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Accepted Paper:
Intellectual Import of the Ismaili dāʿīs in Central Asia: Al-Kirmānī, al-Sijistānī and al-Rāzī on Nature and the significance of their discussions in the Fatimid Context.
Maria De Cillis
(The Institute of Ismaili Studies London)
Central Asia in the Fatimid time (909 - 1171 CE) was the backdrop of intense intellectual fervour and powerful cross-cultural interactions. As one of the most renowned Ismaili dāʿīs of the time, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. after 411/1020), succeeded in creating a complex system of thought. This blended inherited Ismaili traditions — including gnostic cosmological elements — and Greek philosophical strands, mainly drawn from Aristotelianism and Fārābian Neoplatonism. Achieving prominence during the reign of the Imam-caliph al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh (r. 386-411/996-1021), al-Kirmānī set for himself, among other things, the task of intervening in a doctrinal controversy which had erupted amongst the foremost representatives of the so-called Iranian School of Ismaili philosophical theology: Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934), Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Nasafī (d. 332/943) and Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. c. 361/971). Focusing on the concept of Nature, and looking at the hierarchy of the intellectual Pleroma, this study will highlight how the metaphysical and esoteric correspondences employed by these intellectuals, operating across what is nowadays Central Asia, aimed at answering several contemporaneous Ismaili intellectual conundrums.