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Muntazaal-akhbar ft akhbar al-du dt al-akhyar (The History of the Ismii iti Tayyibi da wa up to the Da udi-Sulaymdni Schism), by Qutb al-Din Sulaymani Burhdnpiri. Edited by SAMER E TRABOULSI. Beirut: DAR AL-GHARB AL-ISLAMI, 1999. Pp. 318.
This well produced and finely printed edition of an Arabic text written by an Indian Isma`ili Bohra during the first half of the thirteenth/nineteenth century, marks the entry of a promising young scholar into the field of Isma`ili studies. It is an important contribution and an excellent addition to the growing literature on the Isma'ilis. Traboulsi is to be congratulated and, when he finishes his projected edition of Idris `Imid al-Din's Nuzhat al-afkar, he will have contributed substantially to our knowledge of the Musta`li-Tayyib! da`wa in Yemen.
The text edited here deals with the history of Musta`liTayyibi da`wa in Yemen after the death of the Sulayhid Queen Arwa in 532/1137, and its subsequent transfer to Gujarat, on the west coast of India, around 946/1539, ending with the DdlidiSulaymdni schism following the death of the twenty-sixth dd'i Da'ud b. CAjabshah. One might recall that after the death of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir in 487/1094, the Isma`ilis were torn asunder over the succession to the imamate. Al-Musta`li, the youngest son of the deceased caliph, was recognized by most of the Isma`ilis in Egypt, many in Syria, and by the entire community in Yemen and India. The claims of Nizar, the eldest son of al-Mustansir, by contrast, were upheld by the Iranian da`wa under the leadership of Hasan-i Sabbah, and it later became known as the Nizari da`wa. Again, after the death of the Fatimid caliph al-Amir in 524/1130, when his cousin `Abd alMajid assumed the caliphate with the title al-Hafiz li-Din Allah, the Yemeni da`wa broke off its relations with Egypt and supported the claims made for al-Amir's infant son al-Tayyib. It thereby became...