No longer in government service and having withdrawn to the village of Shahrastāna, in Khurāsān, it is possible that he felt he could express his personal beliefs more openly than hitherto. At any event, the Ismaili character of the work has been noted in the past and this element of the Majlis receives further confirmation in this new edition and translation. Its theme is the Divine Command, Be! (kun) and Creation, a topic central to the Ismaili understanding of cosmology. This theme is presented in the form of a sermon (waʿz) comparable to the sermons of the great Fatimid dāʿī, al-Muʾayyad fi’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078) collected in his al-Majālis al-Muʾayyadiyya, or those of the medieval Persian poets Rūmī and Saʿdī.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to get your book before the Book Launch, which will take place at Ismaili Centre on May 5th.
For more information, please contact ITREB at [email protected].
