ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the channel through which the Rasail reached Erznka was the Ismaili movement and its missionaries or dais. The Ismailis managed to develop a sophisticated system of political-religious propaganda. Positioned against the Sunni-Arab establishment and from their special centers and strongholds, they dispatched agents and missionaries into many parts of the Islamic world to preach their batini doctrines. The missionaries spread the word about the arrival of the imam-mahdi and, as planned, eventually the movement achieved its goal when the Ismailis Fatimid dynasty appeared in Tunisia in 909. Erznka, in Armenian also called Erez, Eriza, Erizawan, and Arznka, was a pagan center and the capital of the province of Ekeleac', a historical Armenian district on the upper reaches of the western Euphrates. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this city at the time—as far as Armenians are concerned—is that Erznka was a wide gateway to and from Islamic culture.
