At some point close to or immediately after the advent of the Fatimids in North Africa, Abu’l-ʿAbbās, brother of the famous Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Shīʿī, was asked to compose an explanation of the stipulations governing zakāt and ṣadaqa and how such payments and patient compliance in observing them is connected to the daʿwa and access to ta’wīl-based knowledge. The work was called Mafātīḥ al-niʿma (The Keys to Grace) and it dates to a period before 911, which is when its author was put to death. Thus all its material about the Ismaili hierarchy, the role of the dāʿī and the imam, and the science of ta’wīl—to whom is it revealed and under what circumstances—is as early, perhaps earlier, than any other sources we have. Moreover, given the prominence of the man who wrote this treatise, it has critical political importance for the formation of the new Fatimid state.

Realpolitik & Sectarian strife: A re-appraisal of Fatimid rule in Syria during the reign of the Fatimid Imam-caliph al-‘Azīz bi’llāh (365-386/975-996) The inception of Fatimid rule in Syria in 970/1 elicited victories and defeats, rebellions and reconciliations. Upon their arrival in Egypt, a Fatimid presence in Syria became inevitable since it was in the Syrian buffer zone that the regional rivalries between the Fatimids in Egypt, the Buyids in Iraq and the Byzantines to the north of Syria were fought out. The contest for Syria was compounded moreover by a competing array of local Syrian factions, among them the Shia Hamdānids, independent military governors, Bedouin confederations, Qaramita contingents and local Syrian militias, each of whom sought patrons and protectors amongst the neighbouring empires, thus adding to the fractiousness of the shifting alliances between them. During the reign of al-‘Azīz bi’llāh Syria became the principal focus of Fatimid foreign policy, yet its fortunes there vacillated through the course of his 21 year reign. In interpreting the Fatimid presence in Syria, the resistance of the local elements is often framed in their opposition to the Fatimid Caliphate on account of its Ismaili Shi‘ism. The Sunni-Shi‘i rivalry, manifest in the Fatimid-Abbasid dialectic, is thus projected onto the dynamics of Fatimid rule in Syria. Using Fatimid involvement in Syria during the reign of al-‘Aziz bi’llah as a case-study, this paper examines the extent to which religious ideology beyond realpolitik influenced Fatimid fortunes in the region. Through a close reading of Syrian and Egyptian primary sources, including Ibn al-Qalānisī (d. 555/1160), Ibn ‘Asākir (d. 571/1176), Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1233), al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442) and Ibn al-Taghrī Birdī (815/1470), this paper reveals the interests of some medieval Sunni sources in presenting events pertaining to Fatimid rule in Syria in a predominantly sectarian hue.

It is well-known that the interrelated ideas of esoteric knowledge (‘ilm al-bāṭīn) and interpretation (ta‘wīl), as qualities borne by the sole righteous Imam, were central to Fatimid Ismaili thought and were amongst its most distinctive characteristics. Over the Fatimid period, a significant body of ta‘wīl literature was produced, much of which has only recently come to the attention of modern scholarship through the production of critical editions. The Kitāb Ta‘wīl al-sharī‘a, compiled and articulated by al-Qāḍī al-Nu‘mān on the authority of the fourth Fatimid Imam al-Mu‘izz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341-65/953-75), is one such work. This treatise became influential in subsequent periods and was mandated by later Fatimid dā‘īs as a pre-required reading for those seeking intellectual advancement in the doctrines of the da‘wa. This paper examines how the ideological and doctrinal content of the Ta‘wīl al-sharī‘a itself was conditioned by an over-riding interest in preparing the audience, that is the Fatimid dā‘īs, with a body of doctrine relevant to the dominant intellectual debates of the 10th and 11th century. It is thus now apparent that much of the content of the Ta‘wīl literature was deeply concerned with producing affirmations or reposes to cosmological and eschatological doctrines circulating in that era, particularly those dominant in theological debates that were then still raging between the Mu‘tazila and other schools of thought. While secondary impressions of ta‘wīl once suggested that it was narrow and insular in its own idiosyncratic methods, the Ta‘wīl al-sharī‘ā indicates instead a body of thought resonant with the dominant intellectual streams of the time.

Ilkhanid era chronicles of Juvayni (d. 1283), Rashid al-Din (d. 1318) and Kashani (d. ca 1337) record three very different narratives of Hasan-i Sabbah’s (r. 1090-1124) conversion to Ismailism. One of these accounts embedded in the story of the famed “three school fellows” is found only in the work of the last two historians. This story brought together the wazir Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092), the poet Omar Khayyam (d. 1131) and Hasan-i Sabbah in a childhood pact of blood brothers that the successful one amongst them would aid the others and that a betrayal of this by the Nizam led Hasan to convert to Ismailism. This paper examines the different layers in each of the conversion narratives and what they add to the biography, perhaps the hagiography, of the founder of the Nizari Ismaili polity in Iran (fl. 1090-1256). A new analysis of the “three school fellows” story - previously believed to be spurious - suggests its purpose, dating and the nature of the original Nizari source. It also sheds fresh light on the factionalism among the Nizaris and their relationships with the equally fractious Saljuqs in a period of immense tumult, shifting alliances and brutal conflict.