HISTORY OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
SHIISM AND PROPHETIC PHILOSOPHY
Reference has just been made to the 'science of letters' which was to be so important for Jabir ibn Hayyan (see below, IV, 2), and even for Avicenna (see below, V, 4). It was borrowed from the Shiites by the Sunni mystics, and was extensively developed by Ibn al-'Arabi and his school. We know that for Mark the Gnostic, the body of Aletheia, Truth, was made up of the letters of the alphabet. For Mughirah ibn Sa'id al-'ljli—possibly the most ancient of Shiite gnostics {d. 119/737)—letters are the elements out of which the very 'body' of God is composed. Hence the significance of his speculations on the supreme Name of God: for example, seventeen people will rise again at the coming of the Imam-Mahdi, and each of them will be allotted one of the seventeen letters which make up the supreme Name. A systematic comparison of this with the Jewish Cabbalah has not yet been attempted.
whose famous controversies with his compatriot, the philosopherdoctor Rhazes, are discussed later (see below, IV, 4); Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani (fourth/tenth century), a profound thinker and the author of about twenty works written in a concise and difficult language; Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Nisaburi (fifth/eleventh century); Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. ca. 408/1017), a prolific and extraordinarily profound writer; as a da 'I of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, he was also the author of several treatises in which he argues against the Druze, the' separated brethren' of Ismailis; Mu'ayyad fi al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 470/1077), equally prolific in both Arabic and Persian, and holder of the high rank of bab (Threshold) in the esoteric hierarchy; the famous Nasir-i Khusraw (d. between 465/1072 and 470/1077), all of whose many works are written in Persian.
3. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to follow the transition between these texts which express what could be termed proto-Ismailism, and the triumphal period in which the coming of the Fatimid dynasty to Cairo in 296/909, with 'Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, was seen as the realization on earth of the Ismaili hope for the kingdom of God. Between the death of the Imam Muhammad, son of the Imam Isma'il, and the founder of the Fatimid dynasty, there is the obscure period of the three hidden Imams (mastur—not to be confused with the idea of the ghaybah of the twelfth Imam in Twelver Imamism). Let us merely observe that in Ismaili tradition, the second of these hidden Imams, Imam Ahmad, great-grandson of the Imam Isma'il, is considered to have sponsored the writing of the Encyclopaedia of the Ikhwan al-Safa', and to have been the author of al-Risalat al-Jami'ah, the synthesis which recapitulates the contents of the Encyclopaedia from the point of view of Ismaili esotericism (see below, IV, 3). In addition, we can mention a Yemeni author, Ja'far ibn Mansur al-Yaman. This brings us to the middle of the fourth/tenth century. At the end of this obscure period, we may remark the appearance of great systematic works, composed with perfect technique and using a precise philosophical vocabulary, even though we are unable to determine the context in which they were produced. Even more explicitly than in the case of the Twelver Shiites, the greatest names among these masters of Ismaili thought, apart from Qadi al-Nu'man (d. 363/974), all belong to Iranians: Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 322/933), 76
4. As we will see below (B, II, 1), the decision taken by the eighth Fatimid caliph, al-Mustansir bi-Allah, with regard to his successor, split the Ismaili community, after his death in 487/1094, into two branches. On the one hand, there was the branch of the so-called 'Oriental' Ismailis, the Ismailis of Persia, whose main centre was the 'command post' of Alamut in the mountains to the south-west of the Caspian Sea. In India today they are called Khojas, and they acknowledge the Aga Khan as their head. On the other hand, there was the branch of the so-called 'Occidental' Ismailis, the Ismailis of Egypt and Yemen, who acknowledged the Imamate of al-Musta'li, second son of al-Mustansir, and continued the ancient Fatimid tradition. For them, the last Fatimid Imam was Abu al-Qasim al-Tayyib, son of the tenth Fatimid caliph al-Amir bi-Ahkam Allah (d. 524/1130), and twenty-first Imam in the Imamic line which started with 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (thus giving us three heptads). But he disappeared while still a child, and as a matter of fact the Ismailis of this branch, known in India as Bohras, affirm, like the Twelver Shiites, the necessity of the Imam's occultation, with all its metaphysical implications. They owe obedience to a da'i or high priest, who is simply the representative of the invisible Imam. The fate of the literature of the Ismailism of Alamut will be discussed later. The literature of the 'occidental' Ismailis, who remained faithful to the ancient Fatimid tradition, is represented by a number of monumental works, which appeared particularly in Yemen towards the end of the sixteenth century, when the residence of the great da'i was 77