HISTORICAL MAINSTREAM OF ISMAILIES

According to one version, the Fatimids sought to spread the Ismaili faith in order to spread loyalty to the Imamate in Egypt and undermine the Abbasid empire. According to another, after the Nizari Ismaili lost a factional battle, they fled Egypt. All agree that Hassan-i-Sabbah of Persia was a most successful missionary teacher or Dai serving the Ismaili cause, and was responsible for the eventual prominence of the Nizari. Hassan-i-Sabbah was born in Qom in 1056 AD to Twelver Shi'a parents. His family later moved to Tehran which was an Ismaili center. Hassan-i-Sabbah studied Ismaili thought, When he was nearly killed by an illness, he decided to convert. He later became one of the most influential Dais, essentialy founding the Nizari branch of Ismailism, named after his son Nizar. Hassan-i-Sabbah took over the fortress of Alamut, which became a Fatimid outpost in the Abbasid empire. Alamut remained a center of Ismailism until it was destroyed by the Mongol Hulagu two centuries later.
Hassan-I-Sabbah used the Hashasheen, who can be described either as faithful disciples or terrorists depending on one's point of view, to "convince" people of his faith. The word "Assassin" is derived from Hashasheen. The Hashasheen are said by opponents to have been Hashish (Cannabis) eaters, who owed their ferocious behavior to use of the drug. Their characteristic trademark of the assassination was that they would not leave the scene of the crime. Ismaili claim that the Hashasheen derive their name from Hassan-i-Sabbah. They called themselves al dawa al Jadida and were also called fedayeen. According to the stories of enemies, they were first indoctrinated in a paradisaical garden under the influence of Hashish, and then told that their only means of salvation, return to the garden, was following the orders of Hassan-i-Sabbah.
In the tenth century, the Qarmatians accepted a young Persian prisoner, Abu'l-Fadl al-Isfahani,
from Isfahan as the Mahdi - the returned hidden Imam, Muhammad ibn Ismail. He claimed to be the descendant of the Persian kings.
The Qarmatians changed their qibla (direction of prayer) from the Kaaba to the Zoroastrian infl -uenced fire. The Qarmatians violently rampaged through out Middle-East, and stole the Black Stone from the Kaaba in Mecca about 930. After their retu -rn of the Black Stone in 951 and defeat by the Abbasids in 976 they faded out of history. In 1171 the Fatimid Ismaili dynasty was ended by Salah al Din (Saladin). By that time North Africa had largely reverted to Sunni Islam, but the Ismaili survived principally in the east. The Mongol invasion shattered the Abbasid and Fatimid empires. Hulagu destroyed Alamut in 1256. The last of the Hashashin were supposedly destroyed in 1272. The branches of Ismaili were now geographically isolated, though in some places they coexists, as the Druze and Nizari, and in South Asia which has both Mustaali and Nizari. Ismaili Muslims follow their forty ninth Imam Noor Mowlana Shah Karim-al-Hussaini, residing in Agrimount, Paris.