Note 1 — Khatri

Khojāh.1—A small Muhammadan sect of traders belonging to Gujarāt, who retain some Hindu practices. They reside in Wardha, Nāgpur and the Berār Districts, and numbered about 500 persons in 1911 as against 300 in 1901. The Khojāhs are Muhammadans of the Shia sect, and their ancestors were converted Hindus of the Lohāna trading caste of Sind, who are probably akin to the Khatris. As shown in the article on Cutchi, the Cutchi or Meman traders are also converted Lohānas. The name Khojāh is a corruption of the Turkish Khwājah, Lord, and this is supposed to be a Muhammadan equivalent for the title Thākur or Thakkar applied to the Lohānas. The Khojāhs belong to the Nazārian branch of the Egyptian Ismailia sect, and the founder of this sect in Persia was Hasan Sabāh, who lived at the beginning of the eleventh century and founded the order of the Fidawis or devotees, who were the Assassins of the Crusades. Hasan subsequently threw off his allegiance to the Egyptian Caliph and made himself the head of his own sect with the title of Shaikh-ul-Jabal or Lord. He was known to the Crusaders as the ‘Old Man of the Mountain.’ His third successor Hasan (A.D. 1163) declared himself to be the unrevealed Imām and preached that no action of a believer in him could be a sin. It is through this Hasan that His Highness the Aga Khān traces his descent from Ali. Subsequently emissaries of the sect came to India, and one Pīr Sadr-ud-dīn converted the Lohānas. According to one account this man was a Hindu slave of Imām Hasan. Sadr-ud-dīn preached that his master Hasan was the Nishkalanki or tenth incarnation of Vishnu. The Adam of the Semitic story of the creation was identified with the Hindu deity Vishnu, the Prophet Muhammad with Siva, and the first five Imāms of Ismailia with the five Pāndava brothers. By this means the new faith was made more acceptable to the Lohānas. In 1845 Aga Shāh Hasan Ali, the Ismailia unrevealed Imām, came and settled in India, and his successor is His Highness the Aga Khān.