It happened at the mountain fortress of Alamut, about sixty miles from present-day Tehran. At noon in the middle of Ramadan, Ḥasan ʿalā dhikrihi al-salām, the leader of the Nizari Ismaili community, proclaimed to his adherents that the end of the world had arrived. In accordance with Ismaili notions of sacred history, Ḥasan announced that during this period of the resurrection (qiyāma), the religious law (sharīʿa) did not apply to his believers anymore. To illustrate the community's new status at the edge of history, Ḥasan and his community celebrated the resurrection with a splendid feast – during the afternoon in the month of Ramadan.

An analysis of the context from which Ḥasan's declaration emerges shows us that his declaration cannot be dismissed as what might seem to be an aberrant manifestation of Islamic antinomianism. Rather we see here how apocalypticism emerges as a powerful solution to two particular logistical problems facing the Nizari community: the absence of a present imām and an inability to conquer Seljuk lands. This declaration also ruptured the Nizari reliance upon past hermeneutical methods that had become increasingly distant from the needs of the community and helped inaugurate a vision of a Shia Islam that was specifically Persianate in form.

Before we examine the case of the qiyāma in more detail, it is necessary to provide a brief survey of the later history of the Fatimid Empire and the historical context leading up to this declaration. I then discuss Ḥasan's declaration, focusing on both the ritualistic elements of his ceremony and on the Haft-bāb [Seven chapters] by Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib, a document written approximately forty years after the event that describes the theology behind the declaration.

The History

As we have witnessed through an examination of al-Mahdī's letter and the Taʾwīl al-da ʿāʾim, the history of the early Fatimids can be seen as an attempt to simultaneously harness utopian aspects of apocalypticism and distance its temporal imminence. Mahdism too posed a challenge for the ruling dynasty: a number of mahdīs arose among the Khārijīs during this time. The most serious threat to the Fatimids was the Khārajī rebel Abū Yazīd, who actually invaded the capitol city al-Mahdiyya in 332/943.