Nizari Ismailis

The Nizari (Arabic: النزاريون‎‎ an-Nizāriyyūn) are the second-largest branch of Shia Islam (the largest being the Twelver). There are an estimated 15-25 million (20% of Shia population) Nizari residing in more than 25 countries and territories. Nizari teachings emphasize human reasoning (Ijtihad, the individual use of one's reason when using both the Quran and Hadith as resources), pluralism (the acceptance of racial, ethnic, cultural and intra-religious differences) and social justice.

From quite early on in his reign, the Fatimid Caliph-Imam al-Mustansir Billah had publicly nominated his elder son Nizar as his heir to be the next Fatimid Caliph-Imam after him. This was common knowledge in Fatimid Egypt at the time. Dai Hassan-i Sabbah, who had studied and accepted Ismailism in Fatimid Egypt, had been made aware of this fact personally by al-Mustansir. After al-Mustansir died in 1094, Al-Afdal Shahanshah, the all-powerful Armenian Vizier and "Commander of the Armies", wanted to assert, like his father before him, his own dictatorial position over the Fatimid State. Al-Afdal engineered a palace coup on behalf of the much younger and dependent al-Musta'li who was his brother-in-law by placing him the very next day on the Fatimid throne. Al-Afdal claimed that Al-Mustansir had made a deathbed decree in favour of Mustaali and thus got the Ismaili leaders of the Fatimid Court and Fatimid Dawa in Cairo, the capital city of the Fatimides, to endorse Mustaali – which they did realizing that the army was dictating the palace coup.

In early 1095, Nizar fled to Alexandria where he received the people's support and where he was accepted as the next Fatimid Caliph-Imam after al-Mustansir. There were even gold dinars minted in Alexandria in Nizar's name. (One such coin found in 1994 is now in the collection of the Aga Khan Museum.) In late 1095, al-Afdal defeated Nizar's Alexandrian army and took Nizar as a prisoner to Cairo where he had Nizar executed.

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