The Farhad Daftary Doctoral Scholarship Programme 2026 has awarded full scholarships to Hidoyatullo Shozodamamadov (GPISH 2025) and Muhammad Ali Sohail (GPISH 2025) to pursue doctoral studies at the University of Oxford.
Hidoyatullo Shozodamamadov
comes from the Badakhshan region of Tajikistan. He completed the Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities (GPISH) at The Institute of Ismaili Studies (ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡), followed by another master’s in the same field from . He will begin pursuing a at the in October 2026. His research focuses on the representation of Ismaili hermeneutical interpretation in anti-Ismaili polemical literature.
Hidoyatullo said:
My thesis examines anti-Ismaili polemical works, particularly those by al-Baqillani (d. 1013) and Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the two most prominent AshÊ¿ari theologians, together with the response of Ibn al-Walid (d. 1215), the fifth »å²¹Ê¿¾± of the post-Fatimid Tayyibi community.
…It will examine al-Baqillani’s and al-Ghazali’s representations and critiques of the Ismaili conception of ³Ù²¹Ê¾·É¾±±ô, particularly its application within Qur’anic hermeneutics and broader metaphysical interpretations. It seeks to assess the nature and intellectual merits of their critiques, as well as the extent to which such polemical representations accurately reflect Ismaili understandings of ³Ù²¹Ê¾·É¾±±ô. My research asks whether such disputes are useful contributions to substantive theological and philosophical debates or should be better understood as politically inflected interventions.
Hidoyatullo hopes that studying at the doctoral level will enable him to engage deeply with Ismaili ³Ù²¹Ê¾·É¾±±ô and the nuances that are crucial to understanding Ismaili thought on this important topic, which can serve as a gateway to a broader engagement with Ismaili philosophy as a whole.
Muhammad Ali Sohail
Muhammad Ali Sohail is from Karachi, Pakistan. He completed the Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities at The Institute of Ismaili Studies (ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡), followed by an at the . He currently serves as a Graduate Research Intern at the Ismaili Special Collections Unit (ISCU) at ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡ and will pursue a . His research sits at the intersection of studies on digital religion, collective memory, and critical AI, with a focus on the global Nizari Ismaili community.
Ali said:
My research will examine how generative artificial intelligence is transforming collective memory, cultural identity and religious authority among Nizari Ismailis around the world.
…For much of the community’s modern history, the transmission of religious and historical knowledge was mediated through centralised institutions. The rise of social networking platforms then enabled more decentralised, but still human-led, negotiation of that knowledge. Since 2023, however, large language models have become an increasingly consulted source of answers about Ismaili doctrine, history, and practice. These systems do not simply host discourse, they synthesise, recompose, and transmit religious and historical knowledge, often with striking confidence and little accountability.
The project conceptualises generative AI as a mnemonic agent: a non-human actor that participates in remembering by generating plausible pasts and coherent narratives from probabilistic associations. It introduces the concept of ‘synthetic canons’, AI-generated assemblages of religious and socio-historical knowledge that simulate coherence and authority while remaining detached from the scholarly accountability traditionally provided by official Ismaili institutions. For a transnational community of thirteen to fifteen million people across more than thirty-five countries, one historically defined by centralised authority and disciplined traditions of knowledge transmission, the stakes are significant. Digitally mediated misinformation targeting Ismailis has, in the past, translated into real-world violence, underscoring the urgency of understanding AI-mediated information ecosystems.
Employing a mixed-methods design combining algorithmic audits of major AI systems, social network analysis, and digital ethnography of online Ismaili spaces, the research traces how AI-generated content circulates, gains legitimacy, and reshapes what community members come to accept as their shared past. As a community insider with direct experience of the ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡â€™s digital archiving and collections work, I hope this research will help the community and its institutions navigate the algorithmic age. My hope is that my thesis may extend, in a new register, the tradition of rigorous scholarship on the Ismailis that Dr Daftary’s own work exemplifies, including his dismantling of the ‘assassin legends’ that once defined outsider narratives of the community.
