Walayah in the Fatimid Isma?ili Tradition

In this original study, Elizabeth R. Alexandrin examines the complex relationships that can be inscribed between medieval Isma'ili thought as an intellectual tradition with a devotional practice of reliance on the imam, and as a politico-esoteric system that redefined governance during the Fatimid caliphate in the eleventh century. Alexandrin's work is a departure from recent Western scholarship that focuses on similarities among early Islamic traditions. She argues instead that, under the guidance of the Fatimid Isma'ili chief missionary al-Mu'ayyad fi al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 1078 CE), the concept of walayah (divine guidance) became closely associated with religio-political authority, on the one hand, and the perfection of the individual human being, on the other. By signaling and affirming how the Fatimid caliph-imams were the heirs of walayah and by proposing new definitions of the 'seal of God's friends' (khatim al-awliya' Allah), al- Mu'ayyad broadened the contexts of making esoteric knowledge public and shifted the apocalyptic frameworks of Islamic messianism.