The Ismailis
Through the influence of Sufism, the central institution of the Shiah, the Imam, the office occupied by their leaders, had acquired a mystical significance. To the Shiah, the true and hidden meaning of the Qur’an could only be known through the Imam, because he alone is infallible. The office of Imam was thought to have been passed on directly from Ali by nomination down to the sixth Imam, Jafar as-Sadiq, one of the most influential leaders of the Shiah during the early Abbasid period. As descendant of the prophet Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, he was believed by many to be in the direct line which transmitted the esoteric teachings of Islam, the doctrines of Sufism, supposedly confided to them by Mohammed himself.
When the Shiah split again over the question of Ali’s successors, the majority followed Jafar’s son Musa al-Kazim and Imams in his line, through to the twelfth, who disappeared in 873 AD. Those loyal to the twelve Imams became known as the Twelvers. Some of Jafar’s followers however, remained loyal to Jafar’s eldest son, Ismail. These were known as the Ismailis or Seveners, and soon became a source of continuing revolution.
According to Jean Doresse, a leading scholar of Gnosticism, Ismailism was genuinely Gnostic:
Not only do these sectaries regard Adam as the first of the prophets; they also make Abraham the head of the generation of the Perfect, to which Zoroaster belonged. One of their writings, which date from about the year 1300, announces that at the resurrection Melchizedek will come as a judge, and that he will then reveal the divine mysteries which the prophets have kept secret during the entire period in which humanity was subject to the religious law. The author of another treatise, of the fifteenth century, adds that Melchizedek is identical with Seth.50
It is also generally considered that a set of Sufi treatises known as the Ikhwan as Safa was Khulan al Wafa, or “Epistles of the Brethren of Sincerity and Loyal Friends”, a philosophical and religious encyclopaedia with elements of Pythagorean, Neoplatonic, Zoroastrian, and Indian lore, was composed by a secret fraternity connected with the Ismailis. Pythagoras, according to the Epistles, was a “monotheistic sage who hailed from Harran.” Though their origin is subject to controversy, Yves Marquet, one of the leading experts on the subject of the Epistles, has proposed that they incorporate the earliest comprehensive body of Ismaili doctrine, drawn up in the ninth century AD by the highest officials of the movement, possibly even by an Imam, under the influence of the Sabians of Harran.
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