States People Centers Other In Nizari Isma'ili doctrine,[1] imamate (Arabic: إمامة) is a concept which defines the political, religious and spiritual dimensions of authority concerning Islamic leadership over the nation of believers.
With respect to their spiritual and religious nature, the Imams are considered living manifestations of the divine word as well as intermediaries (wasilah in Qur'an 5:35) between God and the Ummah.
[4] Ismaili Muslims consider love and devotion for the living imam, his deputies and missionaries an integral part of the religion and classify it within the Seven Pillars of faith.
The Ismailis record several periods in which generations of Imams lived a clandestine lifestyle resulting from political rivalry, religious persecution, and often both.
Ismaili literature traditionally refers to these periods of time as eras of concealment, or dawr al-satr in Arabic.
"[6] However serving and humble the Imam of the Time may be, in the eyes of his devotees he is spiritually revered as the asylum of the universe and a blessing worthy of protection and sacrifice.
Among the rights of the flock against their Imam is the maintaining of the Book of God and the Sunna of His Prophet, may God bless him and his family, and restitution from those who treat them unjustly for those so treated, and from the powerful among them for the weak, from the noble of them for the lowly, investigating their manner of life and the differing conditions of it, looking solicitously upon his dependants in his efforts, watching over them with his eye.
Thus, when describing the essence of an Imam, the spiritual Nizari instructor of Rumi, the great Shams Tabrizi, wrote: The meaning of the 'Book of God' is not the text (of the Quran); it is the Man who Guides.
[12][13] Portugal’s Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, and other senior government officials witnessed the ceremony in Lisbon’s 18th century Palace of Necessidades, home of the Portuguese Foreign Ministry.
[15] In addition, the Ismaili Imamat and Aga Khan Development Network share a long history with Portugal to help improve the quality of life for people within Lusophone communities and around the world.
[21][22] At al-Ghadir Khumm, by God's direct and emphatic command, Muhammad designated his cousin and son-in-law Ali—husband of his daughter Fatima-tz-Zahra—as his successor to his spiritual office as the first Imam in the continuing line of hereditary Imams and as his successor to his temporal office as the first Caliph of the entire Muslim ummah (community).
Ali was then accepted as the successor to Mohammad's leadership at al-Ghadir Khumm by about 100,000 pilgrims on their return journey after participating in Muhammad's farewell pilgrimage, his last one before his death that same year.
At al-Ghadir Khumm the most prominent and closest Companions of the Prophet (the Asaba) "gave their allegiance (bayah) personally to Ali under Muhammad's supervision."
They agree that Muhammad on his return journey from the final pilgrimage stopped at an oasis between Mecca and Medina known as Ghadir Khumm and addressed the large gathering of Muslims assembled there at his explicit command even though it was excruciatingly hot that day in order to hear God's special message to them (the people) according to God's message Muhammad himself had received at Ghadir Khumm directly from God via the Quranic Ayat 5:67 thus: "O Apostle: Deliver (to the people) what has been revealed to you from your Lord.
Ali, the son of Abu Talib, is my brother, my executor (Wasi), and my successor (Caliph), and the leader (Imam) after me.
The two most recent Nizari Ismaili Imams titled Aga Khan III and Aga Khan IV have replaced the obligation to perform the daily prayers from five times a day to three times a day by following the Quranic injunction rather than following Muhammad's custom (hadith and sunnah), in order to ease the religious pressures on the Muslim in the modern world.
For example, they have dispensed with the veil for women and replaced it with dressing according to common decency in the country of one's residence: "But purdah, as now known, itself did not exist till long after the Prophet’s death and is no part of Islam.
That we Muslims should saddle ourselves with this excretion of Persian custom, borrowed by the Abbassides, is due to that ignorance of early Islam which is one of the most extraordinary of modern conditions."