The Fatimid era is ubiquitous today in the discourse of the Nizari Ismailiimamate. Yet this was not always the case. As with other societies and religious communities the world over, the arrangement and presentation of history in the Ismaili tradition has evolved in the course of time, with new historiographical agendas and subjects of emphasis emerging or receding in response to changes in the political and social contexts.
In this chapter the place of theFatimidsin the cultural memory of the Nizari IsmailisAdherents of a branch of Shi’i Islam that considers Ismail, the eldest son of the Shi’i Imam Ja尪far al-廜〢diq (d. 765), as his successor. in the post-Mongol era will be explored.It will be argued that the emphasis placed on the Fatimid era in present-day Nizari discourse is a relatively recent development, rooted in the dynamic changes that occurred in the social and political context of the community in the 18th and 19th centuries. Rather than theFatimidsMajor Muslim dynasty of Ismaili caliphs in North Africa (from 909) and later in Egypt (9731171) More, the primary locus of Nizari communal memory in the earlier period from the 7th/13th AH to the 12th/18th CE centuries was theAlamutera, and particularly the declaration of theqiyama(spiritual resurrection) underImamHasanala dhikrihil-salamatAlamutin 559 AH / 1164 CE. I
Author
Daniel Beben
Daniel Beben is Assistant Professor of History at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He received his PhD from Indiana University Bloomington with a dissertation entitledThe Legendary Biographies of Nasir-i Khusraw: Memory and Textualization in Early Modern Persian Ismailism. His research focuses on the history of Ismaili and Sufi communities in pre-modern Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. His current projects include a monograph on the history of Ismailism in Central Asia and a co-authored work on genealogical traditions in the Badakhshan region.