ABSTRACT
Throughout the mediaeval history of Islam, it is difficult to distinguish between political and religious movements. Two categories of movements, however, are clearly recognizable; the first concerned primarily with achieving political power but using religion as a cover, and the second concerned primarily with religious belief, but involved in politics on account of persecution by more powerful groups and on account of the need for political protection to ensure free propagation of that particular doctrine. It is to the second category that the Isma‘ili movement belongs; for although political considerations and human circumstances exercised considerable influence upon the development of the doctrines of the Isma‘ili movement, which like other Shi‘i movements appears, from the historical point of view, to have had its origin in the issue of religious authority after the death of the Prophet, nevertheless Isma‘ilism was able to provide in its early period a religious philosophy based on a belief in an Eternal Order, which itself springs from their belief in One God, His Apostles, and their revealed Books. This is very similar to the general Muslim view, although the Ismailis like other Shi‘a and Sufi Sunni Muslims believe that obscure passages in the Qur’an, have some inner sense; and that this inner sense was interpreted by Ali as the Wasi (Executor) of the Prophet Muhammad, and this authority was transferred after Ali’s death by a chain of hereditary Imams descending from Ali and his wife Fatima, the Prophet’s beloved daughter. Each of these Imams is believed to have passed on the ilm, which in the terminology of the Isma‘ilis means the spiritual 72science of religion and is to them the right and reliable version of Islam. Moreover, the lsma‘ilis asserted that the revelation sent down through the Prophet Muhammad was the final in the series of revelations already sent down through the previous great Prophets who are called Natiqs (Speakers or Revelers); namely Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham and Jesus, each of whom had an Asas 1 to succeed him. This meant, in the belief of the lsma‘ilis, that the works of the Great Prophets who are mentioned in the Qur’an and the Christian and Jewish scriptures are complementary to one another; if they seem to have some differences, this will be explicable as the result of the different circumstances under which each of these Prophets came to reveal his particular Shari‘a, i.e. religious path, appropriate for his time. The revelation through Muhammad was God’s final message to mankind. This basic doctrine, from which spring all the beliefs and philosophy of Isma‘ilism, will be referred to in this chapter as the doctrine of the universal divine order. In the remaining two chapters, the principles from which the Isma‘ilis derived their religious philosophy will be referred to as the doctrine of the universal divine order.
