![]() This is evident in how certain authors simply mirror or privilege anti-Ismāʿīlī polemical narratives in an uncritical manner while marginalizing or omitting important historical evidence that contravenes their arguments. At the same time, however, a tendency best described as “academic-polemic” continues to hamper academic treatments of select Ismāʿīlī topics, particularly the historical origins of the Fatimid Caliphate and the career of Aga Khan I in colonial India. A more holistic academic approach to Ismāʿīlī studies began in the early twentieth century and has proven quite successful in advancing the field, as Ismāʿīlī studies progresses at a staggering pace. ![]() This gave rise to rather sensationalist accounts of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs as a secret society of tricksters who consumed hashish and carried out systematic assassinations. The earliest Western scholarship on the Ismāʿīlīs began in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, largely based on hostile polemical accounts written by their adversaries, resulting in the proliferation of anti-Ismāʿīlī polemic under the guise of academic scholarship. This chapter assesses the state of academic scholarship on the Ismāʿīlī (Ismaili) Muslims in terms of the methodological categories of theology, polemic, and academic scholarship and presents two critical arguments on the state of the field.
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