Ismailism first came to the attention of the authorities in 891, when villagers from the countryside of Kufa were reported to have been infected by a new heresy. By then, as it turned out, lower Iraq had hosted an Ismaili mission for some sixteen years while other missions had sprung up, or were fast appearing, in Baḥrayn, Iran, Yemen, India, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa, and even in Baghdad itself. Where was it all coming from? The answer proved to be from Salamiyya in Syria, where a family, originally from al-Ahwāz in Khuzistan, was directing a grand movement to take over the Muslim world in the name of a new creed. By the time the ‘Abbāsids discovered this, the leader of the sect, the fourth member of the family to hold the leadership, had fled. He reappeared in 909 in what is now Tunisia as ‘Ubaydallāh al-Mahdī, founder of the Fatimid dynasty which ruled North Africa before moving to Egypt, where they held sway from 969 until 1171, when Saladin removed the dynasty.

THE EARLY DOCTRINE AND ITS ADHERENTS

The believers

The founders of Ismailism were probably breakaway Imamis. Practically all the early missionaries were Imami Shī‘ites by origin, as were many of their converts. Their first mission, in lower Iraq, is said to have begun in 261/874 or three years later, either way not long after the eleventh imam of the Imamis had died without an apparent successor (in 260/874).