THE ISMAILI MINORITY: BETWEEN OPPRESSION AND INTEGRATION By: Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen,

6 | THE ISMAILI MINORITY: BETWEEN OPPRESSION AND INTEGRATION ISMAILI SECTS AND DYNASTIES The Ismaili community is the second largest Shia community in the world, with an estimated 12 million followers in 25 countries.[1] The Ismaili sect began in 765 CE (148 AH), when a dispute broke out among the partisans of the Prophet’s cousin Ali (known as the Shia) over the successor to the sixth imam, Jaafa. [...] During the Sulahyid period, the Ismailis had divided into two main sects following the death of the Fatimid caliph Al-Mustansir in 1094: the Nizaris, followers of the caliph’s son Nizar, in the Levant and north Iran; and the Musta’lis, followers of his son al-Musta’li, in Egypt and Yemen.[6] The Musta’li community divided again in a dispute over the legitimate heir of caliph Al-Amir bi-Ahkam Allah. [...] The Ismaili community in northern Yemen thus traces its religious authority through the Tayyibi Musta’li line,[7] and was to become its only representative after Ismailis largely disappeared from Egypt and the Levant after the Fatimids.[8] But with the rise of the Zaidi Imamate in the 16th century, the community’s religious leaders fled to India and to Najran in modern Saudi Arabia to escape perse. [...] Today the Sulaymani branch of the Musta’li Ismailis form the majority of Ismailis in north Yemen, while those in Aden mostly belong to the Dawoodi branch.[12] The other branch dating from the Fatimid caliphate, the Nizari Ismailis, form the largest Ismaili community in the world, at around 12 million people, with a presence that has expanded to Africa, Europe, and North America since the 19th cent. [...] These include texts on Ismaili jurisprudence, language and philosophy,[33] and responses to Zaidism.[34] Ismaili manuscripts found in the roof of the Great Mosque in Sana’a during the reign of Imam Yahya Hamid al-Din (1918-1948) were transferred after the 1962 revolution to the state-run Manuscripts House in Sana’a, where they remain inaccessible to the public.[35] During the National Dialogue Con.