Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

II. Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia / Ближний Восток, Кавказ и Центральная Азия 94 Proceedings of the International Congress on Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa.Vol. I. 2020 much better collection of preserved literature, due to the relative envi- ronmental isolation and safety in Yemen, where they often lived in mountainous regions. This relative safety allowed them, as Ivanow states, to preserve the Fatimid litera- ture and produce copies of the books which they had transferred from Cairo after the fall of the Fatimid caliphate in 1171. 1 Furthermore, the library and intellectual centres of the Nizārī Ismailis in Alamut and Quhistan of modern-day Iran were destroyed by the Mongols in 1256. At the initial phase of Ivanow’s work on Ismailism, Mūsā Khān Khu- rāsānī, 2 a retired servant of the Aga Khan, offered him his collections of books and manuscripts. 3 Later on, he also received manuscripts from the Badakhshan regions, as well as a fund for purchasing Ismaili texts. Ivanow entered the field of Ismaili studies with full scholarly preparation. As has already been mentioned, he received his early academic training under eminent scholars in St Petersburg and gained professional experience at theAsiatic Society of Bengal for almost ten years. Before his official engagement in the study of Ismaili texts in 1931, he had already (r. 1094–1097). Currently, Prince Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Aga Khan IV (r. 1957 — Present) is the 49 th living present imam (spiritual leader) of the Nizārī Ismailis. His lineage goes back through Imām Nizār to Imām Ismāʿīl (d. sometimes after 762) son of Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣadiq (r. 732–765), the direct descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad’s cousin and son-in-law as well as the fourth caliph of Islam, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (r. 656–661) and his wife Fāṭima (d. 632), daughter of the Prophet Muḥammad (570–632). 1 Ivanow W. A Guide to Ismaili Literature. London, 1933. P. 12–13. 2 Ivanow writes that Mūsā Khān himself wrote a legendary history of Ismailism, which Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Semenov (Semyonov) edited but wrongly attributed to Fidāʾi Khurāsānī of Dīzbād near Nīshāpūr (Ivanow W. Autobiography. 2015. P. 89–90). The book in questio n is Tāʾrīkh-e Ismāʿīliyya yā hidāyat al-mūʾminīn al-ṭālibīn , which Sem enov edited in its original Persian and published in Tehran in 1983. 3 Ivanow W. Autobiography. P. 89–90. W. Iwanov. Brief Survey of the Evolution of Ismailism