Concerning the special beliefs of the mathians, so far as they have been preserved. their system seems in the beginning to have been merely a sort of reformed Islam. The prophet it was held, had brought a new law into the world, by which many of the tenets of _Mohammedanism were altered, many ancient ceremonies abrogated. new forms of prayer duced, and an entirely new kind of fast cated. Wine and a few other things prohibited by the Koran were allowed. Certain of the cepts of the hook were turned into mere gories. Instead of tithes limey gave the fifth part of their prooperty to the imam. Prayer was ly the symbol of obedience to the imam. ing was the symbol of silence, or rather of cealment of religious doctrine from the stranger.
Another offshoot of the Ismailians is the sect known as ASSA SSE': islti , a name rived from hot,qhis d h, a rink drawn from hemp, to wide]] of the sect were addicted ). The sect owed origin to Ilasan ilin Sabloah, a Persian fanatic, who at the beginning of the eleventh century formed a secret society. the members of which swore blind obedience to their leader, known to history as the Man of the From their mountain fastnesses in Persia (Alamut they bade defiance for two centuries to the strongest armies sent against then] by rulers, and they were reduced to harmlessness only by the Mongol invasion] ( They owed their power chiefly to the perfeetion of their secret organization and to the unscrupulousness with which they earried out their plans. They were perhaps best known for the countless assassinations of which the of the sect were guilty. From Persia they spread into Syria and Asia Minor. \\ Idle llasan ibn Sabha]] was still alive, the C:overnor of Aleppo had invited them to settle in his ritory, and they had taken posse—ion various mountain from which they Were ell aided to play an important ride in t :le ('rIk•:de, There are still a few Assassins in the hood of lloms. See Ass.tsst5s.
When t Syria they found the mountain around Ilaina in possession of the Nos muivNs. apparently it rennin tit of the netent !population of the land. which had preserved its own religion through the centuries despite all the efforts of Christianity. .Nlost of the Nosairians displayed a bitter mity toward the though some braced their cause, and at the end of the tenth century there was a strong infiltration of I ion doctrines into the general Nosa irian religions system. In fact, the Nosairian religion. without
being identical with Ismailism, shows many strong points of analogy with it. Elie
ans ano
into folir
aid(' riyytth,
yytt h (or K ot yyt(h) Situ 'no yya ( Or Slut yya ) and tihotibioyoth. The Sha litoult
and
are the most important. They all possess the some religious book (Kit(b 0 .11 a hot it' ) , and (litre r from one another only on points of minor importance. The chief variations from the Ismaili:1mi doctrines are these: While the Ismailians taught that of the seven cycles corresponding to the various manifestations of the deity, the sixth, that of l‘olohainmed, was closed with the death of .Jafar. and the seventh, NV hich was to be characterized by the coming of the :\lalmoli, or Alessialm. was thereby opened. the Nosairians taught that the seventh was closed by the seventh divine manifestation, that of Ali. Furthermore, the Nosairians recognized .Musa
stead of Ismail as the
of Jafar
This was probably due to the fact that they had accepted as their leader Nlohammed Nosair,
who was a partisan of the eleventh imam, a
scendant of Illusa. .1nol with l\dusa (died 7991, who was the seventh
considered the number of imams to lumve been completed.
other striking eharacteristie of the Nosairian belief was their attitude toward the
the various divine inearnation,. Tho lsmailians held that all the natiks excepting Slohammed were superior to their assns f 11111111M
or sumets, while the Nosairians played all of their assns above the natiks. But of greatest importance was the degree to which they carried their
trine of the divinity of .kli. Ali, while he confided the word to \lohammed. hail reserved the wean (meaning) for himself. Ali is their god in heaVPII and their imam on earth: he is concealed from man because of his divine nature: he is not
and has no attributes: his essence is the light. Ile created :\lohamonted to be the veil with wide]] he conceals himself, the phmee in which he
the bearer of his name.
hammed in his turn created Salman
to he the bob, or
one through whom man communicates with the deity, and who is charged by the divinity with the nmal