Walāyah in the Fāimid Ismāīlī Tradition - Softcover

Alexandrin, Elizabeth R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438466269 ISBN 13: 9781438466262

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2018

Synopsis

Explores the relationship between revelation and reason in medieval Islamic intellectual history.

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 Fāimid 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 Fāimid 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 Fāimid 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.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth R. Alexandrin is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Senior Fellow at St. John's College, the University of Manitoba, Canada.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1438466269
• ISBN 13: 9781438466262
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376