Abu Ya qub al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary.

• Author: Crow, Douglas

This slim volume offers the informed reader interested in better understanding the speculative achievements of Isma ili thinkers an accessible and fairly digestible summary of the thought of the most representative fourth/tenth century theoretician, al-Sijistani (executed 361/971 or 365/975, in Sistan). Citation of sources is avoided since the book, in the form of a general introduction to al-Sijistani's thought, is consciously addressed to a non-scholarly audience. Fortunately, this concession to the intended audience does not extend to the transliteration of Arabic and Persian terms.

The author aims to examine al-Sijistani's "thought as a coherent whole without special regard to his own discussions of precise details or controversial aspects of individual doctrines," by rearranging al-Sijistani's own statements to form "a picture of the whole cosmic system that he was trying to describe" (p. xv). This new approach seeks to arrive at "one complete system" through "reflections about what he wrote and why he said what he said" (p. xv). Yet the work does provide further guidance through a good select bibliography, as well as a useful appendix on the works of al-Sijistani, both published and unpublished, containing the tables of contents of the extant treatises (pp. 104-18), including those to al-Sijistani's major work, The Keys (al-Maqalid).(1)

Walker has recently published two major studies on al-Sijistani, which focus on the impact of Arabic Neoplatonism on his Shi i religious system.(2) The present work thus provides the reader an opportunity to review several main areas of the author's contribution. The first two chapters deal with the Shi i intellectual renaissance of the fourth/tenth century and the early Isma ili mission, and with the four "wellsprings" of knowledge - intellect, soul, natiq and ta lif, and asas and ta wil. Those familiar with Walker's other works may be more interested in his treatment of certain major topics which are here situated in a wider Islamic context, covering salvation "hiero-history" and the creation theology of tawhid (chapters three and four) in al-Sijistani's thought.

This book is an engaging and generally convincing interpretation of this important Isma ili da i, "missionary," whom V. Ivanow and then H. Corbin reintroduced to the twentieth century. The lofty social, intellectual, and cultural milieu within which the Persian Isma ili agents operated, as heads of their regional communities, is emphasized...