Note 21 — Chapter VI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS IN EUROPE UNDER THE TURKS.

In the middle of the eighth century, Persia gave birth to a movement that is of interest in the missionary history of Islam, viz. the sect of the Ismāʻīlians. This is not the place to enter into a history of this sect or of the theological position taken up by its followers, or of the social and political factors that lent it strength, but it demands attention here on account of the marvellous missionary organisation whereby it was propagated. The founder of this organisation—which rivals that of the Jesuits for the keen insight into human nature it displays and the consummate skill with which the doctrines of the sect were accommodated to varying capacities and prejudices—was a certain ʻAbd Allāh b. Maymūn, who early in the ninth century infused new life into the Ismāʻīlians. He sent out his missionaries in all directions under various guises, very frequently as ṣūfīs but also as merchants and traders and the like; they were instructed to be all things to all men and to win over different classes of men to allegiance to the grandmaster of their sect, by speaking to each man, as it were, in his own language, and accommodating their teaching to the varying capacities and opinions of their hearers. They captivated the ignorant multitude by the performance of marvels that were taken for miracles and by mysterious utterances that excited their curiosity. To the devout they appeared as models of virtue and religious zeal; to the mystics they revealed the hidden meaning of popular teachings and initiated them into various grades of occultism according to their capacity. Taking advantage of the eager looking-forward to a deliverer that was common to so many faiths of the time, they declared to the Musalmans the approaching advent of the Imām Mahdī, to the Jews that of the Messiah, and to the Christians that of the Comforter, but taught that the aspirations of each could alone be realised in the coming of ʻAlī as the great deliverer. With the Shīʻah, the Ismāʻīlian missionary was to put himself forward as the zealous partisan of all the Shīʻah doctrine, was to dwell upon the cruelty and injustice of the Sunnīs towards ʻAlī and his sons, and liberally abuse the Sunnī K͟halīfahs; having thus prepared the way, he was to insinuate, as the necessary completion of the Shīʻah system of faith, the more esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlian sect. In dealing with the Jew, he was to speak with contempt of both Christians and Muslims and agree with his intended convert in still looking forward to a promised Messiah, but gradually lead him to believe that this promised Messiah could be none other than ʻAlī, the great Messiah of the Ismāʻīlian system. If he sought to win over the Christian, he was to dwell upon the obstinacy of the Jews and the ignorance of the Muslims, to profess reverence for the chief articles of the Christian creed, but gently hint that they were symbolic and pointed to a deeper meaning, to which the Ismāʻīlian system alone could supply the key; he was also cautiously to suggest that the Christians had somewhat misinterpreted the doctrine of the Paraclete and that it was in ʻAlī that the true Paraclete was to be found. Similarly the Ismāʻīlian missionaries who made their way into India endeavoured to make their doctrines acceptable to the Hindus, by representing ʻAlī as the promised tenth Avatār of Viṣṇu who was to come from the West, i.e. (they averred) from Alamūt. They also wrote a Mahdī Purāṇa and composed hymns in imitation of those of the Vāmācārins or left-hand Śāktas, whose mysticism already predisposed their minds to the acceptance of the esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlians.21