Shah Khalil Allah III.

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Shah Khalil Allah III. ( Persian شاه خلیل الله, DMG Shāh Khalīl Allāh ; † 1817 in Yazd ) was the 45th Imam of the Shia of the Nizari Ismailis , as the son and successor of the 44th Imam Abu'l-Hassan Ali († 1792).

biography

After the death of his father in Kerman , Shah Chalil Allah moved his residence back to Kahak near Qom , where some of his ancestors had already lived. Had its predecessors, the principles of "Caution" ( Taqiya ) gradually dropped, so won under his aegis the Ismailitentum increasingly on new political and religious influence in Persia the fledgling Qajar dynasty . His following ( šīʿa ) received a large number of Mu'mini-Ismailis , who had lost contact with their last imam living in India in 1796 .

In 1810 the Imam in Kahak was visited by the French diplomat and orientalist Joseph Rousseau († 1831). This meeting marks the first personal encounter between a European and the spiritual leader of the Ismailis. Rousseau was acquainted with Silvestre de Sacy and knew his etymological decoding of the " assassin " term, behind which the Ismaili community was hiding. In the Imam, Rousseau consequently recognized a descendant of those "ancients from the mountains" who, in the Middle Ages, commanded the sect, which among the Christians was afflicted with all kinds of legends.

In 1815 Shah Chalil Allah moved into a new residence in Yazd in order to be able to communicate more quickly with his followers in India from there . Here, in 1817, a radical mullah of the Twelve Shia, which is predominant in Persia, formed a lynch mob after a public dispute with an Ismailite, who stormed the residence of the imam and murdered him and some of his entourage. The Imam was buried in his specially built mausoleum in Najaf , not far from the Imam Ali shrine , which was still used as a burial place for his grandson Aga Khan II . The mullah was later tried by the imam's widow before Fath Ali Shah , who sentenced the ringleader to death. Contemporary witness reports on these events are available in the autobiography of Aga Khan I (ʿIbrat-afzā) and the travel report of the Scot James Baillie Fraser († 1856), who traveled through the country in 1821/22.

family

Shah Chalil Allah was married to Bibi Sarkara († 1851 in Kachchh ), who was probably his cousin. Your children were:

  • Hassan Ali Schah, Aga Khan I (* 1804 in Kahak, † April 1881 in Bombay ), 46th Imam of the Nizari-Ismailis.
  • Abu'l-Hassan Khan, called "Sardar" (* around 1806 in Kahak, † 1880 in Tehran ; buried in Najaf).
  • Muhammad Baqir Khan.
  • Shah Bibi; ∞ with Imami Khan Farahani.

literature

  • Robert G. Watson, A History of Persia. (London 1866), pp. 191 f, 331-334.
  • Farhad Daftary , The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. (2nd edition, Cambridge University Press 2007), pp. 26 f, 462 f, 472.

Remarks

  1. ↑ See Joseph Rousseau, Memoire sur l'Ismaélis et les Nosaïris de Syrie, address à M. Silvestre de Sacy, in: Annales des Voyages, Vol. 14 (1811), pp. 271-303.
  2. ↑ See James Baillie Fraser, Narrative of a Journey into Khorasān in the years 1821 and 1822. London 1825, p. 376 f.
personal data
SURNAME Shah Khalil Allah III.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Imam of the Ismaili Nizarites
DATE OF BIRTH 18th century
DATE OF DEATH 1817
Place of death Yazd