Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn b. al-Ḥasan al-Qurashī (d. 872/1468) was nineteenth in the chain of Ismāʿīlī-Fāṭimid-Ṭayyibī dāʿīs (agents of the religio-political mission called the daʿwa), who were vicegerents of the Concealed Imāms (the full title is al-dāʿī al-muṭlaq, “the dāʿī with absolute authority”). An able religious, political, and military leader, he was also an eminent historian, poet, and theologian. 1. Life Idrīs was born in 794/1392 in the citadel of Shibām, in the Ḥarāz Mountain region of Yemen, into a family of dāʿīs whose line stretched back to the fifth incumbent, ʿAlī…

Ḥamīd al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1020–1) was one of the most important Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī authors of the Fāṭimid period, although biographical details about him are sketchy. As his nisba al-Kirmānī suggests, he was probably born in the city of Kirmān, in eastern Iran. The title of one of his lost works, al-Majālis al-Baṣriyya wa-l-Baghdādiyya (“The sessions of Basra and Baghdad”), indicates that he worked as an Ismāʿīlī propagandist (dāʿī) in the heart of the ʿAbbāsid Empire, organising teaching sessions (majālis) in Basra and Baghdad. Later Ismāʿīlī autho…

Maʿadd al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341–65/953–75) was the fourth caliph of the Fāṭimid dynasty in Ifrīqiya. He acceded to the throne on 29 Shawwāl 341/19 March 953 at the age of 21, having been born on 11 Ramaḍān 319/26 September 931. One of the main sources on his personality is al-Nuʿmān’s (d. 363/974) Kitāb al-majālis wa-l-musāyarāt (“Audiences and companionable rides”), which in 292 episodes gives a detailed panorama of court life, ceremonial, religious disputes, family intrigues, foreign policy, and so forth. His first concern was to pacify the Awrās mountains, refuge of…

Al-Murtaḍā li-Dīn Allāh Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn (al-Rāzī, 40; al-Marwazī, 107; Ibn ʿInaba, 177) (d. 310/922) was the son of the first Zaydī Imām in Yemen, Yaḥyā l-Hādī ilā l-Ḥaqq (d. 20 Dhū l-Ḥijja 298/19 August 911). Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā entered Ṣaʿda accompanying his father on 6 Ṣafar 284/15 March 897. He should have been about six years old at that time, since, according to the sources, he was born in 278/891–2. There is, however, some doubt about the accuracy of the date of his birth (van Arendonk, 140, n. 6; Jadbān, introd. to al-Murtaḍā, Majmūʿ kutub al-Murtaḍā li-Dīn Allāh, 9–10; al…

Al-Mahdī li-Dīn Allāh Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn (b. 12 Dhū l-Qaʿda 612/3 March 1216, d. 28 or 29 Ṣafar 656/6 or 7 March 1258), was a Zaydī Imām in Upper Yemen, who was descended from the Zaydī Imām al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (d. 246/860; Madelung), through his son Muḥammad (al-Bukhārī, 17–8; Ibn ʿInba, 174–82). Sharaf al-Dīn Yaḥyā b. al-Qāsim al-Ḥamzī (d. 677/1278–9; Ibn Abī l-Rijāl, 4:505), al-Mahdī’s disciple and biographer, attributes to him the epithet Abū Ṭayr (lit., he of/with the bird), whose origin and implication have not been adequately explained. Al-Mahdī Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn was…

ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar b. Ibrāhīm b. Abī Salama b. al-Walīd al-ʿAbshamī al-Qurashī (d. 612/1215) was the mentor of ʿAlī b. Ḥātim al-Ḥāmidī, whom he succeeded as the fifth dāʿī muṭlaq of the Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlīs in Yemen on Saturday 25 Dhū l-Qaʿda 605/31 May 1209. He came from the family of Banū l-Walīd al-Anf that traced its genealogy back to the Quraysh through ʿAbd Manāf b. Quṣayy. His great-grandfather Ibrāhīm b. Abī Salama, known as Ibrāhīm al-Anf (meaning Ibrāhīm the proud), was held in high esteem by the found…

Abū l-Qāsim Aḥmad b. al-Mustanṣir, al-Mustaʿlī bi-llāh, was the ninth Fāṭimid caliph (r. 487–95/1094–1101). Born on 8 (or 20) Muḥarram 467/August/September 1074 (or 468/1075), he was the youngest of his father al-Mustanṣir’s (r. 427–87/1036–94) many sons, several of whom, most especially the eldest, Nizār, expected to succeed. However, the all-powerful wazīr al-Afḍal (d. 515/1121), son and successor of the recently deceased Badr al-Jamālī (d. 487/1094), announced, following the overnight death of al-Mustanṣir on 18 Dhū l-Ḥijja 487/29 December 1…

Aḥmad al-Kayyāl (“the corn measurer”), also called Aḥmad Ibn al-Kayyāl, was a Shīʿī Ismāʿīlī missionary ( dāʿī, pl. duʿāt) working in Khurāsān and Transoxania (present-day Uzbekistan) during the first decades of the fourth/tenth century. Sources for his life and doctrines are scarce, allusive, and contradictory (De Smet, 138–61). According to the Bayān al-adyān (“The explanation of the religions”), a book about Muslim sects written in Persian in 485/1092 by the historian Abū l-Maʿālī, al-Kayyāl was a native of Bayhaq, a region east of Nīshāpūr. H…

ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Qurashī (d. 554/1159), the uncle and mentor of the fifth Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī dāʿī, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar b. al-Walīd, came from the illustrious al-Walīd family that played an important role in the affairs of the Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlī daʿwa in Yemen after the decline of the al-Ḥāmidī family. His grandfather Ibrāhīm b. Abī Salama was a supporter of the founder of the Ṣulayḥid dynasty (r. 429–95/1037–1101), ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī, and was sent by the latter on an …

ʿAlī b. Ḥanẓala b. Abī Sālim al-Maḥfūẓī al-Wādiʿī al-Hamdānī (d. 626/1229) succeeded ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Walīd as the sixth dāʿī muṭlaq of the Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlīs in Yemen in 612/1215. The dāʿī muṭlaq held the highest rank in the Ismāʿīlī religio-political organisation called daʿwa, after the assassination of the Fāṭimid caliph-imām al-Āmir in Cairo in 524/1130 and the going into hiding of his son, al-Ṭayyib. Before Alī b. Ḥanẓala’s designation as the chief dāʿī, he had played an active role in the affairs of the daʿwa, from the time of Ḥātim b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥāmidī, the third dāʿī …

Amīnjī b. Jalāl b. Ḥasan (d. 13 Shawwāl 1010/6 April 1602) was an eminent Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlī Bohra jurist and author from India. The son of the twenty-fifth dāʿī muṭlaq of the Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlīs, Shams al-Dīn Jalāl b. Ḥasan (d. 975/1567), Amīn al-Dīn Amīnjī lived and died in Aḥmadābād, Gujarat. During Amīnjī's lifetime the Dāʾūdī-Sulaymānī schism occurred in the Ṭayyibī community. Amīnjī sided with the Dāʾūdī cause, which was upheld by the vast majority of Indian Ṭayyibī Bohras. Thus Amīnjī recognised the claim of Dāʾūd Burhān al-Dīn b. Quṭb Shāh (d. 1021/1612) to the position of dāʿī muṭlaq,…

Nizār (d. c. 488/1095) was, by common consensus, the eldest of the many sons of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Mustanṣir (r. 427–87/1036–94). Born in 437/1045, Nizār would have been almost fifty by the time of his father’s death, during the night of 18 Dhū l-Ḥijja 487/29 December 1094. By then, due partly to his seniority in the family, many considered him the logical, if not formally designated, successor. He also had his own following in Egypt and elsewhere amongst Ismāʿīlīs. The all-powerful wazīr al-Afḍal (d. 515/1121), son and successor of the military dictator Badr al-Jamālī (i…

Abū Yazīd al-Nukkārī Makhlad b. Kaydād b. Saʿd Allāh b. Mughīth b. Kirmān b. Makhlad b. ʿUthmān b. Wurīmt b. Tabaqrāsan b. Samīdār (b. Wirghit b. Ḥuwinfir b. Samīrān) b. Yafran b. Jānā b. Yahyā al-Zanātī (b. between 267/880 and 272/885, d. 336/947) was a Khārijī leader belonging to the al-Nukkār branch of the Ibāḍiyya. The Nukkār (“deniers”) had refused to recognise the second Ibāḍī Imām of Tāhart, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Rustam (d. 209/823). Abū Yazīd was born in Gao (Kawkaw), on the Niger River, in present-day eastern Mali, in the Bilād al-Sūdān. According …

Al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām Allāh Abū ʿAlī al-Manṣūr (4905–24/1096–1130) was the tenth of the Fāṭimid caliphs (r. 495–524/1101–30). Born on 13 Muḥarram 490/31 December 1096, he succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father, al-Mustaʿlī, in Ṣafar 495/December 1101. For the first two decades of his reign, his all-powerful wazīr, al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī, excluded him almost entirely from the government, leaving him but a few ceremonial functions, fewer than had been allowed any of his predecessors. Reports from those years shed little light on his actions as distinct from those of the wazīr…

ʿAbdallāh b. Maymūn (d. second half of the second/eighth century) was a companion of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), and numerous ḥadīths of this Imām are reported on his authority, in the canonical collections of Imāmī ḥadīths (Ivanow, Alleged founder, 11–60). ʿAbdallāh’s father, Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ al-Makkī, a mawlā of the Banū Makhzūm and a resident of Mecca, was a disciple of the Imām Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. c.114/732) and transmitted a few ḥadīths from him. ʿAbdallāh and his father may also have taken care of these ʿAlid Imāms’ properties in Mecca. In Imāmī Shīʿī sources, ʿAbdallāh b.…

The poet prince Tamīm b. al-Muʿizz (d. 374/985), a son of the fourth Fāṭimid caliph-Imām, al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341–65/953–75), was renowned as a poet of elegance and refinement. He was born on 24 Rajab 337/27 January 949, in al-Mahdiyya, in present-day Tunisia, the city founded by the first Fāṭimid caliph-Imām al-Mahdī as his new capital (al-Maqrīzī, al-Muqaffā, 2:588). Soon the capital was moved to the new city of al-Manṣūriyya, built in 337/948 by the third Fāṭimid caliph- imām, al-Manṣūr bi-llāh (r. 334–41/946–53), and it was there that Tamīm grew up and received…

Abū l-Qāsim Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Naṣībī (d. after 367/978), known as  Ibn Ḥawqal, was an Arab geographer and cartographer who sought to provide up-to-date representations of the Muslim provinces from the information he collected during his travels throughout the Muslim world. He moved away from the Ptolemaic model of cartography towards that of al-Iṣṭakhrī (fl. c.340/951), with a set of twenty maps covering the whole of the Muslim provinces. He was born in Nuṣaybīn (in present-day Turkey), in the first quarter of the fourth/tenth century. We know that he grew up i…

Al-Muʾayyad fī l-Dīn Abū Naṣr Hibatallāh b. Abī ʿImrān Mūsā b. Dāʾūd al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078), was chief dāʿī (agent of the religious, educational, and political mission, the daʿwa) under the Fāṭimid imām-caliph al-Mustanṣir (r. 427–87/1036–94), and he held the rank directly below the imām in the spiritual hierarchy. He was a renowned scholar and poet—his magnum opus is al-Majālis al-Muʾayyadiyya, a compendium of eight hundred lectures on symbolic interpretation (taʾwīl) of the Qurʾān, ḥadīth, and sharīʿa. 1. Life The foremost sources for al-Muʾayyad’s life are two in his…

Al-ʿAzīz bi-llāh, Nizār Abū Manṣūr (344–386/955–996), was the fifth Fāṭimid caliph and the first whose rule began and ended in Egypt. He was born in al-Mahdiyya and moved to Cairo with his father al-Muʿizz in 362/973 when the centre of the empire shifted eastward from the Maghrib to its new capital in Egypt. As the third son of the Imām, Nizār was not expected to succeed. The eldest of his brothers, Tamīm, had already been passed over when it became clear that he could not produce offspring, and …

Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Shīʿī (d. 298/911) was the major architect of the initial revolt that established the Fāṭimid caliphate in North Africa. Although he was known in the Maghrib as al-Shīʿī, among other names applied to him there, one indicated that he had come from Ṣanʿāʾ. In fact, however, he originally entered the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa in his native town of Kufa. Abū ʿAbdallāh, whose full name was al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Zakariyyāʾ, was recruited around 278/891, along with his older brother, Abū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad (d. 298/911), by a dāʿī identified in Fāṭimid sources as Abū ʿAlī b…