XX.
THE LATER HISTORY OF THE ISMAʿILIAN SECT
The Fatimid Khalifate had its origin in a religious sect which professed to represent the true Islam transmitted through a line of seven Imams who alone understood the real meaning of the religion proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad: the first of these was the Prophet’s son-in-law ʿAli, and the last Ismaʿil the son of Jaʿfar as-Sadiq or his son Muhammad, with whom, according to the earlier teaching, the line ended as the Imam passed into concealment, the leaders of the sect keeping the teaching alive and preparing the way for his return to the visible world. At a later date the leaders claimed themselves to be the Imam’s descendants, the “concealment” being no more than a hiding from the persecuting Khalifs of Baghdad, and so they were the continuers of the sacred tradition, and on this claim rested the Khalifate of Kairawan and of Egypt. It is, of course, extremely difficult to make anything like a fair estimate of the religious work and influence connected with such a movement, and especially because it professed to cover its religious teaching with a veil of secrecy, and also because, during the duration of the Fatimid Khalifate in Egypt, the historians are almost exclusively occupied with recording the political activities of the rulers and make only occasional and allusive references to the sect as a religious body. It seems possible to distinguish three different elements in the sect, (i) the philosophical element which is one of the results of Greek philosophy and especially of the teaching of Aristotle as interpreted by the neo-Platonists and represented in an oriental dress after passing through a Syrian and Persian medium. Such teaching is traditionally associated with Jaʿfar as-Sadiq, and seems to have been the real doctrine of the sect at its first formation, but that was revealed only to the initiated, and apparently it was never checked or restated in the light of the more accurate study of the text of Aristotle which was the work of the “philosophers” of the fourth century A.H. (ii) The definitely Shiʿite doctrine of the incarnation of the divine spirit in the Imam passed on by transmigration from ʿAli to his descendants. And (iii) the purely political element which cared nothing about philosophical speculation or Shiʿite doctrine, but saw in the sect promising elements of a conspiracy against the ʿAbbasid Khalifate. But it does not seem true to say that the whole movement was wholly political, as though there were no reality in the attachment to philosophical or Shiʿite ideas.
When the Ismaʿilian sect emerged first into the open arena in the Qarmatian rising the doctrinal element, especially (i), had effectively undermined all adherence to orthodox Islam; how long the Qarmatians remained attached to Shiʿite claims we do not know, but they do not seem to have attached much importance to them. In history the Qarmatians appear as simply anti-Muslim and offensively irreligious: they give evidence of no ideals whatever beyond the ordinary aspirations of brigands, though we must bear in mind that the only account of them is such as their enemies have given us. In fact they seem to have been simply a robber band released from all pretence of religious beliefs and inspired by a hatred of Islam due, no doubt, to oppression at the hands of Muslim rulers.
The Khalifate at Kairawan and Cairo presents a much better test of the religious tendencies of the Ismaʿilian sect. In this case the sectarian leaders established a strong government and, on the whole, ruled well. The government was founded by those who seem to have believed sincerely in the Fatimid claims, but the great majority of the subject population had no sympathies in that direction: they were quite willing to be ruled by Shiʿites, but had no inclination to turn Shiʿite themselves. The extravagant claims of incarnation etc. which made so strong an appeal to the Persians found the Berbers and Egyptians irresponsive. The Ismaʿilians made an attempt to press them into their sect when first the Mahdi was established at Kairawan, but this policy was soon abandoned and very rarely tried again, though it seems that the regular meetings of the sect and the instructions given by the duʿat were continued until some time after the reign of Hakim. For the most part the Fatimids were quite content with political power and did not interfere with the religious convictions of the people. The condition seems to have been that the Ismaʿilians formed a kind of free-masonry which was, to some extent, the “power behind the throne,” though it was by no means necessary for the officers of state to be members of that brotherhood themselves, and in later times, when the wazirs were practically independent princes, cases occur in which the official government is actually unfriendly towards it. In the later part of the Fatimid period the only mark which distinguished its rule from that of the orthodox Khalif at Baghdad seems to have been that the khutba before the Friday sermon was said in the name of the Fatimid, and that of the ʿAbbasid was not mentioned. The whole sectarian teaching seems to have evaporated steadily in an Egyptian atmosphere which was one of steady indifference. The philosophical teaching which had been the first object of the sect, died away in Asia, and was then transmitted to Spain which formed a kind of orbis ulterior of Islam, leaping over Egypt altogether, as though its premature development in the Ismaʿilian sect had inoculated the Fatimite community against it. The characteristically Persian doctrines of incarnation and transmigration took no hold in Egypt or Ilfrikiya: when they were vigorously preached by Persians in Hakim’s time they only provoked a riot.
We can hardly treat religion as a matter of race, for there seems no good evidence for extending heredity so as to include matters of cultural development: culture, which includes religion, is transmitted by contact not by descent, it is learned not inherited: and it is very doubtful how far psychological pre-dispositions can be inherited. But culture exists in different areas with distinctive characteristics so that it is not easy for persons of one culture-area to appreciate the outlook of those of another, although there is a constant culture-drift passing between the two. In North Africa there is a tendency to pay exaggerated honour, which might be described as actual worship, to the murabits or saints, but it is quite independent of the incarnation theories which prevail in Persia and India, and so we may say that this, the characteristic tenet of the Ismaʿilis as Shiʿites, found itself in Egypt and North Africa in an unsympathetic atmosphere, and was gradually starved out. Perhaps we may take the accession of al-Hafiz in A.H. 524 = A.D. 1131, when the wazir in office was antagonistic to the Ismaʿili doctrines, as the probable date by which the doctrines of the Ismaʿili sect had ceased to have any meaning in Egypt, and consequently that in which the parent Ismaʿili sect was practically obsolete. Whatever may have been the sincerity of its first founders, of those whom we credit with a desire to spread the philosophical theories learned from Greek philosophers and formed into a body of doctrine subversive of the traditional teaching of Islam, or of those who were attached to the incarnation theories of the Persians, it is clear that the purely political element finally gained the upper hand, and in due time discarded all the religious and philosophical thought which, from their point of view, had outlived its utility. In Fatimid Egypt the sect was rather like a free-masonry under royal patronage, and when this patronage came to an end the sect died a natural death. That the teaching of Duruzi and Hamza in the reign of Hakim met with such violent opposition is convincing that Shiʿite teachings were uncongenial to the Egyptians, though it does seem that under Fatimid rule Cairo was much frequented by Persian visitors and pilgrims.
The subsequent influence of the Ismaʿili sect shows itself in off-shoots which do not connect with Egypt or North Africa. So far as we know the first Ismaʿili propaganda in India took place about A.H. 460 = A.D. 1067, about the time when the Fatimid Khalifate in Egypt was just coming to the end of its flourishing period. At that time a missionary named ʿAbdullah came from Yemen and preached in North-West India, and is claimed as the founder of a sect known as the Bohras which is found scattered through many of the trading centres of the Bombay presidency, though some attribute its foundation to a later teacher, the Mullah ʿAli. Many of the Bohras, however, have become Sunni (cf. Nur Allah ash-Shushtari, quoted in Arnold: Preaching of Islam, pp. 275-7).
The Khojah sect proper was founded by a daʿi named Nur ad-Din who was sent from Alamut about A.H. 495 (= A.D. 1101), or perhaps later, and so is an off-shoot of the Assassins (cf. [p. 214 supra]), Nur ad-Din changed his name to the Hindu Nur Satagar and made many converts from the lower castes of Gujerat. About A.D. 1430 the head of this Khojah sect was Pir Sadr ad-Din who adapted its teachings to suit Hindu ideas; according to him Muhammad was Brahma, ʿAli was Krisna in his tenth incarnation (avatar), thus accepting the previous nine incarnations of Hindu mythology and adding this extra one as an adaptation to Shiʿite ideas, and Adam was Siva. This Hindu rendering of Ismaʿilian ideas was detailed in a book which he produced and called the Dasavatar, which serves as the sacred book of the modern Khojahs and is read beside any member of the sect on his death-bed. In this semi-Hindu teaching it is difficult to trace any real continuity with historic Islam, and it is rather grotesque to find that the members of the sect, numerous in the chief trading towns of western India, have in recent years taken a leading part in Islamic agitations against British rule.
These Indian Khojahs represent the Assassin branch of the Fatimite wing, but there are other representatives of the same branch scattered all over the Muslim world, though nowhere forming an established community quite in the same way as in West India. The Bohras, or such of them as have not turned Sunni, represent the older parent stock of the Ismaʿilians. The Druzes of Mount Lebanon maintain the off-shoot formed during the later years of al-Hakim, and these show a clearer continuity than any other relic of the sect which set the Fatimid Khalifate upon the throne of Egypt.