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5 - Later Developments: Continuity and Modernisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2020

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Summary

This final chapter will present a brief survey of the main developments and trends in the history of Ismaili communities during the post-Alamūt period, from the fall of Alamūt in 654/1256 till the 1990s. It will focus mainly on the majoritarian Nizārī branch of Ismailism. In this period, several Nizārī communities developed in various regions and, more or less, independently of one another. These communities, scattered widely from Syria to Persia, Central Asia and India, elaborated a diversity of religious and literary traditions in different languages. The Ṭayyibī Musta'lī Ismailis had continued to be centred in Yaman with a growing subsidiary Bohra community in Gujarāt. In time, the Bohra community overshadowed the Ṭayyibīs of Yaman, while both communities preserved a good portion of the Ismaili literature of the Fatimid times. In this chapter we shall also discuss aspects of the modern history of the Ṭayyibī Ismailis.

POST-ALAMŪT PATTERNS AND RESEARCH PROBLEMS

The first five centuries after the fall of Alamūt represent the longest obscure phase in the entire history of the Ismailis. Many aspects of their activities and thought in this period are still not sufficiently studied, and the situation is exacerbated by a paucity of primary sources. A variety of factors, related to the very nature of post- Alamūt Ismailism, have combined to create special research problems here. In the aftermath of the destruction of their state, the Nizārīs were completely deprived of the centralised leadership they had enjoyed during the Alamūt period. The Nizārī imamate itself continued in the progeny of the last lord of Alamūt, Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh. But the imams remained in hiding and inaccessible to their followers for about two centuries. Under the circumstances, various Nizārī communities, as noted, developed locally and more or less in isolation from one another, each community elaborating separate religious and literary traditions. The communities of Central Asia and India expanded significantly, gradually overshadowing their co-religionists in the traditional Nizārī abodes, namely, Persia and Syria. The origins and early formation of the religious traditions of the Nizārī Khojas of the Indian subcontinent are among the least understood areas of post-Alamūt Ismailism.

Type
Chapter
Information
A Short History of the Ismailis
Traditions of a Muslim Community
, pp. 159 - 216
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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