Walāyah in the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī Tradition Contributor(s): Alexandrin, Elizabeth R. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1438466269 ISBN-13: 9781438466262 Publisher: State University of New York Press OUR PRICE: $35.10 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2018 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Religion | Islam - Shi'a - History | Middle East - General - Religion | Islam - History |
Dewey: 297.822 |
Physical Information: 1" H x 6" W x 8.9" (1.19 lbs) 376 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Middle East - Religious Orientation - Islamic |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: In this original study, Elizabeth R. Alexandrin examines the complex relationships that can be inscribed between medieval Ismā'īlī thought as an intellectual tradition with a devotional practice of reliance on the imām, and as a politico-esoteric system that redefined governance during the Fāṭimid caliphate in the eleventh century. Alexandrin's work is a departure from recent Western scholarship that focuses on similarities among early Islamic traditions. She argues instead that, under the guidance of the Fāṭimid Ismā'īlī chief missionary al-Mu'ayyad fī al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1078 CE), the concept of walāyah (divine guidance) became closely associated with religio-political authority, on the one hand, and the perfection of the individual human being, on the other. By signaling and affirming how the Fāṭimid caliph-imāms were the heirs of walāyah and by proposing new definitions of the seal of God's friends (khātim al-awliyā' Allāh), al- Mu'ayyad broadened the contexts of making esoteric knowledge public and shifted the apocalyptic frameworks of Islamic messianism. |