This book brings together 18 papers, originally presented at a symposium convened in 2017 by the Ismaili Special Collections Unit of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. It is divided into seven sections, which together admirably reflect both the current vitality and diversity in Ismaili studies, and the exceptional richness of the manuscript collection of the Institute of Ismaili Studies itself.
Section I (“The shaping of a new field”) includes a panoramic view of Ismaili scholarship from its beginnings in the first decades of the nineteenth century to the present (Farhad Daftary) as well as a poignant evocation of one side (the other side has unfortunately not so far been located) of the correspondence between two great figures of the discipline, Paul Kraus and Ḥusayn al-Ḥamdānī (François de Blois).
Section II concentrates on the manuscript tradition of two important and highly influential texts, respectively the encyclopaedic corpus of Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (Carmela Baffioni and Omar Alí-de-Unzaga, who both make use of IIS manuscripts which were not considered as part of the ongoing OUP–IIS project of critically editing the Epistles, thus shedding new light on the composition and early circulation of the corpus) and al-Rāzī's heresiographical Kitāb al-Zīna (Cornelius Berthold).
Section III explores the early Ṭayyibī literature through meticulous studies of IIS copies of two of its famous representatives, on the one hand the voluminous Majmū‘ al-tarbīya traditionally ascribed to al-Ḥārithī in the twelfth century (Delia Cortese), and on the other the Mukhtaṣar al-ūsūl by al-Wālid from about the same time (Monica Scotti).
Section IV includes three papers dedicated to the Alamūt period of Nizārī history: one is concerned with the biographical account of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ through the Badakhshān manuscripts of the Sargudhasht-i Sayyidnā (Miklós Sárközy), another with the recently discovered ʿAhd-i Sayyidnā on the consolidation of the Alamūt nizārī Daʿwa (Karim Javan), and the third with the manuscripts of the Haft Bāb and the Dīwān-i Qā’immiyyāt, two treatises authored by Ḥasan-i Mamūd-i Kātib (S.J. Badakhchani).
Section V focuses on Satpanthī manuscript culture as transmitted through Ginān literature in Ismaili or non-Ismaili circles in South Asia. One of the two contributions to this section ponders the question of the name and origin of the communal script used in the manuscripts of these communities (Shafique N. Virani), whereas the other explores the question of the scribes and literati who were instrumental in disseminating Sarpanth literature, with the conclusion that the portraying of the Khojas as merchants and traders as found in popular literature needs to be significantly re-appraised (Wafi Momin).
Section VI includes no fewer than four contributions on Central Asian Ismaili communities, discussing respectively the Ismaili–Sufi relationships through the example of the works attributed to Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī (Orkhan Mir-Kasimov), the poetical Salām-nāma of Shāh Ḍiyā’ī-i Shughnānī from Badakhshān (Nourmamadcho Nourmamadchoev), the question of authorship of the Ṣaḥīfat al-Nāẓirīn traditionally ascribed to Sayyid Surhāb Walī Badakhshānī, but which might have also been transmitted in another redaction attributed to Ghiyāth al-Dīn Iṣfahānī (Daniel Beben), and the transmission of the Haft Arkān-i Sharī‘a, of Ismaili provenance (Yahia Baiza).
Section VII, with two contributions, is concerned with the transmission of the Quranic text on the basis of particular manuscripts held in the collections of the IIS, highlighting the significance of marginalia and interlinear annotations in one case (Asma Hilali) and different types of paratextual features in the other (Walid Ghali). In the introduction to the volume he has edited, and which also briefly recalls the gradual expansion of the manuscript collections of the IIS, Wafi Momin provides a timely reminder of how, in the face of distorted sources hostile to Ismailism – the only ones known and used by the Orientalists before the publication of Wladimir Ivanow's seminal A Guide to Ismaili Literature (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1933) –, “the identification and publication of textual sources transmitted via privately circulating manuscripts, and the production of bibliographic surveys expanding upon an ever growing repository of ‘Ismaili literature’, have remained a hallmark of scholarship in Ismaili studies” (p. 4). Through the variety of subjects covered, the up-to-dateness of their content, and the formal quality of the book as a whole, there is no doubt that this open access and richly illustrated volume is exactly in line with the same approach and that it will provide an excellent basis for future research not only in the field of Ismaili studies stricto sensu, but also in Islamic studies more generally.
