From Adam to Aga Khan: The Universal Imamat

[ismailignosis]

http://ismailignosis.com/2012/07/09/fro ... -imamat-2/

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“God created my spirit and spirit of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib two thousand years before He created humankind. He sent ‘Alī secretly with every prophet and openly with me.”
- Prophet Muhammad

The Imāmat is the office of spiritual and religious leadership recognized in Shī‘ī Islam according to which the Imām is the spiritual and religious successor (waṣī) of the Prophet Muḥammad. While prophetic revelation ended with the Prophet Muḥammad, divine inspiration, spiritual authority, religious guidance, and mystical gnosis continued in the institution of Imāmat.

Today, the Shī‘ī Ismā‘īlī Muslims recognize 49 designated hereditary Imāms from the progeny and family (Ahl al-Bayt) of the Prophet Muḥammad in direct lineal descent from Imām ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib who was designated by the Prophet. The present (ḥaḍir) and 49th hereditary Imām is Mawlānā Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusayni Āga Khān IV – known to his disciples (murīds) as Mawlānā Haḍir Imām. (For more details on the history of this succession, see the article Light upon Light: Succession in the Shī‘a Ismā‘īlī Imāmat)

Ismā‘īlī gnosis, as articulated in the teachings of various Ismā‘īlī Muslim philosophers, sages, and Imāms, reveals the Imāmat in a universal perspective which integrates and unifies the histories, communities and theologies of many different religions. One of the sayings of the Prophet Muḥammad often quoted by Shī‘ī sources states:

“I and ‘Alī are of one light. God created my spirit and spirit of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib two thousand years before He created humankind. He sent ‘Alī secretly with every prophet and openly with me.”
– Prophet Muḥammad,
(Shigeru Kamada, ‘Fayd al-Kāshānī’s Walāya’, Todd Lawson, Reason and Inspiration in Islam, 463)

Henry Corbin notes this same ḥadith and concludes that:

“This last is as precise a statement as could be wished for. The Muhammadan Imamate, as the esotericism of Islam, is eo ipso the esotericism of all previous prophetic religions.”
(Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, 42)

The Imāmat of Shī‘ī Ismā‘īlī Islam is not only the spiritual legacy of the Prophet Muḥammad but it embodies the spiritual meaning of all the previous prophetic religions and spiritual traditions. The presence of ‘Alī ‘secretly with every Prophet’ also means that this lineage of Imāms has been in existence even before the mission of the Prophet Muḥammad:

“It is impossible to think that there could not have been an Imām before Muhammad al-Mustafa. In reality, for many thousand centuries before this world and people, he was, he is at present, and will (always) be. After recognition of the Imām one must also know that there always was an Imām from the time of the creation of the world to the creation of Adam, from Adam to the Last Prophet, from the Last Prophet to this moment; that he always is, and will be, to the end of the world.”
- Khayrkwāh-i Harāti, (Kalām-i Pīr, transl. Ivanow, 115-116)

[agakhani]

Good information for most Ismailis, however for those Ismailis who reads ginans and listen Abu Ali's waez then this information may not new for them. I like the chart that is for sure