ISMAILI, also Ismailiah, are Shiah sectarians, who take their name from the Imam Ismail, son of the Imam Jafar Sadaq. In Bombay they are known as the Khoja sect. The Ismaili are the sect of the chief known to the Crusaders as the Old Man of the Mountain, the Shnikh-ul-Jabl. The sect in its original form was a branch of the Shiah, but was called Ismailian, from Ismail, the eldest son of the sixth Imam, whom they recognised as his father's successor in opposi tion to the mass of the Shiahs. Their doctrine took the form of a sort of gnosticism, giving a non-natural sense to all revelation, from which they had the name also of Bathenians, from Batin, ARAB., within, a word signifying esoteric. Hamm Sabah, son of an Arab at Rai, one of their converts I in Persia, put himself at the head of the sect in that country, and about A.D. 1090 made himself master of the mountainous part of Irak Ajami, immediately south of the Caspian. This region included many strong castles, and at one time the power of his successors extended to the gates of Isfahan. From its character the country was called by the Arabs Balad - ul - Jabl, the hill country, and hence the chief's title. This was also applied to the head of a branch society which had its seat in Syria, and became well known to the Crusaders. The name of Assassin has been by
many supposed to be derived from Hashish, the hemp drug, under the influence of which the emissaries of the society are imagined to have acted, but it is more probably obtainable from Hasan Sabah, Bence al-Hasani.
In the western side of India, members of the Ismaili sect are designated Khoja, about 1400 families in and around Bombay, 5000 in Kattya war, 3000 in Sind, and 800 or 900 in Zanzibar. They are descendants of converted Hindus of Sind, who about 400 years ago were won over by Pir Surd-u-Din, a Dai of the Ismaili.
Aga Khan, a chief of one of the branches, claiming indeed to be a descendant from or the representative or incarnation of Ali, died, aged eighty-one, at Bombay, in April 1881. He had failed in an attempt to obtain the kingdom of Persia, and returned to India, where he obtained fees from all his sect from Zanzibar to Central Asia. The Khoja sect of Bombay alone gave him a lakh of rupees a year, and the Government of Bombay allowed him 12,000 rupees annually, for services rendered during the Afghan war of 1842. His son has since been recognised as his successor.— Malcolm's Persia, i. p. 347 ; D'Oltsson, book iv. ch. iv.; Yule, Cathay, i. p. 154.