Three scholars from 51勛圖厙 (IIS) presented papers at the held at , 5-8 August 2026. Dr Daryoush Mohammad Poor and Dr Rahim Gholami co-chaired a panel on Reason, Revelation, and Revival: Esoteric Hermeneutics from N廜ξr-i Khusraw to R贖m蘋 and the Present. They were joined by Dr Maryam Rezaee of IIS and Dr Alice Hunsberger (State University of New York at Old Westbury), author of the IIS-published (2000).
Rahim Gholamis Paper on R贖m蘋s 紼硃喧堯紳硃滄蘋
Dr Rahim Gholami opened with Striking with Part of It: R贖m蘋s Re-readings of Qur尨an 2:6773 in the 紼硃喧堯紳硃滄蘋. Dr Gholami described how, in the story of Moses and the cow, the Israelites press for detail after detail, and the animal is described almost exhaustively. Then, where a concealed murder is to be exposed, the command turns vague. It states: strike him with part of it (莉勳-莉硃尪廎i堯櫻), although the part is never identified. The dead man rises, the crime comes out,, and the passage closes, hoping its hearers may come to reason.
R贖m蘋 returns to the scene three times in the 紼硃喧堯紳硃滄蘋, taking apart its elements command, sacrifice, fragment, blow, disclosure, resurrection and re-distributing them in what Dr Gholami describes as a kind of esoteric pedagogy.
Dr Gholami argued that 莉勳-莉硃尪廎i堯櫻 becomes a grammar of divinely authorised efficacy. The body-serving intellect loses its mastery, and discursive reason works under the light of what R贖m蘋 calls the Intellect of intellect (尪硃梁梭-勳 尪硃梁梭Reason, intellect, mind. This noun does not appear as such in the Quran, although the verb 尪aqala is used (as in Q. 2:44, Do you not understand?). See also 尪硃梁梭i…): the intellect is the husk, the Intellect of intellect the kernel.
Women Facing Barriers to Education
Dr Maryam Rezaee moved the panel to present-day Iran with Empowerment under Constraint: Ismaili Womens Responses to Educational Barriers in Iran. Her paper drew on interviews and questionnaires among Ismaili women in Mashhad and Tehran who wanted to complete a university education but had not managed to do so.
These women faced a combination of barriers: families could not always finance study away from home; daughters were required to care for younger siblings; and economic pressures sometimes meant that they had to take up jobs straight after secondary school. Another issue the women faced was the national entrance examination, which could be used as a tool for ideological vetting rather than determining academic merit. Women who were unable to pursue higher education paid the price in restricted mobility, economic precarity and social invisibility.
Dr Rezaees paper also focussed on what the women did next: some took up vocational courses or places in private institutions, while others turned to voluntary service inside their communities. Drawing on Kabeer, Sen, and intersectional feminist theory, Rezaee argued that empowerment is a process of negotiating constraint, not a destination reached only through a degree. She understands taqiyyaPrecautionary dissimulation of one’s religious beliefs, especially in time of persecution or danger, a practice especially adopted by the Shi’i Muslims., religious discretion, in the same light: a working strategy for moving safely through public institutions while keeping ones faith intact.
The Egypt N廜ξr-i Khusraw Did Not Describe
Dr Alice Hunsbergers paper, Are you in obeisance or not? Navigating Egyptian Politics with N廜ξr-i Khusraw, concerned accounts in the medieval Persian authors 釦硃款硃娶-紳櫻鳥硃. She described how N廜ξr-i Khusraw spent three years in Fatimid Egypt (439442/10471050) and was chosen each year to accompany the imperial HajjThe word Hajj usually refers to the annual pilgrimage by Muslims to the Ka尪ba in Mecca, also called the Great Pilgrimage, in contrast to the 尪Umra, the Lesser Pilgrimage. More caravan with the kiswa and the caliphs payments to Mecca and Medina. He praised almost everything he saw: the Cairo bazaars, the Fatimid justice system, the salaried army, and the management of the Nile flood. Yet at Aydhab, before he had even left Egypt on the road home, N廜ξr found himself with an empty purse, for which he gives no explanation.
Dr Hunsberger described how N廜ξr recounts two major events of Fatimid history but deliberately refrains from mentioning their contexts. In the first of these, two months after N廜ξr arrived in Cairo, soldiers murdered the influential Jewish jeweller, Abu Sa尪d al-Tustar蘋. Twenty thousand horsemen then amass before the palace until a servant emerges with one question: Are you in obeisance or not? N廜ξr-i Khusraws description omits crucial explanations and context for this event. Namely, that the caliphs mother Rasad, a Nubian former slave, had been brought to the palace by al-Tustar蘋, who later became her key ally at the head of the Fatimid treasury, while she ruled as regent for al-Mustan廜ξr (r. 427487/10361094). The vizierA high officer of state, equivalent of a chief minister. al-Fall廎汁 and the Turkish guard murdered al-Tustar蘋, but within a year Rasad had al-Fall廎汁 imprisoned and killed.
The second event was the Aleppo campaign of 441/104950. N廜ξrs sparse account in the 釦硃款硃娶-紳櫻鳥硃 reports that the ruler of Aleppo rebelled, so the caliphIn Arabic khal蘋fa, the head of the Muslim community. See caliphate. sent out 尪Umdat al-Dawla but he was killed at Aleppo. From her reading of the chronicles, Dr Hunsberger identified the Aleppan rebel as the Mirdsid Thiml b. 廜〢li廎, and 尪Umdat al-Dawla as the general Rifq, an African eunuch in his seventies, who led thirty thousand men on the Fatimids third failed campaign against the city.
Dr Hunsberger noted that N廜ξr never names al-Mustan廜ξr, al-Zhir or Rasad, but he was a witness to the early cracks in Fatimid rule factional armies, a contested vizierate and a strained treasury that would later erupt as the Mustan廜ξriyya crises, as epitomised by his own empty purse at Aydhab.
Reconciling Faith and Intellect
Daryoush Mohammad Poors paper, Reconciling Faith and Intellect: N廜ξr-i Khusraws Rationalism, concerned questions of philosophy and epistemology. He asked how far a mind can travel on its own and noted that an intellect that inquires, tests and criticises must be squared with a revelation that requires assent to truths it does not submit for inspection.
N廜ξr-i Khusraw attempted to answer these questions in his Jmi尪 al-廎可kmatayn, composed in exile in 462/1070 in the valley of Yumgn in Badakhshn. Dr Mohammad Poors paper concerned the theme of nourishment of the human intellect. The intellect needs feeding from two sources: philosophy, including the natural sciences and metaphysics, and revelation, as interpreted by 喧硃尨滄蘋梭The elucidation of the inner or esoteric meaning, b廜虹n , from the literal wording or apparent meaning of a text, ritual or religious prescription.. These are the twin wisdoms of the works title, and the souls progress towards perfection depends on their reconciliation.
The argument runs in two directions. Against the literalists, N廜ξr defended the spirit of inquiry. Against the philosophers, and Ab贖 Bakr Mu廎仟mmad b. Zakariyy尨 al-Rz蘋 in particular, he defended revelation. Al-Rz蘋 held prophecy to be superfluous, since philosophers can recall souls to their true world. N廜ξrs reply was that the philosophers who do that are the prophets.
The contemporary point is that faith and reason are still presented as opposites, by secularists who take religious commitment as a failure of rationalism, and by fundamentalists who see critical inquiry as a threat to faith. N廜ξr-i Khusraw argues against this false opposition: intellect is a divine gift, so neglecting it fails the Giver, but reason is only complete under an illumination that it cannot itself generate.
The Thread
In closing, Dr Mohammad Poor traced intellect as the thread running through all the papers. Although R贖m蘋 is not generally considered an Ismaili, he followed in N廜ξr-i Khusraws footsteps given the prominence he grants to the intellect. In Dr Rezaees account, the role of intellect can be seen in the womens striving for higher education and the value they place upon the pursuit of learning. The value of intellect is also upheld by the various institutions of the Ismaili Imamat, such as 51勛圖厙, the Aga KhanA title granted by the Shah of Persia to the then Ismaili Imam in 1818 and inherited by each of his successors to the Imamate. University, the University of Central Asia, and the wide network of educational institutions built over the past 150 years. Finally, Dr Mohammad Poors paper showed how N廜ξr-i Khusraw identified the substance of intellect as joy (莽堯櫻餃蘋): joy comes with the removal of ignorance, ignorance is removed by knowledge, and knowledge is what intellect produces.
The papers are a tribute not only to the figure of N廜ξr-i Khusraw, a towering figure for the Iranian and Central Asian IsmailisAdherents of a branch of Shi’i Islam that considers Ismail, the eldest son of the Shi’i Imam Ja尪far al-廜〢diq (d. 765), as his successor., but also to the role of intellect in the Ismaili tradition, throughout history and down to our own contemporary times.
