Ismaili

The Isma'ili ( اسماعيلي, Farsi Esmaa'ili) branch of Islam is the second largest Shi'a community, after the Twelvers who are dominant in Iran. The Ismailis are found primarily in the Indian subcontinent, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and East Africa but have in recent years emigrated to Europe and North America. The Ismailis and Twelvers both accept the same initial Imams from the descendants of Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and therefore share much of their early history. However, a dispute arose on the succession of the Sixth Imam, Ja'far as-Sadiq. The Ismailis became those who accepted Ja'far's eldest son Ismail as the next Imam, whereas the Twelvers accepted a younger son, Musa al-Kazim.

The Ismaili sect (specifically, the Nizari sub-sect) also gave rise to the Hashishin (the original "Assassins"; the sect whose nickname gave rise to the word) under the leadership of Hasan Ibn Al Sabbah. The Ismaili Assassins were created to revive the Shi'a Ismaili caliphate in Egypt, which had been destroyed by the Sunni Seljuks. Their primary tactic was to kill the Sunni leaders in as public a place as possible - usually at Friday prayers. Their lack of concern for their own escape—they would welcome death—and the belief that that they carried out their "operations" high on hashish, led to the term their opponents used for them, "Hashishin" (or hashish addicts, or, in today's parlance, pot-heads), becoming the root of the word used in several languages for professional killers: "assassin". (The Arabic term for one pledged to fight to the death, and thus often used for suicide killers, is fida'ee, plural fidayeen.)

A branch of the Ismaili known as the Saabiyin or Seveners held that Ismail's son, Muhammad, was the seventh and final Imam (a belief inaccurately but commonly ascribed to Ismailis as a whole). There is still a small Sevener Ismaili community in parts of Saudi Arabia to this date.

In the face of persecution, the bulk of the Ismailis continued to recognize imams who secretly propagated their faith through missionaries (da'is) from their bases in Syria. However by the 10th century, an Ismaili Imam, Abdullah am-Mahdi, had emigrated to North Africa and had successfully established the new Fatimid state in Tunisia. His successors subsequently succeeded in conquering much of North Africa (including the prized Egypt) and parts of Arabia. The capital for the Fatimid state hence shifted to the newly founded city of Cairo. from which the Fatimid Caliph-Imams ruled for several generations.

A group of followers of the 16th Imam, Hakim bi-Amr-Allah broke away from the mainstream Ismailis to form the Druze religion.

A more fundamental split amongst the Ismaili occurred on the dispute of which son should succeed the 18th Imam, Mustansir. Mustaali, his younger son, was installed as Imam in Cairo with the help of Vizier Badr al-Jamali. However, Mustansir's elder son Nizar contested this claim and was imprisoned; he gained support from an Ismaili da'i based in Iran, Hasan as-Sabbah. Sabbah is noted by Western writers to be the leader of the legendary Assassins.

The Fatimid state eventually collapsed after Mustaali's successor Amir was assassinated, but Mustaali Ismaili held that Amir had left a son named Tayyib who had gone into seclusion and that the imamate continued in his progeny during this time. They also regarded a succeeding chain of Yemeni da'is as representatives of the imam. In time, the seat for one chain of dais was transferred to India as the community split several times, each recognizing a different da'i.

Today the majority of the Mustaali Ismailis accept as the 52nd da'i, Syedna Muhammad Burhanuddin, based in India. This group is also known as Dawoodi Bohras. There has been, in recent years, a reapprochment between the Yemeni Mustaalis and the followers of the da'i based out of Mumbai. The Bohras are noted to be the more traditional of the two main groups of Ismaili, maintaining rituals such as prayer and fasting more consistently with other Muslim and Shi'a sects, although a reformist movement has emerged within the sect challenging the authoritarian Dawoodi Bohra clergy.

The largest part of the Nizari Ismaili community today accepts Prince Karim Aga Khan IV as their 49th Imam. The 46th Imam, Aga Hasan Ali Shah, fled Iran to the indian Sub-Continent in the 1840s after a failed coup against the Shah of the Qajar dynasty. Aga Hasan Ali Shah settled in Bombay in 1848. The Aga Khan obtained his authority over Shia Ismaili Muslims in Bombay through a legal case at the Bombay high Court in 1866 when Sir Joseph Arnold ruled that the Khojah Muslim community must recognise the authority of the Aga Khan over all their affairs including transfer of their property to the Aga Khan

Sub-sects

Dawoodi Bohras, the largest Mustaali group.
Aga Khan

External links

Graphical illustration of the sects pf Shi'a Islam
History of Imams from the "Aga Khani" point of view.
A brief history of the Aga Khans
Institute of Ismaili Studies; affiliated with Cambridge University UK
Dawoodi Bohras
Aga Khan Development Network
First Ismaili Electronic Library and Database

References

The Ismailis: Their history and doctrines; Farhad Daftary; Cambridge University Press, 1990 (From the point of view of the followers of the Aga Khan)
A Short History of the Ismailis: Traditions of a Muslim Community; Farhad Daftary; Edinburgh University Press, 1998 (A history of Ismailism from the point of view of the followwers of the Aga Khan)

ar:اسماعيلية de:Ismailiten (Schia) eo:Sepimamismo et:Ismailiidid fr:Ismaélisme ja:イスマーイール派 nl:Isma'iliten