ABSTRACT
There is no reason whatsoever to assume that the beliefs of the followers of I:Iamdan Qarmat in Southern 'Iraq differed in any respect from those held by the rest of the movement in its early days. The question arises what these beliefs were; and when we come to inquire into them, we must beware of the pitfall of attributing to earlier generations the doctrines professed by later ones, If we wish to find out the doctrines preached by the Isma 'iii missionaries in the second half of the third century A.H., the only admissible method is to examine contemporary authorities. I think I have found a way to recover, by confronting certain contemporary evidence with some later Isma 'ili texts, the original cosmological system taught by the Isma 'iliyya which had later to give way to more advanced doctrines. This original doctrine consists of a rather crude cosmological myth; but I have no time to discuss this aspect of the early Isma 'ili doctrine in greater detail here, for I must turn to their central teaching, that about the Imamate.
