Daftary, Farhad. 2024. 'Ismaili Shiʿism', St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/IsmailiShiismDaftary, Farhad. "Ismaili Shiʿism." In St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. University of St Andrews, 2022–. Article published August 29, 2024. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/IsmailiShiism.Daftary, F. (2024) Ismaili Shiʿism. In: B. N. Wolfe et al., eds. St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. University of St Andrews. Available at: https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/IsmailiShiism [Accessed ].Farhad Daftary, 'Ismaili Shiʿism', in St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, ed. by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. (University of St Andrews, 2024) <https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/IsmailiShiism>
1 Origins and early history
The origins of Sunnism and Shiʿism, the two main divisions of Islam, may be traced to the crisis of succession to the Prophet Muḥammad (d. 11 AH/632 CE). A successor was needed to assume his function not as a prophet, but as the leader of the nascent Islamic community. In practice, this choice was resolved by the Muslim notables, leading to the establishment of the historical caliphate. It is the fundamental belief of the Shiʿi Muslims, however, that the Prophet Muḥammad had in fact designated his cousin and son-in-law, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), who was married to his daughter Fāṭima, as his successor – a designation (naṣṣ) believed to have been ordained by divine command. Be that as it may, a minority group originally upholding this view gradually expanded and became generally designated as the Shīʿat ʿAlī, party of ʿAlī, or simply as the Shīʿa.
Originally, Shiʿism represented a unified community. The Shīʿa then recognised successively ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and then his sons al-Ḥasan (d. 49/669) and al-Ḥusayn (d. 61/680) as their imams or spiritual leaders. This situation changed subsequently, as different Shiʿi communities came to coexist, each with its own line of ʿAlid imams, descendants of ʿAlī, and elaborating their own theological doctrines. It was under such circumstances that Shiʿism of the Umayyad times developed mainly in terms of two branches, the Kaysānīs and the Imāmīs. The Kaysānī Shiʿis were mostly absorbed either into the ʿAbbāsid movement or disintegrated soon after the victory of the ʿAbbāsids over the Umayyads in 132/750.
Imāmī Shiʿism, the common theological heritage of the Ismailis and the Twelvers, continued to develop under a particular line of ʿAlid imams, descendants of al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī. By contrast to the Kaysānīs, the Imāmīs remained completely removed from any political activity. It was with Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. ca. 114/732), their fifth imam, that the Imāmī branch of Shiʿism began to acquire its prominence as a Shiʿi community. But it was during the long imamate of al-Bāqir’s son and successory, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, that Imāmī Shiʿism expanded significantly and became a major religious community with a distinctive theological identity.
Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq elaborated the basic conception of the doctrine of imamate (imāma), which was essentially retained by the Ismailis and the Twelvers (Daftary 2005: 64–82). This central theological doctrine of Imāmī Shiʿism was based on the belief in the permanent need of mankind for a divinely guided, sinless and infallible (maʿṣūm) imam who, after the Prophet Muḥammad, would act as the authoritative teacher and guide of men in all their spiritual affairs. This doctrine further taught that the Prophet himself had designated ʿAlī as his legatee (waṣī) and successor; and, after ʿAlī, the imamate would be transmitted from father to son among the descendants of ʿAlī and Fāṭima, and that after their son al-Ḥusayn, it would continue in the Ḥusaynid line until the end of time. This Ḥusaynid ʿAlid imam, the sole legitimate imam at any given time, was in possession of a special knowledge (ʿilm) and had perfect understanding of the exoteric (ẓāhir) and esoteric (bāṭin) meanings of the Qurʾan and the message of Islam. Recognition of the sole, legitimate imam of the time and obedience to him were made the absolute duties of every believer (muʾmin) (Jafri 1979: 235–300).
Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, the last of the early Imāmī Shiʿi imams to be recognised by both the Ismailis and the Twelvers, died in 148/765. The dispute over his succession led to historic divisions in Imāmī Shiʿism, also marking the emergence of the earliest Ismailis (Nawbakhtī 1931: 34, 53–55; Qummī 1963: 76–78). He had originally designated his second son Ismāʿīl, the eponym of the Ismāʿīliyya, as his successor to the imamate. As reported by the majority of the sources, however, Ismāʿīl had apparently predeceased his father. At any rate, Ismāʿīl was not present in Medina, the residence of the ʿAlids, or in Kūfa, the centre of Imāmī Shiʿism, on al-Ṣādiq’s death. As a result, three of Ismāʿīl’s brothers now claimed the imamate. Under the circumstances, the Imāmī Shiʿi followers of al-Ṣādiq split into several groups, two of which may be identified as the earliest Ismailis. One group, based in Kūfa, denied Ismāʿīl’s death in the lifetime of his father and now awaited his return as the Mahdi, the restorer of true Islam and justice on the earth. They were designated as ‘Ismāʿīliyya al-khāliṣa’ or the ‘Pure Ismāʿīliyya’. A second group, designated as the Mubārakiyya, affirmed Ismāʿīl’s earlier death and now acknowledged his eldest son Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl as their imam. Both these groups operated on the radical fringes of Imāmī Shiʿism in Kūfa, Iraq (Nawbakhtī 1931: 57–58, 60–61; (Qummī 1963: 80–81, 83; Daftary 1991: 220ff.).
It is certain that for almost a century after Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl (d. after 179/795), a group of his descendants worked secretly for the creation of a unified, revolutionary Ismaili Shiʿi movement against the ʿAbbāsids. These central leaders did not openly claim the Ismaili imamate for three generations, during the so-called period of concealment (dawr al-satr), in order to escape ʿAbbāsid persecution. The earliest Ismailis now referred to their movement as the daʿwa, the mission, or al-daʿwa al-hādiya, the rightly guiding mission. The religio-political message of the Ismaili daʿwa was disseminated by a network of daʿis, summoners or missionaries (Daftary 2007: 98–116).
The efforts of the central leaders of the early Ismaili daʿwa began to bear fruit by the 260s/870s, when numerous daʿis appeared in southern Iraq and other regions, notably Yemen, Iran and Central Asia (Stern 1960: 56–90). Indeed, by the early 280s/890s, a unified Ismaili movement had replaced the earlier Ismaili, Kūfan-based splinter groups. In 286/899, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī, the future founder of the Fatimid caliphate who had then succeeded to the central leadership of the Ismaili daʿwa, claimed the Ismaili imamate for himself and his ancestors, the same leaders who had organised and led the early Ismaili daʿwa. ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī’s doctrinal reform, which allowed for continuity in the Ismaili imamate after Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, split the Ismaili daʿwa and community into two rival factions. One faction remained loyal to ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī and his ʿAlid ancestors and acknowledged them as imams, which in due course became the official Fatimid Ismaili doctrine of the imamate. On the other hand, a dissident faction continued to acknowledge Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl himself as their seventh and last imam, whose imminent reappearance as the Mahdī was expected by them. This explains why the Ismailis were also later referred to as the Seveners (Sabʿiyya). Henceforth, the dissident Ismaili faction became more specifically known as Qarmaṭī, named after Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ, the local chief dāʿī in Iraq. The Qarmaṭīs did not recognise any imams after Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, including ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī and his successors in the Fatimid dynasty (Hamdani and Blois 1983: 173–207; Daftary 1993: 123–139).
The early Ismailis elaborated the basic framework of a system of religious thought, which was further elaborated or modified in the Fatimid period. This system was based on a fundamental distinction between the exoteric (ẓāhir) and the esoteric (bāṭin) aspects of the Qurʾan and other sacred scriptures as well as the religious commandments and prohibitions of the sharīʿa, the sacred law of Islam. Accordingly, the Ismailis held that the Qurʾan and other revealed scriptures, and their laws (sharīʿas), had their apparent or literal meaning, which had to be distinguished from their inner meaning hidden in the bāṭin. They further held that the ẓāhir, or the religious laws enunciated by the prophets, underwent periodical changes, while the bāṭin, containing the spiritual truths (ḥaqāʾiq), remained immutable and eternal. These hidden truths, representing the message common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the monotheistic religions of the Abrahamic tradition, were explained through the methodology of taʾwīl, or esoteric interpretation, which often relied on the mystical significance of letters and numbers.
In every age, 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, literal meaning of the revelations. Thus, in the era of Islam, the eternal truths of religion could be explained only to those believers who had been properly initiated into the Ismaili daʿwa and as such acknowledged the teaching authority of the Prophet Muḥammad and, after him, that of his waṣī, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, and the rightful ʿAlid imams who succeeded him. These authorities were the sole possessors of taʾwīl in the era of Islam. Although similar processes of exegesis or hermeneutics existed in earlier Judaeo-Christian as well as Gnostic traditions, the immediate antecedents of Ismaili taʾwīl, also known as bāṭinī taʾwīl, may be traced to the extremist Shiʿi milieus of the second/eighth century in Iraq. By exalting the bāṭin and the truths contained therein, the early Ismailis came to be regarded by the rest of the Muslim society as the most representative Shiʿi community expounding esotericism in Islam, hence their common designation by outsiders as the Bāṭiniyya or Esotericists. It was in this context that the early Ismailis were also accused of ibāḥa or antinomianism by their adversaries.
The eternal, 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 were a cyclical history of revelations or prophetic eras (dawrs) and a mythological cosmological doctrine. The Ismaili cyclical conception of sacred history, which was also applied to Judaeo-Christian as well as several other pre-Islamic religions, was developed in terms of eras of different prophets recognised in the Qurʾan. This view was also combined with their doctrine of the imamate. Accordingly, they held that the religious history of humankind proceeded through seven prophetic eras of various durations, each one inaugurated by a speaker-prophet or enunciator (nāṭiq) of a divinely revealed message, which in its exoteric (ẓāhir) aspect contained a religious law (sharīʿa). The nāṭiqs of the first six eras were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad. Each nāṭiq was, in turn, succeeded by a spiritual legatee (waṣī), who explained to the elite the esoteric truths (ḥaqāʾiq) contained in the bāṭin dimension of that era’s message. Each waṣī was, in due course, succeeded by seven imams, who guarded and interpreted the true meaning of the sacred scriptures and laws in their ẓāhir 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 enunciating a new one. This pattern would change only in the seventh and final era of history.
As the seventh imam of the era of Islam, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl was initially expected to return as the Mahdī or qāʾim (Riser), as well as the nāṭiq of the seventh eschatological era when, instead of promulgating a new religious law, he would fully divulge the esoteric truths of all the preceding revelations. In the final, millenarian age, the ḥaqāʾiq would be completely freed from all their veils, and there would no longer be any distinction between the ẓāhir and the bāṭin in that age of true spirituality before the physical world is consummated. This original cyclical view of hierohistory was somewhat modified after ʿAbd Allāḥ al-Mahdī’s doctrinal reform, which allowed for continuity in the imamate. As a result, the advent of the seventh era lost its earlier messianic appeal for the loyal Fatimid Ismailis, for whom the final eschatological age was postponed indefinitely into the future (Corbin 1983: 30–58; Daftary 2008: 151–158).
The second main component of the early Ismaili ḥaqāʾiq systems of thought was a cosmology. The early Ismaili cosmological doctrine represented a gnostic cosmological myth, which was espoused by the entire Ismaili movement until it was superseded in the fourth/tenth century by a new cosmology of Neoplatonic provenance. This early cosmological doctrine explained how God’s creative activity brought forth letters and names; and how with the resulting names there appeared simultaneously the very things they symbolised. This early cosmology also had a soteriological purpose. It aimed at showing that man’s salvation depended on his acquisition of a specific type of knowledge (Greek, gnosis) imparted by God’s messengers (nāṭiqs) and their legitimate successors in every era of sacred history (Stern 1983: 3–29; Halm 1996: 75–83).
2 The Fatimid phase
The Fatimid phase represents the ‘golden age’ of Ismaili Shiʿism, when the Ismailis possessed an important state of their own and Ismaili theological scholarship and literary activities attained their summit. The foundation of the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909 in Ifrīqiya, North Africa (modern-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria), marked the crowning success of the early Ismailis. The religio-political daʿwa of the Ismāʿīliyya had finally led to the establishment of a state or dawla headed by the Ismaili imam, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī (r. 297–322/909–934). It was also during the Fatimid period that the learned Ismaili dāʿīs, who were educated as theologians and at the same time functioned as the scholars and authors of their community, produced what were the classical texts of Ismaili literature dealing with a variety of exoteric and esoteric subjects, as well as taʾwīl which became the hallmark of Ismaili thought. Indeed, the Ismaili dāʿīs of the Fatimid period elaborated distinctive intellectual traditions, while the dāʿīs of the Iranian lands amalgamated their Ismaili theology with different philosophical traditions into elegant and complex metayphysical systems of thought. It was during this period that the Ismailis made their most important contributions to Islamic theology and philosophy in general and to Shiʿi thought in particular. Modern recovery of their literature attests to the richness and diversity of the literary and intellectual heritage of the Ismailis of the Fatimid period (Ivanow 1963: 21–50; Poonawala 1977: 31–132).
The ground for the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in Ifrīqiya was meticulously prepared by the dāʿī Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī, who had been active among the Kutāma Berbers of the region for almost twenty years. It was with the help of his Kutāma army that Abū ʿAbd Allāh speedily conquered Ifrīqiya and uprooted the Aghlabids who ruled over that region on behalf of the ʿAbbāsids. Meanwhile, after a long and eventful journey out of Salamiyya, Syria, where the secret central headquarters of the early Ismaili daʿwa were situated, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī had settled in the remote town of Sijilmāsa (in today’s south-eastern Morocco). In 296/909, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī handed over the reins of power to the Ismaili imam in Sijilmāsa. Soon afterwards, on 20 Rabīʿ II 297/4 January 910, ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī made his triumphant entry into Qayrawān, capital of Ifrīqiya, and was proclaimed as caliph there. The new dynasty was named Fatimid after the Prophet Muḥammad’s daughter Fāṭima, to whom the Fatimid Ismaili imam-caliphs traced their ʿAlid ancestry.
Fatimid rule was established firmly only under the fourth member of the dynasty, al-Muʿizz (r. 341–365/953–975), who succeeded in transforming the Fatimid caliphate from a regional state into a flourishing empire. He was also the first Fatimid imam-caliph to concern himself distinctly 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.
The imam-caliph al-Muʿizz also permitted the assimilation of the Neoplatonised cosmology elaborated by a number of the dāʿīs of the Iranian lands into the teachings of the Fatimid Ismaili daʿwa. In the course of the fourth/tenth century, certain dāʿīs operating in Iran and Central Asia, including especially Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Nasafī (d. 332/943), Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934) and Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971), had set about harmonising their Ismaili kalām theology, revolving around the central Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate, with Neoplatonic philosophy. This led to the development of the unique intellectual tradition of ‘philosophical theology’ in Ismaili Shiʿism. The last major member of this Iranian school of philosophical Ismailism was the eminent Persian poet, traveller and dāʿī Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/2070), who spread the daʿwa in Badakhshān, now divided between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. These Iranian dāʿīs wrote for the elite and the educated classes of society, aiming to attract them intellectually. This may explain why they expressed their theology in terms of the then most intellectually fashionable themes and terminologies. In their metaphysical systems, the earlier gnostic cosmology was replaced by a Neoplatonised emanational cosmology (see Sijistānī 1961: text 1–97; Walker 1994: 37–111; Walker 1993: 67–142; De Smet 2012: 15–173).
It was also in al-Muʿizz’s time that Ismaili law was finally codified and its precepts began to be observed by the judiciary throughout the Fatimid state. The Sunni polemicists had always accused the Ismailis of ignoring the sharīʿa, Islamic law, supposedly because they had found access to its hidden meaning. Hence, they were commonly designated as the Bāṭiniyya. However, from early on the Fāṭimids concerned themselves increasingly with legal matters, while there still did not exist a distinctly Ismaili madhhab or school of jurisprudence, as was the case with Sunni communities and the Twelver Shiʿis.
Under the Fatimids, the promulgation of an Ismaili school of jurisprudence resulted mainly from the efforts of al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān ibn Muḥammad (d. 363/974), the foremost Fāṭimid jurist who was officially commissioned by al-Muʿizz to prepare legal compendia. The efforts of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān culminated in the Daʿāʾim al-Islām (The Pillars of Islam), which was endorsed by the imam-caliph al-Muʿizz as the official code of the Fatimid state. The authority of the rightful imam of the time 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 Muslim communities. The Daʿāʾim al-Islām has continued throughout the centuries to be used by the Ṭayyibī Ismailis as their principal authority in legal matters, while the Nizārī Ismailis have been guided in their legalistic affairs by their imams (Madelung 1976: 29–40; Poonawala 1996: 117–143; Daftary 2009: 179–186).
The Ismailis have had high esteem for learning and under the Fatimids elaborated distinctive theological traditions and institutions of learning. The Fatimid daʿwa was particularly concerned with educating the Ismaili converts in esoteric doctrine known as ḥikma or ‘wisdom’. As a result, a variety of lectures or ‘teaching sessions’, generally designated as majālis (sing. majlis), were organised over time for different Ismaili audiences, including women. 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 (ʿahd) and secrecy (Walker 1997: 179–200). Delivered by the chief dāʿī (dāʿī al-duʿāt) at the Fatimid palace in Cairo, these lectures were approved beforehand by the imam. Only the imam was the source of the ḥikma, and the chief dāʿī was his mouthpiece through whom the Ismailis received their esoteric knowledge. Another of the institutions of learning founded by the Fatimids was the Dār al-ʿIlm (House of Knowledge). Established in 395/1005 by the imam-caliph al-Ḥākim (r. 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 Ismaili dāʿīs received at least part of their training at the Dār al-ʿIlm (Halm 1997: 71–77).
The Fatimid imam-caliph al-Ḥākim’s reign witnessed the genesis of what was to become known as the Druze religion. A number of dāʿīs who had come to Cairo from Iran and Central Asia now began to propagate certain extremist ideas regarding al-Ḥākim and his imamate. By 408/1017, these dāʿīs declared the divinity of al-Ḥākim, also proclaiming the end of the era of Islam and its sharīʿa. However, the leadership of the Fatimid daʿwa organisation was categorically opposed to this movement. It was under such circumstances that the dāʿī Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1020), the most learned theologian-philosopher of the Fatimid period, was invited to Cairo to refute officially the new extremist doctrine from a theological perspective. The dāʿī al-Kirmānī composed a number of treatises reiterating the Ismaili Shiʿi doctrine of the imamate in refutation of the new doctrine. The Druzes eventually found their permanent stronghold in Syria (Poonawala 2000: 71–94).
The Ismaili daʿwa activities of the Fatimid period reached their peak, especially outside of the Fatimid state, in the long reign of the imam-caliph al-Mustanṣir (r. 427–487/1036–1094), even after the Sunni Saljūqs replaced the Shiʿi Būyids as overlords of the ʿAbbāsids in 447/1055. The Fatimid Ismaili dāʿīs won many converts in Iraq, Iran and Central Asia as well as in Yemen where the Ṣulayḥids ruled as vassals of the Fatimids from 439/1047 until 532/1138. The Ṣulayḥids also played an active part in the efforts of the Fatimids to spread the daʿwa on the Indian subcontinent. By the 460s/1070s, the Persian Ismailis in the Saljūq lands were under the overall leadership of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAṭṭāsh, who was responsible for launching the career of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, the future founder of the Nizārī branch of Ismailism. In Badakhshān and other eastern regions 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 was Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070), who played a key role in spreading the daʿwa in Central Asia while maintaining his contacts with the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo (Hunsberger 2000: 220–254).
On al-Mustanṣir’s death in 487/1094, the unified Ismaili daʿwa and community split into two rival factions, as his son and original heir-designate Nizār was deprived of his succession rights by the all-powerful Fatimid vizier, al-Afḍal, who installed Nizār’s younger brother to the Fatimid throne with the title of al-Mustaʿlī bi’llāh (r. 487–495/1094–1101). The imamate of al-Mustaʿlī was recognised by the Ismailli communities of Egypt, Yemen and western India. These Ismailis, who depended on the Fatimid regime, later traced their imamate in the progeny of al-Mustaʿlī. Nizār refused to pay homage to al-Mustaʿlī and rose in revolt, but was eventually defeated and killed in 488/1095. Be that as it may, the Persian Ismailis, then already under the leadership of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, supported the succession rights of Nizār and his descendants. The two factions were later designated as Mustaʿlian and Nizārī, named after two of al-Mustanṣir’s sons who had claimed his heritage.
During its final decades, the Fatimid caliphate declined rapidly. The Mustaʿlian Ismailis themselves split into Ḥāfiẓī and Ṭayyibī branches soon after the assassination of al-Mustaʿlī’s son and successor al-Āmir in 524/1130. Al-Āmir’s cousin and successor on the Fatimid throne, al-Ḥāfiẓ, and the later Fatimid caliphs were recognised as imams by the Mustaʿlian Ismailis of Egypt and Syria and by part of the community in Yemen. These Mustaʿlian Ismailis, now designated as Ḥāfiẓī, did not survive the downfall of the Fatimid dynasty. However, the Mustaʿlian community of Ṣulayḥid Yemen recognised the imamate of al-Āmir’s infant son al-Ṭayyib and became known as Ṭayyibī (Stern 1951: 193–255). Fatimid rule was ended in 567/1171 by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, founder of the Ayyūbid dynasty who had acted as the last Fatimid vizier. He had the khuṭba read in Cairo in the name of the reigning ʿAbbāsid caliph. A few days later, al-ʿĀḍid, the final Fatimid imam-caliph, died. On the demise of the Fatimid state, Egypt’s new Sunni Ayyūbid rulers began their systematic persecution of the Ismailis, also suppressing their daʿwa organisation as well as all the Fatimid institutions. Henceforth, Mustaʿlian Ismailism survived only in its Ṭayyibī form.
3 The Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian Ismailis
The Ṭayyibī Ismailis rejected the claims of al-Ḥāfiẓ and the later Fatimid caliphs to the imamate. In due course, the Ṭayyibīs found their permanent stronghold in Yemen, with the initial support of the Ṣulayḥid dynasty. In fact, it was soon after 526/1132 that the contemporary Ṣulayḥid queen Arwā, also known as Sayyida Ḥurra, became the leader of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa in Yemen and broke off her relations with Cairo and the Fatimid regime (Daftary 1998a: 117–130). Nothing is known of the fate of al-Ṭayyib, who was probably secretly murdered on the orders of the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥāfiẓ. Be that as it may, it is the belief of the Ṭayyibīs that al-Āmir himself had placed his infant son in the custody of a group of trusted dāʿīs, who managed to hide him and made it possible for the Ṭayyibī imamate to continue in his progeny. According to the Ṭayyibī tradition, their imamate has been handed down throughout the centuries among al-Ṭayyib’s descendants to the present time, with all these imams remaining in concealment. The Ṭayyibīs also preserved a good portion of the Ismaili literature of the Fatimid period.
The Ṭayyibīs divide their religious history into succeeding eras of concealment (satr) and manifestation (kashf or ẓuhūr), during which the imams are hidden or manifest. The first era of satr, coinciding with the pre-Fatimid period in Ismaili history, ended with the appearance of ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī. This was followed by an era of ẓuhūr, which continued in the Fatimid period until the concealment of al-Ṭayyib, soon after al-Āmir’s death in 524/1130. The Ṭayyibīs hold that al-Ṭayyib’s concealment initiated another era of satr, during which all the Ṭayyibī imams have remained hidden; and the current period of satr will continue until the appearance of an imam from al-Ṭayyib’s progeny. The current period of satr has, in turn, been divided into a Yemeni phase, extending from 526/1132 to around 997/1589, when the Ṭayyibīs were split into Dāʾūdī and Sulaymānī factions, and an Indian phase, essentially covering the history of the Dāʾūdī Ṭayyibī daʿwa and community during the last four centuries. In the absence of their imams, the different Ṭayyibī Ismaili communities have followed separate lines of dāʿīs, and for all practical purposes there have been no doctrinal differences between the Dāʾūdīs and the Sulaymānīs.
As noted, the Ṭayyibī daʿwa received its initial support from queen Arwā (d. 532/1138), the effective ruler of Ṣulayḥid Yemen. It was soon after 526/1132 that queen Arwā declared al-Dhuʾayb ibn Mūsā al-Wādiʿī as al-dāʿī al-muṭlaq, or dāʿī with absolute authority, to lead the Ṭayyibī Mustaʿlian daʿwa and community on behalf of the hidden imam, al-Ṭayyib. This marked the foundation of the independent Ṭayyibī daʿwa. Having already broken off relations with the Fatimid regime, queen Arwā now made the new Ṭayyibī daʿwa also independent of the Ṣulayḥid state, ensuring the survival of Ṭayyibī Ismailism under the leadership of a dāʿī muṭlaq. As in the case of imams, every dāʿī muṭlaq has appointed his successor. On al-Dhuʾayb’s death in 546/1151, the learned Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥāmidī (d. 557/1162), belonging to the influential Ḥamdān tribe of Yemen, succeeded to the headship of the Ṭayyibīs as the second dāʿī muṭlaq. Subsequently, the leadership of the Ṭayyibīs passed into the hands of dāʿīs hailing from the Banū al-Walīd al-Anf clan of the Quraysh and remained in that family, with minor interruptions, until 946/1539. The Ṭayyibī daʿwa spread very successfully in the mountainous Ḥarāz region of Yemen.
Many Ṭayyibī dāʿīs were learned theologians and contributed to the rich literature of their community. In the doctrinal domain, the Ṭayyibīs maintained the Fatimid Ismaili traditions, placing equal emphasis on the ẓāhir and bāṭin aspects of religion. They also retained the earlier Ismaili interests in cyclical history and cosmology, which served as the basis of their gnostic, esoteric, ḥaqāʾiq system of religious thought with its distinctive eschatological and salvational themes. This system was, in fact, founded largely by the dāʿī Ibrāhīm al-Ḥāmidī who drew extensively on Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī’s Rāḥat al-ʿaql (Tranquillity of the Intellect) and synthesised its cosmological doctrine of ten separate intellects with gnostic mythical elements. This Ṭayyibī system was first expounded in al-Ḥāmidī’s Kanz al-walad. Based on astronomical and astrological speculations, the Yemeni Ṭayyibīs also introduced certain innovations into the previous cyclical conception of religious history, expressed in terms of the seven prophetic eras. The Ṭayyibī esoteric ḥaqāʾiq system of religious thought found its fullest expression in Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn’s Zahr al-maʿānī. Idrīs (d. 872/1468) was the nineteenth dāʿī of the Ṭayyibīs as well as a major Ismaili historian. He wrote several historical works, including the ʿUyūn al-akhbār, a seven-volume history of the Ismaili daʿwa from its beginnings until the opening phase of the Ṭayyibī daʿwa (Hamdani 1970: 258–300; Corbin 1983: 37–58, 65 ff.; Daftary 2007: 269–280).
Meanwhile, the Ṭayyibī dāʿīs in Yemen had maintained close relations with the rapidly growing Ṭayyibī community in South Asia, where the Ismaili converts of Hindu descent became designated as Bohras. On the death of the twenty-sixth Ṭayyibī dāʿī muṭlaq, Dāʾūd ibn ʿAjabshāh, in 997/1589, dispute over his succession led to the Dāʾūdī-Sulaymānī schism in the Ṭayyibī daʿwa and community, reflecting Indian-Yemeni rivalries. By then, the Ṭayyibī Bohras in India greatly outnumbered their Yemeni co-religionists. Henceforth, the Dāʾūdī and Sulaymānī Ṭayyibīs followed separate lines of dāʿīs. The Dāʾūdī dāʿīs have continued to reside in India, where the bulk of the Ṭayyibī Dāʾūdīs are located. On the other hand, the Sulaymānīs, accounting for a minority of the Ṭayyibīs, have remained concentrated in Yemen, where their dāʿīs resided until recent times. Subsequently, the Dāʾūdī Bohras themselves were further subdivided in India due to periodical challenges to the authority of their dāʿī muṭlaq. The ʿAlawī Bohras represent one such splinter Dāʾūdī Bohra group. Since the 1920s, Bombay (Mumbai), with the largest concentration of Dāʾūdī Bohras, has served as the administrative seat of the Dāʾūdī Bohras, who use a particular form of the Gujarātī language permeated with Arabic and Persian words, but write in the Arabic script, designated as the ‘lisān al-daʿwat’ (Qutbuddin 2011: 331–354; Blank 2001: 53-110; Hollister 1953: 265–305).
Unlike the Dāʾūdīs, the Sulaymānī Ṭayyibīs of Yemen have not experienced succession disputes and schisms. In Yemen, Sulaymānī leadership has remained hereditary, with few exceptions, in the same Makramī family. The Sulaymānī dāʿīs established their headquarters in Badr, Najrān, in northeastern Yemen, and ruled over that region with the military support of the local Banū Yām. In the twentieth century, the political prominence of the Sulaymānī dāʿīs, checked earlier by the Zaydī Shiʿis and Ottomans, was further curtailed by the rising power of the Saʿūdī family, adherents to the austere Wahhābī form of Sunni Islam. Najrān was, in fact, annexed to Saudi Arabia in 1934. Thereafter, the Sulaymānī dāʿīs and many Sulaymānī Ṭayyibīs have been persecuted intermittently by the Saudi government, which mistreats Shiʿi Muslims generally as ‘heretics’.
4 The Nizārī Ismailis: the Alamūt phase
The Nizārī Ismailis have had their own complex history and separate doctrinal development. The circumstances of the early Nizārīs, who lived during the Alamūt period of their history, 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 against the Sunni Saljūq Turks and their survival in an extremely hostile environment. Therefore, they produced military commanders rather than highly trained dāʿīs and theologians. The Persian Nizārīs, thus, did not produce a substantial literature (Ivanow 1963: 127–136; Poonawala 1977: 251–263); and the bulk of their writings, including the collections of manuscripts held at their famous library in the fortress of Alamūt, were destroyed in the Mongol invasions or perished soon afterwards.
Nevertheless, the Nizārīs of the Alamūt period did maintain a sophisticated intellectual outlook and a literary tradition, propounding their theological teachings in response to changing circumstances. They also maintained a historiographical tradition, compiling official chronicles in Persian recording the events of their state according to the reigns of the eight successive lords of Alamūt, who initially were dāʿīs before the Nizārī imams themselves emerged and took charge of the affairs of their state, daʿwa and community. Modern scholarship has done much to correct the distorted image of the early Nizārīs, who were made famous in medieval Europe as the Assassins.
By the time of the Nizārī-Mustaʿlian schism of 487/1094, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, who preached the Ismaili daʿwa on behalf of the Fatimids within the Saljūq dominions, had emerged as the undisputed leader of the Persian Ismailis. However, he had already been following somewhat of an independent policy, and his seizure of the mountain fortress of Alamūt, in northern Iran, in 483/1090 had in fact signalled the commencement of the Persian Ismailis’ open revolt against the Saljūqs, as well as the foundation of what would become the Nizārī Ismaili state. This state, centred at Alamūt, with territories and networks of fortresses scattered in different parts of Iran and Syria, lasted some 166 years until it was destroyed by the Mongols in 654/1256.
Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ had a complex set of religio-political motives for his revolt against the Saljūqs. 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 the Saljūq Turks was intensely detested by the Persians of different social classes. This may also explain why he substituted Persian for Arabic as the religious and literary language of the Persian Ismailis, accounting also for the early popular success of his movement (Daftary 1996: 181–204).
It was under such circumstances that in al-Mustanṣir’s succession dispute, Ḥasan, who had already drifted away from the Fatimid regime, supported Nizār’s cause and severed his relations completely with the daʿwa headquarters in Cairo which had supported al-Mustaʿlī. By this decision, Ḥasan had founded the independent Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa on behalf of the Ismaili imams, who remained in concealment for several generations after Nizār. In fact, numismatic evidence shows that Nizār’s own name appeared on coins minted at Alamūt for about seventy years after his death in 488/1095 (Miles 1972: 155–162). The early Nizārīs were, thus, in another period of concealment (dawr al-satr), when the absent imam was represented in the community by a ḥujja, his chief representative. Ḥasan and his next two successors at Alamūt were, indeed, acknowledged as such ḥujjas. However, already in Ḥasan’s time, many Nizārīs believed that a son or grandson of Nizār had been secretly brought from Egypt to Alamūt, and he became the progenitor of the line of the Nizārī imams who later emerged at Alamūt.
The early Nizārīs were also active in the doctrinal field. Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, a learned theologian himself, is credited with restating in a more rigorous form the old Shiʿi doctrine of taʿlīm, or authoritative teaching by the ‘imam of the time’. He expounded this doctrine, which emphasised the autonomous teaching authority of each imam in his own time, in a theological treatise entitled al-Fuṣūl al-arbaʿa (The Four Chapters). The doctrine of taʿlīm became the central theological doctrine of the Nizārī Ismailis who, henceforth, were designated as the taʿlīmiyya, the propounders of taʿlīm. The intellectual challenge posed to Sunni Islam by the doctrine of taʿlīm, which also refuted the legitimacy of the ʿAbbāsid caliph as the spiritual spokesman of all Muslims, called forth the reaction of the Sunni establishment. Many Sunni scholars, led by Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), refuted this Ismaili doctrine.
By the final years of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, who died in 518/1124, the anti-Saljūq revolt of the Persian Nizārīs had already lost its momentum, much in the same way that the Saljūqs had failed in their prolonged military campaigns to dislodge the Persian Nizārīs from their fortress communities. Ismaili-Saljūq relations had now entered a new phase of ‘stalemate’, which essentially continued under Ḥasan’s next two successors at Alamūt, Kiyā Buzurg-Umīd and his son Muḥammad (Hillenbrand 1996: 205–220; Daftary 2015: 41–57).
Meanwhile, the Nizārī Ismailis had been eagerly expecting the appearance of their imam. The fourth lord of Alamūt, Ḥasan II, to whom the Nizārīs refer with the expression ʿalā dhikrihi’l-salām (on his mention be peace), declared the qiyāma or resurrection in 559/1164, initiating a new era in the religious history of the Nizārī community. Relying heavily on Ismaili taʾwīl and earlier traditions, however, Ḥasan II interpreted the qiyāma or the Last Day, symbolically and spiritually for his community. Accordingly, qiyāma meant merely the manifestation of unveiled truth (ḥaqīqa) in the person of the Nizārī imam; and this was a spiritual resurrection only for those who acknowledged the rightful imam of the time and were, therefore, capable of understanding the truth, the esoteric and immutable essence of Islam. It was in this sense that Paradise was actualised for the Nizārīs in this world. The Nizārīs, like the Sufis, were now to rise to a spiritual level of existence, transcending from ẓāhir to bāṭin, from sharīʿa to ḥaqīqa, or from the literal interpretation of the law to an understanding of its spiritual essence 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 and irrelevant (Daftary 2007: 358–367).
The imam proclaiming the qiyāma would be the qāʾim al-qiyāma, ‘lord of resurrection’, a rank which in the Ismaili religious hierarchy was always higher than that of an ordinary imam. In due course, Ḥasan II himself was recognised as the imam as well as the qāʾim. Henceforth, the Nizārī Ismailis acknowledged the lords of Alamūt, beginning with Ḥasan II, as their imams, descendants of Nizār ibn al-Mustanṣir. 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 current imam now became the central theological feature of Nizārī Ismaili thought. Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad also made every Nizārī imam potentially a qāʾim, capable of inaugurating an era of qiyāma.
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 chief dāʿī and the original ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ of the Crusader sources. He reorganised the Syrian Nizārī daʿwa, also consolidating the Nizārī network of castles in Syria (Willey 2005: 216–245). Aiming to safeguard the security and independence of his community, Sinān entered into intricate and shifting alliances with the major neighbouring powers, notably the Crusaders, the Zangids and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin of the Crusader sources). Sinān led the Nizārīs of Syria for almost three decades to the peak of their power and fame until his death in 589/1193 (Hodgson 1955: 185–209). It was also in Sinān’s time that occidental chroniclers of the Crusades and certain European travellers and emissaries wrote about the Syrian Nizārīs, designated as the Assassins; they were also responsible for fabricating and disseminating a number of legends about the secret practices of the Nizārī Ismailis, which culminated in a synthesised version popularised by Marco Polo (Daftary 1994: 88–127).
Nūr al-Dīn Muḥammad’s son and successor Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan (r. 607–618/1210–1221), who had become concerned with the isolation of the Nizārīs from the larger world of Sunni Islam, attempted a daring theological rapprochement with Sunni Muslims. He repudiated the doctrine of the qiyāma and ordered his community to observe the sharīʿa in its Sunni form, inviting Sunni jurists to instruct his followers. In 608/1211, the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir acknowledged the Nizārī imam’s rapprochement and issued a decree to that effect. Henceforth, the rights of Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan to Nizārī territories was officially recognised by the Sunni establishment. The Nizārīs themselves evidently viewed their imam’s new theological policy as a dissimulating tactic, a restoration of taqiyya which had been lifted in qiyāma times. The observance of taqiyya, or precautionary dissimulation, could imply any type of accommodation to the outside world as deemed necessary by the infallible ‘imam of the time’. Be that as it may, the Nizārī imam had now achieved the much-needed peace and security for his community and state.
In the reign of Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥasan’s son and successor, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad (r. 618–653/1221–1255), the Sunni sharīʿa was gradually relaxed within the Nizārī community and the traditions associated with qiyāma were once again revived. At the same time, intellectual life flourished in the Persian Nizārī community, when numerous outside scholars who were then fleeing the first waves of the Mongol invasions took refuge in the Nizārī fortresses. Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), one of the most eminent Shiʿi theologians of all time, was foremost among such scholars. He spent some three decades in the Nizārī fortress communities of Persia, converted to Ismailism, and made major contributions to Nizārī Ismaili thought. It is mainly through al-Ṭūsī’s works, especially his Rawḍa-yi taslīm, that we have a coherent exposition of Nizārī thought of the Alamūt period.
The Mongols had assigned a high priority to the destruction of the Nizārī Ismaili state, a task completed with much difficulty by Hūlāgū who led the main Mongol expedition into Persia. Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, the last lord of Alamūt who reigned for only one year, entered into a complex and ultimately futile series of negotiations with Hūlāgū. The fall of Alamūt in the autumn of 654/1256 sealed the fate of the Nizārī state. The Mongols massacred countless Nizārīs. In the spring of 655/1257, Khurshāh himself was killed in Mongolia, where he had gone to see the Great Khan. The Syrian Nizārīs were spared the Mongol catastrophe, but by 671/1273 all their castles had fallen into Mamlūk hands. Having lost their political prominence, henceforth the Nizārī Ismailis lived secretly as religious minorities in numerous scattered communities, especially in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia and South Asia.
5 Later developments in Nizārī Ismaili communities
In the aftermath of the Mongol debacle, the Nizārī Ismailis survived the demise of their state. Many Persian Nizārīs migrated to Afghanistan, Badakhshān and Sind, where Ismaili communities already existed. Meanwhile, the Nizārī imamate continued in the progeny of Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, the last lord of Alamūt. However, the centralised daʿwa organisation of the Nizārīs had now disappeared, while the Nizārī imams remained in concealment for several generations. Under the circumstances, various Nizārī communities developed independently, under the local leadership of dynasties of dāʿīs and pīrs, espousing a diversity of religious and literary traditions in different languages.
During the early post-Alamūt centuries, the Nizārīs resorted widely to the strict observance of taqiyya and adopted different external guises. In Iran, many Nizārī groups disguised themselves under the cover of Sufism, without affiliation to any of the Sufi orders then spreading in Iran and Central Asia. Thus, the imams would appear to outsiders as Sufi masters or pīrs, while their followers adopted the typically Sufi guise of disciples or murīds. Later, this practice gained wide currency also among the Nizārīs of Central Asia and Sind. In fact, a type of coalescence emerged between Persian Sufism and Nizārī Ismailism, as these two independent esoteric traditions in Islam shared common doctrinal grounds. This explains why the Persian-speaking Nizārīs have regarded several of the great mystic poets of Iran, such as Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. ca. 627/1230) and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273), as their co-religionists, using their poetry in their religious ceremonies.
By the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century, the Nizārī imams emerged in the village of Anjudān, in central Iran, still dissimulating as Sufi pīrs, and initiated the so-called Anjudān revival in Nizārī Ismaili daʿwa and literary activities (Daftary 2007: 422–442). Among the doctrinal works of this period, mention should be made of the writings of Abū Isḥāq-i Quhistānī (d. after 904/1498) and Khayrkhwāh-i Harātī (d. after 960/1553). Many Nizārī authors of this period chose versified and Sufi forms of expression to conceal their Ismaili ideas. The Nizārīs essentially retained the teachings of the Alamūt period, especially as elaborated after the declaration of the qiyāma.
With the advent of the Ṣafawids, who proclaimed Twelver Shiʿism as their state religion in 907/1501, the Nizārī imams and their followers in Iran and adjacent lands also adopted Twelver Shiʿism in addition to Sufism as a taqiyya tactic. By the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century, the revived Nizārī daʿwa had been particularly successful in Central Asia and several regions of South Asia. In India, the Hindu converts, who became known as Khojas, developed an indigenous religious tradition known as Satpanth or the ‘true path’ (to salvation), as well as a devotional literature, the ginans, containing a diversity of mystical, mythological, eschatological and ethical themes (Nanji 1978: 50–83; Asani 2011: 95–128).
By the middle of the twelfthth/eighteenth century, the Nizārī imams had moved their seat to the province of Kirmān in Iran, where they acquired political prominence. The modern period in Nizārī Ismaili history commenced in the long imamate of Ḥasan ʿAlī Shah (1232–1298/1817–1881), the forty-sixth imam, who received the title of Agha Khan (Aga Khan), meaning lord and master, from the contemporary Qājār monarch of Iran. This title has remained hereditary among that imam’s successors, the Nizārī Ismaili imams of modern times.
Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh, Aga Khan I, was appointed to the governorship of Kirmān in 1251/1835. Subsequently, after some prolonged confrontations between this imam and the Qājār establishment, Aga Khan I permanently left Iran in 1257/1841. After spending some years in Afghanistan, Sind, Gujarāt and Calcutta, he finally settled in Bombay in 1265/1848, marking the commencement of the modern period in Nizārī Ismaili history. The Nizārī imam now launched a widespread campaign for defining and delineating the distinct religious identity of his Khoja followers. The Ismaili Khojas were not always certain about their identity as they had often dissimulated for long periods as Sunnis and Twelver Shiʿis, while their indigenous Satpanth tradition had been influenced by Hindu elements. At the same time, some dissident Khojas challenged the Aga Khan’s authority and questioned their own Ismaili identity. Matters came to a head in 1866 when the dissident Khojas filed a suit in the Bombay High Court, which rendered its judgement in favour of the imam (Fyzee 1965: 504–549; Shodhan 2001: 82–116). This judgement legally established the status of the Nizārī Ismaili Khojas as a community of ‘Shiʿa Imami Ismailis’. The majority of the Khojas affirmed their allegiance to Aga Khan I and acknowledged their Ismaili Shiʿi identity, while minority groups seceded and joined the rival Twelver Shiʿi Khojas.
Subsequently, Aga Khan I’s grandson, Sultan Muhammad Shah, Aga Khan III (1302–1376/1885–1957), led the Nizārīs as their forty-eighth imam for seventy-two years, and also became internationally known as a Muslim reformer and statesman. Aga Khan III, too, made systematic efforts to set the religious identity of his followers apart from other religious communities, especially the Twelver Shiʿis who for long periods had provided dissimulating covers for the Nizārī Ismailis of Iran and elsewhere. Large numbers of Nizārīs had, in fact, been assimilated into the dominant Twelver Shiʿi community. Aga Khan III spelled out the Nizārī identity in numerous constitutions that he promulgated for his followers.
Aga Khan III worked vigorously to consolidate and reorganise the Nizārī Ismailis into a modern Muslim community with high standards of education, health and social well-being, for both men and women, also developing a network of councils for administering the affairs of his community. Emancipation and education of women and their full participation in communal affairs received a high priority in Aga Khan III’s reforms; he also abolished the wearing of veils (ḥijāb) by Nizārī women (Boivin 1994: 197–216; Kassam 2011: 247–264; Daftary 2007: 480–496).
Aga Khan III, who had established his residence in Europe, died in 1957, and was succeeded by his grandson Shah Karim al-Husayni, Aga Khan IV. The present Harvard-educated, forty-ninth imam of the Nizārī Ismailis has substantially expanded the modernisation policies of his predecessor. He has also developed 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, developmental and cultural issues which are of wider interest to Muslims and the developing countries. Indeed, he has created a complex institutional network, generally referred to as the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which implements numerous projects in a variety of social, economic and cultural domains (Ruthven 2011: 189–220). The present Ismaili imam has been particularly concerned with the education of his followers and Muslims in general. In the field of higher education, his major initiatives include the Institute of Ismaili Studies, which is also responsible for producing materials for the religious education of the Nizārī primary and secondary students, the Aga Khan University, and the University of Central Asia.
As a progressive Muslim leader, Aga Khan IV has devoted much of his resources to promoting a better understanding of Islam, not merely as a religion with its theologies and multiple interpretations but as a major world civilisation with its plurality of social, intellectual and cultural traditions. In pursuit of such aims, he has launched a number of innovative programmes for the preservation and regeneration of the cultural heritage of Muslim societies. The apex institution here is the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, whose mandate now covers the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Historic Cities Support Programme and the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. Benefitting from the enlightened leadership of their last two imams, and numbering more than ten millions, the Nizārī Ismailis have emerged as a progressive global community of Shiʿi Muslims. It is worth noting that in every country of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America where the Nizārī Ismailis live as religious minorities, they generally enjoy exemplary standards of living while retaining their distinctive religious identity.