Introduction

The Ismailis represent an important Shiʿi Muslim community with rich intellectual and literary traditions. The Ismailis continued to form a minority religious community within the Fatimid state, where the bulk of their subjects adhered to Sunni Islam and the Khariji; interpretations of Islam, with a significant community of Christian Copts. In modern times, the Nizari Ismailis have emerged as a progressive Muslim community with high standards of education and welfare. By the end of the fifth/eleventh century, the widespread literary campaign against the Ismailis had been astonishingly successful throughout the central Muslim lands. The long-awaited breakthrough in Ismaili studies resulted from the recovery and study of genuine Ismaili texts on a large scale. Modern scholarship in Ismaili studies was properly initiated in the 1930s in India, where significant collections of Ismaili manuscripts have been preserved in the Ismaili Bohra community, concentrated in Bombay and Gujarat.