The thing about the assassins is, they are fascinating at a distance. In their own time, they were surely a violent, nasty bunch. But add a few centuries of history to the Ismailis and the rosy tint of the Arabian Nights, and suddenly they're pretty sexy, as games like Assassin's Creed seem to prove.
Yet it still strikes me as profoundly odd that the current-day descendant of the Old Man of the Mountain, the Aga Khan, is spending money on restoring Ismaili castles in Syria and touting them as tourist attractions.
Uh, what? Assassins as a tourist draw? This seems unlikely. Or rather, I don't think a lot of Westerners are likely to visit Syria; someplace like the Alhambra in Spain or Topkapi in Istanbul is likely to be a much bigger draw for someone like me who wants to see the high points of Muslim architecture. And I'm fairly sure the Ismaili are viewed as heretics in the Arab world. So who's the audience for this, exactly? Jihadis looking for inspiration?
Strange.
Yet it still strikes me as profoundly odd that the current-day descendant of the Old Man of the Mountain, the Aga Khan, is spending money on restoring Ismaili castles in Syria and touting them as tourist attractions.
Uh, what? Assassins as a tourist draw? This seems unlikely. Or rather, I don't think a lot of Westerners are likely to visit Syria; someplace like the Alhambra in Spain or Topkapi in Istanbul is likely to be a much bigger draw for someone like me who wants to see the high points of Muslim architecture. And I'm fairly sure the Ismaili are viewed as heretics in the Arab world. So who's the audience for this, exactly? Jihadis looking for inspiration?
Strange.
Profile
the_monkey_king- Wolfgang Baur
- Kobold Quarterly
Page Summary
- effrenatus : (no subject) [+1]
- freeport_pirate : (no subject) [+0]
- richgreen01 : (no subject) [+2]
- mr_orgue : (no subject) [+2]
- (Anonymous) : Ismaili [+2]
Comments
-mls
Earlier this year we went to India and did the "Golden Triangle": Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. The Taj Mahal knocks both the Alhambra and the Topkapi Palace into a cocked hat - it really does live up to all the hype. Oh, and we saw two little owls sitting in a tree in the garden too!
I was limiting myself to the Arab world. Wasn't the Taj built by Persians or... Actually I have no idea who built the Taj. Mughals, maybe?
Near Palmyra I stopped in a cafe where the owner made a point of learning languages from everyone who came through. He floored me when, after I said he was a New Zealander, he spieled off more Maori than I knew.
As a result, I don't know that I will visit dictatorships for tourist reasons. Havana, Damascus, Pyongyang, and Tehran are surely all interesting, but... there's so many other places to see. Morocco and Jordan I'd see in a minute. Maybe Egypt.
Now I want to book a ticket. :)
(I should add, too, that Syria wasn't depressing. There's some fascinating stuff going on there, and a real political engagement; it was weird to see Bashar's face all over the place, but it didn't feel like an oppressed environment at all. I think the new regime has really improved the situation for the locals. The American friend who was my local guide was doing her Anthropology doctorate on the ground-level politics of young men in Syria, so this may have coloured my perspective...)
On the other hand, Egypt often depressed me. The massive disparities between the tourists and the locals, the heavy militarisation, etc., especially outside of Cairo. (And Israel/Palestine is a whole 'nother conversation.)
Now I'm rambling :-) Here are my travel emails from the time, should you have more interest!
Unlike the Sunni, the Shia community is made of many many sects. The Twelvers are the most populous (so-named for their "waiting" for the Hidden Imam, the 12th one since Ali). The second most populous Shia sect are the Ismaili. They'd only be seen as heretics by anyone who would see any Shia branch as heretics.
The Ismaili in the medieval period, though, did fight against fellow Muslims as well as against the Crusaders. The view of them was not entirely favorable; the current Aga Khan and the current state of that branch of Islam is quite removed from the Ismaili founders, no? Maybe I did read too many Sunni histories...
I'm not sure I understand "Unlike the Sunni,". Aren't the Wahhabi, Sufi, and others all Sunni sects? Or are there just *less* sects among the Sunni than among the Shia?
It's been a bit since my Middle East history classes and some of my reading, but there were a lot of factions of Islam during the medieval period (most periods, really) with all the caliphates and dynasties based on descendant from important people. While the main Shia sect are Twelvers, there are Fivers, Seveners, etc., all based on when they split off counting Imams (with a capital I).
The Fatimid dynasty which ruled much of Egypt, North Africa, and Palestine in the 10th-12th centuries were also Ismaili. So I feel that it's hard to state that the Ismaili were significant one way or another in terms of fighting people. Islam has not really been a united entity since the 7th-8th centuries.
You're right in that Sunni does have sects of its own, but while you could (crudely) compare Sunni to Catholicism, the Shia would be the infinite number of Protectant denominations. I don't have enough fingers and toes to name all the Shia sects that I know. Besides, I never got the impression that Wahhabism/Salifism was really a *denomination* of Sunni Islam, like Twelvers and Ismaili are of Shia.
Anyway, I'm only a student who has taken a few classes on the history and geography of the Middle East, plus a reader of a bunch of history books about Islam and the Arabic world, so I may have gotten some of the above wrong. I hope it helps, though.