"I came in touch with the Ismailis for the first time in Persia, in February 1912. The world was quite different then. No one imagined that the Great World War I, with all its misery and suffering, was just around the corner. Persia was still living in her ancestral mediaeval style, and her affairs were largely going on in their traditional ways, as they were going on for centuries."

This is an edited version of an article which was originally published in Ilm Vol. 3, No.3, December 1977, pp.16-17.

Author

Vladimir Alekseevich Ivanow

Vladimir Alekseevich Ivanow, (b. St. Petersburg, Russia, 3 November 1886, d. Tehran, 19 June 1970; variously spelt Ivanov and Wladimir), was a Russian orientalist and leading pioneer in modern Ismaili studies. His father was a military doctor, and he spent his youth in his native city and Moscow, graduating in 1907 with distinction as a gold medallist from a gymnasium in St. Petersburg. 

 

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