Ismailis

Ismailis Ismailis have their own pillars which are as follows: * Walayah (lit.

Although most of the members of the community signed a document issued by Hasan Ali Shah summarizing the practices of the Ismailis, a group of dissenting Khojas surprisingly asserted that the community had always been Sunni.

During the medieval period, Western scholarship on the Ismailis contributed to the popular view of the community as a radical sect of assassins, believed to be trained for the precise murder of their adversaries.

In contrast, some Ismailis believed the Imamate did continue, and that the Imams were in occultation and still communicated and taught their followers through a network of dawah "Missionaries".

In recent centuries Ismailis have also largely been an Indo-Iranian community.

Raphael, 2011, p. 106. From then on, the Ismailis maintained limited autonomy over those former strongholds as loyal subjects of the Mamluks.

Sources on the history and thought of the Ismailis in this period are therefore lacking and the majority extant are written by their detractors.

The Alamut castle therefore was only one of a nexus of strongholds throughout the regions where Ismailis could retreat to safety if necessary.

The assassinations were committed against those whose elimination would most greatly reduce aggression against the Ismailis and, in particular, against those who had perpetrated massacres against the community.

This label was quickly adopted by anti-Ismaili historians and applied to the Ismailis of Syria and Persia.

We can only imagine the horror the Ismailis would have felt when they witnessed the destruction of the literary legacy they had so painstakingly fostered.

Zaidiyyah theology differed from Ismailis or Twelver Shi'ites by stressing the presence of an active and visible imam as leader.