This volume advances the critical study of exegetical, doctrinal, and political authority in Shiʿi Islam. It presents new frameworks for interpreting the diverse modes of rationality and esotericism in Shiʿism and the socio-epistemic values they represent within Muslim discourse.

The Imam, the Divine Guide, is the central point around which the Shi'ite religion turns. The power of Shi'ism comes from the actions of the Imam. This title is reserved exclusively for the sucessors of the prophets in their mission. The author shows that from the beginning of Shi'ite Islam until the tenth century, the Imam was primarily a master of knowledge with supernatural powers, not a jurist theologian. The Imam is the threshold through which God and the creatures communicate. He is thus a cosmic necessity, the key and the center of the universal economy of the sacred. The author presents Shi'ism as a religion founded on double dimensions where the role of the leader remains constantly central: perpetual initiation into divine secrets and continued confrontation with anti-initiation forces. Without esotericism, exotericism loses its meaning. Early Imamism is an esoteric doctrine. Historically, then, at the beginning of esotericism in Islam, we find an initiatory, mystical, and occultist doctrine. This is the first book to systematically explore the immense literature attributed to the Imams themselves in order to recover the authentic original vision. It restores an essential source of esotericism in the world of Islam.

In this original study, Elizabeth R. Alexandrin examines the complex relationships that can be inscribed between medieval Ismā'īlī thought as an intellectual tradition with a devotional practice of reliance on the imām, and as a politico-esoteric system that redefined governance during the Fāṭimid caliphate in the eleventh century. Alexandrin's work is a departure from recent Western scholarship that focuses on similarities among early Islamic traditions. She argues instead that, under the guidance of the Fāṭimid Ismā'īlī chief missionary al-Mu'ayyad fī al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1078 CE), the concept of walāyah (divine guidance) became closely associated with religio-political authority, on the one hand, and the perfection of the individual human being, on the other. By signaling and affirming how the Fāṭimid caliph-imāms were the heirs of walāyah and by proposing new definitions of the "seal of God's friends" (khātim al-awliyā' Allāh), al- Mu'ayyad broadened the contexts of making esoteric knowledge public and shifted the apocalyptic frameworks of Islamic messianism.

Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.

In Praise of the Few: Studies in Shiʿi Thought and History is a selection of Etan Kohlberg’s research on Shiʿi Islam over a period of fifty years. It includes previously published articles, revised dissertation chapters, and a full bibliography of the author’s work. Divided into two parts, the collection begins with chapters from Kohlberg’s Oxford doctoral dissertation (1971) and related articles that investigate Sunni and Shiʿi views on the Prophet’s Companions and debates concerning the extent of their authority as sources of religious knowledge. Part Two traces the doctrinal and historical developments pertaining to various dimensions of Imāmī Shiʿi intellectual tradition such as theology, hadith, law, jurisprudence, and exegesis.

The book 'Esoteric Islam' discusses the mystical teachings of Quran from the standpoint of ancient mysteries and modern metaphysics. The Quran is considered as the book of divine guidance by Muslims whose main subject constitutes ‘man’. From a hermetic standpoint, the Quranic mysteries carry a great deal of connection to the hermetic arts of astrology and alchemy. Here, I have attempted to explain the manner in which symbolism of the hermetic precepts can be used to understand the Quran in its structural designs alongside the principle tenets, so as to define the notions of highest aspirations in men, and to unravel the mystique of this very impressive literature.

Abbreviations Preface Chapter I Introduction: Return to the Earliest Sources Hiero-Intelligence and Reason Esotericism and Rationalization The Sources The Nature and Authority of Imamite Traditions Chapter II The Pre-Existence of the Imam The Worlds before the World. The Guide-Light Adamic Humanity. The "Voyage" of the Light Excursus: "Vision with the Heart" Conception and Birth Chapter III The Existence of the Imam Comments on the "Political" Life of the Imams The Sacred Science Notes on the "Integral Qur’an* " The Sacred Power Chapter IV The Super-Existence of the Imam Imamite Points of View on the Ancientness of the Information The Imam and His Occultation: Esoteric Aspects The Return and the Rising: Esoteric Aspects Conclusions Appendix: Some Implications of the Occultation: Individual Religion and Collective Religion Notes Bibliography General Index

The first detailed study of Islamic theodicy, the book points out distinctively Islamic formulations and solutions of the problem of the best of all possible worlds" and shows where they coincide with Western versions, such as that of Leibniz. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Shows how the frictions and disparities between the different pockets of believers scattered throughout the Eastern Islamic world in the late ninth and tenth centuries, the relations between each of these and the Abbasid political institution favoured the narration of different bodies of the Imams' traditions

This book investigates the intellectual currents among Ottoman and North African scholars of the early modern period.