Ismaili Manuscripts and Modern Scholarship in Ismaili Studies
Book Chapter in "Texts, Scribes and Transmission: Manuscript Cultures of the Ismaili Communities and Beyond"
“The Ismaili manuscript sources, written in Arabic, Persian and later in Indic languages, have been preserved secretly in numerous collections in Yemen, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Central Asia and South Asia. The Arabic literature has been preserved almost exclusively by the Ṭayyibī Ismailis, who are better known in South Asia as Bohras, while the Persian literature has been preserved mainly by the Nizārī Ismailis of Persia and those of the Central Asian region of Badakhshān, now divided between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. At present, there are also major libraries of Arabic Ismaili manuscripts in Surat, Bombay and Baroda, seats of the Dāʾūdī and ʿAlawī Ṭayyibīs in India, and in some private collections in Yemen and Saudi Arabia within the Sulaymānī Ṭayyibī communities in those regions. The Persian Ismaili manuscripts, reflecting the Nizārī Ismaili traditions except for the works of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, have survived in numerous private 29collections held by the Nizārī Ismailis of the Persian-speaking countries and regions. The Syrian Nizārī Ismailis, who retained Arabic as their religious language, developed their own limited literature in Arabic. They also preserved some of the Ismaili works of the Fatimid period.
The largest collection of Arabic and Persian Ismaili manuscripts in the West is located at The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. The latter institution also holds a large number of devotional works of the South Asian Nizārī Ismailis, who are more generally designated as Khojas. These works, known as gināns, are composed in Gujarati and other Indic languages, and written mostly in the Khojkī script developed by the Khojas of Sind. The gināns, representing the religious tradition of the Khojas known as Satpanth, or the ‘true path’, contain a diversity of mystical, mythological, didactic, cosmological and eschatological themes. Many gināns contain ethical and moral instructions.” (Farhad Daftary)
Author: Dr. Farhad Daftary
Link to Full Chapter: Texts, Scribes and Transmission: Manuscript Cultures of the Ismaili Communities and Beyond