The Fatimids and their traditions of Learning pdf

The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning – Heinz Halm

THE FATIMIDS AND THEIR TRADITIONS OF LEARNING

…orientalists, too, have studied the Ismailis on the basis of hostile sources and the fanciful occidental accounts of medieval times.

Thus, legends and misconceptions have continued to surround the Ismailis through the twentieth century.

In more recent decades, however, the field of Ismaili studies has been revolutionized due to the recovery and study of genuine Ismaili sources on a large scale – manuscript materials which in different ways survived the mass destruction of the Fatimid and Nizari Ismaili libraries.

These sources, representing diverse literary traditions produced in Arabic, Persian and Indic languages, had hitherto been secretly preserved in private collec­tions in India, Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.

Modern progress in Ismaili studies has already necessitated a complete rewriting of the history of the Ismailis and their contributions to Islamic civilization.

 It has now become clear that the Ismailis founded important libraries and institutions of learning such as al-Azhar and the Dar al-‘Ilm in Cairo, while some of their learned da’is or missionaries developed unique intellectual traditions amalgamating their theological doctrines with a diversity of philosophical traditions in complex metaphysical systems.

The Ismaili patronage of learning and extension of hospitality to non-Ismaili scholars was maintained even in such difficult times as the Alamut period when the community was preoccupied with its survival in an extremely hostile milieu.

The Ismaili Heritage Series, published under the auspices of the Department of Academic Research and Publications of The Institute of Ismaili Studies, aims to make available to wide audiences the results of modern scholarship on the Ismailis and they are rich intellectual and cultural heritage as well as certain aspects of their more recent history and achievements.