Dedicated to the achievements of Farhad Daftary, the foremost authority in Ismaili Studies of our time, this volume gathers together a number of studies on intellectual and political history, particularly in the three main areas where the significance of Daftary’s scholarship has had the largest impact – Ismaili Studies as well as Persian Studies and Shi‘i Studies in a wider context. It focuses, but not exclusively, on the intellectual production of the IsmailisAdherents of a branch of Shi’i Islam that considers Ismail, the eldest son of the Shi’i Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), as his successor. and their role in history, with discussions ranging from some of the earliest Ismaili texts, to thinkers from the Fatimid and the AlamutFortress of the Nizari Ismailis in northern Iran, which fell to the Mongols in 654 AH/1256 CE. periods as well as relations of the FatimidsMajor Muslim dynasty of Ismaili caliphs in North Africa (from 909) and later in Egypt (973–1171) More with other dynasties. Containing essays from some of the most respected scholars in Ismaili, Shi‘i and Persian Studies (including Patricia Crone, M. A. Amir-Moezzi, C. Edmund Bosworth and Robert Gleave), the book makes a significant contribution to wider scholarship in philosophical theology and medieval Islam. The contributors include: I. Afshar, H. Algar, M. A. Amir-Moezzi, S. J. Badakhchani, C. Baffioni, C. E. Bosworth, D. Cortese, P. Crone, D. De Smet, R. Gleave, H. Haji, I. Hajnal, A. H. Hamdani, C. Hillenbrand, A. C. Hunsberger, H. Landolt, L. Lewisohn, W. Madelung, A. Nanji, A. J. Newman, I. K. Poonawala and P. E. Walker.
Foreword, Azim Nanji
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
1. Introduction: A Biographical Sketch
Omar Alí-de-Unzaga
2. Bibliography of the Works of Farhad Daftary
3. Persian, the Other Sacred Language of Islam: Some Brief Notes
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi
4. Sunni Claims to Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq
Hamid Algar
5. The Kitāb al-Rusūm wa’l-izdiwāj wa’l-tartīb Attributed to ʿAbdān (d. 286/899): Edition of the Arabic Text and Translation
Wilferd Madelung and Paul E. Walker
6. Abū Tammām on the Mubayyiḍa
Patricia Crone
7. The Ikhwān al-ṢafāʾFrom Arabic, lit. ‘Brethren of Purity’, a group of learned scholars who were based in Basra and Baghdad around the last quarter of the t10th century CE. It is more…: Between al-Kindī and al-Fārābī
Abbas Hamdani
8. Ibdāʿ, Divine Imperative and Prophecy in the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ
Carmela Baffioni
9. Some Aspects of the External Relations of the Qarāmiṭa in Baḥrayn
István Hajnal
10. A Distinguished Slav Eunuch of the Early Fatimid Period: al-Ustādh Jawdhar
Hamid Haji
11. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and his Refutation of Ibn Qutayba
Ismail K. Poonawala
12. The Risāla al-Mudhhiba Attributed to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān: Important Evidence for the Adoption of Neoplatonism by Fatimid Ismailism at the Time of al-Muʿizz?
Daniel De Smet
13. Cosmos into Verse: Two Examples of Islamic Philosophical Poetry in Persian
Alice C. Hunsberger
14. Early Evidence for the Reception of Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s Poetry in Sufism: ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s Letter on the Taʿlīmīs
Hermann Landolt
15. A Dream Come True: Empowerment Through Dreams Reflecting Fatimid–Sulayhid Relations
Delia Cortese
16. From the ‘Moses of Reason’ to the ‘Khiḍr of the Resurrection’: The Oxymoronic Transcendent in Shahrastānī’s Majlis-i maktūb…dar Khwārazm
Leonard Lewisohn
17. Poems of the Resurrection: Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib and his Dīwān-i Qāʾimiyyā
S. Jalal Badakhchani
18. Further Notes on the Turkish Names in Abu’l-Faḍl Bayhaqī’s Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī
C. Edmund Bosworth
19. A Book List from a Seventh/Thirteenth-Century Manuscript Found in Bāmyān
Iraj Afshar
20. What’s in a Name? Tughtegin – ‘the Minister of the Antichrist’?
Carole Hillenbrand
21. SafavidsA major Shi’i dynasty which ruled Persia (1501-1732 CE), and was succeeded by the Afsharids. (See also Qizilbash, Safawiyya.) and ‘Subalterns’: The Reclaiming of Voices
Andrew J. Newman
22. Compromise and Conciliation in the Akhbārī–Uṣūlī Dispute: Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī’s Assessment of ʿAbd Allāh al-Samāhījī’s Munyat al-Mumārisīn
Robert Gleave
Bibliography
Index
Omar Alí-de-Unzaga is the Coordinator of the Qur’anic Studies Unit at The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), London. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and is currently preparing a monograph entitled A Philosophical Reading of the Qur’an(also Koran. Arabic term meaning, ‘recitation’ or ‘scripture’): Muslims believe that the Holy Qur’an contains divine revelations to the Prophet Muhammed received in Mecca and Medina over a period of… More: Exegetical Thought in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ). He is also the Editor of the Qur’anic Studies Series published in association with the IIS.