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5 - THE ISMĀ‘ĪLĪ STATE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

M. G. S. Hodgson
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

In the midst of states held together by direct military power alone, the Ismā‘īlīs, or "Assassins of Alamϋt", formed a challenging exception. In the cultural life of the time, moreover, the Ismā‘īlī state played a perceptible role, even to the point of acting as host to prominent non-Ismā‘īlī intellectuals. Shi‘is had never been satisfied with the compromises of official Muslim life, which Sunnis had accepted as more or less inevitable up to a point. The Ismā‘īlīs of the Iranian highlands and the Fertile Crescent were not destined to overthrow the Saljuqs but rather to found a society apart, which was set over against Muslim society as a whole. The rigor and self-sufficiency of the doctrine were appropriate to the new sternness required of a movement in active and universal revolt. The justification of the schism, however, was quite legitimately doctrinal.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1968

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References

al-Athīr, Ibn. al-Kāmil fi-'l-ta'rīkh. Ed. Tornberg, C. J.. 13 vols. Leiden, 1851–76.
Corbin, Henry Histoire de la philosophie islamique, vol. I (Paris, 1964)
Stark, Freya , The Valleys of the Assassins (London, 1934).
Willey, P. R. E. The Castles of the Assassins. London, 1963.

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