This is where another name for the Ismailis comes from. septenaries. What was the reason for their non-recognition of the last five imams? Around 760, the sixth imam Jafar Sadiq, considering his eldest son Ismail unworthy, deprived him of the right to inherit the imamate and transferred this right to his youngest son. The Ismailis, in contrast to the Imamis, did not recognize the legitimacy of Ismail's banishment. Even after the spread of rumors about the death of Ismail, his adherents remained faithful to him, and their descendants, scattered throughout Iran and Syria, spread their teachings with the help of missionaries ( dai), who preached primarily an allegorical interpretation of the Koran, arguing that the sayings of Muhammad should not be taken literally: they supposedly have a hidden, allegorical meaning.
For about a hundred years the activity of the sect was mainly religious. But one of the missionaries - Abdallah - directed this activity to achieve political goals. With the support of his brethren, he succeeded in giving Ismaili propaganda an unheard-of scope. Dai Hamdan Karmat united the workers and peasant elements of Mesopotamia, where not long before there was an uprising of Negro slaves - Zinji . He rallied these rural and urban elements around the idea of a "hidden imam" that responded to the popular desire for equality, and created a secret conspiratorial society in which there were degrees of initiation. (It was very similar to the Western freemasonry. It is possible that the origin of the latter is closely connected with the previous Ismaili-Jewish sources.) From Mesopotamia, the movement Karmatians moved to Arabia and took on communist features.
While Hamdan Karmat was preaching in Mesopotamia, another Dai, Abu Abdallah, was stirring up the Berbers of Ifriqiya (Tunisia) by announcing to them the imminent coming of the "hidden imam." Soon a man posing as this imam also arrived. It was ubidallah, a representative of the Persian "family of the eye doctor" - the same one that recently gave a powerful impetus to the development of political Ismailism. In Ifriqiya, Ubaydallah was soon captured by the rulers of the dynasty Aghlabidov and imprisoned in the city of Sijilmassa. But one of the local Berber tribes stood up to support the Ismailis - kutama(ketama). Imam- mahdi was released and soon founded an Ismaili state in Tunisia, falsely posing as a descendant of Ali and the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, Fatima. Becoming the masters of Ifriqiya (909-910), Ubaydallah and his descendants ( Fatimids) immediately turned their vain aspirations to the east. They declared themselves the true caliphs of all Muslims, and the Abbasid dynasty was illegal. Sixty years later, the Fatidims brought Egypt under Ismaili rule.
Karmatism put the doctrine of the "hidden imam" to the service social revolution. The Fatimids, having abandoned socialism, used the Ismaili doctrine of the "hidden imam" simply to seize dominance.
Religious doctrine of Ismailism
If we consider the basis of the Ismaili doctrine, we can see that the Fatimids attached no more importance to the legitimate succession of the Imamate than the Imamis. The latter believed that the imam must be appointed by his predecessor and descend from him in a straight line. But already Zaidis it was believed that every descendant of Ali and Fatima had the right to claim the title of imam in order to defend the cause of Shiism. Finally, in the eyes of the Ismailis, the imamate was reduced to "the authority bestowed from above on the new head from among the initiates by a sudden illumination of his intellect." With this approach, the question of the legitimacy of the Fatimids fades into the background. They used the general Shiite doctrine of the "divine spark" in the imams, to the point that one of the Fatimids - Hakim - was proclaimed a god.
In the teachings of Ismailism, a constant return to the number seven (perhaps under the influence of Gnosticism) played a large role. It has always been given a sacred character. Ismailism established five steps leading from man to deity (they include both man and god). These steps are created by the initial principles: World mind, World soul, Primary matter, Space, Time. Seven prophets were successive incarnations of the World mind: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Prophet Mohammed and one more Mohammed, the son of the seventh Imam Ismail. Already from these theories it is clear what an abyss separates orthodox Islam from Ismailism (not to mention the allegorical interpretation of the Koran and the belief in the transmigration of souls). While the faithful consider Muhammad to be the last of the prophets, whose business will only be to restore the Mahdi when he comes at the end of the world, the Ismailis, for the sake of a new prophet, nullify the significance of the mission of Muhammad. According to their teaching, each of the seven prophets has seven imams. The first of them constantly accompanies the prophet. So, Imams Seth, Shem, Ismail, Aaron (at Moses, and his seventh imam was John the Baptist, Forerunner), Simon-Peter (at Isa-Jesus) are attached to the first five prophets. Ali is associated with Muhammad as an imam, followed by the first six of his successors, the Alids, up to Imam Ismail. Ismail's son Muhammad begins the seventh prophetic cycle. His imams were the Ismaili missionary Abdallah, and then his two sons. The fourth imam was the first Fatimid caliph, Ubeidallah. This numerical symbolism shows the strong influence of the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanation.
Ismaili sects - Druze
The Fatimid caliphs conclude the seventh cycle of imams following the last prophet. But the logically thinking Ismailis could not be satisfied with the highest earthly manifestation of the World Mind in the person of the Fatimid imam. The circle was supposed to close, and in 1017 some of them decided that the Fatimid caliph Hakim must be revealed to the world as the incarnation of God himself. So from the general mass of Ismailism stood out Druze (on behalf of the founder of this sect - Darazi, approximate caliph Hakim and one of his preachers). The Druze to this day live in Xayran, a mountainous region of Syria, where he moved his sermon, who fled from Egypt after the mysterious disappearance of Hakim Darazi. They are waiting for the return of Hakim, just as the Imamis are waiting for the return of the "hidden Imam". Drusism, as a creed for the initiated, refrains from any kind of propaganda among dissidents. The details of his doctrine are known only to that part of the community called ukkal(“reasonable”), the rest are called “juhkhal”, i.e. “not knowing”, and the latter may include people occupying a high social position. God Hakim, in their opinion, is one and has no attributes. The number seven in this doctrine appears in the form of seven basic commandments. The Druze, to an even greater extent than the Shiites, allow taqiyu(“mental reservation”) and believe in the transmigration of souls.
Caliph Hakim Mosque in Cairo
Ismaili sects - Nusayris (Alawites)
The doctrine of the divinity of Hakim collided during its penetration into Syria with another secret doctrine of the Nizari that had arisen shortly before ( Nusayri– current Alawites). Hostile relations between the Druze and the Nusayris lasted for several centuries. If the Druzes deify Hakim, then the Nusayris and adherents of a sect of a later origin - Ali-Ilahi - deify Ali. Ali, they say, is eternal in his divine nature; he is our god in the depths of his essence, although outwardly he is our imam. They believe in a trinity consisting of Ali, Muhammad and Salman (moreover, Muhammad is only an emanation of Ali, and Salman is the forerunner of Ali). Without going into the details of these teachings, we note only the presence of a pagan element mixed with the Gnostic. Under the trinity of the Nusayris, the pagan triads of ancient Syria are guessed. Moreover, mythological attributes are given to the Alidams: Ali becomes the lord of thunder; the colors of the evening dawn, which in ancient times were considered the blood of Adonis killed by a boar, are now perceived as the blood of the son of Ali, the martyr Hussein. In the rites of Nusayrism, we find a curious mixture of Shia and Christian features (great holidays and the celebration of saints' days). The tombs of their saints, surrounded by trees, which are also an object of worship, crown the hills of the country. Nusairism-Alawism turns out to be a doctrine that got lost in the fog of syncretism and, as a result, was rejected by orthodox Islam, although it is very tolerant of other areas of Ismailism.
Fifteen years after the mysterious disappearance of Caliph Hakim, the Fatimids in 1035 restored the "ordinary", non-Druze Ismaili creed in Egypt. It held out there until the overthrow of the Fatimid dynasty by Saladin in the middle of the 12th century. Saladin replaced Ismailism in Egypt with conventional Sunnism.
Ismaili sects - Assassins
But before this event, in the reign of the Fatimid caliph Mustansira(1036 - 1094), the Dai of Iraq in 1078 sent to Egypt one Iranian Ismailite - Hassan ibn Sabbah. Then an event occurred similar to the excommunication of Imam Ismail (which served as the cause of the emergence of Ismailism). To the detriment of the rights of the eldest son, Nizar, Caliph Mustansir appointed his youngest son as his heir. Hasan ibn Sabbah sided with Nizar and was expelled from Egypt. But he continued his propaganda in Syria (in the region of Aleppo), and then in Iran, where, with the help of his supporters, in 1090 he took possession of the fortress of Alamut and made it his headquarters. Soon he captured other castles in this country, and also built new ones and forced his adherents into blind obedience. He did this by drugging people with a mixture containing Indian hemp (hashish - from this word the name given to them came from " assassins"- from the Arabic "hashshashin"). Under the influence of hashish, the deceived hallucinated, they saw paradise, and Hassan used this to incite them to kill royalty and noble persons. Such systematic terror has already been practiced in Islam before - for example, by the Kharijites.
Taking advantage of the unrest that came in the Middle East after the appearance of the crusaders, Hassan against his will Seljuk Sultans, the then masters of Western Asia, managed to establish an independent principality, which was held by terror during the reign of eight "masters" (1090 - 1256).
The Fatimids added one element to the teachings of Ismailism - passive obedience to the imam. The neo-Ismailism of Hassan ibn Sabbah, which was more of a secret political organization than a creed, made this obedience a law. Neither the study of the Qur'an nor its allegorical interpretation was of any value unless carried out under personal guidance ( talim) and mother. This hindered the freedom of individual interpretation of the holy teaching. The Khorasan Ismailis who rallied around Hasan ibn Sabbah began to be called batinites And talimites. The word "batinites" is derived from "at-tawil al-batin" - an interpretation of the hidden meaning of the sacred text, accessible only to initiates. According to the teachings of the Batinites, unquestioning adherence to the talim - the instructions of the imam - is mandatory. This source is no less authoritative for them than the Koran. Hassan declared himself the deputy of the Egyptian Fatimid Imam, but was the absolute master of the bodies and souls of his adherents.
But one of his successors, the fourth master of Alamut, went further, violating, like Caliph Hakim, the sequence of teaching with a sudden maneuver. While his predecessors posed only as deputies of the Imam of Cairo, he unexpectedly declared himself the great-grandson of Nizar (the son of Fatimid Mustansir, whose rights had once been defended by Hassan ibn Sabbah). Thus, he freed himself from the power of the Fatimid caliph and himself became the high priest of the Ismailis. In those days, Master Alamut held fortresses not only in Iran, but also in Syria. They were gradually subjugated by his emissaries, who, if necessary, resorted to the support of Christians. The "old man of the mountain" mentioned by Western historians of the Crusades was none other than the Syrian governor of the Master of Alamut. One of these governors, Rashid al-Din Sinan, half a century later repeated the Iranian adventure of Hassan ibn Sabbah in Syria. He freed himself from the power of Alamut, applied the same policy of mysterious murders and forced both the crusaders and Saladin, who then overthrew the Fatimids, to reckon with him.
Masyaf - the main fortress of the Assassins in Syria
Mongol invasion Hulagu in 1256 crushed the power of the Assassins in Iran. The Syrian Ismailis were subjugated shortly thereafter by the Egyptian sultans- Mamluks. Their descendants still live around the ruined fortresses. Small groups of them are also found in Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Oman and Zanzibar. In India, they have retained their former power, if not religious, then at least economic, and form the Hoja sect. Since the middle of the 19th century, its heads have been called Aga Khans.
Ismaili philosophy
So Ismailism, which originated from Shiism, had a powerful influence on the fate of Islam and served as a direct or indirect cause for the emergence of a number of political movements: the Karmatians, the Fatimids, the Assassins. In addition, he contributed to the development of Muslim philosophy, becoming on the same point of view with Mutazilism in denying divine attributes and recognizing the priority of reason.
God, according to the philosophy of the Ismailis, is devoid of attributes and inaccessible to perception. By his own accord, he appeared in the form of the World Mind - the true deity of the Ismailis, whose main attribute is knowledge. Reason, in turn, created the World Soul, and thanks to its inherent attribute (life), it gave rise to Primary Matter, passively accepting various forms given to it by Reason. The soul continuously strives for knowledge in order to rise to the nature of Mind. The action of these three principles is joined by Space and Time, whose combined action is directed to the World matter. Thus, from God to matter, there are seven principles. These principles (with the exception of God) manifested themselves in the form of prophets and imams, of whose seven cycles we have already spoken.
Initiation into the Ismaili creed had seven degrees. Most Ismailis reached only the second degree, and the dais (missionaries) reached the sixth degree. Rare units reached the seventh.
The Ismailis also had an allegorical interpretation of paradise (as a state of the soul that has reached perfect knowledge) and hell (as a state of ignorance). The stay in hell seemed to be temporary, since, according to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls ( tanasukh), each soul returned to earth and remained here until it acquired knowledge under the guidance of the imam. On the day when all created things are imbued with the Universal mind, evil will disappear.
The Ismaili system of emanation is found with very minor changes in a philosophical encyclopedia compiled in the 10th century. a group of Arab scholars known as the Pure Brothers. Their concept of cycles and numerical symbolism are repeated in the teachings of the Shia sect Hurufis("interpreters of letters"), founded in the XIV century. Bektashi dervishes in the Ottoman Empire also adopted this creed, according to which each cycle begins with the appearance of Adam and ends with the Last Judgment; the prophets are followed by the saints, announcing the incarnations of the deity; the first such incarnation was the founder of the sect. Calculations based on the numerical value of the letters of the alphabet play no less a role in the teachings of the Bektashi than among the Ismailis; the number seven retains a special meaning for them.
Gulat(unit gali; "extreme", holding immoderate" views) - the general name of the numerous groups and communities that represented the "extreme" trend in Shiite Islam. Muslim doxographers considered “extreme” those who preached “immoderate” views towards Ali and his descendants, meaning by “immoderation” first of all their deification. The first "extreme" Shia was Abd Allah bin Saba, who denied the death of Ali and expected his return. The greatest activity of "extreme" Shiites ( Kaysanites, Khattabits, Mugirites, Mansurites, etc..) fell on VIII - the period of the least stability, the change of dynasties. The activities of the "extreme" Shiites took place at that time mainly in the territory of al-Iraq - in the country of ancient civilizations, mystical beliefs. The most ancient and popular ideas were about the emanation of the "divine spirit", "divine light". The idea of the divine essence of supreme power was expressed in recognition for imams from the family of Ali exceptional supernatural properties that they acquire with the receipt of a spiritual testament from the previous and mother.
In addition to the imam himself, various kinds of “deputies” appear ( caliph), "trusted" ( wakil), temporary "performers" ( kaim) commands of the deified Imami. Numerous "prophets" appeared ( nabis), "messengers" ( rasoul), "gate" ( bab), to whom "revelations" were sent down ( wahee, tanzil), "paths" ( sabab), "proof" ( hujja) etc. Pretenders for prophets and messengers often came to the deification of themselves. The "extreme" Shiites assimilated the elements of Gnosticism and neo-Pythagoreanism, introduced them into the consciousness of the Muslim peoples. It was among the "extreme" Shiites that the ideas about the "hidden state" (al-ghaiba) and the return of the imams (al-raja), about their "prophetic" knowledge and infallibility, about the "divine" incarnation, about the resurrection, about the transmigration of souls, were born. These ideas then became elements of the dogma of the "moderate" Shiites.
Kaysanites
The Kaisanites were the first to separate themselves after the death of Hasan and Husain, the sons of Ali. Kaysanites (al-Kasaniya) - the general name of the group of "extreme" Shiite communities that recognized imamate Muhammad bin al-Hanafiyi (d. in Medina in 700) - the son of Ali from a Hanifite (a slave from the Banu Hanifa tribe). The first movement of the Kaysanites was the Amid uprising in al-Kufa in 686. It was headed by al-Mukhtar ibn Abi Ubayd as-Sakifi, nicknamed Kaysan. By this nickname, the participants in the uprising were called Kaisanites. According to another version, the rebels were named Kaysanites after Abu Amr Kaysan, the head of the guard of al-Mukhtar. The movement took place under the slogan of revenge for the blood of al-Husayn and for imamate Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyy. Al-Mukhtar claimed that Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya possessed knowledge of the innermost secrets kept in the family of Ali (the so-called "yellow scroll"). After the death of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya (d. in Medina in 700), the Kaysanites continued to call his adherents who believed in the legitimacy of his imamate, who claimed that he was the closest to Ali (d. 661), and through him to the prophet Muhammad.
The question of who is the legitimate imam after Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah has caused controversy among the Qaysanites. Muslim doxographers mention four communities formed after his death:
- « True» Kaysanites, or Mukhtarists, supporters of al-Mukhtar. Al-Mukhtar developed the doctrine of "changing the divine mind" ( al-bad, Arab. "appearance", "occurrence"), caused by the emergence of new circumstances.
Famous Arab poets Qusayyir (d. 723) and as-sayyid al-Khimyari (d. 789) belonged to this community. The later Mukhtarites called for an end to the Imamate until the return of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah.
- Hashemites- supporters imamate Abu Hashim (the son of Muhammad ibn Abu Hashim received from his father a spiritual testament - occult knowledge (“yellow scroll”). After the death of Abu Hashim, the Hashemites split into five communities.
- The Bayanites denied the death of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya and awaited his return. Their leader, Bayan ibn Samana al-Nahdi al-Tamimi, claimed that a "divine particle" from Ali moved into him and that after the death of Abu Hashim, the will to the imamate passed to him. In 737. Bayan was burned along with a group of his adherents.
- The Rizamits, or Abbasid Shiites, preached that from Abu Hashim the Imamate had passed into the genus of the Abbasid party (Abassid ash-shii), which fought to overthrow the Umayyad dynasty. These Kasainites claimed that Abu Hashim, who lived in Humaimah, in the name of the Abbasids, before his death bequeathed the "yellow scroll" to the Abassid Muhammad ibn Ali. Together with the “yellow scroll”, Muhammad ibn Ali received the right to an imamate, because according to the teachings of the Hashemites (adherents of Abu Hashim), the one who inherited from the previous one becomes the true imam and mother secret knowledge. Along with this, Muhammad ibn Ali received a ready-made Hashemite organization, consisting mainly of mawali banu musliya (vett banu al-haris), who occupied a separate quarter in al-Kufa. This organization formed the core of the Abbasid party (ash-shii), which, during the uprising, led in 750. to the power of the Abbasod dynasty.
Al-Ashari subdivided Kaysanites on eleven communities, without determining the sequence of their origin and their genetic connection.
Both Shia and Sunni authors noted that teachings about the transmigration of souls, incarnation, return after death, etc., were widely spread among the Kaysanites. The teachings of the Kaysanites had a strong influence on the dogma of Shiite Islam. The most important provisions of the theory of imamat, the teachings of al-bada (“change of divine opinion”) and ar-raja (“return” of imams), developed by the Kaysanites, were accepted by the Shiites-Imamits of al-Iraq.
In Iran and Central Asia, Kaysanite doctrines were preached khurralites.
By the middle of the IX century. The Kaysanite communities proper ceased to exist.
Doctrine al-bad passed to the moderate Imamis. Modern Imami theologians allow for a change in divine decision. Doctrine al-bad allowed Shiite imams to substantiate the need for their prophetic knowledge, the ability to predict the future, on the other hand, allowed them to relieve themselves of responsibility for unfulfilled predictions, and also at any moment to change their mind or decision.
Sunnis who held the concept of predestination, as well as Zaidis, criticized al-bad. The Sunnis spoke only of the "cancellation" (an-naskh) of certain divine injunctions.
Nusayris (Alawites)
This community of "extreme" Shiites was formed in the 9th-10th centuries. in Northern Syria. Later name Alawites("supporters of Ali"). The eponym is possibly Muhammad bin Nusayr al-Numairi (d. in Basra c. 883). According to other sources, he is the head and eponym of the "extreme" Numayr Shiites.
Representatives of the military regime ruling in Syria belong mainly to the group Alawites, although in the last decade, Sunnis, who make up 74% of the Syrian population, have managed to get important political posts. 16% are other Muslims, 10% are Christians. Of the 16% of other Muslims, 12% are politically dominant Alawites based in the provinces of Latakia and Taratus. The Alawites are an unorthodox branch of the Shiites.
The Alawite doctrine is based on Ismailism with elements of Gnostic Christianity and astral cults. The emanation of a deity is considered an inseparable triad Meaning(manna) - Name(ism) - gate(bab). This triad is associated with the Moon, the Sun and the heavens and is periodically embodied in the prophets, the last of the prophets Muhammad, Ali and Salman al-Farisi ..
The Nusayris (Alawites) believe in the transmigration of souls (tanasukh) in men. According to the degree of initiation, they are divided into amma and hassa (“simple” and “special”). Initiation is not available to women. The Nusayris reject many Islamic precepts, use wine during rituals, and have a ban on pork, hare, and eel. Isa (Christ) and a number of Christian saints are venerated, some Christian holidays are celebrated. Religious buildings - Cuba(dome), they are erected in honor of revered religious authorities. In ritual terms, they are divided into two subgroups: "northern" or "solar" ( shamaliya, shamshya) "southern" or "lunar" ( qibliya or kamaria). The center of the "northern" subgroup is in Cilicia. The center of the "southern" subgroup in Qardah (Syria). The Nusayris are divided into tribes and retain endogamy. The Nussayri community is closed. Currently, more than half of the Nussayris (Alawites) live in Syria, about a third in Turkey, and the rest in northern Lebanon.
Syria is a country with a one-party system. Ba'ath Party - Arab Socialist Renaissance Party. The military Ba'ath Party came to power in 1963. with the intention of uniting all Arab nations in a single socialist system under Syrian rule. This coup ended the dominance of the urban elite, increasing the movement of citizens from rural areas.
In 1978, plans for unification with Baathist Iraq collapsed, prompting mutual accusations.
Ismailis
In the same era in the middle of the VIII century. Among the Shiite movements stands out ismailism, much more active than Zaidism or Imamism. The split of the Shiites, caused by the appearance of the Ismalists, occurred in 765. In this year, the 6th imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, died. The dispute between his heirs turned into a historical split in Imami Shiism, which led to the emergence of Ismailism.
According to most sources, both Ismaili and non-Ismaili, Imam Jafar al-Sadiq originally, in accordance with the principle nass, appointed as his heir the eldest son Ismail al-Mubarak ("Blessed"), from his first wife Fatima, granddaughter of Hassan ibn Ali inb Abi Talib. Most sources report Ismail's untimely death during his father's lifetime. The latest date of Ismail's death is 763.
After the death of the 6th Imam Jifar al-Sadiq in 765, three of his other sons, incl. the brother of the deceased Ismail, Abdallah al-Kazim, born in 746 (25 years younger than Ismail). Abdallah al-Aftah died a few months later. And most Shiites recognized the 7th imam as the eldest Ismail, Muhammad ibn Ismail, who is the eldest grandson of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq. He was born in 738. and by the time of Ja'far al-Sadiq's death, he was 26 years old. Mussa al-Kazim (his uncle) was eight years younger. These Shiites believed that the imamate should not be passed from brother to brother. Shortly after the death of the recognition by the majority of the imamate of Musa al-Kazim, Muhammad ibn Ismail left Medina and went to the east (to avoid the persecution of the Abbasids?). Supporters of the preservation of the imamate in the offspring of Ismail began to call themselves Ismalites. After the death of Muhammad ibn Ismail in 795, most of them considered that in fact he did not die, but went into "concealment" (ghaiba), i.e. exalted by divine will and exists invisibly. Thus they recognized him as the 7th and last imam, awaiting his return as the Mahdi, or al-Qaim ("Rising on the Day of Judgment"). From the moment of hiding, Muhammad, in addition to the epithet "al-Maymun" ("Happy"), received the epithet "al-Makhtum") ("Hidden").
Islayli Qarmatians
They belong to the extreme Shiites. The first ruler of the Ismailis after Muhammad ibn Ismail (al-Maymun) was Abdallah, called "al-Akbar" ("Elder"), who secretly settled in Syria in the ancient city Salamiye. From here, he scattered emissaries to various regions in order either to attract sovereign rulers to the Ismailis, or to provoke popular uprisings. In 874 Hamdan Karmat, who was sent to Iraq, was converted to Ismailism. He converted a significant part of the peasantry to Ismailism. His followers began to be called "Karamita"-Karmats. Later, this term became the name of the Ismailis and other regions.
The call of the Qarmatians to rebellion was based on the expectation of the imminent appearance of the Mahdi, who would establish the kingdom of justice in the world. This appeal was addressed to landless peasants and Bedouin tribes against the privileged urban strata, the Sunni Abbasids and their orders. The Ismailis have been successful in southern Iraq, Bahrain (Eastern Arabia) and Yemen, where a thriving Jewish community has been established since pre-Islamic times.
Abdallah al-Akbar died in Salamiyya after 874. The Ismaili movement was led by his son Ahmad. Ahmad had two sons al-Husayn and Muhammad (also known as Abu-sh-Shalaglagh). Ahmad was succeeded by al-Husayn. Al-Husayn died prematurely around 881, when his son Ali (Said) was 8 years old. His uncle Muhammad ibn Ahmad became his guardian. After his death in 899, Ali himself took up the matter. Having become the leader (receiving the name Abdallah al-Mahdi), he made a sharp ideological turn. As a result, the Ismaili movement of the 9th century. It split into two openly opposing factions.
The new Ismaili leader, Abdallah al-Mahdi, instead of recognizing Muhammad ibn Ismail as the Mahdi, now came out with a claim to an imamate for himself and his ancestors (al-Husayn, Ahmad and Abdallah al-Akbar_. Before Abdallah al-Mahdi, the latter proclaimed themselves " hujja"("proof"), i.e. representatives of the absent imam Muhammad ibn Ismail (Mahdi), for contact with the hidden imam is carried out through the hujja. Now the reformer Abdallah al-Mahdi raised his own rank and the rank of his ancestors-predecessors from the hujj, who was waiting for the Mahdi, to the very imam, explaining to his followers that he and his predecessors were all the time truly imams, inheriting Jafar al-Sadiq, but hiding This is for the time being for security reasons. Thus the belief in the advent of Muhammad ibn Ismail as the Mahdi was only a security ruse. Now it's time to say, one group of Ismailis stated that all the descendants of Ja'far al-Sadiq were and are true Imams - i.e. The 7th imam was not the last.
Part of the Ismailis accepted these explanations of Abdallah. These Ismailis supported the concept of continuing the succession of the Imamate after Muhammad ibn Ismail. They formed the bulk of the Ismailis of Yemen and communities in North Africa, Egypt and Sindh. This is the moderate Ismaili wing.
The reform was rejected by the rest of the Ismaili community, who retained the original belief in the coming of Muhammad ibn Ismail as the Mahdi. Hamdan Karmat in 899 refused to submit to the leadership of the center in Salamiyya and disappeared. From that time on, the term "Karamita" (Karmatians) began to be used only in relation to these "extreme" Ismailis, who did not recognize Abdallah al-Mahdi and his predecessors as imams, as well as his heirs. This, proper Qarmatian, faction included communities in Iraq, Bahrain and a significant number of communities in the Iranian regions. Yet Karmatism did not last long in Iraq after Khwek. In Bahrain, in 899, Abu Said founded the independent Qarmatian state of Bahrain, which existed until 1077. In 913 Abu Said was udit. Several of his sons headed the Qarmatian state in Bahrain. During the time of his younger son Abu Tahir Sulaiman (332-994), the Qarmatians of Bahrain raided Iraq (Basra, Baghdad) and Mecca, and regularly robbed the caravans of pilgrims to Mecca. The culmination was the capture of Mecca by Abu Tahir right during the period of pilgrimage in 930. For a whole week, the Ismailis of the Qarmatians plundered the city, defiled places sacred to Muslims. They broke the Black Stone from the walls of the Kaaba and, breaking it into two parts, took it to Ahsa, their capital in Bahrain. The fact is that astrological forecasts predicted the appearance of the Mahdi in 928, which, according to the Karmatian teachings of that time, meant the end of the era of Islam and its laws, after which the final era in the history of mankind was to begin. This explains why Abu Tahir sacked Mecca, then recognized the Mahdi in a young non-Arab from Persia, to whom he handed over the rule in 931. This Mahdi turned out to be a restorer of his Sasanian-Persian religion and such an enemy of Islam that he abolished Sharia and Islamic worship, betrayed condemnation of the prophets, recognized as the elimination of the leaders of the Qarmatians of Bahrain, who were objectionable to him. Eventually he was killed. After these strife, the Bahrainis returned the Black Stone to its place in Mecca in 950, having received a ransom paid by the Abbasids.
It is obvious that the Qarmatians in their essence are the enemies of Islam. This was demonstrated by the ethnic “non-Arab” from Persia with its Sasanian heritage, who got the supreme Karmatian power.
Al-Baghdadi (d. 1037), a Muslim theologian and jurist, who outlined the foundations of Sunnism in his book Usul ad-din (Fundamentals of Religion), classified the Qarmatians, as well as the Ismailis in general, as non-Islamic communities.
The Bahraini Karmats created an agricultural and handicraft community with communal slavery. The affairs of the community were in charge of a council of six elders ( sadat) and six of their deputies ( wazirs) . Decisions were made collectively, subject to unanimity. 30,000 communal slaves were used in private households and public works. The desire to implement the social welfare program of their community at the labor of the Rada was combined with fanaticism and cruelty. The Karmatians had a strict and elaborate system of communication ( at-talim), which included, in particular, an introduction to doubt and the ability to overcome it. There was a carefully designed system of degrees of initiation (7 or 9). Only the members of the five highest degrees were initiated into the mysteries of the esoteric teaching. Philosophical circle "Pure brothers" (Ikhvan as-safa). "Pure brothers and true friends" operating in the Middle East in the 10th century. secret Ismaili community. His philosophy embraced Neo-Platonism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, Chaldean astrology, Hermeticism. This secret ideology stands above the differences between revealed religions (Christianity, Islam), which, from its point of view, are evil. The Pure Brothers presented their community as a prototype of the coming "state of good", which should replace the "state of evil" represented by the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate. The teachings of the Ismailis "have many similarities with the radical branches of Sufism". Jewish authors write that Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) in the East is closely related to Sufism. The scriptures of Islamic law were not respected by the "pure brothers".
The difference between the moderate Ismailis-Fatimids and the extreme Ismailis-Karmatians was not in the philosophical and theological teaching, but in the methods of building a “state of good” instead of a state of evil” of God-revealed Sunnism. Moderate Ismailis saw their state on the basis of trade, commerce, usury, i.e. in economic terms. The extreme Ismailis-Karmatians preferred the military-administrative type of their state. Hence, the moderate Ismailis chose the reformist path of the gradual ideological transformation of Muslims into the spiritual subjugation of their Sufi-Kabbalist ideology. The Ismailis-Karmatians adhered to the principle of extreme revolution - “we will destroy the old (Sunni) world to the ground”, and then “we will build a new (non-Islamic) world” with common slavery at its foundation. According to the chosen path, the external attitude towards Islam also differed. Moderate Ismaili-Fatimids "masquerade as Muslims, outwardly comply with the rulings of the Sharia", refraining from hostile attitude towards Imami Shiites and Sunnis until the right moment. The extreme Ismailis-Karmatians are openly hostile to Muslims. Then the Qarmatians divided in turn into two camps. Some shared the point of view of the moderate Fatimid Ismailis and stood for an alliance with them, others were against it. Under these conditions, the new leader of the Karmatians was killed - a "non-Arab", a native of the Sasanian heritage of Persia, an impatient, militant hater of Muslims. Relations between the extreme Ismailis-Karmatians and the moderate Ismailis-Fatimids were aggressive, similar to the relations between the Trinity-Leninist revolutionaries and the bourgeois reformers of Russia since the peaceful February Revolution of 1917. Thus, in 972, the Qarmatians entered into battle with the Fatimids near Cairo, but were defeated .
The Karmadic state, founded in 899 in Bahrain, lasted until the end of the 11th century, but their doctrines continued to dominate Bahrain for more than two centuries. In Yemen, the Qarmatian movement quickly died out. And this is understandable - Yemen is a thriving trade center and its inhabitants do not need a military-administrative system. In Persia (Irene), the Qarmatians, not recognizing the imamate of Abdallah al-Mahdi, expected the coming of Muhammad ibn Ismail as Mahdi in 928. But the prediction did not come true and Abu Hatim al-Razi, who gave the prediction, was forced to flee, fearing the fury of his co-religionists, to Azerbaijan. The influence of the Karmats weakened. In southern Iraq in the 10th century, the Qarmatians were active on behalf of the hidden Mahdi, Muhammad ibn Ismail. But Karmatism did not last long in Iraq after the 10th century, splitting into two camps. Moderate Ismaili-Fatimids proved to be more stable. In Bahrain, where the Qarmatian state existed from 899 to 1077, today 70% Shiites and 30% Sunnis. But the ruling sphere is dominated by Sunnis.
Ismaili Fatimids
Ismailis loyal to the Syrian center in Salamiyya, calling themselves "Fatimids", named after the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, Fatima, opposed the Abbasids, wanting to establish a Fatimid state for Abdallah al-Mahdi. They did this without the consent of Abdallah al-Mahdi, declassifying it with their actions. Abdallah al-Mahdi was forced to leave Salamiyya in 902, going to Palestine, refusing to lead an armed uprising of the Fatimid Ismailis, who converted the Bedouins to Ismailism. The latter were defeated by the Abbasids in 903. Abdallah al-Mahdi hastily left for Egypt, and soon refused the throne (the Fatimid Caliphate was established in North Africa).
The formation of the Ismaili Fatimid Caliphate in 909 in North Africa crowned the success of the early Ismailis. The Fatimid period is referred to as the "golden age" of Ismailism. The religious and political call (dawa) of the Ismailis led to the founding of a state (dawla), headed by an Ismaimi imam.
The Fatimids, having taken power, did not stop the practice of religious and political conscription ( dava). Cairo, founded as the capital of the Fatimids, became the headquarters of a network of religious-political missionaries ( dai), acting among the entire Muslim ummah. All surviving groups of "extreme" Qarmatians living outside Bahrain also became devoted to the Fatimid Ismailis. The Qarmatians of Bahrain split in such a way that part of them aspired to the Fatimids, while the other part fiercely hated the Fatimids and entered into an open struggle with the Fatimids from 969 (when the Fatimids conquered Egypt, until an open battle in 972 near Cairo.
But the Ismailis-Fatimids were not homogeneous. The extreme wing of the Ismailis, advocating the immediate forcible elimination of God-revealed religions (Islam, Christianity), has raised its head in the very camp of the Fatimid Ismailis, in Egypt. Caliph al-Hakim, who ascended the throne at the age of 11 (996), was under the influence of these forces. Mosques and temples are closed. The confrontation between the two Ismaili currents is reflected in the variable policy of Caliph al-Hakim towards Muslims and Christians. When in 1017 an Ismailite arrived in Egypt from Bukhara, a “non-Arab” of Persian origin, ad-Darazi al-Hakim was 21 years old. Darazi began to preach his divine nature. Al-Hakim openly performs a mysterious cult, not hiding that he is in communion with Satan (shaitan). There was a threat of forcible transformation of Egypt into a non-Muslim Ismaili state. After the mysterious disappearance of al-Hakim (1021), a community emerged from the environment of the Fatimid Ismailis khakimits, or Druze who deified al-Hakim and expected his appearance. This is the extreme Ismaili direction.
Even more important in this regard was the split in 1094 by the Ismaili-Fatimids into Nizaris and Mustalites. The Nizari-Mustalite split in 1094 took place in the following way. Initially, following the Shia rule nass, Caliph al-Mustansir appointed his eldest son Abu Mansur Nizar (1045-1095) as his heir. However, vizier al-Afdal (Abu-l-Qasim Shahanshah) supported the candidacy of Nizar’s younger half-brother, Abu-l-Qasim Ahmad (1094-1101). Afdal, with the help of the “Armenian” part of the army, enthroned the youngest son of the caliph from another wife, Abu-l-Qasim Ahmad, with the Caliph title "Al-Mustali Billah", a day after the death of al-Mustansir.
The prehistory of this final act includes the following events. Mustasir ruled the Fatimid empire for almost 60 years. But gradually Egypt began to fall into chaos. Waves of unceasing crisis began to feverish him, the population suffered from lack of food and hunger. Lawlessness and anarchy reigned in the country. The Turkic guards under these conditions undertook an armed uprising. Then the “Armenian general” Badr al-Jamali in 1074 arrived from Fatimid Syria, which was part of the Fatimid Empire in the Middle East, and pacified the Turkic military with “Armenian troops”. Badr concentrated in his hands all political power - civil, judicial, religious and administrative, was the "commander of the army." The caliph had only to symbolize Islam in his person, being a nominal, but not a real caliph. This situation is reminiscent of those pages of Chinese history, when the agents of the Taoist "dad" determined the policy of the state on behalf of the emperor. This is a well-known principle in the history of many states.
Afdal inherited the power of his father, Badr, and became the all-powerful vizier and "commander of the army" in the Fatimid Caliphate. He married young Ahmad to his sister - a common trick for foreigners in a foreign country to marry rulers to their fellow tribesmen, relatives.
Nizar refused to put up with the palace coup, fled to Alexandria and raised an uprising, supported by military units, previously suppressed by the “Armenian army” of Badr. Soon Nizar was declared caliph and imam in Alexandria. But by the end of 1095, Nizar was forced to surrender to the army of Afdal. He was taken to Cairo and executed there.
These succession events showed that the Fatimid Ismailis were by no means monolithic, and for a long time split the Ismaili Fatimids into two warring camps of the Nizari ( Nizari) and mustalites ( mustali), revealing the religious and political confrontation inherent in Ismailism from the beginning of its existence.
Mustalites established themselves in Egypt, Yemen, Western India (Parsian and Jain). Cairo has since served as the headquarters of the world community of Ismaili-Mustalis.
In the east, where the Fatimids had lost their political influence, extreme Ismalism took hold. By 1094 (the death of Mustansir) the Ismailis of Persia, in the possession of the Seljuks, were headed by Hassan al-Sabbah. He did not hesitate to take the side of Nizar, severed ties with the Fatimid state and the headquarters in Cairo. The entire Ismaili community of Persia and Iraq supported Hassan in this decision. Therefore, they began to be called Nizari.
In Syria, by 1120, the growing community of Nizari equaled that of the Mustalites, and over time, the Nizari became predominant in Siberia. Ismailis Central Asia much later demonstrated their commitment to Nizari Ismailism, but it happened.
The history of the moderate Mustalites-Fatimids was moving towards sunset. The last of the Fatimid viziers. Sapadin, gave all his strength to prepare for the overthrow of the Fatimid dynasty and the suppression of Ismailism in Egypt. Formally, Saladin put an end to the rule of the Fatimids when, on September 10, 1171, he read in Cairo khutbah(sermon), mentioning the ruling Abbasid caliph, which symbolized the return of Egypt to Sunni Islam. A few days later, the 14th and last caliph-imam, al-Adid, died due to a transient illness. The Fatimid state ceased to exist, 262 years after its foundation. In 1174, Saladin proclaimed an independent Sunni dynasty, the Ayyubids, who ruled Egypt, Syria, Yemen and other areas of the Middle East for three centuries.
After al-Adid's death, the vast treasures of the Fatimids, including their extensive libraries, were sold off. The House of Wisdom (Dar al-ilm) was converted into a hospital. Ismailism in any form disappeared from Egypt forever. The religious center of the Mustalites moved from Egypt to Yemen for more than 500 years, where there was a community of Mustalites-Tayyibites-supporters of the supreme power of at-Tayyib, the son of the Fatimid caliph al-Amir (deceased in 1130). The Taibits had an independent organization headed by a supreme preacher. Their propaganda had fertile ground in Western India, and in early XVII V. The religious center of the Mustalites moved to Gujarat. Moreover, they were divided into Daudites (most of the Mustalites), who moved to India, and the Sulaimanites, who remained in Yemen. There are no dogmatic differences between them. Ibrahim ibn al-Husayn al-Hamidi of the Hamidi Banu Hamdan tribe has been the leader of the Tayyibites since 1151. (d. 1162) - introduced the "Schism" "Ikhwan as-Safa" into the religious literature of the Tayybis of Yemen. Widely using "Rakhat al-kal" al-Kirmani, he laid a specific Taiybi system of religious and philosophical thought ( hakaik). This system, first described in Ibrahim's major work The Treasure of the Child (Kanz al-walad), combined Kirmani's cosmological doctrine of ten separate minds with elements of Gnostic mythology. Neoplatonic cosmology introduced into Ismaili thought dai(preachers) from Persia (Iran), was finalized in the works dai Tayyib Mustalites of Yemen. The Tayybi community of Yemen managed to preserve a significant body of Ismaili literature from the Fatimid period. Over time, the overwhelming majority of Ismailis-Tayyibites began to move to India, spreading their religious and philosophical teachings there, and gained fame there as "bohra" (community in Bombay).
At present, Mustalite communities exist in a number of Asia and Africa: In India, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania. The residence of the spiritual head of the Ismailis-Mustalites (ad-dai al-mutlak) is located in the city of Surat (India).
The ethno-confessional position of the Ismaili Mustalites is characterized, it should be noted that, without crushing Islam totally, they showed ruthlessness towards their opponents. So, one muezzin in Kairun (Tunisia), who did not consciously utter a specific formula of the call to prayer, was executed. Night prayers, traditionally performed since the time of Caliph Umar in the month of Ramadan, were strictly prohibited in Fatimid Ifriqiya, and later in Egypt. The Fatimid rulers were forced to curse "the cave and those who are in it", insulting the memory of Abu Bakr and the elder Companions, who, according to legend, helped the Prophet when he received the first revelations. Both Maliki theologians, leaders of a Sunni center similar to the Fatimid Ismaili House of Wisdom in Cairo, were put to death without ceremony. As you can see, Egypt in history had to endure either from the side of the Hyksos, or from the side of the Ismailis.
In Egypt, where the Fatimid state of the Ismaili Shiites existed before 1171, the Sunni ruling regime is now in trouble due to the active activity of Islamic fundamentalists who seek to turn the country into a Muslim theocracy along the Iranian lines and who are supported by Iranian Shiite armed groups. In Egypt, 94% Sunnis and 4% Christian-Coptics, etc.
Religious and philosophical doctrine of the Ismailis
The secret religious and philosophical doctrine of the Karmatians is almost unknown. What we know about them only allows us to assert that they addressed the commoners, the destitute, the slaves used in the large possessions of southern Iraq.
Fatimism also sought to win over to its side the artisan common people of the cities. But at the same time, he acted in the form of a religious philosophy, thoroughly worked out and absolutely opposed to traditionalist Muslim concepts.
Even at an early stage, two aspects stood out in it: “external”, exoteric ( al-zahir), accessible to ordinary members of the community, and “internal”, esoteric (al-batin), accessible only to “initiates” (as-khassa; pl. al-khawass), who occupied the highest levels of the Ismaili hierarchy.
External teaching included ceremonial and legal regulations sharia obligatory for ordinary members of the community. This aspect of the Ismaili teaching differs little from that of the Imami.
The "inner", esoteric doctrine of the Ismailis contains two parts: at-tawil- allegorical interpretation of the Qur'an and Sharia and al-haqaik("truths"; singular h . al-haqiqa) - a system of philosophical and theological knowledge, the interpretation of "secret", "higher" truths. The inconsistency of information about the Ismaili doctrine is explained not only by eclecticism, a variety of sources and regional peculiarities, but also by the didactic principle of all esoteric doctrines, when opposing judgments are deliberately introduced into the text, making the meaning inaccessible to the uninitiated, but in no way complicating reading for those who are initiated (about wrote, for example, Maimonides).
Religious-philosophical system ( al-haqaik) Ismailis, which developed in the early Fatimid period, included the philosophy of Neoplatonism, the rationalist philosophy of Neoplatonism, the rationalist philosophy of Aristotle, Christian Gnosticism, occult mysticism, etc. Its main elements are the cosmogonic theory and the theory of the earthly world is an exact reflection of the mountain world - a reflection of the cosmic structure, order. These ideas were based on the mystical meanings of numbers and letters.
According to the cosmogonic theory of the Jemailite preacher ( dai) al-Nasafi (one of the first theories) god-absolute, devoid of any attributes, eternal will ( al-amr) singled out a creative substance from itself - the World Mind ( al-akl, or al-kull), possessing all the attributes of a deity.
The world mind produced by emanation the World Soul ( an-nafs, or nafs al-kull); which in turn produced seven moving "spheres". By transforming "spheres" the simple elements ( al-mufradat), or "nature" (moisture, dryness, heat, cold), formed complex, "composite" ( al-murakkabat) - earth, water, air and ether. As a result of subsequent transformations, plants with a vegetative soul arose, of which animals with a sensual soul, of which a man with a rational soul.
In other speculative constructions, the World Soul, or the Next ( at-tali) an emanation, imperfect in nature, in striving for perfection, produced primary matter ( al-khayula) - passive, devoid of creativity, creating only a "likeness" ( masal) "pre-image" ( mamsul, sura) that exists in the World Mind. Primary matter became the "initiator" ( al-mubdi) the creation of the world - produced planets, earth, living beings, man.
The reflection of the World mind in the sensible world is the Prophet, the Perfect Man ( an-natik). Reflection of the world Soul - interpreter of the meaning of Revelation ( as-samit, or al-asas).
A somewhat different cosmogonic theory was advanced by the head of the Ismaili propaganda in Iraq, al-Kirmani (d. 1021). Instead of Mind and Soul, he singled out ten Minds. The Third Mind is the second emanation of the First Mind and the first potential being and is equated with primary matter (al-khayula vas-s-sura). The tenth, active Mind is called the Creator of the physical world. Not recognized by the Fatimids, al-Kirmani's teachings were adopted by the Tayyib Ismailis in Yemen.
In the late Fatimid period, the process of the creation of the universe was generally depicted as follows. Allah arranged the highest, heavenly world through five spiritual powers ( al-hudud ar-ruhaniya; unit al-hadd - "limit"). From his light, he created an “eternal perfect prototype” (as-sura), calling it the World Mind and the Preceding (as-sabik) - this is the first spiritual force. From his light and Reason, he created the Next ( at-tali) is the second spiritual force, and created three more spiritual forces: al-jadd, al-fath and al-khayal. Al-jadd (the third spiritual power) is the word-command of Allah "Be!" (“Kun!”), with which Allah created the World Mind ( as-sabik) and Next ( at-tali) . Five spiritual forces correspond in the sphere of angels: to the World Mind - al-kalam(reed pen), Next - al-lauh(heavenly tablet) al-jadd- Archangel Israfil al-fath- Archangel Mirael al-khayal- Archangel Jabrail.
The five spiritual forces of the higher, divine world in the lower, earthly world, in the world of religion (alam ad-din) correspond to five bodily forces. As-sabika is an-natik(prophet). Next comes as-samit (al-asas, al-wasi)- interpreter, guardian of religious law, keeping the community from arbitrary interpretation of Revelation and falling into error. After al-imam- spiritual leader, head of the Muslim community. Al-hujja- high rank in the hierarchy dava Fatimids, who was in charge of his region ("island") Ad-dai.
The history of mankind is divided into cycles, or eras (advar, sg. daur). "The Great Cycle" (ad-daur al-azam) - from Adam to al-qaim (Rising on the Day of Judgment), the "hidden Imam", the eschatological Mahdi. The great cycle consists of seven "minor" cycles ( al-fitra) - prophetic cycles, cycles of prophetic messages. Each prophetic cycle, in turn, includes seven imams (al-mustaqirrun). The "Lord" (sahib) of each "small" cycle is considered an-natik(prophet) to whom Revelation was sent down. An-natik- the lord of religious law, repealing the old law and promulgating a new one. successor an-natika(prophet) in each cycle is as-samit, or as-asas - having the exclusive right to interpret ( sahib at-tawil) religious law and knowledge of prophetic secrets. The prophets (an-natiq) of the first six cycles are successively: Adam, Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Moussa (Moses), Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad, and their spiritual successors (al-asas, al-vasi) - respectively Shis (Sif), Sam, Ismail, Harun (Aaron), Shamun and Ali ibn Abi Talib.
Seventh imam in every prophetic cycle becomes an-natik(prophet) of the next cycle. So, in the cycle of the prophet (an-natiq) Muhammad Ali was al-asasom, and Muhammad ibn Ismail - the seventh imam. He will appear as al-qaim ("hidden imam") and become an-natiq (prophet) of the seventh prophetic cycle - "cycle of revelation" ( daur al-kashf). Its mission will be to abolish the "external" ( al-zahir) the religious law of Islam and in the full disclosure of the esoteric divine truth ( al-batin). He will rule the world until the Day of Judgment and participate in the Last Gray. Before the advent of al-Qaim, the "hidden" Imam, his plenipotentiary representatives on earth are 12 Supreme dai(al-khujja), heading respectively 12 regions ("islands").
Dogmatics
Ismaili dogmatics includes, at level 1, practical theology ( al-ibada) associated with Islamic religious duties ( faraid al-din), "pillars of religion" ( lasso ad-din), and at the 2nd level, theoretical theology - “the science of the sacred” (ilm al-batin). The core of the religious and political doctrine is the doctrine of the need for the existence of a divine imam from the descendants of Ali ibn Abi Talib. Obedience to the Divine Imam (al-wilaya) is the most important of the seven "foundations" ( yesim) religion.
The remaining six devices: at-tahara(ritual purity); as-salad(canonical five-time prayer); azzakat(tax on property and income); as-saum(fast); al-hajj(pilgrimage to Mecca); al-jihad(fight for faith).
But all these six foundations are on the first level, until the moment when, on the second level (al-batin), the initiate learns that the external rites of Islam do not matter.
The religious-philosophical system (haqiqa) of the Ismailis was not intended to be made public, but was to be gradually revealed to the initiates after a long and secret individual study. We will not find any hint of this, for example, in works on law compiled for the public, such as the treatise cadi al-Nauman, which differs from the Sunni writings on the same topic only in a few details and the introduction of the principle wilaya- belief in the exceptional rank of Ali and his successors. And if for the common people wilaya there is only worship of imams, then for the initiates it is faith in the cosmic hierarchy.
Nevertheless, several writings for the initiates have come down to us. The most famous and indicative among them is the "Encyclopedia", compiled in Iraq at the end of the 10th century. a group of sectarians who called themselves the "Brothers of Purity". This is a series of messages on a variety of topics. It is especially distinguished by its desire to “explain everything, rationalize everything, systematize everything” (I. Marquet), giving out a specific mentality. At the same time, the imamate is subject to cosmic laws on the basis of astrology. Spiritual life is understood as the purification of the soul, liberation from matter and return to the World Mind. The closeness of the Ismaili teaching is evident from the following statement-warning: “Anyone who does not accept the conditions of Reason, those that we have entrusted to him, or refuses them after he has accepted, we interfere with our friendship and renounce him; we do not turn to him, we do not have close relations with him, we did not tell him more about our sciences and we hide our secrets from him.
Correlating the human world (with a microcosm, the Ismailis taught that a person is like angels in soul, and “nature” in body ( at-tabia). After the death of a person, his soul returns to the angels from whom it originated, and his body to primary matter ( al-khayula wa-s-sura), or to "nature" ( at-tabia). According to al-Hamidi (d. 1162), the second chief preacher of the Ismaili-Tayyibites in Yemen, the souls of the believers, connecting with each other with points of light, pass from one spiritual force to another until they form a form al-qaima- "lords of the cycle of revelation" ( sahib daur al-kashf), culminating in the "great resurrection" ( al-qiyama). The souls of unbelievers remain in their bodies, turning into dust.
The Ismaili legal system is generally consistent with the Imami (Jafarist) al-fiqh. Differences exist in matters of inheritance, marriage (Ismailis do not recognize temporary marriage al-muta), as well as on some specific issues. The most authoritative exposition of the Ismaili legal system is the essay al-qadi al-Numan (d. 979) "Daaim al-Islam" ("Foundations of Islam").
In social terms, the Ismailis are noted by the spirit of corporatism, group unity. The Ismailis form closely knit groups and do not accept any of the uninitiated into them. This feature isolates them from the Sunnis and Imamis, the contradictions of practical egalitarianism, the broad communalism advocated by Islam.
The Ismailis (Fatimids, Karmats, Druses, Nizaris) are extreme in comparison with the Imamis in that characteristic respect that they deify the prophets and imams as the embodiment of the divine principle, while the Imamis stop at recognizing supernatural, mystical knowledge inherited from them. Such an extreme practical position of the Ismailis follows from their religious and philosophical teachings.
Nizari (Persian) Ismalism
In Ismailism, there was an internal contradiction between the two factions. The outward expression of the split was the events in Fatimid Egypt, when the eldest son of the Fatimid caliph Mustansir (1036-1094) Nizar, appointed by the caliph as his successor, was killed by adherents of another caliph's son Mustali. The Persian Ismailis, who supported the side of Nizar (Nizari), launched a "new call" ("ad-dawa al-jadayda") in opposition to the "old call" (" hell-dawa al-jadida”) as opposed to the “old call” (ad-dawa al-kadima”) Ismailis of the Fatimid period. The New Appeal (dawah) began to be conducted in Persian, as opposed to the Arabic language of the early Ismaili period. The New Appeal did not represent a new doctrine, being in essence a modification of the old Ismaili doctrine. Thus, the cause of the split was not ideological differences. The essence of the confrontation, therefore, consisted in an emphasized ethno-cultural confrontation with Muslims, which was expressed in a change in the language of the “call” (dawa).
Hasan al-Sabbah is considered the founder of the Ismaili Nizari organization. His father, a native of Kufa, settled in Qom, a traditional Shia city in Central Persia. The family later moved to the nearby city of Rey, another important center of Shia learning in Persia. From the middle of the 9th century, Ray became the center of the Ismaili dawa in Jibal. Here, at the age of 17, Hassan became acquainted with the Ismaili doctrine, accepted initiation and made a vow of allegiance (ahd) to the Ismaili "imam of the time" - al-Mustansir. In 1076, Hassan settled in the Fatimid capital of Cairo. Hassan spent about three years in Egypt. It is known that he came into conflict with the all-powerful Badr. Upon his return to Persia, Hasan traveled for 9 years on assignments dava. In the end, he decided to make his headquarters and military base the inaccessible mountain fortress of Alamut on a high cliff in the central part of the Alburz mountain range in the Dailam mountainous region. He developed a plan to capture Alamut. Soon in the fall of 1090, the fortress was in the hands of Hassan. Backed by Alamut, Hasan revolted against the rule of the Seljuk Turks, fierce champions of Sunni Islam who swore an oath to eradicate Ismalite rule in the hands of outsiders. But the Nizaris, using national feelings, sought to expel the Sunnis in their person and establish Ismaili rule in Persia, just as the Fatimids did in Egypt, but in an extreme, totally violent form.
Fighting the Sunni Turks, who under the Seljuks continued to arrive in ever new waves from Central Asia, Hasan opposes them to the Ismailis, who represent a highly organized revolutionary (revolutionary, not reformist) force. In accordance with the spirit of the world revolutionary movement, Ismailis address each other, calling the word "comrade" ("rafik"). Under the Seljuks, a clear division into estates and intra-class groups was established. There was no such division among the Ismailis. Anyone could reach a high position. All were "rafiks" ("comrades"). This is reminiscent of the principle of secret, esoteric unions, like Masonic ones. The revolutionary character of the Isamilits is seen not only in social, but also in greater economic equality than the Seljuks in the Ismaili territory, and in the organization of terrorist killings as a tool to achieve political and military goals. Terrorist killings usually took place in crowded places. How can one not recall the murder of Alexander ΙΙ by Narodnaya Volya in a crowded street, Stolypin - in the theater, etc.
The Sunni caliphs removed their ideological and political opponents differently from the Ismailists - representatives of the forces of adherents of the world revolution, they poisoned them, disguising them as sudden death.
The sentences handed down by the Ismailis were carried out feedai(or fedavi - in Syria). fidai at that time it meant “self-sacrifice.” The invariable readiness to sacrifice oneself was achieved by special training, developing unquestioning obedience. As well as the creed, the fidai firmly knew that his death after the committed murder opens the way to paradise for him. mothers fidaev - killers survivors of the terrorist attack, wept, regretting the missed opportunity for their sons to go to heaven.
Members of the Nizari terrorist order were called - assassins. There is an assumption that the fidais were stupefied with hashish and the name of the members of the order came from this. hashashin, or assassin in the European form of the word.
The executed Nizar had Nizar's son and grandson as heirs. But Hasan did not disclose the name of the heir. And the Nizari Ismailists were left without the "imam of time" available to them, who would represent the "gate" to Allah. Hassan al-Sabbah was recognized as a hujja. “Khuzhzha” among the Nizari Ismailists is the only representative of the hidden imam. Many Nizaris of the time of Hasan al-Sabbah were of the opinion that the son or grandson of Nizar was secretly taken from Egypt to Persia. It was through him that the male line of Nizari Ismaili Imams, who later appeared in Alamut, continued. But the Fatimid imam ridiculed the notion that a descendant of Nizar lived secretly in Persia.
Hasan al-Sabbah ordered the community to study sharia. During his reign, no one in the Alamut valley drank wine openly, and the playing of musical instruments was also prohibited. He executed his son for drinking wine. This suggests that the community has not yet matured to the second stage (Botin), when Sharia is declared meaningless.
Anticipating his death, Hasan al-Sabbah appointed Kiya Buzurg-Ummid as his successor in Alamut. In 1138 Buzurg-Ummid died in Alamut and was succeeded by his son Muhammad. The state of the Nizari, stretching from Syria to Eastern Persia, maintained cohesion. Being highly disciplined, the Nizaris unanimously submitted to the supreme leadership of Alamut. They passionately awaited the appearance of the imam, hidden since the death of Nizar in 1095, for his appearance was associated with a new, higher form of life.
But now it's time for a new stage. With the death of Muhammad ibn Buzurg-Ummid in 1162, the heir appointed by him, Hasan, took over the leadership in Alamut. Hasan was well versed in philosophy and Sufism. (An excellent illustration of the relationship between Ismailism and Sufism). In 1164, Hassan, the head of the Nizari Ismailis, a Sufi by conviction, addressed a message to the Nizari of Alamut on behalf of the hidden imam.
The Imam of the Time - announced Hasan - sent you his blessing: "He called you - his specially chosen servants, he freed you from the burden of Sharia and led to kiyama, Resurrection". Hasan was called not just a representative of the hidden imam (hujat), as his predecessors, but the heir of the hidden imam (caliph), the imam of time.
The Hidden Imam urged to accept any word of Hassan as his true word. The concept of "imam - time", i.e. imam acting at a given time is crucial. After all, any word of his has a divine origin and therefore is an indisputable truth. In this case, the word of Hassan announced that the time of the spiritual Resurrection had come, for the Islamic concept qiyam(The Day of Judgment, which determines who is heaven, who is hell) was interpreted by the Nizaris metaphorically, in a spiritual sense. Spiritual Resurrection consisted, as we see, in the transition from the external (zahir) to the internal (batin), from sharia To hakia- the highest truth, the Ismaili Gnostic system. The departure from Sharia was contrary to the outward religious behavior of the founder of the Nizari order, Hasan al-Sabbah, who observed Sharia. But this should not have embarrassed the Nizaris. After all, their main dogma was complete independence, sovereignty, imam of time. This dogma allows us to assert at the next stage of time what contradicts the statements of the previous stage. This feature, by the way, is generally inherent in sectarianism.
If, even after the announcement of qiyam, the surrounding Muslim population does not see a departure from Sharia among the Nizaris, then this does not mean anything. After all, another important dogma of the Ismailis is the principle takiya(takiya) - prudent concealment of one's faith behind external behavior. Hasan, the successor of Muhammad ibn Buzurg-Ummid, declared kiyama 17 Ramadan and declared this historic day a holiday kiyama. Since then, the 17th of Ramadan has been celebrated by all Nizari as a holiday.
In 1166, a year and a half after the proclamation kiyama, Hassan was killed under mysterious circumstances in the fortress of Lamasar. He was succeeded by his son Nur ad-Din Muhammad (1166 - 1210). It is understandable that he also gave a central place to the concept of sovereign imam of time and attached even greater importance to the imam acting at the moment. In the Qiyam era, people were divided into three categories.
TO first The category included “people of opposition” (ahl – and tadadd) - they included everyone who was outside the Nizari community, a kind of analogue to the concept of “goim” in the culture of the God-chosen ancient Jewish society. These people, who did not recognize the Nizari imam, did not seem to exist, i.e. have no meaning, there is no point in their existence. Hence the moral justification for terror.
second the category was made up of followers of the Nizari imam, “people of gradation” (akhl – and taratub), this is the elite of humanity. But still, these are still ordinary nizaris who have not fully comprehended batin .
Third category - "people of unity" (akhl - and vahdat). This is the top Nizari elite, it reaches full disclosure batin, absolute truth, the innermost meaning of the doctrine haqiqa. “People of unity” is a very narrow circle of people. Only they take complete eternal salvation in the form of paradise. Thus, at the highest level of the Ismailis, social isolation (closedness), cohesion, unity, solidarity are found - the characteristic features of the elect, the initiates.
Nizari in Syria
The history of the Syrian Nizari, who came into contact with the crusaders, or rather with their orders, shows all the same unity, solidarity (“comrades”) characteristic of the secret world revolutionary brotherhoods.
Back in 1105, Hasan al-Sabbah sent Persian missionaries from Alamut to northern Syria (to Aleppo). But since the announcement kiyama(in Syria qiyam was announced a little later than in Persia) for the Syrian Nizari began the most important stage in their history. It coincided with the beginning of the career of Rashid ad-Din Sinan. Sinan was born in 1126-1135 into an Imami family near Basra, where he converted to Nizari Ismailism. He then moved to Alamut. And here he became close friends with Hasan, the heir of Muhammad ibn Buzurg-Ummid. It was this Hassan, after taking office (in 1162), who soon sent Sinan to Syria, with the order to take over the leadership of the Syrian Nizari. Sinan fortified the Nizari fortresses, captured new ones and formed a corps feedai. Better known in Syria as feedavi. The Crusaders spread the legends of the Fidawi throughout the Middle East and Europe. The effect of this was no less than from the commission of terrorist attacks in public places. From this it is clear that not only the orders of the crusaders, but also the Syrian Nizari themselves tried to spread the legends. In the legends of the Crusaders, Sinan was named Elder of the Mountain. Later, Marco Polo and other authors began to call the owners of Alamut so.
Sinan began by establishing friendly relations with the crusaders. But these crusaders were the Templars and the Hospitallers. The Templars (the ancient name "Knights Templars" or "Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon") got their name from the place of their castle in Jerusalem - it was located on the site of the former Temple of Solomon destroyed by the Romans.
The Knights Templars defended the Christian states they created in Palestine from the Muslims. But the Ismaili Sinan began by establishing friendly relations with them. It is clear that the Templars defended Christianity from those Muslims who were enemies of the Ismailis, i.e. from traditional Islam - Sunnis. The traditionalist Sunni Saladin (Salah al-Din, 1138-1193) Sultan of Egypt, waged a successful holy war against the crusaders. He destroyed the Ismailis-Fatimids in Egypt and fiercely fought the Ismailis in Syria. Sinan twice sent groups of fidai to kill Saladin, but to no avail. Sinan's relations with the crusaders were not just friendly, he participated in their campaigns against the Muslims, of course, the Sunnis, whom he hated as fiercely as the crusaders, the Templars and the Hospitallers. Thus, the military Christian orders and the military Ismaili order performed one common task - the destruction of traditional (from Muhammad coming) Islam, nationally identical and organized by the state. You can even ask the question: What is the main goal of the Templars - the destruction of traditional Islam or the protection of Christianity? Let's look at the orders, both Christian and Ismaili, from the point of view of their attitude towards Christianity (their hatred of traditional Islam has already been mentioned). So what is the relationship between the Christianity of Rome and the Christian military orders in Palestine? It would seem that there could be no such question - whether the Christian kingdom of Palestine and the Patriarch of Jerusalem were protected from Saladin by the Templars and Hospitallers. But then why did the crusaders show amazing cruelty to the Christians of Jerusalem when they took Jerusalem in 1099 from the Muslims during the first crusade (1096-1099). Most of the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem were destroyed during the capture of the city by the crusaders. When traditional Islam, represented by Caliph Umar, captured Jerusalem (from Byzantium) in 638, there were no cruelties. The crusaders - the Templars - reacted with cruelty to the Christians of Constantinople, which they plundered in 1204 during the fourth crusade (1202-1204).
And why are strong frictions seen among the Templars with the King of Jerusalem and the Patriarch of Jerusalem? To a lesser extent, but there are also turmoil between the Hospitallers and the King and Patriarch of Jerusalem. Is such a relationship possible between the defender and the protected, if they are not only of the same blood, but are also filled with the same spirit? And here is the answer to the question. On the night of September 13, 1307 (after the failure of the crusades, when a significant part of the Templars settled in France), the Templars of France were arrested. King Philip IU of France accused them of heresy, denial of Christ, magic and idolatry, immorality, blasphemy, worship of the satanic "Baphomet". The Parliament of Paris and the university recognized the accusation as proven. The knights were burned at the stake in May 1310 (isn't it on May 1st, on Valkurgis Night?). It is probable that rumors of the unheard-of blasphemy of the Templars in their initiatory rites reached the Patriarch of Jerusalem earlier than the king in France. After all, it was not in vain that the knights of the orders had their own priests and churches outside the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem Patriarch.
On September 15, 1307, Dominican preachers and royal officials informed the Parisians about the discovery of a monstrous conspiracy of the Templars against the Catholic Church and faith, confirming the rumors that had long been circulating among the people about the unnatural acts of the Templars during the initiation. Indeed, it is strange that, unlike other monastic orders, the initiation of the Templars took place at dawn in deep secrecy, in a room to which outsiders were not allowed access. There were witnesses who testified that:
1) upon entering the order of a neophyte, the mentor retired with him behind the altar, where he forced him to renounce the savior three times and spit on the cross;
2) the neophyte was stripped naked, and the mentor kissed him three times on the back, on the navel and on the mouth, and according to another version - “in all eight holes”;
3) the neophyte was taught that Sodomy is a sin, worthy of praise;
4) a rope - a white woolen cord (John's belt) - which the Templars wore day and night - was not at all a symbol of chastity, this rope was magically consecrated by wrapping it around an idol that had the shape of a human head with a long beard, the revered leader of the order;
5) the priests of the order, when performing divine services, did not consecrate the holy gifts. (Lee G.Ch. History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. T. 2., p. 336)
The fact of sodomy is not denied even by the defenders of the Templars. But it is known that sodomy is an integral element of the ritual of Satanists. One of the medieval English documents also mentions a woman accepted into the ranks of the order as a "sister". But no explanation has been found in this regard. Perhaps this is due to the existence of the female branch of the order? There is absolutely no evidence in favor of this assumption. And what are these women - knights? But it is known that the naked body of a woman serves as an altar in the Black Mass. The “Devil” led a naked woman, radiant with beauty, to the center of the circle. Then he laid her on the sacrificial table, which immediately turned into a marriage bed. One of the engravings of the 17th century. captured a woman lying on a cold stone sacrificial table, over which a clergyman leaned over, sprinkling the blood of a slaughtered baby on her naked body. This is the famous Abbé Guibourg. Gibur three times filled the witch's cup with blood, which, according to the ritual of black magic, he placed between the legs of his mistress. With the blood collected in the bowl, he moistened the wafers and communed them, blasphemously parodying the Catholic Mass. They say skeptically: “Who hasn’t been accused of Satanism? Cathars, Manichaeans, Templars…” But neither traditional Christianity nor traditional Islam was ever blamed.
Pope Clement V approved the actions of the French Inquisition. In October 1311, the XV Ecumenical Council met in Vienne near Lyon, which was attended by 300 bishops from France, Italy, Hungary, England, Ireland, Scotland and other Catholic countries. The council agreed with Clement V and forbade the further activities of the order. The property of the order was transferred to the Order of the Hospitallers. Many Templars died at the stake. On March 18, 1314, it was finally possible to condemn to death and burn grand master Geoffrey de Charne, two other leaders of the Templars went to the casemates of the Inquisition until the end of their days. And then the handwriting of the brothers Templars and Assassins affected. Clement V died of lupus a month later (April 20) after the execution of Mole and Charnay, and on November 29 of the same year, Philip the Handsome died while hunting. But the public execution, favored by the terrorist assassins, acquired a socially organized form with the Freemasons, and in the revolution of 1789, the representative of the French royal house, which treated the Templars so "unkindly", Louis XVI was imprisoned in the Temple, where the leadership of the Templars in France was once located. From there he was taken to the guillotine, so that any conscious political leader would be obedient for the sake of fear of the Templars.
The Knights Templar was re-established in France in 1808. It continues to exist in the form, however, not of knights - monks, but of an aristocratic club to this day. The Freemasons claimed that they had a connection with the Templars, and that there was a society called the "Templars", whose main seat was in Paris and whose branches were spread in England and other countries. They say that Molay appointed a successor before his death, and that from that time to the present there has been an unbroken line of Grand Masters, a list of which is kept by the Knights Templar in Paris. But the main thing is not these words of the Freemasons, but the idea that the line of European "brothers", comrades of the Ismailis, did not die, continued in history, just like the Ismailis themselves.
Hospitallers (Joannites) after the fall of Jerusalem (1187) from 1191 concentrated in the fortress of Acre (Akha). In 1291, they lose their last castles in Palestine, move to Cyprus, from there to Rados (hence their new name - the Rhodes knights). In 1522, Suleiman the Magnificent expels them from Rhodes to Crete. From Crete they move to Messina, then to Bayle and Viterbo. Finally, the order was received from Charles V in 1530 by the island of Malta. Now they - Order of Malta. And now the Inquisition interferes in the internal affairs of the order. In the future, the Order of Malta becomes known as a Masonic organization. This is the path from the Templars and Hospitallers to Freemasonry. In the meantime, 20 thousand Templars and the Order of Hospitallers, also numerous, founded their "Christian" states in Palestine, relying on a network of fortresses, like the Nizari Ismailis. Part of the fortresses were ceded to the Templars by the “comrades” of the Nizari, part they captured themselves or with the help of the Nizari.
If these Christian states of knightly orders had risen and spread, then the position of the Jerusalem flock of the patriarch and himself would not have been better, but worse than under the auspices of the crescent of traditional Islam, which seriously hated both the Nizari Ismailis and the Templars, not distinguishing them in essence from the Ismailis.
The attitude of the Ismailis towards the Christians of the Jerusalem Patriarch was as hateful as the Templars and Hospitallers towards traditional Islam. "Comrades" Nizari willingly entered into an alliance with the Templars against traditional Islam. But they were just as willing, if not more willing, to enter into an alliance with traditional Islam (their bitter enemy) against the traditional Christians of the Jerusalem Patriarch when the opportunity arose.
The Order of the Hospitallers and the Knights Templar did not like each other and waged a constant, sometimes bloody struggle among themselves. This corresponds to the division of the Ismailis into moderate (Fatimid) and extreme (Nizari and Karmat). It is known that the Templars secretly communicated with the Nizari Ismailis ("Assassins") who dominated Iran and Syria. But in Syria there were to some extent the Fatimid Ismailis-Mustalites, and in Egypt and the Western countries of Islam, the Mustalites dominated.
The Mustalites and the Nizari were at enmity with each other, the Templars and the Hospitallers were at odds with each other. Consequently, the Hospitallers were probably related to the Mustalites and had secret relations with them. But the Nizari assassins paid tribute to the Order of the Hospitallers: one thousand two hundred dinars and one hundred mudds of wheat and barley per year. All this four had Mohammed and Christ as their enemy.
The Templars and Hospitallers, who gave birth to the future Freemasonry, performed one task - the crushing of traditional Islam and traditional Christianity. The Ismailis fought openly against both, and the dedicated knights of Christian orders, destroying traditional Islam with weapons, prepared the overthrow of traditional Christianity from within. The Ismailis were just as much "Ismailists" as were the European Hospitallers and "Christian" Templars. The Nizari Ismaili Order and the European Knights Templar represented the historically developing force of the world revolution, which had to break the national-state division of the world by armed means, and to do this, destroy the traditional world religions - Christianity and Islam. It is possible that the demolition of national-state borders and even their very idea has an exclusively religious goal - the destruction of traditional Christianity. The term "traditional", strictly speaking, is redundant - there is no other Islam and no other Christianity. As you can see, the Templars are, in essence, anti-Christianity, that is, an ardent enemy of Islam. The first are Europeans who are Christian in appearance, the second are Muslims who are Islamic in appearance. They are brothers, "comrades", ( rafiki) not only in terms of goals, but also in terms of method- takiya(Islamic term) is the main principle of both; as well as armed violence.
Already in those centuries, the European brother, "comrade" acted as an older brother, an older comrade in relation to his historical Ismaili colleague. The Nizari, for example, could kill anyone but the Templars. They could kill Sunnis, Shia Imamis, and even their colleagues Ismaili Fatimids, who also practiced, even before the Nizari, terrorist killings. Thus, the Nizari killed the Fatimid Caliph and the Mustalite Imam Amr ibn Mustali (killed in Egypt in 1129). Assassination attempts did not threaten only the Templars. But, if necessary, the Nizari Ismailis took refuge in the castles of the Templars from traditional Islam, which was at war with both them and the crusaders.
The growing world-forming force was formed according to the federal principle. Thus, the internal organization of the Order of the Hospitallers was divided into 8 nationes, including France, Italy, England, Germany, Spain. "Nations" were divided into great priories and bagliati. The Muslim East was not included in the structure of the "Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon" (Templars) and the Hospitallers. The idea of uniting Christians (on the basis of anti-Christianity), Jews (on the basis of the anti-Mosaic religion) and Islam (on the basis of anti-Islam) was only gaining strength and the Ismaili (anti-Islamic) eastern direction was not organizationally integrated yet. But the secret relations of the spiritual knightly order of the Templars with their fellow Ismailis, the Nizari, had a systematic character. They took an active part, for example, the English king Richard the Lionheart, being in the Holy Land.
In the second half of the XIII century. The Mamluk Sunnis, who replaced Saladin in Egypt, ousted the crusaders from Syria and Palestine, and in their absence successfully destroyed Imaili Assassins. In the summer of 1273, the army of the Mamluk Sultan Baibars took the last fortified point of the Syrian Assassins.
Timeline of the Crusades
1st Crusade (1096-1099). The capture of Jerusalem, in which most of the Christian population of the city died. The mass destruction of the inhabitants of such cruelty Christians have not seen from the Sunnis. 2nd Crusade (1146-1148). Failure of the siege of Damascus. 3rd Crusade (1189-1192). Capture of Acre. Failure to capture Jerusalem. 4th Crusade (1202-1204). Capture of Constantinople. 5th Crusade (1217-1221). Egypt is attacked. Crusades of Saint Louis (1248-1254 and 1270). His captivity in Egypt and his death near Tunisia.
The invasion of the Mongols and the death of the Nizarites
At the beginning of the XIII century. in Central Asia, Iran and Transcaucasia, the troops of the Mongols conquerors under the command of Genghis Khan appeared. At this time, there was a struggle among the Ismaili rulers. The head of the Ismailis, Ala-ad-din, an enemy of the Mongols, was killed. The conspiracy against him was led by his son Rukn-ad-din Khurshah.
In 1256, the Mongol troops of Khan Khulagu laid siege to a number of Ismaili castles. Hulagu demanded complete surrender and the destruction of all Ismaili fortresses. After a short siege of the fortress Meimundiz Khurshah left it and surrendered to Hulagu Khan. Having then taken the fortress of Alamut (12/15/1256), the khan went upstairs to inspect Alamut and was amazed at the greatness of this mountain. On January 28, 1257, Khulagu Khan gave Khurshah a label and payza and sent him to Karakorum to the Great Mongol Khan. But he, having learned that Khurshah was coming, said: “Why are they taking him and tiring the Ulag in vain?” - and sent messengers to be killed on the way.
The reign of the Ismailis lasted 171 years from 1085. until 11/20/1256
Nizari Ismaili rulers of Alamut (1090-1256):
- Hasan as-Sabah (1090-1124)
- Kaya Buzurg-Ummid (1124-1138)
- Muhammad ibn Buzurg-Ummid (1138-1162)
- Hasan, son of Muhammad, son of Buzurg-Ummid (1162-1166)
- Nur ad-din Muhammad (1166-1210)
- Jalal ad-din Hasan, son of Muhammad (1210-1221)
- Ala ad-din Muhammad, son of Hassan, son of Muhammad (1221-1255)
- Rukn ad-din Khurshah, son of Ala ad-din Muhammad (1255-1256), on which the power of the Ismamlites was stopped.
For almost 200 years, the whole of Asia Minor trembled before this terrible force, which sent deadly blows from impregnable and hidden places, from which there was no escape, and which struck high-ranking people more often than everyone else.
Under the onslaught of Hulagu Khan, the Nizari began to move to India, in which, over time, their chief was formed.
The descendants of the Nizari Ismailis still live in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Oman and Zanzibar. But in India they retained their former power, including economic power, and form a sect hoja(or aganichites). Interestingly, Freemasonry followed on the heels of the Ismailists. Masonic lodges are based in Constantinople, Smyrna, Aleppo, Cairo, Morocco, etc. But the most significant Masonic lodges in Asia are in India, under the control of the Grand Lodges of England and Scotland.
Modern development of the Nizari community
The beginning of the modern period in the history of the Nizari Ismailis corresponds with the settlement of the 46th Imam Aga Khan I in Bombay in 1848. In 1841, his troops were defeated in a major battle near Kerman, the imam was forced to flee to neighboring Afghanistan - this event marked the end of the Persian period Nizari Ismaili Imamat, which lasted about seven centuries, starting from the era of Alamut. In 1842, Aga Khan I moved to Sindh (a province in West Pakistan). In 1844 he left Sindh and, after a year's stay with his supporters in Kativara (Gujarat), arrived in 1846 in Bombay. Then - a short stay in Calcutta and in 1848 Aga Khan I settled permanently in Bombay.
The named places of residence of the Aga Khanta I (Gujarat, Calcutta, Bombay) are places of settlement of the Ismailis. It is believed that the Assassins, who migrated to India, became servants of the goddess Kali, the "Black Mother", and founded a caste of hereditary killers known as the Thagas (on Hindi- deceivers, murderers) or fansigars (stranglers). Indeed, in the customs of the thugs there are both Hindu and Muslim features. According to traditional Nizari Khoja reports, the first Nizari missionary was Satur Nur, who was sent from Daylam to Gujarat. The dates of the missionary's arrival in Gujarat vary. But if we accept the version - from the time of the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustansir, then there will be a coincidence with the time of the appearance of the thugs, known in Hinduism. In any case, how can you separate the Assassins from the Thugs in India? Yes, and the Mustalites, being Ismailis, used terrorist killings for political purposes.
In 1866, part of the Aga Khan I community refused to recognize the Ismaili identity of their community. But the court supported Aga Khan I and gave a legal definition of the community as "Shia-Imamit Ismailism" - a very incomprehensible, but still Ismailism. Historically, the Templar-Assassin roots bore fruit in the 19th century. - Judgment won.
In 1905, Aga Khan III again won the court. This time, the court made a clear distinction between the community and the Imami (Twelver) Shiites. From now on, there is no need to disguise either as Sunnis or as Twelver Shiites. Need for practice takiya dropped. Ismailism is fully rehabilitated and restored as a religious doctrine. If previously used takiya, cover by the Imamis (under the guise of Imamis), now there has been a dissociation from the Imamis.
Simultaneously with the struggle for legal recognition of the Ismaili identity, the Aga Khan III worked energetically to transform his community. On the one hand, he raised the level of education of the Ismailis, the emancipation of women, and sought to instill religious tolerance in the Ismailis. And on the other hand, he emphasized the esoteric significance of the rituals, so that there was a further dissociation of the Ismailis from the Shiites of the Twelvers. And this process of legal restoration of smileism took place not only in India, but especially in Persia, and also in Syria.
In 1887 The Nizari-Ismaili majority of Syria expressed allegiance to Imam Aga Khan III, representing the Qasimshahi branch. At present, these Nizaris, numbering 80,000, live in Salamiyya, restored with the permission of the Ottoman authorities in 1840, and in the villages around it. Another 15,000 Syrian Nizari are concentrated in Masyaf and Kadmus. They remained faithful to the branch of the Muhammadshahi and are still waiting for the appearance of their hidden Imam. Locally, this community is called Jafariyya. What will the hidden imam call to them when he appears in the future? And what does the real imam of the time teach them?
Aga Khan III, in order to take control of the Persian community, appointed them muallim, or teacher, Fidai Khorosani, the most highly educated (it is clear that, first of all, in a religious and philosophical sense) Persian Ismailite. During 1896-1906. Fidai Khorosani came to Bombay three times to see the Aga Khan III. He explained to the Persians the Ismailis their heritage, asked them to separate from the ruling Twelver Shiites. By the time of Fedai Khorosani's death in 1923, Aga Khan III had finally established his authority over the Persian Ismaili community. He extended his policy to her, especially in the field of education. In Khorosan, where a significant part of the Persian community is currently concentrated, the program "School in every Ismaili village" was implemented. There are currently about 30,000 Nizari Ismailis living in Persia, about half of them in the province of Khorasan.
Aga Khan III pursues a policy of introducing education - "a school in every Ismaili village" - and at the same time developing the number of these villages, persuading the Ismailis to separate from the Twelver Shiites and from the Sunnis with whom they have assimilated for many years, hiding behind their guise, according to the principle of taqiyyah, in order to escape from repression and religious persecution. The Aga Khan recreated the world of Ismailism, raised from the ruins into which Sunnism turned it, first of all, the Imami Shiites (twelvers). And he created not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. Schools in every Ismaili village are primarily aimed at education in the spirit of the Ismaili religious doctrine, esoteric in nature, for which they were persecuted by the Sunnis (and not just for political assassinations). In this regard, it is noteworthy that the modern Nizari Ismailis do not conduct proselytizing activities. Organization dava does not exist. "Teachers" ("muallim") and "preachers" ("waiz") provide religious education in closed schools (only for Ismailis) and by preaching on special occasions. To appreciate the enormous significance of the development of the Ismaili education system, it is best to resort to the following visual analogy. In tsarist Russia, the "World Jewish Union", operating under the name "Societies for the Propagation of Education among Jews in Russia", successfully planted Jewish schools. The Jewish magazine of the city of Kovny wrote: “Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists and Mohammedans do not have their own primary schools, and everyone is obliged to send their children to state schools and begin teaching with the Russian alphabet. Only the Jews, with the innate ability of them in a roundabout way, managed to defend what still remained Jewish cheders (schools), with their Old Testament melameds, which fantasize Jewish children in the old way from uncensored books.
For a non-believer, as you know, Jewish institutions in tsarist Russia were inaccessible to information, "dark". It would be a mistake to judge the activities of these institutions only by their statutes, by the official reports that are delivered to the local institutions of the state. There was almost always smuggling hidden here. This phenomenon was a natural fruit of the religious and historical life of the Jews, starting from the time of their return from Babylon. Since that time, the Jews have always kept “Megilot setorim” (secret sviks) next to the Pentateuch scroll, into which the eye of a non-believer could look. Obviously, the same is the case with "a school in every Ismaili village", where even proselytes have no access. The Aga Khan IV himself, who took the place of Imam after the Aga Khan III (who died in his villa near Geneva in 1957), was educated at Le Rose, a closed school in Switzerland, and only then at Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1959 year with a degree in Muslim history.
Next to the reports, books on Sharia, with which the Ismailis deliver official information about themselves to Sunnis, Imami or other authorities, there are other books that are afraid of prying eyes, but represent the religious meaning and life of the Ismailis in their natural form. Ambiguity is a typical feature not only of the Jewish institutions of Tsarist Russia, but also of Ismailism, which historically grew up on the principle of ambiguity. takiya: from the outer, explicit, side ( zahir) represents the Shariah, and with the internal, implicit ( batina) - esoterics ( haqiqa). Such, by the way, are all destructive sects.
Aga Khan III paved the way for religious education in the community's Ismaili schools. His grandson Aga Khan IV focused the main attention of the imamate on the development of a system of religious education and upbringing. The Ismaili Religious Education Authority distributes to the communities school programs designed for Ismaili students around the world. Aga Khan IV extended religious education to higher educational institutions. He directs young Ismailis to master special education, to master science, thereby preparing Ismaili personnel in the most important areas of society.
In 1988, the Aga Khan Trust Fund for Culture was established in Geneva. He attaches great importance to Muslim architecture as a specific created environment . The influence of the environment on the formation of personality psychology has long been well known. In particular, scientists have established the essential importance of the architectural style surrounding a person. As one would expect, the buildings of Cairo and Zanzibar, historical sites of the Ismailis, are taken as an architectural model. From the beginning of the 90s of the XX century. there is a program for their conservation and restoration.
The Aga Khan IV is personally involved in the management of all his institutions, coordinating and directing them through his Secretariat in Aglamont, near Paris. As we can see, in our time, a systemic formation of the esoteric religious direction of Muslims with a focal point in Europe is unfolding. In 1986, Aga Khan IV circulated a universal document called the "Constitution of Shia Muslims, Imani Ismailis." It affirms the fundamental foundations of Islam, and then, in the preamble of the 1986 ruling, it is emphasized that talim- teaching Ismailism - necessary for the spiritual enlightenment of the community. The constitution managed to remove from the fundamental foundations of Islam Sunism. The declared alliance with the Shiite Imamis is beneficial for the Aga Khan IV with the "Secretariat near Paris", because it excludes Sunnism. But thanks to universal learning ( talim) in Ismaili schools this union is fictitious. The Shia Imamis are by no means fit for the current political goal of being against the Sunnis, but their existence makes absolutely no sense from an Ismaili point of view. haqiqa.
If you remove takiya and directly say that shaliat in Ismailism exists as an external (zahir), as something temporary, situationally determined, in contrast to its esoteric inner being ( batin), then he, while remaining ethnically Muslim, appears as having nothing to do with Islam. It is pseudo-Islamism, or post-Islamism.
Most of the Ismailis of Afghanistan and Central Asia are the Gizaris of the mountainous region. Badakhshan. The Ismailis, who lived in the center of the Pamir, Hindu Kush and Kara-Kum ranges, did not want outsiders to penetrate. They were autonomously led by local caliph. Many Nizari Ismaili books have been secretly preserved in many private collections in Badakhshan. The language of religion in Badakhshan is Persian (Tajik), which is spoken in Central Asia. Most of Bodakhshan ended up in the Soviet Union as the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (1925), which later became part of the Tajikistan SSR. After the collapse of the USSR, it enters the sovereign republic of Tajikistan. In the current years, the leadership of the world system of Ismailism pays great attention Ismailis of Badakhshan in Tajikistan, who number about 200 thousand people in their ranks. The Aga Khan IV provided humanitarian assistance to Tajik Badakhshan through the Save the Pamirs program and the Development Program. So in 1995 Badakhshan Ismailis, who were severely persecuted under the Soviet regime, got the opportunity to see their imam. Tens of thousands of them gathered in Shugnan, Ruschan and other regions of the Gorno-Badakhshan region of the Republic of Tajikistan to swear allegiance to their imam.
In modern Northern Pakistan, there are small Ismaili communities in areas such as Chitral and Gilgit. Hunza is home to the largest Ismaili Nizari community in Northern Pakistan, about 50 thousand people. They call themselves "Mavlai", because, referring to the imam, whose followers they were, calling him "Mavla". The Nizaris of Hunza are in possession of Ismaili texts received from fellow believers in Badakhshan, with whom they share similar religious rituals.
Small Nizari communities exist in Yarkend and Kagar (in the Xinjiang province of China). The Turkic-speaking Ismailis of China could not communicate with the outside world due to the Chinese communist system, so there is no information about their history.
In the 70s of the XX century. began a significant emigration of Ismailis from East Africa and the Indian subcontinent to the West. They left a certain part of the Muslim emigrants in the West. Aga Khan IV maintains a well-defined system of community administration in Europe, the USA, Canada, etc.
In conclusion, it should be said about Ismailism that it differs from Shiite Islam, extreme and moderate Shiites (“Gulat”, “Zaydis”, “Imanites”), because Sharia in Ismailism is only the first stage, temporary, unnecessary with the onset of the second main one, true stage ( batina). As al-Baghdadi emphasized, the Ismailis are not Islam.
Ismailism is connected with Islam by the assertion that only a person from the Alids, breakdowns of Ali and Fatima, can be an imam. But this statement is unfounded, given the actual genealogy of the historically existing Imams and Ismailis. The Ismailis simply and reliably adjusted themselves by this point to the Shiites, some aspects of whose worldview are suitable for the ideologists of Ismailism.
Currently, there is a unified system of Ismailism with branches in 14 regions of the world where Ismailis are concentrated, including India, Pakistan, Syria, Kenya, Tanzania, etc., as well as France, Portugal, and the USA. Nizarites are found in more than 20 countries in Asia and Africa.
The system does not yet fully cover Persian-speaking jamaat(communities) of Persia, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. In these communities, leadership is exercised through special committees.
So, the world system of Ismailism is functioning. As before, it has two wings (moderate and extreme), in accordance with the historical division into Mustalites and Nizari, whose economic soil is in India, where they are called respectively. Bohra and Khoja. Nizari Ismalium is developing intensively.
The anti-Christian character of the Nizaris can be inferred from their attitude towards other sects, for example, Nusayris (Alawites) and Khurramites.
The Nusayrites (Northern Syria) are Shiites, and the extreme ones deify the imam. Therefore, they have an emanational doctrine, close to Islamism. Nevertheless, unquenchable hostility reigns between them and the Nizaris to this day. Unlike the Nizari Ismailis, the Nusayri creed includes elements of Gnostic Christianity. Nusayris revere Isa, Christian apostles, some saints and martyrs, celebrate Christian holidays (Christmas, Easter, etc.). The Nusayris, although they reject many of the precepts of Islam, do not reject Islam as such. Wine is consumed only in ritual, food prohibitions are observed (pork, hare, eel). Nizari are bright enemies of Christianity and Islam. But the Khurramites (Azerbaijan, Central Iraq) Hasan al-Sabbah easily attracted into the ranks of the Nizari, because the Khurramites adopted the beliefs of the early Mazdakites, and Mazdakism relied on the worst enemy of Christianity - Manichaeism, with its dualism of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, as well as Ismailis - Nizari, the Khurramites preached using the idea of egalitarian social and economic equality. This idea is a sure sign of an anti-Christian orientation, a causative agent of revolts, which was typical of the Mazdaks.
Modern meaning the term "fidai"
Fidai (Arabic), fedai, fadai (Persian) is a term in the countries of the Near and Middle East, which is used to call representatives of the revolution, fighting with weapons in their hands and ready to give their lives for an idea. In the Middle Ages, it was the Assassins. In modern times - participants in the revolution in 1907-1911. in Iran. After World War II, members of the Fedayane Islam terrorist organization in Iran, founded in the mid-1940s, opposed imperialism and assassinated political and public figures. After an attempt to assassinate the Shah in 1949, Fedayane Islam was disbanded. In 1971, the "Organization of Fedai Partisans of the Iranian People" (OPFIN) was created, whose members played a decisive role in the victory of the February Revolution in Tehran in 1979, which overthrew the Shah's monarchical regime with weapons. February seems to be the month associated with the overthrow of monarchs. Marxism-Leninism was declared the ideological platform of the fedais of the OPFIN. Therefore, in the future, Islam had to part with it. Nine OPFIN calls itself the “Organization of the Fedai of the Iranian people (majority) (in 1980, the left-wing extremist “minority” broke away from it), since 1983 it has been in an illegal position.
Currently, there are various organizations feedai in Lebanon and Iran.
Currently the term feedai is used primarily to refer to Palestinian guerrillas (see I slam: encyclopedic dictionary.- M., 1991. - With. 254).
In historical terms feedai associated with those who, sacrificing their lives, fight for the ideas characteristic of the forces of the world revolution (the overthrow of monarchism, national-state religions, imperialism). The militants who terrorized the tsarist Rolsia are, figuratively speaking, fidai. “fidai” is different from “shahid”, for example, when modern Shiite Iran fought with the pro-Sunite government of Iraq, Iranian Shiites who died for their faith (shahida, shhidat) were called martyr not fidai. Moreover, the Iranian authorities accompanied the notifications of the relatives of the victims with congratulations. According to the modern definition, a “shahid” is one who sincerely converted to Islam and, participating in jihad, accepts death for faith (shahida, shahidat).
Druze
The Druze doctrine appeared in Egypt under the Fatimids, namely under the caliph al-Hakim (Gakem). This was the sixth Egyptian caliph, he ruled from 996 to 1021. He was not a Muslim by blood: his father was the Fatimid caliph Aziz (975-996), but his mother (the main wife of the caliph) was not a Muslim. Therefore, the appearance of Hakim (Gakem) was unusual for the Egyptians - a blue-eyed blond. Hakim (Gakem) and his closest advisers organized pogroms of churches, imposed a ban on public Christian holidays, graves in Christian cemeteries were desecrated - a phenomenon unusual for Muslim rule.
The non-Muslim form of government of Hakim Gakem) immediately manifested itself also in the prohibition of fasting, prayer, pilgrimage to Mecca and a number of other restrictions for Muslims, as well as in allowing the trade in wine. All this is similar to the Egyptian story under Pharaoh Akhenaten, who banned the national Egyptian cult, closed the Egyptian temples and established the cult of some impersonal, impersonal pantheistic deity, Aten. Hakim (Gakem) professed some kind of occult-mystical religion. At night, he went to the desert slope of Mukattam. Studied astrology. In recent years, he let his hair go, did not cut his nails. Religious and mystical reform, in ancient time Akhenaten, and now Gakema-Hakim are mysteriously connected with foreign women. Akhenaten has a wife of Nefertiti from the Middle East, and Gakem has a non-Muslim mother. But in both cases the priests stood in the way of reform. Akhenaten soon died, the cult of the Aten was exterminated along with his adherents. So is Gakem - he disappeared under mysterious circumstances. His mysterious religion never gained ground in Egypt. Approximate Hakim (Gakem) - Darazi and Gamzeh (Hamza), vizier and mystic, are associated with the founding of the Druze sect among the highlanders of Lebanon. This is associated with the Nizari Ismailis, who liked to build their fortresses in hard-to-reach mountains. The Druze practically did not affect the coastal plains and the central part of Lebanon. At the beginning of the XVIII century. part of the Druze moved to Western Syria.
The Druze doctrine is identical to Ismailism. The main dogma of Druism is the recognition of a single god, impersonal, qualityless. This god is characterized by a historical series of epiphanies - a sequence of his incarnations in historical figures. The last and most perfect incarnation of God was Caliph Hakim (Gakim), who should be revered as a living god. The Syrian and Lebanese highlanders recognized Hakim as a god-man, a messiah-savior. They deny the death of Hakim and believe in him as a "hidden imam" ghaiba, mahdi. Druze dogmas are set forth in the "Messages of Wisdom" ("Rasa'il al-hikma"), which includes letters from Caliph al-Hakim and the first preachers of Druzism. The development of Druze doctrine based on Imailism was started by Hamza ibn Ali (died after 1042), one of the main inspirers of the deification of Hakim. He completed the development of the doctrine mainly Jamal ad-din Abdallah at-Tanukhi (1417-1479).
At the center of the Druze cosmogony are, like the Ismailis, five "higher cosmic principles", i.e. emanations involved in the creation of the material world: ("Single", "World Mind", "Soul", "Word").
According to this Druze theory, historical cycles are predetermined. Sunnism and Shiism (i.e. traditional Islam) are preparatory cycles, they only prepared the ground for the true tawhid(principles of monotheism) - " haqiqa", as stated in Ismaili Gnostic thought. The beginning of the "new era", which left behind and made unnecessary traditional Sunnism and Shiism ( sharia- in the terminology of Ismailism), began with the announcement of Hakim as the bodily incarnation of God.
From now on, Muslim rites, like Christian ones, become unnecessary. That is why Hakim destroys and closes mosques and temples. Allegorically interpreting the Qur'an, the Qur'anic order to fast is understood by the Druze as a prohibition to profess all pre-existing religions. Hajj becomes meaningless with the advent of the "new era". The Druzes do not commit it and believe that the god-Hakim will destroy Mecca and Medina at his second coming. The Ismailis-Karmatians did this by attacking Mecca. The Druses and Karmatians in relation to Islam and Christianity are concrete historical forms of extreme Ismailism, the Karmatians being an earlier form. Druze reject Muslim food prohibitions. They don't perform circumcision. Muslim polygamy among the Druze is prohibited, monogamy is prescribed.
Like all Ismailis, a characteristic feature of the Druze is the belief in the transmigration of souls. The soul is immortal, and the souls of the dead Druzes move into the bodies of the born Druzes. The death of any druze exactly coincides in time with the appearance of a new baby. The soul of a dead Drusus immediately inhabits the body of an infant-Druze that appears in the mother's womb. The number of chosen souls is constant, so the admission of new members to the community has been prohibited since the middle of the 11th century. It turns out a community that is ideally closed, like the Jews, completely impenetrable to the eyes of the outside. Hence - absolute endogamy, similar to the biblical tradition of the ancient Jews. Given the size of actual Druze communities, the incestuous trend is inevitable. But unlike the differentiating totem-clan system, which makes it possible to avoid incestuous marriages in limited communities, here, in the mystical-occult community, on the contrary, incestuous marriages are as indispensable as in the mythological community of gods. Ortho-cousin marriages are preferred. The modern esoteric tradition of the West directly states in its writings that in these marriages, in the community of initiates, an elite, a community of man-gods, is grown from generation to generation. This is necessary because the Druze believe that with the advent of messiah a perfect social system will be established with the dominant position in it of their community. But of course, not all Druze are included in the elite.
Druzes, being members of a closed organization, are divided into two numerically unequal groups. The leading minority are the "initiates". This part of the Druses is called ukkal("reasonable"). The rest are uninitiated. They are called juhhal ("ignorant"). Initiates possess secret religious knowledge, inaccessible to ordinary Druzes. Although the rank and file may include people occupying a high social position: large landowners, officials, etc. Obviously, the "reasonable" are not on a social basis, but cultural and genetic.
A characteristic feature of Drusism is the cult of the calf. In Lebanon, in one building of the Druze religious cult, there is an image of a calf (bull) made of gold and kept in a silver casket. Orthodox Muslims believe that this is an image of Iblis (Satan). These are remnants of a very ancient cult of the "golden calf" (calf of gold), which had a central place in the ancient, pagan religion of the Jews, as well as in other religions of Western Asia, which had an occult-mystical character.
The religious cult and rituals of the Druzes are very mysterious. In religious buildings (khalva) only initiates gather on Thursdays after sunset (associated with Christian Maundy Thursday). It is believed that during these secret meetings, the Druze worship a calf's head. At the same time, they are accused of depraved orgies. In any case, it is well known that in the occult-mystical rites aimed at developing a perfect "spiritual" person, there is an element of Tantrism. This state of affairs is all the easier because "initiated" men and "initiated" women participate in the nocturnal secret rites of the Druzes. It is heuristic in this context that the sacred texts and features of the ritual are hidden from the external eye by the Druzes as reliably as "the footprint of a black ant walking on a piece of black marble on a black night." Such is the requirement of the Druze law, clothed in such a poetic form. the conduct of the mysterious Druze cult at night, perhaps, sheds light on the well-known information that Caliph Hakim forced the population of Cairo to trade and engage in crafts at night, i.e. when he and his associates performed a cult in halva on Muqattam Hill.
The model of an ideally just, perfect society of the world is contained in the structure and functions of the Druze community itself. A layer of the "initiated" elite lives on the funds delivered by ordinary Druzes ( communal slavery) and has enormous, unlimited power in the community, and in the outside world has exceptional political influence.
Ordinary Druzes are inspired by the fact that the souls of all other people who do not belong to the Druze sect are prepared to move into the bodies of dogs and pigs. The opinion about pigs is known from the Bible, when Jesus Christ instilled demons in a herd of pigs, and they threw themselves into the sea. Such is the religious assessment by the Druzes of all other people, in comparison with their chosen mission (the idea of being chosen by God, like that of the ancient Jews). I wonder if the Druze have a special name for all other people, just as goim denoted among the ancient Jews all other peoples.
The belief in the transmigration of the soul into another Druz makes the Druz more fearless than belief in the Islamic paradise at least no less fearless. Moreover, faith in paradise And hell rests on the dichtomy - God and the Devil, and the occult-mystical religions never separate these two supernatural principles with a counter attitude. Since the Druzes believe in the transmigration of souls, the cult of the dead did not develop either. The burial is followed by a simple ceremony. Cemeteries are not visited, but not out of neglect, but in the Sioux of a well-known historical cultural tradition - the transmigration of souls into other Druze.
Without hiding their worldview, it would be impossible for the Druze to exist in the current historical time. Therefore, throughout their history, the Druze widely used the principle takiya just like all Ismailis. They easily posed as devout Muslims or Christians and were easily baptized. Therefore, they were called people who are born Christian, live Muslim, and die Druze. The Druzes could take any oath, but in their minds they must say the opposite. This feature became famous for the Spanish Marrano Jews in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Jesuits, and spiritual orders of chivalry. It is not surprising that some writers and even Orientalists see in the Druze not just a sect, but also a certain nationality 1 . There is also a widespread opinion about the genetic connection of the Druzes with the French crusaders who arrived in Lebanon and Palestine at the very end of the 11th century. The last crusaders, after the fall of Akka, taken by the Egyptian Mamluks in 1291, took refuge in the fortresses of the Ismailis, Druze, and Sufis.
The Druze were at war almost continuously with the Christians. In the 19th century - the first half of the XX century. The Druze opposed the Sunni Ottoman government and the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon, i.e. against the influence of orthodox Islam and Christianity. The Nizari Ismailis and Sufis did the same.
The Druze now live in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. It is noteworthy that the Druze is the only "Muslim" sect that has been honored to be allowed to be located in Israel. The Druze play an important role in the social and political life of Lebanon. In 1949, the Progressive Socialist Party was founded on the basis of the Druze community. The founder of this party, K. Jumblatt, in the second half of the 70s became the leader of the national-patriotic forces of Lebanon, which filled the progressive parties and organizations. The Druze community has its own faction in the parliament. But for a correct political assessment, one must always remember that the Druze have historically absorbed the principle takiya, in terms of Muslim terminology.
The socialist aspirations of the Druze can be better understood if we put two facts side by side: al-Hakim, the Druze messiah, was convinced that he was serving Satan, Marx - the inspiration of Lenin's socialism - was associated with the service of Satan, according to modern scholars.
The hostile and violent attitude of the Druze towards Christianity was expressed in the 40-60s of the XIX century. in violent armed clashes between the Druze elite and Catholic Christians- Maronites.
Notes
Doxographers (gr. doxa opinion, representation + graph) are the authors of essays, essays containing the statement of various ancient philosophers.
Qiyama - in Islam, resurrection, judgment day. The Nizari Ismailis interpreted qiyam esoterically as the revelation of the highest truth - hakia
This feature is encountered in the behavior of the leadership of modern sects.
The absolutization of unity is typical for ethno-confessional communities that recognize their God's chosenness.
Templars, templars, French templiers, from temple temple. Religious - knightly order of the Knights Templar was founded in the early years of the existence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1119 or 1120 a group of French knights swore to protect Christian pilgrims from Muslim raids.
You can say: “What does the order have to do with it? After all, the Order of the Hospitallers was created in 118, and the Order of the Templars in 1119. - at least around the same time. But during the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the crusaders among the crusaders were those who later founded these orders in Jerusalem. They were, as they say, aristocrats; those who could hold command posts.
Baigent M., Lee R. Temple and Lodge: From Templars to Freemasons. M., 2003. – p.88
The anti-Christian essence of the knightly orders manifested itself in the murders and violence in the monasteries, they plundered Constantinople - the capital of Orthodox Byzantium - during the 4th crusade (1202-1204)
Richard Lion Heart, son of Henry II, enjoys a reputation as an honorary Templar.
Crusader knights appeared in Palistine and Syria as if on purpose to support the struggle of the created Nizari order with traditional Islam: in 1095. Nizaris started a new conscription ( dava), and in 1096. The first crusade began.
Khoja ("master", "master"): 1). Honorary title of clergy, wealthy officials, feudalists, in some cases poets and writers. In modern Turkey - name. persons professionally engaged in religion, the form of address to the teacher; 2). In Central Asia until the beginning of the XX century. - a person who claims to be descended from the four righteous caliphs (with the exception of the descendants of Ali from his marriages with the daughters of Muhammad - Fatima and Zeinab); 3). Member of the Sufi Brotherhood khojagan; 4). Member of the Indian Nizari Ismaili community, followers of the Aga Khan.
Other Persian Nizari communities are located in Tehran, Mahallat and surrounding villages, as well as in Kerman, Shahr-i-Babak, Sirjan, Yazd and their environs.
Daftari Farhad. A Brief History of Ismailism: Traditions of the Muslim Community. M., 2004.-p.214
From these secret scrolls the current Talmud was compiled.
The movement of Mazdakism for social and economic equality was headed by the Manichaean priest Mazdak (5th-6th centuries in Western Asia; suppressed by the Iranian Shah Khosrov II).
Destroyed including the Christian Church of the Resurrection (Church of the Holy Sepulcher) in Jerusalem.
To become a member of the Jewish community, one must have evidence of blood Jewish descent.
Compare with love for the cousins of the Russian mystic-philosopher Solovyov, who develops the philosophy of human deity.
Conceived on the night of Thursday to Friday, according to Christian faith, are born demonized, criminals.
Shiites, Sunnis, Dervishes: the eternal secrets of Islam. — M., 2005.-p.151.
Maronites - representatives of a special branch of the Catholic Church in Syria and Lebanon, who were once Monothelites, but in the 16th century. recognized the supremacy of the Vatican. The name was received on behalf of a religious figure of the 7th century. Maron. In Lebanon and Syria, there are about 400 thousand. maroons.
Surovyagin S.P.
Recently, two books were published in Russian on the ideology and history of the Ismailis, who are now widely known throughout the world, thanks to the active charitable work of their Imam Aga Khan IV, whose fund has long and successfully been operating in many, including very explosive, regions the globe.
His community was well integrated into the structure of the modern world and strongly Westernized in the 20th century.
First of all, it is necessary to clarify the terms. Ismailis are followers of one of the largest branches of Shiite Islam. In the middle of the VIII century. they recognized the sixth Shia Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, his eldest son Ismail, as the heir, in contrast to the majority of Shiites who recognized Musa al-Kazim as his heir. Later, when the Ismaili Fatimid dynasty formed its caliphate with its capital in Cairo, a new split occurred: after the death of Caliph al-Mustansir in 1094, part of the Ismailis supported his son Mustali, and the other supported his eldest son Nizar. Mustali became the official Fatimid caliph, and Nizar was forced to flee to Alexandria. There he, in turn, was proclaimed caliph. As Farhad Daftari notes, “The proclamation of Nizar as both caliph and imam in Alexandria is confirmed by the discovery in 1994 of a gold dinar minted in 1095.” (Daftari, p.118). In 1095, Nizar was defeated, captured and executed.
However, his rights were recognized by the Ismailis of Northern Iran, who at that time were headed by the prominent dai (preacher) Hasan al-Sabbah (born 1050s - d. 1124), who created there in 1090 a small independent state with a center in Alamut. This is how the Nizari movement appeared in Ismailism, today headed by Imam Aga Khan IV. During the era of the Crusades, Europeans began to call the Nizaris "Assassins". This term acquired a negative connotation, and "assassin" began to mean "murderer" in a number of European languages. The very word "assassin" goes back to the Arabic "hashish" (using hashish). At that time, it was believed that in a state of drug intoxication, the Nizaris committed political assassinations. The spread of this legend in Europe was strongly promoted by the famous traveler Marco Polo (1254-1324), who wrote about how the Mountain Elder lured young men into his garden, the so-called earthly paradise, and turned them into assassins. “Young men will wake up in the palace (the next day - M.R.), but they are not happy that they would never leave paradise of their own free will. They go to the Elder and, revering him as a prophet, humbly bow to him; and the Elder asks them where they came from. From paradise, the young men answer and describe everything that is there, as if in paradise, about which Muhammad spoke to their ancestors; and those who were not there hear all this, and they want to go to heaven; they are ready to die, if only to get to paradise; can't wait for the day to go there. If the Elder wants to kill one of the important ones, he will order to test and select the best of his assassins; he sends many of them to distant countries with orders to kill people; they go, and the order is carried out; whoever remains intact, he returns to the court, it happens that after the murder they are captured and killed themselves ”(Hodgson, p. 357).
This legend reflects the popular perception of the activities of Hasan al-Sabbah and his successors. Book M.J.S. Hodgson (1922-1968) is devoted to the ideology and history of this state. 1/ It was the first study that summarized the disparate information about the Nizaris and their creed and brought them together. The work of M.J.S. Hodgson is today recognized by classical experts. Its great scientific significance is also emphasized by the second author I am considering, Farhad Daftari (Daftari, p. 32).
One of the topics that M.J.S. Hodgson pays close attention to the use of individual terror by the Nizaris, primarily against high-ranking Sunni leaders during the period when they were led by Hasan al-Sabbah and his first successors. According to M.J.S. Hodgson, "at first the word" jihad "- a holy war - was used to denote individual terror, pursuing various religious and political goals in connection with the activities of the early Shiite groups. Among the early Shiites, this method of struggle was called “jihad kafi” (secret war) and was opposed to open frontier war. One extremist Shiite group was called "Hunnaq" (stranglers), because that was the favorite way of killing among its adherents. However, none of these groups gave terrorist killings the political significance they had acquired from the Nizaris” (Hodgson, 91).
Obviously, this practice was caused, first of all, by the weakness of the political structures in the Sunni states of that time, mainly headed by Seljuk rulers, so the assassination of individual sultans, wazirs (prime ministers, in modern terms) or major military leaders often led to general destabilization , confusion and chaos in a particular region of the Muslim world. The Nizaris killed those military and civilian leaders who actively fought against them and opposed the spread of their doctrine. Sometimes it could be about self-defense and revenge. As F. Daftari notes, “Hasan al-Sabbah’s decision to turn murder into a tool to achieve military and political goals was, in essence, a response to the political fragmentation and military power of the Seljuk regime” (Daftari, p. 136).
In turn, M.J.S. Hodgson drew attention to the fact that "Ismaili killings differed from many of the killings that took place in Muslim general political life, not only in their less personal character, since they rarely served as a means of resolving personal disputes and individual rivalry between individuals, but also in their general entourage , since most often they were performed in public and sometimes almost in a theatrical setting: in a mosque, at the royal court. The Ismailis acted openly. They were almost never suspected of using poison" (Hodgson, 122).
A vivid example of such a theatrical murder is given in his comments by the scientific editor of the book, M.J.S. Hodgson A.G. Yurchenko, quoting the Armenian historian Kirakos Gandzaketsi: “One of the nobles named Orkhan, whose wife was the mother of the Sultan, especially oppressed the inhabitants of the city of Gandzak (Ganja - M.R.) - and not only Christians, but also Persians too - with large requisitions. He was killed in that city by mulehids (heretics, as the Nizari were called - M.R.), who had a habit of insidiously killing people. While this man (Orkhan - M.R.) was walking through the streets of the city, some people approached him, allegedly oppressed by someone and (wanting) to file a petition for rights. They showed him the paper they had in their hands and demanded with a cry: "Justice, justice." And when he stopped and wanted to ask who was oppressing them, they rushed at him from all sides and with the swords that they hid, kept with them, inflicted wounds on him and killed him. Thus, evil was destroyed by evil itself. And his killers were barely able to hit with arrows; they fled through the city and many were wounded by them: ”(Hodgson, p. 253-254).
Unfortunately, neither M.J.S. Hodgson and F. Daftary do not provide statistics on this terrorist practice. A relatively complete list of the victims of Ismaili individual terror is given in the work of the Russian historian L.V. Stroevoy "The Ismaili State in Iran in the 11th-13th centuries" (M., 1978). It is based on the data of the Persian historian of the XIV century. Rashid ad-Din, according to which during the reign of Hasan al-Sabbah (1090-1124) 49 people were killed, under his successors Kiya Buzurg Umid (1124-1138) - 12 people and under Muhammad ibn Kiya Buzurg Umid (1138-1162) - 14 people. “Thus, in 72 years the number of victims is 75 people. The lists (Rashid ad-Dina - M.R.) indicate the name and social status of the victim, the name of the killer, sometimes the name and nisba (genealogy - M.R.) of the killer or the number of persons who committed the murder, the place, month and year of the murder , in isolated cases - the motive for the murder ”(Stroeva, p. 148). So, according to the lists, 8 sovereigns were killed (of which 3 caliphs), 6 vazirs, 7 military leaders, 5 wali (regional governors), 5 rais (city governors), 5 muftis and 5 qazis (Muslim judges). In the late autumn of 1121, the commander-in-chief of the Fatimid caliphs, Afdal ad-Din, was killed, through whose fault he was deprived of the caliph's throne and the legitimate imam of the Nizari Nizar died (Stroeva, pp. 148-150).
As L.V. Stroeva, “the absolute number of Ismaili victims is not so great. It is much less than the number of people killed by the Ismailis in open battle”, while by the end of the period under review, individual terror “is significantly reduced and almost disappears” (Stroeva, p. 152). In general, both authors considered in the review come to a similar conclusion. Such a phenomenon as individual terror cannot be absolutized, but must be analyzed in a specific historical context. It is obvious that more often it is an instrument of the struggle of a minority, as was the case with the Ismailis, who at that time strengthened their statehood in a difficult and difficult confrontation with numerous Sunni rulers. Later, the Ismailis moved away from the practice of individual terror.
Another and perhaps the most important topic for understanding the characteristics of the Nizari community is their teaching about the imamate and the role of the imam in the community. M.J.S. Hodgson examines it in detail. For the Ismailis, the real presence of the imam in the world is extremely important, because, notes M.J.S. Hodgson, “the imam by his very nature is al-hujja, proof of God; but he is more than al-hujja, he is all forms of God. Therefore, one can see God through him, as one sees the sun through the light of the sun: To know the Imam is to know God, to see him is to see God, as far as God can be known or seen” (Hodgson, 172). Hasan al-Sabbah and his first successors called themselves dais (preachers), but the need to have their own imam was probably so great that the new sovereign of the Nizari Hasan II (1162-1166) proclaimed himself an imam, but not in the earthly, but in the spiritual sense, that is, in the highest heavenly reality (haqiqa), since he was not a descendant of the 4th Muslim caliph Ali, from whom the Shia imams traditionally traced their lineage. This happened at a time when the Nizaris realized that they would not be able to convince the rest of the Muslim world of the correctness of their creed. That is why Hassan II declared himself the spiritual descendant of Nizar and abolished the power of Sharia as religious law and at the same time proclaimed himself a Qa'im (imam who brought the Resurrection) 2/, which, however, did not mean that the Day of Resurrection had come in the Sunni understanding of this meta-event, which is characteristic of most Muslims, but in spiritual terms. The Nizaris during his reign came to realize their special religious path and abandoned the search for mutual understanding with the Sunnis and representatives of other areas of Shiism. From now on, all Nizari living on earth could "learn to know God directly, directly (as the Sufis did)" (Hodgson, 162). In turn, the rest of the Muslims, for whom, in the first place, the rejection of Sharia was unacceptable, began to call them mulhids (heretics).
The teachings of Hassan II were continued and developed by his son, Imam Muhammad II (1166-1210), who believed that “the goal of the world is to know and see God: and the only way to achieve this goal is to fully spiritual knowledge of the Imam. For the imam himself is the perfect revelation of God” (Hodgson, 170). It should be noted that the idea of the special role of the imam is characteristic of all Shiism, but, perhaps, it was the Nizari who developed it most prominently. In accordance with their creed, there is a “necessity to take for truth what a given imam proclaims, unlike any other” (Hodgson, p. 236). It is this circumstance that explains M.J.S. Hodgson the fact that the son of Muhammad II Hasan III (1210-1221) abandoned the radical views of his father and grandfather and restored the Sharia (Hodgson, 224-225).
The book by M.J.S. Hodgson helps the reader to understand the history of the formation of the Nizari community and the specifics of its worldview. In our days, when interest in Islam and its various currents has greatly increased, the publication of a book in Russian, in my opinion, is extremely useful. In the work, one can feel the keen interest of the author and his enthusiasm for the subject of research, which are involuntarily transferred to the reader.
The book by Farhad Daftari, Head of Research and Publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, complements well the work of M.J.S. Hodgson. 3 / It is a consistent presentation of the history of Ismailism, and its various branches, and not just the Nizaris. The author managed to collect new materials that were not available to his predecessor. The book is valuable in terms of facts and clarification of a number of details. F. Daftari worked especially seriously with the materials and sources of the Nizari tradition proper. It is in this sense that the part of the book that is devoted to the history of the Nizari after the defeat of their state in Northern Iran by the Mongols in 1256 is very interesting. F. Daftari skillfully and conscientiously reconstructs this stage in the history of the Nizari. In my opinion, he convincingly shows that the central idea of the Nizari - relying on the authority of the imam - allowed this religious movement to survive, despite all the vicissitudes of its dramatic history, when at some point it seemed that it simply ceased to exist. After the death of their state, the Nizaris became close to the Sufis, but at the same time they kept their own traditions. As F. Daftari writes, as before, “for the Ismailis, the imam remained the only cosmic individual who concentrated in his personality the whole essence of being, a perfect microcosm, which could not be replaced by a less important mentor: The ontological position of the Nizari Ismaili imam as a representative of a truly cosmic essence was also an analogue of the “perfect man” (al-insan al-kamil) 4/ Sufis” (p. 172).
The latest period in the history of the Nizari is associated with the relocation of their Imam Aga Khan I from Iran to British India in 1842. Imam in 1957, headquartered in Aglamont (France). “The Imam maintains the well-defined community administration council system introduced by his grandfather (Aga Khan III – M.P.) and is expanding it to new territories in Europe, the USA and Canada, taking into account the significant emigration of his followers from East Africa and the Indian subcontinent to the West that began in the 70s. XX century” (Daftari, p.212). Today, the Aga Khan IV plays a role in his community similar to that of the Roman pope for Catholics, while striving to keep up with the times. So, notes F. Daftari, back in 1986, the imam officially promulgated the charter of his community, which is called the "Constitution of Shia Muslims Imami Ismailis" (Daftari, p. 213). This constitution, in many ways, modernizes the structure of community administration and significantly democratizes it.
At the end of his interesting and informative work, F. Daftari writes: “The Nizari Ismailis, a Muslim minority scattered in many countries, went through repression and religious persecution, almost unceasing from the time of the fall of Alamut until our time. Therefore, the Ismailis often resorted to an extended practice of concealment, presenting themselves either as Sufis, or Twelver Shiites, 5/, or as Sunnis or even Hindus. That the Nizaris have survived at all and are a progressive community with a distinct identity in the modern world is testament to the flexibility of their traditions, as well as their ability to adapt to modern conditions, thanks to the able and far-sighted leadership of their current Imams, the Agha Khans. Daftari, p.216). It is difficult to disagree with this conclusion. In the course of their history, the Nizaris have undergone a complex and tortuous evolution and have become one of the most dynamic and successful Muslim communities of our time, with a population of approximately 20 million today.
Marshall J. S. Hodgson. Order of the Assassins. (The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismailis with the Islamic World). SPb., "Eurasia", 2004, 381 p.
Farhad Daftary. A Brief History of Ismailism. (Traditions of the Muslim community). M., Ladomir, 2003, 276 p.
Notes:
1/ Marshall G.S. Hodgson. The Order of Assassins. (The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismailis against the Islamic World). University of Chicago, 1955.
2/ Ismaili beliefs about Qa’im are discussed in an earlier published by our journal article by Shin Nomoto “Revising Ismaili Christology in the light of the views of Abu Hatim al-Razi” - OZ, 2004,? 5, pp. 293-296.
3/Farhad Daftary. A Short History of the Ismailis (Traditions of a Muslim Community). Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
4/ For more on the Ismaili concept of the perfect or whole man, see Henry Corbin. Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam. West Chester, Pennsylvania, 1995, p.100-112. Interestingly, in the Christian tradition, views on this topic very close to Ismaili ones were developed by the Swedish thinker of the 18th century. Emmanuel Swedenborg, see ibid., pp. 74-83.
4/Farhad Daftary. A Short History of the Ismailis (Traditions of a Muslim Community). Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
5/ Twelver Shiites recognize 12 imams from the Ali clan. Their 12th imam Muhammad "disappeared" or "hid" at a young age. The Twelvers proclaimed him a "hidden imam" and a mahdi (messiah), who in due time would return and fill the world with justice. Thus, unlike the Nizaris, the Twelvers do not recognize the Imams open to the world at the present time.
Shiism and Shiite sectarianism. Ismailis and Karmatians
Formed during the reign of the “righteous” caliphs, the “Ali party” eventually acquired the character of a special Shiite trend that split the Islamic community. The difference between the bulk of Muslims - Sunnis and Shiites was in relation to the imamat and the imam - the head of the Islamic community. For the Sunnis, the imam (caliph) is the spiritual and secular head, formally elected from among the Quraish by the members of the ummah in order to regulate the life of the community in accordance with Sharia and monitor the implementation of divine institutions; Shiites, however, recognized the right to the imamate only for the family of Muhammad, that is, for Ali and his descendants. The Imam of the Shiites is the heir to the mission of Muhammad, the high priest, infallible due to the “divine emanation” manifested in him. For Shiites, the imamate cannot depend on the will of the people, as it is commanded by Allah and is based on the principle of "spiritual succession." Thus, the Alid imams personified the principle of hereditary spiritual authority, through which the continuity of divine prophecy was realized.
Moderate Shiites-imamis - the main direction of Shiite Islam - recognized the successive appointment of twelve imams (hence their name "al-isnaashariyya" - "twelvers") from the clan of Ali ibn Abi Talib. After the death of the eleventh imam al-Hasan al-Askari in 873, the Imamis considered his young son Muhammad to be the twelfth imam, who, however, soon disappeared - most likely, was killed. The Imamis proclaimed him a "hidden" imam. Belief in the "hidden" Imam became one of the main tenets of the Imamis. Before the “end of the world,” the hidden imam, “the lord of time,” must return in the form of a mahdi (savior) and “fill the world with justice.”
Considering the imamate as a divine institution, the imams rejected the very possibility of electing an imam. According to their concepts, the imamate is an emanation of the eternal divine light in the family of the descendants of Ali. The divine nature of the imamate predetermined the exceptional qualities of its bearers. Most of the Shiites consisted of Imamites, who recognized twelve Imams, and, according to their concept, power to each next Imam should have been inherited from the previous one according to his one-time decision expressing the divine will. However, even under the Umayyads, after the death of the fifth Imam Muhammad al-Baqir in 731, the first split occurred in the Shiite milieu.
The bulk of the Shiites after the death of Muhammad al-Baqir recognized his son Jafar al-Sadiq as the sixth imam. However, part of the Shiites, dissatisfied with the peacefulness and passivity of Muhammad in the fight against the Umayyads, united around his more active younger brother Zayd ibn Ali and proclaimed him the fifth imam. The Zaidis believed that any person from the Alid family could be elected an imam for services to Islam. Chosen by a minority of Shiites, Zayd ibn Ali led a rebellion against the Umayyad caliph Hisham in 740 and, along with his few supporters, died in battle with the caliph's army. Although the rebellion launched by Zayd under the Umayyads was suppressed, the Shia movement that received his name did not stop. Zaidis developed their own theological doctrine, and although in the field of "theory" they were the most moderate among the Shiites (they, for example, agreed to recognize the right to the Caliph throne of the first three "righteous" Caliphs), politically they were the most active.
The descendants of Zayd ibn Ali and his followers managed to win over the inhabitants of the mountainous regions of the southwestern part of the coast of the Caspian Sea with the help of propaganda and in 864 to accomplish what other Alid leaders of the Shiites could not achieve since the time of Caliph Ali. They formed their own independent emirate in Tabaristan and Gilan. This emirate existed for about thirty years. The Zaydi emirs, of course, did not recognize the legitimacy of Abbasid rule. The success of the Zaidis in the Caspian provinces was accompanied by the fact that the entire region, due to its geographical inaccessibility, by that time had not yet undergone radical Islamization, and Shiite sectarianism peacefully coexisted here with Sunni orthodoxy. Al-Mu'tadid tried to maintain good relations with the leaders of the Zaydi state, which was in line with his policy of conciliation towards the Shiites.
Success accompanied the Zaydis in the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula, which was difficult for the Baghdad authorities to control. Here, on the territory of Yemen, during the time of Caliph al-Mu'tadid in 901, another Zaydi state was formed, which was destined to exist until the 20th century.
In the middle of the 8th century, a new split occurred in the Shiite direction of Islam: along with the moderate Shiite-Imamits, who differed from the Sunnis only in the doctrine of the hereditary right of the Alids to the imamate and recognized this right for the twelve imams, extremist sects appeared, the dogmatics of which are far not only from the dogma and Sunni cult, but also moderate Shiites. These sects were called "gulat" (from the verb "gala" - "to show excess, to cross borders"). common feature of these sects was the deification of Caliph Ali and his descendants, the idea of "incarnation" ("khulul") - "the incarnation of the Divine in man." The beliefs of such extremist Shiite sects were a bizarre interweaving of the main Shiite creed with pre-Muslim ancient Eastern cults, Eastern Christianity, and sometimes with Buddhism.
The most famous of these Shiite sects, the Ismailis, arose as early as the 8th century, but its philosophical and dogmatic foundations and organizational structure were fully developed only by the end of the 9th century. The teachings of extremist Shiites were traced by contemporaries to the ideological founder of Shiism, a Yemenite from the Jews, Abdallah ibn Saba (mid-7th century), who deified the personality of Muhammad, taught about his coming “return” and about his appointment of Ali as his deputy. This concept arose under the influence of the legend of the prophet Elijah, who, after the ascension to heaven described in the Bible, allegedly did not die, but continues to live and must return to earth (in Christianity, John the Baptist is considered the returned Elijah). Later, the extreme Shiites developed the teachings of Abdallah ibn Saba and supplemented it with the idea of transferring the divine spark from one prophet to another.
According to Sunni sources, the Ismaili sect arose in the circle of associates of the sixth Shiite Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, who was one of the main ideologists of Imami Shiism, who recognized the consistent succession of Imams led by the Deity. Imami Shiites recognized his son Musa al-Kazim and his descendants as the successors of the sixth Imam Jafar, until the "concealment" around 874 of the twelfth Imam Muhammad. When appointing the youngest son of Musa al-Kazim, Jafar al-Sadiq, as the seventh imam, he considered it necessary to announce the removal of his eldest son Ismail, who died back in 760 during the life of his father, from the succession of the Imamate. However, some Shiites did not agree with the decision of Jafar, because, as they believed, the appointment of the next imam could not occur only by the volitional decision of the predecessor, but was the result of divine grace, and as a manifestation of the wisdom of the Almighty, it could take place only once. Since Jafar first appointed Ismail as successor, this cannot be changed.
There was a legend that Jafar deprived Ismail of the undeniable right that belonged to him to inherit the rank of the Shiite imam because of his addiction to wine. However, Ismail's supporters, without questioning the tradition itself, justified Ismail on the grounds that no actions of members of the family of imams, descendants of Ali, can be considered sinful. In fact, the removal of Ismail was due to much more serious reasons than his violation of one of the instructions of the Koran. The doctrine of the Shia-Imamis gave the Shia leaders the opportunity to abandon the idea of seizing power in the Caliphate by force, since they believed that they should have waited for the appearance of a "hidden" Imam - the Mahdi - and all efforts were directed towards playing an active role in society and occupying him as high as possible. Such a passive conciliatory position of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq in relation to the ruling dynasty of the Abbasids caused discontent among the more radical part of the Shiites, they yearned for more active action. Apparently, Ismail, a supporter of an extreme Shiite group, was deprived by his imam father of the right to inherit the imam's dignity for extremism.
Anticipating the possible dissatisfaction of some of the Shiites, Jafar al-Sadiq considered it necessary to widely announce the death of his son Ismail and expose his body in one of the mosques in Medina. It would seem that this was a serious argument in favor of a new appointment, for the dead could not inherit the post of the living. But the zealous followers of Ismail denied the fact of his death and claimed that he outlived his father, citing the testimonies of a number of people who assured that they saw him under various circumstances in subsequent years.
Thus, a fundamental dispute arose between the Shia-Imamits and supporters of Ismail: should the dynastic principle of appointing an imam be preserved and only the appointment of Ismail and his son Muhammad ibn Ismail be recognized as legal, or should the principle of appointing an imam as a predecessor by his will be accepted and the appointment of Musa al-Kazim be recognized as legitimate? and other imams from among the twelve. This is how the Ismaili sect arose, supporters of Ismail, the father of the last, seventh imam - Muhammad ibn Ismail.
After the death of Muhammad ibn Ismail, a new split occurred among the Ismailis. Some considered Muhammad ibn Ismail to be the seventh and last imam (hence the name of the sect "Seven-man") and expected his return from the "shelter" (this branch was later called "Karmaty"). Others recognized the imamate of one of the sons of Muhammad ibn Ismail and his descendants, "hidden imams", whose names and their whereabouts were allegedly known only to the elect. From the beginning of the 10th century, they began to be called "Fatimid Ismailis" - after the name of the daughter of Muhammad Fatima.
The ideologists of Shiism and the theoreticians of Ismailism emerged from Jafar al-Sadiq's circle. The first among them was Abu-l-Khattab (died 762), who was known for his extreme views, which forced Ja'far to recant him. A teacher of the same type was one of the close associates of the fifth Imam Muhammad al-Baqir - Maymun al-Kaddah (died about 796) and his son, a particularly active figure and theorist in Jafar's circle - Abdallah ibn Maimun (died in 825). It was these three people who were the true creators and theorists of the Ismaili doctrine.
The conflict that arose in the circle of Ja'far al-Sadiq's successors, and led to the emergence of a sect in Shiism, was not just the result of a dispute over the dynastic succession of imams, but from the very beginning took on an ideological character. This was understood in the Islamic environment at the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries. Therefore, Sunni sources, painting a picture of the controversy that has arisen, focus not so much on the question of which imam the schismatic Shiites or Imamis prefer, but on the ideological side of the dispute, on the very principle of election or appointment to this post.
The Ismaili doctrine was based on the doctrine that sacred texts had two meanings: simple, lying on the surface (zahir), and deep, hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated (batin), reflecting the true spiritual "reality" (haqiqa) contained in the text. In order to reveal the "reality", the spiritual meaning of the sacred text, Abu-l-Khattab resorted to the method of allegorical interpretation, in which the images and even the letters of the Koran themselves made it possible to understand the hidden truth. Under the influence of neo-Pythagoreanism, the Ismailis tried to identify the symbolism of numbers in the Qur'an. They calculated the number of certain letters and, through complex calculations and reasoning, tried to find in it indications of the rights of the seven imams to power. "Hell" they interpreted as a state of ignorance, in which, according to them, the majority of mankind was, and "paradise" - as an allegory of perfect knowledge, accessible only to members of their sect.
In accordance with the doctrine of the duality of the sacred text, Ismailism assumed two levels of initiation: into the external, exoteric doctrine of “zahir” (a generally accessible teaching known to ordinary members of the sect), and into the internal “batin” (esoteric, open only to a few, initiated members of the highest degrees). To each point of the outer doctrine there corresponded a point of the inner doctrine explaining its secret meaning, that is, the inner doctrine was considered as an interpretation of the outer doctrine. Esoteric doctrine differed little from Imami Shiism; the exception was the point that the seventh imam was not Musa al-Kazim, but Muhammad ibn Ismail, after whom (in the teachings of the Fatimid Ismailis) came the "hidden" imams, and after them the Fatimid caliphs-imams. The "external" doctrine preserved almost all ritual and legal provisions of the Sharia (prayers, visiting mosques, fasting, etc.) as obligatory for all Ismailis of the lower levels. The “external” doctrine also included a special system of fiqh, developed by the Shiite jurist Numan (died in 974).
The Ismailis formulated their macrocosmic concept, which they called "true reality" ("haqiqa"). This definition was an Islamized version of Gnosticism (the religious and philosophical teaching of the first centuries of Christianity, which combined heterogeneous elements of Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism with Christian dogmatic positions). According to the teachings of the Ismailis, knowledge of the “true reality”, in other words, God, is “hikma” ( Greek. "gnosis") is the result of the "divine call" ("dava"), which is revealed to the converted or already converted Ismaili as he passes through the various stages of the test. This call comes in the form of a revelation from the true and holistic "spiritual reality" and takes on a material or verbal form.
The teaching of the Ismailis also included, borrowed from Judaism and Christianity, the idea of a great cosmic drama, as a result of which the universe and man came into being, the fall into sin and which must end with final salvation. According to the esoteric doctrine of the Ismailis, the root cause of all things is the spirit (idea) identified with Allah, which generated matter by emanation (by the outflow of the creative energy of the deity). According to them, Allah has neither a definite image, nor properties and qualities, and therefore cannot be perceived by the human mind.
The complex religious and philosophical system developed by Ismaili theorists is eclectic, many of its provisions are borrowed from the teachings of the Neoplatonists and Gnostics and adapted to Ismaili theology. However, the elements of Neoplatonism the Ismailis learned not from the writings of Plotinus, but from their later versions, which were processed by Jewish and Christian authors. Like the Judeo-Christian mystics, the Ismailis adopted from Neoplatonism the concepts of unity and plurality of being in the visible world. In their cosmology they borrowed also the Neoplatonic emanation scheme, which they followed, using Arabic terminology. Plotinus spoke of two products of emanation: the World Mind and the World Soul. The Ismailis brought the number of emanation products to ten and included seven lower Intelligences, including angels, planets and constellations, as well as living creatures. The Ismailis, like the Neoplatonists, explained the appearance of man by the creative ability of the World Soul, which strives for perfection in its deeds. A person appears on earth to fulfill a certain purpose: the perception of the divine truth that the prophets preach, and the Ismaili imams keep and interpret. The reflection of the World Mind in the sensual world becomes a "perfect person", a prophet, according to the terminology of the Ismailis - "natik" ("speaking, reasonable"). The reflection of the World Soul in the sensual world becomes the assistant of the prophet - "samit" ("silent"). The task of the "samit" is to explain to people the speeches and writings of the prophet by interpreting their inner meaning ("batin").
Like the stages of emanation in the heavenly world, the life of mankind is marked by seven prophetic cycles or degrees on the path to perfection. There were six Natikov: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ and Muhammad. Accordingly, their Samites were: Moses had Aaron, Jesus had the Apostle Peter, Muhammad had Ali. The seventh natik will appear before the end of the world. It will combine the functions of "speaking" and "silent". This will be the mahdi - the imam of the "resurrection from the dead" - and his name will be Muhammad. The Karmatians, who did not recognize new imams after Muhammad ibn Ismail, believed that it would be him.
According to the teachings of the Ismailis, every prophetic cycle, every natiq was followed by imams (imams of their time). The end of the world will come when humanity, through the Natiqs, Samites and Imams, reaches perfect knowledge. Then the evil, which is ignorance, will disappear, and the world will return to its original source - the Universal Mind.
The Fatimid Ismailis had a ramified organization and seven degrees of initiation. The highest political power and spiritual leadership belonged to a small number of supreme teachers, who allegedly possessed special abilities that allowed them to understand and perceive the true essence of things and phenomena of the visible world and to penetrate the invisible world with their mental gaze. For the higher degrees, the implementation of Sharia law was optional. Perfect knowledge can be achieved only by recognizing the "imam of his time", that is, by becoming an Ismaili.
Among the Ismaili preachers active in Syria at the beginning of the 9th century, the theorist and practitioner of the movement, Abdallah ibn Maimun, was especially active. Like his father, he was an Iranian from Khuzistan and a former Zoroastrian. Back in Khuzistan, he announced that he was conducting his propaganda on behalf of the "hidden imam." Later, he moved to Syria, where he created an Ismaili propaganda center in the city of Salamiyah, from where he sent Ismaili preachers throughout the Caliphate. The name of the next Ismaili imam and his whereabouts were reported only to a few Ismailis of the highest initiation.
At the end of the 9th century, in Ismaili circles, all hopes were pinned on the immediate appearance of the Mahdi in the person of the “returned” Muhammad ibn Ismail. One of the most zealous preachers of this faith, Husayn al-Ahwazi from Iraq, in 875 managed to involve in this movement a peasant from near Kufa named Hamdan Karmat, who was one of the founders of the new sect. The Karmatian movement arose around 890 and during the time of Caliph al-Mu'tadid (892-902) became the main danger to the Abbasid power. The head of the Karmats, Hamdan Karmat, and his chief associate, Abdan, were active in the region of Wasit and Kufa. In 890, Hamdan founded his main center near Kufa, from where the "call" ("dava") spread throughout the fertile part of southern Iraq; this call heralded the imminent return of Muhammad ibn Ismail, who would finally establish justice on earth. In connection with the approaching "end of the world", Islamic law was declared annulled, which was widely announced.
The message of the energetic dai and his assistant aroused the expectation of the coming of happy times and aroused a feeling of joyful relief among the oppressed urban and rural population and the Bedouins of the nearby steppes. This entire area has been in a state of unrest since the time of the Zanj uprising, and the control of the Baghdad authorities has not been fully restored here. The Baghdad government was aware of what was happening in the areas of Wasit and Kufa, where normal life was disrupted by eschatological expectations of the "end of the world", but it could not do anything to appease the inhabitants. In the minds of ordinary Ismailis, vague ideas about the “establishment of universal justice and equality” with the advent of the Mahdi and the establishment of the “true Imamat” of the Alids wandered, as well as the idea of a return to “true Islam” in its original form and to theocracy, which was opposed to the secular caliphic power. With all the differences in the views of the extreme Shiite sects, they were brought together by a common hostility towards both the Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphs.
Both branches of the Ismailis - the Fatimid Ismailis and the Karmatians - created strong secret organizations and carried out extensive propaganda, especially among the urban lower classes, peasants and Bedouins. They began to show the greatest activity in the second half of the 9th century. Ismaili missionaries (duat) from Salamiyah traveled throughout the Caliphate. There were especially many of them in southern Iraq, Syria, Iran (Khorasan), the Maghreb and Bahrain. They concentrated in areas and cities with a large Shiite population (Rey, Kumm south of the Caspian Sea), and if in Iraq their propaganda was addressed to the poorest segments of the population, then in Iran they tried to convert local rulers to Ismailism.
The activities of the Karmatians were especially successful in southern Iraq and in the Bahrain region in the Persian Gulf. At the end of the 9th century, Hamdan sent his agent Abu Said al-Jannabi to Bahrain, who managed to form a Qarmatian state here with a center in the fortress city of Hajar, which became the main Qarmatian stronghold. Eastern Arabia became a springboard for raids on neighboring countries, from which the Qarmatians returned with rich booty and captives turned into slaves. In 913, al-Jannabi was killed by one of his slaves, and power passed into the hands of his brothers, around whom a kind of "council of elders" was formed, who took over the government. Council members claimed to be acting on behalf of the secret head of the sect. In 903, the Qarmatians broke into Salamiyah and exterminated the family of the self-proclaimed Ismaili Imam Ubaidallah, who managed to escape to Egypt.
Karmatian propaganda was successful both in southern Iraq in the Basra region, and among the Bedouins of the Syrian desert, where a certain Zikrawayh with his sons became the head of the movement. In 902, the Qarmatians defeated the Caliph troops sent against them near Kufa, and in 903 they even laid siege to Damascus. However, the Baghdad authorities managed to cope with the Qarmatians in Syria, their leaders were captured. After the death of Zikrawayh in 906, the Qarmatians appeared in Syria only sporadically and did not play a big role.
Fearing new raids by the Qarmatians, the wazir Ali ibn Isa tried to get along with their leaders, but in 923 the Qarmatians managed to capture Basra and demanded official recognition from the caliph of their rule in the city, which caused the resignation of the wazir Ali ibn Isa in Baghdad.
In subsequent years, the Qarmatians repeatedly raided Iraq and reached Baghdad. The capital was saved only by the energetic actions of the military leader Muniz. However, even later, the Qarmatians penetrated into Iraq, and his younger brother, who replaced al-Jannabi as the military head of the Qarmatians, attacked the Muslim holy city of Mecca in 930 and took with him to Bahrain the main Muslim shrine - the Black Stone - and only the influence of the Fatimid caliph forced the Qarmatians in 951 to return him back to Mecca. Throughout the 10th century, the Qarmatian movement covered the most diverse regions of the Caliphate from North Africa to India, the Samanids fought against the Qarmatians, and Mahmud Ghaznevi fell upon them with cruel persecution. The Karmatian movement, which had a clearly defined social character, was attended not only by peasants, artisans and nomads, but also by people from the educated strata of society. In 922, the famous Muslim mystic al-Hallaj was executed on charges of Qarmatian agitation, and the poet al-Mutanabbi was imprisoned on charges of some connections with the Qarmatians. Only with the advent of the Seljuks in the middle of the 11th century did the Qarmatian movement begin to fade away.
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Ismailis, one of the main branches of Shiism. It arose in the middle of the 8th century during the split of the Shiites on the issue of the successor of Jafar al-Sadiq; named after his eldest son Ismail, who died early (762), whose son Muhammad the Ismailis recognized as the seventh Shiite imam (see also Zaidis, Imamis). After the death of the latter (about 795), the Ismailis split into two currents. Representatives of the first, who received the name Qarmatians at the end of the 9th century, were waiting for the return of Muhammad ibn Ismail as the messiah (al-Qaim), who would restore justice by giving people a new sharia. Adherents of the other, who retained the name "Ismailites", were looking for a messiah among his descendants, who fled from the persecution of the Abbasids to Syria and Khorasan. One of the descendants of Muhammad ibn Ismail, Abu Muhammad Ubaydallah al-Mahdi (reigned 909-934), laid the foundation for the Fatimid dynasty, who, thanks to Ismaili propaganda, subdued Egypt, the Maghreb, Syria, Palestine and Hijaz in the late 10th and early 11th centuries.
In the 11th century, the fragmentation of the Ismailis continued: at the beginning of the century, the Druze separated from them; at the end of the century, disputes over succession divided the Ismailis into Nizaris and Mustalis. The first supported Nizar, the eldest son of Caliph al-Mustansir (1036-94), who raised an uprising in Alexandria, but was captured and executed in 1095. The Nizaris prevailed in the east outside the Fatimid Caliphate, in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. At the end of the 11th century, they created a state centered on the Iranian fortress of Alamut, which lasted until its defeat by the Mongols in the middle of the 13th century. After that, the resettlement of the Nazarites to India began. The Mustalites recognized the youngest son of al-Mustansir, Mustali (1094-1101), as caliph. After the fall of the Egyptian Fatimids under Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (1171), Yemen became the religious center of the Mustalites, where they received the name "Tayibites" (after Tayyib, the son of the Fatimid caliph al-Amir, who was killed in Egypt in 1130). At the end of the 16th century, part of them (the Daudids) moved to India, where at the beginning of the 17th century an Ismaili center arose in Gujarat. The Ismailis who remained in Yemen are called Suleymanites after the name of the founder of the community. There are no differences in doctrine and ritual between the two currents.
In the political struggle, the Nizari widely used terror. According to a number of Muslim and Christian sources, the perpetrators of terrorist acts used drugs (hashish). For this reason, in the 12-13 centuries, the name “Hashishiyun” (in a distorted form of assasins with the meaning of “murderers”) was assigned to all Ismailis, which got into European languages, which contributed to the creation of a distorted image of the entire movement in Christian Europe.
Already at an early stage, two levels of Ismaili doctrine were distinguished: external (azzahir), accessible to ordinary members of the community, and esoteric (al-batin), open only to initiates, occupying the highest levels of the Ismaili spiritual hierarchy. The external teaching demanded from the believers the strict observance of the Shariah prescriptions. It differed little from the religious and legal practice of the Imamis. The inner teaching included an allegorical interpretation of the Qur'an (tawil), Sharia, and hidden philosophical and religious truths (alhaqaik), which were based on a mystical interpretation of the numbers and letters of the Arabic alphabet. The Ismailis were strongly influenced by Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and Muslim peripatetism of falsafa. According to the Ismaili cosmogony, the absolute divine Truth (al-haqq), devoid of forms and signs, separated from itself the World Mind (al-akl), which in turn gave rise to the World Soul by emanation, which created the visible world from seven moving spheres.
The Ismailis consider the earthly world to be a reflection of the cosmic order. Absolute divine Truth, World Mind, World Soul, primary matter, space, time and the perfect man as the crown of creation represent the seven stages of emanation in the heavenly world (al'alam al-ulvi) and the earthly world (dar al-ibda). In the sensory world, these seven stages correspond to the seven great prophetic cycles (advar) - periods between prophetic revelations. Each cycle is subdivided into seven minor cycles. Seven prophets serve as the earthly incarnation of the World Mind: Adam, Ibrahim (Abraham), Nuh (Noah), Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus Christ), Mohammed and Ismail. Each opens a new stage of divine revelation. The small prophetic cycle is determined by seven imams who are under the prophets [for example, Harun (Aaron) under Musa and Ali ibn Abi Talib under Muhammad] and explaining the hidden meaning of God's messages.
The Ismaili literary tradition is known in Persian, Arabic, Urdu and other languages. At an early stage, it included mainly theological treatises. The dogma of the Ismailis of Syria and Iran is the most developed. The foundations of the doctrine are set forth in the works on Ismaili law - "Ummal-kitab" ("Mother of Books", the beginning of the 10th century), "Daaim al-Islam" ("Pillars of Islam") qadi al-Numan (died in 974), as well as in al-Majalis al-Mu'ayadiyya (Collection of Sermons) by al-Mu'ayyad fid-Din ash-Shirazi (died 1077/78). Under the Fatimids, the works of Abu-l-Hasan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Nasafi (died in 942 or 943), Hamid ad-Din al-Kirmani (996-1021), Abu Hatim al-Razi (10th century), Yaqub al-Sijistani (died 943?). By the 10-13th centuries, the Ismaili chronicles of the Fatimid (works of Ibn Zulak al-Musabbihi, al-Qudai, qadi al-Numan) and Alamut (biography of Hasan al-Sabbah, etc.) states were compiled, which were preserved fragmentarily, since most of them were destroyed by the Ayyubids and after the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. There were 4 independent Ismaili literary traditions: Persian (Nizari Kukhistani, 14th century; Abu Ishak Kukhistani, 15th century; Khairkhvah Harati, 16th century, etc.), Central Asian (Nasir Khusrav), Syrian (Rashid ad-Din Sinan, 12th century); Amir ibn Amir al-Basri, 14th century) and Indian; are represented by religious and philosophical treatises, biographies, chronicles, liturgical and heroic songs, hymns, lyrical poems. A new upsurge of Ismaili literature took place in Badakhshan at the end of the 19th - 20th centuries, where the writers Mirza Sang-Mukhhamad Badakhshi, Fazl-Ali-Bek Mirza Surkh Afsar, Qurbon Muhammad-zod, Mukhabbat Shokhzod, poets Mullo Lochin, Mirzo, Khushnazar Pomir-zod worked , Adim.
The widespread notion in Islamic studies that the Ismailis created a secret centralized network of institutions to propagate their teachings is not entirely true. The strict gradation of initiation (al-balag) into the innermost secrets of the Ismailis, known from Ismaili sources, provides an ideal model. In reality, the forms of Ismaili propaganda varied by era and region. The imam led her. The earthly world was divided into 12 "islands" (al-jazair), at the head of each of which was the supreme preacher appointed by the imam (dai duat al-jazeera). The next step was occupied by hujjat al-imam. The advisers to the head of the "island" were 30 preachers (naqib), each of whom, according to the number of hours in a day, received 12 "visible" (day) and 12 "invisible" (night) assistants (dai), who were obliged to debate with scientists (ulema) and preach to the common people. Prepared by the visible dai, the new convert went to the invisible preacher, who took an oath of allegiance from him. He could then become a dai himself.
In the late 12th century, the Nizaris simplified the hierarchy. The organization of the Mustalites is even simpler: from those who have received a spiritual education, administrators (amil) are sent to local communities who are in charge of rituals, courts, collecting taxes and delivering them to the supreme preacher (ad-dai al-mutlyak). In 1840, the residence of the Nizari imam moved from Iran to India. Using new methods of community leadership and a developed network of charitable organizations, the last two imams, known as the Aga Khan, turned the Nizari community into a mass religious community that is active in missionary activity (dawa) and now has several million people living in more than 25 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. The Suleimanites who remained in Yemen are ruled by an imam from the city of Najran (since 1934 in Saudi Arabia). The residence of the spiritual head of the Daudids (ad-dai al-mutlak) is now located in the city of Mumbai (India). The total number of Daudites is about 700 thousand, Suleymanites - 100 thousand people.
Lit.: Ivanow W. Studies in early Persian Ismailism. 2nd ed. Bombay, 1955; Fyzee A. A. A. Compendium of Fatimid law. Simla, 1969; Dodikhudoev Kh. D. Essays on the Philosophy of Ismailism: General Characteristics of the Philosophical Doctrine of the X-XIV centuries. Shower., 1976; Stroeva L.V. The State of the Ismailis in Iran in the XI-XIII centuries. M., 1978; Lewis W. The Assassins. N. Y., 2003; Daftari F. A Brief History of Ismailism. traditions of the Muslim community. M., 2003; he is. Traditions of Ismailism in the Middle Ages. M., 2006; Hodgson M. J. S. Order of the Assassins. The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismailis with the Islamic World. St. Petersburg, 2004; Petrushevsky I.P. Islam in Iran in the 7th-15th centuries. 2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 2007; Dodykhudoeva L. R., Reisner M. L. Poetic language as a means of the "Good Word" in the work of Nasir Khusrav. M., 2007.
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