Noel King
University of California, Santa Barbara

At no time were the Asians large in numbers in East Africa and the Ismailis were never the most numerous among them, yet when the Asian exodus culminated in the sudden expulsion of the Ugandan Asians in 1972. the Ismaili achievements had been incredible despite their small numbers. It is our hope that this paper will show their history is worth detailed scholarly attention[1]. Though some remain in East Africa. the student of their history must now turn his or her main attention to Britain. India, Pakistan. Vancouver. Toronto. Sydney, certain towns in the United States of America, wherever the winds of diaspora have carried them. This is a partial requiem by a man of the twilight acting as a spokesperson and secretary as the darkness deepens[2]. It seeks to set out something of the findings, but more of the spirit. of a small informal study group which met at Makerere University in Uganda from 1964 to 1968 and has kept in touch since by correspondence.[3]

Islàm is known throughout the world for its unity. As the first occupant of the Aga Khan Chair of Islamic Studies in the American University at Beirut put it: "Being 'the religion of unity' Islam, in fact, displays more homogeneity and less religious diversity than any other worldwide religion. Sunnism and Shi'ism are dimensions within islam placed there not to destroy its unity but to enable a larger humanity and differing spiritual types to participate in it. Both Sunnism and Shi'ism are the assertion of the shahadah, La ilaha ill' Allah expressed in different climates and with a somewhat different spiritual fragrance[4]

The ismailis are members of the shiah or 'party' which believe that the 'succession' to the Prophet Muhammad was continued in his family, in Ali who was his cousin and husband of his daughter Fatimah and their descendants. ‘Twelver’ or Ithna-' Ashari Shiism believes that the twelfth Imam became hidden during the fourth Muslim or tenth Christian century. The Ismailis believe that the succession came down through Imam Ismail, to the present holder of the title, the forty-ninth. The Ismailis of East Africa are remarkably familiar with their doctrine of the Imamate and of how the Ismailis came to power and set up Fatimi rule in North Africa and Egypt in the tenth century. They are proud of the Fatimi achievement in founding Cairo and the great University of AI Azhar, which is in some ways the mother university of the western world. They also know that after the eighth Fatimi Caliph the Ismailis of Egypt and Arabia followed al Mustali, while those of the East, following the lead of Hasan ibn Sabbah, who used the fortress of' Alamüt in Iran as his center came to be known as Nizaris [5].

In 1256 the Mongols took the Ismaili stronghold at Alamüt and destroyed the library. the observatory and the scientific apparatus the Ismailis had collected there. ln 1258 Baghdad itself fell to the Mongols and they carried out another of the massacres for which they are infamous to all time. Muslim civilization suffered a blow from which it took centuries to recover. The Ismaili center of gravity moved to Persia. It is a period of great obscurity in their history for they had to hide their real identity in the face of persecution by the Mongols and by Muslims of other groups.

For us the Imamate emerges from the darkness of this historical tunnel in the second decade of the nineteenth century when the forty-fifth Imam was murdered at the instigation of the other party in an Iranian dispute. The King of Persia had to avange the death and in addition honored Hasan Ali Shah. the new Imam, with a Governorship. He was given the title Agha Khan and the band of a Princess. On the death of the Shah, the Aga Khan became involved in the Persian wars of succession and then in a series of court intrigues in which he suffered many insults, imprisonment and hairbreadth escapes. ln 1842 he helped the British in their expedition into Afghanistan. On their retreat from Kandahar, partly because he had become implicated. with them as a result of helping them, the Aga Khan left Persia for Sind, intending to return one day to take up the. struggle for justice. Whatever may have been the promises of the British officers on the spot, British 'higher policy came to terms with the Agha Khan’s enemies in Persia and did not allow the immediate counterattack which he would have liked to launch.[6]