Walayah in the Fatimid Isma'ili Tradition

In this original study, Elizabeth R. Alexandrin examines the complex relationships that can be inscribed between medieval Ism?'?l? thought as an intellectual tradition with a devotional practice of reliance on the im?m, and as a politico-esoteric system that redefined governance during the F??imid caliphate in the eleventh century. Alexandrin's work is a departure from recent Western scholarship that focuses on similarities among early Islamic traditions. She argues instead that, under the guidance of the F??imid Ism?'?l? chief missionary al-Mu'ayyad f? al-D?n al-Sh?r?z? (d. 1078 CE), the concept of wal?yah (divine guidance) became closely associated with religio-political authority, on the one hand, and the perfection of the individual human being, on the other. By signaling and affirming how the F??imid caliph- im?m s were the heirs of wal?yah and by proposing new definitions of the "seal of God's friends" ( kh?tim al-awliy?' All?h ), al- Mu'ayyad broadened the contexts of making esoteric knowledge public and shifted the apocalyptic frameworks of Islamic messianism.