Medieval Isma ili History and Thought.

• Author: Meisami, Julie Scott

Edited by FARHAD DAFTARY. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1996. Pp. xviii + 331. $59.95.

Thanks to the efforts of a number of scholars and researchers, and to the increasing accessibility of hitherto unpublished (and unknown) materials, the various manifestations of what is broadly termed the "Isma ili" movement have begun to emerge into the full light of history. The book under review contains some sixteen essays by thirteen of the foremost scholars in the field, and provides yet another valuable contribution to what is an increasingly flourishing subject of study. It would be impossible to deal here with each essay individually, interesting though they all are. Preceded by the editor's introductory essay on the history of Isma ilism and of Isma ili studies, the essays themselves span the entire period of the movement's development and touch on a wide variety of topics. I shall therefore claim "reviewer's privilege," and concentrate on those topics which seem of particular interest from my own perspective.

As this book shows, historically the phenomenon termed "Isma ilism" was by no means monolithic. Along with the various designated groups such as Qarmatis, Batinis, Fatimids, Nizaris, Tayyibids, and so on, there were other "splinter groups." for example, the followers of the enigmatic Ibn al-Kayyal, in fourth-/tenth-century Khurasan and Transoxania. Ibn al-Kayyal claimed he was both the Imam and the Qa im; he composed a "Persian Qur an," invented a script which only he could read, and preached, to all appearances, esotericgnostic beliefs including some sort of letter mysticism. Wilferd Madelung's essay, "The Fatimids and the Qarmatis of Bahrayn," mentions him only in passing (and one would like to have learned more about him); but overall, this essay provides an excellent account of the conflicting, and shifting, allegiances to a variety of Imams and of the various splits and secessions among adherents to the movement in its crucial early period.

Much more remains to be learned about this period - the late third/ninth and early fourth/tenth centuries - and especially about the various branches of Isma ilism active in Khurasan and Transoxania. We are fortunate, therefore, to have here Paul Walker's essay, "An Isma ili Heresiography of the 72 Erring Sects," which discusses a hitherto unexamined early source, that is, the first part of the Kitab al-Shajara of the fourth-/tenth-century Khurasani da i known as Abu Tammam, who seems to have belonged to the circle in Mary that included, among others, the Samanid general al-Husayn b...