Nizari Isma'ilism
States People Centers Other Nizari Isma'ilism (Arabic: النزارية, romanized: al-Nizāriyya) are the largest segment of the Ismaili Muslims, who are the second-largest branch of Shia Islam after the Twelvers.
[1] Nizari teachings emphasise independent reasoning or ijtihad; pluralism—the acceptance of racial, ethnic, cultural and inter-religious differences; and social justice.
Nizari Isma'ili history is often traced through the unbroken hereditary chain of guardianship, or walayah, beginning with Ali Ibn Abi Talib, whom Shias believe the prophet Muhammad declared his successor as Imam during the latter's final pilgrimage to Mecca, and continued in an unbroken chain to the most recent Imam, Shah Rahim Al-Husayni, the Aga Khan.
Dai Hassan-i Sabbah, who had studied and accepted Ismailism in Fatimid Egypt, had been made aware of this fact personally by al-Mustansir.
After Al-Mustansir died in 1094, Al-Afdal Shahanshah, the all-powerful Armenian Vizier and Commander of the Armies, wanted to assert, like his father before him, dictatorial rule over the Fatimid State.
The schism finally broke the remnants of the Fatimid Empire, and the now-divided Ismailis separated into the Musta'li following (inhabiting regions of Egypt, Yemen, and western India) and those pledging allegiance to Nizar's son Al-Hadi ibn Nizar (living in regions of Iran and Syria).
Returning from Armenia, Henry spoke with Grand Master Rashid ad-Din Sinan (known to the West as "The Old Man of the Mountain") at one of his castles, al-Kahf, in Syria.
[5]: p:146 The Fidais' apparent lack of fear of personal injury or even death could not be understood by the Crusaders, who propagated the black legends of the so-called Assassins.
[5]: p:14 These black legends were then further popularized in the Western world by Marco Polo, the Venetian storyteller who had, in fact, never investigated Sinan, in contradiction to his claim that he had.
[5]: p:14 This tale of the "Old Man of the Mountain" was assembled by Marco Polo and accepted by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, a 19th-century Austrian orientalist responsible for much of the spread of this legend.
Karim succeeded his grandfather Aga Khan III (Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah) as Imām in 1957, when he was a twenty-year-old undergraduate at Harvard University.
Planning of programs and institutions became increasingly difficult due to the rapid changes in the newly emerging post-colonial nations where many of his followers resided.
[15] Following an agreement with the government of Portugal in 2015, the Aga Khan IV officially designated the Henrique de Mendonça Palace, located on Rua Marquês de Fronteira in Lisbon, as the "Diwan (seat) of the Ismaili Imamat" (Portuguese: Divã do Imamato Ismaeli) on 11 July 2018.
It seeks to extend an understanding of religion and revelation to identify the outwardly apparent (zahir), and also to penetrate to the roots, to retrieve and disclose that which is the inner underlying (batin).
This process of discovery engages both the intellect ('aql) and the spirit (ruh), generating an integral synergy to illuminate and disclose truths (haqi'qat) culminating in gnosis (ma'rifat).
[21] Over the many phases of Nizārī Ismāʿīlī history – pre-Fāṭimid, Fāṭimid, Alamūt, Post-Alamūt, Anjudan, etc., there has never been a single unified view of eschatology.
On the rewards of Paradise, al-Sijistānī writes in the Kitāb al-Yanābīʿ: لما كان قصارى الثواب انما هي اللذة ، وكانت اللذة الحسية منقطعة زائلة ، وجب ان تكون التي ينالها المثاب ازلية غير فانية ، باقية غير منقطعة .
كان من هذا القول وجوب لذه العلم للمثاب في دار البقاء ، كما قال الله عز وجل : اكلها دائم وظلها تلك عقبى الذين اتقوا
From this statement, it necessarily follows that the pleasure of knowledge is the reward in the hereafter, as God, glorified and sublime, said: "Its fruit is everlasting and its shade, that is the destination of those who are righteous (Qurʾān 13:35)"[23] According to al-Sijistānī, the most important piece of knowledge to acquire is the recognition of the one who initiates the resurrection, whom he calls Ṣāḥib al-Qiyāmah (Lord of Resurrection).
Al-Sijistānī writes in the Kitāb al-Yanābīʿ: فترى الناس على طبقتين : طبقة ممن آمنوا به وصدقوه وانتظروا ظهور، فهم بذلك النور مقتبسون، متنعمون ، مستبشرون .
Like both al-Sijistānī and Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī believed that paradise and hell were spiritual and mental states that the soul experiences and not physical places or sensual pains and desires.
He writes: There is also only one real Hell, and that is eternal punishment, everlasting disappointment and eternal non-existence; the meaning of all this is being outcast from God in every sense of the word[27]The last most public eschatological view espoused by any Ismāʿīlī was written by the 48th Ismāʿīlī Imām – Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh Āgā Khān III – who endorses a universalist position in regards to salvation and specifically states in his Memoirs that he prays "that all may be reconciled in Heaven in a final total absolution".
The Aga Khan IV said that he had no objection to increasingly-common mixed marriages, and met non-Ismaili spouses and children during his various deedars throughout the world.
In fact, many members of his family, including his daughter Princess Zahra Aga Khan, have married non-Ismailis in inter-faith ceremonies.
The latter refers to the abstention from communicating the esoteric knowledge of revelation (tanzīl) and interpretation (ta’wīl) to those who are not ready to receive it.
