28. An Ismailitic Pedigree. 
By W. Ivanow. 
A manuscript in the collection of the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal, marked Na 106 (or old No. 319), contains a rare Per- 
sian work, in mathnawi verse, with the title Lama‘atu’t-tahirin, 
composed in 1108 A.H./1697 A.D.'! The copy itself was prob 
ably also transcribed about the same time, i.e. the beginning 
of the XIIc. A.H., and is still in fairly good condition. 
The work contains an exposition of the system of Shi‘ism. 
It is extremely lengthy (about 500 folios), and, at the same time, 
as remarkably dull as verbose, consisting of a real deluge of 
words in flowery combinations, but. with very little tangible 
sense or ideas behind them. It is divided into a prose intro- 
duction and 110 lama‘as (to correspond to the numerical value 
of the letters of the name ‘Ali). It would require too much 
space to reproduce their headings here. The poetical author has 
given them a very rhetorical and bombastic form so that many 
of them are monstrously inflated, occupying no less than half 
a page. ; 
The author, Ghulam-Ali b. Muhammad-‘Ali b. Ahmad 
(the latter apparently being surnamed Taam), a native of the 
Deccan, as can be gathered from his allusions, used the takhallus 
Ghulam or Ghulama. I have not been able to trace him in 
any work, accessible to me at present, dealing with the biograph- 
les of Indian poets. Most probably the author’s poetical 
activity was of a purely accidental nature, and the production 
of his book was primarily an act of piety. At all events his 
persistent desperate struggle with verse does not show any 
great poetical talent. : 
e Shi‘ite principles, expounded in the work, have a 
strong flavour of sectarian tendency. Here and there they re- 
call the dogmas of Ismailism, but such passages are always 
very elusively worded. In addition to this the author has 
made much use of the Sufic speculations—a popular device of 
all the ‘ heretical’ writers of the later period. é 
Not content with this, the author also makes extensive 
use of the principle of fagiyya, which allows one to preten 
Cutwaidly to comply with the teaching of another sect or 
religion by way of precaution intended to frustrate the sus- 
Picions of persecutors.? This is apparently the reason not 
; ener by a chronogram |,Lel,3 ees ea. 
D See In this connection an important article by the late I. Goldziher, 
48 Prinzip der Takijja im Islam, ZDMG, 1906, pp. 213-226. 
