Esoteric Apocalypse (Qiyamah): Isma‘ilī Muslim Perspectives on the “End of the World” (Part 2)
“All of these changes suggest that we are moving into a new epoch of history, a new condition of human life.”
– Imām Shāh Karīm al-Husaynī Āgā Khān IV
“We, the Imāms in descent from Imām Husayn, are present until today and we shall remain until the Qiyāmah and even after the Qiyāmah.”
– Imam Āgā Shāh ‘Alī Shāh Āgā Khān II
This post continues from Part 1 – Esoteric Apocalypse (Qiyāmah): Ismā‘īlī Muslim Perspectives on the “End of the World”. In Part 1, we explained and outlined the concept of Qiyāmah in Ismā‘īlī gnosis, and the various signs which would accompany the beginning of the Cycle of Qiyāmah and the advent of the Qā’im al-Qiyāmah. (We advise all readers to go through Part 1 before reading this post).
Part 1 left off by showing how two prominent Ismā‘īlī dā‘īs – Hamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī and Muḥammad al-Ṣūrī – prophecized that the Seventh Cycle – the Cycle of Qiyāmah – would commence after the coming of 49 Imāms of the Cycle of Prophet Muḥammad:
“Kirmānī firmly rejected Druze statements about the imminent advent of the Qā’im by reiterating that the Qiyāma was not near, but was to take place in the distant future when the long cycle of forty-nine Imāms was concluded. Only then would the Qā’im remove all the ranks of the world of dīn [‘ālam ad-dīn], which would no longer be necessary as intermediaries for the knowledge of the divine knowledge would become pure, actual, and no longer mediated.”
– Simonetta Calderini, (“‘Ālam al-dīn in Ismā‘īlīsm: World of Obedience or World of Immobility?”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 56, No. 3 1993, 467)
“Muḥammad b. ‘Alī al-Ṣūrī, a Fatimid dā‘ī in Syria who died around 487/1094, enumerates the imāms of the era of Islam in a long poem. According to him, the seventh heptad of imāms in the era of Muḥammad is the most eminent one, because it precedes the coming of the Qā’im.”
– Farhad Daftary, (The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines, 208)