Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity among the Daudi Bohras.

• Author: Traboulsi, Samer
• Position: Book Review

By JONAH BLANK. Chicago: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2001. Pp. viii + 408.

It has taken more than eighty years for a new and original study on the Bohras to appear. Mian Bhai Mulla Abdul-Husain's Gulzare Daudifor the Bohras of India (Burhanpur, 1920) was the main source of information for practically all studies written on the Indian Tayyibi Ism'ili Bohras in the twentieth century. Hollister, Engineer, and Daftary are only a few of the scholars who relied primarily on the Gulzare for their accounts of the Isma'ili community. However, Abdul-Husain's involvement in the opposition movement to the fifty-first da'i mutlaq Syedna Taher Saifuddin (d. 1965) (I will follow the author's example and use the common Bohra vocalization for personal names) is enough to make us wary of an account that has enjoyed a quasi-authoritative status. This alone should make us welcome Jonah Blank's Mullahs on the Mainframe to fill a longstanding gap in the field of Isma'ili studies. The book, which is a revised version of a doctoral dissertation in anthropology submitted at Harvard University in 1998, includes much to be praised. It is based on extensive field research conducted among the Daudi Bohras in India and Pakistan, a first for a scholar from outside the community.

Through studying Bohra rituals, domestic life, education, and the role of the politico-religious ruling elite, Blank portrays an Islamic community that embraces modern technologies in order to strengthen its centralized unity and traditional values. The book is divided into two main parts. The first, the ethnography, starts with "the historical background." Blank begins with the succession to the Prophet, covering the history of the da'wa until the establishment of the Fatimid state in North Africa and later in Egypt. The major event in Tayyibi/Bohra history was the assassination of the Fatimid imam al-Amir in 524/1130 and the resulting concealment of his infant son al-Tayyib according to the Tayyibi tradition. The Yemeni Isma'ilis under the Sulayhid queen Arwa bint A.hmad followed the concealed imam and seceded from Fatimid Cairo. They soon formed themselves into an independent da'wa headed by a da'i mutlaq. The Tayyibi da'wa ended up moving to India in the tenth/sixteenth century when its existence was threatened by the politico-religious tensions with the dominating Zaydi imams. The local Indian Tayyibi community, known as the Bohras, was mainly concentrated in Gujarat. Soon after, a major schism divided the Tayyibi/Bohra community into Daudis (Dawudis) in India and Sulaymanis in Yemen. Blank's coverage of the remaining history of the Daudi Bohras is mainly an account of Mughal...