Welcome to F.I.E.L.D.- the First Ismaili Electronic Library and Database.

01. Introduction

It is a well-known fact that many persecuted sects in Persia not rarely tried to veil their tenets by adopting the terminology of Sufism. The vagueness of the doctrine of the latter, and the difficulty of its proper formulation usually gave great opportunity to write for those initiated into the real meaning of the doctrine, while preserving the outer semblance of the highly mystic Sufic piety. There were probably also cases of a genuine " coalescence" of the Sufic idea with ideas of the sect which used them for disguise. Especially complete, probably, it always, was in the case of Ismailism, which is based exactly on the same Plotinian philosophy as the Sufic theories. Thought the Persian Ismaili literature is very little known, we may see from those works which are available often it is very difficult to decide whether one has to deal with, so- to-say, "Ismailised Sufism " or with Suficised Ismailism ." The great extent of the practice of the taqiyyah, or lawful precautionary concealement of one's religion, often was carried to such a degree that in the case of some poets it is impossible to decide whether the ideas dealt with by them were really Sufic or Ismailitic. Some of those poets and philosophers whose belonging to Sufism seems indisputable to every student of Persian or Arabic literature, are regarded by Ismailis as their own co-religionists who wrote with great degree of concealment. For instance Sana'i, Attar, and Rumi, who are the principal Sufic poets of Persia, are claimed to be Ismailis. We need not take up the most difficult, and probably quite hopeless task of ascertaining who is right, and may be content with the observation that in their higher and more philosophic forms the Sufic and the Ismaili ideas are exactly the same.(1) Both these systems had to adapt the Neo-Platonic theory to the dogma of Islam by finding compromise, and there is nothing extraordinary if both were compelled to introduce the same formulas.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Already Ibn Khaldun, the famous Islamic historian (d. 808/11406), paid attention to this coincidence in the ideas,see Prolegomenes, vol. II, P. 190, and vol. III, pp. 103-106.


Back to top