5 - THE ISMĀ‘ĪLĪ STATE

Summary

In the midst of states held together by direct military power alone, the Ismā‘īlīs, or "Assassins of Alamϋt", formed a challenging exception. In the cultural life of the time, moreover, the Ismā‘īlī state played a perceptible role, even to the point of acting as host to prominent non-Ismā‘īlī intellectuals. Shi‘is had never been satisfied with the compromises of official Muslim life, which Sunnis had accepted as more or less inevitable up to a point. The Ismā‘īlīs of the Iranian highlands and the Fertile Crescent were not destined to overthrow the Saljuqs but rather to found a society apart, which was set over against Muslim society as a whole. The rigor and self-sufficiency of the doctrine were appropriate to the new sternness required of a movement in active and universal revolt. The justification of the schism, however, was quite legitimately doctrinal.