Omar Al
Isma'ili, Director General of the of e-census 2020 project, said about the issue: "There is sometimes a gap between the data and what is actually happening.
319/931) in his Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-'Arabi and the
Isma'ili Tradition (Leiden, 2014).
She looked at how the 19th and 20th century genealogical histories were preserved by families from generation to generation, tracing the Sayyid descent of pirs and shahs and how sacred landscape of shrines are linked to those genealogies, and to oral and textualised traditions of
Isma'ili foundation figures.
Some examples include a drug lord helping a foreigner to build schools; an
Isma'ili Shah and a local youth leader working with the Mujahideen on drug treatment programs in the 1990s, which has now morphed into knowing where the Taliban hotspots are and keeping an area safe; a local Tajik leader working with the GKNB (formerly the KGB) on keeping the border secure; and local Tajik/Pamiri gemstone smugglers working with local leaders to provide information about the Taliban-related networks on the Afghan side.
Lika presents an Arab edition with commentary of the anti-Isma'ili statements in a work by al-Mu'ayyad bi-llah, an important scholar of the Zaydi community in Tabaristan, a region south of the Caspian Sea in modern northern Iran, where the
Isma'ili movement spread continuously.
He seems to have a somewhat confused understanding of the various strands of Shi'ism and sees the
Isma'ili branch as having originated with the Fatimids, when in fact the Fatimids were just one group that grew out of the
Isma'ili movement.
The Fatimids belonged to the
Isma'ili Shiite sect and came from al-Maghreb (present day Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) to conquer Egypt.
In 909, a claimed descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Abdullah al-Mahdi, declared himself Imam of the
Isma'ili Shi'a community and the rightful leader of the Muslim world.
Iran has forged latent links with Turkish Alevis (mostly
Isma'ili, Ja'fari Shi'ites and Arabic-speaking Alawites) in the opposition represented by the People's Republican Party (CHP), the intensely secular organisation founded in the 1920s by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The other branch that arose after the death of Ja'far followed his second son
Isma'ili and were known as the
Isma'ili group, which inherited the extremist and revolutionary character of the earlier movement.
The
Isma'ili, Druze and other Shi'ites refuse to have anything to do with Safawism.
With startup funds from the Agha Khan Foundation (the Agha Khan is leader of the
Isma'ili community, which is prevalent in northern Afghanistan), the highly successful Roshan cellphone company was founded.