Satr,concealment, a term used in a variety of senses, particularly by the梆莽鳥硃i梭勳聆聆硃.
TheIsmailisoriginally used it in reference to a period in their early history, calleddawr al-satrLit. period of concealment. Al-Q廎蘋 al-Nu尪mn (d. 974) uses the term dawr al-satr to refer to the period of around 150 years in which the Ismaili imams were hidden from…, stretching from soon after the death ofImamJafar al-Sadiq in 148/765 CE to the establishment of the Fatimid state in 297/909 CE.
The IsmailiimamIn general usage, a leader of prayers or religious leader. The Shi’i restrict the term to their spiritual leaders descended from 尪Al蘋 b. Ab蘋 廜珀lib and the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima., recognised as theqaimormahdiby the majority of the earlyIsmailis, was out of the public domain (mastur) during this period of concealment; in his absence, he was represented byhudjdjas (see Jafar b. Mansur al-Yaman,Kitab al-Kahf, ed. R. Strothmann, London 1952, 98-9; al-Shahrastani, 146). Later, theIsmailisof the Fatimid period, who allowed for continuity in theirimamate, recognised a series of three suchimams betweenImamMuhammad b. Ismail b. Jafar, their seventhimam, andImamAbd Allah al-Mahdi, founder of the Fatimid dynasty (see H.F. al-Hamdani,On the genealogy of Fatimid caliphs, Cairo 1958, text 11-14).
Author
Dr Farhad Daftary
Co-Director and Head of the Department of Academic Research and Publications
An authority in Shi’i studies, with special reference to its Ismaili tradition, Dr. Daftary has published and lectured widely in these fields of Islamic studies. In 2011 a Festschrift entitledFortresses of the Intellectwas produced to honour Dr. Daftary by a number of his colleagues and peers.