Verena Klemm: "Hidden Literary History. Ismaʿili Tradition in Syria"

Klemm, Verena: Hidden Literary History. Ismaʿili Tradition in Syria. In: Hakan Özkan und Nefeli Papoutsakis (eds.), Doing Justice to a Wronged Literature. Essays on Arabic Literature and Rhetoric of the 12th–18th Centuries in Honour of Thomas Bauer Leiden, Brill Publishers, 2022, pp. 190-210 (Islamic History and Civilizations).

Link to Brill

"Verena Klemm explores the special manuscript culture that the Syrian Ismaʿilis, a relatively isolated and secretive Shiite community, practised in their mountainous retreat in Jabal Bahrāʾ, not far from Hama, over the centuries. There, away from the cultural centres of the region, religious experts compiled various texts of interest to the community in composite manuscripts (majmūʿāt) that were and are even today kept in private collections inaccessible to research. As an example, she presents a few manuscripts containing, among other things, Manāqib al-mawlā Rāshid al-Dīn, a collection of hagiographic tales about Rāshid al-Dīn Sinān (d. ca. 589/1193), the leader of the community at the time of Saladin. The tales, which were initially transmitted orally, were written down at the time of Hama’s efflorescence under al-Malik al-Muʾayyad (r. 710–31/1310–31) and sharply contrast with the literary high culture that thrived at his court." (Introduction by Hakan Özkan and Nefeli Papoutsakis)