-Muʾayyad fi d-Dīn aš-Šīrāzī. The recovery of his autobiography has revealed the central role that this dāʿī played as an intermediary between the Fatimids and the Turkish military commander al-Basāsīrī, who briefly led the Fatimid cause in Iraq against the Salgˇūqs.20 Al-Basāsīrī seized Baghdad in 450/1058 and had the huṭba read there for one whole year for al-Mustanṣir before ˘ his defeat by the Salgˇūqs. As chief dāʿī, al-Muʾayyad also established closer relations between Cairo and several gˇ azīras, especially Yemen where Ismailism had persisted in a dormant form. By the time of al-Mustanṣir, the leadership of the daʿwa in Yemen had fallen into the hands of the dāʿī ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī. In 439/1047, he rose in Ḥarāz marking the effective foundation of the lsmaili Ṣulayḥid dynasty, ruling over different parts of Yemen as vassals of the Fatimids until 532/1138.

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On ʿAli l-Ṣulayḥī’s death in 459/1067, Lamak b. Mālik al-Ḥammādī was appointed as chief dāʿī of Yemen while ʿAlī’s son Aḥmad al-Mukarram (d. 477/1084) succeeded his father merely as head of the Ṣulayḥid state. The dāʿī Lamak had earlier spent five years in Cairo staying and studying with the chief dāʿī al-Muʾayyad at his residence in the Dār al-ʿIlm. From the latter part of Aḥmad al-Mukarram’s reign, effective authority in the Ṣulayḥid state was transferred to his consort, al-Malika as-Sayyida Ḥurra (d. 532/1138). She played an increasingly important role in the affairs of the Yemeni daʿwa, culminating in her appointment as the ḥugˇ gˇ a of Yemen by al-Mustanṣir. This represented the first assignment of a high rank in the daʿwa hierarchy to a woman.21 The Ṣulayḥids also played an active part in the renewed efforts of the Fatimids to spread the daʿwa on the Indian subcontinent. The Ismaili community founded in Gugˇarāt by dāʿīs sent from Yemen in the second half of the fifth/eleventh century evolved into the modern day Ṭayyibī Bohra community. Meanwhile, the Ismaili daʿwa had continued to spread in many parts of the Iranian world, now incorporated into the Salgˇūq sultanate. By the 460s/1070s, the Persian Ismailis of the Salgˇūq dominions were under the leadership of ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAṭṭāš who had his secret headquarters in Iṣfahān, the main Salgˇūq capital. He was also responsible for launching the career of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124), who later led the daʿwa in Persia. In Badahšān and other parts of Central Asia, too, ˘ the daʿwa had continued after the downfall of the Samanids in 395/1005. As one of the most eminent dāʿīs of al-Mustanṣir’s time, Nāṣir-i Husraw played an important ˘ part in propagating Ismailism in Central Asia as the ḥugˇ gˇ a of Hurāsān.22 ˘ Indeed, the Ismailis of Badah šān (divided in modern times by the Oxus River ˘ between Afghanistan and Tajikistan) and their offshoot communities in the Hindu Kush region, in today’s Hunza and other northern areas of Pakistan, all belonging to the Nizārī branch of Ismailism, regard Nāṣir as the founder of their communities, referring to him with high esteem as Pīr or Šāh Sayyid Nāṣir. It should also be added that by the time the Qarmaṭī state of Baḥrayn was finally uprooted in 470/1077 by local tribesmen, other Qarmaṭī groups in Persia, Iraq and Central Asia too had either disintegrated or switched their allegiance to the Ismaili daʿwa of the Fatimids. There was now only one unified Ismaili daʿwa under the supreme leadership of the Fatimid caliph-imam. During the long reign of al-Mustanṣir, the Fatimid caliphate had already embarked on its decline, resulting from factional rivalries in the Fatimid armies and other political and economic difficulties. On the death of al-Mustanṣir in 487/1094, the unified Ismaili daʿwa split into two rival factions as his son and original heir-designate Nizār was deprived of his succession rights by the all-powerful vizier al-Afḍal, who installed Nizār’s younger half-brother to the Fatimid throne with the title of al-Mustaʿlī bi llāh (487–495/1094–1101). The two factions became designated as the Nizārīya and the Mustaʿlīya after al-Mustanṣir’s sons who claimed his heritage. Al-Mustaʿlī was recognised also as imam by the daʿwa organisation in Cairo as well as the Ismaili communities of Egypt, Yemen and western India. These Ismailis who depended on the Fatimid regime later traced the imamate in the progeny of al-Mustaʿlī. On the other hand, the Ismailis of Persia who were then already

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under the leadership of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ supported the succession rights of Nizār, who was killed in 488/1095, and his descendants. Ḥasan, in fact, founded the independent Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa, severing his ties with the Fatimid regime and the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo. The Ismailis of Central Asia seem to have remained uninvolved in the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism for quite some time. The Fatimid state survived for another 77 years after the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism in the Ismaili daʿwa and community.23 During these turbulent final decades of the Fatimid caliphate, al-Mustaʿlī and his successors on the Fatimid throne continued to be recognised as imams by the Mustaʿlī Ismailis, who themselves soon split into Ḥāfiz. ī and Ṭayyibī branches. When al-Mustaʿlī’s son and successor, al-Āmir, was assassinated in 524/1130, power was assumed in the Fatimid state by his cousin ʿAbd al-Magˇīd who later proclaimed himself as caliph and imam with the title of al-Ḥāfiz. li-Dīn Allāh. The irregular proclamation as imam of al-Ḥāfiz. , whose father Abu l-Qāsim Muḥammad b. al-Mustanṣir had not been imam, caused a major division in the Mustaʿlī community. As in the case of the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī split, the Mustaʿlī daʿwa headquarters in Cairo endorsed the imamate of al-Ḥāfiz. who claimed al-Āmir had personally designated him.24 Therefore, it was also acknowledged by the Mustaʿlī Ismailis of Egypt and Syria as well as a portion of the Mustaʿlīs of Yemen. These Ismailis, who recognised al-Ḥāfiz. and the later Fatimid caliphs as their imams, became known as the Ḥāfiz. īya. The Ismaili traditions of earlier times were maintained during the closing decades of the Fatimid dynasty. These included the appointment of chief dāʿīs as administrative heads of the Ḥāfiz. ī daʿwa, the regular holdings of the magˇ ālis al-ḥikma and the activities of the Dār al-ʿIlm. The Ayyūbid Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn (Saladin), who acted as the last Fatimid vizier, ended Fatimid rule in 567/1171 when he had the huṭba read in Cairo in the name of ˘ the reigning Abbasid caliph. A few days later, al-ʿĀḍid (555–567/1160–1171), the 14th and final Fatimid caliph, died after a brief illness. The Fatimid dawla had, thus, ended after 262 years. On the collapse of the Fatimid caliphate, Egypt’s new Sunni Ayyūbid masters began to persecute the Ismailis, also suppressing the Ḥāfiz. ī daʿwa organisation and all the Fatimid institutions. The Ḥāfiz. ī Ismailis had disintegrated almost completely in Egypt by the end of the seventh/thirteenth century. In Yemen, too, the Zurayʿids of ʿAdan and some of the Hamdānids adhered to Ḥāfiz. ī Ismailism only until the Ayyūbid conquest of southern Arabia in 569/1173. For all practical purposes, after the demise of the Fatimid dynasty, Mustaʿlī Ismailism survived only in its Ṭayyibī form. The Ṭayyibī Ismailis, who were active outside of the Fatimid state, had meanwhile recognised al-Āmir’s infant son, aṭ-Ṭayyib, as their imam after al-Āmir, rejecting the claims of al-Ḥāfiz. and the later Fatimids to the Ismaili imamate. In particular, it was the Ṣulayḥid queen of Yemen, as-Sayyida Ḥurra (d. 532/1138), who upheld aṭ-Ṭayyib’s cause and severed her relations with Cairo. As a result, the Mustaʿlī community of the Ṣulayḥid state, too, recognised aṭ-Ṭayyib’s imamate. The Mustaʿlī Ismailis of Yemen, with some minority groups in Egypt and Syria, became later designated as the Ṭayyibīya. Ṭayyibī Ismailism found its permanent stronghold in Yemen, where it received the initial support of the Ṣulayḥids. The Ṭayyibī imams

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have all remained hidden from the time of aṭ-Ṭayyib, who himself disappeared soon after al-Āmir’s death in 524/1130. The Ṭayyibī daʿwa survived the downfall of the Fatimids because from early on it had developed independently of the Fatimid state. It was around 526/1132 that the Ṣulayḥid queen broke her relations with Cairo and declared ad--D - uʾayb b. Mūsa l-Wādiʿī (d. 546/1151) as the dāʿīmuṭlaq or dāʿī- with supreme authority to lead the affairs of the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlī daʿwa on behalf of the concealed Ṭayyibī imam. This marked the foundation of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa, also independently of Ṣulayḥid state. The Ṭayyibī Ismailis have continued to be led by their dāʿī muṭlaqs while awaiting the reappearance of their imam. Similarly, Nizārī Ismailism survived the collapse of the Fatimid state. By the time of the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī dispute of 487/1094, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had emerged as the leader of the Persian Ismailis. He was then already following an independent policy, and his seizure of the fortress of Alamūt in 483/1090 had in fact marked the foundation of what would become the Nizārī state of Persia and Syria.25 The Nizārī state lasted some 166 years until it was destroyed by the Mongols in 654/1256. At any rate, Ḥasan also founded the Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa independently of the Fatimid regime and upheld the rights of Nizār and his progeny to the Ismaili imamate. In time, the Nizārī daʿwa became largely independent of the Nizārī state as well, and, therefore, it survived the destruction of that state by the Mongol hordes. Subsequently, the Nizārī daʿwa achieved particular success in India and Central Asia. That Ismailism succeeded in surviving the downfall of the Fatimid dynasty and state was mainly due to the permanent successes of the Ismaili daʿwa of Fatimid times outside the confines of the Fatimid dawla, especially in Yemen and Persia where politically insightful dāʿīs, such as al-Malika Ḥurra and Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, respectively, laid the foundations of the independent Ṭayyibī and Nizārī daʿwas, resulting in the two Ismaili communities of our times.

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in U. Vermeulen and K. D’hulster, ed., Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras V. Proceedings of the 11th, 12th and 13th International Colloquium organized at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in May, 2002, 2003 and 2004 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), pp. 73–89.  1 F. Daftary, ‘The Earliest Ismāʿīlīs’, Arabica, 38 (1991), pp. 214–228, reprinted in E. Kohlberg, ed., Shīʿism (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 235–249.  2 Al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa an-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Iftitāḥ ad-daʿwa, ed. W. Al-Qāḍī (Beirut, 1970), pp. 7–222; F. Dachraoui, Le Califat Fatimide au Maghreb 296–365 H./909–975 Jc. (Tunis, 1981), pp. 57–122; H. Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids, trans. into English by M. Bonner (Leiden, 1996), pp. 9–128.   3 See especially I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977), pp. 31–132; F. Daftary, Ismaili Literature (London, 2004), pp. 13–38 and the relevant entries in Chapter 3.   4 For more details, see W. Madelung, ‘The Religious Policy of the Fatimids toward their Sunnī Subjects in the Maghrib’, in M. Barrucand, ed., L’Égypte fatimide, son art et son histoire (Paris, 1999), pp. 97–104.   5 S. M. Stern, ‘Ismāʿīlī Propaganda and Fatimid Rule in Sind’, Islamic Culture, 23 (1949), pp. 298–307, reprinted in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism ( Jerusalem/Leiden 1983), pp. 177–188; Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, pp. 385–392.

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 6 Al-Qāḍī an-Nuʿmān, Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. A. A. A. Fyzee (Cairo, 1951–1961), vol. I, pp. 14–98; English trans. A. A. A. Fyzee, completely revised by I. K. Poonawala as The Pillars of Islam (New Delhi, 2002–2004), vol. I, pp. 18–122.  7 Al-Qāḍi an-Nuʿmān, Kitāb al-himma fī ādāb atbāʾ al-aʾimma, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn (Cairo, 1948), pp. 136–140.  8 A facsimile edition of an-Nīsābūrī’s lost ar-Risāla al-mūgˇ aza al-kāfiya fī adab ad-duʿāt, as preserved in the second volume of Ḥasan b. Nūḥ al-Bharūcˇi’s unpublished Kitāb al-azhār, is contained in V. Klemm, Die Mission des fāṭimidischen Agenten al-Muʾayyad fī d-dīn in Šīrāz (Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 206–277; with summary English translation in V. Klemm, Memoirs of a Mission: The Ismaili Scholar, Statesman and Poet al-Muʾayyad fi’lDīn al-Shīrāzī (London, 2003), pp. 117–127.  9 Taqī ad-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-mawāʿiz. wa l-iʿtibār fī -d ikr al-hiṭaṭ wa ˘ their l-ʿā-t ār, Būlāq 1270/1853–1854, vol. I, pp. 458–460; H. Halm, The Fatimids and Traditions of Learning (London, 1997), pp. 71–77. 10 See, for instance, Šihāb ad-Dīn Aḥmad al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab, ed. M. J. ʿĀ. ʿĀl Al-Ḥīnī et al. (Cairo, 1984), vol. XXV, pp. 195–225; al-Maqrīzī, al-H iṭaṭ, ˘ vol. I, pp. 391ff.; Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baġdādī, al-Farq bayn l-firaq, ed. M. Badr (Cairo, 1910), pp. 282ff; Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ġazālī, Faḍāʾiḥ al-Bāṭiniyya wa faḍāʾil al-Mustaz.hirīya, ed. ʿA. Badawī (Cairo, 1964), pp. 21–36. 11 Al-Maqrīzī, al-Hiṭaṭ, vol. I, pp. 390–391, vol. II, pp. 341–342; H. Halm, ‘The Ismaʿili ˘ Oath of Allegiance (ʿahd) and the “Sessions of Wisdom” (majālis al-ḥikma) in Fatimid Times’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 98–112; Halm, The Fatimids, pp. 23–29 and pp. 41–55. 12 I. K. Poonawala, ‘Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismaʿili Jurisprudence’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 117–143. 13 See, for instance, Šihāb ad-Dīn Aḥmad al-Qalqašandī’s Ṣubḥ al-aʿšā (Cairo, 1331– 1338/1913–1920), vol. VIII, pp. 239–241, vol. XI, pp. 61–66. 14 Al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn and M. Muṣṭafā Ḥilmī (Leiden, 1953), pp. 135, 138, 143, 152, 205–208, 212–214, 224, 260–262. See also al-Muʾayyad fi d-Dīn aš-Šīrāzī, Magˇālis al-Muʿayyadīya, ed. M. Ġālib (Beirut, 1984), vol. III, pp. 220, 256–257, 263–264; R. Strothmann, ed., Gnosis-Texte der Ismailiten (Göttingen, 1943), pp. 8, 82, 102, 154, 175. 15 See S. M. Stern, ‘Cairo as the Centre of the Ismāʿīlī Movement’, in Colloque International sur l’histoire du Caire (Cairo, 1972), pp. 437–450, reprinted in his Studies, pp. 234-256; A. Hamdani, ‘Evolution of the Organisational Structure of the Fāṭimī Daʿwah’, Arabian Studies, 3 (1976), pp. 85–114; P. E. Walker, ‘The Ismaili Daʿwa in the Reign of the Fatimid Caliph al-Ḥākim’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 30 (1993), pp. 161–182; F. Daftary, ‘Dāʿī’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, VI, pp. 590–593. 16 These ‘islands’ are listed in very few Fatimid sources; see, for instance, al-Qāḍi an-Nuʿmān, Taʾwīl ad-daʿāʾim, ed. M. Ḥ. al-Aʿz. amī (Cairo, 1967–1972), vol. II, p. 74, vol. III, pp. 48–49; Abū Yaʿqūb as-Sigˇistānī, I-t bāt an-nubuwwāt, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut, 1966), p. 172. 17 See, for example, Nāṣir-i Husraw, Zād al-musāfirīn, ed. M. Bad- l Ar-Raḥmān (Berlin, ˘ 1341/1923), p. 397. 18 Al-Qāḍi an-Nuʿmān, Taʾwīl ad-daʿāʾim, vol. I, pp. 114–116, 147, 297, vol. II, pp. 116– 117, vol. III, pp. 86–88. See also al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. l-Walīd, Risālat al-mabdaʾ wa l-maʿād, ed. and trans. H. Corbin in his Trilogie Ismaélienne (Paris-Tehran, 1961), text pp. 114–115, translation pp. 167–168. 19 Al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, pp. 134–139, quoted with commentary in H. Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London, 1983), pp. 90–95. See also Nāṣir-i Husraw, Šiš faṣl, ed. ˘ and trans. W. Ivanow (Leiden, 1949), text pp. 34–36, translation pp. 74–77; Strothmann, Gnosis-Texte, pp. 82, 174–177. 20 Al-Muʾayyad fi d-Dīn aš-Šīrāzī, Sīra, ed. M. K. Ḥusayn (Cairo, 1949), especially pp. 94–184. See also Klemm, Memoirs of a Mission, pp. 19–86.

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21 ʿUmāra al-Yamanī, Taʾrih al-Yaman, ed. and trans. H. C. Kay, in his Yaman, its Early ˘ 1892), text pp. 1–102, translation pp. 1–137; Idrīs ʿImād Mediaeval History (London, ad-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-ahbār, vol. VII, ed. and summary English trans. by A. F. Sayyid, P. E. Walker and M.˘ A. Pomerantz as The Fatimids and Their Successors in Yaman (London, 2002), text pp. 5–174, translation pp. 33–73; F. Daftary, ‘Sayyida Ḥurra: The Ismāʿīlī Ṣulayḥid Queen of Yemen’, in G. R. G. Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World (New York, 1998), pp. 117–130. 22 See A. C. Hunsberger, Nasir Khusraw, the Ruby of Badakhshan (London, 2000). 23 For the final decades of the Fatimid dynasty, see F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 256–284. 24 Al-Qalqašandī, Ṣubḥ, vol. IX, pp. 291–297. 25 Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 324–434; idem., ‘Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and the Origins of the Nizārī Ismaʿili Movement’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 181–204.

7 The concept of H.ujja in Ismaili thought

The Arabic word ḥujja has been used in different technical senses by the Ismailis of medieval times.* The term has indeed had a fascinating evolution in Ismaili thought, reflecting the nature of the Ismaili movement of different periods. This brief survey is offered as a token of my appreciation to Heinz Halm, who has contributed so much over the last three decades to modern scholarship in Ismaili and Fatimid studies. The term ḥujja, which appears variously in the Qurʾan (4:165; 42:16; 45:25), means both proof and argument or presentation of proof. In its Qurʾanic usage, for instance, it is to God that ‘the decisive argument’ belongs (6:149); and it was God who gave Abraham the ‘argument’ against his people (6:83). Amongst the Shiʿis, both Ismailis and others, the term has been used in a variety of senses. Originally, in Imāmī Shiʿi theology, the common heritage of the Twelvers and the Ismailis, it referred to that person through whom the inaccessible God becomes accessible and who serves at any given time as evidence, among mankind, of God’s will. It thus meant the ‘proof ’ of God’s presence or will. In this sense, the Prophet Muḥammad was the ḥujja of God (ḥujjat Allāh) and after him the rightful imam of the time is such a ḥujja. It was in its original Shiʿi sense that the application of the term was systematised by the Imāmī (and the later Twelver and Ismaili) Shiʿis to designate the category of prophets and imams and, after the Prophet Muḥammad, more particularly the imams without whom the world could not exist. It was from the time of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), who formulated the fundamental conception of the Imāmī doctrine of the imamate as reported in numerous ḥadīths from him, that the Imāmī Shiʿis had come to use ḥujja as the equivalent of imām. This is reflected in the earliest corpus of Imāmī ḥadīths compiled by al-Kulaynī (d. 329/940), who adopted the title of Kitāb al-ḥujja for the opening book of his al-Kāfī which actually

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deals with the imamate.1 In one of the well-known ḥadīths in that opening book, it is related from Imam al-Ṣādiq that the world cannot exist for a moment without an imam, who is the proof of God (ḥujjat Allāh) on earth. The same traditions, reported mainly from Imams Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. ca. 114/732) and his son and successor Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, the last of the early Shiʿi imams who is acknowledged by both the Ismailis and the Twelvers, are retained by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974) in the opening chapter, entitled Kitāb al-walāya, on the imamate in his major legal compendium which served as the code of the Fatimid state,2 attesting again to the synonymity of the terms ḥujja and imām. On the obverse side of the first Fatimid coins, minted in the year 297/909 in Qayrawān, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī (d. 298/911), who had then just established Fatimid rule for ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī (d. 322/934), had the following formula inscribed: ‘the proof of God has been accomplished’ (balaghat ḥujjat Allāh),3 again reflecting the earliest Shiʿi sense of the term. The original Shiʿi application of the term ḥujja was also clearly retained by the early Ismailis, who had separated on the death of Imam al-Ṣādiq from other Imāmī Shiʿis. The pre-Fatimid Ismailis, thus, held that in every era (ʿaṣr) there is a ḥujja of God, whether he is a prophet (nabī), a messenger prophet (rasūl ) or an imam.4 The early Ismailis used the term ḥujja in a second, more specific sense. It now also referred to that dignitary in their daʿwa organisation through whom their inaccessible concealed imam could become accessible for his followers.5 During the pre-Fatimid period in Ismaili history, known as the dawr al-satr or the ‘period of concealment’, the bulk of the early Ismailis, who had earlier recognised a line of seven manifest ʿAlid imams, acknowledged their seventh and last imam, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Mahdī or qāʾim, the true restorer of Islam whose imminent return was then expected. In this second sense, the ḥujja as a rank in the hierarchy came directly after the imam and had a special significance during the dawr al-satr, lasting until the establishment of the Fatimid state in 297/909. If the world could not exist without ‘proof of God’, it would follow that during the time of the imam’s concealment his chief representative would have to manifest God’s true will to the believers. In other words, during his concealment, Imam Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, acknowledged as the Mahdī or qāʾim, would have to be represented in the community by his ḥujja. On the basis of certain allusions found in early Ismaili sources, it is indeed certain that all the central leaders of the Ismaili daʿwa after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, until 286/899, assumed the rank of ḥujja for themselves.6 It was through the ḥujja that one could establish contact with the exalted ʿayn, namely the imam, and the appellation imam of the time referred to the hidden Mahdi. In other words, the central leaders of the Ismaili daʿwa, who then operated secretly from Khūzistān in Persia and then Salamiyya in Syria, at first acted as the ḥujjas of the hidden Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl and summoned people to give their allegiance to him. But in 286/899, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, the future founder of the Fatimid caliphate, shortly after succeeding to the central leadership of the daʿwa, openly claimed the imamate for himself and his predecessors, the same leaders who had organised and led the Ismaili movement

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after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. In a letter written later by ʿAbd Allāh, he divulges the strict taqiyya practices of his predecessors as central leaders who had to disguise their true identity in order to escape Abbasid persecution.7 As one such dissimulating measure, he explains how they had assumed the rank of the hidden Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl’s ḥujjas, while they themselves were in fact the hidden imams during the period of concealment. As it is now well known, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī’s declarations split the hitherto unified Ismaili daʿwa and community into two rival factions, namely, the loyal Ismailis who accepted his declarations and recognised continuity in the Ismaili imamate after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, and the dissident Qarmaṭīs who retained their original doctrine and expected the return of their seventh and final imam, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, as the Mahdi.8 The dissident Qarmaṭīs founded a powerful state in Bahrayn, eastern Arabia, in the same eventful year, 286/899. The early Ismailis used the term ḥujja in yet a third sense, namely as the designated successor to a speaking-prophet (nāṭiq) or the imam, when they were both alive. This explains why they referred to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib as the Prophet Muḥammad’s ḥujja.9 In this sense, the imam is at first a ḥujja prior to becoming the imam, and the ḥujja becomes an imam after the imam of his time.10 It is interesting to note that the Kitāb al-kashf, comprised of six short early Ismaili treatises collected later by Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. ca. 346/957), allows in fact for several such ḥujjas by stating that only the ‘greatest ḥujja’ (al-ḥujja al-kubrā) succeeds to the imamate after the imam of his time.11 This sense of the term was evidently also maintained under the Fatimids. For instance, the courtier Jawdhar (d. 363/973) relates that the second Fatimid caliph-imam al-Qāʾim (322–334/934–946) had confided to him at an early date that his son Ismāʿīl, the future al-Manṣūr, was his ḥujja and heir-apparent.12 Under the Fatimids, the term ḥujja also referred to a high rank in the Ismaili daʿwa organisation. The daʿwa organisation and its hierarchy or ḥudūd, as well as its functioning, were guarded very secretly, and little information on them is found in the Ismaili texts of the period. At any rate, the daʿwa hierarchy traceable in these texts seems to have had reference to a paradigmatic or utopian state of affairs when the Ismaili imam would rule the entire world. All Ismaili authors of the Fatimid period agreed that the world, presumably the regions outside of the Fatimid state, was divided into 12 jazāʾir, or islands, for daʿwa purposes, with each jazīra representing a somewhat independent region for daʿwa activities.13 Each jazīra was placed under the overall charge of a high-ranking dāʿī called ḥujja. This ḥujja was thus the chief local dāʿī and the highest representative of the daʿwa in the region under his jurisdiction. Of the 12 ḥujjas serving the imam, four occupied special positions, comparable to the positions of the four sacred months amongst the 12 months of the year.14 We have the names of three well-known personalities from the Fatimid period who were ḥujjas of different regions. These included the learned theologian-­ philosopher Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 410/1020) who carried the honorific title ḥujjat al-ʿIrāqayn, meaning the ḥujja of both ʿIrāqs (al-ʿIrāq al-ʿArabī and al-ʿIrāq al-ʿAjamī, covering certain western parts of Persia). And the Persian poet, philosopher, theologian and traveller Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070) was the

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ḥujja (Persian ḥujjat) of Khurāsān, as mentioned in several of his works. There was also al-Malika al-Sayyida Ḥurra Arwā, who became the effective ruler of Ṣulayḥid Yemen from 467/1074 until her death in 532/1138. A capable queen and a most remarkable personality, Arwā was appointed around 477/1084 by the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir as the ḥujja of Yemen, with the additional responsibility of extending the daʿwa to Gujarāt.15 She was the first, and evidently the only, woman in entire Ismaili history to have occupied such a high rank in the daʿwa organisation. The earliest Imāmī heresiographers, al-Nawbakhtī and al-Qummī, who wrote shortly before 286/899, also mention twelve ḥujjas, one for each of the 12 regions of the daʿwa.16 But this usage of the term in connection with a high rank in the regional daʿwa hierarchy attained its full development only under the Fatimids. In the pre-Fatimid period, as noted, the ḥujja was more specifically the full representative of the inaccessible imam in the Ismaili community. On the death of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir in 487/1094, the unified Ismaili daʿwa and community split into two branches, named after his two sons who claimed his heritage. Nizār, the original heir-designate, was deprived of his succession rights by the all-powerful vizier al-Afḍal, who placed Nizār’s much younger brother on the Fatimid throne with the title of al-Mustaʿlī bi’llāh. Al-Mustaʿlī was also recognised as the new Ismaili imam by the central daʿwa organisation in Cairo as well as the Ismailis of Egypt and Yemen. These Ismailis later traced the imamate in al-Mustaʿlī’s progeny. The dispossessed Nizār rose in revolt to assert his rights, but he was eventually defeated and executed in 488/1095. Meanwhile, the Persian Ismailis, who were then already under the central leadership of the dāʿī Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, defended al-Mustanṣir’s original appointment of Nizār and upheld his imamate. Ḥasan, in fact, now founded the Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa, independently of the Fatimid regime. The two factions of the Ismaili daʿwa and community became known as the Mustaʿliyya or Mustaʿlian, and the Nizāriyya or Nizārī, depending on whether they recognised al-Mustaʿlī or Nizār as the rightful imam after al-Mustanṣir. A few years earlier, in 483/1090, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had already established himself at the fortress of Alamūt in northern Persia, signalling the foundation of what was to become the Nizārī Ismaili state of Persia with a subsidiary in Syria. He did not divulge the name of Nizār’s successor to the imamate. Indeed, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124) and his own next two successors at Alamūt, Kiyā Buzurg-Umīd (518–532/1124–1138) and Muḥammad b. Buzurg-Umīd (532–557/1138–1162), did not name any imams after Nizār. It is even possible that the Ismailis of Persia had remained uninformed for some time of Nizār’s tragic fate and continued to await his reappearance. Contemporary numismatic evidence indicates that Nizār’s own name had continued to appear on coins minted at Alamūt for about 70 years after his death in 488/1095.17 In the inscriptions of these rare coins, Nizār’s progeny are blessed anonymously. Be that as it may, the early Nizārī Ismailis were then experiencing another dawr al-satr, when their imam was concealed and inaccessible. In the absence of a manifest imam, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and his next two successors at Alamūt, who also led the

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Nizārī daʿwa, were recognised as the ḥujjas of the inaccessible imam. Drawing on earlier, pre-Fatimid Ismaili traditions, it was now once again held that in the time of dawr al-satr, when the Nizārī imam was in concealment, his ḥujja would represent him amongst his community of followers. In line with this usage, Ḥasan came to be regarded as the imam’s full representative and living proof or ḥujja in the Nizārī community, acting as the custodian of the Nizārī daʿwa until the time of the imam’s emergence. Indeed, in the earliest extant Nizārī treatise from the Alamūt period, written anonymously around 596/1200, Ḥasan is said to have predicted the imminent emergence of the Nizārī imam, while he himself was given the rank of ḥujja of the imam.18 Thus, in the absence of an accessible imam, the community authority depended on his ḥujja, and Ḥasan and his next two successors were recognised as ḥujjas. It is in this context, rooted in the tradition of the early Ismailis, that al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153), the eminent heresiographer and theologian, attributes to the Ismailis the tenet holding that when the imam is manifest, his ḥujja may be hidden, and when the imam is concealed, his ḥujja and dāʿīs must be manifest.19 Al-Shahrastānī, a contemporary of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, was very well informed about Ismaili teachings, including the Nizārī doctrines, and may even have converted secretly to Ismailism. The fourth lord of Alamūt, Ḥasan II (557–561/1162–1166) also initially in some sense claimed the rank of ḥujja before being formally acknowledged as the imam, and a descendant of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir.20 In subsequent Alamūt times, when the imams themselves led their daʿwa, state and community, the ḥujja once again became a rank in the daʿwa hierarchy of the Nizārīs. It now represented the highest position in the daʿwa hierarchy, after the imam; it may even have had reference to the designated successor of an imam.21 In this sense, the rank of ḥujja became even more important for the Nizārīs of the post-Alamūt centuries. In particular, in the revived Nizārī daʿwa organisation of the Anjudān period, covering the ninth/fifteenth to eleventh/seventeenth centuries, the imam was followed by a single ḥujja, designated as ḥujjat-i aʿz.am, or the great ḥujja.22 Residing normally at the central headquarters of the daʿwa, like the imam himself, he was the highest religious and administrative officer of the daʿwa and the imam’s chief assistant. The ḥujja was frequently selected from amongst the close relatives of the imam. The role of the ḥujja was further elaborated in the Nizārī doctrinal works of the Anjudān period. It was, for instance, held that the ḥujja, like the imam himself, was born into his status. Only the ḥujja knew the true essence of the imam and he was thus the revealer of the spiritual truth for the Nizārīs. And it was through him that the Nizārīs could fully recognise the current imam and attain salvation.23 The doctrine of the Anjudān period also emphasised that the imam and his ḥujja could not both be hidden at the same time.24 By the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, when close relations had developed between the Nizārī Ismailis and certain Sufi ṭarīqas or orders, the term ḥujja had gradually lost its importance and fell into disuse. By then, the Persian term pīr, designating a Sufi master (equivalent to the Arabic shaykh), had acquired a wide application among the Nizārīs of Persia, Central Asia and India, and it was used in reference to dāʿīs of different ranks, the local heads of any Nizārī community,

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as well as to the persons of the imam himself and his ḥujja. It may be added here that from early on after the Mongol destruction of their state, the Nizārī imams and their followers had dissimulated under the mantle of Sufism, also adopting the Sufi pīr-murīd (master-disciple) terminology, amongst other disguises, without being affiliated to any of the Sufi orders then spreading in Persia and Central Asia. In the meantime, the term ḥujja had retained a more enduring significance for the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlians, whose imams had all remained hidden after the assassination of the Fatimid caliph al-Āmir in 524/1130 and the simultaneous disappearance of his infant son al-Ṭayyib, the progenitor of the subsequent hidden imams and the eponym of the Ṭayyibiyya. Al-Āmir is acknowledged as the 21st and final manifest imam by the Ṭayyibīs. In the absence of their imams, a dāʿī muṭlaq or a dāʿī with supreme authority has led the Ṭayyibī daʿwa and community. In the Fatimid daʿwa hierarchy, this rank came after those of ḥujja and dāʿī al-balāgh in each region of the daʿwa. In due course, the Ṭayyibīs were split into Dāʾūdī, Sulaymānī and ʿAlawī branches, each one following its own separate line of duʿāt al-muṭlaqayn. For all Ṭayyibī branches (known in India as Bohras), the office of dāʿī muṭlaq became hereditary and the persons occupying it have increasingly appropriated the attributes and functions of the imams. Obedience to the imam, required of all believers, now meant submission to the dāʿī muṭlaq, the concealed imam’s highest representative in the Ṭayyibī community. However, from time to time, certain individuals, especially in the Dāʾūdī branch, claimed to have somehow established contact with the hidden Ṭayyibī imam who had appointed the person in question as his ḥujja. These claimants effectively challenged the authority of the contemporary dāʿī muṭlaq, as they themselves now aspired to the leadership of the community. As an instance of such a claim, mention may be made of an anti-dāʿī movement in the time of the 40th dāʿī muṭlaq of the Dāʾūdī Ṭayyibīs, Hibat Allāh al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn (1168–1193/1754–1779). This movement was led by Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Majdūʿ, the author of the famous catalogue of Ismaili texts, and his son Hibat Allāh. Learned Bohra scholars, both father and son aspired to the leadership of the community. In 1175/1761, Hibat Allāh claimed to have established direct contact with the concealed Ṭayyibī imam through his dāʿī al-balāgh, named as a certain ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥārith. He further claimed to have been appointed by the hidden imam to the particular position of al-ḥujja al-laylī, a rank obviously superior to that of dāʿī muṭlaq. By these claims, supported by his father, Hibat Allāh evidently expected the incumbent Dāʾūdī dāʿī muṭlaq to yield his position to him. The dissenters were eventually chased out of Ujjain, their original seat, by the loyal Dāʾūdīs. Subsequently, Hibat Allāh conducted his campaign with very limited success in a few towns, and his followers became known as Hiptias (Hibtias) after his name.25 Today the Hiptias are almost extinct except for a few families in Ujjain. Another instance of a Dāʾūdī Bohra claiming the position of the ḥujja occurred in the time of the 49th dāʿī, Muḥammad Burhān al-Dīn (1308–1323/1891–1906). By then, internal conflicts and opposition to the authority of the Dāʾūdī dāʿī muṭlaq had once again become rampant within the Bohra community, posing challenges to his leadership and resulting in another splinter group. In 1315/1897, a young

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Dāʾūdī Bohra called ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Jīwājī arrived in Nagpur claiming that he was in direct communication with the hidden Ṭayyibī imam who had now appointed him as his ḥujja. He acquired a group of supporters who became known as the Mahdibaghwalas, or the Mahdibagh party, named after their place of residence in Nagpur. This Dāʾūdī subgroup, with its non-hereditary leadership, has survived to the present day. A small group of the Mahdibaghwalas, holding that the dawr al-satr in Ṭayyibī history had actually ended and that the community had entered the dawr al-kashf or ‘period of manifestation’, split from the main body of this group and became known as the Atbāʿ-i Malak Vakīl, or Artaliswalas (literally, ‘forty-eighters’). This splinter group believes that in the current dawr al-kashf (corresponding to the circumstances prevailing in the period of spiritual qiyāma or resurrection), it is no longer necessary to observe the prescriptions of the Islamic law, such as praying and fasting. The present head of this curious Dāʾūdī subgroup is Malik Shahanshah Tayyibhai Razzak; he has evidently also claimed the imamate for himself.26 Thus, in one of its latest manifestations, the application of the term ḥujja has once again resulted, in a roundabout way, in a claim that makes this term synonymous with that of the imam, reminiscent of the early Shiʿi traditions.

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in H. Biesterfeldt and V. Klemm, ed., Differenz und Dynamik im Islam. Festschrift für Heinz Halm zum 70. Geburtstag/Difference and Dynamism in Islam. Festschrift for Heinz Halm on his 70th Birthday (Würzburg: Ergon, 2012), pp. 55–65.  1 Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī, al-Uṣūl min al-kāfī, ed. ʿA. A. al-Ghaffārī (Tehran, 1388/1968), vol. 1, pp. 168–548.  2 Al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. A. A. A. Fyzee (Cairo, 1951–1961), vol. 1, pp. 14–98. English trans. A. A. A. Fyzee, revised by I. K. Poonawala, The Pillars of Islam (New Delhi, 2002–2004), vol. 1, pp. 18–122.  3 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa, ed. Wadād al-Qāḍī (Beirut, 1970), p. 217. English trans. H. Haji, Founding the Fatimid State: The Rise of an Early Islamic Empire (London, 2006), p. 179.  4 Abu’l-Qāsim Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, ed. R. Strothmann (London, etc. 1952), pp. 12, 60.   5 See W. Madelung, ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 61ff.  6 Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, pp. 97ff., 102ff., and Madelung, ‘Imamat’, pp. 54–58.   7 For the text of this letter, entitled Kitāb arasalahu al-Mahdī ilā nāḥiyat al-Yaman, preserved by Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman in his Kitāb al-farāʾiḍ, see Ḥ. F. al-Hamdānī (ed. and English trans.), On the Genealogy of Fatimid Caliphs (Cairo, 1958), Arabic text pp. 9–14.   8 For further details, see F. Daftary, ‘A Major Schism in the Early Ismāʿīlī Movement’, Studia Islamica, 77 (1993), pp. 123–139, and his The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2007), pp. 116–126.  9 Ibn Ḥawshab (Manṣūr al-Yaman), Kitāb al-rushd wa’l-hidāya, fragment ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn, in W. Ivanow, ed., Collectanea (Leiden, 1948), p. 209, and Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, pp. 55, 60, 125. See also H. Halm, Kosmologie und Heilslehre der frühen Ismāʿīlīya (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 24–28. 10 Ibn Ḥawshab, Kitāb al-rushd, p. 201. 11 Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, p. 119.

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12 Abū ʿAlī Manṣūr al-Jawdharī, Sīrat al-ustādh Jawdhar, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn and M. ʿA. Shaʿīra (Cairo, 1954), p. 40. 13 See al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim, ed. Muḥammad Ḥ. al-Aʿz. amī (Cairo, 1967– 1972), vol. 2, p. 74, vol. 3, pp. 48–49; Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt al-nubūʾāt, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut, 1966), p. 172; and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 217ff. 14 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 114–116, 147, 297, vol. 2, pp. 116–117, vol. 3, pp. 86–88, also his Asās al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut, 1960), pp. 79–80, 127, 190, 224. 15 Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, vol. 7, ed. Ayman F. Sayyid, with summary English trans. by P. E. Walker and M. A. Pomerantz, as The Fatimids and Their Successors in Yaman (London, 2002), text pp. 150–157, and F. Daftary, ‘Sayyida Hurra: The Ismāʿīlī Ṣulayḥid Queen of Yemen’, in G. R. G. Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World (New York, 1998), pp. 117–130. 16 Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, Kitāb firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931), p. 63, and Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qummī, Kitāb al-maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran, 1963), pp. 84–85. 17 See P. Casanova, ‘Monnaie des Assassins de Perse’, Revue Numismatique, 3 série 11 (1883), pp. 343–352; G. C. Miles, ‘Coins of the Assassins of Alamūt’, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 3 (1972), pp. 155–162; and H. Hamdan and A. Vardanyan, ‘Ismaili Coins from the Alamut Period’, in P. Willey, Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria (London, 2005), pp. 288–307. 18 Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, in W. Ivanow, ed., Two Early Ismaili Treatises (Bombay, 1933), pp. 21–22; English trans. in M. G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins (The Hague, 1955), pp. 301–302. See also Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Haft bāb, ed. and English trans. W. Ivanow (Bombay, 1959), text pp. 23, 43, translation pp. 23, 43. 19 Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. ʿA. M. al-Wakīl (Cairo, 1387/1968), vol. 1, p. 192. 20 See Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, p. 358ff. 21 Ibid., p. 382. 22 Mustanṣir bi’llāh (II), Pandiyāt-i javānmardī, ed. and English trans. W. Ivanow (Leiden, 1953), text pp. 62ff., translation pp. 39ff.; Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Haft bāb, text pp. 49–50, translation pp. 49–50; and Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī, Taṣnīfāt, ed. W. Ivanow (Tehran, 1961), pp. 3, 23, 58, 113ff. 23 Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Haft bāb, text pp. 17, 18, 33, 43, 50, 64–65, translation pp. 17–18, 33, 43–44, 50, 64–65; Khayrkhwāh, Taṣnīfāt, pp. 20, 26, 52, 77, 78, 82, 86, 89–90, 92–93, 100, 103, 116, 118, 120; idem., Faṣl dar bayān-i shinākht-i imām, ed. W. Ivanow (3rd ed., Tehran, 1960), pp. 11, 13, 21–22, 28, 32. 24 Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Haft bāb, text p. 43, translation pp. 43–44, and Khayrkhwāh, Faṣl, pp. 2, 4–5. 25 Al-Majdūʿ, Fahrasat al-kutub, ed. ʿA. N. Munzavī (Tehran, 1966), pp. 108–109, 119; Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Mullā Jīwābhāʾī Rāmpūrī, Mawsim-i bahār (Bombay, 1301– 1311/1884–1893), vol. 3, pp. 440–526 (in Gujarātī transcribed in Arabic); W. Ivanow, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliographical Survey (Tehran, 1963), pp. 93–94; and I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977), pp. 204–206. 26 A. Husain, Gulzare Daudi for the Bohras of India (Ahmedabad, 1920), pp. 49–53; J. N. Hollister, The Shiʿa of India (London, 1953), pp. 295–296; S. C. Misra, Muslim Communities in Gujarat (New York, 1964), pp. 51–52; A. A. Engineer, The Bohras (New Delhi, 1980), pp. 138–139; and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 288–289.

Bibliography Primary Sources Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Haft bāb, ed. and English trans. W. Ivanow (Bombay, 1959). Anonymous, Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, in W. Ivanow, ed., Two Early Ismaili Treatises (Bombay, 1933), pp. 4–44.

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al-Hamdānī, Ḥusayn F. (ed. and English trans.), On the Genealogy of Fatimid Caliphs (Cairo, 1958). Ibn Ḥawshab (Manṣūr al-Yaman), Abu’l-Qāsim al-Ḥasan, Kitāb al-rushd wa’l-hidāya, fragment ed. Muḥammad Kāmil Ḥusayn, in W. Ivanow, ed., Collectanea (Leiden, 1948), pp. 185–213. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, vol. 7, ed. Ayman F. Sayyid, with summary English trans. by P. E. Walker and M. A. Pomerantz in The Fatimids and Their Successors in Yaman (London, 2002). Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Abu’l-Qāsim, Kitāb al-kashf, ed. R. Strothmann (London, 1952). al-Jawdharī, Abū ʿAlī Manṣūr, Sīrat al-ustādh Jawdhar, ed. Muḥammad Kāmil Ḥusayn and M. ʿA. Shaʿīra (Cairo, 1954). Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī, Muḥammad Riḍā b. Khwāja Sulṭān Ḥusayn, Faṣl dar bayān-i shinākht-i imām, ed. W. Ivanow (3rd ed., Tehran, 1960). Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī, Muḥammad Riḍā b. Khwāja Sulṭān Ḥusayn, Taṣnīfāt, ed. W. Ivanow (Tehran, 1961). al-Kulaynī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb, al-Uṣūl min al-kāfī, ed. ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī (Tehran, 1388/1968). al-Majdūʿ, Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl, Fahrasat al-kutub wa’l-rasāʾil, ed. ʿAlī Naqī Munzavī (Tehran, 1966). Mustanṣir bi’llāh (II), Pandiyāt-i javānmardī, ed. and English trans. W. Ivanow (Leiden, 1953). al-Nawbakhtī, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā, Kitāb firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931). al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa, Asās al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut, 1960). al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa, Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. Asaf A. A. Fyzee (Cairo, 1951–1961). English trans. Asaf A. A. Fyzee, completely revised by I. K. Poonawala, The Pillars of Islam (New Delhi, 2002–2004). al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa, Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa, ed. Wadād al-Qāḍī (Beirut, 1970). English trans. H. Haji, Founding the Fatimid State: The Rise of an Early Islamic Empire (London, 2006). al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa, Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim, ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Aʿz. amī (Cairo, 1967–1972). al-Qummī, Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh, Kitāb al-maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran, 1963). Rāmpūrī, Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Mullā Jīwābhāʾī, Mawsim-i bahār (Bombay, 1301–1311/1884– 1893). al-Shahrastānī, Abu’l-Fatḥ Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm, Kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz M. al-Wakīl (Cairo, 1387/1968). al-Sijistānī, Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Aḥmad, Ithbāt al-nubūʾāt (nubuwwāt), ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut, 1966).

Studies Casanova, Paul, ‘Monnaie des Assassins de Perse’, Revue Numismatique, 3 série, 11 (1883), pp. 343–352. Daftary, Farhad, ‘A Major Schism in the Early Ismāʿīlī Movement’, Studia Islamica, 77 (1993), pp. 123–139. Daftary, Farhad, ‘Sayyida Hurra: The Ismāʿīlī Ṣulayḥid Queen of Yemen’, in Gavin R. G. Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World (New York, 1998), pp. 117–130. Daftary, Farhad, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2007). Engineer, Asghar Ali, The Bohras (New Delhi, 1980).

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Halm, Heinz, Kosmologie und Heilslehre der frühen Ismāʿīlīya: Eine Studie zur islamischen Gnosis (Wiesbaden, 1978). Hamdan, Hussein and Vardanyan, A., ‘Ismaili Coins from the Alamut Period’, in Peter Willey, Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria (London, 2005), pp. 288–307. Hodgson, Marshall G. S., The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs against the Islamic World (The Hague, 1955). Hollister, John N., The Shiʿa of India (London, 1953). Husain, Abdul, Bhai Mulla, Mian Gulzare Daudi for the Bohras of India (Ahmedabad, 1920). Ivanow, Wladimir, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliographical Survey (Tehran, 1963). Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 43–135. Miles, George C., ‘Coins of the Assassins of Alamūt’, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 3 (1972), pp. 155–162. Misra, Satish C., Muslim Communities in Gujarat (New York, 1964). Poonawala, Ismail K., Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977).

8 Cyclical time and sacred history in medieval Ismaili thought

It was in 148/765 that the earliest groups identifiable as Ismailis separated from the rest of the Imāmī Shiʿis,* centred in Kūfa in southern Iraq.1 By the early 260s/870s, when numerous dāʿīs appeared in many regions of the Muslim world, the Ismailis had organised a dynamic, revolutionary movement. The Ismailis now referred to their religio-political campaign simply as al-daʿwa (the mission) or al-daʿwa al-hādiya (the rightly guiding mission). The central aim of the early Ismaili daʿwa was to install the ʿAlid imam recognised by the Ismaili Shiʿis to the position of leadership over all Muslims, in rivalry with the ʿAbbasid caliph in Baghdad. The rapid success of the early Ismaili daʿwa culminated in the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909 in North Africa. The religio-political daʿwa of the Ismailis had finally led to the establishment of a state or dawla headed by the Ismaili imam. In the Fatimid period (297–567/909–1171), when the Ismailis possessed a flourishing state of their own, they elaborated a diversity of intellectual traditions and institutions of learning, making important contributions to Islamic thought and culture. The basic framework of an Ismaili system of religious thought was, however, already laid down during the pre-Fatimid phase of Ismaili history. In fact, the Ismaili intellectual traditions had acquired their distinctive forms and expressions by 286/899 when the Ismaili daʿwa and community were split into rival Fatimid Ismaili and Qarmaṭī factions.2 The distinctive teachings of the early Ismailis were further developed by the Fatimid Ismailis who also modified certain aspects of early Ismailism, while the Qarmaṭīs followed a separate course in the doctrinal field. In elaborating their religious system, the early Ismailis emphasised a fundamental distinction between the exoteric (z.āhir) and the esoteric (bāṭin) dimensions of the sacred scriptures and the religious commandments and prohibitions. Accordingly, they held that the revealed scriptures, above all the Qurʾan, and the laws laid down in them, had their apparent or literal meaning, the z.āhir, which had to be distinguished from their inner meaning or the true spiritual reality, hidden in

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the bāṭin. They further held that the z.āhir, or the religious laws enunciated by the messenger-prophets, underwent periodical changes while the bāṭin, containing the spiritual truths (ḥaqāʾiq), remained immutable and eternal. The hidden truths could be made apparent through taʾwīl, or esoteric exegesis, the process of educing the bāṭin from the z.āhir. Similar processes of exegesis or hermeneutics existed in early Judaeo-Christian as well as Gnostic traditions, but the immediate antecedents of Ismaili taʾwīl, also known as bāṭinī taʾwīl, may be traced to the Shiʿi milieus of the second/third century in southern Iraq, the cradle of Shiʿism. The Ismailis also taught that in every age, the esoteric world of spiritual reality could be accessible only to the elite (khawāṣṣ) of mankind, as distinct from the common people (ʿawāmm) who were merely capable of understanding the z.āhir, the apparent meaning of the revelations. In the era of Islam, the eternal truths of religion could be revealed only to those who had been properly initiated into the Ismaili daʿwa and community and recognised the teaching authority of the Prophet Muḥammad’s waṣī or legatee, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, and the imams who succeeded him in the Ḥusaynid ʿAlid line. They alone, collectively designated as the ahl al-taʾwīl or ‘people of taʾwīl’, represented the sources of knowledge and authoritative teaching (taʿlīm) in the era of Islam. These authorised guides were, in fact, the very same people referred to in the Qurʾan (3:7) by the expression al-rāsikhūn fi’l-ʿilm or ‘those possessing firm knowledge’.3 The centrality of taʾwīl for the early Ismailis is attested by the fact that the bulk of their literature comprises the taʾwīl genre of writing which seeks justification for Ismaili doctrines in Qurʾanic verses. The Ismailis taught that the eternal truths, the ḥaqāʾiq, hidden in the bāṭin, represented the true message common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, the truths of these monotheistic Abrahamic religions recognised in the Qurʾan had been veiled by different exoteric laws as required by changing circumstances. Fully aware of their ‘ecumenical’ approach, the early Ismailis developed the broader implications of these truths in terms of a gnostic system of thought, a system that represented a distinctly Ismaili esoteric worldview. The two main components of this system were a cyclical history of revelation and a cosmological doctrine with its integral soteriology. By the early 280s/890s, the Ismailis had already developed a cyclical interpretation of time and the sacred history of mankind, which they applied to the Judaeo-Christian revelations as well as to a variety of pre-Islamic religions such as Zoroastrianism, Mazdakism and Manichaeism. They conceived of time as a progression of cycles or eras, referred to as dawrs (Arabic plural, adwār), with a beginning and an end. On the basis of their eclectic temporal view, reflecting Greek, Judaeo-Christian and Gnostic influences as well as Shiʿi eschatological ideas, the Ismailis elaborated a view of sacred history in terms of eras of different prophets recognised in the Qurʾan. The prophetic interpretation of the religious history of mankind was moreover combined with the Ismaili doctrine of the imamate which had been inherited from the earlier Imāmī Shiʿis. According to their cyclical view, the Ismailis believed from early on that the sacred history of mankind proceeded through seven prophetic eras of various

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durations, each one inaugurated by a speaker–prophet or enunciator (nāṭiq) of a divinely revealed message which in its exoteric (z.āhir) aspect contained a religious law (sharīʿa). The nāṭiqs of the first six eras of human history were Adam, Noah (Nūḥ), Abraham (Ibrāhīm), Moses (Mūsā), Jesus (ʿĪsā) and Muḥammad, respectively. These nāṭiqs had enunciated the outer (z.āhir) aspects of each revelation with its rituals, commandments and prohibitions, without explaining details of its inner (bāṭin) meaning. For that purpose, each nāṭiq was succeeded by a legatee (waṣī), also called the ‘silent one’ (ṣāmit), and later the ‘foundation’ (asās), who revealed to the elite the esoteric truths (ḥaqāʾiq) contained in the inner (bāṭin) dimension of that era’s message. The first six waṣīs of sacred history were Seth (Shīth), Shem (Sām), Ishmael (Ismāʿīl), Aaron (Hārūn), Simon Peter (Shamʿūn al-Ṣafāʾ) and ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. In every era (dawr), each waṣī was, in turn, succeeded by seven imams, also called atimmāʾ (singular, mutimm, completer), who guarded the true meaning of the divine scriptures and laws in both their z.āhir and bāṭin aspects. The seventh imam (or mutimm) of every dawr would rise in rank to become the nāṭiq of the following era, abrogating the sharīʿa of the previous era and proclaiming a new one. This pattern would change only in the seventh, final dawr of hierohistory.4 In the sixth dawr, the era of the Prophet Muḥammad and Islam, the seventh imam was Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq who, according to the bulk of the early Ismailis, had gone into concealment as the Mahdi. On his reappearance, as the Mahdi or qāʾim, the restorer of justice on earth and true Islam, he would become the seventh nāṭiq, initiating the final era. However, unlike the previous speakers, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl would not bring a new sharīʿa to replace the sacred law of Islam. Instead, as is expected in the final eschatological age, his own mission would consist of fully revealing to all mankind the hitherto hidden esoteric truths (ḥaqāʾiq) concealed in all the preceding revelations, the immutable truths of all religions which had previously been accessible only to the elite (khawāṣṣ) of mankind. In this final, messianic age, there would be no need for religious laws. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl would thus unite in himself the ranks of nāṭiq and waṣī, and would also be the last of the imams, the eschatological Imam-Mahdi. In the final, millenarian age of pure spiritual knowledge, the ḥaqāʾiq would be completely freed from all their veils and symbolism. In the messianic era of the Mahdi, there would no longer be any distinction between the z.āhir and the bāṭin, the letter of the law and its inner spirituality. On his advent, heralding the end of time and human history, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl would rule in justice as the eschatological qāʾim before the consummation of the physical world.5 The whole cycle from Adam to the advent of the qāʾim as the seventh nāṭiq was also called the ‘era of concealment’ (dawr al-satr), because the spiritual truths (ḥaqāʾiq) were then concealed in the laws. By contrast, the seventh era, when the truths would be fully revealed to mankind by the qāʾim, was designated as the ‘era of manifestation or unveiling’ (dawr al-kashf  ). The Ismaili cyclical view of sacred history was evidently first committed to writing by the dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, notably Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nasafī (d. 332/943), whose major work Kitāb al-maḥṣūl has not survived, and Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934), whose ideas on the subject are mainly expounded in his Kitāb

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al-iṣlāḥ. However, these authors and their early successors, especially Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971), disagreed on certain details of the seven prophetic eras. Al-Nasafī and al-Rāzī also devoted much energy and creative thinking to accommodating a number of pre-Islamic religions, notably those of the Zoroastrians, Manichaeans and Sabaeans, within their scheme of the seven revelational eras of sacred history, assigning these religions to specific dawrs and nāṭiqs. Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī also introduced the concept of an ‘interim period’ (dawr al-fatra), marked by the absence of imams and occurring at the end of each prophetic dawr, between the disappearance of the seventh imam of that era and the advent of the nāṭiq of the following era. According to him, the Zoroastrians, for example, belonged to the fourth era, the dawr of Moses, and Zoroaster himself had appeared during the interim period at the end of that dawr.6 It was in the light of such doctrines, rooted in a syncretic and ecumenical world view, that the Ismailis began to develop their system of thought, a system that appealed not only to Muslims belonging to different communities of interpretation and social strata but also to adherents of a diversity of non-Islamic religious traditions. Of all the Muslim communities, only the Ismailis accommodated in so comprehensive and overt a fashion, in their cyclical scheme of sacred history, the Judaeo-Christian traditions as well as a variety of other pre-Islamic Iranian religions, which were at the time still enjoying some prominence in Persia and Central Asia. The cyclical prophetic view of sacred history elaborated by the early Ismailis was retained by the Fatimid Ismailis, who refined or modified certain aspects of it, especially in connection with the duration of the sixth dawr, the era of Islam.7 In the aftermath of the schism of the year 286/899 in the Ismaili movement, the dissident Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn and elsewhere continued to adhere to the earlier scheme, and awaited the return of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl who as the Mahdi and the seventh nāṭiq was expected to end the era of Islam and the validity of its sharīʿa. The Qarmaṭīs remained intensely preoccupied with prophesies on the advent of the Mahdi and the circumstances of the seventh dawr which would supersede the era of Islam. The sacrilegious acts of the Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn in Mecca in 317/930, when they also dislodged the Black Stone (al-ḥajar al-aswad) from the corner of the Kaʿba and then kept it for some 20 years at their new capital al-Aḥsāʾ, should be viewed in this context. On the other hand, the Fatimid Ismailis, who now upheld continuity in the imamate, allowed for more than one heptad of imams in the era of Islam. For them, the seventh dawr, earlier defined as the spiritual age of the Mahdi, had now completely lost its messianic appeal. The final age, whatever its nature, was henceforth postponed indefinitely into the future; and the functions of the eschatological Mahdi or qāʾim, who would initiate the ‘Day of Resurrection’ (yawm al-qiyāma) at the end of time, were similar to those envisaged by other Muslim communities. Meanwhile, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl himself was not expected to return as the Mahdi; his functions in its original sense had been taken over by his khulafāʾ, vicegerents who eventually ruled as the Fatimid caliph-imams. Furthermore, some dāʿī-authors of the Fatimid period introduced new concepts into the cyclical scheme. Nāṣir-i

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Khusraw (d. after 462/1070), the chief dāʿī in Khurāsān, for instance, distinguished between a grand cycle (dawr-i mihīn), encompassing the entire sequence of the seven prophetic eras, and a small cycle (dawr-i kihīn), coinciding with the latter part of the grand cycle and including the era of Islam and thereafter.8 Later Ismailis introduced further innovations into the earlier interpretation of sacred history expressed in terms of seven prophetic dawrs. On the basis of astronomical calculations, the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismailis of Yemen, who essentially retained the Fatimid traditions in the doctrinal field and the earlier Ismaili interest in cyclical hierohistory and cosmology, conceived of a grand aeon (kawr aʿz.am) comprising countless cycles, each divided into seven dawrs, which would be consummated in the qāʾim of the ‘Great Resurrection’ (qiyāmat al-qiyāmāt). The grand aeon, estimated to last 360,000 times 360,000 years (or 130 billion years), was held to progress through successive cycles of concealment (satr) and manifestation (kashf or z.uhūr), each composed of seven dawrs. An unknown number of successive cycles of concealment and manifestation had occurred until the present cycle of satr, which was initiated by the historical Adam of the Qurʾan, the first nāṭiq of the present age. When this cycle is closed by the seventh nāṭiq and the expected qāʾim of the current cycle, there will begin another cycle of manifestation, inaugurated by a partial Adam (Ādam al-juzʾī), and so on. The countless alternations of these cycles will continue until the appearance of the final qāʾim, proclaiming the final qiyāma, the ‘Resurrection of the Resurrections’ (qiyāmat al-qiyāmāt), at the end of the grand cycle. The consummation of the grand aeon will also mark the end of the Ṭayyibī Ismaili mythohistory.9 The early Nizārī Ismailis under the initial leadership of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124) established a principality in Persia, with a branch in Syria. The Nizārīs, who enjoyed political prominence during the Alamūt period of their history (487–654/1094–1256), followed a religious and political path of their own and they, unlike the Ṭayyibī Ismailis, were not particularly concerned with the earlier cyclical view of religious history, though they generally continued to adhere to the earlier scheme of seven prophetic dawrs. Confronting the enmity of the Saljuq Turks and others, the Nizārīs of Persia, who were more preoccupied with their survival, did not produce many learned scholars. Nevertheless they did maintain a sophisticated outlook and elaborated their teachings revolving around the central Shiʿi doctrine of taʿlīm, or authoritative teaching by the imam of the time. In the year 559/1164, the Nizārī imam proclaimed the qiyāma or ‘Resurrection’ symbolically for his community. Thereafter, the implications of this declaration were elaborated in terms of the doctrine of the qiyāma, which also introduced a further element into the cyclical sacred history in the form of the figure of the imamqāʾim, the imam inaugurating the era of qiyāma, also making every Nizārī imam potentially a qāʾim. In elaborating the doctrine of the qiyāma, the Nizārīs allowed for transitory eras of resurrection during the dawr of the Prophet Muḥammad who, like the preceding five nāṭiqs, had initiated an era of concealment (dawr al-satr). In the era of Islam, and in special honour of Muḥammad’s greatness, there could be occasional partial eras of resurrection, at the discretion of the current Nizārī imams,

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each offering a foretaste of the Great Resurrection that would occur at the end of the sixth era initiated by the Prophet Muḥammad. The Great Resurrection would inaugurate the final, seventh era in the sacred history of mankind. As noted, the condition of qiyāma could in principle be granted at any time by the current Nizārī imam, who was potentially also a qāʾim. Consequently, in the era of Islam and the Prophet Muḥammad, life could alternate at the will of the current imam between eras of qiyāma and satr, the normal condition of human life. And using Ismaili taʾwīl, the Nizārīs interpreted the qiyāma spiritually as the manifestation of the unveiled truths (ḥaqāʾiq) in the person of the Nizārī imam, while satr meant the concealment of the true spiritual reality of the imam, when truths were again hidden in the bāṭin of the laws, requiring the strict observance of the sharīʿa and taqiyya (precautionary dissimulation).10 With the destruction of the Nizārī Ismaili state in Persia by the Mongol hordes in 654/1256, the Nizārīs lost their political prominence. For centuries there­ after they lived in scattered communities disguising themselves under the covers of Sufism, Sunnism and Twelver Shiʿism. During the Anjudān revival in Nizārī daʿwa and literary activities, lasting some two centuries until around 1100/1688, the Nizārīs essentially reiterated the doctrines elaborated during the earlier Alamūt period of their history, with only occasional references to cyclical time and sacred history.11

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in K. D’hulster and J. Van Steenbergen, ed., Continuity and Change in the Realms of Islam: Studies in Honour of Professor Urbain Vermeulen (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), pp. 151–158.   1 On the earliest phase of the Ismaili movement, see al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931), pp. 57–58, 60–61; Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qummī, Kitāb al-maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran, 1963), pp. 80–81, 83; and F. Daftary, ‘The Earliest Ismāʿīlīs’, Arabica, 38 (1991), pp. 220ff.; reprinted in E. Kohlberg, Shīʿism (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 235ff.  2 See F. Daftary, ‘A Major Schism in the Early Ismāʿīlī Movement’, Studia Islamica, 77 (1993), pp. 123–139; reprinted in revised form in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London, 2005), pp. 45–61.  3 See al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, al-Majālis al-Muʾayyadiyya, vol. 1, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1974), pp. 347–351.  4 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, pp. 61–63; Qummī, al-Maqālāt, pp. 83–85; and W. Madelung, ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 48ff.  5 Ibn Ḥawshab Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-rushd wa’l-hidāya, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn, in W. Ivanow, ed., Collectanea (Leiden, 1948), pp. 189, 191–192, 197ff.; Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr alYaman, Kitāb al-kashf, ed. R. Strothmann (London, etc., 1952), pp. 14ff., 50, 97, 103– 104, 109, 113–114, 132–133, 138, 150, 169–170; Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-iṣlāḥ, ed. Ḥ. Mīnūchihr and M. Muḥaqqiq (Tehran, 1377/1998), pp. 211–220 and elsewhere; Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt al-nubuwwāt (al-nubuʾāt), ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1966), pp. 181–193; idem., Kitāb al-iftikhār, ed. I. K. Poonawala (Beirut, 2000), pp. 123–137; and H. Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London, 1983), pp. 1–58.  6 Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, al-Iṣlāḥ, pp. 148–167; al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt, pp. 82–83; Corbin, Cyclical Time, pp. 187–193; S. M. Stern, Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism (Leiden/Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 30–46; and F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 234–239.

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  7 See al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Asās al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut, 1960), pp. 40–368; S. M. Stern, ‘Heterodox Ismāʿīlism at the Time of al-Muʿizz’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 17 (1955), pp. 10–33; reprinted in his Studies, pp. 257–288, and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 176–179, 218–220, 234.  8 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Wajh-i dīn, ed. G. R. Aʿvānī (Tehran, 1977), pp. 62–64, 126–127, 169–170, 245, 256, 331.   9 These ideas are expounded in the metaphysical system of the Ṭayyibī dāʿīs who articulated their gnostic ḥaqāʾiq system in numerous treatises. See, for instance, Ibrāhīm b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥāmidī (d. 557/1162), Kitāb kanz al-walad, ed. M. Ghālib (Wiesbaden, 1971), pp. 149ff., 205–227, 232ff., 258–272; al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī Ibn al-Walīd (d. 667/1268), Risālat al-mabdaʾ wa’l-maʿād, ed. H. Corbin in his Trilogie Ismaélienne (Tehran-Paris, 1961), text pp. 100ff., 121–128; and Corbin, Cyclical Time, pp. 37–58. 10 Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍat al-taslīm, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow (Leiden, 1950), text pp. 56–63, 67–68, 83–84, 101–102, 110, 117–119, 128–149; ed. and trans. S. J. Badakhchani as Paradise of Submission: A Medieval Treatise on Ismaili Thought (London, 2005), text pp. 75–83, 87–89, 108–110, 134–135, 146, 156–159, 169–197. 11 See, for example, Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī (d. after 904/1498), Haft bāb, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow (Bombay, 1959), text, pp. 38–44.

9

ʿAli in classical Ismaili ­theology

Representing the second most important Shiʿi Muslim community, after the Ithnāʿasharīs or the Twelver Shiʿis, the Ismailis are now scattered across more than 25 countries of Asia, Africa, Europe and North America.* In the course of their complex history, the Ismailis subdivided into a number of major factions and minor groupings. Today the bulk of the Ismaili population of the world, numbering several million, belong to the Nizārī branch recognising H. H. Prince Karim Aga Khan as their 49th imam or spiritual leader; and the Aga Khan traces his genealogy directly to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, the first Shiʿi imam, and his spouse Fāṭima, the Prophet Muḥammad’s daughter. In order to contextualise the role of ʿAlī in classical Ismaili theology, the focus of our attention in this chapter, it is first necessary to briefly review the relevant phases in medieval Ismaili history and theological tradition. Needless to add that most of what is now known about Ismaili history and teachings was not known until the 1930s, which marked the initiation of modern Ismaili studies based on the recovery of numerous Ismaili manuscripts preserved secretly in Yemen, Syria, Central Asia, India and elsewhere. For almost a millennium, until modern progress in the field, the Ismailis had been studied and evaluated on the basis of evidence collected or often fabricated by their enemies, especially the Sunnī polemicists and the Christian Crusaders of the medieval times. As a result, a host of legends and misconceptions had been transmitted on Ismaili teachings and practices. However, modern scholarship in Ismaili studies has already necessitated a rewriting of Ismaili history. This study draws extensively on the results of modern scholarship on Ismaili thought in general, and on the role of ʿAlī within Ismaili theological tradition in particular. For the purposes of this study, three phases may be distinguished in the development of classical Ismaili theology, namely, the early pre-Fatimid, the Fatimid and the Nizārī Ismaili phase, especially during the Alamūt period. The Ismailis split

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from the rest of the Imāmī Shiʿis in 148/765, on the death of Imam Djaʿfar al-Ṣādiq who had consolidated Imāmī Shiʿism, the common heritage of the Ismaili and the Twelver Shiʿis. The earliest splinter groups identifiable as Ismaili appeared in southern Iraq, acknowledging the claims of al-Ṣādiq’s eldest son Ismāʿīl (hence the designation Ismāʿīliyya) and the latter’s son Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl to the imamate.1 By the middle of the third/ninth century, a dynamic and rapidly expanding revolutionary movement had already been organised secretly by a line of central leaders, later recognised as ʿAlid imams from the progeny of Imam al-Ṣādiq. This religiopolitical movement, designated by its members as al-daʿwa or al-daʿwa al-hādiya (the rightly guiding mission), aimed at uprooting the ʿAbbāsids and installing the Ismaili imam belonging to the Prophet’s family or the ahl al-bayt to the leadership of Muslims everywhere. The revolutionary message of the Ismaili daʿwa was propagated by a network of dāʿīs or missionaries operating clandestinely in many regions of the Islamic world, from Central Asia and Persia to Iraq, eastern Arabia (then known as Bahrayn), Yemen and North Africa. The early Ismaili daʿwa appealed to different social strata, ranging from the indigenous Berbers of North Africa and Arab tribesmen of Yemen to villagers of southern Iraq and the ruling elites of Persia and Central Asia. In particular, in the aftermath of the death of the 11th imam of the Imāmīs (later designated as Twelvers) and the simultaneous disappearance of his son in 260/874, large numbers of Imāmī Shiʿis responded to the summons of the Ismaili dāʿīs. The early Ismailis also laid the foundations of Ismaili theology and other intellectual traditions which were further elaborated in subsequent times.2 The success of the early Ismaili daʿwa was crowned in 297/909 by the establishment of the Fatimid state or dawla. The Ismaili imam, who had hitherto led a revolutionary movement, was now installed in a remote corner of the Islamic world in North Africa to the first Shiʿi caliphate in rivalry with the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. During the Fatimid period, representing a glorious age in Ismaili tradition, the Ismailis had their own state and were free for the first time to practise their faith openly within the Fatimid dominions, which soon extended from North Africa to Egypt, Palestine and Syria.3 At the same time, Ismaili thought and literature attained their summit in the classical texts produced during the Fatimid period on a variety of exoteric and esoteric subjects, ranging from biographical and historical works to elaborate theological and philosophical treatises, as well as major texts related to taʾwīl or esoteric exegesis which became a hallmark of Ismailism.4 These texts, representing diverse literary traditions, were written by numerous learned Ismaili dāʿīs, who were at the same time the scholars of their community. In this connection, particular mention should be made of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sidjistānī (d. after 361/971), Ḥamīd al-dīn al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 411/1020), al-Muʾayyad fī al-dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078) and Nāṣir Khusraw (d. after 465/1072), while al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), the foremost jurist of the Fatimid period, codified Ismaili law.5 Some of the Fatimid Ismaili dāʿīs, notably those operating in the Iranian world, developed distinctive intellectual traditions. All in all, the Fatimids encouraged intellectual, scientific and artistic activities, making important contributions to Islamic thought and culture.

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The unified Ismaili movement of the Fatimid times experienced a major schism in 487/1094 on the death of al-Mustanṣir bi’llāh (427–487/1036–1094), the 8th Fatimid caliph and the 18th Ismaili imam. Al-Mustanṣir’s son and original heirdesignate, Nizār, was deprived of his succession rights by the all-powerful vizier al-Afḍal, who placed Nizār’s younger brother on the Fatimid throne with the title of al-Mustaʿlī bi’llāh (487–495/1094–1101). Nizār was murdered in 488/1095 in the aftermath of his abortive revolt. As a result of these events, the Ismailis became permanently split into rival Mustaʿlī and Nizārī factions. The Ismailis of Egypt, Yemen and some other regions, who were dependent on the Fatimid regime, recognised al-Mustaʿlī and the later Fatimid caliphs as their imams, although the Mustaʿlī Ismailis themselves were subdivided into Ḥāfiz. ī and Ṭayyibī branches in 524/1130. Ḥāfiz. ī Ismailism disappeared completely soon after the demise of the Fatimid dynasty in 567/1171, and, subsequently, Mustaʿlī Ismailism survived only in its Ṭayyibī form (now represented mostly by the Bohras of Indian origins). It should be noted here that the Ṭayyibī Ismailis, who retained many of the Fatimid traditions, have been mainly responsible for preserving a good portion of the Ismaili literature of the Fatimid period. The response of the Ismailis of the eastern lands to the events of the year 487/1094 in Cairo was quite different. Concentrated in Persia, in the midst of the Saldjūq sultanate, the eastern Ismailis were then under the overall leadership of Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1121), who had been propagating the Ismaili daʿwa on behalf of al-Mustanṣir. However, Ḥasan had already been following an independent revolutionary policy against the alien rule of the Saldjūq Turks over Persia from 483/1090 when he established his headquarters at the mountain fortress of Alamūt. In the Mustaʿlī-Nizārī conflict, Ḥasan sided with Nizār and severed his relations with Cairo. In fact, he now founded the independent Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa and state, centred at Alamūt in northern Persia, which were later extended to Syria as well. Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ and his next two successors at Alamūt acted as the hidden imam’s chief representatives; but from 559/1164, the Nizārī imams themselves, descendants of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir, emerged to take charge of the affairs of their state and community. The Nizārī state was finally destroyed by the all-conquering Mongols in 654/1256. During the Alamūt period, the Nizārī Ismailis were largely preoccupied with their military campaigns and survival in their fortress communities of Persia and Syria. Nevertheless, they did maintain a sophisticated intellectual outlook and developed their religious policies and theological doctrines in response to changing circumstances. For all intents and purposes, however, Ismaili theology, in its Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī and Nizārī forms, did not witness major elaborations after the collapse of the Fatimid dynasty and the destruction of the Nizārī state, though the Ṭayyibī dāʿīs in Yemen did for a while refine or variously modify aspects of classical Ismaili thought. The Nizārīs of the Indian subcontinent, too, developed a distinct tradition of their own, designated as Satpanth. In the pre-Fatimid period of their history, as a precautionary measure to safeguard their revolutionary movement from persecution, the Ismailis had evidently

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produced only a few doctrinal works, preferring instead to propagate their doctrines by word of mouth. Nevertheless, on the basis of a handful of extant texts from that formative period, as well as the Ismaili works of the Fatimid times and certain anti-Ismaili polemical writings, it is possible to grasp the main theological doctrines of the early Ismailis. Needless to add that there are essential commonalities between the Ismaili views on ʿAlī and those held by the Twelver Shiʿis, who share the same early Imāmī theological tradition. The earliest Ismailis or Ismaili groups, who separated from the rest of the Shiʿi following of Djaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, retained the central Imāmī doctrine of the imamate, which had been essentially elaborated in that imam’s time.6 And this doctrine, distinguishing the Ismailis and the Twelvers from other Shiʿi communities, continued to occupy a central position in Ismaili theology. The earliest Ismailis thus maintained that the Prophet Muḥammad had appointed his cousin and son-in-law ʿAlī as his successor and that this designation or naṣṣ had been instituted and revealed through divine command. The Ismailis, in line with the general Shiʿi position, believed that the Prophet had clearly announced this designation at Ghadīr Khumm on 18 Dhū al-ḥidjdja 10/16 March 632 when he was returning to Medina from his farewell Pilgrimage to Mecca – a claim that has been rejected by the Sunnī majority of Muslims who acknowledge the historicity of this event. At any rate, this appointment, according to the Ismailis and other Shiʿis, made ʿAlī the Prophet’s successor as the leader and spiritual guide or imam of the Muslim umma. In this sense, ʿAlī is held to have been the Prophet’s waṣī or legatee. The earliest Ismailis, again in line with their Imāmī tradition, also held a particular conception of religious authority vested in ʿAlī and certain of his descendants, all belonging to the Prophet’s family (ahl al-bayt). They believed that the message of Islam emanated from sources beyond the comprehension of ordinary men, and that it also contained inner truths which could not be grasped through human reason or intellect (ʿaql) alone. In other words, the Islamic revelation required authoritative elucidation and interpretation, which could be accomplished only by a religiously authoritative guide. After the Prophet, these spiritual functions could be performed by none other than ʿAlī, the only person possessing religious authority and the required knowledge or ʿilm. ʿAlī, it was believed, had inherited the Prophet’s undivulged knowledge of spiritual truths, which made him the sole channel for transmitting the true message of Islam. Indeed, ʿAlī had been selected for that role by God’s command (amr), which also meant that he was divinely guided and immune from error and sin (maʿṣūm) and, as such, he was also infallible both in his knowledge and as a teacher after the Prophet. The earliest Ismailis further held that after ʿAlī (d. 40/661), the imamate, a permanent institution needed by mankind, was to be transmitted from father to son by naṣṣ among the descendants of ʿAlī and Fāṭima, the Fatimid ʿAlids; and after al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (d. 61/680), it would continue in the Ḥusaynid branch of the Fatimid ʿAlids until the end of time. Thus, the Ismailis maintained that there was always in existence a single rightful imam designated by naṣṣ, whether or not he was actually ruling, similar to ʿAlī’s own situation during most of his life. Indeed,

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the world could not exist for a moment without an imam, who was the Ḥudjdja (proof or guarantor) of God. In this sense, ʿAlī was the Ḥudjdjat Allāh on earth. In this doctrine, the antecedence of every Ismaili imam’s naṣṣ was traced back to ʿAlī, the recipient of the first naṣṣ under divine command. As in the case of naṣṣ, each imam’s special ʿilm, divinely inspired and transmitted through the naṣṣ of the previous imam, was also traced back in the Ḥusaynid line to ʿAlī and the Prophet himself. It was on the basis of this ʿilm that the rightful imam would become the authorised source of religious guidance, explaining the inner meaning of the Qurʾan and the commandments and prohibitions of Islam. Like ʿAlī himself, the Ismaili imams would also intercede with God on the Day of Judgement on behalf of their followers. And salvation would be reserved only for those with faith in and devotion to the ahl al-bayt, that is, to ʿAlī and the rightful imams after him.7 As a corollary to their doctrine of the imamate, the pre-Fatimid Ismailis maintained, in reflection of some of the radical views of the Kaysāniyya among the early Shiʿa that were absorbed into the Imāmī tradition, that the first three caliphs had usurped ʿAlī’s rights to temporal rule, and that the majority of the Prophet’s Companions (ṣaḥāba) had apostatised by ignoring the Prophet’s testament and failing to support ʿAlī. Subsequently, the legitimate rights of the ʿAlids to leadership had been systematically usurped by the Umayyads and the ʿAbbāsids after them. These claims served to establish the religio-political basis of the early Ismaili daʿwa, whose primary aim was to install the Ismaili imam to the leadership of the umma in place of the ʿAbbāsids. Interesting details on the original beliefs of the earliest Ismaili groups are related by al-Nawbakhtī (d. after 300/912) and al-Qummī (d. 301/913–914), the earliest Imāmī heresiographers and our most important sources on the initial phase of the Ismaili movement.8 For the purposes at hand, it is sufficient to note that all early groups identifiable as Ismaili counted ʿAlī as their first imam, who initiated the cycle of the imamate. However, it is curiously reported that the early Qarmaṭīs, a splinter dissident group who separated from the early Ismailis, also regarded ʿAlī as a rasūl or messenger, or more specifically as an imām-rasūl. They held that ʿAlī had become a messenger at Ghadīr Khumm while the Prophet Muḥammad himself was still alive. The Qarmaṭīs evidently included ʿAlī among the so-called ūlu’l-ʿazm emissaries, or prophets with resolution, but without attributing a new revelation to him. As the early Ismailis emphasised the distinction between the inward and outward aspects of religion, the Qarmaṭīs’ inclusion of ʿAlī in the sequence of ūlu’l-ʿazm prophets may possibly have been due to the role conceived for him as the revealer of the inner meaning of Islam, rather that his having promulgated a new religious law replacing the one enunciated by the Prophet Muḥammad. The Qarmaṭīs, who acquired a powerful state in Bahrayn in eastern Arabia in 286/899, embarked on regular pillaging activities which culminated in their desecrating acts in Mecca during the pilgrimage season of 317/930, presumably to symbolise the end of the era of Islam. The Qarmaṭīs were also extremely hostile towards the Fatimids. Nevertheless, the adversaries of the Ismailis readily blamed the entire Ismaili movement for the atrocities and the antinomian practices of the Qarmaṭīs.9

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By the 280s/890s, a single centrally directed Ismaili movement had appeared on the historical scene. By then, the Ismailis had also developed the basic framework of their distinctive intellectual system. In this religious system, drawing on their Imāmī heritage and the ideas of the earliest Ismaili groups, the Ismailis emphasised a fundamental distinction between the exoteric (z.āhir) and esoteric (bāṭin) aspects and dimensions of the sacred scriptures, and the religious commandments and prohibitions. Accordingly, they held that the revealed scriptures, including the Qurʾan in particular, and the laws laid down in them, had their apparent or literal meaning, the z.āhir, which had to be distinguished from their inner meaning or true spiritual reality, hidden in the bāṭin. The early Ismailis further held that the z.āhir, the religious laws enunciated by the ūlu’l-ʿazm messenger-prophets, underwent periodical change while the bāṭin, containing the spiritual truths (ḥaqāʾiq), remained immutable and eternal. These truths could be made apparent through taʾwīl, or esoteric exegesis. Literally meaning ‘leading back to the origin’, taʾwīl involved the process of educing the bāṭin from the z.āhir. The immediate antecedent of Ismaili taʾwīl may be traced to the Shiʿi milieus of the second/eighth century, although similar processes of exegeses or hermeneutics also existed in Judaeo-Christian and various Gnostic traditions. The Ismaili taʾwīl, also designated as taʾwīl al-bāṭin, was distinguished from tafsīr, the explanation of the apparent or philological meaning of the sacred texts, and tanzīl, the actual revelation of the religious scriptures through angelic intermediaries. In the era of Islam, the Prophet Muḥammad had been responsible for delivering the Islamic revelation, or tanzīl, while ʿAlī was charged with its taʾwīl. ʿAlī was thus regarded as the ṣāḥib al-taʾwīl,10 the repository of the Prophet’s undivulged knowledge and the original possessor of Islam’s true interpretation after the Prophet, who was the ṣāḥib al-tanzīl and the ṣāḥib al-sharīʿa. The passage from z.āhir to bāṭin, from sharīʿa to ḥaqīqa, or from tanzīl to taʾwīl, entailed the passage from the world of appearances to true reality; and the initiation into that spiritual world, undertaken by ʿAlī and his successors in the imamate through taʾwīl, led to a state of spiritual rebirth for the Ismailis. The early Ismailis further taught that in every age, the esoteric world of spiritual reality could be accessible only to the elite or the khawāṣṣ of mankind, as distinct from the common people or the ʿawāmm who were merely capable of understanding the z.āhir, the apparent meaning of the revelations. Thus, in the era of Islam, the eternal truths (ḥaqāʾiq) of religion could be explained only to those who had been properly initiated into the Ismaili community, and recognised the teaching authority of the Prophet Muḥammad’s waṣī ʿAlī, and the legitimate imams who succeeded him in the Ḥusaynid ʿAlid line, because they alone, collectively designated as the ahl al-taʾwīl (people of taʾwīl), represented the sources of knowledge and guidance in the era of Islam. Herein also lies the special role of the imams after ʿAlī and of the religious teaching hierarchy in the daʿwa organisation instituted by the Ismaili imams, with all such teaching being traced in the line of the imamate to ʿAlī’s original interpretations. This explains why the bulk of the religious literature of the early Ismailis comprises the taʾwīl genre of writing, also seeking j­ustification for

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Ismaili doctrines in Qurʾanic passages. In sum, the imamate and legitimate teaching authority in Islam were all closely connected with ʿAlī, the first imam and the original ṣāḥib al-taʾwīl.11 For the Ismailis, these authorised guides were indeed the very same people referred to in the Qurʾan (3:7) by the expression rāsikhūn fi’l-ʿilm,12 those possessing firm knowledge. The immutable truths of religion, the message common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, formed a gnostic system of thought for the pre-Fatimid Ismailis – an elegant esoteric worldview. The two main components of this system were a cyclical history of revelation and a mythological cosmological doctrine which need not concern us here. By the final decades of the third/ninth century, the Ismailis had already developed a cyclical interpretation of time and the religious history of mankind in terms of eras of different prophets, which they applied to the JudaeoChristian revelations as well as a variety of other pre-Islamic religions. They further combined their cyclical conception of revelational history with their doctrine of the imamate, which they had inherited from the earlier Imāmī Shiʿis.13 The Ismailis thus believed that the religious history of mankind proceeded through seven prophetic eras (dawrs) of various durations, each one inaugurated by a speaker (nāṭiq) of a divinely revealed message, which in its exoteric (z.āhir) aspect contained a religious law (sharīʿa). The nāṭiqs of the first six eras were Adam (Ādam), Noah (Nūḥ), Abraham (Ibrāhīm), Moses (Mūsā), Jesus (ʿĪsā) and Muḥammad; these corresponded to the ūlu’l-ʿazm prophets recognised in the Qurʾan. By projecting their current ideas into the past, the early Ismailis further maintained that each of the first six nāṭiqs was succeeded by a legatee (waṣī), also called the silent one (ṣāmit). The first six waṣīs of human history were Seth (Shīth), Shem (Sām), Ishmael (Ismāʿīl), Aaron (Hārūn), Simon Peter (Shamʿūn al-Ṣafāʾ), and ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. As noted, the dissident Qarmaṭīs had initially included ʿAlī, and excluded Adam, in their list of nāṭiqs. At any rate, the Ismailis taught that each nāṭiq announced the outer (z.āhir) aspects of every revelation with its rituals, commandments and prohibitions, while it was the responsibility of the waṣī to explain to the elite the esoteric truths (ḥaqāʾiq) contained in the inner (bāṭin) dimension of that era’s revelation. In the era of Islam, this all-important spiritual function was originally the prerogative of ʿAlī. In recognition of their doctrine of the imamate, again applied retrospectively to pre-Islamic eras, the early Ismailis also held that each waṣī was, in turn, succeeded by seven imams, who guarded the true meaning of the divine revelations in both their z.āhir and bāṭin aspects. The seventh imam of every era would rise in rank to become the nāṭiq of the following era, abrogating the sharīʿa of the previous era and proclaiming a new one. This pattern would change only in the seventh, final era. In the sixth era, the era of Islam, the seventh imam was Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl who had gone into hiding as the Mahdi. On his return, he would become the seventh nāṭiq initiating the final eschatological age, revealing to all mankind the hitherto concealed esoteric truths of all the preceding revelations. Subsequently, the Ismailis of the Fatimid period developed a different conception of the sixth era of religious history, allowing for continuity in the imamate rather than limiting it to a single

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heptad of imams and removing the expectations connected with the coming of the Mahdi and postponing the final millenarian age indefinitely into the future. The centrality of ʿAlī’s role in classical Ismaili theology was reasserted variously in the Ismaili writings of the Fatimid times. The ideas of the early Ismailis were indeed further elaborated in terms of more specialised fields of learning by Fatimid Ismaili dāʿīs and scholars. With the establishment of the Fatimid state in 297/909, the need had arisen, for instance, for codifying Ismaili law, whose precepts were to be observed by the judiciary throughout Fatimid dominions. The promulgation of an Ismaili madhhab or school of jurisprudence, as noted earlier, resulted mainly from the efforts of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, who simultaneously held the offices of chief judge (qāḍī al-quḍāt) and chief dāʿī (dāʿī al-duʿāt). It was in connection with codifying Ismaili law that al-Nuʿmān systematically collected the firmly established legal ḥadīths transmitted from ʿAlī and the ahl al-bayt, drawing on the Imāmī works of al-Kulaynī (d. 329/940–941) and other earlier authorities. These ḥadīths were collected in several works including the Sharḥ al-akhbār and the Daʿāʾim al-Islām (The Pillars of Islam), which served as the legal code of the Fatimid state. In the Sharḥ al-akhbār in particular, al-Nuʿmān compiled a vast number of ḥadīths related to ʿAlī’s virtues (manāqib) and his closeness to the Prophet. The opening section of this work in fact covers the well-known Prophetic Tradition ‘I am the city of knowledge and ʿAlī is its gateway’,14 implying that the true understanding of Islam would be possible only through ʿAlī’s teachings, later transmitted to other imams in his progeny. This ḥadīth is restated in numerous works of the Fatimid period, always emphasising ʿAlī’s unique teaching authority as the possessor of the required knowledge (ʿilm) and interpretation (taʾwīl) of all exoteric and esoteric aspects of Islam.15 In fact, al-Kirmānī, the most learned theologian-philosopher of the Fatimid period, organised his magnum opus, Rāḥat al-ʿaql (The Repose of the Intellect), around the same metaphorical theme of the city of knowledge. As developed by al-Nuʿmān, under the close scrutiny of the Fatimid caliphimam al-Muʿizz (341–365/953–975), Ismaili law accorded special importance to the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate, which also provided Islamic legitimation for an ʿAlid state ruled by the family of the Prophet. As a result, the authority of the infallible ʿAlid imam from the progeny of ʿAlī, and his teachings, became the third principal source of Ismaili law, after the Qur’an and the sunna of the Prophet, which are accepted as the first two sources by all Muslim communities. In the field of Ismaili theology proper, the doctrine of the imamate, always closely connected to ʿAlī, was reiterated formally in numerous works produced by the Ismaili dāʿīs of the Fatimid period,16 as well as the later Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī dāʿīs of Yemen.17 The cyclical conception of time and religious history developed by the early Ismailis was retained during the Fatimid period. But the Fatimid Ismailis, as noted, modified the earlier views regarding the sixth dawr, the era of Islam. Rather than limiting the number of their imams to a single heptad, which had been the original doctrine of the bulk of the Ismāʿīliyya, they now allowed for continuity in the imamate. Furthermore, in the scheme of the Fatimid Ismailis, ʿAlī acquired a higher rank than that of an ordinary imam. In addition to being the Prophet

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Muḥammad’s waṣī, he was now also regarded as the asās or the asās al-imāma, the foundation of the imamate.18 According to this enumeration, still maintained by the Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī Ismailis, especially the Bohras, al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī was counted as the first imam. In the course of the fourth/tenth century, the dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, starting with Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nasafī (d. 332/943) and Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934), elaborated metaphysical systems in which they harmonised Ismaili theology (kalām) with a variety of philosophical traditions, notably a form of Neoplatonism then current in the Islamic world. This amalgam of reason and revelation, or philosophy and theology, led to the development of a unique intellectual tradition of ‘philosophical theology’ in Ismailism. The early evidence of this tradition is preserved mainly in the works of al-Sidjistānī, the dāʿī of eastern Persia and Transoxania. A distinct Ismaili Neoplatonic cosmology, representing an integral component of the complex systems of thought developed by these dāʿīs, is fully discussed in al-Sidjistānī’s Kitāb al-yanābīʿ (Book of the Wellsprings) and other works.19 In the reign of the Fatimid al-Muʿizz, this Ismaili Neoplatonic cosmology was adopted by the Fatimid daʿwa in place of an earlier gnostic mythical doctrine. Al-Sidjistānī, and other Ismaili theologian-philosophers of the Iranian world, also propounded a doctrine of salvation as part of their cosmology. In their soteriological vision of the cosmos, man generally appears as a microcosm with individual human souls as parts of the universal soul. In the case of al-Sidjistānī, for instance, his doctrine of salvation is closely related to his general doctrine of soul and the Ismaili cyclical view of the sacred history of mankind. The ultimate goal of man’s salvation is the human soul’s progression out of a purely physical existence towards his Creator, in quest of a spiritual reward in an eternal afterlife. This ascending quest along a ladder of salvation involves the purification of man’s soul, which depends on guidance provided by the terrestrial hierarchy of teachers since only the authorised members of this hierarchy are in a position to guide those who seek the truth and whose resurrected souls on the Day of Judgement will be rewarded spiritually. In every era of human history, the terrestrial hierarchy consists of the law-announcing speaker-prophet (nāṭiq) of that era and his rightful successors. In the current era of Islam, the guidance needed for salvation is provided only by the Prophet Muḥammad, his waṣī and asās ʿAlī and the Ismaili imams in ʿAlī’s progeny. More specifically, man’s salvation depends on his acquisition of a particular type of knowledge from a unique source of wisdom; and this knowledge can be imparted only through the teachings of the divinely authorised guides, the sole possessors of the true meaning of the revelation in any prophetic era. In the era of Islam, after the Prophet Muḥammad, this role is reserved for ʿAlī and the succeeding imams, who alone provide the authoritative interpretation of Islam through taʾwīl. It is thus important to note that classical Ismaili theology remained consistently and primarily revelational rather than rational. The dāʿīs of the Iranian school of ‘philosophical Ismailism’, who used sophisticated philosophical themes to enhance the intellectual appeal of their message for the elite and the educated classes, did in effect use philosophy (  falsafa) in a subservient manner to their theology (kalām).

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In close affinity to the views of the early Imāmī Shiʿis and the pre-Fatimid Ismailis, al-Sidjistānī too believed that salvation ultimately requires the guidance of the Prophet Muḥammad, and after him, that of ʿAlī and the ʿAlid imams recognised by the Ismailis. Indeed, in the era of Islam, Muḥammad and ʿAlī are two of the four major sources or wellsprings of truth, the other two sources being the original dyad of intellect (ʿaql) and soul (nafs) in the spiritual world. The Prophet is responsible for taʾlīf, or the composition of a religious law, while ʿAlī’s function is that of taʾwīl. More specifically, ʿAlī and the imams after him provide a continuous source of interpretation in Islam. Thus, al-Sidjistānī, and other proponents of ‘philosophical theology’ in Ismailism, essentially remained devout theologians expounding the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate, without which humans cannot know God and attain salvation. Ḥamīd al-dīn al-Kirmānī developed yet a more complex metaphysical system, with a cosmological doctrine partially based on al-Farābī’s Aristotelian system of 10 separate intellects. As propounded in his Rāḥat al-ʿaql, al-Kirmānī’s system, too, culminates in a soteriological doctrine centred on the salvation of man’s soul through the attainment of spiritual knowledge provided by the authoritative guidance of the prophets and their legitimate successors.20 As in the case of al-Sidjistānī, in al-Kirmānī’s metaphysics there also exists numerous correspondences between the celestial and terrestrial hierarchies, and between the 10 separate intellects of the higher world and the terrestrial daʿwa organisation. Thus, in the era of Islam, Muḥammad as nāṭiq and ʿAlī as waṣī (and asās), respectively, correspond to the first and second intellects of al-Kirmānī’s system,21 rather than to universal intellect and universal soul as in al-Sidjistānī’s cosmology. It may be noted in passing that, for unknown reasons, al-Kirmānī’s cosmology was not adopted by the Fatimid daʿwa, but it later provided the basis for the cosmological doctrine expounded by the Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Yemen. The Nizārī Ismailis did not retain as much interest in cosmology as did the earlier Ismailis. In fact, by adopting Persian as the religious language of their community, as an expression of their Persian awareness, the Nizārīs of Persia were cut off from the literature of the Fatimid period, which was produced entirely in Arabic except for the corpus of Nāṣir Khusraw’s writings. The Syrian Nizārīs did, however, preserve a portion of the earlier texts. At any rate, the Nizārī Ismailis, primarily occupied with their military campaigns and survival in hostile milieus, did not produce learned scholars concerned with metaphysics or complex theological issues, comparable with the dāʿī-authors of the Fatimid period. However, certain theological issues continued to provide the focus of Nizārī thought of the Alamūt period (483–654/1090–1256). Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124), the founder of the independent Nizārī daʿwa and state, was himself a learned theologian grounded in philosophical thought; and from early on his doctrinal contributions reasserted the distinctive Imāmī Shiʿi nature of the theological tradition espoused by the Nizārīs. This pattern survived throughout the Alamūt period, as witnessed in the writings of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (597–672/1201–1274), the eminent Shiʿi theologian, philosopher and astronomer

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who enjoyed the patronage of the Nizārīs for some three decades and made important contributions to Nizārī thought of his time.22 In fact, it is mainly on the basis of al-Ṭūsī’s Ismaili works that modern scholarship has begun to study the Nizārī Ismaili theological tradition of the Alamūt period. The doctrines of the Nizārī Ismailis were closely aligned to the requirements of their struggle and their political vicissitudes. From early on, the Nizārīs concentrated their doctrinal investigations on the reality of the imam and the imamate, tracing their theological tradition to ʿAlī and the early imams. Recognition (maʿrifa) of the current Ismaili imam, and unconditional obedience to him, and in his absence to his chief representative or ḥudjdja, were made the focal points of Nizārī theology by Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ himself. As a result, by the early 480s/1090s, the outsiders acquired the impression that the Nizārī Ismailis had initiated a ‘new preaching’ (al-daʿwa al-djadīda) in contrast to the ‘old preaching’ (al-daʿwa al-qadīma) of the Fatimid times. The seemingly ‘new preaching’ did not, however, represent any new set of doctrines; it was essentially a reformulation of the old Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate of long standing among the Ismailis. It now became commonly known as the doctrine of taʿlīm or authoritative teaching by the imam. Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ reformulated this doctrine, in a more rigorous manner, in a Persian treatise entitled Tchahār Faṣl (The Four Chapters), which has not survived. But it was seen and quoted by a number of Persian historians of the Mongol period,23 who are our main sources on Nizārī history during the Alamūt period, and it was also paraphrased in Arabic by Ḥasan’s contemporary al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/ 1153), the renowned Ashʿarī theologian who may himself have been a crypto-Ismaili.24 In a series of four propositions, Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ restated the inadequacy of human reason (ʿaql) in knowing God and understanding the religious truths, and argued for the necessity of an authoritative teacher (muʿallim-i ṣādiq) for the spiritual guidance of mankind. He finally concluded that this teacher is none other than the Ismaili imam of the time, the successor to ʿAlī who initiated the imamate. The doctrine of taʿlīm readily served as the central doctrine of the Nizārī Ismailis, who henceforth were designated as Taʿlīmiyya. This doctrine also refuted the spiritual authority of the ʿAbbāsid caliph and, as such, it posed an intellectual challenge to the Sunnī establishment, which responded through a polemical campaign against the Ismailis and their doctrine of taʿlīm, led by al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111).25 The Nizārīs generally avoided polemical discourses, but a detailed reply to al-Ghazālī’s refutations was later provided by the fifth Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī dāʿī in Yemen.26 The doctrine of taʿlīm, emphasising the autonomous teaching authority of each imam in his time, provided the theological foundation for all the subsequent Nizārī teachings, some of which related specifically to ʿAlī. The continued centrality of the doctrine of taʿlīm in Nizārī theology is attested by the fact that despite apparent periodical reversals in religious policies issued from Alamūt, al-Ṭūsī clearly and forcefully reiterated it in the Sayr wa sulūk, the autobiographical account of his conversion to Ismailism, and elsewhere towards the very end of the Alamūt period.27 The Nizārīs were left without a manifest imam for some seven decades after Nizār (d. 488/1095). Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ and his next two successors at Alamūt, as

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noted, acted as the chief representatives (ḥudjdjas) of the inaccessible imam without revealing their names. As it is known, Nizār had male progeny and several of his descendants were involved in revolts against the later Fatimid caliphs. At any rate, the fourth lord of Alamūt, Ḥasan II (557–561/1162–1166), designated by the Nizārīs as ʿalā dhikrihi’al-salām (on his mention be peace), claimed the Nizārī imamate for himself; and this claim as well as his ʿAlid genealogy were in due course acknowledged by the Nizārī community. The recognition of Ḥasan II’s imamate was, in fact, an integral part of his declaration of the qiyāma or resurrection, a religious revolution reflecting in a sense the culmination of Ismaili esotericism and gnosis. In 559/1164, in two solemn ceremonies at Alamūt, and Quhistān in eastern Persia, Ḥasan II proclaimed the qiyāma for his community, the long awaited ‘Last Day’ when mankind would be judged and committed eternally to either Paradise or Hell.28 However, relying on taʾwīl and drawing on earlier Ismaili traditions, the qiyāma was interpreted symbolically and spiritually. It meant nothing more than the manifestation of unveiled truth or ḥaqīqa in the person of the Nizārī Ismaili imam. This was a spiritual resurrection reserved exclusively for those who acknowledged the rightful imam of the time and as such were capable of understanding the esoteric truths of religion. The Nizārīs had now moved radically from z.āhir to bāṭin, from sharīʿa to ḥaqīqa, or from the positive law to its inner spiritual dimension. In this sense, Paradise was actualised in the corporeal world for the Nizārīs. The outsiders, those who did not recognise the Nizārī imam and were, therefore, incapable of penetrating the literal senses of Islam and understanding its spiritual essence, were rendered spiritually non-existent. The elaboration of the qiyāma in terms of a doctrine and its theological implications were worked out under Ḥasan II’s son and successor in the Nizārī imamate, Nūr al-dīn Muḥammad (561–607/1166–1210). The doctrine of the qiyāma is related in the Haft bāb (The Seven Chapters),29 a contemporary Nizārī treatise written anonymously around 596/1200 and wrongly attributed to Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ (referred to by the Nizārīs as Bābā Sayyidnā), as well as in al-Ṭūsī’s major Ismaili work, Rawḍat al-taslīm (Meadow of Submission).30 The declaration of the qiyāma and its particular implications for the Nizārīs of the Alamūt period represent the most enigmatic episode in the entire Nizārī history; and modern scholars have continued to disagree on important aspects of this event. Be that as it may, the qiyāma initiated a new era in the life of the Nizārī community – a spiritual era rooted in the earlier messianic expectations of the Ismailis. In a sense, this was the culmination of the Ismaili interpretation of Islam and the sacred history of mankind devoid of any external veils or symbolisms. But the final eschatological age, eagerly awaited in the third/ninth century, had now acquired a new allegorical meaning. The qiyāma was interpreted with the aid of Ismaili taʾwīl to mean an age of pure spiritualism rather than the consummation of the corporeal world, which would occur at the end of time in the Great Resurrection (qiyāmat al-qiyāmāt). But even now, in the current partial qiyāma, religious truths could be made accessible to true believers who belonged to the Nizārī Ismaili community and were guided by the rightful imam of the time.

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In line with earlier Ismaili teachings, the imam initiating the qiyāma would also be the qāʾim or qāʾim al-qiyāma, the lord of resurrection, a rank which in Ismaili tradition had always been higher than that of an ordinary imam; and his summons would be the daʿwa of the qiyāma (Persian, daʿwat-i qiyāmat), or the ‘mission of the resurrection’. The doctrine of the qiyāma thus introduced a further element in the cyclical history of the Nizārī Ismailis in the form of the figure of imam-qāʾim, the imam inaugurating the era of the qiyāma. Ḥasan II was in due course identified with this figure; and, more importantly, every imam recognised by the Nizārīs was made potentially an imam-qāʾim, at whose discretion the partial period of qiyāma, before the Great Resurrection, could be initiated for the elite of mankind, the Nizārīs. Drawing on different religious traditions, the Nizārīs elaborated a curious series of imam-qāʾims for previous prophetic eras as well, figures who did not necessarily correspond to the waṣīs of those eras.31 Indeed, the new perennial figure of imamqāʾim was made superior to any era’s waṣī, and even prophet, with the exception of the era of Islam. The imam-qāʾims of the eras of Adam, Noah and Abraham were, respectively, Malik Shūlim, Malik Yazdāq and Malik al-Salām, who collectively corresponded to the Biblical Melchizedec. In the eras of Moses and Jesus, they were Dhū al-Qarnayn, identified with the Qurʾanic figure Khiḍr (and not Aaron or Joshua), and Maʿadd, an Arab patriarch (and not Peter). In the era of Islam, however, its waṣī ʿAlī was also made the first imam-qāʾim. It is reported in the Haft bāb that the Prophet Muḥammad pointed to ʿAlī when he was asked to identify the qāʾim of the resurrection; for it was ʿAlī who proclaimed the spirituality of the Islamic message.32 Furthermore, every imam, when perceived correctly, was seen to be ʿAlī, who was identified with the ‘Malchizedec-Dhū al-Qarnayn-Khiḍr’, the eternal imam-qāʾim figure, while every true believer was identified with Salmān al-Fārisī, the faithful Companion of the Prophet and one of the original followers of ʿAlī. Thus, in the Nizārī teachings of the qiyāma, the present imam or imamqāʾim, and indeed all Nizārī imams, were made equal to one another and to ʿAlī;33 they appeared identical in their spiritual reality to the Nizārī believers, who in their own spiritual relationship to the imam (imam-qāʾim) were identical with Salmān. The exaltation of ʿAlī, and every imam’s status and teaching authority independently from any previous imam or prophet, now found a new articulation in the doctrine of the qiyāma. On this basis, mankind was divided into the friends of ʿAlī, true believers who enjoyed a paradisal existence, and his foes who were cast into the hell of spiritual non-existence; and the enmity towards ʿAlī would continue for as long as the Nizārī imams in his progeny were not acknowledged as the rightful imams by all mankind. Thus, ʿAlī was now portrayed as the supreme guide and saviour of mankind, for he was not only an imam and waṣī, but also the qāʾim of resurrection. ʿAlī, the historical personality, now became a metahistorical or quasimythological figure as the eternal imam-qāʾim, the saviour lord, who would carry the banner of the qiyāma at the very end of time. The current Nizārī imam and all imams were the bearers of the same light (nūr or nūr-i Muḥammadī), which was traceable to ʿAlī and the Prophet himself. And the imam, or imam-qāʾim, in his eternal essence was defined as the epiphany (maz.har) of

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the divine word (kalima) or command (amr), which had brought about the creation of the pleroma.34 In Shiʿi theology, ʿAlī and other imams had always been considered as the ḥudjdja or proof of God. But in the qiyāma tradition of the Nizārī Ismailis, they became the locus of the divine word or the creative imperative kun (be!). With these developments, and the Nizārī emphasis on the equality of all imams to ʿAlī and to one another, ʿAlī was once again counted as the first imam of the series acknowledged by the Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamūt period and later times. In this enumeration, al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī is counted as the second imam, while al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī came to be regarded merely as a temporary or trustee (mustawdaʿ ) imam as distinct from the permanent (mustaqarr) imams. The Nizārī teachings connected with the declaration of the qiyāma were temporarily suspended by the sixth lord of Alamūt, Djalāl al-dīn Ḥasan (607–618/1210– 1221), who successfully sought to improve relations with the ‘Abbāsid caliph and other Sunnī rulers. In response to the increasing hostility of the Sunnī world towards the Nizārīs of Persia and Syria, Djalāl al-dīn Ḥasan, in fact, introduced a new religious policy ordering his followers to observe the sharīʿa in its Sunnī form – a command interpreted to reflect the reimposition of taqiyya or precautionary dissimulation which had been set aside in the qiyāma times. Naṣīr al-dīn al-Ṭūsī later provided an integrated theological frame, in his already noted Rawḍat al-taslīm, for contextualising the various religious declarations of the Nizārī imams of Alamūt. By the time the Mongol hordes appeared before the Nizārī fortresses of Persia, in 651/1253, the doctrine of the qiyāma had already been revived for several decades within the Nizārī community. In the aftermath of the destruction of their state and fortresses in Persia, in 654/1256, the disorganised and demoralised Nizārī Ismailis survived clandestinely in scattered communities. The Nizārīs now widely practised taqiyya for long periods and adopted different external guises to safeguard themselves against persecution. The Nizārīs’ total disintegration or assimilation into the religiously dominant communities of their milieus was prevented by their religious traditions and identity, which revolved around the Nizārī imamate and ʿAlī’s personality. In the postAlamūt period, ʿAlī’s centrality in Nizārī thought was manifested in a variety of forms. In Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia, the Nizārīs adopted the guise of Sufism for more than two centuries until the advent of the Ṣafawids in 907/1501. By then, a type of coalescence had in effect occurred between Nizārī Ismailism and Sufism, which would not have been possible if these two esoteric traditions in Islam did not share close affinities and common doctrinal grounds.35 Relations between Ismailis and Sufis were particularly facilitated by their common reverence towards ʿAlī, a Perfect Man (al-insān al-kāmil) in both traditions. Most of the Sufi orders then developing throughout the Iranian world remained outwardly Sunnī, but, at the same time, they were devoted to ʿAlī’s spiritual guidance and counted him as the initiator of their silsilas or chains of spiritual masters (pīrs or quṭbs). Indeed, the Sunnī Sufi orders, strangely enough, played an important role in the dissemination of ʿAlid loyalism and popular forms of Shiʿism, also making it convenient for the Nizārīs to seek refuge under the mantle of Sufism. Under the circumstances, the

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Nizārī imams, who continued to reside in Persia, readily adopted Sufi appellations and added, similar to Sufi masters, terms such as Shāh and ʿAlī to their names. With ʿAlid loyalism and Shiʿi tendencies spreading through Sufi orders, whose members were actually Sunnī, the Nizārīs’ veneration of ʿAlī and other early imams did not pose any danger of giving away their true identity. Subsequently, in Ṣafawid Persia, with Twelver Shiʿism as the official religion of the state, the Nizārīs observed taqiyya mainly in the guise of Twelver Shiʿis. This disguise, too, was facilitated by the fact that both of these Shiʿi communities venerated ʿAlī as the first imam and the Prophet’s waṣī, in addition to sharing the same early Imāmī tradition. In the meantime, by the tenth/sixteenth century, Nizārī Ismailism had been successfully spreading in Sind and other parts of the Indian subcontinent, where the converted Hindus became designated as Khodjas. The specific form of Nizārī Ismailism that developed in India became known as Satpanth or True Path (to salvation). In the Satpanth tradition, too, ʿAlī acquired key importance, in close affinity to the earlier Nizārī teachings of the qiyāma times. The missionaries, designated with the Sufi term pīr, who propagated Satpanth Ismailism in India attempted to maximise the appeal of their message to Hindus. Therefore, they interfaced their Ismaili teachings with myths, images and symbols familiar to Hindu audiences. These teachings are reflected in the indigenous religious literature of the Khodjas, hymn-like poems known as gināns composed in a number of South Asian languages.36 The doctrine of the imamate, as held by the Nizārī Ismailis of the qiyāma times, found expression in a Hindu framework concerning the ten descents (dasa avatāra) of the Hindu deity Vishnu, with ʿAlī retaining his role as the expected saviour (qāʾim).37 The Hindus had awaited the appearance of the tenth avatāra or manifestation of Vishnu, who would fight the forces of evil, led by the goddess Kali, in the current age (yuga) of darkness. The Nizārī missionaries now introduced ʿAlī, instead of the standard Hindu figure of Kalki, as the tenth avatāra. ʿAlī would thus accomplish the eschatological expectations of the Hindu converts to Satpanth Ismailism and would eventually kill Kalinga, the demon of Hindu mythology. In this account, preserved in a ginān of the same name (Dasa Avatāra), all the imams succeeding ʿAlī, as recognised by the Nizārī Ismailis, were also held to be identical to him in their status. Consequently, every Nizārī imam came to be represented as the tenth avatāra of Vishnu. This ginān was in circulation in the Khodja community until modern times, articulating afresh in the Satpanth tradition ʿAlī’s status as the expected saviour and the equality of all imams to him and to one another—the central theme of the post-qiyāma Nizārī tradition. From the time of the earliest Ismailis, ʿAlī has been accorded an increasingly important status in Ismaili tradition, ranging from a highly revered historical personality as the Prophet’s waṣī and the possessor of taʾwīl to the perennial archetype of the eschatological saviour or even the epiphany of a mythological figure. In whatever form or status, ʿAlī has always been deeply venerated as an infallible guide and teacher by the Ismailis throughout their history. ʿAlī’s continued centrality in

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Ismaili theology, traditions and rituals is attested by the fact that even today it is normal for the Nizārī Ismailis to greet each other everywhere with the expression yā ʿAlī madad (may ʿAlī assist you).

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in A. Y. Ocak, ed., From History to Theology: Ali in Islamic Beliefs (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 2005), pp. 59–82.   1 See al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, Kitāb firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931), pp. 57–58, 60–66; Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī, Kitāb al-maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran, 1963), pp. 80–81, 83; and F. Daftary, ‘The Earliest Ismāʿīlīs’, Arabica, 38 (1991), pp. 214–245.   2 For a general survey of the early Ismaili daʿwa, see F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 91–143, 593–614.  3 Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 144–255, 615–654; his A Short History of the Ismailis: Traditions of a Muslim Community (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 63–119; H. Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids, trans. M. Bonner (Leiden, 1996), pp. 121–274; and his The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning (London, 1997), especially pp. 17–93.   4 For the Ismaili authors of the Fatimid period and their writings, see I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA), pp. 31–132.   5 On the origins and early development of a distinct Ismaili school of jurisprudence, see W. Madelung, ‘The Sources of Ismāʿīlī Law’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 35 (1976), pp. 29–40, reprinted in his Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam (London, 1985), article XVIII, and I. K. Poonawala, ‘al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismaʿili Jurisprudence’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 117–143.  6 See al-Kulaynī, al-Uṣūl min al-Kāfī, ed. ʿA. al-Ghaffārī (Tehran, 1388/1968), vol. 1, pp. 168–548, containing the earliest Imāmī ḥadīths on the imamate reported mainly from Imam Djaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Many of the same ḥadīths are restated in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. A. A. A. Fyzee (Cairo, 1951–1961), vol. 1, pp. 1–98; partial English translation, The Book of Faith, trans. A. A. A. Fyzee (Bombay, 1974), pp. 1–111, containing the opening chapter in al-Nuʿmān’s major legal compendium which relates to walāya or devotion to ʿAlī and the imams succeeding him. See also A. Nanji, ‘An Ismāʿīlī Theory of Walāya in the Daʿāʾim al-Islām of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’, in D. P. Little, ed., Essays on Islamic Civilization Presented to Niyaze Berkes (Leiden, 1976), pp. 260–273.   7 For a comprehensive treatment of such Ismaili views on ʿAlī, and the relevant ḥadīths, see al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Sharḥ al-akhbār, ed. S. M. al-Ḥusaynī al-Djalālī (Qumm, 1409– 1412/1988–1992), vol. 1, pp. 87–250.  8 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa, pp. 61–64, and al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt, pp. 83–86. See also W. Madelung, ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 48ff., and S. M. Stern, ‘The Account of the Ismāʿīlīs, in Firaq al-Shīʿa’, in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism (Leiden, 1983), pp. 47–56.   9 For further details, see W. Madelung, ‘The Fatimids and the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 21–73, and F. Daftary, ‘Carmatians’, in EIR, 4, pp. 823–832. 10 Djaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, ed. R. Strothmann (Bombay, etc., 1952), pp. 54–55, 60, 66–68, 119–120, 157–165, representing one of the few extant Ismaili texts dating to pre-Fatimid times. Similar ideas may be found in numerous Ismaili texts of the Fatimid period; see, for instance, al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, al-Madjālis al-Muʾayyadiyya, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1974–1984), vol. 1, pp. 219–223. 11 See, for instance, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sidjistānī, Kitāb al-iftikhār, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1980), pp. 70–73, 98–109; al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Taʾwīl al-Daʿāʾim, ed. M. Ḥasan al-Aʿz. amī (Cairo, 1967–72), vol. 1. pp. 47–71, 237ff.; and al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn, al-Madjālis, vol. 1, pp. 24–28, 38, 39, 81–82, 103, 189–190, 219ff., 236, 254, 259–263, 266–267, 290, 346, 406, 453.

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12 See al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn, al-Madjālis, vol. 1, pp. 347–351. 13 Ibn Ḥawshab Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-rushd wa’l-hidāya, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn, in W. Ivanow, Collectanea (Leiden, 1948), pp. 185–213; Djaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, especially pp. 14ff., 50, 97, 104, 109–110, 113–114, 132–133, 138, 143, 150, 169–170; Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sidjistānī, Ithbāt al-nubūwwa, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1966), pp. 181–193; his Kitāb al-iftikhār, pp. 47–56; al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Asās al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1960), especially pp. 315–367; H. Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, trans. R. Manheim and J. W. Morris (London, 1983), pp. 1–58; Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 51ff.; H. Halm, Kosmologie und Heilslehre der frühen Ismāʿīlīya (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 18–37; and F. Daftary, ‘Dawr’, in EIR, 7, pp. 151–153. 14 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Sharḥ al-akhbār, pp. 89–90. 15 See Ḥamīd al-dīn al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn and M. Muṣṭafā Ḥilmī (Leiden and Cairo, 1953), p. 424; al-Kirmānī’s al-Risāla al-lāzima fī ṣawm, ed. M. Ghālib, in Madjmūʿat rasā’il al-Kirmānī (Beirut, 1983), p. 76, and al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn, al-Madjālis, vol. 1, pp. 284, 332–333, 335–336. 16 See Ḥamīd al-dīn al-Kirmānī, al-Maṣābīḥ fī ithbāt al-imāma, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1969); Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī, Ithbāt al-imāma, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1984); Abu’l-Fawāris Aḥmad b. Yaʿqūb, al-Risāla fi’l-imāma, ed. and trans. S. N. Makarem as The Political Doctrine of the Ismāʿīlīs (The Imamate) (Delmar, NY, 1977); Nāṣir Khusraw, Wadjh-i dīn, ed. G. R. Aʿvānī (Tehran, 1977), especially pp. 11–32, 277–283, 337–339. 17 ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Walīd (d. 612/1215), Tādj al-ʿaqāʾid, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1967), pp. 57–82, 113–119, and Idrīs ʿImād al-dīn b. al-Ḥasan (d. 872/1468), Zahr al-maʿānī, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1991), pp. 157–173; these authors were, respectively, the fifth and the nineteenth dāʿī muṭlaqs of the Ṭayyibī Ismaili community. 18 See, for instance, Ḥamīd al-dīn al-Kirmānī, Kitāb al-riyāḍ, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1960), pp. 83–85, 86, 90; his Rāḥat al-ʿaql, pp. 102, 132–139; and Nāṣir Khusraw, Shish faṣl, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow under the title Six Chapters (Leiden, 1949), text pp. 32–38, translation pp. 70–80. 19 Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sidjistānī, Kitāb al-yanābīʿ, ed. and partial French trans. H. Corbin in his Trilogie Ismaélienne (Tehran and Paris, 1961), text pp. 1–97, translation pp. 5–127; English trans. P. E. Walker, The Book of the Wellsprings in his The Wellsprings of Wisdom: A Study of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-yanābīʿ (Salt Lake City, 1994), pp. 37–111, and also al-Sidjistānī’s Kitāb al-maqālīd, which is still in manuscript form. See also P. E. Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 67–142; his Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī: Intellectual Missionary (London, 1996), pp. 26–103; W. Madelung, ‘Aspects of Ismāʿīlī Theology: The Prophetic Chain and the God beyond Being’, in S. H. Nasr, ed., Ismāʿīlī Contributions to Islamic Culture (Tehran, 1977), pp. 53–65, reprinted in his Religious Schools and Sects, article XVII; and Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis, pp. 81–89. 20 For an analyis of the Rāḥat al-ʿaql and al-Kirmānī’s metaphysical system of thought in general, see D. de Smet, La Quiétude de l’intellect: Néoplatonisme et gnose Ismaélienne dans l’oeuvre de Ḥamīd ad-Dīn al-Kirmānī (Xe/XIe) (Louvain, 1995), and P. E. Walker, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī: Ismaili Thought in the Age of al-Ḥākim (London, 1999). 21 Al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, pp. 139–149, 224–225, and Corbin, Cyclical Time, pp. 90–95. 22 See W. Madelung, ‘Naṣīr ad-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Ethics between Philosophy, Shiʿism, and Sufism’, in R. G. Hovannisian, ed., Ethics in Islam ((Malibu, CA, 1985), pp. 85–101; H. Dabashi, ‘The Philosopher/Vizier: Khwāja Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and the Ismaʿilis’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 231–245; and Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 260–263. 23 ʿAṭā-Malik Djuwaynī, Taʾrīkh-i Djahān-gushā, ed. Muḥammad Qazwīnī (Leiden and London, 1912–1937), vol. 3, pp. 195–199; English trans., The History of the WorldConqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Manchester, 1958), vol. 2, pp. 671–673; Rashīd al-dīn Faḍl Allāh, Djāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i Ismāʿīliyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh and M. Mudarrisī Zanjānī (Tehran, 1338 Sh./1959), pp. 105–107; and Abu’l-Qāsim Kāshānī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh: bakhsh-i Fāṭimiyān va Nizāriyān (2nd ed., Tehran, 1366 Sh./1987),

ʿAlı- in classical Ismaili theology  161  

pp. 142–143. On Ḥasan Ṣabbāḥ and the doctrine of taʿlīm, see M. G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs against the Islamic World (The Hague, 1955), pp. 41–98; his ‘The Ismāʿīlī State’, in The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 5, The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 424–449; B. Lewis, The Assassins (London, 1967), pp. 38–63, 145-148; Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 324– 371, 669–681, and his ‘Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and the Origins of the Nizārī Ismaʿili Movement’, in his Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 181–204. 24 Al-Shahrastānī in his Kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. W. Cureton (London, 1842–1846), pp. 150–152; ed. ʿA. M. al-Wakīl (Cairo, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 195–198; partial English translation, Muslim Sects and Divisions, trans. A. K. Kazi and J. G. Flynn (London, 1984), pp. 167–170, also translated by Hodgson, in his Order of Assassins, pp. 325–328; French translation, Livre des religions et des sectes, trans. D. Gimaret and G. Monnot (Louvain, 1986–1993), vol. 1, pp. 560–565. 25 Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, Faḍāʾiḥ al-Bāṭiniyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Badawī (Cairo, 1964), and F. Daftary. ‘Ghazālī wa Ismāʿīliyya’, Maʿārif, 1 (March, 1985), pp. 179–198. 26 ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Walīd, Dāmigh al-bāṭil, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1982), 2 vols., and H. Corbin, ‘The Ismāʿīlī Response to the Polemic of Ghazālī’, in Nasr, ed., Ismāʿīlī Contributions, pp. 69–98. 27 Naṣīr al-dīn al-Ṭūsī, Sayr wa sulūk, ed. and trans. S. J. Badakhchani under the title Contemplation and Action (London, 1998), text pp. 1–12, 17, translation pp. 23–39, 47; see also al-Ṭūsī’s Maṭlūb al-muʾminīn, ed. W. Ivanow, in his Two Early Ismaili Treatises (Bombay, 1933), pp. 43–55. 28 Djuwaynī, Taʾrīkh, vol. 3, pp. 225–230, 237–239; trans. Boyle, vol. 2, pp. 688–691, 695–697; Rashīd al-dīn, Djāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, pp. 164–169; and Kashānī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh, pp. 201–205. 29 Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, ed. W. Ivanow, in his Two Early Ismaili Treatises, pp. 4–42. English trans. with commentary in Hodgson, Order of Assassins, pp. 279–324. This treatise is paraphrased in some post-Saljūq Nizārī works, especially in Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Haft bāb, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow (Bombay, 1959), and in Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī, Kalām-i pīr, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow (Bombay, 1935). 30 Naṣīr al-dīn al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍat al-taslīm, ya taṣawwurāt, ed. and trans. W. lvanow (Leiden, 1950); French translation, La Convocation d’Alamūt: Somme de philosophie Ismaélienne, trans. C. Jambet (Lagrasse, 1996). For modern expositions of this doctrine, see Hodgson, Order of Assassins, pp. 160–180; Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 386–396, 685–688; and C. Jambet, La Grande résurrection d’Alamūt (Lagrasse, 1990). 31 Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, pp. 8–14; trans. Hodgson, pp. 284–293; al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa, text pp. 115, 128ff., translation pp. 133, 149ff.; Abū Isḥāq, Haft bāb, text pp. 22, 38–40, translation pp. 21–22, 38–41; G. Vajda, ‘Melchisédec dans la mythologie Ismaélienne’, Journal Asiatique, 234 (1943–1945), pp. 173–183; and W. Ivanow, ‘Noms Bibliques dans la mythologie Ismaélienne’, Journal Asiatique, 237 (1949), pp. 249–255. 32 See Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, pp. 14–19; trans. Hodgson, pp. 293–296; al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa, text pp. 132ff., 145–149, translation pp. 155ff., 169–175; and Abū Isḥāq, Haft bāb, text p. 32, translation p. 32. 33 Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, p. 17; trans. Hodgson, p. 296; al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa, text pp. ­114–119, translation pp. 132–138; and Abū Isḥāq, Haft bāb, text p. 40, translation p. 40. 34 Al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa, text pp. 104–105, 112, translation, pp. 119, 128–129. 35 For further details, see Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 452–467, 704–709, where further references are cited. 36 See W. Ivanow, ‘Satpanth’, in Ivanow, ed., Collectanea, pp. 1–19; A. Nanji, The Nizārī Ismāʿīlī Tradition in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (Delmar, NY, 1978), pp. 50–96; C. Shackle and Z. Moir, Ismaili Hymns from South Asia: An Introduction to the Ginans (London, 1992); A. S. Asani, ‘The Ismāʿīlī Gināns: Reflections on Authority and Authorship’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 265–280; and Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis, pp. 177–185. 37 Nanji, Nizārī Ismāʿīlī Tradition, pp. 99–130, 144–145.

10

- -- Al-Qa D.I al-Nuʿma n, IsmaʿIlI law - and ImamI ShIʿism

The Ismāʿīlīs split off from the rest of the Imāmī Shīʿīs on the death of the Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in 148/765; other Imāmī groups were eventually consolidated in terms of the Twelver (Ithnāʿasharī) community.* The Imāmī Shīʿī doctrine of the imamate, which was conceptualised already in al-Ṣādiq’s time, retained its centrality in the theological thought of both branches of Imāmī Shīʿism, the Ismāʿīliyya and the Ithnāʿashariyya, despite pronounced differences in their political strategies. It was, however, in the Fatimid state, representing the crowning success of the revolutionary movement of the early Ismāʿīlīs, that the doctrine of the imamate also served to characterise the newly founded legal system of the Ismāʿīlīs. The modern progress in Ismāʿīlī studies, based on a large number of Ismāʿīlī manuscripts recovered in the twentieth century, has shed light on many aspects of Ismāʿīlī history and thought. As a result, centuries-old misrepresentations of this branch of Imāmī Shīʿism have also been increasingly replaced by factual evidence substantiating a completely different, and equally astonishing, picture. The Ismāʿīlīs had been accused from early on by their detractors, especially the Sunnī polemicists among them, of having dispensed with positive law or the commandments and prohibitions of the sharīʿa, because they had found access to its hidden, true meaning concealed in the bāṭin or esoteric dimension of religion as interpreted by their imam. This explains why the Ismāʿīlīs were also pejoratively designated as the Bāṭiniyya (Esotericists) by their enemies. However, modern scholarship in Ismāʿīlī studies has revealed that the Ismāʿīlīs, at least from the time when their daʿwa led to the foundation of a dawla, the Fatimid caliphate, in 297/909, concerned themselves with legal matters. In fact, Ismāʿīlī literature of the Fatimid period generally emphasises the inseparability of the z.āhir and the bāṭin, the letter of the law and its inner, spiritual significance. Modern scholarship has shown that Ismāʿīlī law and jurisprudence were founded in early Fatimid times, mainly as a result of the efforts of the foremost Fatimid jurist, Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Abī ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Manṣūr b. Aḥmad b.

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Ḥayyūn al-Tamīmī al-Qayrawānī. However, in the pre-Fatimid, secret and revolutionary phase of the Ismāʿīlī movement, Ismāʿīlī law did not exist; and the then dissimulating Ismāʿīlīs observed the law of the land wherever they lived. After a pioneering study by Richard Gottheil (1862–1936), based on Ibn Ḥajar’s Raf ʿ al-iṣr ʿan quḍāt Miṣr,1 it was mainly Asaf A. A. Fyzee (1899–1981) who first called the attention of modern scholars to the work of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān as an Ismāʿīlī jurist and the resulting independent Ismāʿīlī school of jurisprudence, on par with the Jaʿfarī madhhab of the Twelver (Ithnāʿasharī) Imāmī Shīʿīs.2 Subsequently, a few other scholars in the West, such as Rudolf Strothmann (1877–1960), Robert Brunschvig (1901–1990) and Wilferd Madelung, produced studies on Ismāʿīlī law;3 and most recently, Ismail K. Poonawala has made significant contributions to the field.4 The existence of an Ismāʿīlī madhhab or school of jurisprudence was of course always known to the Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlīs, designated as Bohras in South Asia, for whom al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām has served throughout the centuries as their principal legal authority. There are also those medieval and modern scholars in the Islamic world that variously deny al-Nuʿmān’s Ismāʿīlī persuasion, mainly regarding him as a Twelver Shīʿī who had practised taqiyya or precautionary dissimulation, concealing his true religious identity whilst serving the Fatimid caliph-imams. There is little information available on al-Nuʿmān’s family and early education. According to the reliable report of his contemporary, the Mālikī jurist from the Maghrib, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥārith al-Khushanī al-Qayrawānī (d. 371/981), al-Nuʿmān’s father Muḥammad b. Ḥayyān, himself a jurist, was originally a Mālikī Sunnī (like his forefathers) before converting to Ismāʿīlism (or ‘the doctrine of the mashāriqa’) sometime prior to the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909.5 However, al-Nuʿmān’s father seems to have practised taqiyya. Born around 290/903, al-Nuʿmān was in his youth at the time of his father’s conversion, and, in all probability, as argued by Poonawala, he was raised and educated as an Ismāʿīlī. This may also explain his rapid rise to prominence under the early Fatimids. At any rate, for medieval Ismāʿīlī authorities, such as the Ṭayyibī dāʿī and historian Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn (d. 872/1468),6 the religious affiliation of the foremost Fatimid jurist is not a question to be debated; he was always an Ismāʿīlī. There are, however, those medieval and modern authorities who hold that al-Nuʿmān was initially a Mālikī Sunnī and then became a Twelver Imāmī and finally converted to Ismāʿīlism. This conversion process was evidently first propounded by Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282),7 a late source who evidently confused al-Nuʿmān with his father Muḥammad; and this claim may be refuted on the basis of the already-cited more reliable report of al-Nuʿmān’s contemporary al-Khushanī. More persistently, we have the claims of various Twelver Imāmī authors who, throughout the centuries, held that al-Nuʿmān was indeed one of their co-religionists, although the early Imāmī authors of bio-bibliographies (kutub al-rijāl), such as al-Kashshī (fl. fourth/tenth century), al-Najāshī (d. 450/1058) and Shaykh al-Ṭā’ifa al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067), do not refer to him at all. The theologian and biographer Ibn Shahrāshūb (d. 588/1192) is apparently the earliest Twelver authority to mention al-Nuʿmān and some of his works.8

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It seems that by the sixth/twelfth century, al-Nuʿmān was already regarded as a Twelver Imāmī, who had practised taqiyya under the Fatimids. The origins of such claims may be traced to a century earlier when numerous ʿAlids and Twelver scholars found refuge in Fatimid Cairo in the aftermath of the demise of the Shīʿī Būyids who were replaced in ʿAbbasid dominions by the Sunnī Saljūqs. The Twelver Imāmīs living in the Fatimid state may have played a key role in introducing al-Nuʿmān’s works to their distinct Imāmī community and also laying claims on him as one of their own. As an early case in point, it is worth noting that Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Karājikī (d. 449/1057), a prominent Twelver scholar and close associate of the Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044–1045) who spent the greater part of his scholarly life in Fatimid dominions, composed abridgements of several of al-Nuʿmān’s legal works, including the Daʿāʾim al-Islām.9 These abridgements probably qualified al-Nuʿmān for being cited in later Imāmī bibliographies. Nūr Allāh al-Shūshtarī (d. 1019/1610), the eminent Persian Twelver jurist, reiterated that al-Nuʿmān was originally a Mālikī Sunnī and then became an Imāmī.10 This claim was repeated by numerous Twelver theologians of subsequent times, such as al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1104/1693), Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (d. 1110/1699), Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, better known as Sayyid al-Ṭāʾifa (d. 1212/1797), and Mīrzā Ḥusayn al-Nūrī (d. 1320/1902). Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī (d. 1389/1970), a contemporary Twelver scholar who produced a valuable encyclopaedia of Shīʿī works, also maintained that al-Nuʿmān was an Imāmī.11 For similar reasons, works of al-Nuʿmān, such as Sharḥ al-akhbār, have been recently published in Qumm with the sponsorship of Twelver seminaries there. Al-Nuʿmān was a contemporary of some of the most renowned early Imāmī authorities, such as al-Kulaynī (d. 329/940–941) and Ibn Bābawayh (d. 381/991) and, in addition to drawing on their works, he himself was amongst the earliest Shīʿī contributors to ḥadīth and fiqh; not to mention that Ismāʿīlīs, too, like the Twelvers, have referred to themselves as Imāmīs. All of this may explain the high esteem with which Twelver Shīʿīs of different generations have held al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān. According to his own statement,12 al-Nuʿmān served the first Fatimid caliphimam al-Mahdī (297–322/909–934) for about nine years before the latter’s death. Subsequently, he served the second and third Fatimids, al-Qāʾim (322–334/934– 946) and al-Manṣūr (334–341/946–953). He may even have joined the service of the Fatimids earlier than reported, having received his first significant appointment in 313/925 as a secretary reporting the news of the court to al-Mahdī and a librarian to al-Mahdī’s grandson, the future caliph al-Manṣūr. Soon after his accession to the Fatimid caliphate, al-Manṣūr appointed al-Nuʿmān as the judge of Tripoli. Subsequently, in 337/948, when al-Manṣūr relocated the Fatimid capital to Manṣūriyya, al-Nuʿmān was promoted to the highest judiciary post of the Fatimid state, with jurisdiction over Manṣūriyya, the old capitals Mahdiyya and Qayrawān, as well as having the right to appoint judges throughout all Fatimid territories. Al-Manṣūr may also have entrusted al-Nuʿmān with the affairs of the daʿwa as chief dāʿī.13 It was under al-Manṣūr’s son and successor al-Muʿizz (341–365/953–975) that al-Nuʿmān reached the peak of his career. According to a decree issued by

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al-Muʿizz in 343/954, al-Nuʿmān was entrusted with the maz.ālim (grievances) proceedings throughout the Fatimid dominions.14 In addition to enjoying the highest judicial authority in the Fatimid state, al-Nuʿmān was now also authorised to hold the majālis al-ḥikma or the ‘sessions of wisdom’, held every Friday, following the noon prayers, in a section of the Fatimid palace in order to instruct the Ismāʿīlīs in esoteric (bāṭinī) doctrines.15 In later times, the preparation and delivery of these ḥikma lectures were undertaken only by the chief dāʿīs. But it was in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān that, for the first time in a systematic manner, the responsibility for implementing the law and explaining the esoteric Ismāʿīlī doctrines was unified in the same person. Al-Nuʿmān accompanied al-Muʿizz to Egypt in 362/973, when the Fatimid caliph-imam established himself in his new capital, Cairo. He died shortly afterwards on 29 Jumādā II 363/27 March 974, having faithfully served the Fatimid dynasty for almost 50 years. Al-Nuʿmān’s funeral prayers were led by al-Muʿizz himself. Al-Nuʿmān was a prolific writer, with more than 50 treatises to his credit. He effectively covered every field of Ismāʿīlī literature, from history to esoteric sciences (ḥaqāʾiq) and taʾwīl, or the esoteric interpretation of the Qurʾanic passages, as well as the commandments and prohibitions of the law. The lectures he delivered in the majālis al-ḥikma have survived as the Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim. However, it is the codification of Ismāʿīlī law, in successive stages, that accounts for a significant portion of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s scholarly output. In this domain, as well as in his esoteric work, al-Nuʿmān evidently consulted his contemporary Fatimid caliphimams, especially al-Muʿizz, on whatever he wrote; and it is primarily due to this Ismāʿīlī tradition, related by the dāʿī Idrīs, that our Qāḍī has been accorded such a high position of respect and authority amongst the Ismāʿīlīs. Al-Nuʿmān started the elaborate process of codifying Ismāʿīlī law while still serving al-Mahdī, by systematically collecting a vast number of legal ḥadīths transmitted from the ahl al-bayt on the basis of a variety of earlier Shiʿi sources. The results of his initial endeavours appeared in a massive compendium entitled Kitāb al-īḍāḥ, comprising some 3,000 folios, which has not survived except for a fragment on ritual prayer (ṣalāt).16 Subsequently, he produced several abridgments of the Īḍāḥ, such as the Kitāb al-akhbār, Kitāb al-iqtiṣār and al-Urjūza al-muntakhaba. All of these legal works were treated as semi-official compendia by the Fatimids.17 In addition to these early legal texts, al-Nuʿmān also composed several polemical treatises, such as the Kitāb ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, refuting various Sunnī schools of jurisprudence. As argued in the Kitāb ikhtilāf, and elsewhere in al-Nuʿmān’s works, the principles of jurisprudence are the Qurʾan, the sunna of the Prophet, and the decisions of the imams from the ahl al-bayt, especially the ruling imam.18 With the establishment of the Fatimid state, the Imāmī Shīʿī doctrine of the imamate, shared by both the Twelvers and the Ismāʿīlīs who evolved out of the earlier Imāmīs, became institutionalised and, therefore, Ismāʿīlī law, as we shall see, had to formally recognise it in terms of its principles (uṣūl ). It was, however, al-Muʿizz who officially commissioned al-Nuʿmān to promulgate the Fatimid code.19 And this resulted in the composition of the

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Daʿāʾim al-Islām,20 representing the culmination of al-Nuʿmān’s legal compendia. Composed around 349/960, the Daʿāʾim was read carefully by al-Muʿizz, chapter by chapter, and it was endorsed by the Ismāʿīlī imam as the official code of the Fatimid dominions. The Fatimid caliph-imam evidently urged his subjects to read this book, and the text was also used extensively in the lectures on law delivered by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān in the weekly sessions on Fridays.21 Ismāʿīlī law was new and its precepts had to be explained to all subjects of the Fatimid state. Like the Sunnīs as well as the Twelver and Zaydī Shīʿīs, the Ismāʿīlīs had now come to possess a system of law and jurisprudence, which also delineated an Ismāʿīlī paradigm of governance revolving around a living imam from the Prophet’s family. The Daʿāʾim is divided into two volumes, the first one dealing with ʿibādāt, or acts of devotion and religious duties, consisting of the seven pillars of Islam, as enumerated by the Imam al-Ṣādiq and adopted by the Ismāʿīlīs: walāya (devotion to imams), ṭahāra (ritual purity), ṣalāt (prayer), zakāt (alms giving), ṣawm (fasting in the month of Ramaḍān), ḥajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) and jihād (holy war). The Fatimid Ismāʿīlīs, as Shīʿīs, thus added two more pillars, walāya and ṭahāra, to the generally accepted five pillars. The second volume of the Daʿāʾim deals with muʿāmalāt, or worldly affairs, such as food, clothing, inheritance, marriage and divorce. The Daʿāʾim became the Fatimid legal code from the time of al-Muʿizz, and it still remains the chief legal text for all branches (Dāʾūdī, Sulaymānī, ʿAlawī) of the Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlī communities. In codifying Ismāʿīlī law, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān drew on a variety of Shīʿī (Imāmī and Zaydī) as well as Sunnī sources, in addition to acknowledging the minoritarian position of the Ismāʿīlīs within the Fatimid state. Thus, compromises were required in promulgating Ismāʿīlī law, the latest addition to the Shīʿī systems of law. Ismāʿīlī law, which in general agrees with Imāmī (Twelver) law with minor differences on the questions of inheritance22 and marriage, indeed represents a blending of Shīʿī beliefs, especially as embodied in the doctrine of the imamate, with the legal concepts of Muslims in general. The Ismāʿīlīs, like other Muslims, accepted the Qurʾan and the sunna of the Prophet as the principal sources of law. However, in line with their Imāmī heritage, they departed from the norms of the Sunnī schools in acknowledging only those Prophetic traditions which were reported by their imams from the ahl al-bayt. In addition, the Ismāʿīlīs also accepted traditions (ḥadīths) from their imams. The traditions reported by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, in the Daʿāʾim and elsewhere, are from the Prophet, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and his five successor imams, especially Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, recognised by both the Ismāʿīlīs and the Twelvers. In the case of the Prophetic traditions, the isnāds or chains of transmission of ḥadīth, aside from those related by an imam, are dropped in all Ismāʿīlī legal literature, implying that when an imam relates a ḥadīth from the Prophet, no further authority is necessary. Al-Nuʿmān does not quote any ḥadīths from the Ismāʿīlī imams after Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, the fountainhead of Ismāʿīlī fiqh and initiator of the Jaʿfarī (Ithnāʿasharī) madhhab named after him. The identity of these imams living in the period of concealment (dawr al-satr) was a closely guarded secret for the Ismāʿīlīs, and evidently they did not report ḥadīth. Furthermore, al-Nuʿmān

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did not quote any traditions from the contemporary Ismāʿīlī imams, al-Muʿizz or earlier Fatimid caliphs who monitored his writings. Al-Nuʿmān totally ignores the ḥadīths of the later imams of the Twelvers (Imāmīs) after Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, beginning with Mūsā al-Kāz. im (d. 183/799), who are not recognised by the Ismāʿīlīs. Those Twelver scholars who regard al-Nuʿmān as a ­co-religionist attribute this to his observance of the principle of taqiyya or precautionary dissimulation through fear of the Fatimids. Taqiyya, as is known, has been practised widely by both the Ismāʿīlīs and the Twelvers as part of their common Imāmī tradition. This is one of the main differences between the ḥadīths cited by al-Nuʿmān and those included in the four canonical collections of the Twelver Imāmīs, compiled by al-Kulaynī, Ibn Bābawayh and Shaykh al-Ṭāʾifa Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī. Another difference between the ḥadīth reports of the Twelvers and Ismāʿīlīs is that authority of the scholars of Qumm is predominant in the Twelver collections of al-Kulaynī and others, while the majority of the authorities and transmitters used by al-Nuʿmān hailed from Kūfa. This phenomenon, as pointed out by Madelung,23 may have resulted solely from the availability of sources in North Africa. On the other hand, prior to composing the Daʿāʾim, al-Nuʿmān also used traditions from ʿAlids who were not recognised as imams either by the Ismāʿīlīs or the Twelvers, relying on Zaydī transmission. Some of these ʿAlids were not even acknowledged as imams by the Zaydīs themselves. Here, al-Nuʿmān evidently adopted a Zaydī ( Jārūdī) position that recognised the teaching of all qualified members of the ahl al-bayt as authoritative.24 However, al-Nuʿmān accords the imams superior authority compared to other ʿAlids. In this sense, Ismāʿīlī law initially appeared, both materially and theoretically, as a compromise between Imāmī (Twelver) and Zaydī law. However, by the time of the Daʿāʾim, al-Nuʿmān had confined himself to the firmly established doctrine of the imams of the ahl al-bayt as it was related to him. Nevertheless, in a few cases, he still quoted views of the Zaydī ʿAlids. As an example of such cases in the Daʿāʾim, reflecting a major point of difference with Twelver (Imāmī) law, the prohibition of temporary marriage (mutʿa) is admitted by al-Nuʿmān on the basis of ḥadīths from the Imams ʿAlī and al-Ṣādiq used also by the Zaydīs. As it is known, mutʿa is practised by Twelver Shī‘īs. Ismāʿīlī fiqh in general may be said to reflect a compromise between Imāmī and Zaydī law. In sum, strong Twelver Imāmī influences, and to a lesser extent Zaydī, Shīʿī influences, are present in the legal system elaborated in the Daʿāʾim al-Islām, which also tended to reconcile certain differences between the doctrines of the Ismāʿīlīs and those upheld by the Mālikī Sunnī school of jurisprudence prevalent in North Africa. For example, there are close similarities between the Ismāʿīlī and Mālikī laws of marriage and sales. As noted, al-Nuʿmān, who was closely guided by al-Muʿizz, recognised the minority status of the Ismāʿīlīs in their North African milieu and attempted a legalistic rapprochement with Mālikī Sunnism. In the Daʿāʾim al-Islām, the first pillar on walāya is the key to understanding al-Nuʿmān’s entire legal system.25 Constructed from Qurʾanic verses and Prophetic ḥadīth with interpretations of the imams, this chapter is an authoritative exposition of the Imāmī Shīʿī doctrine of the imamate. It is, in fact, this doctrine that separates

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the Imāmī, Ismāʿīlī or Twelver, and the Sunnī schools of jurisprudence. For the Ismāʿīlīs, the authority of their ʿAlid imam and his teachings now became the third and most decisive principal source of law, after the Qurʾan and the sunna of the Prophet. The doctrine of walāya/imāma, as articulated by al-Nuʿmān, also provided Islamic legitimation for an ʿAlid state ruled by the ahl al-bayt, laying the foundation for the Fatimids’ claim to political leadership of the Muslims.26 The Daʿāʾim al-Islām was the earliest Shīʿī text to accord walāya a legal status in Islamic law. The chapter on the walāya, together with the ʿahd, dealing with the ruler’s conduct towards his subjects, a document ascribed to ʿAlī and included in the Daʿāʾim’s chapter on jihād, represent the Ismāʿīlī theory of the state.27 By contrast to the Ismāʿīlīs, walāya was not included in the Twelver Imāmī legal works. For the Twelvers, the doctrine of the imamate had no practical value as their twelfth Imam-Mahdī had gone into occultation. In the absence of their imam, the Twelver scholars and jurists had emerged as legal authorities ( fuquhāʾ) in the community, allowing for ijmāʿ and ʿaql as sources of law. Ismāʿīlī law did not accept ijmāʿ , meaning consensus of opinion (allowed by Twelvers and Sunnīs), or ʿaql, meaning systematic reasoning in law. The Ismāʿīlīs also rejected qiyās, or analogical deduction, and all of its substitutes that were accepted by the Sunnīs. In sum, Ismāʿīlī law rejected adjudication or legal interpretation from sources other than the imams. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was also the founder of a distinguished family of judges in the Fatimid state. His son Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī (d. 374/984), chief judge under al-ʿAzīz for nine years, was in fact the first person to bear the official title of qāḍī al-quḍāt, or the supreme judge in the Fatimid state. Al-Nuʿmān’s great-grandson, Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Muḥammad b. al-Nuʿmān, was the last member of the Nuʿmān family to hold the post of chief qāḍī; he was dismissed, after several terms in office, in 449/1049. However, the legal literature of the Fatimid Ismāʿīlīs remained rather meagre by comparison with the Sunnī schools of jurisprudence and the Twelver madhhab. After al-Nuʿmān, there was no significant development in Ismāʿīlī law. The Ismāʿīlī system of jurisprudence is almost exclusively the work of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, whose works have been preserved by the Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlīs of Yemen and South Asia. For these Ismāʿīlīs, the Daʿāʾim al-Islām still serves, after a millennium, as their foremost authority in legal matters while their imams have remained hidden. On the other hand, the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs, who have always had a present imam, have been guided in their legalistic affairs by current imams.

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in M. A. Amir-Moezzi, M. M. Bar-Asher and S. Hopkins, ed., Le Shīʿisme Imāmite quarante ans après. Hommage à Etan Kohlberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 179–186.   1 R. J. H. Gottheil, ‘A Distinguished Family of Fatimide Cadis (al-Nuʿmān) in the Tenth Century’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 27 (1906), pp. 217–296.   2 A. A. A. Fyzee, ‘Qadi an-Nuʿman, The Fatimid Jurist and Author’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1934), pp. 1–32, and his other works listed in F. Daftary, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies (London, 2004), pp. 269–271.

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  3 R. Strothmann, ‘Recht der Ismailiten: Kadi Nuʿmān und Daʿāʾim al-Islām’, Der Islam, 31 (1954), pp. 131–146; R. Brunschvig, ‘Fiqh Fatimide et histoire de l’Ifriqiya’, in Mélanges d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’occident Musulman: II, Hommage à Georges Marçais (Algiers, 1957), pp. 13–20; reprinted in his Études d’Islamologiques (Paris, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 63–70; and W. Madelung, ‘The Sources of Ismāʿīlī Law’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 3 (1976), pp. 29–40; reprinted in his Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam (London, 1985), article XVIII.  4 See the following works by I. K. Poonawala: ‘Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Works and the Sources’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 36 (1973), pp. 109–115; ‘A Reconsideration of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Madhhab’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 37 (1974), pp. 572–579; ‘Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismaʿili Jurisprudence’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 117– 143; Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977), pp. 48–68; and ‘Ismaʿilism. xi. Ismaʿili Jurisprudence’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 14, pp. 195–197.  5 Muḥammad b. al-Ḥārith al-Khushanī and Abu’l-ʿArab Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, Ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ Ifrīqiya, ed. B. Cheneb, in his Classes des savants de l’Ifriqiya (Algiers, 1915), pp. 223ff.   6 See Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1978), vol. 6, pp. 38–49.   7 Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. I. ʿAbbās (Beirut, 1968–1972), vol. 5, pp. 415–423.   8 Ibn Shahrāshūb, Maʿālim al-ʿulamāʾ, ed. ʿA. Iqbāl (Tehran, 1353/1934), p. 113.  9 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī, ‘Maktabat al-ʿAllāma al-Karājikī’, Turāthunā, 43–44 (1416/ 1996), p. 380, cited in W. Madelung’s review of S. A. Hamdani’s Between Revolution and State (London, 2006), in Journal of Islamic Studies, 18 (2007), p. 421. 10 Al-Shūshtarī, Majālis al-muʾminīn (Tehran, 1375–1376/1955–1956), vol. 1, pp. 538–539. 11 Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī, Muḥammad Muḥsin, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa (TehranNajaf, 1353–1398/1934–1978), vol. 1, p. 60. 12 Al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Kitāb al-majālis wa’l-musāyarāt, ed. al-Ḥabīb al-Faqī et al. (Tunis, 1978), p. 79. See also Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1978), vol. 5, p. 346. 13 Idrīs, ʿUyūn, vol. 5, p. 331, vol. 6, p. 39. 14 Al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Kitāb ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, ed. S. T. Lokhandwalla (Simla, 1972), text pp. 19–22. 15 Al-Nuʿmān, Kitāb al-majālis, pp. 386, 435, 487, 546. 16 Al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa, al-Īḍāḥ, partial ed. M. K. Raḥmatī (Beirut, 2007), pp. 20–165. 17 See Poonawala, ‘Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismaʿili Jurisprudence’, pp. 121–123. 18 Al-Nuʿmān, Kitāb ikhtilāf, text p. 22. 19 Idrīs, ʿUyūn, vol. 6, pp. 42–43. 20 Al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. A. A. A. Fyzee (Cairo, 1951–1961); English trans., The Pillars of Islam, trans. A. A. A. Fyzee, completely revised by I. K. Poonawala (New Delhi, 2002–2004). 21 Al-Nuʿmān, Kitāb al-majālis, pp. 306–307. 22 For a comparative analysis of Ismāʿīlī and Imāmī laws of inheritance, see A. Cilardo, Diritto ereditario Islamico delle scuole giuridiche Ismailita e Imamita (Rome-Naples, 1993). 23 Madelung, ‘Sources of Ismāʿīlī Law’, p. 31. 24 Ibid., p. 32. 25 Al-Nuʿmān, Daʿāʾim, vol. 1, pp. 3–98; trans. Fyzee and Poonawala, vol. 1, pp. 5–122; see also A. Nanji, ‘An Ismāʿīlī Theory of Walāyah in the Daʿāʾim al-Islām of Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’, in D. P. Little, ed., Essays on Islamic Civilization Presented to Niyazi Berkes (Leiden, 1976), pp. 260–273. 26 For a detailed discussion, see S. A. Hamdani, Between Revolution and State: The Path to Fatimid Statehood, Qadi al-Nuʿman and the Construction of Fatimid Legitimacy (London, 2006), especially pp. 65–92. 27 See Wadād al-Qāḍī, ‘An Early Fāṭimid Political Document’, Studia Islamica, 48 (1978), pp. 71–108.

11 The Iranian school of ­philosophical Ismailism*

By the end of the third/ninth century, much of the intellectual heritage of ­antiquity had become available to Muslims.** This had resulted from the great movement of translating numerous texts of Greek wisdom into Arabic. The works of Plato (Aflāṭūn), Aristotle (Arisṭūtālīs), Galen ( Jālīnūs), Ptolemy (Baṭlāmiyūs) and many other Greek sages were initially translated into Syriac-Aramaic, mainly by the Christian scholars of Mesopotamia and Syria who then translated the same materials into Arabic. After the sporadic efforts of the Umayyad period, this translation movement was officially and extensively sponsored by the early Abbasids, especially al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–833), who established at his palace in Baghdad the Bayt al-Ḥikma (House of Wisdom) with a major library where translations were undertaken systematically by teams of scholars. As a result, the Muslims now became closely acquainted not only with different branches of Greek sciences, such as medicine, physics, mathematics and astronomy, but also with logic and metaphysics, transporting Hellenistic influences to the Islamic sciences and other traditions of learning.1 In philosophy, along with the works of the great Greek masters, the writings of the authors of the so-called Neoplatonic school were also translated into Arabic with commentaries from the third/ninth century onwards. These new Arabic Neoplatonic materials were to have seminal influences on the development of Islamic philosophy in general and the Ismaili thought of the Fatimid period in particular. Neoplatonism, a term coined by modern historians of philosophy, was founded by Plotinus (d. 270 AD), known to Muslims as the Shaykh al-Yūnānī, or the Greek Master, who had reworked Plato in an original manner. After the contributions of a number of Plotinus’s disciples, notably Porphyry (d. ca. 330 AD) and his student Iamblichus (d. ca. 330 AD), Neoplatonic philosophy received its major systematisation at the hands of the Athenian Proclus (d. 485 AD).

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It is to be noted that Muslims did not generally distinguish among the various schools of Greek philosophy, while they considered Aristotle as its foremost representative. This explains why they readily attributed numerous pseudepigrapha to Aristotle, texts that acquired early popularity in Muslim intellectual milieus. By the fourth/tenth century, there had appeared several Arabic treatises containing Neoplatonic doctrines rooted in the teachings of Plotinus and other Greek philosophers. Although a number of these texts had been translated into Arabic under the correct names of their Greek authors, a majority bore false attributions, chiefly to Aristotle. Foremost among the Neoplatonic materials in Arabic, which disseminated Neoplatonism among the Muslims and also influenced the Ismaili and Qarmaṭī dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, was a paraphrase of portions of Plotinus’s principal work, the Enneads. Existing in ‘longer’ and ‘shorter’ versions, this treatise circulated as The Theology of Aristotle (Uthūlūjiya Arisṭūtālīs). The learned Ismaili dāʿīs, who were at the same time the scholars and authors of their community, as well as other Muslim scholars, also had access to the Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khayr (Discourse on the Pure Good), another important pseudo-Aristotelian work which was in fact a paraphrase of Proclus’s Elements of Theology. When medieval Europe began in the sixth/twelfth century to acquire access to texts on Greek sciences and philosophy through translations from their Arabic versions, the Kalām became famous in its Latin version under the title of Liber de causis (Book of Causes).2 The pseudo-Aristotelian texts, and other Arabic translations of Greek philosophical works, circulated among the educated classes and their Neoplatonic doctrines proved particularly appealing to a diversity of Muslim thinkers, who adopted and adapted them in the course of the fourth/tenth century. And this led to the development of a distinctive philosophical tradition in the Muslim world. Initiated by al-Kindī (d. after 256/870), the early success of this philosophical tradition found its full application in the works of al-Fārābī (d. 339/950), widely known as the ‘second teacher’ (al-muʿallim al-thānī) of philosophy in the Islamic world after Aristotle and Ibn Sīna (d. 428/1037), the Avicenna of medieval Europeans. Both of these great Muslim philosophers or falāsifa hailed from the eastern Iranian world, and they synthesised Aristotelian metaphysics with a variety of Neoplatonic doctrines. Neoplatonism proved particularly attractive to the intellectual circles of Nīshāpūr and other cities of Khurāsān, an important region for the development of Islamic philosophy, as well as Transoxania in Central Asia. The pseudo-Aristotelian texts and their Neoplatonic philosophy had also attracted the attention of the learned Ismaili and dissident Qarmaṭī dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, operating especially in the Jibāl, Khurāsān and Transoxania.3 It was in the course of the fourth/tenth century that these dāʿīs set about to harmonise their Ismaili Shiʿi theology (kalām) with Neoplatonic philosophy. This interfacing of reason and revelation, or philosophy and theology, led to the development of the unique intellectual tradition of ‘philosophical theology’ within Ismailism – a tradition designated as ‘philosophical Ismailism’ in modern times. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nasafī (d. 332/943), the chief dāʿī of Khurāsān and Transoxania, was evidently the earliest of the Iranian dāʿīs to introduce Neoplatonic

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philosophy into his theology and system of thought. He may also have been the first Iranian dāʿī to have propagated his ideas in writing. Al-Nasafī’s major work, Kitāb al-maḥṣūl (Book of the Yield), written around 300/912 and summarising this dāʿī’s views, has not survived, but it is known that it circulated widely and acquired much popularity among dissident Qarmaṭī circles. Al-Nasafī and other early dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, such as Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934) and Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971), wrote for the ruling elite and the educated classes of society, aiming to attract them intellectually and win their support for the daʿwa. This may explain why these dāʿīs expressed their kalām theology, revolving around the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate, in terms of the then most modern and intellectually fashionable philosophical terminologies and themes, without compromising the essence of their religious message. It was under such circumstances that Muḥammad al-Nasafī, Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī and, most importantly, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, drawing on a type of ‘Neoplatonism’ then current among the educated circles of Khurāsān and Central Asia, wrote on various philosophical themes that are generally absent in the writings of al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad (d. 363/974) and other contemporary Ismaili authors operating in the Arab lands and North Africa. The Iranian dāʿīs elaborated complex metaphysical systems of thought with a distinct Neoplatonised emanational cosmology, representing the earliest tradition of philosophical theology in Shiʿi Islam. Sharing a common interest in philosophy, the Iranian dāʿīs also became involved in a long-drawn theological debate. The dāʿī al-Nasafī’s al-Maḥṣūl was criticised by his contemporary dāʿī of Rayy, Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, who devoted an entire work, Kitāb al-iṣlāḥ (Book of the Correction), to correct aspects of al-Nasafī’s teachings.4 Abū Ḥātim’s al-Iṣlāḥ, in turn, called forth a rejoinder from al-Nasafī’s disciple and successor in Khurāsān, al-Sijistānī, who wrote a book entitled Kitāb al-nuṣra (Book of the Support) specifically to defend aspects of al-Nasafī’s views against the criticisms of the dāʿī of Rayy. Al-Sijistānī’s al-Nuṣra, which was composed before this dāʿī was won over by the Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa, has also been lost, but it is quoted extensively, along with al-Maḥṣūl and al-Iṣlāḥ, in the Kitāb al-riyāḍ of the dāʿī Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 411/1020).5 Al-Kirmānī reviewed this debate in his al-Riyāḍ from the perspective of the Fatimid daʿwa, and generally upheld the views of Abū Ḥātim against those of al-Nasafī in affirming the indispensability of both the z.āhir and the bāṭin of the law. This explains why Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī’s al-Iṣlāḥ was the only early text related to this debate that was selected for preservation by the Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa. Later, the antinomian tendencies of al-Nasafī and al-Sijistānī were also attacked by the dāʿī Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070) who, like al-Kirmānī, reflected the position of the Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa.6 This eminent Persian poet, traveller and philosopher was, in fact, the last of the major Iranian dāʿīs propounding philosophical theology.7 The Iranian dāʿīs, as noted, became greatly influenced by Neoplatonism, especially by its concept of the unknowable God, its emanational chain of creation and its hierarchic chain of beings. In their cosmologies, which represented a drastic

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change from the gnostic mythological theory of creation of the early Ismailis,8 the Iranian dāʿīs did not, however, adopt every doctrine of Neoplatonic philosophy, because they had to integrate the borrowed ideas into an Islamic perspective. As a result, the dāʿīs of this ‘Iranian school’ of Ismailism developed their own unique branch of metaphysics, cosmology, soteriology and spiritual anthropology. However, it is mainly on the basis of al-Sijistānī’s corpus of extant writings that modern scholars have recently studied the origins and early development of ‘philosophical Ismailism’, with its Neoplatonised emanational cosmology, as elaborated by the Iranian school during the fourth/tenth century.9 In the Neoplatonised Ismaili cosmology, fully described in al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-yanābīʿ and other works, God is presented as absolutely transcendent, beyond human comprehension, beyond any name or attribute, beyond being and nonbeing, and therefore unknowable. This conception of God, reminiscent of the ineffable One of the Greek Neoplatonists, was also in close agreement with the fundamental Islamic principle of tawḥīd, affirming the absolute unicity of God. The basic tenet of Neoplatonism could thus find ready acceptance in Ismaili theology, which adhered to strict monotheism and at its core was ‘revelational’ rather than ‘rational’. This is why the dāʿī al-Sijistānī stresses that the worshipping of the unknowable God and the upholding of tawḥīd would require, via double negation, the denial of both tashbīh, or anthropomorphism, and the most radical anti-anthropomorphic doctrine, such as those propounded by the rational Muʿtazila, since the advocation of the latter doctrines would mean committing taʿṭīl, or the denudation of the divine essence.10 The Ismailis did, however, introduce some major changes in the next stage of the emanational cosmological doctrine, which they had borrowed from the Neoplatonists, harmonising it with their Islamic teachings and the Qur’anic view of creation. For Plotinus and his school, creation emanates directly and involuntarily from the One. Instead of having the intellect, called nous by the Neoplatonists, emanate directly and involuntarily from the source of being, the One, in the system of the Iranian school, God brings creation into being through His command or volition (amr), or word (kalima), in an act of primordial, extra-temporal origination (ibdāʿ), signifying creation out of nothing – ex nihilo. Hence, God is the originator or the mubdiʿ, and His command or word act as an intermediary between Him and His creation. The universal intellect (ʿaql) is the first originated being (al-mubdaʿ ­al-awwal), also called the first (al-awwal) and the preceder (al-sābiq), since the amr or logos is united with it in existence. The intellect is eternal, motionless and perfect, both potentially and actually.11 It corresponds to the number one, and, in keeping with the Neoplatonic tradition, it is called the source of all light. Through emanation, from the intellect proceeds (inbiʿāth) the soul (nafs) or the universal soul (al-nafs al-kulliyya), also referred to as the second (al-thānī) and the follower (al-tālī), corresponding to the psyche of the Neoplatonists. In this cosmological doctrine, intellect and soul are also combined together as the two roots or principles (al-aṣlān), the original dyad of the pleroma. The nafs, the second hypostasis, is much more complex than the ʿaql, being imperfect and belonging to a different

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plane of ­existence.12 The deficient soul is definitely subservient to the intellect and requires the benefits of the intellect in order to achieve perfection. The Iranian dāʿīs continued the emanational chain of their cosmology all the way to the genesis of man, beyond the simple triad of the One, intellect and soul described by Plotinus, while also recognising that God had created everything in the spiritual and physical worlds all at once (daf ʿatan wāḥidatan).13 The various parts of the universe, however, became only gradually manifested through the process of causation and emanation. The imperfection of the soul, and its desire to attain perfection, expresses itself in movement and this movement is a symptom of defect, just as tranquillity reflects perfection.14 For Plotinus as for Plato, the essential characteristic of the soul is movement, and it is the soul’s movement which causes all other movements. It is interesting to note that for al-Sijistānī, as for Plotinus, time is the measure of motion, resulting from the soul’s activity. The soul’s defect also accounts for its descent into the depths of the physical world, which owes its existence to this very defect. From the movement of the soul, through emanation, prime matter (hayūlā) and form (ṣūra) come into being,15 which provide the foundations of the material world. The order of creation then proceeds as follows: from the soul emanated the seven spheres (aflāk) with their stars, and the heavenly bodies move with the soul’s movement. Through the revolution of the spheres, the four elemental qualities or simple elements (mufradāt), namely, heat, cold, humidity and dryness, were then produced. The simple elements were mixed, through the revolution of the spheres, to form the composite elements (murakkabāt), namely, earth, water, air and ether (fire). The composite elements then mingled to produce the plants with their vegetative soul (al-nafs al-nāmiya), from which the animals with their sentient soul (al-nafs al-ḥissiyya) originated.16 And finally, from the latter, man with his rational soul (al-nafs al-nāṭiqa) came forth. In order to relate this Ismaili Neoplatonic cosmology more closely to the Islamic tradition, some of the concepts of the spiritual world contained in it were identified by the Iranian dāʿīs with Qurʾanic terms. Thus, ʿaql was identified with the ‘pen’ (qalam) and the ‘throne’ (ʿarsh), while nafs was equated with the ‘tablet’ (lawḥ) and the ‘chair’ (kursī).17 At the same time, much emphasis was given to analogies between the spiritual, celestial world and the physical, terrestrial world, on the one hand, and between man as a microcosm and the physical universe as the macrocosm, on the other. This Ismaili Neoplatonic cosmology, as refined by the dāʿī Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, was officially accepted by the Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa sometime towards the latter part of the reign of the Fatimid al-Muʿizz (r. 341–365/953–975), with the approval of the caliph-imam evidently being part of his policy to win the allegiance of the dissident eastern Ismailis (Qarmaṭīs) who were undermining the activities of the Fatimid daʿwa in those regions of the Iranian world.18 Certain conceptions of the earlier mythological cosmology of the Ismailis, however, continued to be retained in the Neoplatonic cosmology that superseded and replaced it, though the original character and function of the older elements are not recognisable in their new context. For instance, the three spiritual beings jadd, fatḥ and khayāl, preserved from the earlier cosmology, now acquired the function

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of acting as intermediaries between the terrestrial daʿwa hierarchy and intellect and soul, while retaining their previous role of rendering the cognition of the upper world feasible for mankind.19 As in the case of the earlier doctrine, they are also the special graces which bestow certain gifts upon the speaker-prophets (nuṭaqāʾ) of sacred human history, bringing the benefits of intellect and soul directly to the nuṭaqāʾ. For al-Sijistānī, the pentad consisting of the aṣlān (intellect and soul), jadd, fatḥ and khayāl, in fact, represents the spiritual ḥudūd, which together with the five highest ranks of the terrestrial daʿwa, that is, nāṭiq, asās, imām, lāḥiq and janāḥ, makes up what Paul Walker has designated as the normative or moral hierarchy, which is of specifically Ismaili provenance.20 Al-Sijistānī harmonises this hierarchy of the intelligible reality, in a highly intricate fashion, with the hierarchical order derived from Neoplatonism, that is, intellect, soul, the spheres and the lower natural orders, with God at the head of both hierarchies. The theologian-philosophers of the Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism also propounded a doctrine of salvation as part of their cosmology. Indeed, al-Sijistānī’s Neoplatonic philosophy and his Ismaili theology, as in the case of his Iranian predecessors, were closely related to a soteriological vision of the cosmos in which man appears as a microcosm with individual human souls as parts of the universal soul. Al-Sijistānī’s doctrine of salvation, elaborated in purely spiritual terms, bears a close affinity to Plotinus’s ideas on the mystical union between man and the One – a union which, according to the ancient Neoplatonists, was the supreme goal of all human endeavour. Drawing extensively on various Neoplatonic and gnostic motifs, al-Sijistānī’s doctrine of salvation is also closely related to his doctrine of the soul and the Ismaili cyclical view of history. This soteriological vision can be explained in terms of descending and ascending scales or paths with their related hierarchies. The descending scale traces creation from God’s command through an emanational hierarchy to the world of material reality and the genesis of man. As a counterpart, the ascending scale maps the rise of man’s soul to the higher, spiritual world in quest of salvation. The doctrine of salvation thus forms the necessary counterpart to the cosmological doctrine in the metaphysical system of al-Sijistānī, as in the case of other theologian–philosophers of the Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism. The ultimate goal of man’s salvation is the human soul’s progression out of a purely mundane, physical existence towards his Creator, in quest of a spiritual reward in an eternal, paradisal afterlife. This ascending quest up a ladder of salvation, or sullam al-najāt, which is also the title of one of al-Sijistānī’s works on his doctrine of salvation, involves the purification of man’s soul, which depends on guidance provided by the terrestrial hierarchy of the Ismaili daʿwa. This is because only the authorised members of this daʿwa hierarchy are in a position to reveal the ‘right path’ along which God guides those who seek the truth and whose souls on the Day of Judgement will be rewarded spiritually. In every era (dawr) of human history, the terrestrial hierarchy consists of the law-announcing nāṭiq of that era and his rightful successors. In the era of Islam, the guidance required for salvation is provided by the Prophet Muḥammad, his waṣī, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and the Ismaili

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imams. In this system, man’s salvation depends on his acquisition of a particular type of knowledge through a unique source or wellspring (yanbūʿ; plural, yanābīʿ) of wisdom. This knowledge can be imparted only through the guidance of religious authorities, the sole possessors of the true, inner meaning of revelation in any prophetic era, who provide its authoritative interpretation or taʾwīl. And it is only through the perfection of individual souls that the actually defective universal soul can realise its own perfection, which is tantamount to restoring perfection to the pleroma. Thus, history becomes the record of the universal soul’s quest for perfection, and also the record of human achievement as man is called to assist in the perfection of the universal soul.21 In evaluating the intellectual contributions of the Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism, themes of theology and philosophy need to be considered side by side, even though al-Sijistānī and his predecessors would not have considered themselves amongst the Muslim philosophers or falāsifa. These Iranian dāʿīs produced original syntheses of religious and philosophical themes, amalgamating the Islamic revelation and its Ismaili interpretation with reason and free enquiry. Yet, it is important to bear in mind that they used philosophy essentially in a subservient manner and in the service of their religious quest, which ultimately required the guidance of the ‘Ismaili imam of the time’ and the hierarchy of teachers authorised by him in the daʿwa organisation. Al-Sijistānī and other proponents of ‘philosophical Ismailism’ thus remained faithful theologians and dāʿīs propagating the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate. However, the philosophical superstructure of their systems served to enhance the intellectual appeal of their message. This explains why their writings circulated widely in Persia and Central Asia, in both Ismaili and non-Ismaili intellectual circles. Some non-Ismaili scholars, such as Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), the Sunni theologian of Transoxania and founder of the Māturīdiyya school of kalām theology, and Abu’l-Qāsim al-Bustī (d. 420/1029), a Muʿtazilī Zaydī scholar of Persia, even commented upon aspects of the systems of thought developed by al-Nasafī and his disciples, and preserved fragments of their writings.22 The Fatimid daʿwa headquarters in Ifrīqiya did not contribute to the elaboration of early philosophical Ismailism of the Iranian school. The original cosmology of the pre-Fatimid Ismailis had continued to be adhered to by the Fatimid daʿwa until the latter part of al-Muʿizz’s reign, as attested, for instance, by Abū ʿĪsā al-Murshid’s Risāla, studied by Stern and other modern scholars. As noted, the Neoplatonic cosmology of the Iranian dāʿīs was, however, endorsed eventually by al-Muʿizz and the Fatimid daʿwa headquarters. Thereafter, the new Ismaili Neoplatonic cosmology was generally advocated by Fatimid dāʿī-authors, in preference to the earlier mythological doctrine, at least until the time of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the last major Iranian proponent of philosophical Ismailism who drew extensively on al-Sijistānī’s writings in elaborating his own metaphysical system in the middle of the fifth/ eleventh century.23 The Neoplatonised cosmology of the Iranian dāʿīs went through further transformation, representing a third stage in the medieval development of the Ismaili cosmological doctrine, at the hands of the dāʿī Ḥamīd al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh

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al-Kirmānī, perhaps the most learned Ismaili theologian-philosopher of the entire Fatimid period. A prolific writer, al-Kirmānī was of Persian origin and was probably born in Kirmān. However, he seems to have spent the greater part of his life as a Fatimid dāʿī in Iraq, being particularly active in Baghdad and Baṣra during the reign of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh (r. 386–411/996–1021). The honorific title ḥujjat al-ʿIrāqayn, meaning the chief dāʿī of both Iraqs (al-ʿIrāq al-ʿArabī and al-ʿIrāq al-ʿAjamī), which is often appended to his name and which may be of a later origin, implies that he was also active in the north-western and west-central parts of Persia. Al-Kirmānī was fully acquainted with Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophies as well as the metaphysical systems of Muslim philosophers, notably al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā. He was, in fact, a contemporary of Ibn Sīnā. Al-Kirmānī also knew Hebrew and Syriac languages and was familiar with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Syriac version of the New Testament, as well as other Judaeo-Christian sacred scriptures.24 Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, too, harmonised Ismaili theology with a diversity of philosophical traditions in developing his own elaborate metaphysical system expounded in the Rāḥat al-ʿaql (Repose of the Intellect), his major philosophical treatise composed in 411/1020 for advanced adepts.25 In fact, al-Kirmānī’s metaphysical system represents a unique syncretic tradition within the Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism. Al-Kirmānī’s cosmology was partially based on al-Fārābī’s Aristotelian cosmic system, and also took account of some of Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī’s objections to the Central Asian school of al-Nasafī. Regarding God’s unknowability and transcendence, al-Kirmānī adopted yet a stricter position compared to his Ismaili predecessors. He denied the hypostatic role of any mediator (wāsiṭa), such as the divine word or command between God and the first created being, because they too would compromise the principle of tawḥīd and God’s absolute transcendence.26 He was also opposed to the views of those Muslim philosophers, such as Ibn Sīnā, who regarded God as a ‘necessary existent’ (wājib al-wujūd), a conception that would again compromise God’s transcendence since it could apply only to a ‘created being’. In his cosmology, al-Kirmānī replaced the Neoplatonic dyad of intellect (ʿaql) and soul (nafs) in the spiritual world, adopted by his Iranian predecessors, with a system of ten separate intellects, or archangelical hypostases, in partial adaptation of al-Fārābī’s school of philosophy. In his system, the first intellect (al-ʿaql al-awwal), or the first originated being, is identical to the very act of origination (ibdāʿ), and it is perfect in its essence, motionless and stable. These attributes signify the complete repose or tranquillity (rāḥa) of the first intellect, and hence the designation Rāḥat al-ʿaql. The first intellect is also the cause (ʿilla) of all beings, corresponding to the One of Plotinus and other Greek Neoplatonists, and to the ‘necessary existent’ of the Muslim philosophers. The first intellect becomes the point of departure for the emanation (inbiʿāth) of the remaining intellects and all other beings. The second and third intellects are emanated from the higher and lower relations of the first intellect. The remaining seven intellects, identified symbolically with the seven higher letters (al-ḥurūf al-ʿulwiyya) of the earliest Ismaili cosmology,27

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are issued from the second intellect (al-ʿaql al-thānī), also called the first emanated being (al-munbaʿith al-awwal). Al-Kirmānī’s ideas on the third intellect, or the second emanated being, representing archetypes of matter (hayūlā) and form (ṣūra), seem to have been without antecedent among his Ismaili predecessors in the Iranian world as well as Muslim philosophers. Celestial bodies and the corporeal world are formed through the third intellect. The physical world consists of nine celestial spheres, the spheres of the planets and the sublunar world. Each sphere is related to one of the intellects. The tenth intellect, also called the active intellect (al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl), governs the physical world as a demiurge. Al-Kirmānī then explains the generation of the four elements (arkān), the realms of minerals, plants and animals, and finally of man as a microcosm reflecting in his essence the macrocosm. Al-Kirmānī’s system, too, culminates in a soteriological doctrine, centred on the salvation of man’s soul through the attainment of spiritual knowledge provided by the authoritative guidance of prophets and their legitimate successors, the imams. In al-Kirmānī’s metaphysical system, there are numerous correspondences between the celestial and terrestrial hierarchies, and between the ten intellects of the higher world and the ranks or ḥudūd of the complete terrestrial daʿwa organisation, ranging from nāṭiq, waṣī (or asās) and imām to bāb (or dāʿī al-duʿāt), ḥujja and different ranks of dāʿī and his assistant or maʾdhūn.28 Many aspects of al-Kirmānī’s system still puzzle modern scholars. It is evident, however, that he used his diverse sources creatively and elaborated an original synthesis.29 At the same time, al-Kirmānī represents continuity in terms of the pivotal Ismaili tenets, and, as in the case of his predecessors in the Iranian school, it is ultimately the authoritative guidance of the Prophet Muḥammad and his successors, the Ismaili imams, that reigns supreme and is determining in his metaphysical system. For unknown reasons, al-Kirmānī’s cosmology failed to be adopted by the Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa in preference to the Neoplatonised cosmology of the earlier Iranian dāʿīs. But it did later provide the doctrinal basis for the fourth and final stage in the medieval development of Ismaili cosmology at the hands of the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian dāʿīs of Yemen, starting with Ibrāhīm b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥāmidī (d. 557/1162). Operating as the second dāʿī muṭlaq, or supreme leader, of the Ṭayyibīs, al-Ḥāmidī drew extensively on al-Kirmānī’s Rāḥat al-ʿaql. Thus, the philosophical tradition elaborated by the Iranian dāʿīs was retrieved and revived by the Arab dāʿīs of Yemen who generally maintained the Fatimid intellectual traditions.

Notes * This chapter was originally published in Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook, 4 (Moscow, 2013), pp. 13–24.

** An earlier, shorter version of this study was included in the author’s A Short History of the

Ismailis (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 81–89. 1 Probably the best work on the Abbasid era translation movement is D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdād and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries) (London, 1998). 2 For a survey of these Neoplatonic texts and their influences on early Ismaili thinkers, see P. Kraus, ‘Plotin chez les Arabes’, Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte, 23 (1940–1941),

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pp. 263–295; reprinted in his Alchemie, Ketzerei, Apokryphen im frühen Islam, ed. R. Brague (Hildesheim, 1994), pp. 313–345; S. Pines, ‘La longue récension de la Théologie d’Aristote dans ses rapports avec la doctrine Ismaélienne’, Revue des Études Islamiques, 22 (1954), pp. 7–20; S. M. Stern, ‘Ibn Ḥasdāy’s Neoplatonist’, Oriens, 13–14 (1960–1961), especially pp. 58–98; reprinted in his Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Thought (London, 1983), article VII; R. C. Taylor, ‘The Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khair (Liber de causis) in the Islamic Philosophical Milieu’, and F. Zimmermann, ‘The Origins of the So-Called Theology of Artistotle’, both studies in J. Kraye et al., ed., Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts (London, 1986), pp. 37–52, 110–240, respectively; P. E. Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 37–44; and C. d’Ancona, ‘Greek into Arabic: Neoplatonism in Translation’, in P. Adamson and R. C. Taylor, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 10–31. 3 For the Ismaili-Qarmaṭī schism in Ismailism, see F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2007), pp. 116–126. See also S. M. Stern, ‘The Early Ismāʿīlī Missionaries in North-West Persia and in Khurāsān and Transoxania’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 23 (1960), pp. 56–90; reprinted in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism ( Jerusalem and Leiden, 1983), pp. 189–233. 4 Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-iṣlāḥ, ed. Ḥ. Mīnūchihr and M. Mohaghegh (Tehran, 1377/1998). 5 Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, Kitāb al-riyāḍ, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1960). 6 See, for instance, Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Khwān al-ikhwān, ed. Y. al-Khashshāb (Cairo, 1940), pp. 112ff.; ed. ʿAlī Qavīm (Tehran, 1338/1959), pp. 131ff., and also his Zād al-musāfirīn, ed. Badhl al-Raḥmān (Berlin, 1341/1923), pp. 421–422. See also A. C. Hunsberger, ‘Nasir Khusraw: Fatimid Intellectual’, in F. Daftary, ed., Intellectual Traditions in Islam (London, 2000), pp. 112–129. 7 See D. de Smet, ‘Was Nāṣir-e Husraw a Great Poet and Only a Minor Philosopher? Some Critical Reflections on His˘ Doctrine of the Soul’, in B. C. Craig, ed., Ismaili and Fatimid Studies in Honor of Paul E. Walker (Chicago, 2010), pp. 101–130. 8 S. M. Stern, ‘The Earliest Cosmological Doctrines of Ismāʿīlism’, in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism, pp. 3–29; H. Halm, Kosmologie und Heilslehre der frühen Ismāʿīlīya: Eine Studie zur islamischen Gnosis (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 18–127; and his ‘The Cosmology of the Pre-Fatimid Ismāʿīliyya’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 75–83. 9 Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī’s metaphysical system may be studied particularly on the basis of his Kitāb al-yanābīʿ, ed. and French trans. H. Corbin, in his Trilogie Ismaélienne (Tehran and Paris, 1961), text pp. 1–97, partial translation pp. 5–127; complete English trans. as The Book of Wellsprings, in P. E. Walker, The Wellsprings of Wisdom (Salt Lake City, 1994), pp. 37–111. Other works of al-Sijistānī, such as his Kashf al-maḥjūb, ed. H. Corbin (Tehran, 1949); French trans., Le dévoilement des choses cachées, trans. H. Corbin (Lagrasse, 1988); partial English trans., Unveiling of the Hidden, trans. H. Landolt, in An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia: Volume 2, Ismaili Thought in the Classical Age, ed. S. H. Nasr and M. Aminrazavi (London, 2008), pp. 74–129; his Kitāb al-iftikhār, ed. I. K. Poonawala (Beirut, 2000) and his Kitāb al-maqālīd al-malakūtiyya, ed. I. K. Poonawala (Tunis, 2011) also contain aspects of his metaphysical system. See also P. E. Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism, pp. 67–142; his Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī: Intellectual Missionary (London, 1996), especially pp. 26–103; and also his ‘The Ismāʿīlīs’, in Adamson and Taylor, ed., Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, pp. 72–91. 10 See, for instance, al-Sijistānī, Kashf al-maḥjūb, ed. Corbin, pp. 4–15. 11 Al-Sijistānī, al-Yanābīʿ, ed. Corbin, text pp. 22–29. 12 See Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, al-Iṣlāḥ, pp. 23-26; al-Sijistānī, al-Yanābīʿ, ed. Corbin, text pp. 32ff.; and al-Sijistānī, al-Nuṣra, quoted in al-Kirmānī, al-Riyāḍ, pp. 59–65, 68–69. 13 Al-Rāzī, al-Iṣlāḥ, pp. 26–28; al-Nasafī, al-Maḥṣūl, quoted in al-Kirmānī, al-Riyāḍ, p. 220; al-Sijistānī, al-Yanābīʿ, text p. 56; and his Ithbāt al-nubūʾāt (al-nubuwwāt), ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1966), pp. 2–3, 28.

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14 Al-Sijistānī, Kashf al-maḥjūb, pp. 29–31, and his al-Nuṣra, in al-Kirmānī, al-Riyāḍ, pp. 102ff. 15 Al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt, p. 44. 16 Ibid., pp. 127–128. 17 See al-Sijistānī, al-Iftikhār, pp. 108–115. 18 See Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 163–167, and Daniel de Smet, ‘The Risāla al-Mudhhiba Attributed to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān: Important Evidence for the Adoption of Neoplatonism by Fatimid Ismailism at the Time of al-Muʿizz?’, in O. Ali-de-Unzaga, ed., Fortresses of the Intellect: Ismaili and Other Islamic Studies in Honour of Farhad Daftary (London, 2011), pp. 309–341. 19 Al-Sijistānī, al-Iftikhār, pp. 116ff., and his Ithbāt, p. 128. 20 See P. E. Walker, ‘Cosmic Hierarchies in Early Ismāʿīlī Thought: The View of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī’, Muslim World, 66 (1976), pp. 14ff. 21 Al-Sijistānī, al-Yanābīʿ, text pp. 44–57. 22 See, for instance, Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Māturīdī, Kitāb al-tawḥīd, ed. F. Kholeif (Beirut, 1970), pp. 3–27, 63–64, and Abu’l-Qāsim Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad al-Bustī, Min kashf asrār al-bāṭiniyya, ed., ʿĀdil Sālim al-ʿAbd al-Jādir, in his al-Ismāʿīliyyūn: kashf al-asrār wa-naqd al-afkār (Kuwait, 2002), pp. 187–369. See also S. M. Stern, ‘Abu’l-Qāsim al-Bustī and His Refutation of Ismāʿīlism’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1961), pp. 14–35; reprinted in his Studies, pp. 299–320; and Halm, Kosmologie, pp. 128–138, 222–224. 23 Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s metaphysical system may be traced through several of his works, especially his Jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn, ed. H. Corbin and M. Muʿīn (Tehran and Paris, 1953); French trans., Le livre réunissant les deux sagesses, trans. I. de Gastines (Paris, 1990); English trans., Between Reason and Revelation: Twin Wisdoms Reconciled, trans. E. Ormsby (London, 2012). 24 On al-Kirmānī’s life and works, see J. van Ess, ‘Biobibliographische Notizen zur islamischen Theologie. I. Zur Chronologie der Werke des Ḥamīdaddīn al-Kirmānī’, Die Welt des Orients, 9 (1978), pp. 255–261; W. Ivanow, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliographical Survey (Tehran, 1963), pp. 40–45; I. K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature (Malibu, CA, 1977), pp. 94–102; F. Daftary, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies (London, 2004), pp. 124–128; and his ‘Ḥamid-al-Din Kermāni’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 11, pp. 639–641. 25 Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn and M. Muṣṭafā Ḥilmī (Cairo, 1953). For thorough studies of al-Kirmānī’s metaphysical system, including his cosmology, see D. de Smet, La Quiétude de l’intellect: Néoplatonisme et gnose Ismaélienne dans l’oeuvre de Ḥamîd ad-Dîn al-Kirmânî (Xe/XIes) (Louvain, 1995), and P. E. Walker, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī: Ismaili Thought in the Age of al-Ḥākim (London, 1999). 26 See al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, pp. 37–56, and de Smet, La Quiétude, pp. 35ff. 27 Al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, pp. 121–131. 28 See al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, pp. 134–139, 225; H. Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, trans. R. Manheim and J. W. Morris (London, 1983), pp. 90–95; and I. R. Netton, Allāh Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology (London, 1989), pp. 222–229. 29 See de Smet, La Quiétude, pp. 23–33, 379–398.

12 ¯ ¯li¯s of The medieval IsmAʿi the Iranian lands

As a major Shīʿī Muslim community, the Ismāʿīlīs have had a long and eventful history dating to the middle of the second/eighth century.* After obscure beginnings in southern Iraq, the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa or mission spread rapidly to eastern Arabia, Yemen, Syria, and other Arab lands as well as North Africa where the Ismāʿīlīs founded their own state, the Fāṭimid caliphate, in 297/909. Meanwhile, the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa had been extended to many regions of the Iranian lands, from Khūzistān in south-western Persia and Daylam on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea to Khurāsān and Transoxania in Central Asia. Belonging to a variety of ethnic groupings and sociocultural milieu, the Ismāʿīlīs in time elaborated diverse intellectual and literary traditions in Arabic, Persian and Indic languages. At present, the Ismāʿīlīs are scattered in more than 25 countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America. Of all the Ismāʿīlī communities that have survived to our own times, those of the Iranian lands and Yemen have had the longest continuous histories. This chapter, presented respectfully to Professor C. Edmund Bosworth, who has so meticulously studied over several decades the history and cultures of the peoples of the Iranian lands, aims to provide a historical overview of the medieval Ismāʿīlī communities of these lands and their prominent dāʿīs or missionaries, who were also their community’s scholars and authors. The Iranian Ismāʿīlīs are primarily Persian-speaking and, since 487/1094, have belonged to the majoritarian Nizārī community of Ismāʿīlism. The Iranian Ismāʿīlīs, now situated mainly within the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as in Hunza and other northern areas of Pakistan, along with the Khoja Ismāʿīlīs of Indian origins and other Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs of the world, currently acknowledge H. H. Prince Karim Aga Khan IV as their 49th imam or spiritual leader.

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The early period On the Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s death in 148/765, the Imāmī Shīʿīs who had acquired their prominence in his imamate split into various groups. Later Imāmī heresiographers identify two of these Kūfan-based splinter groups as the earliest Ismāʿīlīs. One group, the so-called ‘pure Ismāʿīliyya’, denied the death of Ismāʿīl, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s eldest son and original heir-designate, and awaited his return as the Mahdi or qāʾim. A second group, acknowledging Ismāʿīl’s death in his father’s lifetime, now recognised Ismāʿīl’s son Muḥammad as their new imam; this group became known as the Mubārakiyya, named after Ismāʿīl’s epithet of al-Mubārak (the Blessed One).1 Few details are known about the subsequent history of the early Ismāʿīlīs until the middle of the third/ninth century. Soon after 148/765, when the bulk of the Imāmiyya recognised the imamate of Ismāʿīl’s half-brother Mūsā al-Kāz.im (d. 183/799), later counted as the seventh imam of the Twelver Shīʿīs, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl left the permanent residence of the ʿAlids in Medina and went into hiding to avoid ʿAbbāsid persecution, initiating the dawr al-satr or period of concealment in early Ismāʿīlī history. It is certain that Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl spent the latter part of his life in Khūzistān, where he had some following in addition to the bulk of the Mubārakiyya who lived clandestinely in Kūfa. In fact, Khūzistān in south-western Persia remained the scene of the activities of early Ismāʿīlī leadership for several decades. On the death of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, not long after 179/795, the Mubārakiyya themselves split into two groups. The majority, refusing to accept his death, now acknowledged him as the Mahdi, while an obscure group traced the imamate in his progeny. Modern scholarship has revealed that for almost a century after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, a group of his descendants worked secretly and systematically as the central leaders of the earliest Ismāʿīlīs to create a unified and expanding Ismāʿīlī revolutionary movement. These leaders, whose Fāṭimid ʿAlid genealogy was in due course acknowledged by the Ismāʿīlīs, did not for three generations claim the Ismāʿīlī imamate openly in order to safeguard themselves against ʿAbbāsid persecution. The first of these leaders, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl’s son ʿAbd Allāh, had in fact organised a reinvigorated Ismāʿīlī daʿwa around the central doctrine of the bulk of the earliest Ismāʿīlīs, namely, the Mahdiship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Leading an anti-ʿAbbāsid revolutionary movement in the name of a hidden imam who could not be tracked down by the ʿAbbāsid agents did indeed hold obvious advantages for ʿAbd Allāh and his next two successors, who took every precaution to hide their own true identities as the central leaders of the Ismāʿīliyya. ʿAbd Allāh, a capable organiser and strategist, spent his youth in the vicinity of Ahwāz in Khūzistān. He eventually settled down in ʿAskar Mukram, then an economically flourishing town situated some 40 kilometres to the north of Ahwāz. Today the ruins of ʿAskar Mukram, to the south of Shūshtar, are known as Band-i Qīr. ʿAbd Allāh lived as a wealthy merchant in ʿAskar Mukram, from where he decided to organise an expanding Ismāʿīlī movement with a network of dāʿīs operating in different regions. Thus, Khūzistān represented the original base of operations for

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what was to become the successful Ismāʿīlī daʿwa of the third/ninth century. Subsequently, ʿAbd Allāh was forced to flee from ʿAskar Mukram due to the hostilities of his enemies; he eventually settled down in Salamiyya, in central Syria, where the secret headquarters of the early Ismāʿīlī daʿwa now came to be located for several decades. The efforts of ʿAbd Allāh to reorganise the Ismāʿīlī movement began to bear concrete results from around 260/873, when numerous dāʿīs appeared simultaneously in southern Iraq and in different parts of Persia. Al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī, who converted Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ in the Sawād of Kūfa, was a Persian dāʿī and a close associate of ʿAbd Allāh. Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ then organised the daʿwa in southern Iraq, where the Ismāʿīlīs became known as the Qarāmiṭa, named after their first local leader. Ḥamdān’s chief assistant, and one of the most learned dāʿīs of the early Ismāʿīlīs, was his brother-in-law ʿAbdān, who himself hailed from Khūzistān. ʿAbdān recruited and trained numerous dāʿīs, who were dispatched in due course to various regions around the Persian Gulf. Amongst such dāʿīs, who were of Persian origin and operated in different parts of Persia, particular mention may be made of Abū Saʿīd Ḥasan b. Bahrām al-Jannābī, a native of the port of Jannāba (Persian, Ganāva) on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf. Abū Saʿīd was initially active with much success in southern Persia, before being dispatched to Baḥrayn in eastern Arabia where he spread the daʿwa successfully among the indigenous Bedouin tribesmen and the Persians residing there. He eventually founded the independent Qarmaṭī state of Baḥrayn, which lasted for almost two centuries. There was also ʿAbdān’s own brother al-Maʾmūn, who was appointed as dāʿī in Fārs, where the Ismāʿīlīs were evidently called the Maʾmūniyya after him.2 The initiation of the daʿwa in the west-central and north-western parts of Persia, the region designated as the Jibāl by the Arabs, also dates to the early 260s/870s, or possibly earlier, as the Imāmī scholar al-Faḍl b. Shādhān who died in 260/873 had already written a refutation of the Ismāʿīliyya (Qarāmiṭa) in Persia. The daʿwa in the Jibāl was initiated by a certain dāʿī called Khalaf al-Ḥallāj, who was sent there by the central leader of the Ismāʿīlī movement. Khalaf established himself in the village of Kulayn, in the district of Pashāpūya near Rayy (to the south of modernday Tehran), where an important Imāmī community already existed; and the area of Rayy continued to serve as the base of operations for the daʿwa in the Jibāl. The earliest Ismāʿīlīs of Rayy became known as the Khalafiyya, named after their first local leader. Khalaf was succeeded as the chief dāʿī of Rayy by his son Aḥmad and then by the latter’s chief disciple Ghiyāth, a native of Kulayn. Ghiyāth extended the daʿwa to Qumm, another important Imāmī centre in Persia, Kāshān, Hamadān and other towns of the Jibāl. Ghiyāth also initiated the daʿwa in Khurāsān. However, the efforts of these early dāʿīs of Rayy to mobilise rural support for insurrectional purposes, as attempted by Ḥamdān and ʿAbdān in Iraq, proved futile. The Persian dāʿīs soon adopted a new policy, addressing their message to the ruling classes. After its initial success in the Jibāl, this policy was also implemented in Khurāsān and Transoxania. It was in accordance with this policy that Ghiyāth converted al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Marwazī, a prominent amīr in the service of the Sāmānids in Khurāsān. As

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a result, large numbers in the districts of Ṭaliqān, Maymana, Harāt, Gharjistān and Ghūr, under the influence of this amīr who later became a dāʿī himself, also converted to Ismāʿīlism. Ghiyāth’s chief deputy was the learned theologian Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, a native of Rayy, who in time became the fifth dāʿī of the Jibāl.3 As a result of the efforts of ʿAbd Allāh, later designated in the Fāṭimid sources as al-Akbar (the Elder), and his successors, a unified and dynamic Ismāʿīlī movement had by the early 280s/890s completely replaced the earlier Kūfan-based splinter groups. This movement was centrally and secretly directed from Salamiyya. The Ismāʿīlīs now referred to their religio-political campaign and movement as al-daʿwa al-hādiya (the rightly guiding mission), or simply as the daʿwa (the mission), in addition to using expressions such as the daʿwat al-ḥaqq (the summons to the truth). The Ismāʿīlīs were then united around the doctrine of the Mahdiship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, whose imminent return was expected. Centred on the advent of the Mahdi, the restorer of true Islam who would establish the rule of justice in the world, the Ismāʿīlī movement of the second half of the third/ninth century had much messianic appeal for different underprivileged groups. Indeed, Ismāʿīlism now appeared as a movement of social protest against the oppressive rule of the ʿAbbāsids and their social order. The early Ismāʿīlī movement achieved particular success among the Imāmī Shīʿīs of Iraq and Persia who were left without an imam and in a state of disarray on the death of their eleventh imam, al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, in 260/873–874. At the same time, the fragmentation of the ʿAbbāsid state and the various peripheral challenges posed to the authority of the ʿAbbāsid caliph by a number of new dynasties, such as the Ṣaffārids of Sīstān, had made it possible for the Ismāʿīlīs and others to launch their own insurrectional activities. The Ismāʿīlī movement was torn apart by a major schism in 286/899. In that year, the then central leader of the movement, the future founder of the Fāṭimid state ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, claimed the imamate openly for himself and his ancestors, the same individuals who had actually led the Ismāʿīlī movement after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī had now in effect introduced continuity in the Ismāʿīlī imamate. He also explained that the same leaders had always regarded themselves as the true imams, but as a form of taqiyya or dissimulation they had not divulged their true status in order to safeguard themselves against ʿAbbāsid persecution. In other words, the propagation of the Mahdiship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl had been, we are told, no more than a decoy adopted by the central leaders of early Ismāʿīlism, who also evidently used various pseudonyms and posed as the ḥujjas or chief representatives of the hidden Mahdi.4 The reform of ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī split the unified Ismāʿīlī movement of the time into two rival factions in 286/899. The loyal Ismāʿīlīs, later known as Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs, accepted the reform and maintained continuity in the imamate. This loyalist camp included the bulk of the Ismāʿīlīs of Yemen, as well as those of North Africa and Egypt. On the other hand, a dissident camp rejected ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī’s declarations, and retained their original belief in the Mahdiship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Henceforth, the term Qarmaṭī came to be applied specifically to the dissident Ismāʿīlīs, who did not acknowledge ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī and

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his predecessors, as well as his successors in the Fāṭimid dynasty, as their imams. Centred in Baḥrayn, the dissident Qarmaṭī faction initially also comprised the communities of Iraq and most of those situated in the Jibāl, Khurāsān and Transoxania.5

The Fāṭimid period The foundation of the Fāṭimid caliphate in 297/909 in North Africa marked the crowning success of the early Ismāʿīlīs. The religio-political daʿwa of the Ismāʿīliyya had finally led to the establishment of a state or dawla, which lasted for more than two centuries until 567/1171. The Fāṭimid victory, indeed, represented the longawaited fulfilment of a Shīʿī ideal, which had been frustrated by numerous defeats after the brief rule of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), the first Shīʿī imam. In line with their universal aspirations, the Fāṭimid caliph-imams did not discontinue their daʿwa on assuming power. But it was not until the second half of the fifth/eleventh century that the Fāṭimid dāʿīs working in the central and eastern lands of Islam succeeded in winning a growing number of converts within the dominions of the ʿAbbāsids, and their Būyid and Seljuq overlords, as well as in territories ruled by the Ṣaffārids, Ghaznavids and other dynasties emerging in the eastern Iranian lands. These converts acknowledged the Fāṭimid caliph as the rightful Shīʿī imam of the time. All of the surviving Qarmaṭī communities outside of Baḥrayn, too, had by then either disintegrated or switched their allegiance to the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī daʿwa, whose central headquarters were located in the royal city of Cairo founded by the Fāṭimids themselves. Educated as theologians at special institutions of learning in Cairo, the Fāṭimid dāʿīs were at the same time the scholars and authors of their community. They produced the classical texts of the Ismāʿīlī literature on a multitude of exoteric (z.āhirī) and esoteric (bāṭinī) subjects, also developing the Ismāʿīlī taʾwīl or esoteric exegesis to its fullest extent. The dāʿīs of the Fāṭimid period, especially those operating secretly in the Iranian lands, also elaborated distinctive intellectual traditions, and made important contributions to Islamic civilisation. ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī (d. 322/934) and his next two successors in the Fāṭimid dynasty were preoccupied with establishing and consolidating the Fāṭimid state in North Africa. It was only with the fourth caliph-imam al-Muʿizz, who conquered Egypt in 358/969 and transferred the seat of the Fāṭimid state there, that the Fāṭimids could begin to concern themselves effectively with their daʿwa activities. At any rate, before leaving Salamiyya permanently in 289/902, al-Mahdī had already dispatched a certain Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Khādim to Khurāsān as the first chief dāʿī there. The dāʿī al-Khādim established his secret headquarters at Nīshāpūr sometime during 290–300/903–913. He propagated the daʿwa on behalf of ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, while Ghiyāth had earlier introduced Ismāʿīlism to Khurāsān on behalf of the hidden Mahdi Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. It was under such confusing circumstances that both factions of Ismāʿīlism came to be represented in Khurāsān. Be that as it may, al-Khādim was succeeded, around 307/919, by the dāʿī Abū Saʿīd al-Shaʿrānī who converted several notables of the province. The next chief dāʿī of

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Khurāsān was the already noted al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Marwazī, who is a well-known amīr in the annals of the Sāmānid dynasty.6 In his time, the provincial seat of the daʿwa was transferred from Nīshāpūr to Marw al-Rūdh (present-day Bālā Murghāb in northern Afghanistan). The dāʿī al-Marwazī appointed as his successor Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nasafī, a learned theologian and philosopher who hailed from the vicinity of Nakhshab (Arabicised, Nasaf ), a town in Central Asia. The dāʿī al-Nasafī, who is generally credited with having introduced a form of Neoplatonic philosophy into Ismāʿīlī thought, transferred the seat of the daʿwa to Transoxania, where he had been advised to go by his predecessor in order to convert the dignitaries of the Sāmānid court. After a brief period in Bukhārā, the Sāmānid capital (in present-day Uzbekistan), al-Nasafī retreated to his native Nakhshab, from where he was more successful in penetrating the inner circles of the Sāmānid regime. Subsequently, al-Nasafī settled down in Bukhārā and, with the help of his influential converts at the court, including Ashʿath, the private secretary, won over the young Sāmānid amīr Naṣr II b. Aḥmad (301–331/914–943). Encouraged by his successes, al-Nasafī now began to preach openly in Bukhārā, while also extending the daʿwa to Sīstān (Arabicised, Sijistān) through one of his subordinate dāʿīs. The dāʿī al-Nasafī reaffirmed the Mahdiship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl in his Kitāb al-maḥṣūl, which also contained a new emanational cosmological doctrine based on Neoplatonic philosophy. It seems that al-Nasafī’s al-Maḥṣūl gained widespread acceptance within the various Qarmaṭī circles and it played a major part in unifying the Qarmaṭīs of the Iranian lands who, by contrast to the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn, lacked central leadership. The fortunes of the dāʿī al-Nasafī and the daʿwa in Khurāsān and Transoxania were reversed in the aftermath of the revolt of the Turkish soldiers who were in alliance with the Sunnī ʿulamāʾ of the Sāmānid state. Under the amīr Naṣr II’s son and successor, Nūḥ I b. Naṣr (331–343/943–954), al-Nasafī and his close associates were executed in Bukhārā in 332/943 and their co-religionists were severely persecuted. The Sunnī ʿulamāʾ of the Sāmānid state had now in fact declared a jihād or holy war against the Qarmaṭī ‘heretics’. Despite these setbacks, however, the daʿwa survived in Khurāsān and Transoxania under the leadership of al-Nasafī’s son Masʿūd, nicknamed Dihqān, and the other chief dāʿīs, notably Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī. In the meantime, Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī had assumed office during 300–310/912– 923 as the fifth dāʿī of Rayy. He extended the daʿwa to Ādharbāyjān and Daylam, which in medieval times referred to a number of Caspian provinces including Daylamān, Gīlān, Ṭabaristān (Māzandarān) and Gurgān. Abū Ḥātim was particularly successful in converting several local rulers, starting with Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, the governor of Rayy during 307–311/919–924. In the aftermath of the conquest of Rayy by the Sunnī Sāmānids, however, Abū Ḥātim went to Ṭabaristān where he sided with Asfār b. Shirawayh (d. 319/931) against the local Zaydī Imam al-Dāʿī al-Ṣaghīr. Abū Ḥātim converted Asfār and soon acquired many followers in Ṭabaristān and other regions of northern Persia, which were then ruled by this Daylamī amīr. Abū Ḥātim also converted Asfār’s chief lieutenant Mardāwīj b. Ziyār

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(d. 323/935), who later rebelled against his master and founded the Ziyārid dynasty of Ṭabaristān and Gurgān. The famous disputations between the dāʿī Abū Ḥātim and the physician-philosopher Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī reportedly took place in the presence of Mardāwīj.7 Abū Ḥātim, like al-Nasafī, evidently belonged to the dissident Qarmaṭī branch and did not recognise the imamate of his contemporary ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī. Indeed, he corresponded with Abū Ṭāhir al-Jannābī, the leader of the Qarmaṭī state of Baḥrayn, and like the latter was expecting the appearance of the Mahdi in the year 316/928. Abū Ḥātim may even have claimed to have been the lieutenant of the hidden Mahdi. At any rate, as Abū Ḥātim’s date for the emergence of the Mahdi proved wrong, Mardāwīj turned against the dāʿī and his community. Subsequently, Abū Ḥātim sought refuge with Mufliḥ, a local ruler in Ādharbāyjān, and died in that north-western region of Persia in 322/934. On Abū Ḥātim’s death, the Qarmaṭīs (Ismāʿīlīs) of the Jibāl were thrown into disarray and their leadership eventually passed to ʿAbd al-Malik al-Kawkabī who resided in Girdkūh, near Dāmghān, the future Nizārī Ismāʿīlī stronghold, and a certain Isḥāq residing in Rayy. The latter dāʿī may perhaps be identified with Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Aḥmad al-Sijistānī, the dāʿī al-Nasafī’s disciple and successor in Khurāsān. It was due to Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī’s successes in Daylam that the daʿwa also spread to the Rūdbār of Alamūt or Daylamān, the traditional seat of the obscure Justānid dynasty. One of the earlier Justānid rulers, Wahsūdān b. Marzubān, had built around the middle of the third/ninth century the fortress of Alamūt, which was to become the central headquarters of the Nizārī daʿwa and state. The Justānids traditionally supported the Shīʿism of the Zaydī ʿAlid rulers of Ṭabaristān. Mahdī b. Khusraw Fīrūz, known as Siyāh-chashm, who succeeded his father at Alamūt soon after 307/919, was the first Justānid to embrace Ismāʿīlism of the dissident Qarmaṭī kind.8 After being defeated by Muḥammad b. Musāfir, the founder of the powerful Musāfirid dynasty of Daylam, Siyāh-chashm sought refuge in 316/928 with his co-religionist Asfār b. Shirawayh. But he was soon murdered by Asfār who aspired to add Rūdbār to his own dominions. After Siyāh-chashm, the Justānids came to be eclipsed by the vigorous dynasty of the Musāfirids or Sallārids, who ruled over parts of Daylam as well as Ādharbāyjān and Arrān. In 330/941, the founder of the Musāfirid dynasty, Muḥammad b. Musāfir who had held the castle of Shamīrān in Ṭārum, was deposed by his sons Wahsūdān and Marzubān. Both of these Musāfirids were converted by the dāʿīs of Rayy, and numismatic evidence from the year 343/954–955 confirms that they adhered to Qarmaṭism and acknowledged the Mahdiship of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl rather than the imamate of their contemporary Fāṭimid caliph-imam, al-Muʿizz.9 Wahsūdān b. Muḥammad (330–355/941–966) remained at Shamīrān and governed Ṭārum, while his more influential brother Marzubān (330–346/941–957) soon conquered Ādharbāyjān and Arrān, as well as Armenia and other parts of Transcaucasia as far as Darband, and began to rule over the expanding Musāfirid dominions from his own seat at Ardabīl in north-western Persia.

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After the demise of the Sājids in 317/929, who governed on behalf of the ʿAbbāsids, Ādharbāyjān had become the scene of rivalries among various independent local rulers, including Mufliḥ, a former Sājid officer who gave refuge to Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī and who may have been one of the dāʿī’s converts. By 326/938, the Khārijī Daysam b. Ibrāhīm al-Kurdī had established his own control over Ādharbāyjān. In the aftermath of a rupture between Daysam and his vizier Abu’l-Qāsim ʿAlī b. Jaʿfar, the latter fled to Ṭārum in 330/941 and entered the service of the Musāfirids. Originally serving the Sājids as a financial administrator, Abu’l-Qāsim had also been active secretly as a Bāṭinī (Qarmaṭī) dāʿī in northwestern Persia. He was instrumental in encouraging his co-religionist Marzubān b. Muḥammad’s conquest of Ādharbāyjān, where he had earlier converted numerous Daylamī notables and army officers in the service of Daysam. It was also at Abu’lQāsim’s instigation that the bulk of Daysam’s army, including many Qarmaṭī converts, deserted him and switched their allegiance to Marzubān. Soon, Marzubān appointed the dāʿī Abu’l-Qāsim as his own vizier; and he was now permitted to preach the daʿwa openly with much success throughout the Musāfirid dominions. The well-informed Ibn Ḥawqal, who may himself have been a secret Fāṭimid dāʿī and who visited Ādharbāyjān around the year 344/955, reports on the existence of a large Bāṭinī (Qarmaṭī) community there.10 Qarmaṭism evidently survived under the later Musāfirids, who were eventually obliged to withdraw to Ṭārum. After submitting to the Seljuqs, the Musāfirid dynasty was finally overthrown by the Nizārīs of Alamūt who incorporated Shamīrān and other fortresses of Ṭārum into their own network of mountain strongholds in Rūdbār. In the meantime, Qarmaṭism had persisted in Khurāsān and Transoxania in the dominions of the later Sāmānids. The sources have preserved some fragmentary information on the dāʿī-authors operating secretly in the eastern Iranian lands after al-Nasafī and his son. There were the dāʿīs Abu’l-Faḍl Zangurz and ʿAtīq, as well as Abu’l-Haytham Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan al-Jurjānī, an Ismāʿīlī philosopher and poet from Gurgān, and his disciple Muḥammad b. Surkh al-Nīsābūrī. There was also Abū Tammām, an obscure dāʿī from Khurāsān who belonged to al-Nasafī’s dissident school. Paul Walker in his recent studies has shown that Abū Tammām, in fact, produced what may well be the only Ismāʿīlī heresiography on Muslim sects.11 Above all, mention should be made of Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Aḥmad al-Sijistānī, who led the daʿwa in Khurāsān, and Sīstān, his original base of operations.12 He may also have headed the daʿwa in the Jibāl, in succession to Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, as well as in Iraq.13 A contemporary of the Fāṭimid caliph-imam al-Muʿizz, the dāʿī al-Sijistānī was executed as a heretic by the order of the Ṣaffārid amīr of Sīstān, Khalaf b. Aḥmad (352–393/963–1003),14 not long after 361/971, the date of completion of one of his last books. A learned theologian and philosopher, the dāʿī al-Sijistānī was also a prolific writer; and it is mainly on the basis of his numerous extant works that modern scholars have now begun to study an important tradition of philosophical theology developed by the dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, particularly in Khurāsān, during the fourth/tenth century.15 This tradition of learning, which in fact represented

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a distinctive ‘Iranian school’ of philosophical Ismāʿīlism, was evidently initiated by al-Nasafī. The dāʿī al-Nasafī, and his successors, wrote for the ruling elite and the educated strata of Muslim society in Khurāsān, and this may explain why they attempted to express their theology in terms of the then most modern and intellectually fashionable philosophical terminologies and themes, without, however, compromising the Shīʿī essence of their religious message. Drawing on a type of Neoplatonism then current among the educated circles of Khurāsān, these dāʿīs of the Iranian lands elaborated complex metaphysical systems of thought, amalgamating in an original manner their Shīʿī theology with a Hellenised system of emanational Neoplatonic philosophy. A Neoplatonic cosmology, with the universal intellect (ʿaql) and soul (nafs) as the first and the second originated beings created by the command of an unknowable God, was an important part of their systems; and this new cosmological doctrine gradually superseded the earlier mythological cosmology of the pre-Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs. Al-Sijistānī was perhaps the foremost Shīʿī Neoplatonist of his time, and his writings are extremely valuable, not only for understanding philosophical Ismāʿīlism but also for discovering how Neoplatonic themes came to be originally adopted by Muslim thinkers. It is interesting to note that the leading Iranian dāʿīs of the early Fāṭimid times wrote on a multitude of theological issues; they also disagreed among themselves and engaged in a long-drawn disputation over certain aspects of their doctrines. Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, who himself adopted Neoplatonism, wrote his Kitāb al-iṣlāḥ (Book of the Correction) to correct certain ideas found in al-Nasafī’s Kitāb al-maḥṣūl (Book of the Yield), while al-Sijistānī wrote his Kitāb al-nuṣra (Book of the Defence) to defend al-Nasafī against Abū Ḥātim’s criticisms. Subsequently, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, another learned dāʿī belonging to the same ‘Iranian school’ of philosophical Ismāʿīlism, acted as an arbiter in this disputation in his Kitāb al-riyāḍ (Book of the Meadows).16 The Fāṭimid caliph-imam al-Muʿizz (341–365/953–975), as noted, was the first member of his dynasty who found it possible to concern himself with the affairs of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī daʿwa outside of the Fāṭimid dominions, where Qarmaṭī communities had continued to flourish with their own dāʿīs undermining the success of the Fāṭimid dāʿīs. In this connection, and in order to win the support of the eastern Qarmaṭīs, al-Muʿizz also attempted a limited doctrinal rapprochement with the Qarmaṭīs, including a partial endorsement of the Neoplatonic cosmological doctrine propounded by the Iranian dāʿīs. As a result of these efforts, al-Sijistānī was won over to the side of the Fāṭimid daʿwa, which henceforth began to preserve his books. At the same time, the dissident communities under the leadership or influence of al-Sijistānī also switched their allegiance to the Fāṭimid al-Muʿizz, recognising him as the rightful imam of the time. These developments marked a turning point in the stagnating fortunes of the Fāṭimid daʿwa throughout Khurāsān, Sīstān, Makrān and other eastern parts of the Iranian world. Al-Muʿizz also won an important victory in Sind, where through the conversion of a local ruler an Ismāʿīlī state was established around the year 347/958. The rulers of this state, centred at Multān, recognised the suzerainty of the Fāṭimid caliph and

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recited the khuṭba in his name rather than for the ʿAbbāsid caliph. Large numbers of Hindus converted to Ismāʿīlism in this state, which was effectively uprooted in 396/1005, when Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna invaded Multān and made its Ismāʿīlī ruler a tributary. Soon afterwards, Sultan Maḥmūd began to massacre the Ismāʿīlīs of Multān and other parts of his domains, also frustrating renewed Ismāʿīlī attempts to re-establish their local rule in Sind.17 However, Ismāʿīlism survived clandestinely during the Ghaznavid persecutions in northern India, where the Ismāʿīlīs later received the protection of the Sūmras, an Ismāʿīlī dynasty which ruled independently in Sind from Thatta for almost three centuries. Despite the efforts of al-Muʿizz and the Fāṭimid daʿwa, Qarmaṭism persisted for a while longer in certain parts of the Iranian lands, notably Daylam, Ādharbāyjān and western Persia, as well as in Iraq. Above all, al-Muʿizz failed to win the support of the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn, who were to pose a serious obstacle to the extension of Fāṭimid rule to the central and eastern lands of Islam, beyond Syria and Palestine. The Fāṭimid daʿwa was systematically intensified in the Iranian lands under al-Muʿizz’s next two successors in the Fāṭimid dynasty, al-ʿAzīz (365–386/975–996) and al-Ḥākim (386–411/996–1021). By this time, the Fāṭimids had realised the difficulty of extending their rule over the eastern regions of the Muslim world, and in fact a stalemate had by then developed between them and the Būyids, who were still the real masters of the ʿAbbāsid state. Nevertheless, the Fāṭimids did not abandon their universal aspirations, aiming to be acknowledged as imams by all Muslims. It was in the pursuit of this objective that the Fāṭimids retained and indeed intensified their daʿwa activities in the Iranian lands, especially under al-Ḥākim, who also concerned himself with the organisation of the daʿwa as well as the training of the dāʿīs. The Fāṭimid dāʿīs, including many from Persia and other eastern lands, now received elaborate instructions at the ‘House of Knowledge’ (Dār al-ʿIlm), founded by al-Ḥākim in a section of the Fāṭimid palace in 395/1005, and other institutions of learning in Cairo. Among the lesser-known Iranian dāʿīs of this period, mention may be made of Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī, who wrote the only known Ismāʿīlī treatise of the genre of adab al-dāʿī on the ideal dāʿī and his attributes.18 By far the most eminent Ismāʿīlī theologian and dāʿī of this period was Ḥamīd al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Kirmānī, who was also the most accomplished Ismāʿīlī philosopher of the entire Fāṭimid period. As his nisba indicates, al-Kirmānī was probably born in the Persian province of Kirmān. He later maintained his contacts with the Ismāʿīlī community of Kirmān, addressing at least one of his treatises to a subordinate dāʿī in Jīruft in that province. In time, al-Kirmānī became the chief dāʿī in Iraq, in addition to heading the daʿwa in central and western parts of Persia, known as the ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam, hence earning him the honorific title of ḥujjat al-ʿIrāqayn, the ḥujja or chief dāʿī of both Iraqs. As the most learned theologian of the time, al-Kirmānī was called to Cairo in 405/1014 to refute on behalf of the Fāṭimid daʿwa the extremist doctrines propounded by the founders of the Druze movement and religion. Later, he returned to Iraq where he composed his principal work, the Rāḥat al-ʿaql (Quietude of the Intellect), in 411/1020 and where he died soon afterwards. It was mainly due to al-Kirmānī’s efforts that several influential

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local amīrs of Iraq were won over to the side of the Fāṭimids, preparing the ground for later successes of the Fāṭimid daʿwa in the East.19 A prolific writer, al-Kirmānī produced some 40 treatises.20 He expounded the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī doctrine of the imamate in several of his works. He also defended the Fāṭimids against the polemical attacks of the Zaydīs of Persia and other adversaries. As a philosopher, al-Kirmānī was fully acquainted with Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophies, as well as the metaphysical systems of the Muslim philosophers ( falāsifa), notably al-Fārābī and his own contemporary Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), whose father and brother had converted to Ismāʿīlism in their native Transoxania. It was in al-Kirmānī’s metaphysical system that philosophical Ismāʿīlism attained its summit, reflecting a distinctive synthesis of Shīʿī theology, Hellenistic traditions and gnostic doctrines. In his system, fully elaborated in the Rāḥat al-ʿaql, al-Kirmānī also propounded what may be regarded as the third stage in the development of Ismāʿīlī cosmology in medieval times.21 In his cosmogonic doctrine, al-Kirmānī replaced the Neoplatonic dyad of the intellect and soul in the spiritual world, which had been adopted by his predecessors in the Iranian school of philosophical Ismāʿīlism, with a series of ten separate intellects in partial adoption of al-Fārābī’s Aristotelian cosmic system. The Fāṭimid daʿwa continued to be propagated successfully in the eastern lands, even after the ardently Sunnī Seljuqs had replaced the Shīʿī Būyids in 447/1055 as the effective rulers of the ʿAbbāsid state. Indeed, by the early decades of the reign of the Fāṭimid caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir (427–487/1036–1094), Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlism had been established in many parts of the Iranian world, where Qarmaṭī communities had almost completely ceased to exist. The Fāṭimid dāʿīs were now particularly active in Iraq and various parts of Persia, notably Fārs, Iṣfahān, Rayy and other areas of the Jibāl. In Khurāsān and Transoxania, too, the daʿwa had become more successful after the downfall of the Sāmānids in 395/1005, when the Turkish Qarakhānids and Ghaznavids divided the former Sāmānid dominions between themselves. This is attested by the fact that in 436/1044 Bughrā Khān, the ruler of the eastern Qarakhānid kingdom established over the lands of the middle Syr Daryā valley, ordered the massacre of a large number of Ismāʿīlīs who had been converted by the Fāṭimid dāʿīs operating in his territories. The Fāṭimid daʿwa had also been active in the western territories of the Qarakhānids, in Bukhārā, Samarqand, Farghāna and elsewhere in Transoxania. There, Aḥmad b. Khiḍr, the local Qarakhānid ruler, was executed in Samarqand in 488/1095 (or earlier in 482/1089) on the accusation of having converted to Ismāʿīlism.22 The most prominent Fāṭimid daʿī of al-Mustanṣir’s time was al-Muʾayyad fi’lDīn al-Shīrāzī. He was born around 390/1000 in Shīrāz, in the province of Fārs, into a Daylamī Ismāʿīlī family. His father had acquired some influence in the Būyid circles of Fārs where he eventually seems to have headed the daʿwa. Al-Muʾayyad succeeded his father, and in 429/1037 entered the service of the Būyid Abū Kālījār Marzubān (415–440/1024–1048), who ruled over Fārs and Khūzistān from his capital at Shīrāz. The subsequent decades until 451/1059 in al-Muʾayyad’s career are well documented in his autobiography.23 At any rate, he soon converted

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Abū Kālījār himself and many of his courtiers as well as a large number of the Daylamī troops in the service of the Būyids. Al-Muʾayyad’s success in Fārs brought about hostile reactions spurred on by the caliph at Baghdad, obliging the dāʿī to emigrate permanently from Shīrāz in 435/1043. He arrived in Cairo in 439/1047, and soon began to play an active part in the affairs of the Fāṭimid state and daʿwa. Later, al-Muʾayyad played a key role as an intermediary between the Fāṭimids and Arslān al-Basāsīrī, the Turkish military commander who briefly led the Fāṭimid cause in Iraq against the Seljuqs. Al-Muʾayyad delivered the crucial material and financial support of the Fāṭimids to al-Basāsīrī who, in 450/1058, succeeded to seize Baghdad, where he had the khuṭba read for one full year in the name of al-Mustanṣir while the ʿAbbāsid caliph remained a captive in his own capital. In the same eventful year 450/1058, al-Muʾayyad was appointed as the chief dāʿī (dāʿī al-duʿāt), the administrative head of the Fāṭimid daʿwa organisation in Cairo, a post he held with the exception of one brief period until shortly before his death in 470/1078. Al-Muʾayyad’s principal work, the Majalis al-Muʾayyadiyya, eight volumes containing a hundred ‘sessions’ (majālis) each and representing the apogee of Ismāʿīlī thought, is based on the lectures he had delivered at the ‘sessions of wisdom’ (majālis al-ḥikma) for the instruction of dāʿīs and other Ismāʿīlīs.24 Another prominent Iranian dāʿī of al-Mustanṣir’s time was Nāṣir-i Khusraw. A learned theologian, traveller and renowned poet of the Persian language, Nāṣir-i Khusraw was also the last major proponent of philosophical Ismāʿīlism in the Iranian lands. Nāṣir was born in 394/1004 near Balkh, which at the time was a part of the district of Marw in Khurāsān. In his youth, Nāṣir held administrative posts at Marw (now in Turkmenistan) under the Ghaznavids and their Seljuq successors. At the age of 42, however, Nāṣir experienced a spiritual upheaval which may have been connected to his conversion to Ismāʿīlism. Soon afterwards, in 437/1045, he resigned from his post and set off on a long journey for the apparent reason of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. But this seven-year journey, described vividly in his Safar-nāma (Travelogue), took Nāṣir to the Fāṭimid capital where he arrived in 439/1047, the same year in which al-Muʾayyad had arrived there. Nāṣir stayed in Cairo for three years and received intensive training as a dāʿī. During this period, he saw al-Mustanṣir and also established close relations with al-Muʾayyad, who was to remain his mentor at the central headquarters of the Fāṭimid daʿwa and to whom he later dedicated several of his poems. In 414/1052, Nāṣir-i Khusraw returned to Balkh (near today’s Mazār-i Sharīf in northern Afghanistan), and began his career as a Fāṭimid dāʿī, or according to himself as the ḥujja or chief dāʿī of Khurāsān. 25 At any rate, he established his secret headquarters at Balkh, from where he extended the daʿwa to Nīshāpūr and other districts of Khurāsān as well as to Ṭabaristān (Māzandarān) in northern Persia. By 452/1060, however, the hostility of the Sunnī ʿulamāʾ, who denounced Nāṣir as a heretic (mulḥid) and an irreligious person (Persian, bad-dīn) and destroyed his house,26 had obliged the dāʿī to flee to the valley of Yumgān, in the region of Badakhshān in the Pamirs. There, he sought refuge with his friend Abu’l-Maʿālī ʿAlī b. al-Asad, an autonomous Ismāʿīlī

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amīr of Badakhshān. This obscure Yumgān period in Nāṣir’s life lasted until his death, sometime after 465/1072. Like other Fāṭimid dāʿīs of the Iranian lands and elsewhere, Nāṣir-i Khusraw maintained his contacts with the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo, receiving books and his general instructions from there. Even in the remote Yumgān, Nāṣir had ready access to earlier Ismāʿīlī literature; and he was particularly influenced by al-Sijistānī, many of whose ideas are paraphrased in Nāṣir’s writings. It was probably during this period of exile, if not earlier, that Nāṣir extended the daʿwa throughout Badakhshān (divided in modern times by the Oxus or Āmū Daryā between Afghanistan and Tajikistan). In any event, the Ismāʿīlīs of Badakhshān, and their offshoot community in the Hindukush region (now situated in Hunza and other northern areas of Pakistan), regard Nāṣir as the founder of their communities, and they still revere him under the name of Pīr or Shāh Sayyid Nāṣir. It was also in Yumgān that Nāṣir produced the bulk of his poetry and philosophico-theological works, including the Zād al-musāfirīn written in 453/1061 and the Jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn, his last known work completed in 462/1070 at the request of his Ismāʿīlī protector in Badakhshān.27 The Ismāʿīlīs of Badakhshān have continued to preserve Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s genuine and spurious works, all written in the Persian language. Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s mausoleum is still in existence on a hillock near the village of Jarm in the vicinity of Fayḍābād, the capital of Afghan Badakhshān. By the early 460s/1070s, the Ismāʿīlīs of Persia in the Seljuq dominions had come to own the authority of a single chief dāʿī, ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAṭṭāsh, who had his secret headquarters at Iṣfahān, the main Seljuq capital. A learned dāʿī, Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh seems to have been the first dāʿī to have centrally organised the daʿwa and the various Ismāʿīlī communities of the Seljuq territories in Persia, from Kirmān to Ādharbāyjān. He may have been responsible for the daʿwa activities in Iraq as well, but his central supervision does not seem to have been extended to northern Khurāsān, Badakhshān and adjacent regions in Central Asia. Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh, who received his own instructions from Cairo, was also responsible for launching the career of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, his successor and the future founder of the independent Nizārī Ismāʿīlī daʿwa and state centred at Alamūt. Al-Mustanṣir died after a long reign in 487/1094. The dispute over his succession split the then unified Ismāʿīlī daʿwa and community into the rival Nizārī and Mustaʿlī branches. By that time, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ was already following an independent revolutionary policy as the leader of the Persian Ismāʿīlīs; and he did not hesitate to support the cause of Nizār, al-Mustanṣir’s original heir-designate who had been deprived of his succession rights through the machinations of the allpowerful Fāṭimid vizier al-Afḍal. The vizier had swiftly installed Nizār’s younger brother to the Fāṭimid caliphate with the title of al-Mustaʿlī. However, Ḥasan recognised Nizār as al-Mustanṣir’s successor to the Ismāʿīlī imamate and severed his relations with the Fāṭimid daʿwa headquarters in Cairo, which had transferred their own allegiance to al-Mustaʿlī, recognising him and, later, some of his descendants as their imams after al-Mustanṣir. Henceforth, the Ismāʿīlīs of the Iranian lands, who recognised the imamate of Nizār and his progeny and became known as the

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Nizāriyya, developed independently of the Ismāʿīlīs of Egypt and the communities in Yemen and Gujarāt dependent on the Fāṭimid regime; the latter communities comprised the Mustaʿliyya branch of Ismāʿīlism.

The Alamūt period During the Alamūt period of their history (483–654/1090–1256), the Ismāʿīlīs of Persia came to possess a state of their own, with a subsidiary in Syria. This state, with its central headquarters at the mountain fortress of Alamūt, was founded in the midst of the Seljuq sultanate by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāh, and it lasted for some 166 years until it collapsed under the onslaught of the Mongol hordes in 654/1256. The Persian Ismāʿīlīs themselves produced official chronicles recording the events of their state, starting with the Sargudhasht-i Sayyidnā (Biography of Our Master), which covered the life and career of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ as the first lord of Alamūt.28 These chronicles, as well as the bulk of the meagre religious literature produced by the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs of the Alamūt period, have not survived. However, the Nizārī chronicles were seen and utilised by three Persian historians of the Īlkhānid period, namely, Juwaynī (d. 681/1283), Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh (d. 718/1318) and Abu’l-Qāsim Kāshānī (d. ca. 738/1337), who are our primary sources on the history of the Persian Ismāʿīlīs during the Alamūt period.29 Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ was born in the mid-440s/1050s into a Twelver Shīʿī family in Qumm, a traditionally Shīʿī town in central Persia. Subsequently, the Ṣabbāḥ family moved to the nearby town of Rayy, another important centre of Shīʿī learning and an area of Ismāʿīlī activity. Soon after the age of 17, Ḥasan was introduced to Ismāʿīlī doctrines and was converted through the efforts of some local dāʿīs. In 464/1072, the newly initiated Ḥasan was brought to the attention of Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh, who was then staying in Rayy. Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh recognised Ḥasan’s talents and appointed him to a post in the daʿwa, also instructing him to go to Cairo to further his Ismāʿīlī education. Ḥasan finally arrived in Fāṭimid Egypt in 471/1078, and spent some three years in Cairo and Alexandria. In Egypt, Ḥasan seems to have come into conflict with Badr al-Jamālī (d. 487/1094), the all-powerful Fāṭimid vizier and ‘commander of the armies’, who had earlier also succeeded al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī as the dāʿī al-duʿāt. At any rate, Ḥasan seems to have been banished under obscure circumstances from Egypt; he returned to the Persian daʿwa headquarters at Iṣfahān in 473/1081. He seems to have learned important lessons in Fāṭimid Egypt. Beset by numerous difficulties, the Fāṭimid regime was by then well embarked on its rapid decline. Ḥasan was now fully aware of the inability of the Fāṭimid state to support the Persian Ismāʿīlīs, taking this reality into account in his own subsequent revolutionary strategy. In Persia, Ḥasan travelled for nine years in the service of the daʿwa to different localities in Kirmān, Khūzistān and Qūmis, as well as the Caspian provinces in Daylam. It was during this period that Ḥasan formulated his revolutionary strategy against the Seljuqs, also evaluating Seljuq military strength in different parts of Persia. By 480/1087, he seems to have chosen the inaccessible mountain fortress of

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Alamūt, in the region of Rūdbār in Daylam, as a suitable site to establish his headquarters. Ḥasan, who was later appointed dāʿī of Daylam, now began to reinvigorate the daʿwa activities throughout Rūdbār. Ḥasan’s activities were soon brought to the attention of Niz.ām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), who remained vizier for 30 years under the Great Seljuq Sultans Alp Arslān and Malik Shāh. However, Niz.ām al-Mulk failed to capture Ḥasan, who in due time arrived in Rūdbār. In 483/1090, with his supporters infiltrating Alamūt and its surroundings, Ḥasan seized that impregnable fortress in the Alborz Mountains according to a clever plan, signalling the open revolt of the Persian Ismāʿīlīs against the Seljuqs. The seizure of Alamūt also marked the foundation of what was to become the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī state in Persia. It is certain that Cairo had played no part in the organisation or direction of this revolt, which was planned and carried out by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ on his own initiative. Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ seems to have had a complex set of religio-political motives for his revolt against the Seljuq Turks. As an Ismāʿīlī, he could not have tolerated the anti-Shīʿī policies of the Seljuqs, who as the new champions of Sunnī ‘orthodoxy’ had sworn to uproot Fāṭimid Shīʿī rule from the Muslim world. Less conspicuously, Ḥasan’s revolt was also an expression of Persian ‘national’ sentiments, which accounts for its early popular appeal and success in Persia. By the opening decades of the fifth/eleventh century, a number of Turkish dynasties had established their rule over the Iranian lands, starting with the Ghaznavids and the Qarakhānids. A new alien age, with the Turks replacing the Arabs, in the Islamic history of the Iranian world was definitely initiated by the coming of the Seljuqs, who threatened the revival of Persian culture and national sentiments. This renaissance of a specifically Irano-Islamic culture had been based on the sentiments of the lslamicised Persians who had continued to be consciously aware of their Persian identity and cultural heritage during the centuries of Arab domination. This process, pioneered by the Ṣaffārids and maintained under the Sāmānids and the Būyids, had become quite irreversible by the time of the Turkish domination of the region.30 At any rate, the Turkish Seljuqs were aliens in Persia and their rule was intensely detested by the Persians of different social classes. The anti-Turkish sentiments of the Persians were further aggravated due to the depredation caused in towns and villages by the Turks and their unruly soldiery, who were continuously attracted in new waves to Persia from the steppes of Central Asia by the successes of the Seljuqs. Ḥasan himself is reported to have expressed his resentment of the Turks and their rule over Persia.31 It was, indeed, to the ultimate goal of uprooting Seljuq rule in Persia that Ḥasan dedicated himself and organised the Persian Ismāʿīlīs into a revolutionary force. In this connection, it is also significant to note that Ḥasan, as an expression of his Persian awareness and in spite of his uncompromising Islamic piety, substituted Persian for Arabic as the religious language of the Ismāʿīlīs of Persia. This was the first time that a major Muslim community had adopted Persian as its religious language; it also explains why the Ismāʿīlī literature of all the Persian-speaking (Nizārī) Ismāʿīlī communities of the Alamūt period and subsequent times was produced entirely in the Persian language.

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After firmly establishing himself at Alamūt, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ extended his influence throughout Rūdbār and adjacent areas in Daylam by winning converts and gaining possession of more strongholds which he fortified systematically for withstanding long sieges. There is evidence suggesting that Ḥasan also attracted at least some of the remnants of the Khurramiyya in Ādharbāyjān and elsewhere who, as an expression of their own Persian sentiments, referred to themselves as Pārsiyān.32 Soon, Alamūt came to be raided by the forces of the nearest Seljuq amīr, marking the initiation of an endless series of Seljuq-Ismāʿīlī military encounters in Persia. In 484/1091, Ḥasan sent the dāʿī Ḥusayn-i Qāʾinī to his native Quhistān to mobilise support there. This capable dāʿī met with immediate success in Quhistān, a barren region in south-eastern Khurāsān, where the Ismāʿīlīs soon rose in open revolt against the Seljuqs and seized numerous castles as well as several major towns, including Tūn, Ṭabas, Qāʾin and Zūzan. As a result, Quhistān became the second major territory, after Rūdbār, for the activities of the Persian Ismāʿīlīs. By 485/1092, Ḥasan had founded an independent territorial state for the Persian Ismāʿīlīs. Having become aware of the growing power of the Ismāʿīlīs, Sultan Malik Shāh had meanwhile sent major Seljuq expeditions against the Ismāʿīlīs of both Rūdbār and Quhistān. However, on Malik Shāh’s death in 485/1092, the Seljuq forces dispersed, and the sultanate was thrown into civil war for more than a decade until 498/1105, when Muḥammad Tapar emerged victorious as the undisputed sultan while his brother Sanjar remained at Balkh as his viceroy in the East. During this period of strife in the Seljuq camp, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ readily consolidated and extended his power to other parts of Persia, including in particular the medieval province of Qūmis where the Ismāʿīlīs seized Girdkūh and a number of other strongholds near Dāmghān. The Ismāʿīlīs also captured several fortresses in Arrajān, in the border region between the provinces of Khūzistān and Fārs. The Ismāʿīlī leader in Arrajān was the dāʿī Abū Ḥamza, who like Ḥasan, had spent some time in Egypt to further his Ismāʿīlī education. In Daylam itself, the Ismāʿīlīs had repelled intermittent Seljuq offensives;33 they had also acquired more strongholds in northern Persia, including the key fortress of Lamasar (or Lanbasar) to the west of Alamūt. Kiyā Buzurg-Umīd, who had seized Lamasar by assault, stayed there as commander for more than 20 years until he was called to Alamūt to succeed Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ. In addition, the Ismāʿīlīs were now spreading their activities to numerous towns throughout Persia, also directing their attention closer to the seat of Seljuq power, Iṣfahān. In this area, the Ismāʿīlīs under the leadership of Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh’s son Aḥmad attained a major political success by seizing in 494/1100 the fortress of Shāhdiz, which guarded the main routes to the Seljuq capital. It is reported that the dāʿī Aḥmad succeeded in converting some 30,000 persons in the Iṣfahān area where he also collected taxes in the districts around Shāhdiz. There is no evidence suggesting that the activities of Ḥasan and his immediate successors at Alamūt extended to Badakhshān and elsewhere in Transoxania. The remote and small Ismāʿīlī communities of these regions in Central Asia seem to have developed independently of Alamūt until sometime in the seventh/thirteenth century. By the early years of the sixth/twelfth century, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had also extended his activ-

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ities into Syria by dispatching a number of Persian dāʿīs there. However, almost half a century of efforts were required before the Ismāʿīlīs could finally acquire a network of strongholds in Syria. Other than Ḥasan himself, the leading Persian Ismāʿīlī personalities of the early Alamūt period, such as Buzurg-Umīd, Ḥusayn-i Qāʾinī and Raʾīs Muz.affar, the governor of Girdkūh, were all capable commanders and military strategists suited to the task at hand, rather than learned theologians and philosophers like the earlier Iranian dāʿīs of the Fāṭimid times. Soon, the anti-Seljuq revolt of the Persian Ismāʿīlīs acquired its distinctive pattern and methods of struggle, which were appropriate to the times. Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had recognised the decentralised nature of Seljuq rule as well as their vastly superior military power. As a result, he designed an appropriate strategy, aiming to subdue the Seljuqs locality by locality through acquiring a multiplicity of impregnable strongholds. He also resorted to the technique of assassinating prominent adversaries for attaining military and political objectives. In subsequent times, this policy became identified in a highly exaggerated manner with the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs to the extent that almost any assassination of any significance in the central and eastern Islamic lands during the Alamūt period was attributed to the daggers of the Ismāʿīlī fidāʾīs, the young self-sacrificing devotees who carried out the actual sectarian missions. And in time, a number of myths came to be fabricated and disseminated regarding the recruitment and training of these fidāʾīs.34 From early on, the assassinations led to the massacre of Ismāʿīlīs, and the massacres in turn provoked further assassinations of their instigators. In the meantime, the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism of 487/1094 had split the Ismāʿīlīs into two rival factions. By that time, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had emerged as the undisputed leader of the Persian Ismāʿīlīs, and perhaps of the Ismāʿīlīs of the entire Seljuq realm. He had already been following an independent revolutionary policy for several years, and now he supported Nizār’s cause and broke off his relations with Cairo. Ḥasan had now in effect founded the independent Nizārī daʿwa. In this decision, he was supported by the entire Ismāʿīlī community of Persia, while the Ismāʿīlīs of Central Asia seem to have remained uninformed about this schism for quite some time. Nizār, who had led an abortive revolt in Egypt, was captured and executed by the Fāṭimid regime in 488/1095. Nizār did have male progeny, and some of them revolted against the later Fāṭimids. But Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ did not divulge the name of Nizār’s successor to the imamate. Numismatic evidence shows that Nizār’s own name had continued to be mentioned on the coins minted at Alamūt for some 70 years after his death until the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī imams emerged at Alamūt and took charge of the affairs of their community and state.35 In the absence of a manifest imam, Ḥasan continued to be obeyed as the supreme leader of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī movement. Soon after 487/1094, Ḥasan was also acknowledged as the ḥujja or chief representative of the inaccessible imam, in the same manner that the central leaders of the early Ismāʿīlī movement had been recognised as the ḥujjas of the hidden imam. It was under such circumstances that the outsiders from early on had acquired the impression that the movement of the (Nizārī) Ismāʿīlīs of Persia represented

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a ‘new preaching’ (al-daʿwa al-jadīda), by contrast to the ‘old preaching’ (al-daʿwa al-qadīma) of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlīs. Be that as it may, the ‘new preaching’, expressed in the Persian language, was essentially the reformulation of an old Shīʿī doctrine of long standing among the Ismāʿīlīs, that is, the doctrine of taʿlīm or authoritative teaching by the imam. Ḥasan restated this doctrine vigorously in a treatise that has not survived, but it has been preserved fragmentarily by our Persian historians as well as the contemporary theologian al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153), who may have been an Ismāʿīlī himself.36 The doctrine of taʿlīm, emphasising the autonomous guiding authority of each imam in his time, provided the foundation of the Nizārī teachings of the Alamūt period and subsequent times. The intellectual challenge posed by the doctrine of taʿlīm, which also refuted the legitimacy of ʿAbbāsid rule, called forth the official reaction of the Sunnī establishment, led by al-Ghazālī who attacked the Ismāʿīlīs in several polemical works. Alarmed by the Nizārī successes, Sultan Barkiyāruq in western Persia and Sanjar in Khurāsān agreed in 494/1101 to deal more effectively, in their respective territories, with the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs who were then posing a general threat to the Seljuqs. Despite new Seljuq offensives and massacres, however, the Nizārīs managed to retain all their strongholds. But the Nizārī fortunes began to be reversed with the accession of Muḥammad Tapar (498–511/1105–1118) to the sultanate, which marked the termination of dynastic disputes and factional rivalries among the Seljuqs. During his reign, the Persian Nizārīs lost most of their fortresses in the Zagros Mountains; with the loss of Shāhdiz in 500/1107, the Nizārīs also lost their influence in the Iṣfahan region. Despite their superior military power and a prolonged war of attrition, the Seljuqs did not succeed in seizing Alamūt, where Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had continued to stay; and, the Persian Ismāʿīlīs by and large retained their regional positions in Rūdbār, Qūmis and Quhistān. Nevertheless, by the time of Ḥasan’s death in 518/1124, the armed revolt of the Persian Ismāʿīlīs against the Seljuqs had lost its effectiveness, much in the same way that Muḥammad Tapar’s offensive against them had failed to realise its objectives. The Seljuq-Ismāʿīlī relations had now entered a new phase of ‘stalemate’. Kiyā Buzurg-Umīd (518–532/1124–1138), the second lord of Alamūt, maintained the policies of his predecessor and further strengthened the Nizārī state, despite renewed Seljuq offensives against Rūdbār and Quhistān. Meanwhile, the Nizārī daʿwa was revived in southern Syria through the efforts of Bahrām (d. 522/1128) and other Persian dāʿīs sent from Alamūt, and by 527/1132, they began to acquire their permanent strongholds in central Syria. The scattered territories of the Nizārī state now stretched from Syria to eastern Persia, and possibly parts of adjacent areas in Afghanistan, and yet this state maintained a remarkable cohesion and sense of unity amidst extremely hostile surroundings and despite suffering uninterrupted persecution. Indeed, the stability of this state and the unwavering obedience of the Nizārīs towards their leaders never ceased to amaze the Seljuqs and other Nizārī adversaries, including the European Crusaders. Comprising mountain dwellers, villagers and inhabitants of small towns, the Persian Nizārīs also maintained a sophisticated outlook and encouraged learning. They established

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impressive libraries at Alamūt and their other major strongholds in Persia, as well as Syria. In later Alamūt times, numerous Muslim scholars availed themselves of the Nizārī libraries and patronage of learning. Buzurg-Umīd was succeeded by his son Muḥammad (532–557/1138–1162). In his time, the Persian Nizārīs extended their activities to Georgia (Gurjistān). They also made a major effort through their dāʿīs to penetrate a new region, Ghūr, to the east of Quhistān, in present-day central Afghanistan. The Nizārī Ismāʿīlī daʿwa seems to have been established in that region around 550/1155 at the request of the Ghūrid ruler ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Ḥusayn Jahānsūz. In Daylam, the Nizārīs had continued to confront the enmity of the Zaydīs as well as other local dynasties such as the Bāwandids of Ṭabaristān and Gīlān. The fourth lord of Alamūt, Ḥasan II ʿalā dhikrihi’l-salām (557–561/1162–1166), proclaimed the qiyāma or the Great Resurrection, the long-awaited Last Day, in 559/1164 at special ceremonies held at Alamūt and Quhistān. Relying heavily on Ismāʿīlī taʾwīl, or esoteric exegesis, however, the qiyāma was interpreted spiritually to mean the manifestation of unveiled truth in the person of the Nizārī imam. Accordingly, for the Nizārīs, who alone were capable of understanding the spiritual reality of the immutable religious truths (ḥaqāʾiq), hidden in the bāṭin of the positive laws, Paradise had now been actualised in this world. As a corollary, the outside world, comprising non-Ismāʿīlīs, was relegated to the realm of spiritual non-­ existence. The declaration of the qiyāma was tantamount to the Nizārī declaration of independence from the ‘other’. The Nizārīs of the qiyāma times did in fact practically ignore the outside world, refraining from any major campaign against their adversaries. As the person who had declared the qiyāma, Ḥasan II was also acknowledged by the Nizārī community as the qāʾim and the rightful imam from the progeny of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir. Ḥasan’s son and successor, Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad II (561–607/1166–1210), devoted his own long reign to a systematic elaboration of the doctrine of the qiyāma.37 This period also coincided with the career of Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān, the original ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ of the Crusaders. Sinān had spent his youth at Alamūt, where he had furthered his Ismāʿīlī education before being sent by Ḥasan II to Syria soon after 557/1162. He led the Syrian Nizārīs for 30 years to the peak of their power and glory until his death in 589/1193. Meanwhile, the Great Seljuq sultanate had been disintegrating in Persia and elsewhere after Sanjar’s death in 552/1157. The Seljuqs were replaced by a number of Turkish dynasties in different regions. At the same time, a new power based on Khwārazm, the region on the lower Oxus, had emerged in the East. The hereditary rule of this region had passed earlier into the hands of a Turkish dynasty acting as vassals of the Seljuqs and carrying the region’s traditional regnal title of Khwārazm Shāh. After Sanjar, the Khwārazm Shāhs began to assert their independence and expanded their territories into Khurāsān and other Iranian lands. Subsequently, the Khwārazm Shāhs expanded their empire westward across Persia, clearing away the remnants of Seljuq rule. As the successors of the Seljuqs, the Khwārazm Shāhs developed their own hostile relations with the Nizārīs of Rūdbār and elsewhere in Persia. In Quhistān, the Nizārīs had continued to have military encounters with the

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Ghūrids and the Maliks in the neighbouring Sīstān or Nīmrūz.38 It was in the aftermath of the decline of the Seljuqs that the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir (575–622/1180– 1225) found the long-awaited opportunity to revive the power and prestige of his dynasty. During this period, the next ruler of Alamūt, Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan III (607–618/1210–1221), attempted a daring rapprochement with the Sunnī establishment, ordering his followers to observe the sharīʿa in its Sunnī form. Later, this policy was explained as having represented a form of taqiyya or dissimulation to safeguard the survival of the community and improve its relations with the rest of the Muslim society. At any rate, by contrast to the qiyāma times, the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī imam had now boldly accommodated his community to the outside world. The new Nizārī policy proved very successful; Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan was acknowledged by the caliph al-Nāṣir and other leading Sunnī rulers as an amīr in the Muslim world, and his rights to the Nizārī territories were officially recognised. Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan also participated in the caliph al-Nāṣir’s intricate alliances. As a result of these developments, the Ghūrid attacks against the Nizārīs of Quhistān ceased, while the Nizārīs of Syria received timely help from the Ayyūbids in their conflicts with the Crusaders; and many Sunnīs, including scholars, who were then fleeing from the first Mongol invasions of Khurāsān, began to find refuge in the Nizārī towns and strongholds of Quhistān. Later in the seventh/thirteenth century, the Nizārī daʿwa began to be actively propagated in Badakhshān where the Ismāʿīlīs had survived in small Pamiri communities. At the same time, Nizārī dāʿīs, later also called pīrs, were dispatched from Alamūt to spread the daʿwa in Multān and other areas of Sind. The final decades of the Nizārī state in Persia, under ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad III (618–653/1221–1255), coincided with a most turbulent period in the history of the Iranian, and indeed Islamic, lands. By 617/1220, Chingiz Khan, ruler of the new Mongol empire, had captured Bukhārā and Samarqand. In the following year, he crossed the Oxus and seized Balkh. Then, the Mongols conquered Khurāsān, destroying Marw and Nīshāpūr. It was in the early years of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad’s reign that an increasing number of Muslims, both Sunnī and Shīʿī, found refuge among the Nizārīs of Quhistān who were still enjoying their stability and prosperity. The enviable contemporary conditions of the Quhistānī Nizārīs are described vividly by Minhāj-i Sirāj Jūzjānī, the Ghūrid historian and ambassador who visited Quhistān several times during 621–623/1224–1226 and met with the muḥtasham or chief of the Ismāʿīlīs there.39 The most prominent of the outside scholars who now availed themselves of the Nizārīs’ patronage of learning was the Shīʿī philosopher, theologian and scientist Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (597–672/1201–1274). It was around 624/1227 that al-Ṭūsī entered the service of Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Abī Manṣūr (d. 655/1257), the learned muḥtasham of the Nizārīs of Quhistān. Al-Ṭūsī developed a close friendship with Nāṣir al-Dīn, to whom he dedicated his great work on ethics, the Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī. The period of his Ismāʿīlī connection, lasting some 30 years until 654/1256, was particularly productive for al-Ṭūsī, who also embraced Ismāʿīlism.40 During this period, spent first in the Nizārī strongholds of Quhistān and later at Alamūt and Maymūndiz fortresses in Rūdbār, al-Ṭūsī also wrote a number of Ismāʿīlī works,

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including the Rawḍat al-taslīm (Meadow of Submission) which is the most comprehensive extant treatise on the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī teachings of the Alamūt period after the declaration of the qiyāma.41 With the demise of Jalāl al-Dīn Mingübirti (617–628/1220–1231), the last of the Khwārazm Shāhs who had also been engaged in war and diplomacy with Alamūt, the Nizārīs of Persia came to be confronted directly by the Mongols. The efforts of the Imam ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad to forge an alliance with the kings of France and England, in collaboration with the ʿAbbāsid caliph, against the Mongols proved futile; and all the Nizārī attempts to reach a peaceful accord with the Mongols themselves proved equally ineffective. In any event, when the Great Khan Möngke (649–657/1251–1259) decided to complete the Mongol conquest of western Asia, he assigned first priority to the destruction of the Nizārī state in Persia, entrusting the mission to his brother Hülegü. The Mongol hordes had already started to exert constant pressures on the Nizārīs of Quhistān and Qūmis when ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad was succeeded by his youthful son, Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, in Shawwāl 653/December 1255; he would be the last lord of Alamūt. A few months later, in the spring of 654/1256, the main Mongol expedition led by Hülegü himself entered Persia through Khurāsān. In the final year of the Nizārī state, Khurshāh and Hülegü exchanged countless embassies and negotiated endlessly in vain.42 Vacillating between resistance and surrender, Khurshāh seems to have hoped to save at least the major Nizārī strongholds of Persia from Mongol destruction, while Hülegü demanded nothing less than total Nizārī submission. Finally, Khurshāh surrendered on 29 Shawwāl 654/19 November 1256, after the main Mongol armies had converged on Maymūndiz, where the imam was then staying, and engaged the Nizārīs in fierce fighting. This marked the end of the Alamūt period in the Ismāʿīlī history of the Iranian lands. Alamūt itself was surrendered to the Mongols a month later, while Lamasar held out for another year, and Girdkūh, as the last Nizārī outpost in Persia, resisted its Mongol besiegers until 669/1270. Early in the following year, 655/1257, Möngke sanctioned a general massacre of the Nizārīs of Persia. Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh’s own tragic end came in the spring of 655/1257 when he was murdered by his Mongol guards somewhere in central Mongolia, whither he had gone in vain to see the Great Khan.

The early post-Alamūt centuries The collapse of the Nizārī state in 654/1256 marked the initiation of a new phase in the medieval history of the Iranian Ismāʿīlīs, who had now permanently lost their political prominence. Henceforth, the Ismāʿīlīs of the Iranian lands, all belonging to the Nizārī branch, survived as minority religious communities in Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia. The first two centuries in the post-Alamūt history of these communities remain rather obscure. Only the major developments of this period have been recently clarified by modern scholarship on the basis of numerous

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regional histories and other primary sources as well as the oral traditions and the meagre writings of the Nizārīs themselves.43 In Persia, the Nizārīs were left in an utterly confused and devastated state in the aftermath of the Mongol catastrophe. Large numbers were put to the Mongol swords in Rūdbār and Quhistān; and in both regions, the surviving groups were displaced from their traditional abodes, the mountain strongholds, their surrounding villages and a few towns. Many of the Nizārīs who had survived the Mongol massacres migrated to adjacent regions in Afghanistan and Badakhshān as well as Sind, while numerous groups, isolated in remote places or towns, soon began to disintegrate or gradually assimilated themselves into the religiously dominant communities of their surroundings. The Nizārīs were now also deprived of any form of central leadership, which had been provided earlier from Alamūt. It was under such circumstances that the highly disorganised and scattered Nizārī communities were once again obliged to observe taqiyya very strictly. For about two centuries after the fall of Alamūt, the Nizārī communities of Persia, Afghanistan and Badakhshān, and elsewhere in Syria and India, developed on a local basis and independently of one another under the local leadership of their own dāʿīs. Meanwhile, a group of Nizārī dignitaries had managed to hide Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh’s minor son Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, who had succeeded to the Nizārī imamate. He was evidently taken to Ādharbāyjān where he spent the rest of his life disguising himself as an embroiderer. These facts are attested by certain allusions in the unpublished versified Safar-nāma of Saʿd al-Dīn b. Shams al-Dīn Nizārī Quhistānī (d. 720/1320). A native of Bīrjand in Quhistān, and the first post-Alamūt Nizārī poet, Nizārī Quhistānī served for a while at the court of the Kart rulers of Harāt. Nizārī Quhistānī travelled widely, and he seems to have seen the Imam Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad around 678/1280 in Ādharbāyjān, possibly at Tabrīz. Practically nothing is known about the imams who succeeded Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad in Persia until the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century. Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, the 28th Nizārī imam, died around 710/1310. An obscure dispute over his succession split the line of the Nizārī imams and their following into what became known as the Muḥammad-Shāhī and Qāsim-Shāhī branches. The Muḥammad-Shāhī line of Nizārī imams, who initially had numerous followers in Daylam and Badakhshān, was discontinued soon after 1201/1786. On the other hand, the Qāsim-Shāhī line has persisted to our times, and since the early decades of the thirteenth/nineteenth century, the imams of this line have become better known under their hereditary title of Aga Khan. At any rate, this schism provided another serious blow to the already devastated Nizārī daʿwa of the early post-Alamūt period. Meanwhile, the Nizārīs had managed to regroup in Daylam, where they remained active throughout the Īlkhānid and Tīmūrid periods. At the time, Daylam was ruled by different local dynasties, and the political fragmentation of the region permitted the Nizārīs there to make periodic attempts to regain Alamūt and Lamasar, which had not been completely demolished by the Mongols. They also succeeded in winning several local rulers of northern Persia to their side. For

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instance, some of the Kushayjī amīrs, including Kiyā Sayf al-Dīn, who by 770/1368 controlled much of Daylam, adhered to Nizārī Ismāʿīlism.44 A certain Nizārī leader known as Khudāwand Muḥammad, who may perhaps be identified with the Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārī Imam Muḥammad b. Muʾmin Shāh (d. 807/1404), had also appeared in Daylam, where he played an active part in local conflicts and alliances. Khudāwand Muḥammad established himself at Alamūt for a while, but was eventually obliged to seek refuge with Tīmūr who exiled him to Sulṭāniyya.45 Later, the Banū Iskandar who ruled over parts of Māzandarān supported the Nizārī cause in Daylam.46 The Nizārīs retained some importance in northern Persia until the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, when the Caspian provinces were annexed to the Ṣafawid dominions. It is interesting to note that the Ṣafawids themselves used Alamūt as a royal prison for the rebellious members of their own household before the fortress was permanently abandoned. The Nizārīs of Quhistān never really recovered from the Mongol onslaught, which left all of Khurāsān with its great cities in ruins. Subsequently, they survived in scattered villages around some of their former towns in Khurāsān, without acquiring any political prominence. The Nizārīs of Badakhshān, who were particularly devoted to Nāṣir-i Khusraw, had essentially remained outside of the confines of the Nizārī state. But, as noted, the Nizārī daʿwa had been propagated actively there during the later Alamūt period. According to the local tradition of the Nizārīs of Badakhshān, the Nizārī daʿwa was introduced to Shughnān by two dāʿīs sent from Alamūt. These dāʿīs, Sayyid Shāh Malang and Sayyid Shāh Khāmūsh, founded dynasties of mīrs and pīrs who ruled on a hereditary basis over Shughnān, Rūshān and adjacent districts of Badakhshān in the upper Oxus region.47 Subsequently, Badakhshān was fortunate to escape the Mongol debacle. The region was eventually annexed to the Tīmūrid Empire in the middle of the ninth/ fifteenth century. Early in the tenth/sixteenth century, Badakhshān was briefly conquered by the Özbegs, whose hegemony was persistently resisted by different local rulers. It was under such chaotic conditions that Shāh Raḍī al-Dīn, a MuḥammadShāhī Nizārī imam, came from his original base of operations in Quhistān and Sīstān to Badakhshān, where he established his own rule with the help of the local Nizārīs. Shāh Raḍī al-Dīn was, however, killed in battle in 915/1509, and, subsequently, Mīrzā Khān, a local Tīmūrid amīr, severely persecuted the Nizārīs of Badakhshān. Meanwhile, the Nizārī imams of the Qāsim-Shāhī line had emerged at Anjudān, a large village in central Persia near Qumm and Maḥallāt, initiating the Anjudān revival in the post-Alamūt history of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs.48 Imām Mustanṣir bi’llāh, who died in 885/1480, is the first imam of his line to have definitely established himself at Anjudān, where a Nizārī community already existed. By that time, Nizārī Ismāʿīlism had become infused in Persia with Sufi teachings and terminology, while Sufi pīrs themselves had begun to use ideas which had been more widely attributed to the Ismāʿīlīs. As a part of this coalescence between Nizārī Ismāʿīlism and Sufism in Persia, the Nizārīs had also adopted certain external features of the Sufi orders (ṭarīqas), referring to their imams and themselves as pīrs (or murshids) and murīds.

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This disguise was partly adopted for the purposes of taqiyya to ensure the safety of the Nizārīs in predominantly Sunnī surroundings. However, the esoteric nature of the teachings of both communities, too, had made its own important contribution to bringing about this coalescence which left permanent imprints on the Nizārī community. This also explains why the Nizārīs of the Iranian lands, especially in Badakhshān, have continued to regard some of the great mystic poets of Persia, such as Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, as their co-religionists. Later in Ṣafawid times, the Persian Nizārīs also adopted the guise of Twelver Shīʿism, then the official religion of the Ṣafawid realm, as another taqiyya practice. Anjudān served as the residence of the Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārī imams and the headquarters of their daʿwa for some two centuries, coinciding with the period of Ṣafawid rule over Persia. The tombs of the Imam Mustanṣir bi’llāh, who carried the Sufi name of Shāh Qalandar, and several of his successors are still preserved in Anjudān.49 The Anjudān period ushered a revival in the daʿwa activities of the Nizārīs of the Iranian lands. This revival also resulted in the assertion of Anjudān’s control over the various Nizārī communities which had hitherto developed on a local basis. The ground for the Anjudān revival had already been prepared by the spread of Shīʿī tendencies in Persia, mainly through the activities of a number of Sufi orders; and this process eventually culminated in the adoption of Twelver Shīʿism as the religion of Ṣafawid Persia in 907/1501. The Ṣafawiyya themselves represented one of the most militant Sufi orders through which Shīʿī tendencies and ʿAlid loyalism had permeated Persia. During the Anjudān period, the Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārī daʿwa was reorganised and reinvigorated under the direct leadership of the imams at Anjudān, not only to win new converts but also to gain the allegiance of those Iranian Nizārīs, especially in Badakhshān, who had hitherto supported the Muḥammad-Shāhī line of imams. By asserting their own leadership, the imams also succeeded in undermining the position of the hereditary dynasties of dāʿīs, mīrs or pīrs, which had emerged in different Iranian Ismāʿīlī communities. The imams now began to appoint their own trusted representatives to administer the affairs of these communities, especially in Khurāsān, Afghanistan and Badakhshān. These agents visited Anjudān on a regular basis, to report on the affairs of their community and to deliver the much-needed religious dues they had collected. By the second half of the eleventh/seventeenth century, the Anjudān revival had led to significant achievements. Rapidly expanding and reorganised Nizārī communities had now emerged throughout the Iranian world, in central Persia, Kirmān, Khurāsān, Afghanistan and Badakhshān. The Nizārī daʿwa directed from Anjudān had also been particularly successful in Sind, Gujarāt and other regions of the Indian subcontinent. At the same time, the bulk of the Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs had switched their allegiance to the imams residing at Anjudān. The literary activities of the Iranian Nizārīs, too, were revived during the Anjudān period, starting with the writings of Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, and Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī who died after 960/1553.50 The Nizārīs of the Iranian lands, especially in Badakhshān,

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also preserved a substantial portion of the literary heritage of their community, produced in the Persian language during the Alamūt and post-Alamūt centuries. The Ismāʿīlīs of the Iranian lands were not destined to regain the prominence they had acquired during the Alamūt period of their history, a religio-political prominence that was abruptly ended by the all-conquering Mongols. Nevertheless, by the end of the Middle Ages, the Anjudān revival had already started to compensate at least partially for the Mongol debacle, permitting the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs to survive in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, as well as in many other regions of the world, as peaceful and prosperous religious communities.

Notes   * This chapter was originally published in C. Hillenbrand, ed., Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth: Volume 2, The Sultan’s Turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 43–81.  1 See Nawbakhtī, Kitāb firaq al-Shīʿa, pp. 57–58, 60–61; al-Qummī, Kitāb al-maqālāt, pp. 80–81, 83; and Daftary, ‘The Earliest Ismāʿīlīs’, pp. 214–245.  2 Al-Daylamī, Bayān, p. 21.   3 The most detailed account of the initiation of the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa in the Jibāl, Khurāsān and Transoxania is contained in Niz.ām al-Mulk, Siyar, ed. Darke, pp. 282–295, 297– 305; English trans., Darke, pp. 208–218, 220–225. See also Stern, ‘The Early Ismāʿīlī Missionaries’, pp. 56–90, reprinted in Stern, Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism, pp. 189–233.  4 On ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī’s reform and its consequences, see Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 43–65, 69ff., and Daftary, ‘A Major Schism’, pp. 123–139.   5 On the early history of these Qarmaṭī communities, and their relations with the Fāṭimids, see Madelung, ‘The Fatimids and the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn’, pp. 21–73; W. Madelung, ‘Ḳarmaṭī’, EI2, vol. 4, pp. 660–665; and Daftary, ‘Carmatians’, pp. 823–832.  6 Gardīzī, Zayn al-akhbār, pp. 148–149; Taʾrīkh-i Sīstān, ed. Bahār, pp. 290–294, 300–302; ed. Ṣādiqī, pp. 158–160, 165–166; English trans., ‘The Tārīkh-e Sistān’, trans. M. Gold, pp. 233–237, 243–244; Mīrkhwānd, Rawḍat al-ṣafāʾ, vol. 4, pp. 40–42; and Barthold, Turkistan, pp. 241–245.  7 Al-Kirmānī, al-Aqwāl, pp. 2–3.   8 On the Justānids, who are variously treated by a few medieval chroniclers of the Caspian provinces, including Ibn Isfandiyār, Awliyāʾ Allāh Āmulī and Z.āhir al-Dīn Marʿashī, see Madelung, ‘Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī’, especially pp. 52–57, reprinted in his Religious and Ethnic Movements, article VII, and Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties, pp. 145–146.   9 See Stern, ‘Early Ismāʿīlī Missionaries’, pp. 70–74. On the Musāfirids, see the following works by Minorsky: Studies in Caucasian History, pp. 159–166; History of Sharvān and Darband, pp. 27, 60–62, 71, 76, 85, 112; and ‘Musāfirids’, EI2, 7, pp. 655–657. See also Madelung, ‘The Minor Dynasties’, pp. 224–225, 231ff., and Bosworth, New Islamic Dynasties, pp. 148–149. 10 Ibn Ḥawqal, Ṣūrat al-arḍ, pp. 348–349, 354. See also Miskawayh, Tajārib, ed. and trans. Amedroz and Margoliouth, Arabic text, vol. 2, pp. 31–37, 62–67, 115, 135–136, 148–154, 166–167, 177–180, 219–220; English translation, vol. 5, pp. 33–41, 67–74, 118, 140–142, 156–164, 178–180, 192–195, 233. 11 See Walker, ‘Abū Tammam’, pp. 343–352, and his ‘An Ismaʿili Version’, pp. 161–177. See also Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids, pp. 292–293. 12 For the most comprehensive modern studies of al-Sijistānī's thought and intellectual contributions, see Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism, and his Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī. 13 lbn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-fihrist, pp. 240–241; English trans., p. 472. 14 See Bosworth, Saffarids, pp. 301–337.

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15 For al-Sijistānī’s writings, see Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 82–89, and Walker, al-Sijistānī, pp. 104–118. Only one of al-Sijistānī’s books, the Kitāb al-yanābīʿ, containing the major components and themes of his metaphysical system, has been translated into English; see Walker, Wellsprings, pp. 37–111; for the Arabic text and partial French translation of this work, see Corbin, Trilogie ismaélienne, text pp. 1–97, translation pp. 5–127. 16 See Corbin, Cyclical Time, pp. 151–193; Madelung, ‘Aspects of lsmāʿīlī Theology’, pp. 53–65, reprinted in Madelung, Religious Schools, article XVII, and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 234–246. 17 See Stern, ‘Ismāʿīlī Propaganda’, pp. 298–307, reprinted in his Studies, pp. 177–188; Hamdani, The Beginnings, pp. 3ff.; Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, pp. 52–53, 76, 199–200, 235; and Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, pp. 385–392. 18 Al-Nīsābūrī’s treatise entitled al-Risāla al-mūjaza al-kāfiya fī ādāb al-duʿāt has not survived directly, but it has been preserved in full in later Ismāʿīlī sources; see Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 91–92. 19 See Daftary, The lsmāʿīlīs, pp. 186–197; Walker, ‘The Ismaili Daʿwa’, pp. 161–182; and Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions, pp. 35ff., 53–54, 71–78. 20 Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 94–102, and van Ess, ‘Bibliographische Notizen’, pp. 255–261. 21 For a comprehensive study of al-Kirmānī’s thought, as expounded mainly in his Rāḥat al-ʿaql, see De Smet, La Quiétude de l’lntellect. 22 Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz. al-ḥunafāʿ, vol. 2, pp. 191–192; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, vol. 9, pp. 211, 358, and vol. 10, pp. 112ff., 165–166; and Barthold, Turkestan, pp. 251, 304–305, 316–318. 23 See al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Sīrat al-Muʿayyad fi’l-Dīn. See also Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, vol. 6, pp. 329–359. For a modern study based on al-Muʾayyad’s Sīra, see Klemm, Die Mission des fāṭimidischen Agenten. 24 For a list of al-Muʾayyad’s writings, see Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 103–109. See also Halm, ‘The Ismaʿili Oath of Allegiance (ʿahd)’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval lsmaʿili History, especially pp. 99–115. 25 See, for instance, Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Zād al-musāfirīn, p. 397, and his Dīwān, pp. 8, 10, 17, 51, 56, 86, 92, 366, 416, 459, 490. 26 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Zād al-musāfirīn, pp. 3, 402, and his Dīwān, pp. 162, 234, 287, 436. 27 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Kitāb jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn, pp. 16–17; French trans., Le Livre réunissant les deux Sagesses, p. 48. On Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s life and writings, see Ivanow, Problems in Nasir-i Khusraw’s Biography; Corbin, ‘Nāṣir-i Khusrau and Iranian Ismāʿīlism’, pp. 520– 542; Bertel’s, Nasir-i Khosrov i ismailizm, pp. 148–264; Persian trans., Nāṣir-i Khusraw va Ismāʿīliyān, pp. 149–256; and Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 111–125, 430–436. 28 F. Daftary, ‘Persian Historiography’, pp. 91–97. 29 Juwaynī, Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushāy, vol. 3, pp. 186–278; English trans., vol. 2, pp. 666–725; Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, pp. 97–195; Kāshanī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh, pp. 133–233. For modern studies on the Persian Ismāʿīlīs and their state during the Alamūt period, see Hodgson, Order, pp. 37–278, and his ‘The Ismāʿīlī State’, pp. 422–482; Lewis, The Assassins, pp. 38–124; Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 324–434, 669–699, and his ‘Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and the Origins of the Nizārī Ismaʿili Movement’, in his Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 181–204. 30 Professor Bosworth has studied the Persian revival under Arab and Turkish rule in numerous studies; see, for instance, his ‘The Development of Persian Culture’, pp. 33–44, reprinted in his The Medieval History, article XVIII; ‘Interaction of Arabic and Persian Literature and Culture’, pp. 59–75, reprinted in his Medieval Arabic Culture, article VIII; and his Saffarids, pp. 168–180. See also Stern, ‘Yaʿqūb the Coppersmith’, pp. 535–555. 31 See Rashīd al-Dīn, p. 112, and the anonymous Nizārī treatise from the Alamūt period entitled Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, p. 30; English trans., in Hodgson, Order, p. 314. 32 See Rashīd al-Dīn, pp. 149–153; Kāshānī, pp. 186–190; and Madelung, Religious Trends, pp. 9–12. On the Khurramiyya, who were active in different parts of the Iranian world throughout the ʿAbbāsid times, and manifested anti-Arab, anti-Turkish or even antiIslamic sentiments, see Madelung, ‘Khurramiyya’, EI2, vol. 5, pp. 63–65.

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33 For a detailed analysis of these campaigns and the biased reports of the chroniclers favouring the Seljuqs, see Hillenbrand, ‘The Power Struggle’, pp. 205–220. 34 For the origins and early development of these legends, which found their culmination in the tales recounted by Marco Polo, see Daftary, The Assassin Legends, especially pp. 88–127. 35 See, for instance, Miles, ‘Coins of the Assassins of Alamūt’, pp. 155–162. 36 Al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-milal, pp. 150–152; partial English trans., pp. 167–170; English trans. also in Hodgson, Order, pp. 325–328. See also G. Monnot, ‘al-Shahrastānī’, EI2, vol. 9, pp. 214–216. 37 The doctrine of the qiyāma, as elaborated under Muḥammad II, is expounded in the Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, pp. 4–42; English trans., with commentary, in Hodgson, Order, pp. 279–324. For the best modern exposition of this doctrine, see Hodgson, Order, pp. 162–180, while an interesting phenomenological account is contained in Jambet, La grande résurrection. 38 See Bosworth, ‘The Ismaʿilis of Quhistān’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 221–229, and his Saffarids, pp. 387–410, 418ff. 39 Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, pp. 182–183; English trans., vol. 2, pp. 1197–1205, 1212–1214. 40 On the controversy surrounding al-Ṭūsī’s religious affiliation, see Dabashi, ‘The Philosopher/Vizier’, pp. 231–245, and also Madelung, ‘Naṣīr ad-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Ethics’, pp. 85–101. 41 Al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍat al-taslīm; French trans., La Convocation d’Alamūt. For al-Ṭūsī’s Ismāʿīlī writings, see Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 260–263. 42 See Boyle, ‘The Ismāʿīlīs and the Mongol Invasion’, pp. 7–22; Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 416–430, and his ‘Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh’, EI2, vol. 8, pp. 598–599. 43 For the details and the relevant sources, see Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 435–451. 44 See Marʿashī, Taʾrīkh-i Gīlān, pp. 66–68. 45 Marʿashī, Taʾrīkh-i Gīlān, pp. 52–66, 123–124. 46 See Gīlānī, Taʾrīkh-i Māzandarān, pp. 88–89, 100, and Fūmanī, Taʾrīkh-i Gīlān, ed. Dorn, pp. 127–129, 192–195; ed. Sutūda, pp. 164–166, 241–244. 47 Badakhshī, Taʾrīkh-i Badakhshān, ed. Boldyrev, pp. 227–253, and Semenov, ‘Shughnan­ skikh Ismailitov’, pp. 523–561. 48 Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 451–478. 49 See Ivanow, ‘Tombs’, pp. 49–62, and Daftary, ‘Anjedān’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 2, p. 77. 50 See Poonawala, Biobibliography, pp. 268–277.

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Hodgson, Marshall G. S., ‘The Ismāʿīlī State’, in The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 5, The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 422–482. Ibn al-Athīr, ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Muḥammad, al-Kāmil fi’l-taʾrīkh, ed. C. J. Tornberg (Leiden, 1851–1876). Ibn Ḥawqal, Abu’l-Qāsim ʿAlī, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. J. H. Kramers (2nd ed., Leiden, 1938– 1939). Ibn Isfandiyār, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, Taʾrīkh-i Ṭabaristān, ed. ʿA. Iqbāl (Tehran, 1320/1941). Ibn al-Nadīm Abu’l-Faraj Muḥammad b. Isḥāq, Kitāb al-fihrist, ed. M. R. Tajaddud (Tehran, 1973); English trans. B. Dodge, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm (New York, 1970). Ibn al-Qalānisī, Abū Yaʿlā Ḥamza b. Asad, Dhayl Taʾrīkh Dimashq, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden, 1908); ed. S. Zakkār (Damascus, 1983). Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār wa-funūn al-āthār, vol. 6, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1984). Ivanow, Wladimir, ‘Tombs of Some Persian Ismaili Imams’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, 14 (1938), pp. 49–62. Klemm, Verema, Die Mission des fātimidischen Agenten al-Muʾayyad fi d-din in Šīrāz (Frankfurt, 1989). Ivanow, Wladimir, Alamut and Lamasar: Two Mediaeval Ismaili Strongholds in Iran (Tehran, 1960). Jambet, Christian, La grande résurrection d’Alamūt (Lagrasse, 1990). Juwaynī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā Malik b. Muḥammad, Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushāy, ed. M. Qazvīnī (Leiden/London, 1912–1937); English trans. John A. Boyle, The History of the WorldConqueror (Manchester, 1958). Jūzjānī, Minhāj-i Sirāj, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, ed. ʿA. Ḥabībī (2nd ed., Kabul, 1342–1343/1963– 1964); English trans. H. G. Raverty, The Ṭabaḳāt-i Nāṣirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia (London, 1881–1889). Kāshānī, Abu’l-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh: bakhsh-i Fāṭimiyān va Nizāriyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh (2nd ed., Tehran, 1366/1987). Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī, Muḥammad Riḍā b. Sulṭān Ḥusayn, Taṣnīfāt, ed. W. Ivanow (Tehran, 1961). al-Kirmānī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh, al-Aqwāl al-dhahabiyya, ed. Ṣ. al-Sāwī (Tehran, 1977). Lewis, Bernard, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London, 1967). Lewis, Bernard, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London, 1967). Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 43–135. Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī on the Alids of Ṭabaristān and Gīlān’, Journal of Near Eatern Studies, 26 (1967), pp. 17–57; reprinted in his Religious and Ethnic Movements in Medieval Islam (Hampshire, 1992), article VII. Madelung, Wilferd, ‘The Minor Dynasties of Northern Iran’, in The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 4, The Period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, ed. R. N. Frye (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 198–249. Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Aspects of Ismāʿīlī Theology: The Prophetic Chain and the God beyond Being’, in S. H. Nasr, ed., Ismāʿīlī Contributions to Islamic Culture (Tehran, 1977), pp. 53-64; reprinted in his Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam (London, 1985), article XVII. Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Naṣīr ad-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Ethics between Philosophy, Shiʿism and Sufism’, in R.G. Hovannisian, ed., Ethics in Islam (Malibu, CA, 1985), pp. 85–101.

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Madelung, Wilferd, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany, NY, 1988). Madelung, Wilferd, ‘The Fatimids and the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 21–73. Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Ḳarmaṭī’, EI2, vol. 4, pp. 660–665. al-Maqrīzī, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad, Ittiʿāz. al-ḥunafāʿ, ed. J. al-Shayyāl and M. H. M. Aḥmad (Cairo, 1967–1973). Marʿashī, Z.ahīr al-Dīn, Taʾrīkh-i Gīlān va Daylamistān, ed. M. Sutūda (Tehran, 1347/1968). Marʿashī, Z.ahīr al-Dīn, Taʾrīkh-i Ṭabaristān va Rūyān wa Māzandarān, ed. B. Dorn (St. Petersburg, 1850); ed. M. Ḥusayn Tasbīḥī (Tehran, 1345/1966). Miles, George C., ‘Coins of the Assassins of Alamūt’, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 3 (1972), pp. 155–162. Minorsky, Vladimir, Studies in Caucasian History (London, 1953). Minorsky, Vladimir, History of Sharvān and Darband (Cambridge, 1958). Mīrkhwānd, Muḥammad b. Khwānshāh, Rawḍat al-ṣafāʾ (Tehran, 1338–1339/1960). Miskawayh, Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. Muḥammad, Tajārib al-umam, ed. and trans. H. F. Amedroz and D. S. Margoliouth under the title The Eclipse of the ʿAbbasid Caliphate (Oxford, 1920– 1921). al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Abū Naṣr Hibat Allāh, Sīrat al-Muʿayyad fī’l-Dīn dāʿī al-duʿāt, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn (Cairo, 1949). Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Dīwān, ed. M. Mīnuvī and M. Muḥaqqiq (Tehran, 1353/1974). Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Kitāb jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn, ed. H. Corbin and M. Muʿin (Tehran/Paris, 1953); French trans. I. de Gastines, Le Livre réunissant les deux Sagesses (Paris, 1990). Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Zād al-musāfirīn, ed. M. Badhl al-Raḥmān (Berlin, 1341/1923). al-Nawbakhtī, al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā, Kitāb firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931). Niz.ām al-Mulk, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Ṭūsī, Siyar al-mulūk (Siyāsat-nāma), ed. H. Darke (2nd ed., Tehran, 1347/1968); English trans. H. Darke, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings (2nd ed., London, 1978). Poonawala, Ismail K., Biobibliography of Ismāʿīlī Literature ((Malibu, CA, 1977). al-Qummī, Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh, Kitāb al-maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran, 1963). Rabino, Hyacinth L., ‘Rulers of Gilan’, JRAS (1920), pp. 277–296. Rabino, Hyacinth L., ‘Les dynasties du Māzandarān’, Journal Asiatique, 228 (1936), pp. 397–474. Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i Ismāʿīliyān va Fāṭimiyān va Nizāriyān va dāʿīyān va rafīqān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh and M. Mudarrisī Zanjānī (Tehran, 1338/1959). al-Rāwandī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, Rāḥat al-ṣudūr, ed. M. Iqbāl (London, 1921). Semenov, Aleksandr A., ‘Iz oblasti religioznuikh verovany Shughnanskikh Ismailitov’, Mir Islama, 1 (1912), pp. 523–561. al-Shahrastānī, Abu’l-Fatḥ Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm, Kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. W. Cureton (London, 1842–1846); partial English trans. A. K. Kazi and J. G. Flynn, Muslim Sects and Divisions (London, 1984). Smet, Daniel De, La Quiétude de l’Intellect: Néoplatonisme et gnose ismaélienne dans l’oeuvre de Ḥamīd ad-Dīn al-Kirmānī (Xe/XIe s.) (Louvain, 1995). Stern, Samuel M., ‘Ismāʿīlī Propaganda and Fatimid Rule in Sind’, Islamic Culture, 23 (1949), pp. 298–307. Stern, Samuel M., ‘The Early Ismāʿīlī Missionaries in North-West Persia and in Khurāsān and Transoxania”, BSOAS, 23 (1960), pp. 56–90. Stern, Samuel M., ‘Yaʿqūb the Coppersmith and Persian National Sentiments’, in C. E. Bosworth, ed., Iran and Islam, in Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky (Edinburgh, 1971), pp. 535–555. Stern, Samuel M., Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism (Jerusalem/Leiden, 1983).

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Taʾrīkh-i Sīstān, ed. M. T. Bahār (Tehran, 1314/1935); ed. J. Mudarris Ṣādiqī (Tehran, 1373/1994); English trans. M. Gold, The Tārikh-e Sistān (Rome, 1976). al-Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, Rawḍat al-taslīm, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow (Leiden, 1950); French trans. C. Jambet, La Convocation d’Alamūt: Somme de philosophie ismaélienne (Lagrasse, 1996). Walker, Paul E., Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (Cambridge, 1993). Walker, Paul E., ‘The Ismaili Daʿwa in the Reign of the Fatimid Caliph al-Ḥākim’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 30 (1993), pp. 161–182. Walker, Paul E., The Wellsprings of Wisdom: A Study of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Yanābīʿ (Salt Lake City, 1994). Walker, Paul E., ‘Abū Tammām and his Kitāb al-Shajara: A New Ismaili Treatise from TenthCentury Khurasan’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 114 (1994), pp. 343–352. Walker, Paul E., Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī: Intellectual Missionary (London, 1996). Walker, Paul E., ‘An Ismaʿili Version of the Heresiography of the Seventy-two Erring Sects’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 161–177. Z.ahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, Saljūq-nāma (Tehran, 1332/1953).

13 The ‘Order of the Assassins’ J. von Hammer and the orientalist ­misrepresentations of the Nizari Ismailis

The orientalists of the nineteenth century started their scholarly study of Islam on the basis of the Islamic manuscript sources then available in Europe.* They also produced a number of works on Shiʿi Islam and its subdivisions, including the Ismailis. However, in studying the Ismailis in general, and the Nizari Ismailis under the misnomer of the Assassins in particular, they were obliged to utilise two main categories of primary sources, notably, Sunni authors and the European accounts transmitted through the Crusader circles. Consequently, the orientalists, too, unwittingly lent their approval to the earlier misrepresentations of the Ismailis rooted in the ‘hostility’ of the medieval Sunni authors and the ‘imaginative ignorance’ of the Crusaders and their occidental chroniclers. All this, of course, changed drastically with the modern progress in Ismaili studies, based on the recovery of a large number of genuine Ismaili works. At any rate, it is against such a background that Joseph von Hammer’s book on the so-called Assassins, the first orientalist monograph devoted entirely to the Nizari Ismailis of the Alamut period (483– 654/1090–1256), should be read and evaluated in our time, almost two centuries after its publication. In the course of their long and complex history dating back to the middle of the second/eighth century and the succession dispute over the heritage of Imam Jaʿfar al-Sadiq (d. 148/765), the Ismailis have often been accused of various heretical teachings and practices and, at the same time, a multitude of myths and misconceptions circulated about them. This state of affairs reflected mainly the unfortunate fact that the Ismailis were, until the middle of the twentieth century, perceived and judged almost exclusively on the basis of evidence collected or often fabricated by their enemies. As the most revolutionary wing of Shiʿism with a religio-political agenda that aimed to uproot the Abbasids and restore the caliphate to a line of ʿAlid imams, the Ismailis from early on had aroused the hostility of the Sunni establishment of the Muslim majority. With the foundation of the Fatimid state under the

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leadership of the Ismaili imam in 297/909, the Ismaili challenge to the established order became actualised, and thereupon the Abbasid caliphs and Sunni scholars launched what amounted to a widespread and official anti-Ismaili propaganda campaign. The overall objective of this systematic and prolonged campaign was to discredit the entire Ismaili movement from its origins so that the Ismailis could be readily condemned as malahida, ‘heretics’ or ‘deviators’ from the true religious path. In particular, Sunni polemicists, starting with Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad b. ʿAli b. Rizam al-Kufi, better known as Ibn Rizam, who lived in Baghdad during the first half of the fourth/tenth century, fabricated evidence that would lend support to the condemnation of the Ismailis on specific doctrinal grounds. The polemicists concocted detailed accounts of the sinister teachings and practices of the Ismailis while refuting the ʿAlid genealogy of their imams, descendants of Imam ­al-Sadiq through his son Ismaʿil, the eponym of the Ismaʿiliyya. Anti-Ismaili polemical tracts provided a major source of information for Sunni heresiographers such as al-Baghdadi (d. 429/1037), who investigated the internal divisions of Islam.1 The anti-Ismaili polemical and heresiographical traditions, in turn, influenced the Muslim historians, theologians and jurists who had something to say about the Ismailis. The Sunni authors, who were generally not interested in collecting accurate information on the internal divisions of Shiʿism and who treated all Shiʿi interpretations of Islam as ‘heterodoxies’ or even ‘heresies’, also readily availed themselves of the opportunity to blame the Fatimids and indeed the entire Ismaili community for the atrocities perpetrated by the Qarmatis of Bahrayn, who had seceded from the Ismaili community as dissenters in 286/899, the same year in which they founded their state in eastern Arabia.2 It may be recalled that the prolonged pillaging activities of the Qarmatis of Bahrayn reached their climax in 317/930 when they attacked Mecca, massacred the pilgrims and then carried away the Black Stone, which was only returned to its original place in the corner of the Kaʿba two decades later. At any rate, the dissemination of hostile accounts and misrepresentations contributed significantly to turning the Sunni Muslims at large against the Ismailis. By spreading defamations and travesties, the anti-Ismaili authors, in fact, produced a ‘black legend’ in the course of the fourth/tenth century. Ismailism was depicted as the arch-heresy of Islam, carefully designed by a non-ʿAlid impostor, a certain ʿAbd Allah b. Maymun al-Qaddah, or possibly even a Jewish magician disguised as a Muslim, aiming to destroy Islam from within.3 By the fifth/eleventh century, this fiction, with its elaborate details and seven stages of initiation ending in atheism and libertinism, had been accepted as an accurate and reliable description of Ismaili motives, beliefs and practices, leading to further anti-Ismaili polemics and heresiographical accusations as well as intensifying the animosity of other Muslim communities towards the Ismailis. The same ‘black legend’ provides the basis of von Hammer’s discussion of the origins of Ismailism. The revolt of the Persian Ismailis led by Hasan-i Sabbah (d. 518/1124) against the Saljuq Turks, the new overlords of the Abbasids, called forth another vigorous Sunni reaction against the Ismailis in general and the Nizari Ismailis in

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p­ articular. The Ismailis were split into Nizari and Mustaʿli factions as a result of the ­succession dispute in the aftermath of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustansir’s death in 487/1094. The two factions were named after al-Mustansir’s sons who claimed his heritage. Hasan-i Sabbah’s seizure of the fortress of Alamut earlier in 483/1090 had already marked the foundation of what was to become the Nizari Ismaili state of Persia and Syria. And in the Nizari-Mustaʿli dispute, Hasan upheld Nizar’s rights to the Ismaili imamate and severed his ties with the Fatimid regime in Cairo that had sided with the Mustaʿli cause. By this decision, Hasan had also founded the independent Nizari daʿwa that survived the collapse of the Fatimid dynasty and caliphate in 567/1171. The new literary campaign against the Ismailis, accompanied by military attacks on Alamut and other Nizari strongholds in Persia, was initiated by Nizam al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), the Saljuq vizier and virtual master of their dominions for more than two decades. Nizam al-Mulk himself devoted a long chapter in his Siyasat-nama (The Book of Government) to the condemnation of the Ismailis who, according to him, aimed ‘to abolish Islam, to mislead mankind and cast them into perdition’.4 However, the earliest polemical treatise against the Persian Ismailis and their doctrine of taʿlim, propounding the necessity of authoritative teaching by the Ismaili imam of the time, was written by al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), the most renowned contemporary Sunni scholar. He was, in fact, commissioned by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustazhir to write a treatise in refutation of the Batinis or ‘esotericists’, another designation coined for the Ismailis by their enemies who accused them of dispensing with the zahir, or the commandments and prohibitions of the Islamic law (shariʿa), because they claimed to have found access to the batin, or the inner meaning of the Islamic message as interpreted by the Ismaili imam. In this widely circulating book, completed around 488/1095, al-Ghazali fabricated his own elaborate Ismaili system of graded initiation leading to the ultimate stage of atheism.5 It is interesting to note that both Nizam al-Mulk and al-Ghazali, whose defamations were adopted by other Sunni writers, were also familiar with the earlier ‘black legend’ against the Ismailis. Be that as it may, Sunni authors, including Saljuq chroniclers, participated actively in the renewed propaganda against the Ismailis, while the Saljuq armies, despite their far superior military power, failed to dislodge the Nizaris from their mountain fortresses. The Fatimids and the Nizari Ismailis soon found a common enemy in the Christian Crusaders, who arrived in the Holy Land and seized Jerusalem, their primary target, in 492/1099. Subsequently, the Crusaders had extensive military and diplomatic encounters with the Fatimids in Egypt and the Nizari Ismailis in Syria, with lasting consequences in terms of the distorted image of the Nizaris in Europe. The Syrian Nizaris attained the peak of their power and fame under Rashid ­al-Din Sinan, their chief local daʿi or leader for some three decades until his death in 589/1193. It was at the time of Sinan, the original ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ or ‘Le Vieux de la Montagne’ of the Crusader sources, that occidental chroniclers of the Crusades and a number of European travellers and diplomatic emissaries began to write about the Nizari Ismailis, designated by them as the ‘Assassins’.

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The very term ‘Assassin’, based on the variants of the Arabic word hashishi (plural, hashishin or hashishiyya) that was applied to the Nizari Ismailis in a derogatory sense by other Muslims, was picked up locally in the Levant by the Crusaders and their European observers. It is important to note that in all Muslim sources in which the Nizaris are referred to as hashishis, this term is used only in its abusive, figurative sense of ‘low-class rabble’ and ‘irreligious social outcast’, without accusing them of actually using hashish, a product of hemp.6 The literal interpretation of the term for the Nizaris as users of hashish is rooted in the fantasies of medieval Europeans and their ‘imaginative ignorance’ of Islam and the Ismailis. Indeed, the Frankish circles and their occidental chroniclers, who were not interested in collecting accurate information about Islam as a religion and its internal divisions despite their proximity to Muslims, remained completely ignorant of Muslims and the Ismailis. It was under such circumstances that the Frankish circles themselves began to fabricate and disseminate both in the Latin Orient and in Europe a number of tales about the secret practices of the Nizari Ismailis. It is important to note that none of the variants of these tales are to be found in contemporary Muslim sources produced during the sixth–seventh/twelfth–thirteenth centuries, despite their hostile biases towards the Ismailis. The Crusaders were particularly impressed by the highly exaggerated reports and rumours of the Nizari assassinations and the daring behaviour of their fidaʾis, the self-sacrificing devotees who carried out targeted missions in public places and normally lost their own lives in the process. It should be added that in the sixth/ twelfth century, almost any assassination of any significance committed in the central Islamic lands was readily attributed to the daggers of the Nizari fidaʾis. This explains why these imaginative tales came to revolve around the recruitment and training of the youthful fidaʾis, because they were meant to provide satisfactory explanations for behaviour that would otherwise seem irrational or strange to the medieval European mind. These so-called Assassin legends consisted of a number of separate but interconnected tales, including the ‘paradise legend’, the ‘hashish legend’ and the ‘death-leap legend’.7 The Assassin legends developed in stages and finally culminated in a synthesis popularised by Marco Polo (d. 1324). The famous Venetian traveller added his own original contribution in the form of a ‘secret garden of paradise’, where bodily pleasures were supposedly procured for the would-be fidaʾis with the aid of hashish by their mischievous and beguiling leader, the ‘Old Man’, as part of their indoctrination and training.8 Marco Polo’s version of the Assassin legends, offered as a report obtained from reliable contemporary sources in Persia, was reiterated to various degrees by subsequent European writers, such as Odoric of Pordenone (d. 1331), as the standard description of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain and his Assassins’. Oddly enough, it did not occur to anyone that Marco Polo may have actually heard the tales in Italy after returning to Venice in 1295 from his journeys to the East—tales that were by then widespread in Europe and could be at least partially traced to European antecedents on the Nizaris of Syria—not to mention the possibility that the Assassin legends found in Marco Polo’s travelogue may have been

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entirely inserted as a digressionary note by Rustichello of Pisa, the ­Italian romance writer who was originally responsible for committing the account of Marco Polo’s travels to writing. In this connection, it may also be noted that Marco Polo himself evidently revised his travelogue during the last 20 years of his life, at which time he could have readily appropriated the Assassin legends then current in Europe regarding the Syrian Nizaris. In fact, it was Marco Polo himself, or his narrator, who transferred the scene of the legends from Syria to Persia, including the very title of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’, which was now applied for the first time to the supreme leader of the Nizari Ismailis residing in the fortress of Alamut in northern Persia. The contemporary historian ʿAta-Malik Juwayni (d. 681/1283), an avowed enemy of the Nizaris who accompanied the Mongol conqueror (Hulagu) to Alamut in 654/1256 and personally inspected that fortress and its famous library before their destruction by the Mongols, does not report discovering any ‘secret garden of paradise’ there, as claimed in Marco Polo’s account. Nonetheless, von Hammer, as we shall see, accepts this account with all of its embellished details. By the eighth/fourteenth century, the Assassin legends had acquired wide currency and were accepted as reliable descriptions of secret Nizari Ismaili practices, in much the same way as the earlier ‘black legend’ of Sunni polemicists had been treated as an accurate explanation of Ismaili motives, teachings and practices. Henceforth, the Nizari Ismailis were portrayed in medieval European sources as a sinister order of drugged assassins bent on indiscriminate murder and terrorism – themes and accusations that permeate von Hammer’s book. In the meantime, the word ‘assassin’, instead of signifying the name of the Nizari community in Syria, had acquired a new meaning in European languages. It had become a common noun designating a professional murderer. With the spread of this usage, the origin of the term was soon forgotten in Europe, while the ‘oriental sect’ designated by that name in the Crusader sources continued to arouse interest among Europeans, mainly because of the enduring popularity of the Assassin legends which had acquired an independent mythical life of their own. By the end of the twelfth/eighteenth century, numerous strange etymologies of this term had been proposed, while Europeans still perceived the Ismailis in utterly confused and fanciful manners. Some of these accounts, such as those produced by Camille Falconet (1671–1762) and G. F. Mariti,9 are indeed cited among the occidental sources used by von Hammer. The orientalists of the nineteenth century, starting with Silvestre de Sacy (1758– 1838), commenced their more scholarly study of Islam on the basis of the Arabic manuscripts written mainly by Sunni authors. As a result, they studied Islam according to the Sunni viewpoint and, furthermore, they borrowed classifications from Christian contexts and treated Shiʿism as the ‘heterodox’ interpretation of Islam by contrast to Sunnism, which was taken to represent Islamic ‘orthodoxy’. It was mainly on this basis, as well as the continued attraction of the seminal Assassin legends, that von Hammer and other orientalists launched their own study of the Ismailis. At the same time, it was left for de Sacy to finally solve the mystery of the name ‘Assassins’ in his famous Memoir on the Nizari Ismailis.10 Although the orientalists correctly identified the Ismailis as a Shiʿi Muslim community, they were still

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obliged to study them exclusively on the basis of the hostile Sunni sources and the fictitious occidental accounts of the Crusaders. Consequently, they perpetuated the anti-Ismaili ‘black legend’ of the Sunni polemicists and the Assassin legends of the Crusaders. However, von Hammer, as we shall see, far exceeded his sources in his negative evaluation of the Nizari Ismailis. The orientalists’ interest in the Ismailis had now received a fresh impetus from the anti-Ismaili accounts of the then newly discovered Sunni chronicles, which, with their own distortions of the Ismailis, seemed to complement the Assassin legends contained in the occidental sources and known to Europeans for centuries. It was under such circumstances that misrepresentations, plain fiction and gross defamations came to permeate the first Western book devoted exclusively to the Nizari Ismaili state of Persia, written by the Austrian orientalist-diplomat Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856), who had studied Arabic, Persian and Turkish at the Oriental Academy in Vienna to become a diplomat in the Ottoman Empire. In 1799, von Hammer commenced his career as a dragoman at the Austrian Embassy in Constantinople. However, his diplomatic career was cut short in 1807 and, subsequently, until his retirement in 1839, he was employed in the bureaucracy of the Imperial court and the state administration in Vienna. He produced a large number of oriental studies on history and literature, together with editions and translations of texts. His publications ranged from his magnum opus on the history of the Ottoman Empire, the ten-volume Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (Pesth, 1827–1835), and vast anthologies of Persian and Turkish literature to editions of texts such as the Taʾrikh-i Wassaf and German translations, including the first complete translation in any European language of Hafiz’s Divan (Stuttgart, 1812–1813). It was this translation of Hafiz that provided Goethe with the material for his own West-­ östlicher Divan (Hamburg, 1818). Amongst other works, von Hammer wrote a history of Persian literature, Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens (Vienna, 1818), and published the first edition, together with a German translation, of the Gulshan-i raz, the celebrated Persian Sufi treatise of Mahmud-i Shabistari (d. after 740/1339) as Mahmud Schebisteri’s Rosenflor des Geheimnisses (Pesth, 1838). Our author was also the founder of the Fundgruben des Orients (French title: Mines de l’Orient), the first journal of oriental studies published in Europe during 1809–1818 with many contributions by von Hammer himself. All in all, even though he was often criticised for his inaccuracies and superficial treatment of his sources and was never appointed to an academic chair, von Hammer did earn himself the reputation of a pioneer in modern oriental studies.11 Among many honours, he was awarded the Order of the Lion and the Sun by the Qajar monarch of Persia. In 1818, by utilising William of Tyre, James of Vitry and other medieval chroniclers of the Crusades, Marco Polo’s travelogue and, a number of earlier confused European studies, as well as Islamic manuscripts (such as Juwayni’s Taʾrikh-i jahangusha, Abu’l-Fida’s Taʾrikh, al-Maqrizi’s Khitat, Mirkhwand’s Rawdat al-safaʾ, Ibn al-Furat’s Taʾrikh, Zahir al-Din Marʿashi’s Taʾrikh-i Tabaristan and Taʾrikh-i Wassaf ) in the Imperial Library of Vienna or in private collections including his own, which also comprised Turkish works (such as Muhammad Katib’s Jamiʿ al-tawarikh,

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Muhammad Effendi’s Nukhbat al-tawarikh and Taʾrikh Lari), von Hammer published a book in German devoted to the so-called ‘Order of the Assassins’, that is, the Nizari Ismailis of the Alamut period.12 This book, which traced for the first time the entire history of the Nizari state in Persia, covering the reigns of Hasan-i Sabbah and his seven successors at Alamut with briefer references to the Nizaris of Syria, comprised seven chapters, which included a chapter on early Islam and the earlier history of the Ismailis. This pioneering work achieved great success in Europe and was soon translated into French and English;13 it continued to serve until the 1930s as the standard interpretation of the subject.14 Our references are to the English translation of this work. It was indeed von Hammer who joined together, in its standard form, the theme of a non-ʿAlid diabolical founder of Ismailism, rooted in the Sunni polemics (pp. 28–37), with the tale of the seduction of young men influenced by hashish into senseless crime, based on Marco Polo and other European writings. He accepted Marco Polo’s narrative in its entirety together with all of the criminal acts attributed to the Nizaris.15 In fact, he found further proof for the validity of Marco Polo’s account by collating it with an Arabic historical novel he had discovered in 1813 in the Imperial Library in Vienna. This work, Sirat amir al-muʾminin al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, an anachronistic biography of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (386–411/996– 1021), apparently written around 833/1430 and attributed wrongly to Ibn Khallikan (d. 681/1282), contained stories about secret gardens of paradise and the administration of hashish to Ismaili fidaʾis. A fragment of this work was published by von Hammer,16 who recognised its fictional character but still cited it as sufficient evidence for authenticating Marco Polo’s narrative and affirming that Nizari secret gardens of paradise had actually existed in both Persia and Syria.17 Fully convinced of his scholarship on the Nizaris, von Hammer states that: what the Byzantines, the Crusaders, and Marco Polo related of them, was long considered a groundless legend, and an oriental fiction. The narrations of the latter have not been less doubted and oppugned, than the traditions of Herodotus concerning the countries and nations of antiquity. The more, however, the east is opened by the study of languages and by travel, the greater confirmation do these venerable records of history and geography receive; and the veracity of the father of modern travel, like that of the father of ancient history, only shines with greater lustre.18 The chapters of von Hammer’s book on the reigns of the various lords of Alamut, referred to as Grand Masters, are permeated with strange and hostile interpretations of historical evidence, though correct dates are cited for many of the events. The author, as he was in fact accused by his contemporaries, displays an outright ignorance of the subject matter he had set before himself. In order to better appreciate the superficiality of von Hammer’s text and his deliberate distortions of the Ismailis, it is sufficient to compare his book with the writings of the renowned contemporary orientalists on the Ismailis, including in particular the historical studies of de

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Sacy himself and Etienne M. Quatremère (1782–1857).19 Be that as it may, von Hammer’s malicious motives and false accusations remained undiscovered for more than a century! The harsh and vengeful judgments of von Hammer, indeed, remained unsurpassed. He regarded the Nizari Ismailis of the Alamut period as that union of impostors and dupes which, under the mask of a more austere creed and severer morals, undermined all religion and morality; that order of murderers, beneath whose daggers the lords of nations fell; all powerful, because for the space of three centuries, they were universally dreaded, until the den of ruffians fell with the khaliphate, to whom, as the centre of spiritual and temporal power, it had at the outset sworn destruction, and by whose ruins it was itself overwhelmed.20 He went further than all of his European contemporaries and earlier sources, however, and stated that ‘the history of the Assassins alone, in heaping atrocity on atrocity, surpasses hell itself ’,21 making the lords of Alamut a series of parricides and adding that ‘their guards, the devoted to death, were common murderers’.22 The author’s most ferocious invective was, however, reserved for Hasan-i Sabbah himself, the founder of the Nizari state who, we are told, had been ‘initiated, in Persia, in the Ismailite mysteries of Atheism and immorality’.23 On Hasan, von Hammer further adds that ‘human nature is not usually so diabolical, that the historian must, among several doubtful motives to an action, always decide for the worst; but, in the founder of this society of vice, the establisher of the murderous order of the Assassins, the most horrible is the most likely’.24 Modern scholarship has revealed that Hasan-i Sabbah, an austere religious figure, had a complex set of religio-­political motives for his revolt against the Saljuqs.25 As an Ismaili Shiʿi leader, he clearly could not tolerate the anti-Shiʿi policies of the Saljuqs, the new champions of Sunni Islam. Less conspicuously, Hasan’s revolt against the Saljuqs, whose alien rule was deeply detested in Persia, was an expression of Persian sentiments, which accounts for its early widespread success in Persia. Hasan-i Sabbah was also confronted with the unenviable task of guarding the independence and safety of his community in an extremely hostile milieu. Always ready to accuse the Nizaris of every imaginable crime, von Hammer does not at all mention numerous occasions in Isfahan and elsewhere in Saljuq Persia when large numbers accused of merely being Ismailis were put to the sword. One may wonder as to why von Hammer so exceeded his authorities in condemning and refuting the Nizari Ismailis, transcending the boundaries of the Sunni polemics and the Assassin legends contained in his oriental and occidental sources. It has now become clear that, like both categories of sources used by him, von Hammer too was not interested in studying his subject objectively and analytically, even if he could. Lifting his ‘oriental’ veil, we can now see that his inquiry had been motivated by a different ulterior concern. Writing not too long after the French Revolution, von Hammer wanted to use his knowledge of the oriental sources and

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the Nizari Ismailis to produce a tract for the times that would warn against ‘the pernicious influence of secret societies in weak governments, and of the dreadful prostitution of religion to the horrors of unbridled ambition’.26 In line with this scheme, he demonised the Ismailis and drew close analogies between his construct of the ‘Order of the Assassins’, on the one hand, and the European secret orders and societies of his time, which he detested, such as the Templars, the Jesuits, the Illuminati and the Freemasons, on the other. He emphasised parallels in terms of their ‘various grades of initiation; the appellations of master, companions, and novices; the public and the secret doctrine; the oath of unconditional obedience to unknown superiors, to serve the ends of the order’.27 Similar parallels have continued to underline more recent books on the subject.28 Thus, von Hammer’s book was conceived more as a polemic against the revolutionary danger of secret societies than an investigation of the Nizari Ismailis themselves; and to lend maximum credibility to his findings, he stressed all of the appalling vices of which he found the Nizaris accused, implying that one might expect the same from the Jesuits and similar groups that were secret orders like the Assassins.29 That von Hammer had acquired fame as an orientalist with an impressive body of work lent unwarranted credibility to his pronouncements on the Nizari Ismailis, who continued to be perceived more or less as an ‘order of assassins’ until modern scholarship in Ismaili studies began to have its impact in the 1940s in the form of a drastic revaluation of the Nizari Ismailis. Modern progress in the field, pioneered by Wladimir Ivanow (1886–1970), soon enabled Marshall Hodgson (1922–1968) to produce in 1955 the first scholarly and comprehensive study of the Nizari Ismailis of the Alamut period, albeit itself mistitled The Order of Assassins, with the author’s subsequent regret and correction.30 Even Bernard Lewis, who is not particularly sympathetic towards the Nizari Ismailis, still designated by him as the Assassins, has found it necessary to sum up the findings of modern scholarship here by noting that the new picture of the Assassins differs radically both from the lurid rumours and fantasies brought back from the East by mediaeval travellers, and from the hostile and distorted image extracted by nineteenth-century orientalists from the manuscript writings of orthodox Muslim theologians and historians, whose main concern was to refute and condemn, not to understand and explain. The Assassins no longer appear as a gang of drugged dupes led by scheming impostors, as a conspiracy of nihilistic terrorists, or as a syndicate of professional murderers. They are no less interesting for that.31 Rooted in fear, hostility, ignorance and fantasy, myths of the Ismailis have fired the popular imagination of countless generations. The Sunni polemics of the Ismailis’ Muslim enemies found their successors in the seminal Assassin legends of the Christian Crusaders and medieval occidental authors, rooted in their ‘imaginative ignorance’; and transcending even these false accounts, von Hammer produced his own misrepresentations of the Nizari Ismailis, who still wrongly continue to be referred to as the Assassins. The exotic tales of hashish, daggers and earthly gardens

The ‘Order of the Assassins’  221  

of paradise have indeed proved too sensational to be totally relegated to the realm of fiction by more scientific investigations of modern times. That such legends are still found credible in some quarters, and new parallels are now drawn between the Nizari Ismailis of Alamut times and the activities of certain modern-day terrorist groups, attests to the unfortunate fact that in both occidental and oriental societies the boundaries between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, are often liminal and blurred by motives inimical to sober inquiry.

Notes * This chapter was originally published in Iranian Studies, 39 (2006), pp. 71–81.

1 ʿAbd al-Qahir b. Tahir al-Baghdadi, al-Farq bayn al-firaq, ed. M. Badr (Cairo, 1328/1910), pp. 265–299; English trans., A. S. Halkin as Moslem Schisms and Sects (Tel Aviv, 1935), vol. 2, pp. 107–157. 2 F. Daftary, ‘Carmatians’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 4, pp. 823–832. 3 For a pioneering study on this ‘black legend’, see W. Ivanow, The Alleged Founder of Ismailism (Bombay, 1946). 4 Nizam al-Mulk, Siyar al-muluk (Siyasat-nama), ed. H. Darke (2nd ed., Tehran, 1347 Sh./1968), p. 311; English trans., H. Darke as The Book of Government, or, Rules for Kings (2nd ed., London, 1978), p. 231. 5 Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, Fadaʾih al-Batiniyya, ed. ʿA. Badawi (Cairo, 1964), pp. 21–36. 6 See, for instance, Abu Shama Shihab al-Din b. Ismaʿil, Kitab al-rawdatayn fi akhbar ­al-dawlatayn (Cairo, 1287–1288/1870–1871), vol. 1, pp. 240, 258; Ibn Muyassar, Akhbar Misr, ed. A. F. Sayyid (Cairo, 1981), p. 102. 7 For a survey of these legends, see F. Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʿilis (London, 1994), pp. 88–127. 8 Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, ed. and trans. H. Yule, 3rd revised edition by H. Cordier (London, 1929), vol. 1, pp. 139–146. 9 C. Falconet, ‘Dissertation sur les Assassins, peuple d’Asie’, in Mémoires de Littérature, tirés des registres de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, XVII (1751), pp. 127–170; English trans., ‘A Dissertation on the Assassins, a People of Asia’, in John of Joinville, Memoirs of John Lord de Joinville, trans. T. Johnes (Hafod, 1807), vol. 2, pp. 287–328; G. F. Mariti, Memorie istoriche del popolo degli Assassini e del Vecchio della Montagna, loro capo-signore (Leghorn, 1807). 10 Antoine I. Silvestre de Sacy, ‘Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins, et sur l’étymologie de leur nom’, in Mémoires de l’Institut Royal de France, IV (1818), pp. 1–84; reprinted in B. S. Turner, ed., Orientalism: Early Sources: Volume 1, Readings in Orientalism (London, 2000), pp. 118–169; English trans., ‘Memoir on the Dynasty of the Assassins, and on the Etymology of their Name’, in Daftary, Assassin Legends, pp. 136–188. 11 See J. T. P. de Bruijn, ‘Hammer-Purgstall’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 11, pp. 644–646, where further references are cited. One of von Hammer’s critics, himself a Prussian diplomat and another source of inspiration for Goethe’s encounter with the East, devoted an entire monograph to exposing the alleged superficiality and ignorance of this orientalist; see Heinrich Friedrich von Diez, Unfug und Betrug in der morgenländischen Literatur nebst vielen Hundert Proben von der groben Unwissenheit des Herrn von Hammer in Sprachen und Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1815). 12 J. von Hammer, Die Geschichte der Assassins aus morgenländischen Quellen (Stuttgart, 1818). 13 J. von Hammer, Histoire de l’ordre des Assassins, trans. J. J. Hellert and P.A. de la Nourais (Paris, 1833; reprinted, Paris, 1961); English trans., The History of the Assassins, derived from Oriental Sources, trans. O. C. Wood (London, 1835; reprinted, New York, 1968).

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14 The author possesses another obscure reprint of the English version with an i­ntroduction by S. Shraddhananda Sanyasi (Benares, 1926). Freya Stark (1893–1993), the noted British traveller to the Alamut valley, for instance, cites von Hammer as a main authority in her The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels (London, 1934), p. 228. Some authors of popular works on the subject still take von Hammer seriously; see Jean Claude Frère, L’ordre des Assassins (Paris, 1973). 15 See von Hammer, History, pp. 136–138. 16 J. von Hammer, ‘Sur le paradis du Vieux de la montagne’, Fundgruben des Orients III (Vienna 1813), pp. 201–206. 17 von Hammer, History, p. 136. 18 von Hammer, History, p. 2. 19 See F. Daftary, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies (London, 2004), pp. 369–370, 386–388. 20 von Hammer, History, pp. 1–2. 21 von Hammer, History, p. 163. 22 von Hammer, History, p. 164. 23 von Hammer, History, pp. 48–49. 24 von Hammer, History, p. 72. 25 See F. Daftary, The Ismaʿilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 334–371; idem, ‘Hasan-i Sabbah and the Origins of the Nizari Ismaʿili Movement’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 181–204, where further references are cited. 26 von Hammer, History, p. 218. 27 von Hammer, History, p. 217. 28 See, for instance, J. Wasserman, The Templars and the Assassin: The Militia of Heaven (Rochester, 2001). 29 von Hammer, History, pp. 105–106, 125, 155, 216. In this respect, see also M. G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismaʿilis against the Islamic World (The Hague, 1955), pp. 26–28, 119. 30 M. G. S. Hodgson, ‘The Ismaʿili State’, in The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge, 1968), vol. 5, p. 422 n.1. 31 B. Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London, 1967), pp. 18–19.

14 Ismaili-Seljuq relations Conflict and stalemate

From early on in their eventful history, the Ismailis as Shiʿi Muslims believed that the Umayyads and after them the Abbasids had usurped the rights of the ʿAlids to the leadership of the Muslims.* The Ismailis in line with their Imami Shiʿi heritage recognised a particular Ḥusaynid line of the ʿAlids, descendants of ʿAli b. Abī Ṭālib through his son al-Ḥusayn. The Ismailis separated from the rest of the Imami Shiʿis on the death of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in 148/765. They traced their imamate through al-Ṣādiq’s son Ismāʿīl, the eponym of the Ismāʿīliyya. By the middle of the third/ninth century, the Ismailis had organised a dynamic revolutionary movement against the established Sunni-Abbasid order headed by the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. The primary objective of this movement, designated as the daʿwa or al-daʿwa al-hādiya (‘the rightly guiding mission’), was to install the imam recognised by the Ismailis to a new caliphate. The religio-political message of the Ismailis was disseminated by a network of dāʿīs or summoners, who were soon operating in every region of the Islamic world – from Iraq, eastern Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and North Africa to different regions of Persia and Central Asia. The early success of the Ismaili movement culminated in the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909. The religio-political daʿwa of the Ismailis had finally led to the establishment of a state or dawla headed by the Ismaili imam of the time. This state soon evolved into a flourishing empire, especially after the Fatimids transferred the seat of their power from Ifrīqiya in North Africa to Egypt, where they founded their new capital city of Cairo in 358/969. In line with their universal claims, the Ismaili Fatimid caliph-imams did not abandon their daʿwa activities on assuming power. Aiming to extend their authority and rule over the entire Muslim society and beyond, they retained a network of dāʿīs, operating on their behalf as religio-political missionaries both within and outside of Fatimid dominions. Indeed, Cairo was to serve as the headquarters of their complex hierarchical daʿwa organisation. The Fatimids devoted particular attention to the training of

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their dāʿīs, and founded a variety of institutions to that end. Many of these dāʿīs became eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, jurisprudence and other exoteric (z.āhirī) and esoteric (bāṭinī) fields of learning, making important contributions to Islamic thought and culture. In Fatimid times, the Ismaili daʿwa was propagated openly within the Fatimid caliphate. But with the exception of Syria, where a diversity of Shiʿi traditions had coexisted throughout the centuries, the success of the Ismaili daʿwa in Fatimid dominions, stretching from North Africa to Palestine and parts of Syria, was both very limited and transitory, as Shiʿi traditions had never acquired deep roots there. It was in the territories outside of the Fatimid state that the Ismaili daʿwa had its greatest and most lasting success. Many of these regions, designated in the Ismaili literature of Fatimid times as the jazāʾir or islands, scattered in the central and eastern lands of Islam from Syria to Central Asia, were already well acquainted with Shiʿi traditions, including the Ismaili form of Shiʿi Islam, and responded positively to the summons of the learned and skilful dāʿīs. By the time of the long reign of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir (427–487/1036–1094), the Ismaili dāʿīs had won the allegiance of a growing number of converts, in both urban and rural areas, throughout the Abbasid domain and beyond in the eastern lands of Islam, including areas under the control of the Ghaznavids, Buyids, Seljuqs, Saffarids and other dynasties emerging in the East. These converts acknowledged the reigning Fatimid caliph as the rightful imam of the time. It was essentially due to the successes of the Ismaili dāʿīs, such as Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī and Nāṣer-e Khosrow and their successors, that Ismailism spread widely throughout Iranian lands, also surviving the challenges posed by the Sunni revival of the fifth and sixth/eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Ismaili daʿwa flourished in many parts of Persia when the Sunni Seljuqs succeeded the Shiʿi Buyids as the overlords of the Abbasids. The daʿwa had continued to be strong in Persia, with a growing number of converts in different towns as well as amongst the soldiery and the inhabitants of the northern highlands of Daylam, who all acknowledged the Fatimid caliph al-Mustanṣir as the rightful imam of the time. Few details are known about the specific ideas preached at the time in Persia by the Ismaili dāʿīs, who maintained their close contacts with the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo. It seems that the dāʿīs emphasised existing social injustices in addition to generally capitalising on the dislike of the Persians for their new Turkish rulers. By the early 460s/1070s, the Persian Ismailis of the Seljuq sultanate owned the authority of a single chief dāʿī, ʿAbd al-Malek b. ʿAṭṭāsh, who had established his secret headquarters at Isfahan, the main Seljuq capital. A learned scholar, ʿAbd al-Malek seems to have been the very first dāʿī to organise the various Ismaili communities in Persia, from Kermān to Azerbaijan, and possibly in Iraq, under his central leadership. ʿAbd al-Malek, like other regional chief dāʿīs, received his general instructions from Cairo where the Persian al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī was then the chief dāʿī (dāʿī al-duʿāt) for some two decades until he was succeeded in 470/1078 by the all-powerful Fatimid vizier Badr al-Jamālī. ʿAbd al-Malek evidently reinvigorated

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the daʿwa activities in many parts of the Seljuq dominions; he was also responsible for launching the career of the most famous of all Persian dāʿīs, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, the architect of the Persian Ismailis’ struggle against the Seljuqs. Ḥasan also founded an Ismaili state in the very midst of the Seljuq sultanate. Our main source of information on Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, reflecting the contemporary Persian Ismaili historiographical tradition, is his biography entitled Sarguzasht-e Sayyednā, an anonymous work which has not survived directly. This was the first of a number of chronicles on the history of the Ismaili state in Persia during the ­so-called Alamut period (483–654/1090–1256), coinciding with almost the final century of Seljuq rule in Persia. The chronicles were arranged according to the reigns of Ḥasan and his seven successors at the fortress of Alamut, the headquarters of that state. These Ismaili chronicles that were kept at Alamut and other major fortresses in Persia have not survived directly, mainly due to the onslaught of the Mongols. But they were seen and used extensively by three historians of the Ilkhanid period, namely Juvayni (d. 681/1283), Rashid al-Din (d. 718/1318) and Kāshāni (d. ca. 738/1337), who produced histories of the Ismaili state in Persia.1 According to the Sarguzasht-e Sayyednā,2 Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ was born in the mid440s/1050s in Qumm into a Twelver Shiʿi family. His father, ʿAli, was a Kufan Arab who claimed Yemeni origins and had migrated from southern Iraq to the traditionally Shiʿi town of Qumm in Persia. Subsequently, the family had moved to the nearby city of Rayy, where the youthful Ḥasan received his early religious education as a Twelver Shiʿi. At that time, Rayy served as the centre of the Ismaili daʿwa in the Jibāl. And it was at Rayy that Ḥasan, around the age of 17, was introduced to Ismaili doctrines by a certain Amireh Zarrāb, one of the several local dāʿīs there. On reading some Ismaili books and receiving gradual instruction from various dāʿīs at Rayy, Ḥasan was won over to the Ismaili cause, recognising the legitimacy of the imamate of Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and his successors. He was thus initiated and took the customary oath of allegiance (ʿahd) to al-Mustanṣir as the rightful contemporary imam. Soon after his conversion, in Ramaḍān 464/May–June 1072, Ḥasan was brought to the attention of the dāʿī ʿAbd al-Malek, who was then visiting Rayy. ʿAbd al-Malek was evidently impressed by Ḥasan, who was now appointed to a post in the daʿwa organisation, initiating a career unrivalled by any other Ismaili dāʿī. A couple of years later, Ḥasan accompanied ʿAbd al-Malek to the secret headquarters of the Persian daʿwa at Isfahan. Then, in 469/1076, at the suggestion of ʿAbd alMalek, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ set off for Egypt to further his Ismaili education and training as Nāṣer-e Khosrow had done some three decades earlier. Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ’s visit to the seat of the Fatimid state, then already on its decline, must have contributed to his future decision to follow a policy independently of the Fatimid regime. Indeed, Ḥasan seems to have learned important lessons in Egypt, where he stayed for about three years, first in Cairo and then in Alexandria. By that time, the Persian Ismailis were already generally aware of the declining power of the Fatimid regime, and the shrewd Ḥasan had personally witnessed the difficulties of al-Mustanṣir at the very centre of the Fatimid state. In fact, it was in response to the deteriorating state of affairs, caused in no small measure by the

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unruly ­Turkish faction of the Fatimid armies, that al-Mustanṣir had appealed for help to Badr al-Jamālī, an Armenian general. Serving the dynasty in Syria, Badr arrived in Cairo in 466/1074 and with the help of his Armenian troops succeeded in restoring some stability to the Fatimid state. Henceforth, Badr, and his successors to the vizierate, rather than the Fatimid caliphs themselves, held the reins of power in the Fatimid state. At any rate, whilst in Egypt, Ḥasan must have realised that the Fatimid regime, then under the effective control of Badr al-Jamālī, lacked both the means and the resolve to assist the Persian Ismailis in their struggle against the Seljuqs, as had been the case, for example, with al-Basāsīrī; the latter had received both military and material help from the Fatimids in his revolt against the Seljuq leader Toghrel, who had defeated the Ghaznavids and proclaimed himself sultan at Nīshāpūr in 429/1038. Toghrel soon conquered the greater part of Persia and then crossed into Iraq, entering Baghdad in 447/1055 and ending the rule of the Buyids of Iraq. In the aftermath of these events, the Abbasid caliph confirmed Toghrel’s title of sultan and the founder of the Seljuq sultanate now announced his intention of sending expeditions against the Fatimids. However, dissent within the Seljuq camp and the pro-Fatimid activities of al-Basāsīrī in Iraq prevented Toghrel from carrying out his design against the Fatimids. A chief military figure in Iraq, al-Basāsīrī appealed to al-Mustanṣir for assistance to conquer Baghdad in his name. After receiving a substantial gift of money and arms from Cairo, delivered by the dāʿī al-Muʾayyad fi’lDīn al-Shīrāzī, who also played a key role in creating anti-Seljuq disorders in Iraq, al-Basāsīrī seized several towns in Iraq and finally entered Baghdad in 450/1058, where the khuṭba was now pronounced for one full year in the name of the Fatimids and the Abbasid caliph remained in custody.3 Subsequently, al-Basāsīrī was abandoned by Cairo and his success proved to be short-lived. At any rate, it was in recognition of the declining power of the Fatimids that Ḥasan eventually chartered an independent course of action for himself. On returning to Persia in 473/1081, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ travelled extensively in the service of the daʿwa for nine years, operating in Kermān, Yazd, Khuzestān and Dāmghān. It was during this crucial period in Ḥasan’s career that he formulated his revolutionary strategy and evaluated the military strength of the Seljuqs in different regions of Persia. Gradually, Ḥasan had realised the difficulties of achieving success in the central and western parts of the country – the main centres of Seljuq power. Consequently, he had turned his attention to the Caspian provinces and the northern highlands of Persia – the general medieval region of Daylam – which had familiarity with different Shiʿi traditions in addition to providing safe refuge for numerous ʿAlids. A stronghold of Zaydi Shiʿism and already penetrated by the Ismaili daʿwa, Daylam was out of reach of the Seljuqs. Ḥasan was then definitely planning a major revolt against the Seljuqs, and was searching for a suitable site to establish his revolutionary headquarters. By around 480/1087, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ had chosen the remote and inaccessible fortress of Alamut in Rudbār (Daylamān) as the most suitable base of operations for his activities. At the time, the Ismaili daʿwa in the Seljuq lands was still under the overall leadership of ʿAbd al-Malek b.

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ʿAṭṭāsh, but Ḥasan had already embarked on a course of action independently of the Fatimid regime and its designated supreme leadership in the Seljuq domain. Ḥasan had effectively now begun to act as a secret revolutionary leader, who would not be accountable to anyone. Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, who was meanwhile appointed as dāʿī of Daylam, devised a detailed and highly clever plan for the seizure of Alamut, then held by a Zaydi ʿAlid commander on behalf of the Seljuqs. He sent numerous dāʿīs to various districts around Alamut to convert the local inhabitants, including the garrison stationed at the fortress. In Rajab 483/September 1090, Ḥasan secretly entered the fortress of Alamut, disguising himself as a teacher called Dehkhodā. With his followers installed in and around the fortress, Alamut fell readily into Ḥasan’s hands later in the autumn of 483/1090. The seizure of Alamut initiated a new phase in the activities of the Persian Ismailis, signalling the commencement of their armed uprising against the Seljuqs and also marking the effective foundation of what was to become an independent Ismaili state in Persia. Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ had a complex set of religio-political motives for his revolt against the Seljuqs. As an Ismaili Shiʿi, he was charged with spreading the cause of the Fatimids in Seljuq lands and, at the same time, he could not tolerate the anti-Shiʿi policies of the Seljuqs who, as the new champions of Sunni Islam, had sworn to uproot the Ismaili Shiʿi caliphate of the Fatimids. Less conspicuously, but of equal importance, Ḥasan’s revolt was an expression of Persian ‘national’ and cultural sentiments, in the tradition of the earlier anti-Arab and anti-Abbasid revolts organised by a variety of the so-called Khorrami (or Khorramdini) groups in the Iranian lands. In other words, Ḥasan’s revolt went beyond a strictly Ismaili one with broader appeal to the Persians—which in fact accounted for its early popular appeal and widespread success in Persia. By the early decades of the fifth/eleventh century, a number of Turkish dynasties had appeared in the Iranian world. The trend towards the Turkish domination of the Iranian lands, initiated by the establishment of the Ghaznavid and Qarakhanid dynasties, had reached a climax under the Seljuqs, who threatened the revival of Persian culture and sentiments. This revival of a specifically Persianised Islamic culture had been based on the sentiments of the Islamicised Persians, who remained conscious of their Persian identity and cultural heritage despite centuries of Arab domination. This process, pioneered by the Saffarids and maintained by the Samanids and the Buyids, had become irrevocable by the time of the Seljuqs, when the conversion of Persians to Islam was finally completed.4 Even Nez.ām al-Molk, the all-powerful and learned vizier to the Seljuq sultans Alp Arslān (455–465/1063– 1073) and his son Malekshāh (465–485/1073–1092), it will be recalled, wrote his Seyāsat-nāmeh for Malekshāh in Persian. The Seljuq Turks were alien in Persia, and their rule was intensely detested by the Persians of various social classes. Anti-Seljuq sentiments were further accentuated by the anarchy and depredation wrought in towns and villages by the Turks and their unruly soldiers, who continuously swarmed to Persia in new waves from Central Asia, encouraged by Seljuq victories. Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ himself resented the Turks and their rule over Persia. He referred to the Seljuq sultan as a mere ­ignorant

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Turk;5 and he is also reported to have stated that the Turks were jinn, and not human beings.6 It is also highly significant that Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, as an expression of his Persian identity and despite his intense Islamic piety, adopted Persian as the religious language of all the Persian-speaking Ismailis. This was the first time that a major Muslim community had selected Persian in preference to Arabic as its religious language. This also explains why the Persian-speaking Ismailis of Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia, all belonging to the Nezāri branch of Ismailism, produced their literature entirely in Persian during the Alamut and subsequent phases of their history. At any rate, it was to the ultimate goal of uprooting Seljuq rule that Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ dedicated himself, organising the Persian Ismailis into a highly disciplined revolutionary force, also drawing much support from the Persians at large. Henceforth, Persian Ismailis of different social backgrounds, in both rural areas and towns, were to address one another as rafīq or ‘comrade’, as was appropriate in a revolutionary movement. The early success of the revolt led by Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ in Persia was also rooted in certain economic grievances shared by the landless villagers and highlanders there, as well as artisans and craftsmen, who accounted for most of the underprivileged social classes in Seljuq dominions. In Daylam and elsewhere, these masses were subjected to the oppressive and alien rule of a multitude of Seljuq emirs who held and administered different localities as their iqṭāʿ, or allotted land, on behalf of the sultan. These emirs levied taxes on villagers who cultivated the land and lived under their jurisdiction, and they also maintained local armies to assist the sultan as required. The Seljuq institution of iqṭāʿ led to the effective subjugation of the Persian peasantry by the alien Turks. A variety of townspeople, too, especially artisans, craftsmen and the dispossessed lower social classes, were dissatisfied with the Seljuq social order and the excessive taxes levied on them in both rural and urban areas. By contrast, those Persians who became incorporated into the territories held by the Ismailis in Persia were treated more equitably in a revolutionary society dedicated to the ideal of social justice. It is known, for instance, that the booty acquired in Ismaili campaigns was distributed equally among all; and the Ismailis viewed their participation in communal projects, such as improving the irrigation system of particular localities or the construction of fortresses, as public activities beneficial to their entire community. It is also noteworthy that strict class strata and distinctions of the sort developed under the Seljuqs did not exist among the Ismailis. Any capable individual could aspire to a leadership position, as governor of a stronghold or chief dāʿī in a region. Most Persian Ismaili leaders, in fact, hailed from modest social backgrounds. Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, by his own extremely austere lifestyle, served as a role model for other Ismaili leaders, who were not accorded particular privileges such as those enjoyed by Seljuq emirs. In addition to the fact that Ismaili territories were not subject to the alien rule of the Turks, this all contributed to the early success and popularity of the struggle of the Persians against the Seljuq Turks – a popularity that clearly went beyond the support provided by the Ismaili converts themselves, especially as the revolt unfolded initially in rural areas. In other words, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ received w ­ idespread support

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from the Persians, who had broadly sympathised with the revolt of the Ismailis for a variety of socio-economic and political grievances against the order established by the alien Turks. Indeed, without this broad non-Ismaili support in both rural and urban areas, the Persian Ismailis might not have been able to sustain their armed struggle against the far superior military power of the Seljuqs for as long as they did. This support, in fact, made the very survival of the Persian Ismailis possible in the midst of the ardently anti-Shiʿi Seljuq dominions. Once installed at Alamut, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ improved the fortifications of the old castle, making it virtually impregnable. Ḥasan then extended his influence throughout Rudbār and adjacent areas in Daylam, by winning more Ismaili converts as well as sympathisers and acquiring or building more castles, which were fortified systematically. Ḥasan’s religio-political message evoked popular support among the Daylamīs, villagers and highlanders, who were also familiar with various forms of Shiʿi Islam, including its Ismaili tradition. Ḥasan also attracted at least some of the Khorramiyeh or Khorramdiniyeh of Azerbaijan and elsewhere who, as an expression of their Persian sentiments, referred to themselves as Pārsiyān.7 The Khorramiyeh, it may be added, had remained active in different parts of the Iranian world throughout Abbasid times, manifesting both anti-Arab and anti-Turkish sentiments. In this particular context, Ḥasan’s revolutionary movement may be considered as the inheritor or reviver of the earlier Khorrami movements. Soon Alamut began to be raided by the forces of the nearest Seljuq emir, Yorun Tāsh, who held the district of Alamut as his iqṭāʿ granted by the sultan. Henceforth, the Persian Ismailis were drawn into direct conflict with the Seljuqs in an endless series of military encounters.8 In 484/1091, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ sent the dāʿī Ḥuseyn Qāʾeni to his native Kuhestān (Arabic: Quhistān) in south-eastern Khorāsān to organise activities there. The people of Kuhestān were then under the oppressive rule of a local Seljuq emir, and they responded almost instantly and on a large scale. In what amounted to a popular uprising against the Seljuqs, they seized numerous strongholds as well as several major towns, including Tun, Tabas, Qāʾen and Zuzan. Kuhestān thus became the second major territory, after Rudbār, for the activities of Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ and the Persian Ismailis. The Ismailis of Kuhestān were placed under the leadership of a chief local dāʿī designated from Alamut and known as muḥtasham. In two regions, Rudbār and Kuhestān, Ḥasan had now founded within two years an independent territorial state for the Persian Ismailis and their supporters, challenging Seljuq hegemony.9 It was in recognition of the rapidly growing Ismaili power – and the inability of the local Seljuq emirs to check it – that in the summer of 485/1092, Sultan Malekshāh, on the advice of Nez.ām al-Molk, sent major expeditions against the Ismaili strongholds of both Rudbār and Kuhestān. But these military operations were soon terminated on Nez.ām al-Molk’s assassination in Ramaḍān 485/October 1092, followed by Malekshāh’s death shortly afterwards in Shawwāl/November of the same year. Nez.ām al-Molk was murdered in western Persia as he was accompanying Malekshāh to Baghdad. This eminent Sunni vizier was a zealous enemy of the Ismailis, and devoted a long chapter in his Seyāsat-nāmeh to their condemnation.10 This may explain why his assassin is

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generally thought to have been sent by Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ. However, contemporaries seem to have considered the real instigators of this murder to have been Malekshāh himself, who had grown wary of his powerful vizier, as well as the sultan’s wife Terken Khātun – a view now endorsed increasingly by modern scholarship on the subject.11 On Malekshāh’s death in 485/1092, the Seljuq Empire was thrown into civil war, which lasted for more than a decade and was marked by disunity among the deceased sultan’s sons and the constant shifting of alliances among the Seljuq emirs who controlled various provinces. There were several claimants to the Seljuq sultanate, with Malekshāh’s eldest son Barkeyāroq emerging as the most prominent one – although Maḥmud, the four-year-old son of Malekshāh and Terken Khātun, had immediately been proclaimed as sultan. When Maḥmud died in 487/1094, Barkeyāroq was recognised by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustaz.hir. Sultan Barkeyāroq, whose seat of power was in western Persia and Iraq, devoted most of his time and energy to fighting his half-brother Moḥammad Tapar who was assisted by his own full brother Sanjar, the ruler of Khorāsān and Tokhārestān from 490/1097 onwards. Peace was not restored to the Seljuq dominions until Barkeyāroq’s death in 498/1105, when Moḥammad Tapar emerged as the undisputed sultan while Sanjar remained at Balkh as his viceroy in the East. During this period of strife in the Seljuq camp, when various emirs were quarrelling among themselves, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ found the much-needed respite to consolidate and even extend his power to other parts of Persia. The Persian Ismailis now found even more sympathy for their message of resistance against the alien and oppressive Turkish rulers. They now began to seize more fortresses in widely scattered and inaccessible locations, outside Rudbār and Kuhestān. They seized Gerdkuh, one of the chief Ismaili strongholds in Persia and a number of lesser castles near Dāmghān, in the region known in medieval times as Qumes. The Ismailis also acquired several fortresses in Arrajān, the border region between the provinces of Fārs and Khuzestān, in south-western Persia. The chief Ismaili leader in that mountainous area of the Zagros range was the dāʿī Abū Ḥamzeh who, like Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, had spent some time in Egypt to further his Ismaili education. In Rudbār itself, the Ismailis seized more strongholds, including the key fortress of Lamasar, also called Lanbasar, to the west of Alamut. Keyā Bozorg-Omid acquired Lamasar by assault in 489/1096 and stayed there as commander until he was summoned to Alamut to succeed Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ in 518/1124. Bozorg-Omid, one of the most capable Ismaili leaders in Persia, transformed Lamasar into a major stronghold, and the second most important unit in the network of Ismaili castles in Rudbār. Meanwhile, the Ismailis were not only consolidating and extending their positions in Rudbār, Kuhestān and Qumes, as well as in many other mountainous areas of Persia, but were spreading their religio-political message in numerous towns and had even begun to intervene directly in Seljuq affairs. As a result, they acquired a growing number of supporters in Persian towns, as well as among the Persians in the Seljuq armies. Encouraged by their successes, the Persian Ismailis now directed their attention closer to the seat of Seljuq power in Isfahan.12 In this area, they were

Ismaili-Seljuq relations  231  

led by the dāʿī Aḥmad, son of ʿAbd al-Malek b. ʿAṭṭāsh, who scored a major victory by gaining possession of the fortress of Shāhdez in 494/1101. Situated strategically on a mountain about eight kilometres to the south of Isfahan, Shāhdez, also called Dezkuh, had been rebuilt by Malekshāh as a key military fortress for guarding the routes to the Seljuq capital. It is reported, perhaps in an exaggerated manner, that Aḥmad converted some 30,000 people in the Isfahan area, also collecting taxes in the districts around Shāhdez, to the detriment of the Seljuq treasury. The capture of Shāhdez, a major Ismaili victory in the Ismaili-Seljuq conflict, doubtless dealt a serious blow to the prestige of the Seljuqs. The Ismailis soon acquired a second fortress, Khānlanjān, about 30 kilometres south of Isfahan. With the capture of fortresses in the Isfahan area, the Ismailis became bolder in their revolutionary ventures. Now, they were even able to infiltrate Barkeyāroq’s own court and armies. So large was the number of Seljuq soldiers secretly won over to the Ismaili message that some Seljuq officers reportedly asked the sultan for permission to appear before him in armour for fear of attack by their own soldiers. The uprising of the Persian Ismailis had, from its commencement, a distinctive pattern and method of struggle, adapted to the power structure of the Seljuq Empire and other circumstances of the time. In particular, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ’s overall strategy was designed in recognition of the decentralised nature of Seljuq rule and their far superior military power. More specifically, after Malekshāh, there was no longer a single all-powerful Seljuq sultan to be uprooted by a large army, even if such a military force could be mobilised by the Persian Ismailis and their sympathisers. In fact, even before Malekshāh’s demise, political and military power in the Seljuq sultanate had come to be increasingly localised among numerous military and religious leaders, who were virtually equal and operated autonomously as loyal Seljuq vassals. Under the circumstances, with a multitude of emirs and commanders of garrisons holding iqṭāʿ assignments throughout the Seljuq dominions, the strategy best suited to the aspirations of a revolutionary movement had also to be decentralised. Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ adopted precisely such a piecemeal strategy in his efforts to undermine Seljuq rule – working locality by locality, leader by leader, and from a multitude of impregnable strongholds. Consequently, the Ismaili strategy was based on the seizure of a host of strongholds from where a multiplicity of simultaneous risings could be launched throughout the Seljuq realm to overwhelm the existing decentralised order from within. Each Ismaili stronghold, normally a fortified mountain fortress, could be used as a local base of armed operations. In special circumstances, the Ismailis would also help one Seljuq emir against another, always considering the overall contribution of such shifting alliances to their own objectives. The same realities suggested to Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ the use of ‘assassination’ as an important auxiliary technique for attaining military and political aims. Many earlier Muslim groups, including the Khawārij and some Shiʿi ghulāt, had used assassination to remove religio-political adversaries. The Seljuqs themselves, like the Crusaders, also assassinated their individual enemies in their factional conflicts. At any rate, Ḥasan did assign an important role in his strategy of struggle to the selective

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assassination of prominent religio-political and military opponents, especially as the Ismailis were confronted by an enemy possessing a vastly superior military power. Consequently, this policy became identified in a highly exaggerated manner with the Ismailis of Persia and Syria, so that almost any contemporary assassination of any significance in the central lands of Islam was readily attributed to them. The actual Ismaili assignments were carried out by their fedāʾis, young self-sacrificing devotees who volunteered for such dangerous missions and rarely survived. The assassinations, normally conducted in public places with intimidating side effects, targeted those individuals who posed serious threats to Ismaili activities and the survival of the community in specific localities. Contrary to the so-called Assassin legends fabricated by uninformed Crusader circles and their occidental chroniclers, who erroneously made the Nezāri Ismailis famous in Europe as the Assassins, there is no evidence that hashish was used for motivating the fedāʾis.13 From early on, the assassinations, whatever their real source, often triggered massacres of all suspected Ismailis in a particular town or locality; and the massacres, in turn, provoked retaliatory assassinations. As the revolt of the Persian Ismailis was spreading successfully, the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir died in Cairo in 487/1094. The dispute over his succession split the Ismailis permanently into rival Nezāri and Mustaʿlian factions, named after two of the deceased caliph’s sons who claimed his heritage. Al-Mustanṣir had originally designated Nezār as his heir, but the powerful vizier al-Afḍal, who had a few months earlier succeeded his own father Badr al-Jamālī, moved swiftly and placed Nezār’s much younger brother on the Fatimid throne with the title al-Mustaʿlī bi’llāh. Al-Mustaʿlī was also acknowledged as his father’s successor to the imamate by the Egyptian and Yemeni Ismailis, and by some in Syria – that is, by the Ismaili communities under the direct influence of the Fatimid regime. By then, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ had emerged as the undisputed leader of the Ismailis of Seljuq lands and he was already following an independent revolutionary policy; and the succession dispute provided an opportunity for him to sever relations with the Fatimid regime. Ḥasan lent his unconditional support to Nezār, who had been deprived of his succession rights, and refused to recognise the authority of the central headquarters of the Ismaili daʿwa in Cairo, now operating on behalf of the Mustaʿlian cause. By this decision, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ had in effect founded the independent Nezāri Ismaili daʿwa, directed centrally from Alamut. Ḥasan’s decision was supported by all of the Ismailis of Persia without any dissent, indicating his unquestionable authority over the entire community there. Henceforth, the Ismailis of the Iranian lands (and later those of Syria) came to represent the Nezāri branch of Ismailism, by contrast to the Mustaʿlian branch concentrated in Egypt and Yemen. Nezār rose in revolt in Egypt, but was defeated and executed in 488/1095. It is an historical fact that Nezār did have male progeny, and some of them rose in revolts against the later Fatimids, claiming the caliphate. At any rate, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ did not divulge the name of Nezār’s successor to the imamate. It is possible that the Ismailis of Persia remained uninformed for quite some time of Nezār’s tragic end, and continued to await his reappearance. Nezār’s own name contin-

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ued to be mentioned on coins minted in Alamut in its early period, until about 70 years after his death. In the inscriptions of these coins, Nezār’s progeny are generally blessed anonymously.14 According to Persian historians, already in Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ’s time, many Nezāri Ismailis believed that a son or grandson of Nezār had been brought from Egypt to Alamut and kept there secretly.15 At any rate, Ḥasan and his next two successors at Alamut did not name any imams after Nezār. In the absence of a manifest imam, it seems that Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, now also as the head of the Nezāri Ismaili daʿwa, was recognised as the ḥujja or full representative and proof of the inaccessible imam, acting as the custodian of the Nezāri daʿwa until the time of the imam’s reappearance. Ismaili fortunes continued to rise in Persia during Sultan Barkeyāroq’s reign. Alarmed by the growing power of the Ismailis, Barkeyāroq in western Persia and Sanjar in Khorāsān finally agreed in 494/1101 to take combined action against them in their respective territories. Despite new Seljuq offensives and massacres, however, Nezāri Ismailis managed to retain their strongholds and territories. By the time of Barkeyāroq’s death in 498/1105, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ had also already begun to extend his activities to Syria by sending Persian dāʿīs there. As in Persia, Seljuq rule in Syria had caused many difficulties and was abhorred by Syrians, who also suffered from political fragmentation and internal divisions. But almost half a century of continuous effort would be required before the Nezāri Ismailis could finally gain possession, in the middle of the sixth/twelfth century, of a network of permanent strongholds in the Jabal Bahrāʾ region of central Syria. Meanwhile, Moḥammad Tapar had succeeded his brother Barkeyāroq in Persia, while Sanjar remained at Balkh as his viceroy in the East. Sultan Moḥammad reigned for some 13 years (498–511/1105–1118) as the undisputed Seljuq ruler, restoring order to the sultanate. Barkeyāroq and Sanjar had already checked what might have been an Ismaili sweep through Seljuq dominions in Persia. Nevertheless, the Ismailis had maintained their position in widely scattered territories, and posed a continued threat to the Seljuqs. Sultan Moḥammad now set out to deal more effectively with the Ismailis. He launched a series of major campaigns against them, and succeeded in checking their expanding activities. As a result, the Ismailis lost most of their strongholds in the Zagros Mountains and in Iraq. Sultan Moḥammad’s main anti-Ismaili campaign was directed against Shāhdez. The sultan personally laid siege to Shāhdez, finally seizing it in 500/1107.16 The dāʿī Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Malek was captured and executed in Isfahan. Sultan Moḥammad Tapar also directed his attention to Rudbār, the main centre of Nezāri Ismaili power in Daylam, with its network of castles. Over eight consecutive years, the Seljuqs besieged Alamut, where Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ resided, Lamasar and other strongholds in Rudbār, destroying the crops of the districts around the castles and engaging in sporadic battles with the Ismailis.17 Ḥasan’s resistance during these difficult years, when the Seljuqs received regular reinforcements, amazed the enemy. At any rate, despite their superior military power, the Seljuqs failed to take Alamut by assault, and they broke camp on hearing the news of the sultan’s death in 511/1118. Alamut was

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thus saved once again and the Nezāri Ismailis of Rudbār were rescued from what could have been an irreversible defeat. The death of the Great Seljuq Sultan Moḥammad Tapar was followed by another period of internal strife and dynastic disputes in the Seljuq camp. This provided further timely respite for the Nezāri Ismailis, who did in fact recover from some of their earlier setbacks. Muḥammad Tapar was succeeded in Isfahan by his son Maḥmud (511–525/1118–1131), who ruled over western Persia and, at least nominally, Iraq. Maḥmud faced a number of claimants to the sultanate, often supported by various emirs in Seljuq dominions. In time, three other sons of Moḥammad Tapar, including Solaymānshāh (555–556/1160–1161) – as well as several of his grandsons, some of whom ruled over different parts of the Seljuq domains even during Maḥmud’s reign – succeeded to the sultanate in the west. However, Maḥmud’s uncle Sanjar, who had controlled the eastern provinces, now became generally recognised as the head of the Seljuq family and as the supreme sultan until his death in 552/1157, when the sultanate of the Great Seljuqs began to disintegrate. Sultan Sanjar now also controlled important territories in northern Persia, including Ṭabarestān and Qumes, which were already penetrated by the Nezāri Ismailis. By the final years of Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, who died after a brief illness in 518/1124, the Ismaili-Seljuq relations, as observed by Marshall Hodgson, had in effect entered a new phase of ‘stalemate’.18 The great Seljuq offensives against the Ismailis had clearly ended on Moḥammad Tapar’s death. The Seljuqs had failed to uproot the Persian Ismailis from their strongholds in Rudbār, Qumes and Kuhestān. At the same time, the anti-Seljuq revolt of the Ismailis had lost its effectiveness. For almost three decades, the Ismailis had carried out an open revolt in the heart of the Seljuq lands. But they had also sustained severe blows. In particular, their partisans in the cities had been frequently massacred, damaging their urban bases of support, and they had also lost many of their fortresses in the Alborz and Zagros Mountains and around Isfahan. The remaining Ismaili strongholds, now located only in Rudbār, Qumes and Kuhestān, could not serve as adequate bases for renewed revolutionary activities in Persia. But the Ismaili revolt had succeeded on a local basis in several scattered territories, while the Persian Ismailis maintained their cohesion. Henceforth, the Persian Ismailis were more concerned with consolidating their power and defending the territories and networks of strongholds that they held, rather than engaging in further military action against the Seljuqs, while the Seljuqs no longer conducted any large-scale offensives against the Ismaili fortress communities. In this period of stalemate, or even peaceful coexistence, which lasted until the end of Seljuq rule over Persia, the Nezāri Ismaili community transformed itself into an autonomous state, now taking its place as a principality within the Seljuq Empire. This state was ruled, after Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, by the two other dāʿīs, Keyā Bozorg-Omid (518–532/1124–1138) and then his son Moḥammad (532– 557/1138–1162), before the Nezāri imams themselves emerged openly at Alamut and took charge of the affairs of their state, daʿwa and community. Ironically, this Nezāri state outlasted the demise of the Seljuq sultanate itself in 590/1194. Seljuq

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rule was finally uprooted not by the Ismailis but by another dynasty of Turkish origins, the Khwārazmshāhs. By then, a spiritual qiyāma or resurrection had been proclaimed by the Nezāri imam for his community, which in effect also made the ‘outside world’ irrelevant. Henceforth, the Nezāri Ismailis became psychologically independent, at least for a while, of all their Sunni adversaries. The Ismaili state in Persia, which lasted for some 166 years until it was uprooted by the all-conquering Mongols in 654/1256, owed its very existence to Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, a remarkable organiser and political strategist. He maintained a sense of purpose and dedication despite periodical setbacks, and saw the independent Nezāri Ismaili state and daʿwa he had founded through their extremely turbulent early decades. Possessing exceptional leadership qualities and charisma, Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ personally offered a rallying point for other Nezāri Ismailis. He also provided a religio-political frame that was to serve as an appropriate response to the challenges of the time, enabling the Nezāri Ismailis to survive under incredibly adverse circumstances and in widely scattered territories stretching from eastern Persia to Syria.

Notes * This chapter was originally published in E. Herzig and S. Stewart, ed., The Age of the

1 2

3

4

Seljuqs: The Idea of Iran, 6 (London: I. B. Tauris in association with the Middle East Institute at SOAS and The Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, 2015), pp. 41–57. See F. Daftary, ‘Persian Historiography of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs’, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 30 (1992), pp. 91–97, reprinted in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London, 2005), pp. 107–123. ʿAṭā-Malek Juvayni, Taʾrikh-e jahān-goshā, ed., M. Qazvini (Leiden/London, 1912–1937), vol. III, pp. 187ff.; English trans. as The History of the World-Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Manchester, 1958), vol. II, pp. 666ff.; Rashid al-Din Fazl Allāh, Jāmeʿ al-tavārikh: qesmate Esmāʿīleyān, ed. M. T. Dāneshpazhuh and M. Modarrisi Zanjāni (Tehran, 1338/1959), pp. 97ff.; ed. M. Rowshan (Tehran, 1387/2008), pp. 98ff.; ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAli Kāshāni, Zobdat al-tavārikh: bakhsh-e Fāṭemeyān va Nezāreyān, ed. M. T. Dāneshpazhuh (2nd ed., Tehran, 1366/1987), pp. 133ff. See al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Sīrat al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn dāʿī al-duʿāt, ed. M. Kāmil Ḥusayn (Cairo, 1949), especially pp. 94–184; Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, vol. VII, ed. Ayman F. Sayyid, with summary English trans. by P. E. Walker and M. A. Pomerantz as The Fatimids and Their Successors in Yaman (London, 2002), Arabic text pp. 48–74; V. Klemm, Memoirs of a Mission: The Ismaili Scholar, Statesman and Poet al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (London, 2003), pp. 78–86; and P. E. Walker, ‘Purloined Symbols of the Past: The Theft of Souvenirs and Sacred Relics in the Rivalry between the Abbasids and the Fatimids’, in F. Daftary and J. W. Meri, ed., Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honour of Wilferd Madelung (London, 2003), pp. 364– 387, reprinted in his Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine (Aldershot, 2008), article VIII. Professor C. Edmund Bosworth has written extensively on the revival of Persian culture under Arab and Turkish rule. See particularly his ‘The Development of Persian Culture under the Early Ghaznavids’, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 6 (1968), pp. 33–144, reprinted in his The Medieval History of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia (London, 1977), article XVIII, and his The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–3) (Costa Mesa, CA, 1994), pp. 168–180. See also W. Madelung, ‘The Assumption of the Title Shāhānshāh by the Būyids and the Reign of the Daylam (Dawlat al-Daylam)’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 28 (1969), pp. 84–108, 168–183, reprinted in his Religious and Ethnic Movements in Islam (Hampshire, 1992), article VIII.

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  5 Rashid al-Din, Jāmeʿ al-tavārikh, ed. Dāneshpazhuh, p. 112; ed. Rowshan, p. 111; and ed. Kāshāni, p. 148.  6 Haft bāb-e Bābā Sayyednā, ed. W. Ivanow, in his Two Early Ismaili Treatises (Bombay, 1933), p. 30.  7 Rashid al-Din, Jāmeʿ al-tavārikh, ed. Dāneshpazhuh, pp. 149–153; ed. Rowshan, pp. 147–150; Kāshāni, pp. 186–190; and W. Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany, NY, 1988), pp. 9–12.   8 For an overview of these encounters, and the anti-Ismaili biases of the sources relating them, see C. Hillenbrand, ‘The Power Struggle between the Saljuqs and the Ismaʿilis of Alamūt, 487–518/1094–1124; The Saljuq Perspective’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 205–220.   9 For descriptions of Alamut and other Ismaili strongholds in Rudbār and Kuhestān, see P. Willey, Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria (London, 2005), pp. 102–146, 167–203. Peter Willey (1922–2009) devoted his life to studying and leading expeditions to the medieval Ismaili castles and has produced the best descriptions of these strongholds and their defensive features. He was also responsible for identifying the precise location of several of these castles. His field research revealed that the Ismailis of the Alamut period possessed an accomplished mastery of military architecture and mountain agriculture, together with an ability to ensure ample reserves of food and water in their fortress communities. 10 Nez.ām al-Molk, Seyar al-molūk (Seyāsat-nāmeh), ed. H. Darke (2nd ed., Tehran, 1347/1968), pp. 282–311; ed. Mehmet Altay Köymen (Ankara, 1999), pp. 227–252; English trans., The Book of Government, or, Rules for Kings, trans. H. Darke (2nd ed., London, 1978), pp. 208–231. This work was completed in 484/1091, with 11 more chapters (including Chapter 46 on the Ismailis) added in the following year, shortly before the vizier’s assassination. These final 11 chapters focus on dangers that threatened the Seljuq state, notably those emanating from certain Khorrami movements in Persia and the Ismailis (Bāṭinīs). 11 See, for instance, C. Hillenbrand, ‘1092: A Murderous Year’, The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic, 15–16 (1995), pp. 281–296, and H. Bowen and C. E. Bosworth, ‘Niz.ām al-Mulk’, EI2, vol. 8, pp. 69–73. 12 See Z.ahir al-Din Nishāpuri, Saljuq-nāmeh, ed. I. Afshār (Tehran, 1332/1953), pp. 40–41; ed. A. H. Morton (Chippenham, 2004), p. 46; Moḥammad b. ʿAli al-Rāvandi, Rāḥat al-ṣodur, ed. M. Eqbāl (London, 1921), pp. 155ff. See also C. O. Minasian, Shah Diz of Ismaʿili Fame (London, 1971); S. M. Stern, E. Beazley and A. Dobson, ‘The Fortress of Khān Lanjān’, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 9 (1971), pp. 45–57; Willey, Eagle’s Nest, pp. 206–212, and D. Durand-Guédy, Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers: A History of Iṣfahān in the Saljūq Period (London, 2010), pp. 157–162, where the author argues for an earlier – 490/1096–1097 – date for the Ismaili capture of Shāhdez. 13 For these legends, all revolving around the recruitment and training of the fedāʾis, see F. Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʿilis (London, 1994), especially pp. 88–127, and his The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2007), pp. 10–30. 14 See P. Casanova, ‘Monnaie des Assassins de Perse’, Revue Numismatique, 3rd series, 11 (1893), pp. 343–352; G. C. Miles, ‘Coins of the Assassins of Alamūt’, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 3 (1972), pp. 155–162; and H. Hamdan and A. Vardanyan, ‘Ismaili Coins from the Alamūt Period’, in Willey, Eagle’s Nest, pp. 288–307. 15 See Juvayni, Taʾrikh-e jahān-goshā, vol. III, pp. 180–181, 231–237; trans. Boyle, vol. II, pp. 663, 691–695; Rashid al-Din, Jāmeʿ al-tavārikh, ed. Dāneshpazhuh, pp. 79, 166–168; ed. Rowshan, pp. 77, 163–164; Kāshāni, Zobdat al-tavārikh, pp. 115, 202–204; and Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrikh Dimashq, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden, 1908), pp. 127–129. 16 Rashid al-Din, Jāmeʿ al-tavārikh, ed. Dāneshpazhuh, pp. 121–122; ed. Rowshan, pp. 120–121; Kāshāni, Zobdat al-tavārikh, pp. 156–157; Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrikh Dimashq, pp. 151–156; Z.ahir al-Din Nishāpuri, Saljuq-nāmeh, ed. Afshār, pp. 41–42; ed.

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Morton, pp. 48–50; al-Rāvandi, Rāḥat al-ṣodur, pp. 158-161; al-Fatḥ b. ʿAli al-Bondāri, Zobdat al-noṣra, ed. M. T. Houtsma (Leiden, 1889), pp. 90–91; and Durand-Guédy, Iranian Elites, pp. 172–181. 17 Juvayni, Taʾrikh-e jahān-goshā, vol. III, pp. 211–212; trans. Boyle, vol. II, pp. 680–681; Rashid al-Din, Jāmeʿ al-tavārikh, ed. Dāneshpazhuh, pp. 124–132; ed. Rowshan, pp. 123–130; Kāshāni, Zobdat al-tavārikh, pp. 160–166. 18 M. G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs against the Islamic World (The Hague, 1955), pp. 99ff., 145, and his ‘The Ismāʿīlī State’, in The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 5, The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 428, 447ff.

15 ¯ and the Niz Ari ¯ ¯ SinAn Ismailis of Syria

The early success of the Ismaili daʿwa culminated in the foundation of the Ismaili state or dawla in North Africa in 297/907, under the leadership of the Ismaili imam who now ruled as the Fatimid caliph over an expanding empire.* It did not take long for the Fatimid caliph-imams to establish themselves in Egypt, where they founded Cairo as their new capital. However, the Fatimids never managed to acquire lasting success in propagating Ismailism within the Fatimid dominions. The Berber inhabitants of Ifrīqiya and other Fatimid dominions in North Africa essentially retained their adherence to the Khārijī form of Islam, while the Arab populace of the cities there adhered to Mālikī Sunnism. In Egypt, too, the Ismaili Shiʿis remained a minority religious community, albeit holding the reins of power, while the majority of the Fatimid subjects there remained Shāfiʿī Sunnis with a significant community of Coptic Christians. This explains why Ismailism disappeared so rapidly from Egypt and other Fatimid dominions in North Africa soon after the demise of the Fatimid dynasty in 567/1171. The Ismaili daʿwa had its lasting success outside of the Fatimid state, paradoxically where the Ismailis were normally persecuted and thus were often obliged to observe taqiyya, or precautionary dissimulation, rather strictly.1 It was in those scattered regions, the so-called jazāʾir of the daʿwa, from Yemen to Syria, Persia and Central Asia, that Ismailism survived the downfall of the Fatimid caliphate in its Ṭayyibī-Mustaʿlian and Nizārī forms. And this success was effectively due to the efforts and achievements of a few key individuals, notably al-Malika Arwā, the Ṣulayḥid queen of Yemen, and two dāʿīs, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān, the latter being the focus of our attention here. The queen Arwā, who became the real authority of Yemen during the reign of her husband Aḥmad al-Mukarram (459–477/1067–1084) and ruled over Ṣulayḥid Yemen until her death in 532/1138, founded the independent Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian daʿwa. The Ṭayyibī Ismailis traced the imamate in the progeny of the Fatimid

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caliph al-Mustaʿlī (487–495/1094–1101) and found their permanent stronghold in Yemen, before becoming firmly established in South Asia where they were designated as Bohras. On the other hand, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, originally an Ismaili dāʿī in Persia, upheld the rights of Nizār, al-Mustaʿlī’s older brother, in the NizārīMustaʿlī schism of 487/1094 that split the Ismailis of the Fatimid times into rival Mustaʿlian and Nizārī factions. Ḥasan had already established himself in 483/1090 at the fortress of Alamūt in northern Persia, signalling the foundation of what was to become the Nizārī Ismaili state of Persia and Syria. And in the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī succession dispute, he sided with Nizār, the original heir designate of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustanṣir (427–487/1036–1094), and severed his relations with the Fatimid regime and the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo which had lent its support to al-Mustaʿlī, al-Mustanṣir’s actual successor in the Fatimid caliphate. By this decision, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had also founded the independent Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa.2 Nizār attempted unsuccessfully to assert his rights to the Fatimid throne. The allpowerful Fatimid vizier al-Afḍal, who had installed al-Mustaʿlī to the Fatimid caliphate in Cairo, personally led the Fatimid forces against Nizār. In the event, Nizār was defeated and captured, and he was executed in 488/1095. It is a fact that Nizār had male progeny and some of them rose in revolt against the later Fatimids, claiming the caliphate and the imamate.3 Meanwhile, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ did not divulge the name of Nizār’s successor to the imamate, on whose behalf he was leading the Nizārī daʿwa and state. Published numismatic evidence from the early Alamūt period of Nizārī Ismaili history shows that Nizār’s own name was mentioned on coins minted at Alamūt for about 70 years after his death, in 488/1095, through the reigns of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s next two successors as lords of Alamūt and leaders of the Nizārī daʿwa and state.4 The nascent Nizārī Ismailis were now effectively left without an accessible imam, as in the dawr al-satr, or ‘period of concealment’, in pre-Fatimid times in Ismaili history when the absent imam had been represented by the ḥujja or his chief representative in the community. So, the earliest Nizārīs, too, lived through such a dawr al-satr, when the Nizārī imam remained hidden and inaccessible. Indeed, Ḥasan and his next two successors at Alamūt were regarded as the ḥujjas of the hidden imam. The seizure of Alamūt by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ initiated a new phase in the activities of the Persian Ismailis, who had hitherto operated clandestinely. It signalled the commencement of their open revolt against the Saljuq Turks, who were aliens in Persia and their rule was intensely detested by the Persians of various social classes. It was indeed to the ultimate goal of uprooting Saljuq rule that Ḥasan dedicated himself and organised the Persian Ismailis into a formidable and highly disciplined revolutionary force. By the time Muḥammad Tapar emerged as the undisputed Saljuq sultan in 498/1105, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had already established a territorial state in several regions of Persia with an extensive network of mountain fortresses. By then, he had also begun to extend his activities to Syria, reflecting his wider Islamic ambitions. A number of Persian dāʿīs, initially led by al-Ḥakīm al-Munajjim (d. 496/1103), were dispatched from Alamūt to Aleppo in northern Syria to organise the Ismailis

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there and win new converts. The political fragmentation of Syria as well as diversity in the region’s religious topography, which included different Shiʿi traditions, contributed to the spread of the Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa there. As in Persia, Saljuq rule in Syria had caused many difficulties and was resented by the Syrians, who also suffered from internal divisions. Syria was then the scene of rivalry among different Saljuq princes, each one claiming a portion of the land, while various minor local dynasties were at the same time attempting to assert their independence. The political fragmentation of Syria had become more pronounced with the appearance of the Crusaders in 490/1097. Starting from Antioch, the Crusaders had advanced swiftly along the Syrian coast and settled down in the conquered territories, establishing four Frankish states based at Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli and Jerusalem. From the beginning, the dāʿīs who were dispatched from Alamūt to Syria used the same methods of struggle as their Persian co-religionists. In particular, they attempted variously to seize strongholds to use as bases for extending their operations into the surrounding areas. However, the Nizārī Ismailis found their task in Syria much more difficult than it had been in Persia. Almost half a century of continuous effort was needed before the Nizārīs could finally come into possession of a network of strongholds in Syria. It was also in the course of their early campaigns in northern Syria that the Nizārīs came into contact with the Frankish troops of the prince of Antioch, Tancred, marking the first of the prolonged military and diplomatic encounters between the Syrian Ismailis and the Crusaders. The early success of the Nizārī Ismailis in northern Syria was short-lived. By 507/1113, the Saljuq ruler of Aleppo had authorised a widespread anti-Ismaili campaign, resulting in the massacre of the sectaries and the capture of their leaders.5 Subsequently, the Syrian Nizārīs concentrated their activities in Damascus, in the south. By 520/1126, Bahrām, the chief dāʿī in Syria, even preached the daʿwa openly in Damascus, where he had a ‘mission house’ (dār al-daʿwa). Soon after, Bahrām also managed to seize the frontier castle of Bāniyās, on the border with the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. But the Ismaili success in southern Syria proved to be equally short-lived. In 523/1129, with the murder of al-Mazdaqānī, the local Būrid vizier who had lent his support to the Ismailis, the town militia and the mob, supported by the predominantly Sunni inhabitants of Damascus, turned on the Nizārīs, killing more than 6,000.6 The Syrian Ismailis succeeded, over the course of two decades after their debacle in Damascus, in finally acquiring a number of strongholds. During this period, they adopted a new strategy and directed their activities away from major urban centres of Syria, such as Aleppo and Damascus, which had proved catastrophic. They now concentrated their efforts in the Jabal Bahrāʾ (present-day Jabal Anṣāriyya), a mountainous region between Ḥamā and the Mediterranean coastline south-west of the Jabal al-Summāq, in central Syria with numerous castles possessed by various Muslim lords and the Crusaders. In 527/1132, the Nizārīs came into possession of their first fortress in the Jabal Bahrāʾ by purchasing Qadmūs from its Muslim owner, who himself had recovered the castle from the Franks the previous year.7 Soon afterwards, the Nizārīs acquired Kahf; and in 535/1141, they seized Maṣyāf,

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their most important stronghold which usually served as the headquarters of their chief dāʿī. Around the same time, the Nizārīs captured several other castles in the Jabal Bahrāʾ, including Khawābī, Ruṣāfa, Manīqa and Qulayʿa, which became collectively designated as the qilāʿ al-daʿwa, or the ‘fortresses of the mission’.8 William of Tyre (d. ca. 1184), the famous archbishop and historian, who spent the greater part of his life in the Latin Orient, writing a few decades later, puts the number of these castles at ten and the Nizārī population of the region at 60,000.9 Although the Nizārīs had succeeded in establishing themselves in the Jabal Bahrāʾ, their overall position remained rather precarious as they confronted the hostility of the local Sunni rulers as well as the Crusaders, who were active in the adjacent areas belonging to the Frankish states of Antioch and Tripoli; the Crusaders had designs of their own for the region’s fortresses. It was under such circumstances that the Syrian Nizārīs had been obliged to start paying an annual tribute to the Templar military order. The Templars and the Hospitallers, founded in 1113 and 1119 respectively, were military orders of the knights, who provided military assistance to the Crusaders in the Frankish states and also guarded the pilgrim routes of the Holy Land. Both of these military orders, with well-organised fighting forces, possessed numerous castles in the vicinity of the Nizārī fortresses in the Jabal Bahrāʾ. Meanwhile in Persia, by the final years of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124), the Nizārī Ismailis had failed in their general revolt against the Saljuqs. Despite their far superior military power and continuous campaigns against the Nizārīs, the Saljuqs, too, had failed to uproot the Nizārī fortress communities.10 Henceforth, NizārīSaljuq relations were more of a stalemate. And this stalemate continued during the reigns of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s next two successors at Alamūt, Kiya Buzurg-Umīd (518–532/1124–1138) and his son Muḥammad (532–557/1138–1162). The Nizārī imamate emerged openly with the fourth lord of Alamūt, Ḥasan II (557–561/1162– 1166), who was in due course acknowledged as imam, a descendant of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir, by his community. In 559/1164, Ḥasan II proclaimed the qiyāma, the long-awaited Last Day, a controversial event in the history of the Nizārī community. Be that as it may, relying heavily on Ismaili taʾwīl or esoteric exegesis, the qiyāma was interpreted symbolically and spiritually for the living Nizārīs.11 Ḥasan II, whom the Nizārīs called ʿalā dhikrihi’l-salām (on his mention be peace), was also responsible for launching the career of Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān, the most famous of the chief dāʿīs of the Syrian Nizārī Ismailis. The only Ismaili work on Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān is the Faṣl min al-lafz. al-sharīf, a hagiographic text containing various anecdotes based on the oral traditions of the Syrian Nizārīs, attributed to the Syrian dāʿī-author Abū Firās Shihāb al-Dīn b. al-Qāḍī Naṣr al-Maynaqī (d. ca. 937/1530).12 Among the non-Ismaili biographical sources on Sinān, the most important account is that of Ibn al-ʿAdīm (d. 660/1262) in his Bughyat al-ṭalab fī taʾrīkh Ḥalab, but the volume of the Bughyat containing Sinān’s biography has survived only indirectly in at least three recensions in the works of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Yūnīnī (d. 726/1326), Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d.748/1348) and Khalīl b. Aybak al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363).13

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One of the most prominent figures in the entire history of the Nizārī Ismailis, Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān b. Salmān (or Sulaymān) b. Muḥammad Abu’l-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was born into an Imāmī Shiʿi family during the 520s/1126–1135 in ʿAqr al-Sudan, near Baṣra, where he was converted to Nizārī Ismailism in his youth. Subsequently, he went to the central headquarters of the Nizārī daʿwa at Alamūt to further his Ismaili education. There, Sinān became a close companion and a schoolfellow of the heir-apparent to the lord of Alamūt, the future Ḥasan II ʿalā dhikrihi’l-salām. It is related that at Alamūt, Sinān studied Ismaili doctrines as well as the doctrines of the philosophers and the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, amongst other works. Soon after his accession in 557/1162 to the central leadership of the Nizārī daʿwa and state, Ḥasan II dispatched Sinān to the Nizārī community in Syria, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. Travelling cautiously, like other Ismaili dāʿīs, through Mawṣil, Raqqa and Aleppo, then ruled by the Zangids, Sinān finally arrived at the Nizārī fortress of Kahf, where he remained for a while making himself extremely popular as a schoolmaster with the local Nizārīs. The death of Shaykh Abū Muḥammad, who had led the Nizārīs of Syria for some years, resulted in unprecedented succession disputes, intensifying the raging dissensions within the community. While different factions of the Syrian Nizārī community had their own candidates for the post of their chief dāʿī, Sinān succeeded in assuming the leadership of the Syrian daʿwa and community with Alamūt’s support; he held on to this post without any challenges to his authority for almost 30 years until his death in 589/1193. Once established, Sinān, who normally resided at the fortresses of Kahf or Maṣyāf, began to consolidate the deteriorating position of his community while adopting suitable policies towards the neighbouring Sunni rulers and the Crusaders, both posing constant threats to the Syrian Nizārīs. Consequently, he entered into an intricate web of shifting alliances with the major neighbouring powers and rulers, especially the Crusaders, the Zangids and Saladin, who uprooted the Fatimid dynasty and founded the Ayyūbid state. Indeed, Sinān played a prominent role in the regional politics of Syria and succeeded in maintaining the independence of his community under the most adverse circumstances. Initially, Sinān concentrated his efforts in reorganising the Nizārī daʿwa and community in Syria, also strengthening the defensive and offensive capabilities of his community. He rebuilt the fortresses of Ruṣāfa and Khawābī, fortified and constructed other strongholds in the Jabal Bahrāʾ, and captured the fortress of ʿUllayqa near the Frankish castle of Marqab held by the Hospitallers. At the same time, Sinān rapidly ended the internal dissensions of the Nizārī community, also paying attention to creating a corps of fidāʾīs, more generally referred to in Syria as fidāwīs or fidāwiyya, self-sacrificing devotees who embarked on dangerous missions to remove the enemies of their community. The absolute obedience of the fidāʾīs and their behaviour, seemingly irrational in the eyes of their occidental observers, as well as the much exaggerated reports about their actual or alleged missions, provided the basis for a number of imaginative tales, the Assassin legends, that circulated in the Crusading milieus of the Near East and Europe. These tales revolved around

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the recruitment and training of the sectaries, known to medieval Europeans as the ­so-called Assassins, and their awe-inspiring chief, Sinān, who now became famous in the occidental sources as the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’, or ‘le Vieux de la Montagne’. The Assassin legends, which developed in stages in the Crusader milieus, found their culmination in the synthesised account of Marco Polo regarding the ‘Old Man’ and his ‘secret garden of paradise’, where the would-be fidāʾīs allegedly received part of their training and indoctrination.14 When Sinān assumed the leadership of the Syrian Nizārīs, the ardently Sunni Nūr al-Dīn Zangī, who ruled over the Zangid dominions in Syria, was at the height of his power, posing a greater threat to Sinān than the Crusaders, who had been sporadically fighting the Nizārīs for several decades over the possession of various strongholds. The Nizārīs were also threatened by the Hospitallers and Templars, who acted rather independently of one another and often demanded tribute from them. The Nizārīs were now particularly pressured by the Hospitallers, who in 537/1142 had received from the lord of Tripoli the celebrated fortress of Krak des Chevaliers (Ḥiṣn al-Akrād) at the southern end of the Jabal Bahrāʾ. The Nizārīs clashed periodically with both of these Frankish military orders whilst continuing to pay an annual tribute of 2,000 besants to the Templars. A shrewd strategist, like Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, and always aiming to safeguard his community against external enemies, Sinān adopted suitable policies in response to changing realities. Therefore, from early on he aimed to establish peaceful relations with the Crusaders and the Frankish states. In fact, in 569/1173, Sinān sent an embassy to King Amalric I, seeking a formal rapprochement with the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, also hoping to be relieved of the tribute to the Templars. The Templars naturally disapproved of the Nizārī embassy, and on his return journey, Sinān’s envoy was ambushed and murdered by a Templar knight, Walter of Mesnil. King Amalric of Jerusalem was greatly angered by this assassination, which had been ordered by Odo of Saint-Amand, the Grand Master of the Templars during 1171–1179. Amalric personally led a force to Sidon, where he arrested Walter in the Templar lodge and sent him to prison. He also conveyed his apologies to Sinān. However, as Amalric died soon afterwards in 570/1174, formal negotiations between Sinān and the Franks of Jerusalem proved abortive; although the Nizārīs and the Crusaders continued to refrain from hostile campaigns against each other. Archbishop William of Tyre, the contemporary Frankish historian of Jerusalem, curiously relates that it was at the time of this embassy that the Syrian Nizārīs had proposed to collectively convert to Christianity.15 This report, clearly reflecting a basic misunderstanding of Sinān’s real intentions, may be dismissed as purely erroneous. Meanwhile, relations had remained relatively tense between Sinān and Nūr al-Dīn Zangī, who was then mainly occupied with his policies against the Crusaders and the declining Fatimid caliphate. Nūr al-Dīn finally succeeded through Saladin in overthrowing the Fatimids in 567/1171. Nūr al-Dīn was then evidently planning a major expedition against the Nizārīs of Syria when he died in 569/1174. The death of Nūr al-Dīn, in the same year in which King Amalric I died , finally gave Saladin his opportunity to act as the champion of the Muslim ‘orthodoxy’ and

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the leader of the war against the Crusaders. As the strongest of the Sunni Muslim leaders in the region, Saladin aspired to incorporate all of Arabia, Syria and Iraq, in addition to Egypt, into his nascent Ayyūbid state. Thus, Saladin now became the most dangerous enemy of the Syrian Nizārīs, while the Zangids of Aleppo and Mawṣil were equally threatened by his expansionary designs. Under the circumstances, Sinān entered into a temporary alliance with the Zangids out of fear of their common enemy, Saladin, who had entered Damascus in 570/1174. From Damascus, Saladin then marched northwards and laid siege to Aleppo. On two occasions in the period 570–571/1174–1176, Sinān dispatched two separate contingents of fidāʾīs to kill Saladin, but without success.16 In the aftermath of these events, Saladin invaded the Nizārī territory and besieged Maṣyāf. The siege was brief, however, as on the mediation of his maternal uncle Shihāb al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Takash, the governor of Ḥamā who was interested in having good neighbourly relations with the Nizārīs, Saladin concluded a truce with Sinān and withdrew his forces from the Jabal Bahrāʾ. Henceforth, hostilities ceased between Sinān and Saladin, who had evidently arrived at some form of truce agreement. On the other hand, relations between Sinān and the Zangids of Aleppo had now deteriorated. In 573/1177, the fidāʾīs killed Shihāb al-Dīn al-ʿAjamī, the influential vizier of the Zangid Malik al-Ṣāliḥ, in Aleppo. In 575/1179, Malik al-Ṣāliḥ seized the fortress of Hajīra from the Nizārīs. Subsequently, Sinān sent agents to Aleppo where they set fire to several locations in the city’s marketplaces.17 When Ḥasan II proclaimed the qiyāma at Alamūt in 559/1164, it fell upon Sinān to inaugurate the new dispensation in Syria. Sinān did proclaim the spiritual resurrection for the Nizārīs of Syria. But the doctrine of the qiyāma as developed in Persia does not seem to have become the central teaching of the Syrian Nizārīs in the time of Sinān, who also acquired increasing independence from the Persian headquarters during the reign of the fifth lord of Alamūt, Imam Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad (561–607/1166–1210). However, Sinān avoided a complete break. It was due to his unprecedented popularity within the Syrian Nizārī community that Sinān was able to drift away from the rigid control of Alamūt. However, it is not known just what role he claimed for himself, other than that of chief dāʿī of the Syrian Nizārīs. Some sources relate that Sinān was even venerated as an imam, at least by some of his followers who were called Sinānīs after him.18 In the popular Syrian Nizārī literature of later times, Sinān is actually exalted as a saintly hero with a cosmic rank appropriate to the figure of the imam. Indeed, Abū Firās ascribes the glory of Sinān’s achievement directly to God. In 588/1192, Conrad of Montferrat, the newly elected Frankish king of Jerusalem and the husband of Amalric I’s daughter Isabella, was killed in Tyre by two assassins who had disguised themselves as Christian monks. This event is reported by most of the occidental chroniclers of the Third Crusade (1189–1192) and by many Muslim historians. Many Muslim sources, as well as some occidental ones, state that this murder was instigated by King Richard I (1189–1199) of England, surnamed the Lion Heart, who was then in the Holy Land and was hostile to the marquis Conrad. On the other hand, Ibn al-Athīr and other Muslim sources hostile

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to Saladin report that it was Saladin who persuaded Sinān to arrange for the murder of both Conrad and Richard.19 The Ismaili author Abū Firās, too, attributes the initiative to Sinān, who was then evidently not on good terms with the Franks, because he was in alliance with Saladin.20 In this connection, it is also interesting to note that when soon afterwards King Richard I signed a peace treaty with Saladin, the Nizārī territory was also included in the treaty at the Ayyūbid sultan’s request. Be that as it may, by the end of Sinān’s life, relations had deteriorated somewhat between the Crusaders and the Syrian Nizārīs. Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān died in 589/1193, or perhaps a year earlier, in the castle of Kahf. An outstanding organiser, strategist and statesman, Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān led the Syrian Nizārīs in the course of some three decades to the peak of their power and fame. The ablest of all the Syrian Nizārī chiefs, he was also the only one amongst them to have acquired effective independence from Alamūt. He succeeded in giving the Nizārīs an independent identity in Syria, with their own sphere of influence, network of strongholds and a hierarchy of dāʿīs. At the same time, his shrewd strategies and pragmatic alliances with the Zangids, the Crusaders and Saladin served to ensure the independence of his community in the most turbulent and challenging times of its medieval history. It was indeed Sinān who laid solid foundations for the continued existence of the Nizārī Ismaili community and daʿwa in Syria.

Notes * This chapter was originally published in D. Bredi, L. Capezzone, W. Dahmash and

L. Rostagno, ed., Scritti in onore di Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti (Rome: Edizioni Q, 2008), pp. 489–500. 1 F. Daftary, ‘The Ismaili Daʿwa outside the Fatimid Dawla’, in M. Barrucand, ed., L’Égypte Fatimide, son art et son histoire (Paris, 1999), pp. 29–43, reprinted in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London, 2005), pp. 62–88. 2 Juwaynī, ʿAṭā-Malik, Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushā, ed. M. Qazwīnī (Leiden, 1912–1937), vol. 3, pp. 186–216; English trans., The History of the World-Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Manchester, 1958), vol. 2, pp. 666–683; Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i Ismāʿīliyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh and M. Mudarrisī Zanjānī (Tehran, 1338/1959), pp. 97–137; Abu’l-Qāsim ‘Abd Allāh b. ʿAlī Kashānī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh: bakhsh-i Fāṭimiyan va Nizāriyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh (2nd ed., Tehran, 1366/1987), pp. 133–172; M. G. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins (The Hague, 1955), pp. 41–98; F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 324–371, and his ‘Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and the Origins of the Nizārī Ismaʿili Movement’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 181–204. 3 See Ibn Z.āfir, Akhbār al-duwal al-munqaṭiʿa, ed. A. Ferré (Cairo, 1972), pp. 97, 111; al-Maqrīzī, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad, Ittiʿāz. al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār al-aʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ, ed. J. al-Shayyāl and M. H. M. Aḥmad (Cairo, 1967–1973), vol. 3, pp. 147, 186, 246; Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden, 1908), p. 302; Ibn Muyassar, Akhbār Miṣr, ed. A. F. Sayyid (Cairo, 1981), p. 139; lbn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujum al-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa’l-Qāhira (Cairo, 1348–1391/1929–1972), vol. 5, pp. 282, 339. 4 G. C. Miles, ‘Coins of the Assassins of Alamūt’, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 3 (1972), pp. 155–162; H. Hamdan and A. Vardanyan, ‘Ismaili Coins from the Alamut Period’, in P. Willey, Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria (London, 2005), pp. 288–307. 5 Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl, pp. 189–191; Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Zubdat al-ḥalab min taʾrīkh Ḥalab, ed. S. Dahan (Damascus, 1951–1968), vol. 2, pp. 168–169.

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  6 Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl, pp. 222–224.   7 Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Zubdat al-ḥalab, vol. 2, pp. 251–252; Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār, ed. A. F. Sayyid (Cairo, 1985), pp. 132–133; Willey, Eagle’s Nest, pp. 228–230.   8 On the Nizārī castles in the Jabal Bahrāʾ, which are much better preserved than those in Persia, see M. van Berchem, ‘Epigraphie des Assassins de Syrie’, Journal Asiatique, 9 série, 9 (1897), pp. 453–501, reprinted in his Opera Minora (Geneva, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 453– 501; also in B. S. Turner, ed., Orientalism: Early Sources. Volume I: Readings in Orientalism (London, 2000), pp. 279–309; P. Thorau, ‘Die Burgen der Assassinen in Syrien und ihre Einnahme durch Sultan Baibars’, Die Welt des Orients, 18 (1987), pp. 132–158; Willey, Eagle’s Nest, pp. 216–240.   9 William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 953– 954; English trans., A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. E. A. Babcock and A. C. Krey (New York, 1943), vol. 2, pp. 390–392. 10 See C. Hillenbrand, ‘The Power Struggle between the Saljuqs and the Ismaʿilis of Alamūt, 487–518/ 1094–1124: The Saljuq Perspective’, in Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History, pp. 205–220. 11 See Haft Bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, ed. W. Ivanow, in his Two Early Ismaili Treatises (Bombay, 1933), pp. 4–44; Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa-yi taslīm, ed. and trans. S. J. Badakhchani, Paradise of Submission (London, 2005), text pp. 81–83, 109–110, 134–136, 169–198; Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Haft bāb, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow (Bombay, 1959), text pp. 19, 24, 38–39, 40–42; Hodgson, Order of Assassins, pp. 160–180; Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 385–396; C. Jambet, La grande resurrection d’Alamût (Lagrasse, 1990), especially pp. 35–73, 95–135, 295ff. 12 The Faṣl was first published with a French translation by the orientalist Stanislas Guyard (1846–1884) under the title of ‘Un grand maître des Assassins au temps de Saladin’, Journal Asiatique, 7 série, 9 (1877), translation, pp. 387–450, text pp. 452–489; another edition was published by Mehmet Şerefeddin in ‘Darülfünun Ilâhiyat Fakültesi Mecmuasi’, 2, no. 7 (1928), pp. 45–71. The late Syrian Nizārī scholar Muṣṭafā Ghālib (1923–1981) produced a new edition of this text in his Sinān Rāshid ai-Dīn, shaykh al-jabal al-thālith (Beirut, 1967), pp. 163–214. 13 Al-Yūnīnī’s text, the fullest of the three recensions, has served as the chief source for the edition prepared by B. Lewis in his ‘Three Biographies from Kamāl ad-Dīn’, in 60 doğum yili münasebetiyle Fuad Köprülü Armağani. Mélanges Fuad Köprülü (Ankara, 1953), pp. 325–344, with a better edition with English translation in B. Lewis, ‘Kamāl ­al-Din’s Biography of Rāšid al-Dīn Sinān’, Arabica, 13 (1966), pp. 225–267, reprinted in his Studies in Classical and Ottoman Islam (London, 1976), article X. For some modern studies of Sinān, see B. Lewis, The Assassins (London, 1967), pp. 110–118; Hodgson, Order of Assassins, pp. 185–209; N. A. Mirza, Syrian Ismailism (Richmond, Surrey, 1997), pp. 22–39; F. Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʿilis (London, 1994), pp. 67–74, 94ff.; and his ‘Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān’, EI2, vol. 8, pp. 442–443. 14 See L. Hellmuth, Die Assassinenlegende in der österreischichen Geschichtsdichtung des Mittelalters (Vienna, 1988), pp. 78–116; Daftary, Assassin Legends, pp. 88–127, where all occidental sources of the legends are discussed; F. Daftary, ‘The Ismaʿilis and the Crusaders: History and Myth’, in Z. Hunyadi and J. Laszlovszky, ed., The Crusades and the Military Orders (Budapest, 2001), pp. 21–41, reprinted in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies, pp. 149–170. 15 William of Tyre, Chronicon, vol. 2, pp. 954–956; trans. Babcock and Krey, vol. 2, pp. 392–394; S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades (Cambridge, 1951–1954), vol. 2, pp. 396–397; M. Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 100–104; J. Hauziński, ‘On Alleged Attempts at Converting the Assassins to Christianity in the Light of William of Tyre’s Account’, Folia Orientalia, 15 (1974), pp. 229–246, translated into Polish in his Tropem Muzulmańskich Dziejów (Toruń, 2007), pp. 135–144. 16 Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Zubdat al-ḥalab, vol. 3, pp. 30–34; Abū Shāma, Kitāb al-rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn (Cairo, 1287–1288/1870–1871), vol. 1, pp. 239–240, 258; Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār, selections, ed. and trans. E. R. Lundquist, Saladin and the

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Crusades (Lund, 1992), pp. 24–26, 32–34; B. Lewis, ‘Saladin and the Assassins’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 15 (1953), pp. 239–245, reprinted in his Studies in Classical and Ottoman Islam, article XI; M. C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 87–88, 99, 105–106, 108–109. 17 Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Zubdat al-ḥalab, vol. 3, pp. 38–39; Abū Shāma, al-Rawḍatayn, vol. 2, p. 16. 18 Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. I. ‘Abbās (Beirut, 1968–1972), vol. 5, p. 185; al-Maqrīzī, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad, al-Sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, ed. M. ʿA. ʿAṭā (Beirut, 1418/1997), vol. 1, p. 173. See also Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār, ed. Sayyid, pp. 77–78. 19 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fi’l-taʾrīkh, ed. C. J. Tornberg (Leiden, 1851–1876), vol. 12, p. 51. For a survey of the occidental sources on this event, see Hellmuth, Die Assassinenlegende, pp. 54–62. 20 Abū Firās al-Maynaqī, Faṣl, translation pp. 408–412, text pp. 463–466. See also F. Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, trans. E. J. Costello (Berkeley, 1969), pp. 242–245.

16 Hidden imams and Mahdis in Ismaili history

The idea of an eschatological saviour, who will appear before the end of time to restore true Islam and justice, found its way into Islamic discourse from early on.* This messianic figure was designated as the Mahdi or the ‘rightly guided one’. This name, with its various messianic connotations, has been applied to different individuals by both Shiʿis and Sunnis in the course of the centuries. However, belief in the coming of the Mahdi from the family of the Prophet Muḥammad (ahl al-bayt) became a central aspect of the faith in Shiʿi, in contrast to Sunni, Islam. Also distinctively Shiʿi was the common belief in a temporary absence or occultation (ghayba) of the Mahdi and his eventual return (rajʿa) in glory before the end of time and the Day of Resurrection (qiyāma). Generally speaking, a person acknowledged as Mahdi had to be initially recognised as an imam before acquiring that eschatological status, with the implication that no further imams would succeed the Mahdi during his period of occultation. Thus, the Mahdi would be the seal of the imams for that particular Shiʿi group. It is not clear why the title of al-mahdī was adopted for the messianic deliverer in Islam. As the term does not appear in the Qurʾan, the origin of this eschatological idea has been traced by different modern scholars to different pre-Islamic sources, including the ancient Iranian religions and Judaeo-Christian traditions.1 Be that as it may, in Shiʿi terminology, at least from the second/eighth century, the Mahdi was often given the additional epithet al-qāʾim or ‘the riser’, also called qāʾim āl Muḥammad, denoting a member of the Prophet’s family who will rise and establish justice on earth. Amongst the Shiʿa, the first personality to have been designated as the eschatological Mahdi was Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya, the third son (after al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn) of Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, on whose behalf al-Mukhtār successfully launched his own Shiʿi movement in southern Iraq. Al-Mukhtār’s campaign on behalf of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya as the Mahdi had an unexpected popular appeal among

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the masses, especially the non-Arab converts of Islam or the mawālī, who now swarmed to his side, calling themselves the shīʿat al-Mahdī or the ‘Party of the Mahdi’. It was with the crucial support of the mawālī that al-Mukhtār speedily won control of Kūfa, albeit briefly, in 66/685. The movement started by al-Mukhtār survived his demise in 67/687; his followers, recognising Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya as the Imam-Mahdi, soon formed a radical branch of Shiʿism generally designated as the Kaysāniyya. On Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya’s death in 81/700, one group of his Kaysānī followers, refusing to acknowledge his death, believed he remained hidden (ghāʾib or mastūr) in the Riḍwā mountains near Medina, whence he would eventually emerge to fill the earth with justice and equity as it had formerly been filled with injustice and oppression. It is the Mahdi of the Ithnāʿashariyya or Twelvers, the politically moderate branch of early Shiʿism, however, that has historically attracted the greatest attention. In 148/765, on the death of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, who had consolidated the Imāmī branch of Shiʿism on a quiescent basis, his followers split into various groups, two of which eventually became the precursors of Twelver and Ismaili Shiʿism. The Twelvers traced the imamate through al-Ṣādiq’s son Mūsā al-Kāz.im (d. 183/799), their seventh imam, and then recognised five more imams. On the death of their eleventh imam, al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (d. 260/874), this branch of the Imāmiyya recognised his sole infant son Muḥammad al-Mahdī, who had been kept hidden, as their Mahdi. These Imāmī Shiʿis, who later became designated as the Ithnāʿashariyya, thus believed in a line of 12 imams, starting with ʿAlī and ending with Muḥammad al-Mahdī, who is believed to have remained in occultation and whose emergence (z.uhūr) as the Mahdi is still awaited by the Twelver Shiʿis of the world.2 The Zaydīs, representing yet another major branch of Shiʿi Islam, were not prepared to accept the eschatological notions associated with the concept of the Mahdi, and so never recognised any hidden imams or Mahdis. What is less generally known is that the Ismailis, who shared the same early Imāmī heritage with the Twelvers, have also had different types of hidden imams and Mahdis at various times in their long and complex history that dates back to the middle of the second/ eighth century. It is our purpose here to present a chronological survey of these figures as they appeared in different branches of Ismailism. On the death of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in 148/765, his Imāmī Shiʿi followers split into several groups, two of which may be identified as the earliest Ismailis. These groups supported the claims of his son Ismāʿīl, the eponym of the Ismāʿīliyya, or his son Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, to the imamate. One of these groups denied the death of Ismāʿīl, who had probably predeceased his father. They held that Ismāʿīl, being the true imam after al-Ṣādiq, remained alive and hidden and would eventually return as the Mahdi, representing the first application of the concept in Ismaili history. Designated as ‘al-Ismāʿīliyya al-khāliṣa’ or the ‘pure Ismāʿīliyya’ by the later heresiographers, the members of this group held that Imam al-Ṣādiq had announced Ismāʿīl’s death merely as a ruse to protect him from the persecution of the Abbasids, who were displeased by his anti-regime political activities. A second splinter group, designated as the Mubārakiyya, affirmed Ismāʿīl’s death and recognised his son Muḥammad b.

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Ismāʿīl as their seventh imam.3 Soon afterwards, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl left Medina, seat of the ʿAlids, and went into hiding, marking the initiation of the dawr al-satr or period of concealment in early Ismailism that lasted until the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909, when the Ismaili imams emerged from their concealment. Henceforth, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl acquired the epithet of al-Maktūm, the ‘Hidden One’. Born around 120/738, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl evidently died during the caliphate of the Abbasid Hārūn al-Rashīd (170–193/786–809), perhaps soon after 179/795. It seems that on his death, the Mubārakiyya themselves split into two groups.4 One small and obscure group apparently traced the imamate through the progeny of their deceased imam. But another group, comprising the bulk of the former Mubārakiyya, refused to acknowledge Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl’s death. They now regarded Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as their seventh and last imam, who was expected to reappear as the Mahdi or qāʾim. This also explains why the Ismāʿīliyya later acquired the denomination of the Sabʿiyya or Seveners. It was after these obscure beginnings that the Ismaili movement appeared, almost abruptly, in different regions of the Islamic world shortly after the middle of the third/ninth century. The Ismailis at that time began referring to their movement as the daʿwa, the ‘mission’, or al-daʿwa al-hādiya, the ‘rightly guiding mission’, which propagated an anti-Abbasid message through a network of dāʿīs. There are diverse accounts of the beginnings of the Ismaili daʿwa of the third/ninth century. It is certain that for almost a century after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, a family of leaders who were well placed within the early Ismaili groups worked secretly for the creation of a unified, revolutionary Shiʿi movement that would act against the Abbasids. These leaders, ʿAlid descendants of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, evidently did not openly claim the Ismaili imamate for three generations. They had, in fact, carefully hidden their true identity in order to escape Abbasid persecution. ʿAbd Allāh al-Akbar, the first of these leaders, organised his campaign around the central teaching of the majority of the earliest Ismailis, namely, the Mahdism of his father Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Organising a revolutionary movement in the name of a ‘hidden imam’, who could not be chased by Abbasid agents, represented an attractive political strategy. The existence of such a group of early Ismaili leaders is confirmed by both the official version of the Ismailis of the Fatimid period regarding the pre-Fatimid phase of their history as well as the Sunni accounts of the anti-Ismaili polemicists.5 Centred on the expectation of the imminent return of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Mahdi who would establish justice in the world, the revolutionary and messianic movement of the early Ismailis had a great deal of appeal for underprivileged groups of different social backgrounds. It achieved particular success among those Imāmī Shiʿis who were disillusioned with the quietist policies of their own line of imams and who were then left without a manifest imam after the death of their eleventh imam, al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī. It was under such circumstances that the dāʿī Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ and his chief assistant ʿAbdān attracted many supporters in southern Iraq, who became generally known as the Qarāmiṭa or Qarmaṭīs, named after their first chief local leader. This term was soon applied to other Ismaili communities organised by other dāʿīs. At the time, there was a single Ismaili daʿwa directed

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secretly from the centre at Salamiyya in Syria in the name of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Mahdi.6 By the early 280s/890s, the central leaders of the Ismaili daʿwa had been quite successful in hiding their true identity while directing the activities of dāʿīs of different regions. Meanwhile, a unified messianic Ismaili movement had replaced the earlier Ismaili or proto-Ismaili splinter groups. In 286/899, soon after ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, the future Fatimid caliph al-Mahdī, had succeeded to the central leadership in Salamiyya, Ismailism suffered a major schism. Ḥamdān found out that instead of acknowledging the hidden imam on whose behalf the daʿwa had so far been propagated, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, as the Mahdi and the new leader, now claimed the imamate for himself and his ancestors, the same leaders who had actually organised and led the movement. Ḥamdān and ʿAbdān refused to accept this doctrinal change that allowed for continuity in the imamate, and they renounced their allegiance to the central leadership of the Ismaili daʿwa. ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī’s reform is explained in a letter he later sent to the Ismaili community in Yemen.7 In this letter, ʿAbd Allāh meticulously attempts to reconcile his reform with the actual course of events in pre-Fatimid Ismaili history. He explains that, as a form of taqiyya or precautionary dissimulation, the central leaders of the daʿwa had assumed different pseudonyms, also claiming the rank of the ḥujja, proof or full representative, of the absent Imam Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. He then goes on to explain that the earlier propagation of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Mahdi was itself another dissimulating tactic and that this was in reality a collective pseudonym for every true imam in the progeny of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Consequently, the Mahdism of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, instead of referring to the particular grandson of Imam al-Ṣādiq, had in fact acquired a collective meaning and referred to every imam in the progeny of al-Ṣādiq. In support of his reform, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī attributed a tradition to Imam al-Ṣādiq affirming that the family of the Prophet was to produce more than one Mahdi.8 The doctrinal reform of ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī split the Ismaili movement into two rival factions. One faction remained loyal to the central leadership and acknowledged continuity in the imamate, recognising ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī and his ʿAlid ancestors as their imams. This reform was in due course incorporated into the Fatimid Ismaili doctrine of the imamate, according to which there was always a visible imam at the head of the Ismaili community. These Ismailis now allowed for three hidden imams (al-aʾimma al-mastūrīn) between Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl and ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī. This loyalist faction came to include the bulk of the Ismailis of Yemen and those communities in Egypt, North Africa and Sind, founded by dāʿīs dispatched by Ibn Ḥawshab Manṣūr al-Yemen (d. 302/914), the loyal dāʿī who had successfully initiated the daʿwa in Yemen. On the other hand, a dissident faction, originally led by Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ, rejected ʿAbd Allāh’s reform and retained their original belief in Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Mahdi or qāʾim, whose return they continued to expect. Henceforth, the term Qarmaṭī came to be applied specifically to the dissident Ismailis who did not acknowledge ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, his predecessors or his successors in the Fatimid dynasty as their imams.

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The dissident Qarmaṭī faction, which lacked a united leadership, soon acquired its most important stronghold in the Qarmaṭī state of Bahrayn, founded in 286/899 by Abū Saʿīd al-Jannābī (d. 301/913) who sided with Ḥamdān and ʿAbdān. There were also Qarmaṭī communities in Iraq, Yemen, Persia and Central Asia. In time, some of the leaders of these dissident communities claimed Mahdism for themselves or others. Most notably, in Bahrayn, in line with the view prevalent among the Qarmaṭī dāʿīs who were then predicting the advent of the Mahdi in the year 316/928 on the basis of certain astrological calculations, Abū Saʿīd’s son and successor Abū Ṭāhir Sulaymān al-Jannābī (d. 332/943) acknowledged a young Persian as the expected Mahdi. In 319/931, Abū Ṭāhir turned over the rule of the state to this Persian from Iṣfahān. However, this proved to be a disastrous act for the Qarmaṭī movement, and events rapidly took a different course from what had been predicted by the Qarmaṭīs for the advent of the Mahdi. The young Persian, who is reported to have been a Zoroastrian, manifested a range of anti-Arab and antinomian sentiments. He also instituted a number of strange ceremonies, such as the cursing of Muḥammad and all other prophets, the burning of religious books and the worship of fire, instead of initiating the circumstances prophesied for the advent of the expected Mahdi. At any rate, Abū Ṭāhir was soon obliged to admit that the young Persian was an imposter and had him killed. The obscure episode of the ‘false Mahdi’ seriously demoralised the Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn and weakened their influence over dissident Ismaili groups in other regions. Subsequently, the Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn reverted to their former beliefs and claimed to be acting on the orders of the hidden Mahdi. Meanwhile, the Qarmaṭīs of Iraq and other regions had continued to propagate the Mahdism of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. All available evidence indicates that the expectation of the imminent return of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the Mahdi continued to play a dominant part in the creed of the Qarmaṭīs everywhere, and this expectation was not fulfilled by the appearance of the Fatimids in North Africa.9 The early Ismailis elaborated the basic framework of a gnostic system of religious thought. A major component of their system was a cyclical history of revelations or prophetic eras, in which the qāʾim of the final era played a key eschatological role. According to their cyclical view, the religious history of mankind proceeded through seven prophetic eras or dawrs, each one inaugurated by a speaker-prophet or nāṭiq of a divinely revealed message. Each nāṭiq was, in turn, succeeded by a spiritual legatee or waṣī and seven imams, who would elucidate the inner meaning of that era’s revelation. The seventh imam of every era would rise in rank to become the nāṭiq of the following era, abrogating the sharīʿa of the previous era and enunciating a new one. This pattern would change only in the seventh and final era of sacred history. As the seventh imam of the sixth era, the era of the Prophet Muḥammad and Islam, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl was initially expected to return as the Mahdi or qāʾim as well as the nāṭiq of the seventh eschatological era when, instead of enunciating a new religious law, he would fully reveal the esoteric truths (ḥaqāʾiq) of all the preceding revelations. This original cyclical view was modified after ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī’s doctrinal reform. Recognising continuity in the imamate and

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allowing for more than one heptad of imams, the seventh era now lost its earlier messianic appeal for the Fatimid Ismailis, for whom the final eschatological era, whatever its nature, was postponed indefinitely into the future. On the other hand, the Qarmaṭīs of Bahrayn and elsewhere continued, throughout the rest of their history (until the second half of the fifth/eleventh century), to consider Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as their Mahdi or qāʾim who, on his reappearance as the seventh nāṭiq, was expected to initiate the final age of pure spirituality.10 Such messianic ideas were also propagated by the Qarmaṭī dāʿīs of the Iranian lands, such as Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nasafī who was initially successful in penetrating the inner circles of the Sāmānid court in Bukhāra before being executed there in 332/943. For instance, al-Nasafī taught that the era of Islam had ended with the first coming of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, who would return as the seventh nāṭiq to reveal the inner meaning of all the previous religious laws. After establishing their state in 297/909 in Ifrīqiya, the Fatimids continued to propagate continuity in the imamate, allowing for more than one heptad of imams in the era of Islam.11 Al-Muʿizz (341–365/953–975), the fourth Fatimid caliphimam, in addition to revitalising the activities of the daʿwa, also concerned himself with doctrinal issues, partially aiming to neutralise the appeal of the ongoing messianic teachings of the Qarmaṭīs in the eastern lands. He reiterated that Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, as the seventh imam of the era of Islam, held the rank of the qāʾim and the nāṭiq of the final era, but with a different interpretation from that in the teachings of the pre-Fatimid Ismailis. The qāʾim was not expected to announce a new sharīʿa, but would merely reveal the inner meaning of the previous laws. Furthermore, since the qāʾim, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, had first appeared in the time of complete concealment, his functions were to be undertaken by his khulafāʾ, the Fatimid Ismaili imams who were his descendants. He adds that there was no qāʾim besides the imam of the time, who is the Lord of the Time (ṣāḥib al-zamān) and interprets the inner meaning of the laws.12 In other words, al-Muʿizz denied the corporeal return of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as the qāʾim, because the Fatimids as his deputies had already fully assumed his functions. It was not until the time of al-Muʿizz’s grandson al-Ḥākim (386–411/996–1021) that eschatological expectations and earlier Ismaili teachings relating to the Mahdi found new expressions in some extremist Ismaili circles, leading to the formation of the Druze movement. Under obscure circumstances, in 408/1017, a number of dissident dāʿīs of Persian and Central Asian origins began to espouse certain extremist ideas for the purpose of proclaiming al-Ḥākim’s divinity. Muḥammad al-Darazī (or al-Darzī), also known as Nashtakīn, a Turk from Bukhārā after whom the movement later became designated as al-Daraziyya (al-Durziyya), was the first dāʿī to declare publicly al-Ḥākim’s divinity. There is no evidence that al-Ḥākim himself supported this movement, while the official Fatimid daʿwa organisation was categorically opposed to it. As part of the official Fatimid campaign against the Ḥākim cult, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1021), the most learned Ismaili dāʿī of the time who had already articulated the Fatimid doctrine of the imamate,13 was summoned from Iraq

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to Cairo to refute the new doctrine from a theological perspective. It was in this context that al-Kirmānī wrote several works until 408/1017. Recognising that the new extremist ideas were essentially rooted in the expectations for the advent of the qāʾim with its eschatological implications taught by earlier Ismailis, al-Kirmānī repudiated the notion that the resurrection (qiyāma) had occurred with the appearance of al-Ḥākim and that the era of Islam had therefore ended. He argued that the era of Islam and the validity of its sharīʿa would, in fact, continue under al-Ḥākim’s numerous prospective successors to the Ismaili imamate. Nevertheless, the new doctrine continued to spread; and when al-Ḥākim disappeared in 411/1021 on one of his nocturnal outings, the Druze leaders interpreted this as a voluntary retreat initiating al-Ḥākim’s ghayba or occultation. They held that on his reappearance, al-Ḥākim would set in motion the final era of sacred history. The Druzes, who are still awaiting the reappearance of al-Ḥākim and some of the original Druze leaders, such as Ḥamza, guard their sacred literature and doctrines rather closely. The Druze religion, falling outside Shiʿism and Ismailism, possesses elaborate doctrines of eschatology and cosmology, also advocating tanāsukh or metempsychosis.14 In Ismaili teachings of subsequent times, the eschatological ideas connected with the concept of the hidden imam and his return as the qāʾim or Mahdi, especially in reference to a particular Ismaili imam, disappeared almost completely. On the other hand, in the aftermath of the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism of 487/1094, the imams recognised by the Ṭayyibī branch of Mustaʿlian Ismailism remained permanently in concealment (satr), while the Nizārīs eventually propagated certain eschatological teachings in a symbolic and spiritual manner by relying on the methodology of bāṭinī taʾwīl or esoteric interpretation, while recognising manifest (ḥāḍir) imams. By the time of al-Mustanṣir (427–487/1036–1094), the eighth Fatimid caliph and the eighteenth Ismaili imam, the Fatimid Ismailis had come to allow for further heptads of imams after Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078), who was the dāʿī al-duʿāt or chief dāʿī in Cairo for 20 years, speaks of the imams in the progeny of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib throughout his majālis lectures, but without specifying their number. He also refers to the seven eras of history, the seventh one being that of the qāʾim al-qiyāma, whose future appearance will end the era of the imams and begin the final judgment of mankind.15 Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Ṣūrī, another Ismaili author of al-Mustanṣir’s time, also speaks of numerous heptads of imams, now making a distinction between the functions of the Mahdi and the qāʾim. He states that the Mahdi had already appeared in the person of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, while the qāʾim who will be a descendant of al-Mustanṣir is still the awaited one.16 Meanwhile, the Fatimid caliphate had embarked on its gradual decline. As the domestic situation in Fatimid Egypt deteriorated, al-Mustanṣir appealed for help to Badr al-Jamālī, an Armenian commander who operated in Syria in the service of the Fatimids. Badr arrived in Cairo in 466/1074 with his Armenian troops and succeeded in speedily restoring order. The Fatimid caliphate was in effect saved by Badr, who acquired the highest positions of the state; he became the vizier and the chief dāʿī, as well as the commander of the armies (amīr al-juyūsh). Badr was the ­effective

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ruler of the Fatimid state during the final two decades of al-Mustanṣir’s reign, and he also succeeded in establishing a powerful dynasty of viziers. It was his own son and successor al-Afḍal who, on al-Mustanṣir’s death in 487/1094, deprived the deceased caliph-imam’s elder son and heir-designate Nizār of his succession rights and placed his younger brother on the Fatimid throne with the title of al-Mustaʿlī bi’llāh (487– 495/1094–1101). Nizār rose up in revolt to assert his rights, but he was defeated and murdered a year later in 488/1095. Al-Afḍal’s machinations permanently split the Ismaili daʿwa and community into the Mustaʿlian and Nizārī factions. The imamate of al-Mustaʿlī, after he was installed to the Fatimid caliphate, was recognised by the daʿwa organisation in Cairo, as well as most Ismailis in Egypt, many in Syria, and the entire Ismaili community in Yemen. These Ismailis traced the imamate in al-Mustaʿli’s progeny. On the other hand, the Persian Ismailis, already under the leadership of the dāʿī Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124), defended al-Mustanṣir’s original designation (naṣṣ) and upheld Nizār’s right to the imamate. Ḥasan, in fact, now founded the independent Nizārī daʿwa, severing his relations with the Fatimid regime and the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo, which hereafter served as the headquarters of the Mustaʿlian Ismaili daʿwa. The Ismailis of Central Asia seem to have remained uninvolved in the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism for quite some time. The two factions of the Ismaili daʿwa became known as the Nizāriyya and the Mustaʿliyya, depending on whether they recognised Nizār or al-Mustaʿlī as the rightful imam after al-Mustanṣir. The two branches developed independently of one another, each one elaborating its own teachings and acquiring its own distinctive identity. After al-Mustaʿlī, the Mustaʿlian Ismailis recognised the imamate of his infant son al-Āmir, installed to the Fatimid caliphate by the all-powerful vizier al-Afḍal (d. 515/1121), who continued to hold the reins of state in his own hands. Soon after al-Āmir’s assassination in 524/1130, a new schism divided the Mustaʿlian Ismailis into Ḥāfiz.ī and Ṭayyibī factions. A son, named al-Ṭayyib, had been born to al-Āmir a few months before his death, and he had been duly designated as heir. However, on al-Āmir’s assassination, power was assumed by his cousin, ʿAbd al-Majīd, the eldest member of the Fatimid family, and nothing more was heard of al-Ṭayyib. ʿAbd al-Majīd initially ruled as regent. Meanwhile, al-Afḍal’s own son Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad, nicknamed Kutayfāt, was raised to the vizierate by the army. Kutayfāt adopted some radical policies that threatened the very foundation of the Fatimid establishment. ʿAbd al-Majīd was overthrown and imprisoned by Kutayfāt, who now declared the Fatimid dynasty deposed and proclaimed the sovereignty of Muḥammad al-Mahdī, the hidden 12th imam of the Twelver Shiʿis whose reappearance had been expected since 260/874. This may have been an ingenious religio-political solution to the succession problem created by the absence of a manifest direct heir to the Fatimid caliphate and imamate after al-Āmir. At any rate, Kutayfāt, apparently an Imāmī Shīʿī himself, acquired a unique position of authority, ruling without being responsible to anyone. Kutayfāt issued coins in Egypt in 525 and 526/1130–1132, bearing the name of al-imām al-mahdī al-qāʾim, with himself mentioned as the hidden imam’s representative (nāʾib) and deputy (khalīfa).17 However, this strange turn of events did not last long.

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In 526/1131, Kutayfāt was overthrown in yet another coup d’état, and ʿAbd al-Majīd was restored to power. Three months later, ʿAbd al-Majīd proclaimed himself imam and caliph with the title of al-Ḥāfiz. li-Dīn Allāh, and Ismaili Shiʿism was reinstated as the state religion of Fatimid Egypt.18 The irregular proclamation of al-Ḥāfiz. as imam, whose father had not been imam before him, caused a major schism in Mustaʿlian Ismailism. The claims of al-Ḥāfiz. to the imamate were supported by the official daʿwa organisation in Cairo and by the bulk of the Mustaʿlian Ismailis of Egypt and Syria as well as a portion of the Mustaʿlians of Yemen. These Mustaʿlians, recognising al-Ḥāfiz and the later Fatimid caliphs as their imams, became known as the Ḥāfiz.iyya. On the other hand, the Ṣulayḥid queen of Yemen, al-Sayyida Arwā, who like other members of the Ṣulayḥid dynasty recognised the suzerainty of the Fatimids but had personally drifted away from Cairo, upheld al-Ṭayyib’s right to the imamate in succession to al-Āmir. As a result, the Mustaʿlian community of the Ṣulayḥid state, too, recognised al-Ṭayyib’s imamate. These Mustaʿlian Ismailis of Yemen, with some minority groups in Egypt and Syria, became designated as the Ṭayyibiyya. Ḥāfiz.ī Ismailism and its imamate disappeared completely soon after the collapse of the Fatimid dynasty and caliphate in 567/1171, when Egypt was returned to the fold of Sunni Islam. Henceforth, Mustaʿlian Ismailism survived only in its Ṭayyibī form, with its ‘hidden imams’ and periodic eschatological manifestations of very limited significance. Ṭayyibī Ismailism soon found its permanent stronghold in Yemen, where it had received the initial support of the Ṣulayḥid queen, who had been looking after the affairs of the Mustaʿlian daʿwa with the help of the dāʿī Lamak b. Mālik al-Ḥammādī and then his son Yaḥyā (d. 520/1126). It is not clear what happened to al-Ṭayyib, designated heir-apparent at his birth, a few months before his father’s assassination. But there is a Yemeni Ṭayyibī tradition concerning the fate of al-Ṭayyib, who is counted as the 21st imam of the Ṭayyibiyya and the last one whose name is known to the Ṭayyibī Ismailis. According to this tradition,19 a group of dāʿīs swore allegiance to al-Ṭayyib upon his birth and protected him secretly in Cairo. In the turbulent circumstances that developed in the aftermath of al-Āmir’s assassination, one of these dāʿīs, called Abū ʿAlī, who had escaped persecution, managed to go into hiding with al-Ṭayyib. Nothing more was heard of al-Ṭayyib. It is, however, the belief of the Ṭayyibīs that al-Ṭayyib survived and that the imamate continued in his progeny, being handed down from father to son, generation after generation, during the current period of concealment (dawr al-satr) initiated by al-Ṭayyib’s own concealment. In other words, all the Ṭayyibī imams have remained hidden since around 524/1130. Meanwhile, it was soon after 526/1132 that the Ṣulayḥid Queen Arwā (d. 532/1138) broke her relations with Cairo and declared that Yaḥyā b. Lamak’s assistant and successor, al-Dhuʾayb b. Mūsā (d. 546/1151), was the dāʿī muṭlaq, or the dāʿī with full authority to conduct the daʿwa activities on behalf of the hidden imam al-Ṭayyib. This marked the foundation of the independent Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Yemen, henceforth called al-daʿwa al-Ṭayyibiyya, under the leadership of a dāʿī muṭlaq. Al-Dhuʾayb became the first in the line of al-duʿāt muṭlaqīn, who followed one another

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during the current period of satr in the history of the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismailis, each dāʿī appointing his successor by the rule of naṣṣ, as in the case of the imams. The Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Yemen maintained close relations with the Ṭayyibī community in Gujarāt, which expanded rapidly and soon outnumbered the original Yemeni community; the Ṭayyibī converts in India became known as Bohras. On the death of the 26th dāʿī muṭlaq, Dāʾūd b. ʿAjabshāh, in 997/1589, his succession was disputed, leading to the Dāʾūdī-Sulaymānī schism in the Ṭayyibī daʿwa and community. The great majority of Ṭayyibīs, then located in India, followed the Dāʾūdī line of dāʿīs, starting with Dāʾūd Burhān al-Dīn b. Quṭbshāh (d. 1021/1612) who was recognised as their 27th dāʿī. On the other hand, the bulk of the Ṭayyibīs in Yemen recognised Sulaymān b. Ḥasan (d. 1005/1597) as their own 27th dāʿī. The two Ṭayyibī communities became known, respectively, as Dāʾūdīs and Sulaymānīs, following separate lines of dāʿīs to the present time. The Dāʾūdī dāʿīs continued to reside in India, while the Sulaymānī dāʿīs established their daʿwa headquarters in Yemen.20 Subsequently, the leadership of the Dāʾūdīs was challenged by Shams al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm (d. 1046/1637), who claimed the succession to the 28th dāʿī for himself. ʿAlī seceded, with a group of followers, from the Dāʾūdī Bohra community, founding the ʿAlawī Bohra community with its own separate line of dāʿīs. Thus, the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismailis have followed three separate lines of dāʿīs, while adhering to the same doctrine of the imamate. All Ṭayyibīs have acknowledged hidden imams, descendants of al-Ṭayyib b. al-Āmir, whose names remain unknown. Subsequently, the Dāʾūdī Bohras were further subdivided in India due to periodical challenges to the authority of their dāʿī muṭlaq; a number of these splits also involved eschatological claims and millenarian expressions. One such episode occurred in the time of the 40th Dāʾūdī dāʿī, Ḥibat Allāh al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn b. Ibrāhīm Wajīh al-Dīn (1168–1193/1754–1779), coinciding with the early phase of the British subjugation of India. The leaders of this opposition movement were Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Majdūʿ (d. 1183/1770), the author of a famous Ismaili catalogue commonly known as Fihrist al-kutub, and his son Hibat Allāh. In 1175/1761, Hibat Allāh claimed to have established direct contact with the hidden Ṭayyibī imam of the time through his dāʿī al-balāgh, a rank higher than dāʿī muṭlaq in the earlier daʿwa hierarchy of the Fatimids. He further claimed to have been appointed by the hidden imam to the position of al-ḥujja al-laylī, another rank superior to that of dāʿī muṭlaq. By these claims, which were supported by his father, Hibat Allāh evidently expected the incumbent dāʿī to yield his position to him. Hibat Allāh and his followers, who became known as Hiptias (Hibtias), were eventually chased out of Ujjain, their initial seat, by loyal Dāʾūdīs. Currently, the Hiptias are almost extinct in South Asia. In the time of the 49th Dāʿūdī dāʿī, Muḥammad Burhān al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Qādir Najm al-Dīn (1308–1323/1891–1906), communal rift and religious dissent became, once again, rampant in the Dāʾūdī Bohra community of South Asia. In 1315/1897, a young Dāʾūdī called ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Jīwājī, originally a merchant in Bombay, went to Nagpur claiming that he was in direct communication with the hidden Ṭayyibī imam and that he had been appointed as his ḥujja. He acquired

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some followers who became known as Mahdībāghwālās, or the Mahdībāgh Party, named after their residence in Nagpur, or as Atbāʿ-i Malak Badr.21 A small group of Mahdībāghwālās, who have had their own hereditary leadership, continue to live in their settlement in Nagpur. A splinter group within this party, known as Atbāʿ-i Malak Vakīl, believing that the dawr al-satr had already ended and that it was no longer necessary to observe the prescriptions of the sharīʿa in the now dawr al-kashf or ‘period of manifestation’, gave up praying and fasting along with other Islamic obligations. The present head of this Dāʾūdī subgroup, Malik Shahanshah Tayyibhai Razzak, has evidently even claimed the imamate for himself. Meanwhile, in the main Dāʾūdī Bohra community, the dāʿī muṭlaq has, for all practical purposes, become a substitute for the hidden imam. The dāʿī is now actually considered to be the hidden imam’s vicegerent or nāʾib. The dāʿī, appointed through the naṣṣ of his predecessor, is also considered to be maʿṣūm, sinless and infallible, and in possession of the required religious knowledge or ʿilm, which are all attributes reserved for the imam. He has supreme authority over every religious and secular aspect of the community. The hereditary position of dāʿī muṭlaq of the Sulaymānī Ṭayyibīs has remained in the hands of the same Makramī family of the Yemeni Ismaili tribe of Banū Yām. There have been no schisms in the Sulaymānī community. A substantial portion of medieval Ismaili literature has been preserved by the Ṭayyibī Ismailis of different branches, especially the Dāʾūdī Bohras who have significant collections of such Arabic manuscripts in Sūrat and Bombay, kept under the close watch of the dāʿī who does not allow scholarly access to this heritage. Meanwhile, the Nizārī Ismailis had been elaborating their own teachings. Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, the chief dāʿī of the Ismailis of the Saljūq lands, had increasingly drifted away from the Fatimid regime and the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo, which was then under the tight control of Badr al-Jamālī (d. 487/1094). By 483/1090, Ḥasan had established himself at the mountain stronghold of Alamūt, signalling the open revolt of the Persian Ismailis against the Saljūq Turks as well as the foundation of what was to become the Nizārī Ismaili state of Persia with its subsidiary in Syria. In the Nizārī-Mustaʿlī dispute of 487/1094, as noted, Ḥasan upheld Nizār’s cause and severed his relations completely with the Fatimid establishment. By this decision, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had effectively also founded the independent Nizārī daʿwa on behalf of the Nizārī imam, who was then inaccessible. Subsequently, Ḥasan never divulged the name of Nizār’s successor to the imamate. It is possible that the Ismailis of Persia remained uninformed for quite some time of Nizār’s tragic end and continued to await his reappearance. At any rate, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124) and his next two successors at Alamūt, Kiyā Buzurg-Umīd (518–532/1124–1138) and Muḥammad b. Buzurg-Umīd (532–557/1138–1162), did not name any of the imams after Nizār, who is known to have had male progeny. In fact, some of these Nizārids rose in revolt in Egypt against the later Fatimids. The early Nizārī Ismailis of the Alamūt period had, in effect, entered a period of concealment or dawr al-satr, in their own turbulent history, when their imam remained hidden and inaccessible. In the event, the name of Nizār himself continued to appear on coins minted at Alamūt for about 70 years after his death

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in 488/1095, while his progeny were blessed anonymously.22 Already in Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s time, many Nizārīs held the belief that a son or grandson of Nizār had been brought from Egypt to Alamūt in northern Persia and kept there secretly. And it was this hidden Nizārid who became the progenitor of the line of Nizārī imams who later emerged openly at Alamūt and took charge of the affairs of their community and state.23 Under the circumstances, Ḥasan and his next two immediate successors at Alamūt each in turn came to be regarded as the hidden imam’s full representative and living proof or ḥujja in the Nizārī community, acting as the custodian of the Nizārī daʿwa, until the time of the imam’s appearance. Indeed, in the earliest extant Nizārī treatise, written around 596/1200, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ is said to have predicted the imminent coming of the imām-qāʾim while he himself was given the rank of the ḥujja of the qāʾim.24 Later, the Nizārī Ismailis formally held that three generations of hidden imams, descendants of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir, had lived secretly at Alamūt during this dawr al-satr in their history, similarly to the period of concealment in the pre-Fatimid history of the Ismailis. The fourth lord of Alamūt, Ḥasan II, to whom the Nizārīs referred with the expression ʿalā dhikrihi’l-salām (on his mention be peace), succeeded to leadership in 557/1162 and soon after proclaimed the qiyāma or resurrection, initiating a new phase in the religious history of the early Nizārī community. On 17 Ramaḍān 559/8 August 1164, in the presence of the representatives of different Nizārī communities who had been invited to Alamūt, he delivered a sermon proclaiming the qiyāma (Persian, qiyāmat), the long-awaited Last Day when mankind would be judged and committed forever to Paradise or Hell.25 Relying heavily on Ismaili taʾwīl and earlier traditions, however, the qiyāma or the end of the world was interpreted symbolically and spiritually to mean the manifestation of the unveiled truth (ḥaqīqa) in the person of the Nizārī Ismaili imam. As such, this was a spiritual resurrection only for the Nizārīs who acknowledged the rightful imam of the time and were now capable of understanding the truth, the bāṭin or the esoteric essence of Islam. It was in this sense that Paradise was actualised for the Nizārīs in this world. On the other hand, the ‘outsiders’, all those who refused to acknowledge the Nizārī imam and were thus incapable of recognising the truth, were henceforth rendered spiritually non-existent. In line with the earlier Ismaili teachings, the imam had to be present at the time of the qiyāma, for it was precisely the eschatological role of the culminating imam, the qāʾim, to inaugurate the qiyāma. The imam initiating the qiyāma would be the qāʾim al-qiyāma, or the ‘lord of the resurrection’, a rank that in Ismaili thought had always been higher than that of an ordinary imam. The Nizārīs of the time of the resurrection thus expected to know the identity of the imam who had ushered in the qiyāma for his community. With the announcement of the qiyāma, an important change had indeed taken place in the status of the lord of Alamūt. In his proclamations, Ḥasan II had claimed to be God’s khalīfa, similar to the rank held by the Fatimid caliph al-Mustanṣir, who had also been the Ismaili imam. In other words, Ḥasan II himself had now claimed to be the imam, and indeed the imām-qāʾim, the son of an imam from the progeny of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir, though this had not been made publicly known earlier. Ḥasan II’s son and successor at Alamūt, Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad (561–607/1166–1210),

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explicitly claimed a particular Fatimid genealogy for his father and himself, which was generally accepted by the Nizārīs. At any rate, with the declaration of the qiyāma, the Nizārī imams, who had remained hidden from their followers during the preceding dawr al-satr, emerged openly. Ḥasan II and his next four successors as lords of Alamūt were all recognised as imams, descendants of Nizār. For almost seven decades, the Nizārīs had obeyed the imam’s chief representative or ḥujja while expecting his own appearance. This expectation was finally fulfilled by the declaration of the qiyāma. The salvation of the Nizārīs now depended on their recognition of the true spiritual reality of the Nizārī imam rather than merely observing the rituals specified by the sharīʿa. The qiyāma had thus inaugurated a new era in the religious history of the Nizārīs, who would henceforth have direct access to a manifest (ḥāḍir) imam. In his doctrinal elaboration of the qiyāma, Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad also made every Nizārī imam potentially a qāʾim, capable of inaugurating a partial era of qiyāma. It was later explained that the qiyāma was not necessarily a final eschatological event in the history of mankind, but a transitory condition of life, when the unveiled truth would be made known to all. And the condition of qiyāma could, in principle, be granted to or withheld from mankind or the elite, namely, the Nizārīs, at any time, because every imam was potentially also an imām-qāʾim.26 However, in the current cycle of human history, it was still expected, as with the early Ismailis, that full qiyāma, or the Great Resurrection (qiyāmat-i qiyāmāt), would occur at the end of the final millennial era after Adam – that is, at the end of the sixth era initiated by the Prophet Muḥammad. The Great Resurrection would inaugurate the final, seventh era, the culmination of the ages in the sacred history of mankind. In 654/1256, the Mongol hordes succeeded, with some difficulty, in uprooting the Nizārī Ismaili state of Persia. Alamūt and many other castles were demolished by the Mongols, who also massacred large numbers of Nizārīs. Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, the eighth and final lord of Alamūt who had ruled for exactly one year, was murdered in 655/1257 by the Mongols in Mongolia, where he had gone to visit the Great Khan. Having lost their political prominence, the Nizārīs henceforth lived secretly in numerous scattered communities in Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. These Nizārī communities developed independently of one another, while resorting to the strict observance of taqiyya, adopting different external guises to protect themselves. The centralised daʿwa organisation and direct leadership of the Nizārī imams also disappeared in the wake of the Mongol debacle. However, the Nizārī imamate survived as a group of dignitaries had managed to hide Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh’s son, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, who succeeded to the imamate in 655/1257. Subsequently, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad was taken to Ādharbāyjān in north-western Persia, where he and his immediate successors to the imamate lived in hiding. The first two centuries after the fall of Alamūt represent the most obscure period in Nizārī history, when the imams were once again inaccessible to their followers, who adopted Sunni, Sufi and other guises to protect themselves against

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persecution. Furthermore, soon after Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad’s death around 710/1310, an obscure dispute over his succession split the line of the Nizārī imams and their followers into the rival Qāsim-Shāhī and Muḥammad-Shāhī (or Muʾminī) branches. The Muḥammad-Shāhī imams initially seem to have acquired large followings in northern Persia, Badakhshān and Syria. By the tenth/sixteenth century, however, they were already being overshadowed by the expanding Qāsim-Shāhī daʿwa, which was revived during the so-called Anjudān period of Nizārī history. Shāh Ṭāhir Ḥusaynī, the most prominent imam of the Muḥammad-Shāhī line, adopted the guise of Twelver Shiʿism as a taqiyya tactic in Safawid Persia, where that form of Shiʿism had become the official religion of the realm. Nevertheless, he was obliged to flee to India in 926/1520 to escape persecution at the hands of the Safawids and their Twelver jurists, who accused the imam of teaching ‘heretical’ doctrines. Shāh Ṭāhir eventually joined the entourage of Burhān Niz.ām Shāh at Ahmadnagar in the Deccan. This Nizārī imam who effectively preached a form of Twelver Shiʿism had his greatest success in the Deccan when Burhān Niz.ām Shāh, shortly after his own conversion, proclaimed Twelver Shiʿism as the official religion of the Niz.ām-Shāhī state in 944/1537. After Shāh Ṭāhir’s death around 956/1549, the imamate of the Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs was handed down through his progeny. These imams, all practising taqiyya under the cover of Twelver Shiʿism, continued to live in India, while their following in Persia, Central Asia and India either disintegrated or was rapidly absorbed into the dominant neighbouring Twelver communities; many integrated into the expanding Qāsim-Shāhī communities of the same localities.The Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs survived only in Syria, under the Ottomans. In other words, living secretly as Ismailis under the guise of Ithnāʿasharī Shiʿism eventually resulted in the loss of the distinctive Nizārī religious identity of these sectarians and their imams. Amīr Muḥammad al-Bāqir was the 40th and the last known imam of the Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs; he lived in Awrangabad and had his last contact with his followers in Syria in 1210/1796. At present, the only known Muḥammad-Shāhī (Muʾminī) Nizārī community is located in Syria. Centred in Maṣyāf and Qadmūs and numbering around 15,000, these Nizārīs, locally known as the Jaʿfariyya, are still awaiting the reappearance of their last known hidden imam, Amīr Muḥammad al-Bāqir, as the Mahdi.27 Meanwhile, the much more successful Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārī imams had emerged in the village of Anjudān in central Persia around the middle of the ninth/­fifteenth century. While disguising themselves as Sufi pīrs, they initiated the Anjudān revival in the Nizārī daʿwa and promoted literary activities that by the time of Shāh Nizār (d. 1134/1722), the 40th imam of this line, had achieved great results, especially in Central Asia and South Asia. The imamate in this Nizārī line was handed down regularly and manifestly, from generation to generation, without any internal dissent. By the early thirteenth/nineteenth century, the Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārī imams, who had continued to live in Persia while dissimulating as Twelver Shiʿis, had acquired some political prominence. The 46th imam of this line, Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh, was appointed (like his grandfather Sayyid Abu’l-Ḥasan Kahakī) to the governorship of the Province of Kirmān by the Qājār monarch of Persia; he was also

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given the honorific title of Āghā Khān (Aga Khan), meaning lord and master. This title has remained a hereditary title among the successors of Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh (d. 1298/1881), who left Persia in 1841 after prolonged military confrontations with the Qājār establishment and eventually settled permanently in Bombay. The last two current (ḥāḍir) imams of this branch of Nizārī Ismailism, internationally known as the Aga Khans, have led their global community in a highly enlightened and progressive manner.28 Thus, all branches of Ismaili Shiʿism have, at one time or another, had ‘hidden imams’, some of whom were also expected to reappear as the Mahdi or qāʾim. In fact, the eschatological figure of the Mahdi occupied a central position in the teachings of the early Ismailis. In more recent centuries, for the Ṭayyibīs of all factions (Dāʾūdī, Sulaymānī and ʿAlawī), their imams have continued to remain hidden (mastūr), and the Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs of Syria are still awaiting the return of their last known imam (perhaps as the Mahdi). On the other hand, for the majoritarian Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārī community, the imamate has been traced down in an uninterrupted and manifest fashion, with their present 49th imam, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, actually counting as the seventh imam of the seventh heptad of such imams in the era of Islam.

Notes * This chapter was originally published in B. D. Craig, ed., Ismaili and Fatimid Studies in

Honor of Paul E. Walker (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2010), pp. 1–22. 1 See J. Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, trans. A. and R. Hamori (Princeton, 1981), pp. 192–202, 211–212; H. Corbin, ‘L’imam caché et la rénovation de l’homme en théologie Shīʿite’, Eranos Jahrbuch, 28 (1959), pp. 47–87; idem, ‘Au pays de l’imam caché’, Eranos Jahrbuch, 32 (1963), pp. 31–87; idem, History of Islamic Philosophy, trans. L. Sherrard (London, 1993), pp. 68–74; M. A. Amir-Moezzi, La religion discrète. Croyances et pratiques spirituelles dans l’Islam Shīʿite (Paris, 2006), pp. 297–315, 317ff.; and W. Madelung, ‘al-Mahdī’, EIR, vol. 5, pp. 1230–1238. 2 E. Kohlberg, ‘From Imāmiyya to Ithnā-ʿashariyya’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 39 (1976), pp. 521–534, reprinted in his Belief and Law in Imāmī Shīʿism (Aldershot, 1991), article XIV; A. A. Sachedina, Islamic Messianism: the Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shiʿism (Albany, NY, 1981), pp. 39–179; J. M. Hussain, The Occultation of the Twelfth Imam: A Historical Background (London, 1982), pp. 56–78; M. Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shiʿism (New Haven, CT, 1985), pp. 161–171; H. Halm, Shiʿism, trans. J. Watson and M. Hill (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 28–44; and M. A. Amir-Moezzi, ‘Islam in Iran. viii. The Concept of Mahdi in Twelver Shiʿism’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 14, pp. 136–143. 3 Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1931), pp. 57–58; Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qummī, Kitāb al-maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran, 1963), pp. 80–81, 83; ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl al-Ashʿarī, Kitāb maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul, 1929–1930), pp. 26–27; ʿAbd al-Qāhir b. Ṭāhir al-Baghdādī, al-Farq bayn ­al-firaq, ed. M. Badr (Cairo, 1928/1910), pp. 46–47; and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. ʿA. M. al-Wakīl (Cairo, 1387/1968), vol. 1, pp. 26–27, 167–168. 4 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, pp. 61–64, and al-Qummī, al-Maqālāt, pp. 83–86. 5 ʿImād al-Dīn Idrīs b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, vol. 4, ed. M. al-Sāghirjī (London and Damascus, 2007), pp. 511–527, 565–577; Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar, vol. 6, ed.

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Ṣ. al-Munajjid (Cairo, 1961), pp. 44–156; and Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz. al-ḥunafāʾ, ed. J. al-Shayyāl and Muḥammad Ḥ. M. Aḥmad (Cairo, 1387–1393/ 1967–1973), vol. 1, pp. 151–201. 6 S. M. Stern, ‘Ismāʿīlīs and Qarmaṭians’, in L’élaboration de l’Islam, ed. C. Cahen (Paris, 1961), pp. 99–108, reprinted in his Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism ( Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 289–298; also in E. Kohlberg, ed., Shiʿism (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 267–276, and W. Madelung, ‘Das Imamat in der frühen ismailitischen Lehre’, Der Islam, 37 (1961), pp. 43–65. 7 See Ḥ. F. al-Hamdānī, ed., On the Genealogy of Fatimid Caliphs (Cairo, 1958), and A. Hamdani and F. de Blois, ‘A Re-Examination of al-Mahdī’s Letter to the Yemenites on the Genealogy of the Fatimid Caliphs’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1983), pp. 173–207. 8 Al-Hamdānī, On the Genealogy, text pp. 12–13, and F. Daftary, ‘A Major Schism in the Early Ismāʿīlī Movement’, Studia Islamica, 77 (1993), pp. 123–139, reprinted in his Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London, 2005), pp. 45–61. 9 W. Madelung, ‘The Fatimids and the Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 21–34, 37–39, 41–42, 46–51, 54. 10 Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, ed. R. Strothmann (London, etc., 1952), pp. 14ff., 103–104, 109–110, 113–114, 132–133, 143, 169–170; Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt al-nubuwwāt, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1966), pp. 181–193; Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 51ff., 82–90; H. Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London, 1983), pp. 1–58; H. Halm, Kosmologie und Heilslehre der frühen Ismāʿīlīya (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 18–37; P. E. Walker, ‘Eternal Cosmos and the Womb of History: Time in Early Ismaili Thought’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9 (1978), pp. 355–366, reprinted in his Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine (Aldershot, 2008), article XII, and F. Daftary, ‘Cyclical Time and Sacred History in Medieval Ismaili Thought’, and in K. D’hulster and J. Van Steenbergen, ed., Continuity and Change in the Realms of Islam: Studies in Honour of Professor Urbain Vermeulen (Leuven, 2008), pp. 151–158. 11 See, for example, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, Asās al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Beirut, 1960), pp. 316–317, 337–338, 351, and his Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim, ed. M. Ḥ. al-Aʿz.amī (Cairo, 1967–1972), vol. 1, pp. 235, 269; vol. 3, pp. 109, 130, 222–223, and Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 84–85. See also P. E. Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 134–142. 12 The teachings attributed to al-Muʿizz are contained in Adʿiyat al-ayyām al-sabʿa, ed. I. K. Poonawala (Beirut, 2006), and in Taʾwīl al-sharīʿa, still in manuscript form. See also ʿImād al-Dīn Idrīs b. al-Ḥasan, Zahr al-maʿānī, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1411/1991), pp. 207–221; Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 86–101; and F. Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2007), pp. 163–167. 13 See al-Kirmānī’s al-Maṣābīḥ fī ithbāt al-imāma, ed. and trans. P. E. Walker as Master of the Age: An Islamic Treatise on the Necessity of the Imamate (London, 2007). See also I. K. Poonawala, ‘Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani and the Proto-Druze’, Journal of Druze Studies, 1 (2000), pp. 71–94. 14 For further details, see D. R. W. Bryer, ‘The Origins of the Druze Religion’, Der Islam, 52 (1975), pp. 47–84, 239–262; 53 (1976), pp. 5–27; Madelung, ‘Das Imamat’, pp. 114–127; H. Halm, Die Kalifen von Kairo. Die Fatimiden in Ägypten 973–1074 (Munich, 2003), pp. 281–297; and M. G. S. Hodgson, ‘Durūz’, EI2, vol. 2, pp. 631–634. 15 Al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, al-Majālis al-Muʾayyadiyya, ed. M. Ghālib (Beirut, 1974–1984), vol. 1, p. 363. 16 Al-Ṣūrī, al-Qaṣīda al-Ṣūriyya, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir (Damascus, 1955), pp. 41–71. See also ʿAbd al-Ḥākim b. Wahb al-Malījī, al-Majālis al-Mustanṣiriyya, ed. M. K. Ḥusayn (Cairo, 1947), pp. 30–31, 32, 36–37, 43–47, 117. 17 H. Sauvaire and S. Lane-Poole, ‘The Name of the Twelfth Imam on the Coinage of Egypt’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series 7 (1875), pp. 140–151; P. Balog, ‘Quatre dinars du Khalife Fatimide al-Mountazar li-Amr-Illah (525–526 A. H.)’, Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte, 33 (1950–1951), pp. 375–378; and G. C. Miles, Fāṭimid Coins in the Collections of the University Museum, Philadelphia, and American Numismatic Society

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(New York, 1951), pp. 44–45. See also M. Jungfleisch, ‘Jetons (ou poids?) en verre de l’Imam El Montazer’, Bulletin de l’Institut de l’Égypte, 33 (1951), pp. 359–374, describing Fatimid glass weights bearing inscriptions in the name of the hidden and the expected imam. 18 Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden, 1908), pp. 203, 229, 242ff., 262, 270, 272–273, 295–296, 302, 308; Ibn Z.āfir, Akhbār al-duwal al-munqaṭiʿa, ed. A. Ferré (Cairo, 1972), pp. 94–101; Ibn Muyassar, Akhbār Miṣr, ed. A. F. Sayyid (Cairo, 1981), pp. 113–141; Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz, vol. 6, pp. 506–556; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz., vol. 3, pp. 135–192; and Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa’lQāhira (Cairo, 1348–1392/1929–1972), vol. 5, pp. 237–287. 19 ʿImād al-Dīn Idrīs b. al-Ḥasan, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, vol. 7, ed. Ayman F. Sayyid, with summary English trans. by P. E. Walker and M. A. Pomerantz, as The Fatimids and their Successors in Yaman (London, 2002), text pp. 247–249, 253–257, 261, 265–271. 20 Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 261–269, 276–282. 21 Abdul Husain, Gulzare Daudi for the Bohras of India (Ahmedabad, 1920), pp. 49–53; J. A. Hollister, The Shiʿa of India (London, 1953), pp. 295–296; and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 288–289. 22 See G. C. Miles, ‘Coins of the Assassins of Alamūt’, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 3 (1972), pp. 155–162, and H. Hamdan and A. Vardanyan, ‘Ismaili Coins from the Alamut Period’, in P. Willey, Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria (London, 2005), pp. 288–307. 23 ʿAṭā Malik Juwaynī, Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushā, ed. M. Qazwīnī (Leiden, 1912–1937), vol. 3, pp. 180–181, 231–237; English trans., The History of the World Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Manchester, 1958), vol. 2, pp. 663, 691–695; Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i Ismāʿīliyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh and M. Mudarissī Zanjānī (Tehran, 1338/1959), pp. 79, 166–168; and Abu’l-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī Kāshānī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh: bakhsh-i Fāṭimiyān va Nizāriyān (2nd ed., Tehran, 1366/1987), pp. 115, 202–204. 24 Haft bāb-i Bābā Sayyidnā, ed. W. Ivanow, in his Two Early Ismaili Treatises (Bombay, 1933), pp. 21–22; English translation in M. G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins (The Hague, 1955), pp. 301–302. 25 Juwaynī, Taʾrīkh, vol. 3, pp. 225–230, 237–239; trans. Boyle, vol. 2, pp. 688–691, 695–697; Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, pp. 164–166, 168–169; and Kashānī, Zubdat al-tawārīkh, pp. 201–202, 204. See also Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa-yi taslīm, ed. and trans. S. J. Badakhchani as Paradise of Submission: A Medieval Treatise on Ismaili Thought (London, 2005), text pp. 81–83, 109–110, 134–136, 169–198; Hodgson, Order, pp. 160–180; and Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, pp. 358–367. 26 Al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa, text pp. 80, 82, 134–135, 146, 156–159, 175–176, 190, 192–193, 197– 198; Hodgson, Order, pp. 225–238; C. Jambet, ‘A Philosophical Commentary’, in al-Ṭūsī, Rawḍa, pp. 178–242, and F. Daftary, ‘Satr’, EI2, vol. 12, Supplement, pp. 712–713. 27 Shaykh Sulaymān b. Ḥaydar, al-Qaṣīda al-Sulaymāniyya, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir, in his Murājaʿāt Ismāʿīliyya (Beirut, 1415/1994), pp. 5–20; also in Abū Firās al-Maynaqī, Risālat al-tarātīb al-sabʿa, ed. ʿĀ. Tāmir, with French trans. by Y. Marquet, as L’épître des sept degrés (Beirut, 2002), text pp. 131–147, translation pp. 249–270; W. Ivanow, ‘A Forgotten Branch of the Ismailis’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1938), pp. 57–79; ʿĀ. Tāmir, ‘Furūʿ alshajara al-Ismāʿīliyya al-Imāmiyya’, al-Mashriq, 51 (1957), pp. 581–612; F. Daftary, ‘Shāh Ṭāhir and Nizārī Ismaili Disguises’, in T. Lawson, ed., Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, Essays in Honour of Hermann Landolt (London, 2005), pp. 395–406. 28 For more details, see F. Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 170–185, 193–209.

17 Religious identity, ­dissimulation and assimilation The Ismaili experience

The Shiʿa appeared on the historical stage in the formative period of Islam with their own distinct identity and ideas on religious authority and leadership revolving around the sanctity of the Prophet Muhammad’s family or the ahl al-bayt.* Soon after the tragedy of Karbalaʾ, where al-Husayn b. ʿAli, the Shiʿi imam and the Prophet’s grandson, and his small band of companions were massacred by an Umayyad army in 61/680, the Shiʿa themselves split into different groups, each one recognising a different line of ʿAlids, descendants of ʿAli b. Abi Talib (d. 40/661), the Prophet’s cousin, son-in-law and the first Shiʿi imam, or other members of the then broadly defined ahl al-bayt, as their spiritual leaders or imams. Subsequently, Shiʿism evolved in terms of two main branches, designated as the Kaysaniyya and the Imamiyya, each comprising a number of sects and splinter groups. However, both of these Shiʿi branches represented minority positions within the Islamic community compared to groups later collectively designated as Sunnis. The Kaysanis, representing the politically active wing of Shiʿism, were gradually absorbed into the Abbasid movement that succeeded in supplanting the Umayyads and installing the Abbasids to the caliphate in 132/750. It was in the aftermath of the establishment of Abbasid rule that the moderate Imami branch of Shiʿism, the common heritage of the Twelver (Ithnaʿashari) and Ismaili Shiʿis, acquired its prominence during the imamate of Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, while yet another politically active Shiʿi tradition found expression in Zaydi Shiʿism. All Shiʿi groups, even those belonging to the quiescent Imami branch, were severely persecuted under the Umayyads. During that period in the history of early Shiʿism, numerous ill-organised revolts launched by various Kaysani groups, and the ghulat, the most extremist ones among them, were equally suppressed in Kufa (the cradle of Shiʿism) and elsewhere. The persecution of the Shiʿa continued unabated under the Abbasids, who despite their Shiʿi origins championed the cause of Sunni Islam after establishing their own caliphate.

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In the aftermath of numerous defeats and tragic events in the history of early Shiʿism, the principle of taqiyya, precautionary concealment or dissimulation of one’s true religious identity and beliefs under adverse circumstances that endangered one’s life or property, was articulated by the imams of the Imami Shiʿis. More specifically, Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (d. 114/732) is credited with introducing this principle (Lalani 2000: 88–91). Imam al-Baqir and his son and successor Jaʿfar al-Sadiq were actually responsible for endowing Imami Shiʿism with a distinct identity and rituals, also adopting an apolitical strategy regarding the Umayyad and Abbasid rulers who held the actual reins of power in the Islamic community. The principle of taqiyya, which also allowed for dispensation from the requirements of religious compulsion and adoption of any type of religious disguise, became central to the Imami Shiʿi teachings. Imam al-Sadiq refined the principle of taqiyya and, in fact, made it an absolute article of faith and an integral part of the Imami Shiʿi creed with its central doctrine of the imamate (al-Nawbakhti 1931: 56–57, ­al-Qummi 1963: 78–79, al-Kulayni 1968: vol. 2, 217–226, al-Nuʿman 2002: vol. 1, 77, 136, 201, Tabatabaʾi 1975: 223–225, Sobhani 2001: 150–154, Kohlberg 1975: 395–402). Subsequently, taqiyya was variously adopted as a prudential or dissimulation tactic by both the moderate Twelvers and the politically active Ismailis with differing consequences. Clearly, it must have been dangerous for the early Shiʿi imams and their followers to openly propagate their beliefs and to publicly hold that certain individuals, the Shiʿi imams, other than the ruling caliphs, were the divinely appointed spiritual guides of the Muslims. The practice of taqiyya was thus meant to protect the Imami Shiʿis from persecution, and serve in the preservation of their religious identity and very existence. On the other hand, the Zaydis, who essentially retained the politically militant yet religiously moderate attitude prevailing among the early Kufan Shiʿa, elaborated a doctrine of the imamate that clearly distinguished them from Imami Shiʿism and its two subsequent Twelver and Ismaili branches. The Zaydis did not even recognise a hereditary line of ʿAlid imams, as in the case of the Imamis, though the later Zaydi imams came to be restricted to Fatimid ʿAlids, descendants of ʿAli and his spouse Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. According to Zaydi doctrine, if a person wanted to be recognised as an imam, he would have to assert his claims publicly with sword in hand if necessary, in addition to possessing the required religious knowledge or ʿilm. Due to their emphasis on activism, the observance of taqiyya was thus alien to Zaydi teachings which had been largely formulated by the fourth/tenth century. In theory, taqiyya tactics could take different forms, ranging from the temporary or short-term concealment of one’s religious identity or belief to long-term dissimulation and disguises under various other religious identities (see Kohlberg 1995: 345–379). Traditionally, the Imami Shiʿis resorted to short-term or temporary taqiyya practices in response to immediate or specific threats without compromising or losing their true identity. However, as we shall see, the long-term adoption of taqiyya under Sunni, Twelver Shiʿi or Hindu disguises by the later Nizari Ismailis would lead to lasting consequences in terms of their religious identity. The latter

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phenomenon has not been sufficiently investigated other than some cultural and social anthropological case studies in the Indian context conducted by DominiqueSila Khan and a few other modern scholars. It is undeniable that taqiyya practices of the dissimulation type in any form and for extended periods, covering several generations, would have irrevocable influences on the traditions and on the very religious identity of the dissimulating group. In time, such influences may manifest themselves in different forms, ranging from total acculturation or full assimilation of the dissimulating group in a particular locality into a dominant community or religious tradition chosen initially as a dissimulating cover, to various degrees of interfacing with ‘other’ traditions without the actual loss of the specific original identity of the dissimulating group. The very concept of ‘acculturation’ has been used by cultural anthropologists to explain how ‘composite’ forms of religion could emerge through mutual exchanges and influences occurring in a more or less spontaneous manner, while others have referred to the complex phenomena in question as ‘syncretistic’ or ‘liminal’ (Khan 2004: 30–93). There are also those cases of claims and counterclaims put forth by the Twelvers and Ismailis on the true religious affiliation of certain eminent individuals, such as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 672/1274), who are said to have temporarily practised taqiyya. In 148/765, on the death of Imam Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, who had successfully consolidated Imami Shiʿism on a quiescent basis, his following split into several groups. One group traced the imamate in the progeny of al-Sadiq’s son Musa al-Kazim (d. 183/799) and recognised five more imams. This community, acknowledging a line of 12 imams ending with Muhammad al-Mahdi, who is believed to have gone into occultation in 260/874 and whose emergence is still awaited, became designated in due course as Ithnaʿashari or Twelver. On the other hand, two groups of the Imami Shiʿis now traced the imamate in the progeny of Ismaʿil b. Jaʿfar ­al-Sadiq and his son Muhammad b. Ismaʿil, and they became known as Ismaili. From early on, the central leaders of the Ismailis organised a revolutionary movement for uprooting the Abbasids and installing the Ismaili imam to the caliphate. However, in order to protect themselves against Abbasid persecution, the central leaders of the early Ismaili movement practised taqiyya and closely guarded their identity. During this so-called dawr al-satr or period of concealment in early Ismailism when the Ismaili imams remained hidden, they adopted codenames, such as Maymun (the Fortunate One) and Saʿid (the Happy One), rather than using their real names; furthermore, they did not openly claim the Ismaili imamate. Instead, they assumed the cover of being the hujja, proof or chief representative, of the absent Ismaili imam, Muhammad b. Ismaʿil, who had gone into hiding and whose reappearance as the Mahdi was then expected. Organising a revolutionary movement in the name of a hidden imam, who could not be pursued by Abbasid agents, while his chief representatives also maintained utter secrecy in their own operations, must have had obvious advantages. And this concealment tactic was retained by the central leaders of the early Ismailis until 286/899 when the then leader of the movement, ʿAbd Allah ­al-Mahdi (the future founder of the Fatimid dynasty), felt secure enough to abandon the taqiyya measures of his predecessors and openly claim the

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i­mamate (al-Hamdani 1958: 9–14, Daftary 1993: 123–139). This was the earliest and simplest form of taqiyya-related concealment adopted by the Ismailis, a form that contributed significantly to the success of the early Ismailis without any adverse or lasting consequences in terms of their religious identity. In 297/909, the early Ismaili daʿwa or mission led to the foundation of the Fatimid state, which represented a new Shiʿi caliphate under the leadership of the Ismaili imams. The Ismailis had now come into possession of an important state that lasted until 567/1171. The Fatimid Ismaili caliph-imams never abandoned their aspirations for ruling over the entire Muslim community. As a result, they retained the Ismaili daʿwa organisation. The daʿwa activities, discharged by a hierarchy of daʿis, were propagated openly within the Fatimid state, where the Ismailis could practise their faith freely for the first time without fear of persecution. However, the success of the Ismaili daʿwa in Fatimid dominions was both limited and transitory, as Shiʿism never acquired any deep roots in North Africa and Egypt. In fact, the Ismailis remained a minority in Fatimid Egypt with its negligible Shiʿi population. Strangely, it was in non-Fatimid territories, the so-called jazaʾir or islands of the daʿwa, scattered from Central Asia and Persia to Yemen and which were already well acquainted with Shiʿi traditions, that Ismailism achieved its lasting success (Daftary 1999: 29–43). In these regions, outside the dominions of the Fatimid state, daʿwa activities were undertaken clandestinely and the Ismaili daʿis such as Abu Yaʿqub al-Sijistani (d. after 361/971), Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. after 411/1020) and Nasir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070), were obliged to observe strict secrecy in their activities. Despite their taqiyya practices, however, the Ismaili daʿis and their followers were periodically subject to persecution by the Abbasids, Saljuqs, Samanids and other Sunni rulers of the central and eastern lands of Islam, while the Ismailis of Yemen had prolonged conflicts with their Sunni and Zaydi neighbours. On the death of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustansir in 487/1094, the Ismaili daʿwa and community permanently split into rival Mustaʿlian and Nizari factions, named after al-Mustansir’s sons al-Musta‘li and Nizar who had both claimed to be his successor. The Musta‘lian Ismailis recognised al-Mustaʿli and the later Fatimids as their imams, while the Nizaris traced the imamate in the progeny of Nizar who was executed in Cairo in 488/1095 after the failure of his revolt to assert his rights. The Nizari Ismailis soon found their permanent stronghold in Persia where the daʿi Hasan-i Sabbah had already established himself at the fortress of Alamut in 483/1090, marking the foundation of what was to become the Nizari Ismaili state of Persia with a subsidiary in Syria. Hasan-i Sabbah (d. 518/1124) organised the Persian Ismailis into a revolutionary movement against the ardently Sunni Saljuq Turks whose alien rule was detested by Persians of all social classes. For 166 years, Hasan and his seven successors as lords of Alamut ruled over the Nizari state, which was finally uprooted by the all-conquering Mongols in 654/1256. Within the territories of this state, the Nizaris were once again free to practise their faith, while elsewhere they continued to hide their religious identity. The Nizari imamate too emerged openly at Alamut when the Nizaris acknowledged the fourth lord of

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­ lamut Hasan II (557–561/1162–1166) and his successors as their imams, descendA ants of Nizar b. al-Mustansir. The Nizari Ismaili state in Persia was a particular type of principality, carved out in the midst of the hostile Saljuq dominions. The Nizaris were thus isolated in their fortress communities and almost constantly struggled to survive. It was under such circumstances that the sixth lord of Alamut, Jalal al-Din Hasan (607–618/1210– 1221), attempted a daring rapprochement with the Abbasid caliph and the Sunni establishment, and ordered his followers to observe the shariʿa in its Sunni form. Jalal al-Din did his utmost to convince the outside world of his new policy and to end the isolation of his community. In 608/1211, the Abbasid caliph al-Nasir acknowledged the Nizari imam’s rapprochement with Sunni Islam and issued a decree to that effect ( Juwayni 1958: vol. 2, 699–704, Rashid al-Din 1959: 174–178). Jalal al-Din Hasan’s new policy had obvious advantages for the Nizaris, who had been marginalised as ‘heretics’ for several decades. He changed all that by aligning himself with the spiritual head of Sunni Islam and situating his community at the very heart of contemporary Muslim affairs. Above all else, he now won territorial security for his state as well as peace for his community. It is a significant point to be noted that all Nizaris accepted Jalal al-Din’s reform without any opposition, regarding him as the imam who guided his community and contextualised the interpretation of the shariʿa as he saw fit. The Nizaris evidently viewed their imam’s declaration as an application of taqiyya. The observance of taqiyya could be taken by the Nizaris to imply any type of accommodation to the outside world as deemed necessary by their infallible ‘imam of the time’ (Daftary 2007: 375–377). However, the apparent adoption of Sunni practices did not have any long-term effects on Nizari traditions as the Nizaris soon dispensed with the Sunni shariʿa and reverted back to their own teachings in the imamate of Jalal al-Din Hasan’s son and successor ʿAlaʾ al-Din Muhammad (618–653/1221–1255). In the imamate of ʿAlaʾ al-Din Muhammad, the intellectual life of the Nizari community received a special impetus from the continuing influx of outside scholars who were then fleeing the Mongol invasions and taking refuge in Nizari strongholds, especially in Quhistan in southern Khurasan. These scholars availed themselves of the Nizari patronage of learning and their libraries. Several of the Nizari fortresses, including Alamut, thus became flourishing centres of intellectual activity. Foremost among such scholars, mention may be made of Nasir al-Din Muhammad al-Tusi who spent some three decades in the Nizari fortresses, from around 624/1227 until the collapse of the Nizari state. There is much controversy surrounding al-Tusi’s religious affiliation and Ismaili connection. The medieval Twelver Shiʿi scholars, who considered al-Tusi one of their co-religionists, persistently denied that he had ever converted to Ismailism, also rejecting the authenticity of the Ismaili treatises, such as the Rawdat al-taslim, attributed to him and preserved by the Nizaris. Later Twelver scholars, including his modern Persian biographers, such as M.T. Mudarris Radavi and M. Mudarrisi Zanjani, argue that al-Tusi, observing taqiyya as a Twelver Imami Shiʿi, was obliged to compose these Ismaili works for fear of his life during his captivity in the Nizari

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strongholds of Persia. There is, however, no reason to doubt the authenticity of his spiritual autobiography, the Sayr va suluk (al-Tusi 1998: 3–7, 11–12, 17–18, 20–21), in which al-Tusi explains how he eventually came to realise the necessity of following an infallible teacher (muʿallim) who would guide reason to its perfection. Hence, he joined the Ismailis, or the ahl-i taʿlim, and recognised their imam. Taking into account the circumstances of al-Tusi’s career, his contribution to the Ismaili thought of the period, his long and productive stay among the Nizaris, and the latter’s generally liberal policy towards non-Ismaili scholars (Twelvers, Sunnis, Jews) living with them, it is safe to state that al-Tusi willingly embraced Ismaili Shiʿism sometime during his long association with the Nizaris. However, he did revert to Twelver Shiʿism on joining the Mongols, whose patronage he then sought, and wrote several theological treatises supporting Twelver views, and at the same time, attempted to distance himself from his Ismaili past (Dabashi 1996: 231–245, Daftary 2000: 59–67). The Mongols succeeded, with some difficulty, in seizing the various Nizari strongholds in Persia; and the surrender of Alamut in 654/1256 signalled the demise of the Nizari Ismaili state and the permanent loss of the Nizaris’ political prominence. The Mongols also massacred large numbers of Nizaris in Persia. However, there were Persian Nizaris who survived the downfall of their state and network of mountain strongholds. Many Persian Nizaris now migrated to adjacent lands in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Sind, where Ismaili communities had existed outside of the territories of the Nizari state. Other Nizari groups, isolated in remote places or in towns outside of their traditional territories in Persia, soon either disintegrated or were assimilated fully into the religiously dominant Sunni communities of their milieu. It was under such circumstances that scattered Nizari communities outside Syria resorted once again to the widespread and strict observance of taqiyya. It is important to bear in mind that the observance of taqiyya in this early post-Alamut period in Nizari history, marked by an absence of a viable central leadership organisation, was not imposed on the community. Deeply rooted in their earlier Imami teachings and communal practices, it was a measure adopted by different Nizari groups independently of one another and on their own initiative, as necessitated by the exigencies of the time. The Nizaris were rather experienced in adopting different external guises as required to safeguard themselves. For a short while during the Alamut period of their history, as noted, they had even adopted the shariʿa in its Sunni form. Many Nizari groups in the eastern Iranian world, where Sunni Islam prevailed, now disguised themselves once again as Sunnis. Meanwhile, Imam Shams al-Din Muhammad, son and successor of the last lord of Alamut Rukn al-Din Khurshah (d. 655/1257), had gone into hiding. He and his immediate successors lived secretly in different localities in Persia without much contact with their followers. Furthermore, around 710/1310, a little-known dispute over Shams al-Din Muhammad’s succession split the line of the Nizari imams and their followings into what became designated as the Qasim-Shahi and Muhammad-Shahi (or Muʾmini) branches. The seat of the Muhammad-Shahi line

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of Nizari imams was transferred to India in the tenth/sixteenth century, and, as we shall see, by the end of the twelfth/eighteenth century this line became extinct. On the other hand, the Qasim-Shahi branch has persisted down to our times, with their contemporary imams known as the Aga Khans. It was in early post-Alamut times that the Persian-speaking Nizaris, as part of their taqiyya practices, disguised themselves under the mantle of Sufism, without actually establishing formal affiliations with any of the Sufi orders or tariqas then spreading throughout Persia and Central Asia. The origins and early development of this phenomenon remain rather obscure. But the practice soon gained wide currency among the Nizaris of different regions in the Iranian world and India. The earliest recorded manifestation of it is found in the versified writings of the Nizari poet Hakim Saʿd al-Din b. Shams al-Din, better known as Nizari Quhistani (d. 720/1320). He may have been the very first post-Alamut Nizari author to have chosen the poetic and Sufi forms of expression for concealing Ismaili ideas, a model emulated widely by many later Nizari authors in Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia (Daftary 2007: 410–422, Lewisohn 2003: 229–251). Nizari Quhistani is the first Nizari Ismaili to use Sufi terminology such as pir and murshid, terms used by Sufis in reference to their spiritual guide, and murid, the guide’s disciple. In due course, these terms were adopted and used widely by the Nizaris; they are still commonly used by the Nizaris who also use the term tariqa for their particular interpretation of Islam. It was in the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century that the Qasim-Shahi Nizari imams emerged in the village of Anjudan, in central Persia, posing as Sufi pirs. By that time, a type of coalescence between Persian Nizari Ismailism and Sufism was well established. While Nizari Ismailism in Persia had become increasingly infused with Sufi teachings and terminology, the Sufis themselves had begun to use ideas that were more widely ascribed to the Ismailis. As a part of this coalescence, the Nizari Ismailis now began to adopt Sufi ways of life even externally. Thus, the Nizari imams lived clandestinely as Sufi pirs, with names like Shah Qalandar, while their followers adopted the typically Sufi title of murid or disciple. The adoption of a Sufi exterior by the Nizaris might not have been so readily possible if these two esoteric traditions in Islam had not had common doctrinal grounds. It may also be added that Twelver Shiʿism developed its own rapport with Sufism in Persia during this period. At any rate, owing to their close relations with Sufism, the Persian-speaking Nizaris have regarded some of the greatest mystic poets of Persia as their co-religionists and selections of their works have been preserved in the private libraries of the Nizaris of Persia and Badakhshan, now divided between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Amongst such poets, mention may be made of Sanaʾi, Farid al-Din ʿAttar (Landolt 2006: 3–26) and Jalal al-Din Rumi. With their emergence at Anjudan, the Qasim-Shahi Nizari imams initiated a revival in their daʿwa activities while still hiding their identity. They reorganised and reinvigorated the daʿwa not only to win new converts but also to reassert their central authority over the various Nizari communities, especially those situated in Central Asia and India. The Anjudan period in Nizari history, which lasted some

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two centuries until the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century, also witnessed a revival in the literary activities of the Nizaris of Persia (Daftary 2007: 422–434). However, the Nizaris still found it necessary, in predominantly Sunni Persia, to practise taqiyya in the guise of Sufism. For all practical purposes, the Persian Nizaris now appeared as Sufi tariqas. To the outsiders, the Nizari imam living in Anjudan appeared as a Sufi pir, murshid or shaykh. Similarly, the ordinary Nizaris were considered as the imam’s murids, guided along a spiritual path or tariqa, to haqiqa or ultimate truth, by their spiritual master, very much like a Sufi order. By the tenth/sixteenth century, the term pir, the Persian equivalent of the Arabic word shaykh, had acquired widespread currency among Nizari Ismailis. It was applied to daʿis of different ranks as well as the person of the imam himself. Subsequently this term fell into disuse in Persia, but it was retained by the Nizari communities of Central Asia and South Asia. The influences of some of these medieval taqiyya practices, as noted, have left an indelible mark on the historical development of the Nizari community. In the context of Nizari-Sufi relations during the Anjudan period, valuable evidence is preserved in a book entitled Pandiyat-i javanmardi (1953), containing the religious admonitions of Imam Mustansir bi’llah II (d. 885/1480), whose mausoleum known as Shah Qalandar is still in situ at Anjudan. Permeated with ideas widely associated with Sufism, the Nizari imam’s sermons in the Pandiyat-i javanmardi start with the shariʿat-tariqat-haqiqat categorisation of the Sufis, describing haqiqat as the batin or inner dimension of shariʿat, which could be attained by the faithful through following the spiritual path or tariqat. Meanwhile, the advent of the Safawids and the proclamation of Twelver Shiʿism as their state religion in 907/1501 promised yet more favourable opportunities for the activities of the Nizaris and other Shiʿi movements in Persia. The Nizaris did in fact reduce the intensity of their taqiyya practices during the initial decades of Safawid rule. The new optimism of the Nizaris proved short-lived, however, as the Safawids and their shariʿat-minded ʿulamaʾ soon adopted a policy of eliminating all popular forms of Sufism and those Shiʿi or Shiʿi-related movements that fell outside the confines of Twelver Shiʿism. However, the conversion of Persia to Twelver Shiʿism, mainly at the expense of Sunnism, proceeded rather slowly under the early Safawids. Engaged in more overt activities, the Nizari Ismailis now attracted the attention of the early Safawids and their Twelver ʿulamaʾ, many of whom had been brought in from the Arab centres of Twelver scholarship. As a result, the Nizaris, too, received their share of persecution. Shah Ismaʿil, the founder of the Safawid dynasty, eventually issued an order for the execution of Shah Tahir al-Husayni, the most famous imam of the Muhammad-Shahi Nizari line. Shah Tahir was a learned theologian and a poet, and he attained much popularity due to his learning and piety. He became a religious teacher at the theological seminary in Kashan and acquired many disciples and students there. Shah Tahir’s success soon aroused the hostility of the local officials and Twelver scholars, who now reported his ‘heretical’ teachings to the Safawid monarch who agreed to have him executed. However, Shah Tahir was warned in time and, in 926/1520, he fled to India. By 928/1522, he had settled

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in Ahmadnagar, the capital of the Nizam-Shahi state in the Deccan, and became the most trusted adviser to Burhan Nizam-Shah (915–961/1509–1554) (Firishta 1822: vol. 2, 213–231, Ivanow 1938: 57–79, Daftary 2005: 395–406). It is interesting to note that from early on in India, Shah Tahir advocated Twelver Shiʿism, which he had adopted as a taqiyya measure. It is certain that Shah Tahir originally propagated his form of Nizari Ismailism, whatever it may have been, in the guise of Twelver Shiʿism, which was also more acceptable to the Muslim rulers of India who were interested in cultivating friendly relations with the Twelver Shiʿi Safawid dynasty of Persia. This may explain why he wrote several commentaries on the theological works of well-known Twelver scholars. Shah Tahir achieved his greatest religious success in the Deccan when Burhan Nizam-Shah, shortly after his own conversion, proclaimed Twelver Shiʿism as the official religion of his state in 944/1537. Henceforth, an increasing number of Twelver Shiʿi scholars gathered at the Nizam-Shahi court. The propagation of Twelver Shiʿism by a Nizari imam, a strange phenomenon indeed, may be understood only as an extreme case of taqiyya practice. Shah Tahir died around 952/1545; and his successors, too, evidently observed taqiyya in India in the form of Twelver Shiʿism. In this connection, it is noteworthy to point out that in the Lamaʿat al-tahirin, one of the few extant Muhammad-Shahi treatises composed in the Deccan around 1110/1698, the author clearly hides his Ismaili ideas under the covers of Twelver and Sufi expressions; he eulogises the Twelver imams while also alluding in a confused manner to the Nizari imams of the Muhammad-Shahi line. The Muhammad-Shahi leadership was handed down amongst the descendants of Shah Tahir, who continued to live in Ahmadnagar and later in Awrangabad. However, these imams do not seem to have acquired any significant ‘Ismaili’ following apart from their Twelver Shiʿi adherents. By the end of the twelfth/sixteenth century, the Muhammad-Shahi Nizaris, whatever the nature of their shifting creed and identity, had disappeared or become fully assimilated into the Twelver or ‘other’ religious communities of India as a result of the dissimulating policies of their imams. Many must have abandoned their Shiʿi identity entirely following the persecution of the Shiʿa in the Deccan by the Mughal emperor Awrangzib. By that time, the Muhammad-Shahi Nizaris in other regions, notably Persia and Central Asia, had also either converted fully to Twelver Shiʿism or had switched their allegiance to the more successful Qasim-Shahi line of Nizari imams. The last known imam of the Muhammad-Shahi line, Amir Muhammad al-Baqir, had his last contact with his Syrian followers in 1210/1796 and probably died soon afterwards. Muhammad-Shahi Nizaris, with an Ismaili identity, have survived as a very small community (15,000 persons) only in Syria, where they did not practise ­taqiyya. These sectaries are currently still awaiting the reappearance of their last imam, Amir al-Baqir, as the Mahdi. Meanwhile, the second Safawid monarch, Shah Tahmasp, had persecuted the Qasim-Shahi Nizaris of Anjudan, also executing their 36th imam, Murad Mirza, in 981/1574. By the time of Shah ʿAbbas I (995–1038/1587–1629), who led Safawid Persia to the peak of its glory, the Qasim-Shahi Nizaris of Persia had also

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successfully adopted the ‘politically correct’ Twelver Shiʿism as a second tactical disguise, while Shah Tahir of the rival Nizari branch may have been the earliest Nizari leader to have conceived of this new form of dissimulation. The Nizaris sharing the same early ʿAlid heritage and Imami traditions with the Twelvers could readily adopt this new taqiyya practice. Be that as it may, Shah ʿAbbas did not persecute the Nizaris and their imams who continued to reside in Anjudan. The success of the Nizaris in dissimulating as Twelvers is clearly attested to by an epigraph dated 1036/1627, reproducing the text of a royal decree issued by Shah ʿAbbas (Daftary 2007: 437–438). According to this decree, addressed to Amir Khalil Allah Anjudani (d. 1043/1634), the contemporary Qasim-Shahi imam, the Shiʿa of Anjudan, referred to as Ithnaʿasharis, were exempted from paying certain taxes like other Twelver Shi‘is around Qumm. The later Nizari imams in Persia, by then solely of the Qasim-Shahi line, continued to practise taqiyya under the double guises of Sufism and Twelver Shiʿism, though the Sufi cover was increasingly eclipsed by that of Twelver Shiʿism. By the closing decades of the eleventh/seventeenth century, when the imams moved from Anjudan to the nearby village of Kahak and then to various locations in the province of Kirman, the Anjudan revival in Nizari Ismailism had borne definite fruit. The Qasim-Shahi daʿwa had gained the allegiance of the bulk of the Nizaris of different regions at the expense of the Muhammad-Shahis. At the same time, the daʿwa had spread successfully in Afghanistan, Central Asia and in several regions of South Asia. The early history of Nizari Ismailism in South Asia remains obscure. According to the traditional accounts of the Indian Nizaris, as preserved in their devotional literature known as ginans, the daʿwa in India was initiated by emissaries or pirs dispatched by the Nizari imams from Persia, probably in the seventh/thirteenth century. The earliest Nizari pirs operating in India concentrated their activities in Sind, where Ismailism had persisted clandestinely in Multan and elsewhere since the Fatimid times. It was mainly Pir Sadr al-Din who organised and consolidated the Nizari daʿwa in South Asia. Pir Sadr al-Din, who flourished in the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century, converted large numbers of Hindus from the Lohana trading caste and gave them the title of Khoja, derived from the Persian word khwaja, an honorary title meaning lord or master. The specific tradition of Nizari Ismailism that evolved in South Asia became known as Satpanth (sat panth) or the ‘true path’ (to salvation), a term used by the Khojas throughout their ginans. In India, as in Persia, the Nizari Khojas developed a close relationship with Sufism; Multan and Uch, in Sind, in addition to serving as centres of Satpanth Ismailism, were the headquarters of the Suhrawardi and Qadiri Sufi orders. The same doctrinal affinities that existed between Persian Nizari Ismailism and Sufism also existed between Satpanth Ismailism and Sufism. As a result, Nizari Khojas were able to present themselves for extended periods as one of the mystically oriented communities of Sind, where such communities existed in both the predominantly Sunni Muslim and Hindu milieux. However, in contrast to the situation in Persia, the pirs and their Khoja followers may not have consciously and deliberately developed their Sufi connections for taqiyya purposes.

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The Khojas, unlike the Nizaris in Persia, were safeguarded to some extent against Sunni persecution by the Hindu elements which were an integral part of their Satpanth tradition. They also dissimulated intermittently as Sunnis. All this enabled the Khojas to blend more readily into the religious, cultural and social structure of Sind, attracting less attention as Ismaili Shiʿis and escaping persecution by the region’s Sunni rulers. The origins of the particular form of Ismailism known in South Asia as Satpanth, and its religious literature, the ginans, remain very obscure. In particular, it is not known whether Satpanth resulted from the conversion policies of the pirs, or whether it represented an indigenous tradition that had evolved gradually over time, with the Nizari pirs or preacher-saints adapting their preaching to an existing religious situation. The weight of evidence seems to support the latter alternative. On the other hand, many modern scholars of Satpanth have generally attributed the mixed, Hindu-Muslim, interfacing or syncretism of this Ismaili tradition to the preaching strategy of the pirs, who are held to have designed suitable Hinduoriented policies for maximising the appeal of their message in a Hindu ambience of mainly rural and uneducated castes. This also explains why the pirs turned to Indian vernaculars, rather than the Arabic or Persian used by the educated classes, in order to further enhance the popularity of their preaching. For the same reasons, the pirs used Hindu idioms and mythology, interfacing their Islamic and Ismaili tenets with myths, images and symbols already familiar to Hindus. In other words, the pirs adopted a strategy of acculturation that proved very successful and won large numbers of converts to Satpanth (Nanji 1978: 65–96, Asani 2001: 155–168). However it was achieved, Satpanth Ismailism does represent an indigenous tradition reflecting specific historical, social, cultural and political circumstances prevalent in medieval India. And the Hindu cover of the Khojas, as expressed by Hindu elements in the Satpanth tradition, in addition to encouraging conversion, also served taqiyya purposes and made the Khojas less conspicuous in their predominantly Hindu and Sunni environments. In a sense, Satpanth Ismailism represented a complex form of dissimulation and acculturation adapted to the religious, social, cultural and political realities of South Asia. In this Indo-Muslim context, taqiyya meant something much more than the prudential concealment of one’s true religious identity, or dissimulation through superficial adoption of an exterior guise. It involved the creative application of taqiyya through a highly complex and organic process of indigenisation, adhesion, acculturation and syncretism (Kassam 1995: 62–74). This is why the Satpanth tradition of the South Asian Khojas differs so significantly from the other Nizari traditions elaborated in Central Asia, Persia and Syria. It is also to be noted that Satpanth Ismailism did not always evolve coherently and smoothly in India. Recent research has shown that certain communities which originally adhered to Satpanth did revert to Hinduism. This phenomenon seems to have occurred in the case of the Kamad or Kamadiyya of Rajasthan, for instance, the untouchable worshippers of a deified saint known as Ramdev Pir (Khan 1997: 29–168). Removed from the religious centres of Satpanth in Sind,

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and perhaps originally converted superficially, the Kamad experienced a complex process of ‘re-Hinduisation’, redefining and shifting their identity. In the event, they completely forgot their Satpanth heritage, while their devotional poems are permeated with Ismaili references. As a different case of shifting identities, we may reiterate that many isolated Persian groups dissimulating as Twelver Shiʿis eventually became fully assimilated into the predominantly Twelver religious community of Safawid and post-Safawid Persia. For those groups, as well as for the Muhammad-Shahi Nizaris of India, dissimulation under the Twelver exterior guise eventually led to the internalisation of that guise and a complete loss of their Ismaili identity. Meanwhile, the Nizari imams themselves had continued to dissimulate variously in post-Safawid Persia as Twelver Shiʿis. It was under such circumstances that the 46th Nizari imam, Hasan ʿAli Shah (1804–1881), who had received the ­honorific title of the Agha Khan (Aga Khan), meaning lord and master, from the Qajar monarch of Persia, settled permanently in Bombay in 1848, after earlier military conflicts with the Qajar establishment. The Nizari Ismaili imamate had now been transferred, after some seven centuries, from Persia to India. The Nizari imam, who had mainly dissimulated as a Twelver Shiʿi in Persia, asserted his authority over the Khoja community with some difficulty. Satpanth Ismailism, as noted, was influenced by Hindu elements, whilst the Khojas had also dissimulated variously as Sunnis or Twelver Shiʿis. In the settlement of their legal affairs, too, the Khojas, like some other Muslim groups in India, had often resorted to Hindu customs rather than the provisions of Islamic law. These factors had not been particularly conducive to the articulation of a strong and distinct sense of Ismaili religious identity. In fact, dissident Khoja groups appeared periodically during the nineteenth century, claiming Sunni or Twelver Shiʿi heritage and identity for their community. They even brought such claims before the Bombay High Court for adjudication. It was under such circumstances that the Agha Khan launched a widespread campaign for defining and delineating the specific religious identity of his Khoja followers. And in 1866, the Bombay High Court legally recognised the status of the Nizari Khojas as a community of ‘Shia Imami Ismailis’ (Fyzee 1965: 504–549, Shodan 1999: 82–116). Nevertheless, groups of dissenting Khojas seceded periodically and joined mainly the Ithnaʿashari Khojas of India and East Africa. Building on the court decisions in Bombay and the work of his grandfather, the 48th Nizari imam, Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III (1877–1957), also devoted much energy to delineating the Nizari Khojas from those Khojas who had preferred to be Sunnis or Ithnaʿasharis, also separating his followers in Persia from the Twelvers there. By the early decades of the twentieth century, as a result of their taqiyya heritage, the Persian Nizaris normally observed their religious rituals mainly in the fashion of, and in company with, the Twelver Shiʿis, with detrimental consequences in terms of their identity. It was in 1908 that a suit was now filed against Aga Khan III in the Bombay High Court by certain members of his own family led by a cousin, Hajji Bibi. The litigants argued that all along

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they had been of the Twelver Shiʿi persuasion, once again attesting to the damaging long-term consequences of the Nizaris’ taqiyya practices. In the aftermath of the Hajji Bibi Case, the Nizari imam asked his Persian followers to set themselves apart from the Twelvers, reaffirming their own identity as a separate religious community like the Nizari Khojas of South Asia. For instance, the Nizaris now began to recite the entire list of the imams of the Qasim-Shahi Nizari line at the end of their daily prayers. Furthermore, they were required to observe only those religious prescriptions that were directly issued by their living imam (Daftary 2007: 480–496). Subsequently, Aga Khan III promulgated constitutions that effectively represented the personal law of his community. The constitutions, which were revised periodically, revolved around the person of the Nizari imam, also articulating the Nizari beliefs and practices. Aga Khan III, who pioneered numerous reforms in his community in the areas of education and female emancipation, kept in direct contact with his followers and guided them also through his farmans or written directives. The modernising work of Aga Khan III was continued by his grandson and successor, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the present imam, who in 1986 promulgated a universal constitution for all Nizaris, scattered throughout some 30 countries as religious minorities. While sharpening the specific identity of the Nizaris, Aga Khan IV also allowed for diversity in the expression of the cultural, literary and ritualistic traditions of his followers in different regions. However, the figure of the imam, as the religious and administrative head of the community, has remained central to all of the Nizari constitutions and reforms. The fact that the Nizaris have emerged as a progressive Shiʿi community with a distinct religious identity, despite their centuries-old taqiyya practices under different guises, attests to the foresight and successful policies of the Nizari Ismaili imams of modern times.

Note * This chapter was originally published in Y. Suleiman, ed., Living Islamic History: Studies

in Honour of Professor Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp. 47–61.

Bibliography Asani, Ali S. (2001), ‘The Khojas of South Asia: Defining a Space of their Own’, Cultural Dynamics, 13, pp. 155–168. Dabashi, Hamid (1996), ‘The Philosopher/Vizier: Khwāja Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and the Ismaʿilis’, in F. Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 231–245. Daftary, Farhad (1993), ‘A Major Schism in the Early Ismāʿīlī Movement’, Studia Islamica, 77, pp. 123–139. Daftary, Farhad (1999), ‘The Ismaili Daʿwa outside the Fatimid Dawla’, in M. Barrucand, ed., L’Égypte Fatimide, son art et son histoire (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne), pp. 29–43.

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Daftary, Farhad (2000), ‘Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and the Ismailis of the Alamūt period’, in N. Pourjavady and Ž. Vesel, ed., Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, philosophe et savant du XIIIe siècle (Tehran: Presses Universitaires d’Iran and Institut Français de Recherche en Iran), pp. 59–67. Daftary, Farhad (2005), ‘Shāh Ṭāhir and Nizārī Ismaili Disguises’, in T. Lawson, ed., Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, Essays in Honour of Hermann Landolt (London: I. B. Tauris), pp. 395–406. Daftary, Farhad (2007), The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Firishta, Muḥammad Qāsim Hindū Shāh Astarābādī (1822), Tārīkh-i Firishta, ed. J. Briggs (Bombay). Fyzee, Asaf A. A. (1965), Cases in the Muhammadan Law of India and Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press). al-Hamdānī, Ḥusayn F. (1958), On the Genealogy of Fatimid Caliphs (Cairo: American University of Cairo). Ivanow, Wladimir (1938), ‘A Forgotten Branch of the Ismailis’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 57–79. Juwaynī, ʿAṭā Malik (1958), The History of the World-Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Kassam, Tazim R. (1995), Songs of Wisdom and Circles of Dance: Hymns of the Satpanth Ismāʿīlī Muslim Saint, Pīr Shams (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Khan, Dominique-Sila (1997), Conversions and Shifting Identities: Ramdev Pir and the Ismailis in Rajasthan (New Delhi: Manohar). Khan, Dominique-Sila (2004), Crossing the Threshold: Understanding Religious Identities in South Asia (London: I. B. Tauris). Kohlberg, Etan (1975), ‘Some Imāmī-Shīʿī Views on Taqiyya’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 95, pp. 395–402. Kohlberg, Etan (1995), ‘Taqiyya in Shīʿī Theology and Religion’, in H. G. Kippenberg and G. G. Stroumsa, ed., Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions (Leiden: Brill), pp. 345–380. al-Kulaynī, Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb (1388/1968), al-Uṣūl min al-kāfī, ed. ʿAlī A. al-Ghaffārī (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya). Klemm, Verena, Die Mission des fāṭimidischen Agenten al-Muʾayyad fi d-dīn in Šīrāz (Frankfurt, 1989). Lalani, Arzina R. (2000), Early Shīʿī Thought: The Teachings of Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir (London: I. B. Tauris). Landolt, Hermann (2006), ‘ʿAṭṭār, Sufism and Ismailism’, in L. Lewisohn and C. Shackle, ed., ʿAṭṭār and the Persian Sufi Tradition (London: I. B. Tauris), pp. 3–26. Lewisohn, Leonard (2003), ‘Sufism and Ismāʿīlī Doctrine in the Persian Poetry of Nizārī Quhistānī (645–721/1247–1321)’, Iran, 41, pp. 229–251. Mustanṣir bi’llāh II (1953), Pandiyāt-i javānmardī, ed. and trans. W. Ivanow (Leiden: Brill). Nanji, Azim (1978), The Nizārī Ismāʿīlī Tradition in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books). al-Nawbakhtī, al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā (1931), Kitāb firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul: Staatsdruckerei). al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa (2002), Daʿāʾim al-Islām, trans. A. A. A. Fyzee, rev. I. K. Poonawala, as The Pillars of Islam, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). al-Qummī, Saʿd b. ʿAbdullāh (1963), Kitāb al-maqālāt wa’l-firaq, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi ʿAṭāʾī). Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh (1338/1959), Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i Ismāʿīliyān, ed. M. T. Dānishpazhūh and M. Mudarrisī Zanjānī (Tehran: Bungāh-i Tarjuma wa Nashr-i Kitāb).

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Shodan, Amrita (1999), A Question of Community: Religious Groups and Colonial Law (Calcutta: Samya). Sobhani, Jaʿfar (2001), Doctrines of Shiʿi Islam, trans. R. Shah-Kazemi (London: I. B. Tauris). Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn (1975), Shiʿite Islam, trans. S. Hossein Nasr (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). al-Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad (1998), Contemplation and Action, ed. and trans. S. J. Badakhchani (London: I. B. Tauris).

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Index

ʿAbbās I, Ṣafawid shah 23, 88, 273–4 al-ʿAbbās, uncle of the Prophet 15 Abbasids 1–3, 15–16, 18–19, 25, 29, 39, 46, 48, 69, 72, 76, 106, 110, 113–15, 121, 145, 148, 170, 184–5, 188, 212–13, 223–4, 249, 250, 265, 267–8 ʿAbd Allāh al-Afṭaḥ, ʿAlid 18, 102, 104, 108–9 ʿAbd Allāh al-Akbar, concealed Ismaili imam 25–6, 250 ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī see al-Mahdī, ʿAbd Allāh ʿAbd Allāh b. Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ 48, 104, 213 ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl (alAkbar) see ʿAbd Allāh al-Akbar ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Jīwājī, founder of Mahdībāghwālās 133, 257 ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Ḥāfiz. see al-Ḥāfiz. , Fatimid caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAṭṭāsh, Ismaili dāʿī in Persia 73, 122, 193–4, 196, 224–6 ʿAbdān, Qarmaṭī leader in Iraq 26, 104, 106–7, 109–10, 183, 250–2 Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Khādim, early Ismaili dāʿī in Khurāsān 185 Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī, early Ismaili dāʿī in North Africa 68, 94, 105, 114, 128 Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Ṭūsī see Niz. ām al-Mulk Abū Bakr, first caliph 12, 37 Abū Firās Shihāb al-Dīn al-Maynaqī, Nizārī author in Syria 76, 85, 241, 244–5

Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān see al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa Abū Hāshim ʿAbd Allāh, ʿAlid, eponym of Hāshimiyya 15 Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī see al-Rāzī, Abū Ḥātim Aḥmad Abū ʿĪsā al-Murshid, Ismaili dāʿī and author 176 Abū Isḥāq Quhistānī, Nizārī author 34, 83, 204 Abū Kālījār Marzubān, Būyid 191–2 Abū Saʿīd al-Jannābī see al-Jannābī, Abū Saʿīd Abū Saʿīd al-Shaʿrānī, early Ismaili dāʿī 185 Abū Shāma, historian 52, 76 Abū Ṭālib, uncle of the Prophet 15, 37; see also Ṭālibids Abū Tamīm Maʿadd al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh see al-Muʿizz, Fatimid caliph Abū Tamīm Maʿadd al-Mustanṣir bi’llāh see al-Mustanṣir, Fatimid caliph Abū Tammām, Ismaili dāʿī 188 Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī see al-Sijistānī, Abū Yaʿqūb Abu’l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad, Ismaili dāʿī in North Africa 94 Abu’l-Fidā, historian 217 Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī, Kahakī, Nizārī imam 34, 89, 261 Abu’l-Ḥasan Khan, Sardār, brother of Aga Khan I 7 Abu’l-Haytham Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan al-Jurjānī, Ismaili author in Persia 188

282  Index

Abu’l-Khaṭṭāb, eponym of Khaṭṭābiyya 102 Abu’l-Qāsim Shāhanshāh see al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī Acre (ʿAkkā), 51 Ādam (Adam), 105, 139, 141, 150, 156, 260 ʿAdan, in southern Yemen 95, 123 Ādharbāyjān, region, in northwestern Persia 22, 86, 186–8, 190, 193, 196, 202, 224, 229, 260 al-ʿĀḍid, Fatimid caliph 74, 123 al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī, Fatimid vizier 29 73, 122, 130, 193–4, 224, 226, 232, 239, 254–5, 258 Afghanistan 3, 5–6, 28, 54, 63–4, 66, 82, 83, 87–8, 90, 122, 157, 181, 186, 192–3, 198–9, 201–2, 204–5, 228, 260, 270–1, 274 Africa 2, 10, 26–7, 35, 45–6, 55, 63–4, 66–9, 90, 93, 96, 100, 109, 114–15, 116, 120–1, 137, 144–5, 167, 172, 181, 184–5, 223–4, 238, 251–2, 268, 276 Aga Khan(s), 3, 6–8, 33–5, 43, 46, 54, 56, 58, 85–6, 90, 91, 110, 144, 181, 202, 262, 271, 276–7 Aga Khan I, Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh, Nizārī imam 7, 34–5, 89–90, 261–2, 276 Aga Khan II, ʿAlī Shāh, Nizārī imam 83, 89–90 Aga Khan III, Sultan Muhammad (­Mohamed) Shah, Nizārī imam 3, 6, 35, 56, 85, 90, 276–7 Aga Khan IV, Prince Karim, Nizārī imam 3, 8, 35, 46, 58, 90–1, 110, 144, 181, 262, 277 Aga Khan Case, of 1866, 35, 54, 276 Aga Khan Award for Architecture 35 Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) 3, 35, 91 Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 35 Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) 35 Aga Khan University 35, 91 Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī, Twelver ­scholar  164 Āghā Khān see Aga Khan Aghlabids, of Ifrīqiya 68, 114 ʿahd (oath of allegiance) 65, 118, 168, 225; see also mīthāq ahl al-bayt 13–16, 22, 29, 37–8, 70, 113, 145, 147–8, 151, 165–8, 248, 265 ahl al-taʾwīl 138, 149; see also taʾwīl Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAṭṭāsh, Nizārī dāʿī in Persia, 196, 231, 233 Aḥmadnagar, in the Deccan 88, 261, 273

al-Aḥsāʾ, capital of the Qarmaṭī state of Baḥrayn 47, 140 Ahwāz, in Khūzistān 104, 182–3 akhbār 23; see also ḥadīth Akhbārī school, of Twelver jurisprudence 20, 23–4 Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī 200 al-Akhram, al-Ḥasan b. Ḥaydara, Druze leader 29, 72 Akhū Muḥsin, Sharīf Abu’l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, anti-Ismaili author 47, 101, 103–9 āl Muḥammad see ahl al-bayt ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad, Nizārī imam and lord of Alamūt 32, 80–1, 200–1, 269 Alamūt, fortress and seat of Nizārī state 2, 3, 5–6, 8, 31–4, 39, 48, 50, 53–4, 56–7, 64, 74–82, 86–7, 94, 124, 130–1, 141–2, 144, 146, 153–5, 157, 187–8, 193–203, 200–1, 205, 212, 214, 216, 218–21, 225–30, 232–4, 239–42, 244–5, 258–60, 268–71; described by Marco Polo 5, 50–1, 53, 215–18, 243; Ismaili library at 3, 51, 74–5, 94, 199, 216; seat of Justānids 187; as seat of Nizārī state 2, 31, 33, 74, 78, 81, 94, 124, 146, 198, 200–1, 203, 218–19, 225–9, 233–4, 239, 258–9, 268–70 ʿAlawīs, ʿAlawiyya, subgroup of Dāʾūdīs 46, 74, 132, 166, 257, 262 Alburz, mountains, in northern Persia 195, 234 Aleppo (Ḥalab) 76, 78, 239–40, 242, 244 Alexandria (Iskandariyya) 73, 194, 225 Algeria 27, 69, 114 ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, first Shiʿi imam and fourth caliph 12, 17–18, 20, 22, 36, 41, 65, 84, 96, 105, 114, 129, 138–9, 144, 147–8, 150–3, 156–8, 166, 175, 185, 223, 249, 248, 254, 265 ʿAlī b. al-Faḍl, early Ismāʿīlī dāʿī in Yemen 104–5 ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, early Shiʿi imam 16, 38, 83 ʿAlī b. al-Muḥammad b. al-Walīd, Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq 48–9 ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī, Ismāʿīlī dāʿī and founder of the Ṣulayḥid dynasty of Yemen 72, 121–2 ʿAlī al-Riḍā, Twelver imam 18 ʿAlids 3, 16, 37, 46–8, 64, 68, 70, 87, 101, 108, 113–14, 116, 128, 137–8, 145, 147– 9, 151, 153, 155, 157, 158, 164, 167–8, 182, 187, 204, 212–13, 218, 223, 226,

Index  283  

227, 250–1, 265–6, 274; see also Ḥanafids; Ḥasanids; Ḥusaynids; Fatimids ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī see Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī allegorical interpretation see taʾwīl Alp Arslān, Saljūq sultan 195, 227 alphabet see ḥurūf Amalric I, king of the Latin state of Jerusalem 49, 243–4 Ambrosian Library, Milan 6, 54 America 8, 35, 45, 53, 58, 63, 144, 181 al-Āmir, Fatimid caliph 29–30, 96, 123–4, 132, 255–7 amīr al-juyūsh 73, 254 ʿāmma (ʿawāmm) 65, 121, 138–9, 149 Amoretti, Biancamaria Scarcia 8 amr (divine command) 147, 157, 173 Āmul, in Ṭabaristān 39 Anatolia 21–2 Anjudān, village near Maḥallāt, in central Persia 8, 34, 56, 83, 87–9, 131, 142, 203–5, 261, 271–4 Antioch (Anṭākiya) 78, 240–1 Aq Qoyunlu, dynasty of Persia and eastern Anatolia 22 Āqā Khān see Aga Khan ʿaql (intellect, reason) 19, 147, 153–4, 168, 173–4, 177–8, 189 Arabia 20, 26, 31, 41, 47, 110, 114, 123, 129, 145, 148, 181, 183, 213, 223, 244 Arabic language 7–8, 31–2, 47, 49, 51–6, 58–9, 63–4, 66–7, 74, 76–7, 81, 83–5, 89, 93–5, 127, 153–4, 170–1, 181, 195, 215–18, 228, 258, 275 Arabs 14–15, 115, 120, 183, 195, 227 Aristotle (Ariṣtū or Arisṭūṭālīs) 170–1 Armenia, Armenians 73, 187, 226, 254 Arnold of Lübeck, German abbott and historian 51 Arrajān, castles and town, in Khūzistān 78, 196, 230 Arrān 187 Arwā, Ṣulayḥid queen of Yemen 30, 97, 122–3, 130, 183, 238, 256 Asani, Ali 58 asās 139, 152–3, 175, 178 Ascalon (ʿAsqalān) 120 Asfār b. Shirawayh, Daylamī leader 186–7 Asia 1, 3, 5–6, 10, 20–1, 26, 28–9, 33–5, 45–6, 54–5, 58, 63–4, 67, 69, 72–3, 81–4, 86–8, 91–2, 94–5, 100, 116, 121–4, 131– 2, 140, 144–5, 157, 163, 168, 171–2, 176, 181, 186, 193, 195–7, 201, 205, 223–4, 227–8, 238–9, 252, 255, 257, 260–1, 268, 270–5, 277

Asiatic Museum, St Petersburg 6, 54–6 ʿAskar Mukram, in Khūzistān 104, 182–3 Assassin legends 4–5, 50–2, 215–17, 219–20, 232, 242–3 assassination 197, 231–2, 256 Assassins 4–6, 33, 49–51, 53, 212, 214–16, 232, 242–4; variants of the term 5, 50–2, 215–16, 218–21, 242–3; origins of the name 51–2, 216–17, 232, 242; see also Assassin legends; fidāʾīs; Nizārīs al-Astarābādī, Muḥammad b. Amīn, founder of Akhbārī school 20, 23 ʿAṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn, Sufi poet 33, 87, 204, 271 Avicenna see Ibn Sīnā ʿawāmm see ʿāmma Awrangābad, in India 261, 273 Ayyūbids 41, 94, 123, 200, 245 Azarbāyjān see Ādharbāyjān al-Azhar, mosque and university, Cairo 1, 119 al-ʿAzīz, Fatimid caliph 96, 117, 168, 190 bāb (gate), rank in daʿwa hierarchy 71, 120–1, 178 Badakhshān 3, 5, 28, 54, 56, 58, 66–7, 73, 84–6, 122, 192–3, 196, 200, 202–4, 261, 271; see also Central Asia; Transoxania Badakhshānī, Sayyid Suhrāb Valī, Nizārī author 84 Badr, in Najrān 31 Badr al-Jamālī, Fatimid vizier 73, 194, 224, 226, 232, 254, 258 Baffioni, Carmela 57 Baghdad 18–21, 23, 40, 46, 48, 72, 94, 101, 106, 121, 137, 170, 177, 192, 213, 223, 226, 229; anti-Fatimid manifesto 48; in campaign of al-Basāsīrī 72, 94, 121, 192, 226; Saljūqs in 72; taken by Būyids 29, 72 Baghdad manifesto 48 al-Baghdādī, ʿAbd al-Qāhir b. Ṭāhir, Sunni jurist and heresiographer 47, 213 Bahrām, Nizārī dāʿī in Syria 198, 240 Baḥrayn, eastern Arabia 20, 22, 26, 27, 29, 47, 53, 105, 110, 114, 116, 122, 129, 140, 145, 148, 183, 185–7, 190, 213, 252–3; Ismaili daʿwa 26, 29, 105, 109–10, 114, 116, 122, 145, 183, 186–7, 190; Qarmaṭīs of see Qarmaṭīs balāgh (initiation) 47, 65, 118, 132, 257 Balkh 192, 196, 200, 230, 233 Banū Hā 12, 14–15; see also ʿAlids Banū Umayya see Umayyads al-Bāqir, Shiʿi imam see Muḥammad al-Bāqir

284  Index

Barkiyāruq, Saljūq sultan 78, 198, 230–1, 233 al-Basāsīrī, Arslān, Turkish commander 72, 94, 121, 192, 226 Baṣra, in southern Iraq 70, 104, 177, 242 bāṭin 1, 27, 48, 64–5, 69–70, 79, 81, 87, 113, 117–19, 137–9, 142, 149–50, 155, 162, 172, 185, 199, 214, 224, 259, 272 Bāṭinīs, Bāṭiniyya (Esotericists) 4, 41, 48, 65, 162, 214 Batriyya, branch of Zaydīs 36–7 Bausani, Alessandro 57 Bāwandids, of Daylam 199 Bayt al-Ḥikma (House of Wisdom), in Baghdad 170 Bektashis, Sufi order 21 Berbers 26, 68–9, 105, 114–15, 120, 145, 238 Berchem, Max van, orientalist 7, 54 Berkeley, California 6–7 Bertels, Andrey E. 57 Bianquis, Thierry 58 bidʿa (innovation in belief) 11 Biḥār al-anwār, of Muḥammad Bāqir alMajlisī 23 al-Bihbahānī, Muḥammad Bāqir, Twelver scholar 24 Bīrjand, in Quhistān 79, 83, 202 Bīrjandī, Ḥasan b. Ṣalāḥ see Ḥasan b. Ṣalāḥ Munshī Bīrjandī Black stone of the Kaʿba (al-ḥajar al-aswad) 47, 140, 213 Bobrinskiy, Count Alexis A., Russian scholar 54 Bohras, Bohoras 3, 6, 31, 46, 55–6, 64, 132, 146, 152, 163, 239, 257–8; see also Dāʾūdīs; Sulaymānīs; ʿAlawīs Bombay (Mumbai) 6–7, 31, 35, 54, 56, 58, 90, 97, 257–8, 262, 276 Bombay High Court 35, 276–7 Bosworth, C. Edmund 8, 181–2 Brethren of Purity see Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ Brett, Michael 58 Browne, Edward G., orientalist 53 Brunschvig, Robert 163 Bukhārā (now in Uzbekistan) 186, 191, 200, 253 Burhān I Niz. ām Shāh 88, 261, 273 Būrids, of Syria 240 al-Bustī, Abu’l-Qāsim, Muʿtazilī Zaydī scholar 176 Būyids (Buwayhids), of Persia and Iraq 10, 19–20, 29, 72, 121, 164, 185, 190–2, 195, 224, 226–7

Buzurg-Umīd, Kiyā, Nizārī leader and lord of Alamūt 78, 130, 196–9, 230, 234, 241, 258 Byzantines 69, 115, 120, 218 Cairo (al-Qāhira) 1, 7, 28–30, 32, 57, 66, 69, 72–4, 77, 93–4, 116–17, 119, 121–4, 130, 146, 164–5, 185, 190, 192–5, 197, 214, 223–6, 232, 238–9, 254, 255–6, 258, 268 Cairo University 55 Calcutta 90 Canard, Marius 7, 57 Caprotti, Giuseppe 54 Carmatians see Qarmaṭīs Casanova, Paul, orientalist 53–4 Caspian provinces, region, in northern Persia 36, 38–41, 73, 181, 186, 194, 203, 226; Nizārīs in 39, 203; Zaydī Shiʿis of 36, 38–40, Caspian sea 181 Central Asia 1, 5–6, 21, 26, 28–9, 33–5, 45, 54–5, 58, 63–4, 67, 69, 72–3, 82–4, 86–8, 91–2, 95, 100, 116, 121–4, 131–2, 140, 144–5, 157, 171–2, 176–7, 181, 186, 193, 195–7, 201, 205, 223, 224, 227–8, 238, 252–3, 255, 260–1, 268, 270–5 Chingiz Khan 200 Chirāgh-rawshan, rite for the dead in Badakhshān 84 Chitral, in northern Pakistan 84 Christianity, Christians 28, 49, 64, 105, 138, 150, 238, 243 Companions of the Prophet (ṣaḥāba) 12–13, 17, 37, 41, 148, 156, 265 Conrad of Montferrat, king of the Latin state of Jerusalem 244 Copts, Christian community in Egypt 2, 28, 118, 238 Corbin, Henry 7, 56–7 cosmology 30, 63, 69–70, 72, 93, 141, 152–3, 172–8, 189, 191, 254; in doctrine of early Ismailis 70, 72, 152, 170–1, 186, 189; in doctrine of Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī 72, 93, 153, 177–8, 191; in doctrine of Ṭayyibīs 72, 141, 153; Ismaili Neoplatonic doctrine 69, 152, 173–6 Crusaders 4–5, 33, 46, 49–50, 52, 54, 78, 80–1, 144, 198–200, 212, 214–15, 217–18, 220, 231, 240–5 Crusades 4, 49, 81, 214, 217 cyclical history 27, 30, 63, 65, 93, 105, 137–42, 150, 156, 252; early Ismailis 27, 63, 65, 105, 137–41, 150, 252; Fatimid

Index  285  

27, 93, 151–2; Nizārī 141–2, 156; Ṭayyibī 30, 141; see also dawr Daʿāʾim al-Islām, of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān 29, 30, 55, 70–1, 116, 119, 151, 163–4, 166–8 Dachraoui (al-Dashrāwī), Farhat (Farḥāt) 58 dāʿī 2, 4, 48–9, 54, 63, 68–9, 71–2, 76, 78–9, 81, 83, 85, 92–7, 101, 104, 107, 114, 116– 22, 124, 129–30, 132, 141, 151–4, 163–5, 171–4, 176–8, 183–96, 214, 224–31, 233, 239, 241–2, 244, 250–1, 253–8, 268 dāʿī al-balāgh 120, 132, 257 dāʿī al-duʿāt (chief dāʿī) 28, 71–2, 118–19, 151, 178, 192, 194, 224, 254 al-dāʿī al-muṭlaq 30–1, 48, 95–6, 101, 120, 124, 132, 178, 256–8 Damascus (Dimashq) 78, 101, 120, 187, 240, 244 Dāmghān, in Persia 187, 196, 226, 230 Dār al-Ḥikma see Dār al-ʿIlm Dār al-ʿIlm (House of Knowledge), Cairo 1, 28, 71, 94, 117, 122–3, 190 al-Darazī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, Druze leader 29, 72, 253 Daraziyya see Druzes Dasa Avatāra, ginān 158 dassondh (tithe) 89 Dāʾūd b. ʿAjabshāh, Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq 31, 257 Dāʾūd Burhān al–Dīn b. Quṭbshāh, first Dāʾūdī dāʿī 257 Dāʾūdīs, branch of Ṭayyibīs 31, 46, 55, 58, 70, 95, 97, 132–3, 166, 257–8, 262 daʿwa, 1–2, 56–7, 64–79, 83, 85, 87–9, 95–7, 100–1, 104–8, 110, 113–24, 128–32, 137–8, 142, 145–6, 148–9, 152–4, 156, 162, 164, 172, 174–6, 178, 181–205, 223–6, 232–3–235, 238–42, 245, 250–61, 268, 271, 274; Abbasid 16; early Ismaili 2, 105–6, 137, 145, 148, 250, 268; Fatimid 27, 66, 72, 118, 130, 190, 223, 268; Nizārī 2, 34, 56–7, 75, 77–9, 88–9, 123, 130–1, 142, 146, 153, 187, 193, 197–200, 202–4, 232–5, 239–40, 242, 245, 255, 258–60, 274; Ṭayyibī 30, 68, 77, 95–7, 124, 132, 153, 238, 256–7; Zaydī 37 al-daʿwa al-hādiya (rightly guiding mission) 25, 64, 113, 116, 120, 137, 145, 184, 223, 250 al-daʿwa al-jadīda (the new preaching) 76–7, 154, 198 al-daʿwa al-qadīma (the old preaching) 76–7, 154, 198

dawla (state) 27, 66, 72, 74, 114, 117, 123–4, 137, 145, 162, 185, 223, 238, dawr, adwār (cycles, eras) 25, 27, 68, 77, 93, 105, 113, 128, 130–1, 133, 138–41, 150–1, 166, 175, 182, 239, 250, 252, 256, 258–9, 260, 267; in early Ismaili doctrine 27, 68, 93, 105, 113, 128, 130–1, 138–40, 150–1, 166, 175, 182, 239, 250, 252; in Nizārī doctrine of qiyāma 259–60, 267; in Ṭayyibī doctrine 133, 141, 256, 258; see also cyclical history dawr al-kashf (period of manifestation) 133, 139, 141, 258 dawr al-satr (period of concealment) 25, 68, 77, 113, 128, 130, 133, 139, 1414, 166, 239, 250, 256–8, 267 Day of Judgement 18, 148, 152, 175, 248; see also qiyāma; eschatology Daylam, Daylamān, region, in northern Persia 19, 36, 38–9, 78, 86, 120, 181–2, 186–8, 190–2, 194–6, 199, 202–3, 224, 226–9, 233 de Blois, F. 109 de Smet, Daniel 58 de Sacy see Silvestre de Sacy Deccan, the 88, 261, 273 Defrémery, Charles F. 7, 53 al-Dhuʾayb b. Mūsā al-Wādiʿī al-Hamdānī, first Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq 30, 124, 256 Dieterici, Friedrich, orientalist 53 Dizkūh see Shāhdiz Druzes, Druses 5, 29, 52, 72, 190, 253–4 Durūz see Druzes East Africa 35, 90, 181, 276 Egypt, Egyptians 1–2, 4, 7, 28–30, 49, 57, 66–9, 73–4, 77, 94, 96, 101, 109, 111, 116, 118–23, 130, 145–6, 165, 184–5, 194, 196–7, 214, 223, 225–6, 230, 232– 3, 238, 244, 251, 254–6, 258–9, 268 England 42, 201, 244 Epistles of the Brethren of Purity see Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ eschatology 63, 93, 248, 254, 257; see also qiyāma; soteriology esoteric interpretation see taʾwīl Euphrates, river 20 Europe, Europeans 3–5, 7–8, 12, 21, 35, 45–6, 49–57, 63, 85, 90, 92, 144, 171, 181, 198, 212, 214–20, 232, 242–3 exaggeration in religion see ghulāt al-Faḍl b. Shādhān, Imāmī scholar 183

286  Index

falāsifa 171, 176, 191 Falconet, Camille 216 al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad, philosopher 72, 153, 171, 177, 191 Fārs, in southern Persia 72, 105, 183, 191–2, 196, 230 fatḥ 174–5 Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh, Qājar 34, 90 Fāṭima, daughter of the Prophet 12, 14, 17, 27, 68, 114, 144, 147, 266 Fatimid caliphate 1, 3, 27, 45–6, 66, 69, 73–4, 93–4, 96, 100, 105, 109, 114, 122–3, 128, 137, 162–4, 181, 185, 193, 223–4, 238–9, 243, 250, 254–5, 266; collapse 74, 123, 238; consolidated 45–6, 69, 73; decline 74, 122–3, 225, 243, 254; established 1, 3, 27, 68, 93–4, 105, 109, 114, 137, 162–3, 181, 185; seat transferred to Egypt 66, 93; organisation 96, 114, 128; see also Fatimids Fatimids 1, 3–4, 10, 28, 29, 40, 47–9, 53, 66–74, 77, 94, 96–7, 109–10, 113–24, 129–30, 145, 148, 163–5, 167–8, 185, 190–2, 195, 197, 213–14, 223, 226–7, 232, 238–9, 243, 252–4, 256–8, 268; as branch of ʿAlids 15, 147; decline and overthrow 73–4, 96, 121–4, 146, 194, 214, 225, 243, 254–6; Egyptian phase 1, 28–32, 66, 69, 72–4, 77, 93–4, 116–24, 130, 146, 164, 165, 185, 190–7, 214, 223–6, 232, 238–9, 254–6, 258, 268; factions in the army 26, 69, 116, 185, 226, 251–2; genealogy 27, 68, 79, 109, 110, 260; historiography 67, 94–5; jurisprudence 28, 67, 70, 114, 117, 151, 162–8, 224; Khārijī revolts against 1–2, 69, 238; libraries 66, 74, 94; literature 1, 27–31, 33, 66–7, 115–16, 145, 153, 162, 168, 185, 224; North African phase 10, 27, 45–6, 66–9, 93, 96, 100, 109, 114–16, 121, 137, 145, 167, 181, 184–5, 223–4, 238, 252; and Qarmaṭīs of Baḥrayn 27, 47, 53, 57, 65, 100, 110, 114–16, 137, 140, 189–90, 213, 252; and Ṣulayḥids 29, 40, 96–7, 121–3 Fidāʾī Khurāsānī, Muḥammad b. Zayn al–ʿĀbidīn, Nizārī author 83–4 fidāʾīs (devotees) 4–5, 50, 83, 197, 215, 217–18, 232, 242–4; see also Assassin legends; Nizārīs fiqh (jurisprudence) 17, 19, 24, 67, 164–7 France 51–2, 201 Franks see Crusaders

al-Fuṣūl al-arbaʿa, of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ 32, 77, 154 Fyzee, Asaf Ali Asghar 6–7, 55–6, 163 G˘aʿfar aṣ-Ṣādiq see Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq Galen (Jālīnūs) 170 gˇazīra see jazīra Ghadīr Khumm 12, 147–8 ghāliya see ghulāt ghayba (occultation) 15, 19, 248, 254 al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad, Sunni theologian 4, 32, 48, 78, 154, 198, 214 Ghaznawids 185, 190–2, 195, 224, 226–7 Ghiyāth, early Ismaili dāʿī in Persia 183–5 ghulāt 15, 29, 58, 102, 231, 265 Ghūr 184, 189 Ghūrids, of Ghūr and Khurāsān 199–200 Gīlān, in northern Persia 38–9, 186, 199 Gilgit, in northern Pakistan 84 ginān 3, 34, 58, 64, 83, 85, 88–9, 158, 274–5 Girdkūh, fortress, in northern Persia 78, 81, 187, 196–7, 201, 230 gnosticism (ʿirfān) 23, 27, 30, 63, 65, 93, 97, 138, 149–50, 152, 173, 175, 191, 252 Goeje, Michael Jan de, orientalist 7, 53 Gottheil, Richard, orientalist 163 Great Resurrection see qiyāmat al-qiyāmāt Greek philosophy 170–1; see also Neoplatonism Gujarāt 6, 55, 58, 64, 89–90, 95, 97, 122, 130, 194, 204, 257 Gulshan-i rāz, of Maḥmūd-i Shabistarī 86, 217 Gurgān, in Persia 186–8 Guyard, Stanislas, orientalist 7, 53 Hādawiyya, Zaydī legal school 40 ḥadīth 17, 19–21, 23, 29, 36–7, 70–1, 127–8, 151, 164–7; see also akhbār al-Ḥāfiz. , Fatimid caliph 29–30, 123, 255–6 Ḥāfiz. īs, Ḥāfiz. iyya, branch of Mustaʿlīs 29–30, 74, 96, 123, 146, 255–6 Haft bāb, anonymous Nizārī work 75, 155–6 ḥajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) 67, 166, Hajji Bibi Case 276–7 al-Ḥākim, Fatimid caliph 29, 48, 71–2, 96, 117, 119, 177, 190, 218, 253–4 al-Ḥākim, mosque, in Cairo 119 al-Ḥakīm al-Munajjim, Nizārī dāʿī in Syria 78, 239 Halm, Heinz 8, 58, 108, 127 Ḥamā, in Syria 78, 240, 244 Hamadān, in Persia 20, 183 Hamdān, Banu, of Yemen 72 Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ, Qarmaṭī leader in Iraq 26–7, 104–7, 109–10, 183, 250–2

Index  287  

Hamdani, Abbas 57, 109 al-Hamdānī, Ḥusayn F. 6–7, 55 Ḥamdānids, of Iraq and Syria 10, 123 Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī see al-Kirmānī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Ḥāmidī, ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm, Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq 95 al-Ḥāmidī, Ḥātim b. Ibrāhīm, Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq 178 al-Ḥāmidī, Ibrāhīm b. al-Ḥusayn, Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq 178 Hammer-Purgstall, Josef von, orientalist 5, 53, 57, 216–20 Ḥamza b. ʿAlī, Druze leader 29 Ḥanafids, branch of ʿAlids 14–15 Ḥanbalī Sunnism 41 ḥaqīqa, ḥaqāʾiq 30, 32, 79, 81, 149, 155, 165, 259, 272; for early Ismailis 27, 64, 105, 138–9, 149–50, 252; in Nizārī doctrine 32, 79, 142, 155, 199, 272; in Pandiyāt of Mustanṣir bi’llāh II 87, 272 Harāt 184, 202 Ḥarāz, in Yemen 72, 95, 121 Hārigˇīs see Khārijīs ˘ Hārūn al-Rashīd, Abbasid caliph 18, 103, 113, 250 Harvard University 3, 35, 91 al-Ḥasā see al-Aḥsāʾ Ḥasan, Ḥasan Ibrāhīm 57 Ḥasan II ʿalā dhikrihi’l-salām, Nizārī imam and lord of Alamūt 32, 79, 81, 131, 155–6, 199, 241–2, 244, 259–60, 269 Ḥasan III, Nizārī imam see Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan III Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh, Aga Khan I see Aga Khan I al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, Twelver imam 18, 26, 184, 249–50 al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, Shiʿi imam 13, 37, 96, 152, 157, 248 al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Uṭrūsh see al-Uṭrūsh al-Ḥasan b. al-Ṣabbāḥ see Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ Ḥasan b. Ṣalāḥ Munshī Bīrjandī, see Salāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, al-Dāʿī ila’l-Ḥaqq, founder of the ʿAlid Zaydī dynasty in Ṭabaristān 39 Ḥasan Kabīr Dīn, pīr 88–9 Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ 2–4, 29, 31–2, 45, 48, 73–8, 94, 122–4, 130–1, 141, 146, 153, 193–8, 213–14, 218–19, 238–9, 241, 243, 255, 258–9, 268; biography of 73–4; early career 31, 77, 122, 196–7, 225–6, 255; established at Alamūt 228–9; founder of Nizārī state 45, 94, 130, 141, 193, 197,

219; as head of Nizārī daʿwa 193, 197, 232, 268; recognised as ḥujja of the imam 130–1, 197, 259; and Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism 29, 130, 239 Ḥasan-i Ṣalāḥ Munshī see Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd Ḥasanids, branch of ʿAlids 14–15, 36–40 Hāshimids see Banū Hāshim Hāshimiyya, early Shiʿi sect 15 ḥashīsh 5, 50, 52, 215, 218, 221, 232 ḥashīshī, ḥashishiyya 49, 52, 215; see also ­Assassin legends Hawsam, in eastern Gīlān 39 Ḥaydar, Ṣafawid shaykh 22 hayūla (matter), in Ismaili cosmology 174, 178 Hebrew language 177 Hell 155–6, 219, 259; see also eschatology; Paradise; qiyāma Hellenistic wisdom see Greek philosophy; Neoplatonism hermeneutics see taʾwīl Hibat Allāh b. Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Majdūʿ, founder of Hiptias 132, 257 hidden imams (al-aʾimma al-mastūrīn) for early Ismailis 19, 22, 26, 30, 96, 107–8, 129, 132, 146, 182, 197, 239, 248–59, 261, 267 Ḥijāz, the 13, 36 hijra, in Zaydī tradition 38, 41 ḥikma (wisdom) 23, 28, 71, 93, 118–20, 123, 165, 192 see also majālis al-ḥikma Ḥilla, in Iraq 20–2 Hillenbrand, Carole 8 Hindu Kush, mountain, in Central Asia 66, 122 Hindus, Hinduism 30–1, 33–4, 66, 82, 88–90, 122, 158, 190, 266, 274–6 Hiptias (Hibtias), subgroup of Dāʾūdī Bohras 132, 257 Hishām b. al-Ḥakam, Imāmī scholar 17 Ḥisn al-Akrād see Krak des Chevaliers historiography 8, 92–3, 94–5, 101; of Ismailis 8, 92–3, 95, 101; of Fatimids 95; of Nizārīs 83, 94; of Ṭayyibīs 95; see also literature; numismatic evidence Hodgson, Marshall G. S. 6–7, 21, 57, 220, 234 Holy Land 49, 81, 214, 241, 244 see also Middle East Hospitallers, Frankish military order 80, 241–3 ḥudūd, ḥudūd al-dīn, ranks in Ismaili daʿwa hierarchy 65, 101, 119–20, 129, 175, 178

288  Index

ḥugˇgˇa see ḥujja ḥujja (proof) 26, 71, 73, 77, 107–8, 127–33, 178, 190, 192, 197, 233, 239, 251, 257, 259–60, 267; in early Ismaili doctrine 107–9, 184, 232, 251; in Imāmī doctrine 17, 128, 148, 157; a rank in Ismaili daʿwa organisation 73, 120, 122, 129; in Nizārī doctrine 77, 79, 130–1, 154–5, 197, 239, 259 Hülegü (Hūlāgū), founder of the Īlkhānid dynasty of Persia and Iraq 33, 50, 75, 81, 201, 216 Hunza, in northern Pakistan 66, 84, 122, 181, 193 al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, Twelver scholar 164 Ḥurra see Arwā, Ṣulayḥid queen of Yemen ḥurūf (letters of the alphabet) 177 Ḥurūfiyya, Ḥurūfīs 21 Ḥusayn, Muḥammad Kāmil 7, 57 al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī, early Ismaili dāʿī 104, 183 al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, Shiʿi imam 13, 37, 96, 147, 157, 183, 186, 223, 248, 265 al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Marwazī, Ismaili dāʿī 183–4, 186 Ḥusayn-i Qāʾinī, Nizārī dāʿī in Persia 196–7, 229 Ḥusaynids, branch of ʿAlids 14–17, 27, 37–9, 138, 147–9, 223 Iamblichus, philosopher 170 Ibāḍiyya, subgroup of Khārijīs 121 ibāḥa (antinomianism) 3, 65, 214 ibdāʿ (creation ex nihilo) 173, 177 Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Kamāl al-Dīn, historian 76, 241 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Sufi master 21, 23, 129, 177 Ibn al-Athīr, ʿIzz al-Dīn, historian 244 Ibn ʿAṭṭāsh see ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAṭṭāsh Ibn Bābawayh, Imāmī scholar 19, 20, 164, 167 Ibn al-Dawādārī, Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd Allāh, historian 47, 101 Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya see Muḥammad b. alḤanafiyya Ibn Hāniʾ, Ismaili poet 55 Ibn Ḥawqal, Abu’l-Qāsim, geographer and traveller 110, 118 Ibn Ḥawshab, Manṣūr al-Yaman, early Ismaili dāʿī and author 26, 97, 101, 104–5, 109, 251 Ibn Ḥazm, Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī, heresiographer 109

Ibn al-Haytham, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Jaʿfar, Ismaili dāʿī and author 67–8, 94 Ibn Khallikān, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad, biographer 163, 218 Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī, Imāmī scholar 21 Ibn al-Nadīm, Muḥammad b. Isḥāq, author 47, 101 Ibn al-Qaddāḥ see ʿAbd Allāh b. Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ḥamza b. Asad, historian 76 Ibn Rizām (Razzām), Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad, anti–Ismaili author 46–7, 101, 103–8, 213 Ibn Shahrāshūb, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, Imāmī scholar 163 Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) 21, 23, 75, 171, 177, 191 Ibn Taymiyya, Ḥanbalī jurist 41 Ibn Zūlāq, Abū Muḥammad al–Ḥasan, historian 94, 97 Ibrāhīm (Abraham) 105, 127, 139, 150, 156 Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan, Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq and historian 30, 68, 93–7, 101, 163 Ifrīqiya 27, 68–9, 93–4, 96, 114–15, 119, 121, 176, 223, 238, 253; as seat of Fatimid caliphate 27, 68–9, 93–6, 114–15, 119, 121, 176, 223, 238, 253; see also North Africa Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa, of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān 67, 93 ijtihād 21–5, 37, 39; see also taqlīd ijmāʿ (consensus) 168 Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity) 53, 57, 59, 70, 242; see also Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ ilḥād see mulḥid Īlkhānids, Mongol dynasty of Persia and Iraq 74–5, 86, 94, 194, 202, 225 ʿilm (religious knowledge) 16–17, 38, 138, 147–8, 150–1, 258, 266; see also imamate Imām al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Ḥasan see Imām Shāh Imām Shāh, Imām al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, eponym of Imām-Shāhīs 89 imamate 13, 16–18, 25–30, 33–4, 36–42, 45, 47, 63–5, 69–70, 72–3, 77, 82, 86, 89, 91, 93, 96, 100, 102–10, 113–14, 122–4, 127–30, 133, 138, 140, 145, 147–55, 157–8, 162, 165–8, 172, 176, 182, 184, 187, 191, 193, 197, 202, 214, 223, 225, 232, 238–9, 241, 249–58, 260–2, 265–9, 276; in account of Akhū Muḥsin 106–7; divinity of 14, 16–17, 22–4, 29, 37, 72, 113, 115, 147–8, 152, 253, 266; in early Ismaili doctrine 70, 72, 100, 110, 128,

Index  289  

138, 145, 147–8, 171, 182; in Fatimid doctrine 47, 128, 140, 151, 253–4; for ghulāt 29; in Imāmī doctrine 16, 18, 27–8, 65, 127, 162, 165–7, 266; in Nizārī doctrine 82, 154–5, 157–8, 193, 197, 202, 214, 241, 260–1, 268, 276; in teachings of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq 16, 64, 102, 108, 127–8, 225, 249, 267; in Zaydī doctrine 16, 36–42, 151 Imāmīs, Imāmiyya, Shiʿi community 15–23, 25–8, 35–8, 64–5, 67, 70, 90, 100–3, 105–7, 113, 127–8, 130, 137–8, 145, 147–51, 153, 158, 162–8, 182–4, 223, 242, 249–50, 255, 265–7, 269–70, 274, 276 imām-qāʾim 81, 156 see also qāʾim Imām-Shāhīs 89 inbiʿāth (emanation) 173, 177 India, Indians 3, 6, 24, 29–31, 33–5, 52, 55–6, 63–4, 66, 70, 73, 82–3, 85–90, 92, 95, 97, 100, 120, 122, 124, 131, 144, 146, 158, 181, 190, 202, 204, 257, 260–1, 267, 271–6; Dāʾūdīs of 257; and East Africa 35, 90; jazīra of 120; Nizārīs of 33–5, 85, 88, 158; Ṭayyibīs (Bohras) of 30–1, 132; see also South Asia Indic (Indian) languages 34, 63–4, 83, 85 initiation see balāgh al-insān al-kāmil (Perfect Man of the Sufis) 157 Institute of Ismaili Studies, London 8, 35, 55–6, 58, 91, 96–7 intellect see ʿaql iqṭāʿ 228–9, 231 Iran, Iranians 2, 8, 12, 20, 24, 28, 33, 57, 66, 69–70, 72–3, 82–3, 85–6, 93, 115, 122, 139–40, 145, 152, 157, 170–8, 181, 185–93, 195, 197, 199–201, 204–5, 224, 227, 229, 232, 248, 253, 270–1; see also Persia Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism see philosophical Ismailism Iraq 2, 12, 15, 18–20, 23–4, 26, 29, 36, 72, 103–7, 109–10, 115–16, 120–2, 129, 137–8, 145, 177, 181, 183–5, 188, 190–3, 223–6, 230, 233–4, 244, 248, 250, 252–3; conquered by Saljūqs 29, 121, 192–3, 226, 230, 233–4; early Ismaili daʿwa in 2, 26, 106–7, 145, 181; Fatimid daʿwa to 29, 72, 104, 115–16, 121–2, 188, 190–1; Qarmaṭī revolts 110, 183–5, 252; seat of Abbasid caliphate 18–19, 184, 223–4 ʿirfān see gnosticism ʿĪsā (Jesus) 105, 139, 150, 156

ʿĪsā b. Zayd, Zaydī imam 36 Iṣfahān, in central Persia 20, 23, 73, 122, 191, 193–4, 196, 198, 219, 224–5, 230–1, 233–4, 252 Ishkāshim, in Badakhshān 54, 84 ʿiṣma (perfect immunity from error and sin) 17, 37, 147, 258 Ismāʿīl I, founder of the Ṣafawid dynasty 22, 87–8 Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, eponym of Ismāʿīliyya 25, 64, 102, 104, 109, 113, 139, 145, 182, 225, 249, 267 Ismaili Society, Bombay 6–7, 56 al-Ismāʿīliyya al-khāliṣa, early Ismaili group 25, 102, 104, 182, 249 Ithnāʿasharīs see Twelvers Ivanow, Wladimir 6–7, 55–7, 102, 220 Jabal ʿĀmil, in Lebanon 21–2 Jabal Anṣāriyya see Jabal Bahrāʾ Jabal al-Summāq, in Syria 120, 240 jadd 174–5 Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Ismaili author 56, 65, 71, 76, 101, 129 Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, Shiʿi imam 16–18, 25–6, 38, 47, 64, 96, 100, 102, 104, 107–9, 113–114, 127–8, 139, 145, 147, 154, 159, 162–3, 166–7, 182, 212, 223, 225, 249, 251, 265–7 Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan III, Nizārī imam and lord of Alamūt 80–1, 157, 200, 269 Jalāl al-Dīn Mingübirtī, Khwārazm Shāh 201 Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Mawlānā, Sufi poet 33, 86–7, 204, 271 jamāʿat-khāna (assembly house) 88 Jambet, Christian 58 James of Vitry, bishop of Acre and Crusader historian 49, 51, 217 Jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn, of Nāṣir-i Khusraw 66, 193 al-Jannābī, Abū Saʿīd, founder of the Qarmaṭī state of Baḥrayn 27, 104, 183, 252 al-Jannābī, Abū Ṭāhir, Qarmaṭī ruler of Baḥrayn 187, 252 Jārūdiyya, branch of Zaydīs 36–7, 40, 167 Jawdhar, Ustādh, Fatimid courtier 68, 129 jazīra, jazāʾir 28, 71–2, 119–21, 129, 224, 238 Jerusalem 4, 49, 214, 240, 243 Jibāl, region, in Persia 26, 105, 171, 183, 191, 225 jihād (war) 166, 168, 186

290  Index

Joinville, John of (Jean de), French historian 81 Judaeo-Christian traditions 65, 138, 150, 177, 248 Judaism 138, 150 al-Jurjānī, Abu’l-Haytham see Abu’l-Haytham Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan al-Jurjānī jurisprudence see fiqh Justānids, of Daylam 187 Juwaynī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā Malik, historian 50, 75, 76, 94, 194, 216–17, 225 Jūzjānī, Minhāj al-Dīn, historian 200 Kahak, village near Maḥallāt, in central Persia 8, 56, 89, 274 Kahf, castle, in Syria 78, 82, 240, 242, 245 kalām (theology) 17, 19–20, 22–3, 28, 38, 152, 171–3, 176 kalima (divine word) 157, 173 Kāmaḍ, Hindu community 275–6 Kāmaḍiyy see Kāmaḍ al-Karakī, Shaykh ʿAlī 22 Karbalāʾ, in Iraq 13–14, 23, 265 Karīm Khān Zand, founder of the Zand dynasty of Persia 34, 89 Kāshān, in central Persia 20, 76, 183, 272 Kāshānī, Abu’l-Qāsim ʿAlī, historian 75–6, 94, 194, 225 al-Kashshī, Muḥammad b. ʿUmar, Imāmī scholar 163 Kaysānīs, Kaysāniyya, Shiʿi sect 15–16, 148, 249, 265 Khākī Khurāsānī, Imām Qulī, Nizārī poet 83 Khalaf b. Aḥmad, Ṣaffārid governor of Khurāsān 116, 188 Khalaf al-Ḥallāj, early Ismaili dāʿī in Persia 183 khalīfa, khulāfāʾ 12, 83–4, 140, 253, 255, 259 Khānlanjān, fortress, near Iṣfahān 231 Khārijīs, Khawārij 2, 11, 69, 115, 121, 231, 238 khāṣṣa, khawāṣṣ 65, 119, 121, 138–9, 149 Khaṭṭābiyya, extremist Shiʿi group 102 Khawābī, castle, in Syria 241–2 khayāl 174–5 Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī, Muḥammad Riḍā, Nizārī dāʿī and author 83, 204 Khiḍr 156 Khojas, Nizārīs of South Asian origins 3, 34, 54, 85, 158, 274–5, 277; in court cases 35; etymology 88; see also East Africa; Nizārīs Khojkī, script 34, 58, 83, 85 Khorramieh see Khurramiyya

Khumayni, Ayatullah Sayyid Ruhullah 24 Khorasan see Khurāsān Khurāsān, in northeastern Persia 18, 36, 171, 191, 269; conquered by Mongols 200–3, 269; Ismaili daʿwa to 69, 105, 183; jazīra of 129–30, 141; Nizārīs of 200–1, 203–4, 233 Khurramiyya, Khurramdīniya 196, 227, 229 Khurshāh, Nizārī imam see Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh khuṭba 74, 79, 94, 121, 189, 192, 226 Khūzistān, region, in southwestern Persia 20–1, 128, 181–2, 191, 194, 226, 230 Khwārazm, in Central Asia 199 Khwārazm Shāhs 80, 199, 201, 235 al-Kindī, Abū Yusūf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq, philosopher 171 Kirmān, city and province, in Persia 34, 89–90, 177, 190, 193–4, 204, 224, 226, 261, 274 al-Kirmānī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh, Ismaili dāʿī and author 2, 28, 56, 69, 72, 93, 120–1, 129, 145, 151, 153, 172, 176–8, 189–91, 224, 253–4, 268 Kitāb al-ʿālim wa’l-ghulām, of Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman 65 Kitāb al-iṣlāḥ, of Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī 139–40, 172, 189 Kitāb jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn, of Nāṣir-i Khusraw 66, 193 Kitāb al-kashf, of Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman 106, 129 Kitāb al-maḥṣūl, of Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al–Nasafī 139, 172, 186, 189 Kitāb al-nuṣra, of Abū Yaʿqūb al–Sijistānī 172, 189 Kitāb al-riyāḍ, of Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī 69, 172, 189 Kitāb al-siyāsa, anonymous anti–Ismaili treatise 47 Kitāb al-yanābīʿ, of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī 69, 152, 173 Kohlberg, Etan 8 Krak des Chevaliers (Ḥisn al-Akrād), castle, in Syria 243 Kraus, Paul, orientalist 7, 55, 57 Kūfa, in southern Iraq 13–15, 17, 19, 25–6, 36–8, 102–4, 113, 137, 167, 182–4, 225, 249, 265–6; centre of Shiʿism 13, 15, 102, 104, 137, 265; mawālī of 249; in revolt of al-Mukhtār 14; support for ʿAlī 13; support for ʿAlī 13 kufr (unbelief) 11 Kūhistān see Quhistān

Index  291  

al-Kulaynī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad, Imāmī scholar 17, 19, 127, 151, 164, 167, 266 kun (the Qurʾanic creative imperative) 157 kursī (chair) 174 Kūshayjī, amīrs 203 Kutāma, Berbers 26, 68–9, 105, 114 Kutayfāt, Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad, Fatimid vizier 255–6 Lāhījān 39 Lamak b. Mālik al-Ḥammādī, Ismaili dāʿī in Yemen 30, 122, 256 Lamasar, Lanbasar, fortress, in northern Persia 8, 78, 196, 201–2, 230, 233 Landolt, Hermann 58 Langa, in Daylam 39 Langarids see Musāfirids Latin Orient see Near East law 1, 8, 16–17, 19–20, 23, 27–9, 37–40, 55, 63–4, 67, 69–70, 73, 79, 93, 105, 116, 118–19, 132–3, 137–9, 142, 145, 148–53, 155, 162–8, 172, 175, 214, 252–3, 276–7; see also fiqh lawḥ (tablet) 174 Lebanon 21–2, 24 Lev,Yaacov 58 Lewis, Bernard 7, 57 literature 1, 3, 6–7, 15, 27, 34, 36, 45, 53, 55–8, 63–7, 70–1, 74, 82–5, 88–9, 93–5, 115–16, 118, 138, 145–6, 149, 153, 158, 162, 165–6, 168, 185, 193–5, 217, 224, 228, 244, 254, 258, 274–5; early Ismaili 15, 65, 138, 149, 193–5; Fatimid 1, 27–31, 33, 66–7, 115–16, 145, 153, 162, 168, 185, 224; Ṭayyibī 64, 70, 146, 258; Nizārī 6, 57, 74, 76, 82–5, 88–9, 195, 228, 244, 274–5; see also historiography; ginān Lohana, Hindu caste 34, 88, 274 London 8, 55–6, 58, 91, 97 Louis IX (St Louis), king of France 81 Madelung, Wilferd 6–8, 57, 102, 163 madhhab (school of religious law) 17, 28–9, 38–40, 55, 67, 70, 118, 151, 163, 166, 168 maʾdhūn, rank in daʿwa hierarchy 120–1, 178 Maghrib 1, 68–9, 105, 109, 114–15, 163; see also Ifrīqiya; North Africa Maḥallāt, in central Persia 89–90, 203 Mahdi, the 14–15, 18–19, 22, 25–6, 38–40, 85, 102–3, 106, 108–9, 114, 128–9, 139–40, 150–1, 184, 187–8, 248–55, 261–2, 267, 273; Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar as 25;

Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl as 25, 27 in Zaydī doctrine 40; see also qāʾim al-Mahdī, ʿAbd Allāh (ʿUbayd Allāh), first Fatimid caliph 26, 70, 96, 106, 128, 164–5, 184–5, 251, 267; ancestry 102; doctrinal reform 26–7, 107, 109, 114, 251; flight to the Maghrib 27, 68; letter to Ismailis of Yemen 101, 106, 108, 129 al-Mahdī, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, twelfth imam of the Twelver Shiʿis 18, 249, 255, 267 Mahdībāghwālās, Mahdībāgh party, subgroup of Dāʾūdīs 133, 258 Mahdism see Mahdi; qāʾim Mahdiyya, Fatimid capital in Ifrīqiya 164 Maḥmūd I, Saljūq sultan 230, 234 Maḥmūd of Ghazna, Ghaznawid sultan 190 Maḥmūd-i Shabistārī, Sufi shaykh 86, 217 majālis al-ḥikma (sessions of wisdom) 28, 71, 93, 119–20, 165, 192 al-Majdūʿ, Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl, Dāʾūdī author 132, 257 Mājid, ʿAbd al-Munʿim 57 al-Majlisī, Muḥammad Bāqir, Twelver scholar 23, 164 Majūs see Zoroastrians Makramī, family of Sulaymānī dāʿīs 31, 258 Makrān, in Persia 69, 189 malāḥida see mulḥid al-Malika al-Sayyida, Ṣulayḥid queen see Arwā Mālikī Sunnism 115, 121, 163–4, 167, 238 Maliks, of Sīstān 200 Malikshāh I, Saljūq sultan 195, 196, 227, 229–31 Mamlūks, dynasty of Egypt and Syria 33, 74, 76, 82 al-Maʾmūn, Abbasid caliph 18, 170 Mangū Khān see Möngke Manichaeism 138, 140 Manīqa, castle, in Syria 241 al-Manṣūr, Fatimid caliph 70, 96, 129, 164 al-Manṣūr bi’llāh al-Qāsim b. ʿAlī, Zaydī imam in Yemen 40 al-Manṣūr bi’llāh al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad, founder of the Qāsimī dynasty of Zaydī imams in Yemen 41 Manṣūr al-Yaman see Ibn Ḥawshab al-Maqrīzī, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad, historian 47, 101, 217 Marʿashī, z.ahīr al-Dīn 217 Marco Polo,Venetian traveller 5, 50–1, 53, 215–17, 243 Mardāwīj b. Ziyār, founder of the Ziyārid dynasty of Persia 186–7

292  Index

Marqab, castle, in Syria 242 Marquet,Yves 57 Marw, in Khurāsān 192, 200 Marw al-Rūdh, in Khurāsān 186 al-Marwazī, al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, Ismaili dāʿī see al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Marwazī Marzubān b. Muḥammad, Musāfirid 187–8 Mashhad, in Khūrāsān 18, 23 Massignon, Louis, orientalist 54 maʿṣūm see ʿiṣma Maṣyāf, castle, in Syria 78, 240–2, 261 al-Māturīdī, Abū Manṣūr, Sunni theologian 176 Māturīdiyya, Sunni school of theology 176 mawālī (clients), non-Arab Muslims 14, 248–9 Mawṣil, in Iraq 242, 244 Maymana, in Central Asia 184 Maymūndiz, fortress, in northern Persia 81, 200–1 maz.ālim 165 Māzandarān see Ṭabaristān Mazdakism 138 Mazyadids, of Iraq 20 Mecca (Makka) 12, 47, 140, 147–8, 166, 192, 213 Medina (Madīna) 13–14, 16–17, 25, 38, 102–3, 147, 182, 249–50 Mediterranean Sea 66, 78, 115, 240 Melchizedec 156 Melville, Charles 8 Mesopotamia 170; see also Iraq Middle East 4, 10, 35, 45, 63, 181; see also Near East; Holy Land Mīr Dāmād (Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir Astarābādī), founder of the ‘school of Iṣfahān’ 23 mīthāq (oath) 65, 118; see also ʿahd Möngke, Great Khan 81, 201 Mongolia, Mongols 2, 33, 50, 77, 80, 124, 142, 194, 200–2, 235, 260, 268, 270 Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān, founder of the Umayyad caliphate 13 al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Abū Naṣr Hibat Allāh, Ismaili dāʿī and author 2, 28, 56, 68, 71–2, 94, 97, 119, 121–2, 145, 191–2, 194, 224, 226, 254 Mubārakiyya, designation of the early Ismailis 25, 102–3, 182, 249–50 Mudarrisī Raḍavī, M. T. 269 al-Mufīd, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, Imāmī scholar 20 Mughals, of India 31, 273

Muḥammad, the Prophet 10, 12–17, 19, 27, 29, 37, 41, 65, 68, 70, 81, 96, 109, 113–14, 116, 127–9, 138–9, 141–2, 144–5, 147–9, 151–3, 156, 158, 165, 168, 175, 178, 248, 251–2, 260, 265–6; ʿAlī as his successor 17, 37, 153, 156; definition of his family 116, 265–6; ḥadīth of 29; hereditary sanctity of his family 14–16, 27, 113, 147; as sixth nāṭiq 105, 139, 175; succession to 12–13; see also ahl al-bayt Muḥammad b. Buzurg-Umīd, Nizārī leader and lord of Alamūt 78, 130, 196–9, 234, 241, 258 Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya, son of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib 14–15, 248–9 Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Mahdī see alMahdī, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Wazīr, founder of the neo-Sunni school of Zaydism in Yemen 41 Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, Ismaili imam 25, 47, 64, 96, 100, 102, 104, 107–9, 127–8, 139, 145, 147, 162, 166–7, 182, 212, 223, 225, 249, 251, 265–7; as Ismaili qāʾim (Mahdi), 103–5, 108–9, 128, 139–40, 150, 182, 185, 252–3; Mahdiship denied by ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī 107, 109, 184; position in series of imams 47, 110, 113, 182, 249–50 Muḥammad b. Musāfir, founder of the Musāfirid dynasty of Daylam and Ādharbāyjān 187 Muḥammad b. Zayd, al-Dāʿī ila’l-Ḥaqq, ʿAlid ruler in Ṭabaristān 39 Muḥammad al-Bāqir, Shiʿi imam 16, 36, 38, 85, 128, 166, 261, 266, 273 Muḥammad Burhān al-Dīn, Dāʾūdī dāʿī muṭlaq 132, 257 Muḥammad Tapar, Saljūq sultan 78, 196, 198, 230, 233–4 Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārīs see MuḥammadShāhīs Muḥammad-Shāhīs (or Muʾminīs), branch of Nizārīs 33, 82, 84–8, 202, 204, 261, 270–2, 276 muḥtasham, leader of Nizārīs of Quhistān 78, 200, 229 al-Muʿizz, Fatimid caliph 69–70, 96, 110, 116, 151–2, 164–5, 174, 176, 185, 187, 189–90, 253 mujtahid see ijtihād al-Mukhtār b. Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī, leader of Shiʿi revolt 14, 248

Index  293  

mulḥid, malāḥida (heretics) 3, 11, 76 Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn, theosopher 23 Multān, in Sind 88, 116, 189, 200, 274 Muʾminīs see Muḥammad-Shāhīs Murād Mīrzā, Nizārī imam 88 murīd 33, 87, 132, 203, 271–2 Mūsā (Moses) 105, 139–40, 150, 156 Mūsā al-Kāz.im, Twelver imam 18, 20, 22, 26, 102, 113, 167, 182, 249, 267 al-Musabbiḥī, Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd Allāh, historian 94 Musāfirids, of Daylam and Ādharbāyjān 187–8 Mushaʿshaʿ 21 mustag˘īb see mustajīb al-Mustaʿlī, Fatimid caliph 29, 73, 77, 96, 122–3, 130, 146, 193, 214, 232, 239, 255, 268 Mustaʿlīs (Mustaʿlians) 3, 29, 122–3, 193, 256–7 al-Mustanṣir, Fatimid caliph 2, 3, 29, 32, 45, 71, 72, 73, 77, 79, 96, 120, 121, 122, 123, 130, 131, 146, 191, 192, 193, 199, 214, 224, 225, 226, 232, 239, 241, 254, 255, 259, 268 Mustanṣir bi’llāh II, Nizārī imam 34, 87, 203–4, 271–2 al-Mustaz. hir, Abbasid caliph 4, 48, 214, 230 Muṭarrif b. Shihāb, founder of the Muṭarrifiyya 40 Muṭarrifiyya, Zaydī sect in Yemen 40–1 al-Mutawakkil Aḥmad b. Sulaymān, Zaydī imam in Yemen 41 Muʿtazilīs, Muʿtazila 19, 20, 38, 40, 41, 48, 97, 176 Muz. affar, Raʾīs, Nizārī leader in Quhistān 79, 197 nabī, anbiyāʾ (prophets) 12, 128 nafs (soul) 153, 173–4, 177, 189 Nagpur, in India 133, 257, 258 Nahj al-balāgha, of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib 20 Najaf, in Iraq 22, 23 al-Najāshī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Imāmī scholar 163 Nanji, Azim 58 Nar (Nūr) Muḥammad, son of Imām Shāh 89 Nasafī, ʿAzīz al-Dīn, Sufi author 86 al-Nasafī, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, Ismaili (Qarmaṭī) dāʿī and author 2, 28, 69, 115, 139, 140, 152, 171–2, 176, 177, 186–7, 188, 189, 253

Naser-i Khosraw see Nāṣir-i Khusraw al-Nāṣir, Abbasid caliph 80, 200, 269 Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Abī Manṣūr, Nizārī leader in Quhistān 200 Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī see al-Ṭūsī, Naṣīr alDīn Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Ismaili dāʿī and author 2, 28, 29, 54, 56, 63, 66–7, 73, 84, 93, 120, 122, 129, 141, 145, 153, 172, 176, 192–3, 203, 224, 225, 268 Nāṣiriyya, Zaydī community in Ṭabaristān 39 Naṣr II, Sāmānid amīr 186 naṣṣ (designation) 12, 16, 17, 25, 31, 37, 38, 102, 147–8, 255, 257, 258; see also imamate nāṭiq, nuṭaqāʾ (law-announcing prophets) 27, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 129, 139, 140, 141, 150, 152, 153, 175, 178, 252, 253 al-Nawbakhtī, al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā, Imāmī scholar and heresiographer 101, 105, 106, 130, 148 Near East 215, 241, 242; see also Middle East; Holy Land Neoplatonism 28, 66, 93, 152, 170–1, 172, 173, 175, 189; of Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī 69; in cosmology of Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism 152, 172–3, 175, 177, 189, 191; in Fatimid teachings 28; of al-Kirmānī 177, 191; of al-Nasafī 69; pseudo-Aristotelian works 171; of alSijistānī 69; of Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ 70; in Ṭayyibī cosmology 178 Netton, Ian R. 58 New Testament 177 Niʿmat Allāhīs, Niʿmat Allāhiyya, Sufi order 34, 89–90 Nīmrūz see Sīstān Nīsābūr see Nīshāpūr al-Nīsābūrī, Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm, Ismaili dāʿī and author 68, 93, 117, 118, 190 al-Nīsābūrī, Muḥammad b. Surkh, Ismāʿīlī author 188 Nīshāpūr (Nīsābūr), in Khurāsān 171, 185, 186, 192, 200, 226 Niz. ām al-Mulk, Saljūq vizier 4, 48, 195, 214, 227, 229 Niz. ām-Shahīs, of Aḥmadnagar 88, 273 Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir, Nizārī imam 2, 29, 32, 73, 79, 122, 124, 130, 131, 146, 193, 199, 214, 232–3, 239, 241, 255, 258–9, 268–9 Nizārī Quhistānī, Ḥakīm Saʿd al-Dīn b. Shams al-Dīn, Nizārī poet 83, 86, 202, 271

294  Index

Nizārī-Mustaʿlī schism 2, 29, 31, 73, 74, 96, 122–3, 124, 146, 197, 214, 232, 239, 254–5, 258, 268 Nizārīs, Nizāriyya 4, 5, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 45, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 58, 64, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 94, 95, 130, 131, 141, 142, 146, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 188, 193, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 220, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 254, 255, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 266, 268–9, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277; Alamūt period (483–654/1090–256) 3, 5, 6, 31, 33, 34, 53, 54, 57, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 86, 87, 93, 94, 131, 141, 142, 144, 146, 153, 154, 155, 157, 194, 195, 197, 198, 201, 203, 205, 212, 218, 219, 220, 225, 239, 258, 270; against Crusaders 49–50; daʿwa see under daʿwa; distorted image 4, 49, 214, 220; doctrine 87, 131, 157; historiography 83, 93, 94, 101; Nizārī methods of struggle 197, 240; Nizārī state described 33, 74, 78, 81, 94, 100, 124, 146, 198, 200, 201, 203, 218, 219, 268, 270; origins 2–3, 29, 31, 193, 232; post-Alamūt period 82, 83, 84, 87, 157, 202, 270; Qāsim-Shāhī/ Muḥammad-Shāhī schism 33, 82, 86, 202, 261, 270, 273; revolt against Saljūqs (483–511/1090–1118) 74, 195, 196, 219, 226, 227, 239; satr 77, 81, 130, 131, 142, 239, 258, 259, 260 Noah see Nūḥ North Africa 2, 10, 26, 27, 45, 46, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 93, 96, 100, 109, 114, 115, 116, 121, 137, 145, 167, 172, 181, 184, 185, 223, 224, 238, 251, 252, 268; see also Ifrīqiya; Maghrib Nūḥ (Noah) 105, 139, 150, 156, 186 Nūḥ I, Sāmānid amīr 186 al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad, al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa, Ismaili jurist and author 1, 28–9, 30, 55, 56, 65, 67, 70, 71, 76, 97, 110, 116, 117, 119, 128, 145, 151, 162–5, 166–7, 168, 172 numismatic evidence 77, 130, 187, 197, 239 Nuqṭawīs, Nuqṭawiyya 21 Nūr al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Zangī, Zangid ruler of Aleppo 243 Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad, Nizārī imam and lord of Alamūt 79, 80, 155, 199, 244, 259–60 Nuṣayrīs, Nuṣayriyya, Shiʿi community 74, 85

al-Nuwayrī, Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, historian 47, 101 oath of allegiance see ʿahd; mīthāq occultation see ghayba Odoric of Pordenone, Franciscan friar and traveller 50, 215 Old Man of the Mountain 4, 49, 50, 199, 214, 215–16, 243; see also Assassin legends Old Testament 177 O’Leary, De Lacy E., orientalist 53 orientalism 5, 12, 51–4, 212, 217 Ottoman 33, 41, 82, 85, 217, 261 Oxford University 8, 55 Oxus (Āmū Daryā), river 54, 84, 122, 193, 199, 200 Özbegs 86, 203 Pahlavi, Reza Shah 24 Pakistan 35, 84, 116 Pamirs, mountains 84, 192 Pandiyāt-i jawānmardī, of Mustanṣir bi’llāh II 87, 272 Paradise 5, 50, 51, 75, 79, 155, 199, 215, 216, 218, 221, 243, 259; see also eschatology; qiyāma; soteriology Paris 7, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 168 Persia (Iran) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 45, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 63, 64, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 100, 103, 105, 110, 116, 120, 121, 122, 124, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 140, 141, 142, 145, 146, 152, 153, 155, 157, 158, 176, 177, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 238, 239, 240, 241, 244, 252, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276; early Ismailism in 1, 28, 252, 268; under Īlkhānids 74, 75, 86, 94, 194, 202, 225; Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism in 72, 175, 176, 177; under Khwārazm Shāhs 80, 199, 201; Mongol conquest of 81, 201; mawālī of 15; Nizārīs of 33, 53, 64, 74, 83, 88, 90, 95, 131, 141, 153, 157, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204, 259, 261, 271–2, 273, 274; under Ṣafawids 21, 22–3, 34, 39–40, 86, 87, 88, 157–8, 203–4, 261, 272–4; under

Index  295  

Saljūqs 29, 31–2, 74, 77, 78, 80 195, 219, 227, 241; Shiʿism in 21; Sufism in 22, 84, 86, 87, 132, 142, 157, 203, 271–2, 274 Persian Gulf 20, 183 Persian language 31, 74, 75, 77, 83, 94, 192, 193, 195, 198, 205, 228, 271 philosophical Ismailism 72, 152, 171–2, 173, 175, 176, 177 pīr 33, 83, 85, 87, 131, 157, 200, 203, 261, 271–2, 274 Plato (Aflāṭūn) 170 Plotinus (al-Shaykh al-Yūnānī), philosopher 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 177 Polo, Marco see Marco Polo Poonawala, Ismail K. 6, 58, 163, 181 Porphyry (Furfūriyūs) 170 Proclus (Buruqlus), philosopher 170, 171 prophecy see nubuwwa prophets 12, 27, 64, 65, 105, 127, 138, 148, 149, 150, 153, 175, 178, 252; cycle of 139, 141 Ptolemy (Baṭlāmiyūs) 170 al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān see al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad qāḍī al-quḍāt (chief qāḍī) 70, 118, 151, 168 al-Qādir, Abbasid caliph 48 Qādirī, Qādiriyya, Sufi order 88, 274 Qadmūs, castle, in Syria 78, 85, 240, 261 qāʾim 18, 79, 81, 106, 128, 139, 140, 141, 156, 158, 182, 199, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 259, 260, 262; in doctrine of early Ismailis 102, 103, 105, 106, 107–10, 128, 139, 140, 182, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255; in Nizārī doctrine of the Alamūt period 142, 156, 199, 259, 260; see also Mahdi; qiyāma al-Qāʾim, Fatimid caliph 96, 129, 164 qāʾim al-qiyāma 32, 79, 156, 199, 254, 259, 262; see also qāʾim Qāʾin, in Quhistān 196, 229 Qajār, dynasty of Persia 24, 34, 35, 54, 90, 217, 261, 262, 276 qalam (pen) 174 al-Qalqashandī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, secretary in the Mamlūk chancery and author 68 Qarakhānids, of Transoxania 191, 195, 227 Qarāmiṭa see Qarmaṭīs Qarmaṭīs 27, 47, 53, 57, 65, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 114, 116, 129, 137, 140, 148, 150, 174, 184, 186, 187, 189, 190, 205, 209, 213, 250, 252, 253, 263; of Baḥrayn

29, 47, 53, 110, 114, 140, 186, 190, 213, 252, 253; origin of the name 104, 250 relations with Fatimids 53, 189; as dissident Ismailis in schism of 286/899 27, 47, 65, 100, 110, 114, 129, 140, 148, 150, 174, 184, 189; of Iraq 106, 252; and Mahdism of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl 129, 184; of Persia 186 al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī, Zaydī imam 38, 40 Qāsim al-Manṣūr, Zaydī imam in Yemen 40, 41 Qāsim-Shāhī Nizārīs see Qāsim–Shāhīs Qāsim-Shāhīs, branch of Nizārīs 33, 82, 86, 87, 202, 203, 261, 270–1, 273; see also Khojas; Nizārīs; Satpanth Qāsimiyya, branch of Zaydīs 39 Qayrawān (Kairouan), in North Africa 68, 69, 114, 115, 119, 121, 128, 163, 164 Qazwīn, in Persia 20 qiyāma (resurrection) 15, 32, 34, 79, 80, 81, 87, 133, 140, 141, 142, 155, 156, 157, 158, 199, 200, 201, 235, 241, 244, 248, 254, 259, 260; in early Ismaili doctrine 156, 248, 254; in Nizārī doctrine 32, 80, 87, 141, 155, 156–7, 199, 200, 235, 241, 244, 260; proclamation at Alamūt 79, 155, 199, 201, 241, 244, 259–60; in Ṭayyibī doctrine 133, 141; see also eschatology qiyāmat al-qiyāmāt (Great Resurrection) 80–1, 141, 155, 260 Qizilbāsh 22 Quatremère, Étienne M., orientalist 7, 219 al-Quḍāʿī, Muḥammad b. Salāma, historian 94, 97 Quhistān (Kūhistān), region, in southeastern Khurāsān 78, 79, 86, 155, 196, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 229, 230, 234, 269 Qulayʿa, castle, in Syria 241 Qūmis, region, in northern Persia 78, 194, 196, 198, 201, 230, 234 Qumm, in central Persia 19, 20, 23, 34, 89, 90, 164, 167, 183, 194, 203, 225, 274 al-Qummī, Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī, Imāmī scholar and heresiographer 101, 105, 106, 130, 148, 266 Qurʾan, Qurʾanic 12, 13, 17, 23, 27, 29, 45, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 75, 93, 127, 137, 138, 141, 148, 149, 150, 156, 165, 166, 167, 168, 174, 248 Quraysh, Meccan tribe 12, 95 Raḍī al-Dīn b. Ṭāhir, Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārī imam 86, 87–8, 203, 261, 272–4

296  Index

Rāḥat al-ʿaql, of Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī 72, 151, 153, 177, 178, 190–1 rajʿa (return) 15, 19, 38, 248 Rajasthan, in India 275 Ramdev Pir, Hindu saint 275–6 Ramla, in Palestine 120 Raqqāda, near Qayrawān 68 Raqqāmī Khurāsānī, ʿAlī Qulī, Nizārī poet 83 Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) 53, 57, 58, 59, 70, 242 Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh, historian and Īlkhānid vizier 75, 76, 94, 194, 225, 269 Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān, Nizārī dāʿī in Syria 4, 33, 49, 76, 79, 81, 199, 214, 238, 241–2, 243–4, 245 Rasūlids, of Yemen 95, 97 Rawḍat al-taslīm, of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī 75, 80, 155, 157, 201, 269 Rayy, in Persia 20, 105, 172, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 194, 225, 225 al-Rāzī (Rhazes), Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyāʾ, physician and philosopher 187 al-Rāzī, Abū Ḥātim Aḥmad b. Ḥamdān, Ismaili (Qarmaṭī) dāʿī and author 2, 28, 56, 69, 115, 139, 140, 152, 172, 177, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 224 resurrection see qiyāma Richard I, the Lion Heart, king of England 244–5 Rūdbār, district in northern Persia 39, 81, 187, 188, 195, 196, 198, 199, 200, 202, 226, 229, 230, 233, 234; see also Daylam Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, Nizārī imam and last lord of Alamūt 33, 75, 81, 82, 85–6, 94, 201, 202, 260, 270 Rūm see Anatolia Ruṣāfa, castle, in Syria 241, 242 Rūshān, in Badakhshān 54, 84, 203 Russia, Russians 6, 54, 56, 57 Rustichello of Pisa 50, 216 Rūyān, in northern Persia 39 Sabaeans 140 Ṣaʿda, in Yemen 40 al-Ṣādiq, Shiʿi imam see Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq Ṣadr al-Dīn, pīr 34, 85, 88, 274 Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī see Mullā Ṣadrā Safar-nāma, of Nizārī Quhistānī 86, 202 Ṣafawids, dynasty of Persia 10, 21, 22, 23, 34, 40, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 157, 158, 203, 204, 261, 272, 273, 276

Ṣaffarids, of Sīstān and Afghanistan 116, 184, 185, 188, 195, 224, 227 Ṣafī al-Dīn, Ṣafawid shaykh 22 ṣaḥāba see Companions of the Prophet ṣāḥib al-taʾwīl 149, 150 St Louis, king of France see Louis IX St Petersburg 6 Saladin see Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin), founder of the Ayyūbid dynasty 74, 80, 123, 242, 243, 244–5 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūḍ, Nizārī author 94 Salamiyya, in central Syria 25, 26, 27, 68, 85, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 114, 128, 183, 184, 185, 251 Sālārids see Musāfirids ṣalāt (ritual prayer) 165, 166 Saljūqs 2, 4, 8, 20, 29, 31, 32, 45, 48, 49, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 80, 94, 121, 122, 141, 146, 164, 185, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 213, 214, 219, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 239, 240, 241, 258, 268, 269 Salmān al-Fārisī, Companion of the Prophet 156 salvation see eschatology; soteriology Sāmānids, of Khurāsān and Transoxania 39, 73, 122, 183, 186, 188, 191, 195, 227, 253, 268 Samarqand (now in Uzbekistan) 191, 200 Sāmarrā, in Iraq 18 Sanders, Paula 58 Sanjar, Saljūq sultan 196, 198, 199, 230, 233, 234 Sargudhasht-i Sayyidnā, of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ 75–6, 94, 194, 225 Satpanth Ismailism 3, 34, 58, 83, 88, 89, 90, 146, 158, 274, 275, 276; see also gināns; Khojas satr (concealment) 81, 141, 142, 254, 257; see also dawr al-satr Saudi Arabia 31 Sawād, of Kūfa 26, 104, 183 ṣawm (fasting) 166 Sayyid, Ayman F. 58 al-Sayyida Ḥurra see Arwā “school of Iṣfahān”, in Twelver theosophy 23 School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 55 Seljuqs see Saljūqs Semenov, Aleksandr A. 54, 57

Index  297  

Sen, Amartya 6 Shāfiʿī Sunnism 118, 218 Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī see Aga Khan IV Shāh Khalīl Allāh, Nizārī imam 89 Shāh Nizār, Nizārī imam 89, 261 Shāh Qalandar, Nizārī imam see Mustanṣir bi’llāh II Shāh Ṭāhir b. Raḍī al-Dīn, al-Ḥusaynī Dakkanī, Muḥammad-Shāhī Nizārī imam 87, 88, 261, 272–3, 274 Shāhdiz (Dizkūh), fortress, near Iṣfahān 196, 198, 231, 233 al-Shahrastānī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd alKarīm, heresiographer and theologian 32, 75, 77, 131, 154, 198 Shahr-i Bābak, in Kirmān 89 Shamīrān, castle, in Ṭārum 187, 188 Shams al-Dīn, pīr 34, 85, 88 Shams al-Dīn ʿAlī, ʿAlawī dāʿī 257 Shams al-Dīn Jaʿfar, Zaydī jurist 41 Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, Nizārī imam 33, 82, 86, 202, 260–1, 270 Shams-i Tabrīz 86 Sharḥ al-akhbār, of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān 151, 164 sharīʿa (religious law) 24, 29, 48, 64, 65, 79, 80, 81, 87, 139, 140, 142, 149, 150, 155, 157, 162, 200, 214, 252, 253, 254, 258, 260, 269, 270, 272 al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, ʿAlam al-Hudā, Imāmī theologian 20, 164 al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Imāmī theologian 20 al-Shawkānī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, Zaydī theologian 41 Shaykh al-Ṣadūq see Ibn Bābawayh Shaykh al-Ṭāʾifa see al-Ṭūsī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad al-Shayyāl, Jamāl al-Dīn 57 Shibām, mountain and fortress, in Ḥarāz 95 Shihāb al-Dīn Shāh al-Ḥusaynī, pīr, Nizārī author 83 Shiʿis, Shiʿism 1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 14–15, 45, 46, 47, 49, 52, 54, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 76, 77, 82, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 121, 127, 128, 133, 138, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 149, 151, 153, 154, 157, 158, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 172, 176, 181, 182, 184, 185, 187, 189, 191, 194, 195, 198, 200, 204, 212, 213, 216, 219, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229, 231, 238, 240, 242, 248, 249, 250, 254, 255, 256, 261, 262, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274,

276, 277, 279; conception of religious authority 13, 147, 166; definition of ahl al-bayt 13, 14, 15, 16, 36–7, 70, 113, 145, 147, 148, 167, 248, 265; devotion to ʿAlī 36, 148; during imamate of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq 16, 265; Fatimid caliphate established 1, 3, 27, 45, 46, 66, 69, 93, 94, 96, 100, 105, 109, 114, 137, 162, 181, 185, 223, 224; mawālī 14; and Muʿtazilīs 19, 20, 23, 37; origins 12–13; revolt of al-Mukhtār 14, 15, 16, 248–9; as state religion of the Ṣafawids 22, 34, 87–8, 158, 204, 261, 272, 273; Sufism and 22, 84, 157, 203, 271, 274; see also imamate; Imāmīs; Ismailis; Nuṣayrīs; Qarmaṭīs; Twelvers; Zaydīs Shīrāz, in Fārs 191, 192 Shughnān, in Badakhshān 54, 58, 84, 86, 203 al-Shūshtarī, Nūr Allāh, Qāḍī, Twelver scholar 164 Sicily (Ṣiqilliyya) 114, 115 Šīʿīs see Shiʿis sijill, sijillāt (epistles) 68, 97 Sijilmāsa, in southern Morocco 68, 114 Sijistān see Sīstān al-Sijistānī, Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Aḥmad, Ismaili dāʿī and author 2, 28, 56, 67, 69, 93, 116, 140, 145, 152–3, 172–3, 174–5, 176, 186, 187, 188, 189, 193, 224, 268 Silvestre de Sacy, Antoine Isaac, orientalist 5, 7, 52, 216 Sinān, Rāshid al-Dīn see Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān Sind (now in Pakistan) 34, 64, 69, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 105, 109, 116, 120, 158, 189, 190, 200, 202, 204, 251, 270, 274, 275 Sinkiang (Xinjiang), region, in China 84 Sīra, of Jawdhar 68 Sīra, of al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī 68, 72, 94 Sīstān (Arabic Sijistān; also called Nīmrūz), in eastern Persia 69, 116, 184, 186, 188, 189, 200, 203 Siyāsat-nāma, of Niz. ām al-Mulk 4, 48, 214, 227, 229 Smoor, Pieter 58 soteriology; in doctrine of early Ismailis 63, 93, 138; in doctrine of Ṭayyibīs 153, 178; in Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism 69, 152, 173, 175–6; see also eschatology; qiyāma soul see nafs South Asia 3, 5, 10, 33, 45, 46, 54, 55, 58, 63, 64, 82, 83, 88, 89, 94, 158, 163, 168, 239,

298  Index

257, 261, 272, 274–5, 277; see also India; Pakistan; Sind; Multān; Gujarāt Stern, Samuel M. 6, 7, 47, 57, 102, 176 Stroeva, Lyudmila V. 57 Strothmann, Rudolf 7, 57, 163 Sufis, Sufism 2, 21, 22, 23, 33, 34, 41, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 131, 132, 142, 157, 158, 203, 204, 217, 260, 261, 271–2, 273, 274, al-Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā 23 Suhrawardī, Suhrawardiyya, Sufi order 88, 274 Ṣulayḥids, of Yemen 3, 29, 30, 40, 72, 95, 96, 97, 121–2, 123–124, 130, 238, 256 Sulaymān b. Ḥasan, Sulaymānī dāʿī muṭlaq 257 Sulaymānīs, Sulaymāniyya, branch of Ṭayyibīs 31, 46, 55, 132, 166, 257, 258, 262 Sultan Muhammad Shah, Aga Khan III see Aga Khan III Sumrās, of Sind 190 sunna (custom) 13, 29, 70, 151, 165, 166, 168 Sunnis, Sunnism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 37, 39, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 55, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 85, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 101, 110, 114, 115, 116, 118, 121, 123, 142, 144, 147, 154, 157, 158, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 176, 186, 191, 192, 195, 198, 200, 204, 212–13, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 223, 224, 227, 229, 235, 238, 240, 241–2, 243, 244, 248, 250, 256, 260, 265, 266, 268, 269, 270, 272, 274, 275, 276 ṣūra (form), in Ismaili cosmology 174, 178 Sūrat, in Gujarāt 58, 97, 258 symbolic exegesis see taʾwīl Syria, Syrians 2, 4, 5, 7, 13, 20, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 45, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 63, 68, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84–5, 86, 92, 94, 100, 104, 114, 120, 121, 123, 124, 128, 130, 141, 144, 145, 146, 153, 157, 170, 181, 183, 190, 194, 197, 198–9, 200, 202, 214, 215, 216, 218, 224, 226, 232, 233, 235, 238, 239–40, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 251, 254, 255, 256, 258, 260, 261, 262, 268, 270, 273, 275 Syriac language 170, 177 al–Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr, historian 101

Ṭabaristān (Māzandarān), in northern Persia 38, 39, 73, 186, 187, 192, 199, 217, 234 Ṭabas, in Quhistān 196, 229 Tabrīz, in Ādharbāyjān 22, 86, 202 tafsīr (Qurʾan commentary) 71, 149 ṭahāra (ritual purity) 166 Ṭāhirids, of Persia 39 Ṭāhirids, of Yemen 95, 97 Ṭahmāsp I, Ṣafawid shāh 88, 273 Tāj al-Dīn, pīr 88 Tajikistan 3, 28, 54, 66, 84, 91, 122, 181, 193, 271 Ṭālibids, branch of Banū Hāshim 15, 37, 108 taʿlīm 32, 48, 77, 78, 138, 141, 154, 198, 214, 270 Tāmir, ʿĀrif 7, 57 tanāsukh (metempsychosis) 254 taqīya see taqiyya taqiyya (precautionary dissimulation) 2, 16, 17, 25, 26, 33, 38, 80, 81, 82–3, 85–6, 87–8, 92, 95, 103, 108, 114, 115, 129, 142, 157–8, 163, 164, 167, 184, 200, 202, 204, 238, 251, 260, 261, 266–7, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274–5, 276–7 ṭarīqa 21, 22, 86, 87, 131, 203, 271, 272 Ṭārum, in Persia 187, 188 tashbīh (anthropomorphism) 173 Tashkorghan, in Sinkiang (Xinjiang) region of China 84 tawḥīd 173, 177 taʾwīl (esoteric interpretation) 1, 27–8, 32, 45, 63, 65, 66, 67, 71, 75, 79, 93, 115, 117, 119, 138, 142, 145, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 158, 165, 176, 185, 199, 241, 254, 259; in early Ismaili doctrine 27, 65, 138, 145, 149, 176; in Fatimid doctrine 28, 71, 115, 117, 165, 185; in Nizārī doctrine of qiyāma 32, 75, 155, 158, 241, 254 Taʾwīl al–daʿāʾim, of al–Qāḍī al–Nuʿmān 28, 71, 119, 165 al–Ṭayyib, son of the Fatimid caliph al–Āmir 30, 123–4, 132, 255, 256, 257 Ṭayyibīs, Ṭayyibiyya, branch of Mustaʿlīs 3, 29, 30, 31, 46, 48, 55, 63, 64, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 95, 96, 97, 101, 122, 123, 124, 132, 133, 141, 146, 151, 152, 153, 154, 163, 166, 168, 178, 238, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258; historiography 95; schism with Ḥāfiz. īs 29, 74, 96, 123, 146, 255; see also Mustaʿlīs; Dāʾūdīs; Sulaymānīs; ʿAlawīs; Bohras Tehran 7, 57, 83, 183

Index  299  

Templars, Frankish military order 80, 220, 241, 243 Thaʾirids, Zaydī ʿAlid dynasty in northern Persia 39 Tihāma, in Yemen 95 Tīmūr 203 Tīmūrids 86, 202, 203 Toghrel see Ṭughril Toronto 35 Transoxania (Mā warāʾ al–nahr) 2, 20, 105, 152, 171, 176, 181, 183, 185, 186, 188, 191, 196; see also Badakhshān; Central Asia Tripoli (Ṭarablus), in Syria 78, 240, 241, 243 Ṭughril I, Saljūq sultan 226 Tūn, in Quhistān 196, 229 Tunisia 27, 69, 114; see also Ifrīqiya; Maghrib; North Africa Turcomans see Turkomans Turkomans 22 Turks 2, 4, 22, 32, 48, 72, 73, 77, 94, 120, 121, 141, 146, 186, 191, 192, 195, 199, 213, 224, 226, 227–8, 229, 230, 234–5, 239, 253, 258, 268; see also Ottomans; Saljūqs Ṭūs, in Khurāsān 18 al–Ṭūsī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. al–Ḥasan, Shaykh al–Ṭāʾifa, Imāmī scholar 20, 163, 167 al–Ṭūsī, (Khwāja) Naṣīr al–Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, Shiʿi scholar 2, 20–1, 33, 75, 77, 80, 81, 153–4, 155, 157, 200–1, 267, 269–70 Twelvers, Twelver Shiʿism (Ithnāʿashariyya) 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 34, 36, 38, 40, 88, 90, 127, 128, 145, 147, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 249, 261, 265, 269, 270, 272, 273, 276, 277; definition 18; use of the term ḥujja 127; and taqiyya 204; system of law 21; ­persecuted under Abbasids 18; proclaimed as state religion in s.afawid Persia 22, 34, 87–8, 158, 204, 261, 272, 273; and Sufism 22; al–Qāḍī al–Nuʿmān as 163; Nas.īr al–Dīn al–Ṭūsī as 267 Tyre (s.ūr) 120, 244 ʿUbayd Allāh al–Mahdī see al–Mahdī, ʿAbd

Allāh, first Fatimid caliph Uch (Uchch), in Sind 88, 274 ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) 11, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 42, 46, 87, 186, 192, 272 ʿUmar b. al–Khaṭṭāb, second caliph 12, 37

ʿUmāra b. ʿAlī al–Ḥakamī al–Yamanī, historian and poet 97 Umayyads, Banū Umayya 14, 15, 16, 36, 69, 115, 148, 170, 223, 265, 266 Umayyads, of Spain 69, 115 Umm al–kitāb, anonymous early Shiʿi work 84 umma (community of believers) 10, 27, 113, 147, 148 University of California, Berkeley 6, 7 University of Central Asia 35, 91 upper Oxus region see Transoxania Urdu language 55 uṣūl al–fiqh 19, 24; see also fiqh Uṣūlī school, of Twelver jurisprudence 23–4 ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, third caliph 12, 37 Uthūlūjiya (Theology), of Aristotle, pseudo– Aristotelian treatise 171 al–Uṭrūsh, al–Ḥasan b. ʿAlī, al–Nāṣir li’l–Ḥaqq, Zaydī ruler in Ṭabaristān 39 ʿUyūn al–akhbār of Idrīs ʿImād al–Dīn 30, 68, 93, 96, 97 Venice 50, 215 Vermeulen, Urbain 8 Vieux de la Montagne see Old Man of the Mountain Vishnu, Hindu deity 158 Wahsūdān b. Marzubān, Justānid 187 Wahsūdān b. Muḥammad, Musāfirid 187 Wajh–i dīn, of Nāṣir–i Khusraw 67 Wakhān, in Badakhshān 54 walāya (devotion to imams) 116, 128, 166, 167, 168 walī, awliyāʾ 121 Walker, Paul E. 8, 58, 175, 188 waṣī, awsiyāʾ (legatees) 17, 37, 65, 105, 138, 139, 147, 149–50, 151–2, 153, 156, 158, 175, 178, 252 William of Tyre, archbishop and Crusader historian 49, 217, 241, 243 Wüstenfeld, Ferdinand 53 yad, rank in daʿwa hierarchy 120 Yaḥyā b. al–Ḥusayn, al–Hādī ila’l–Ḥaqq, Zaydī imam in Yemen 40 Yaḥyā b. Lamak al–Ḥammādī, Ismaili dāʿī in Yemen 30, 256 Yaḥyā b. Zayd, Zaydī imam 36 Yalaoui (al–Yaʿlawī), Mohammad (Muḥammad) 58 Yām, Banū, of Yemen 258 Yazd, in Persia 89, 226

300  Index

Yazīd, Umayyad caliph 13 Yemen (Yaman) 1, 3, 5, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 48, 54, 55, 56, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 92, 95, 96, 97, 101, 102, 106, 107, 110, 114, 115, 116, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 127, 130, 131, 141, 144, 145, 146, 151, 153, 154, 168, 178, 181, 184, 194, 223, 225, 232, 238, 239, 251, 252, 255, 256, 257, 258, 268, 272; early Ismailis in 1, 105, 109, 251, 268; and Ṣulayḥids 29, 40, 96, 97, 123; Zaydīs in 39 Yumgān, in Badakhshān 66, 192–3 Zabīd, in Tihāma 95 Zād al–musāfirīn, of Nāṣir–i Khusraw 66, 193 Zagros, mountains, in western Persia 78, 198, 230, 233, 234 Zāhid ʿAlī 6, 55 z.āhir 1, 27, 45, 48, 64, 65, 69, 70, 79, 113, 117, 118, 119, 137–8, 139, 149, 150, 155, 162, 172, 185, 214, 224

al–z.āhir, Fatimid caliph 96 zakāt (alms) 71, 118, 166 Zanāta, Berbers 115 Zand, dynasty of Persia 34, 89 Zangids, of Syria and northern Iraq 80, 242, 243, 244, 245 Zanj 106, 120 Zarubin, Ivan I. 54 Zayd b. ʿAlī b. al–Ḥusayn, Zaydī imam 36, 38 Zaydīs, Zaydiyya, Shiʿi community 10, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 29, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41–2, 70, 95, 97, 166, 167, 176, 186, 187, 191, 199, 226, 227, 249, 265, 266, 268 Zayn al–ʿĀbidīn, Shiʿi imam see ʿAlī b. al–Ḥusayn Ziyārids 187 Zikrawayh b. Mihrawayh, Qarmaṭī leader 107 Zīrids, of Ifrīqiya 121 Zoroastrianism 65, 138, 140, 252 Zurayʿids, of ʿAdan 123 Zūzan, in Quhistān 196, 229