A history of my people.
I belong to a people who’ve never had a homeland.
Spread over thirty countries, the Shia Ismailis speak a multitude of languages, from English to Tajik, and trace their roots back to the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
The Muslim world or the Ummah, is made up of two main branches, the Sunni and the Shia. Although both groups subscribe to the main tenets of Islam, the Sunnis believe that Mohammed was the last prophet. The Shias believe that his son-in-law, Ali and his successors had the authority to lead them after the Prophet’s death. This difference has led to a deep division. Over time the Shia split into several sects, the Ismailis being one of them.
The forging of the Ismaili identity has occurred against a backdrop of migrations, conversions, expulsions and genocidal attacks. The early migration path, starting from Arabia, included Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Persia, Central Asia, China, the subcontinent of India and finally Africa, Europe and North America.
In the early tenth century, the Ismaili Imams began to establish the Fatimid Empire in North Africa. At the peak of their power, they founded the city of Cairo and ruled Egypt for over two centuries. During the twelfth century, Christian crusaders as well as the Sunni armies of Saladin began attacking the Ismailis. The Shia Fatimid Empire was replaced by a Sunni caliphate in Egypt and the Ismaili population became concentrated in Syria and Persia.
In 1256 Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, led a devastating attack on an Ismaili fort in Alamut, Persia, killing most of the men, selling off the women and children into slavery, and destroying libraries of precious religious texts. The survivors and their descendants went into hiding for many decades.
Starting in the late fourteenth century, the Ismaili Imams of Persia sent Pirs to India to spread the Ismaili faith. Most of those converted came from the lower Hindu castes, living in the northwestern part of India. My forefathers, probably peasant farmers from Gujarat, converted to Ismailism but were forced to practice their new religion as Guptis (hidden followers) to avoid persecution by Hindus and the Muslim Sunni majority. The Imam of the nineteenth century, Aga Khan I, became the first Ismaili leader to move to India from Persia.
Around the turn of the last century, Ismailis from India began migrating to Africa, primarily to Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar. These settlers became traders, farmers, clerks, and railway workers who, along with other Indians, helped the British in colonizing East Africa. The hinterland had swathes of fertile lands ideal for planting tea, coffee and cotton, virgin forests for lumbering and herds of game for ivory, skins and hunting.
In the last century, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah, Aga Khan III, started programs to transform the Ismaili community. He promoted the building of schools, housing colonies, and hospitals, particularly in India, Pakistan, and East Africa, and encouraged greater emphasis on education and women’s rights. He became the first Imam to move to the West. Prince Karim Shah, Aga Khan IV, the present Imam, born in Switzerland, and educated at Harvard, has carried on with his grandfather’s vision on a far larger scale.
The political storms of the twentieth century, starting with the Partition of India and Pakistan, disrupted the plans and the lives of those Ismailis living in India. During the unrest the majority was forced to flee into the predominantly Sunni Muslim Pakistan. Some, caught up in the bloody division, were killed, but the majority survived and started new lives in Pakistan, albeit as a minority.
Soon after Indian independence, African countries also began to demand their freedom and following widespread unrest in the Fifties, the British started to withdraw from the continent. The majority of the Ismailis living in Africa took up the new citizenship of their adopted country whilst a few retained British citizenship and moved to England.
Those that stayed behind, under the direction of the Imam, eliminated racial segregation in its community-built schools and hospitals and began to invest heavily in the African economy. But the great hope of a stable and multicultural society was to be dashed within a decade as Tanzania adopted socialism, nationalizing all private property; the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin expelled all Asians from the country, confiscating their assets and Kenya sank into corruption.
For the Ismailis, Africa’s political strife resulted in yet another set of migrations, this time to the West. Thousands from Uganda and the neighbouring countries, often stripped of their assets, moved to Canada, Britain, and the U.S. The majority of Ismailis, however, still live in developing countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and continue to face persecution and upheavals.
Through the centuries Ismailis have developed an ability to settle in new countries and yet maintain a powerful sense of identity, traditions and faith. Great emphasis is still placed on education, particularly for women, and on volunteerism
Mine is the story of a family’s seventy-year journey of migration across three continents to escape political convulsions, prejudice and poverty. Immigration, as I have come to learn, is not just about moving from one country to another. It’s much more about moving from one culture to another, a journey that never quite ends.
Excerpt from Conversations on Three Continents by M. H. Velshi
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