Includes bibliographical references and index.

Fatimid institutions of learning -- Succession to rule in the Shiite caliphate -- The Ismaili daʻwa in the reign of the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim -- Another family of Fatimid chief Qāḍīs : the al-Fāriqīs -- A Byzantine victory over the Fatimids at Alexandretta (971) -- The "crusade" of John Tzimisces in the light of new Arabic evidence -- Al-Maqrīzī and the Fatimids -- Purloined symbols of the past : the theft of souvenirs and sacred relics in the rivalry between the Abbasids and Fatimids -- "In praise of al-Ḥākim" : Greek elements in Ismaili writings on the Imamate -- Abū Tammām and his Kitāb al-Shajara : a new Ismaili treatise from tenth-century Khurasan -- An Ismaʻili version of the heresiography of the seventy-two erring sects -- Eternal cosmos and the womb of history : time in early Ismaili thought -- The doctrine of metempsychosis in Islam.