Kitab al-Iftikhar.

• Author: Walker, Paul E.
• Position: Book Review

Kitab al-Iftikhar. By ABU YA'QUB ISHAQ B. AHMAD AL-SIJISTANI. Edited with commentary by ISMAIL K. POONAWALA. Beirut: DAR AL-GHARB AL-ISLAMI, 2000. Pp. xxviii (English) + 497 (Arabic).

In 1980 Mustafa Ghalib published one version of this important text by the tenth-century Ismaili theorist, the Iranian [da.sup.[subset]]i al-Sijistani. At the time Ismail Poonawala, who is perhaps our leading expert on Ismaili works and manuscripts, had all but completed his own edition of the same treatise. Unfortunately, the appearance of Ghalib's publication of it made Poonawala's project seem unnecessary, at least to the unsuspecting. To those who bothered to check, however, Ghalib's effort fell far short of a critical scholarly edition, the most serious lapse of which was his deliberate omission of portions out of deference to what he feared in it would offend the sensibilities of the larger Islamic community. But, given that the work itself is and was always a stridently polemical defense of Ismaili doctrines (which may well have brought about al-Sijistani's own martyrdom as a consequence of his authorship), to treat it with such reserve is worse than not publishing it at all.

Fortunately, Poonawala persevered and has at last produced the kind of scholarly edition this and other early Ismaili works deserve. Based on the close reading...