Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine: Between Revolution and State: The Path to Fatimid Statehood. Qadi al-Nu'man and the Construction of Fatimid Legitimacy: The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, a Search for Salvation.

• Author: Brett, Michael
• Position: Book review

Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine. By PAUL E. WALKER. Variorum Collected Studies Series. Alder-shot, Hampshire: ASHGATE/VARIORUM, 2008. Pp. 352. $124.95.

Between Revolution and State: The Path to Fatimid Statehood. Qadi al-Nu'man and the Construction of Fatimid Legitimacy. By SUMAIYA A. HAMDANI. London: I. B. TAURIS, in association with the INSTITUTE OF ISMAILI STUDIES, 2006. Pp. xxvi + 210. [pounds sterling]25.

The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, a Search for Salvation. By SHAFIQUE N. VIRANI. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2007. Pp. xv + 301. $70.

Since the pioneering work of Ivanow before and after the Second World War, the study of the history and doctrines of Ismailism has become a growth industry, researched by both Ismaili and non-Ismaili scholars, greatly assisted by the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London with its library and growing collection of manuscripts, and summed up in The Ismailis. Their History and Doctrines by its associate director, Farhad Daftary. As knowledge has increased, however, so have the problems widened from the internal history of what by the nineteenth century had become an obscure sect to the question of the relationship of that history to the history and doctrines of Islam itself. The problems are evidently interconnected, not least because of the sectarian perspective summed up in the name of Ismailism, the doctrine of a minority relegated to the fringe of Islam by the generally hostile majority to whom it owes its very name. In that perspective, the issue is foreclosed from its supposed beginning in the eighth century C.E. with the succession of Muhammad b. Isma'il to the imamate of Ja'far al-Sadiq, and the establishment of an unbroken line of such Imams at the head of a missionary organization lasting down to the present day. Much ink has been inconclusively spilt over the reality of this imamate and this da'wa or organization before the Fatimid Mahdi emerged at the beginning of the tenth century C.E. out of the welter of expectations of a second Muhammad in the line of 'Ali. With more certainty, the formation of Ismailism and its community may be placed in the middle of that century with the recognition of Muhammad b. Isma'il as their ancestor by the Fatimid Imams, and their recruitment of most of those who looked for his second coming into a worldwide following, which subsequently split into the branches that have survived until today. This association with the dynasty, however, opens up the question of the role played by this Fatimid da'wa or calling in the creation of their dawla, their state and empire, and beyond that, the role of both in the formation of the Islamic world. The first question is addressed both by Walker and Hamdani, the second only touched upon, For Shafique Virani, writing of the dark age of the Nizari branch in the aftermath of the Mongol conquest of Iran, both are irrelevant; we are back with the problems of the pre-Fatimid era, a sectarian history so obscure that its reconstruction, in the author's words, can only be...