Advent of the Fatimids, The: A Contemporary Shi'I Witness (Ismaili Texts and Translations). This item is unavailable.Advent of the Fatimids, The: A Contemporary Shi'I Witness (Ismaili Texts and Translations)

This work is a personal memoir composed by a medieval scholar in which he records details of his discourse with two Ismaili leaders who spearheaded the Fatimid revolution in North Africa in 909-10. By reporting at first hand the thoughts and activities of Abu `Abdallah al-Shi'i and his brother Abu'l-Abbas over a period of seven months, Ibn al-Haytham in his "Kitab al-Munazarat" (The Book of Discussions) provides an insider's view to our understanding of the foundations of the Fatimid state.

Professor Wilferd Madelung was for twenty years the Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford and is at present a Senior Research Fellow at The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. Paul E. Walker is an historian of ideas, at the University of Chicago. An authority on Fatimid Ismaili history and thought, he is the author of Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary and Hamid al-Din Kirmani: Ismaili Thought in the Age of al-Hakim.