Verifying the Imam A Medieval Treatise on Leadership in Islam

Few Islamic doctrines have provoked as much division and disagreement as those bound up with the imamate--or the office of supreme leader of the Muslim community following the Prophet's death. In the early 5th/11th century, the great Ismaili thinker Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani was mandated to compose a treatise calledLights to Illuminate the Proof of the Imamate(al-Masabih fi ithbat al-imama) in the hope of convincing Fakhr al-Mulk, the Shi'i wazir of the Buyids in Baghdad, to support the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim. He assembled an interconnected series of philosophical proofs, all pointing logically to the absolute necessity of the imamate. This is a modern critical edition of the Arabic original with a complete translation, introduction, and notes.Walker, Paul E. is the author of 'Verifying the Imam A Medieval Treatise on Leadership in Islam', published 2007 under ISBN 9781845116040 and ISBN 1845116046.