Ismaili Taʾwīl of Religious Rites: Interpretation of Obligatory Prayer in Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman’s Riḍāʿ fī l-Bāṭin

In what was labelled “exaggerating” Shiʿism (ghuluww) by various Islamic orthodoxies (Twelver Shiʿism, Sunnism, and Fatimid Ismailism), it was commonly held that the Islamic prescriptions had to be interpreted as referring to specific persons (ashkhāṣ)—which sometimes led to antinomianism. Stemming from this tradition, Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, a tenth-century Fatimid Ismaili author, proposes in his Riḍāʿ fī l-bāṭin an exegesis of the ritual ablutions and the five daily prayers that identifies them with specific individuals and sacred ranks of the daʿwa. This work illustrates how Ismailism developed its distinctiveness by reinterpreting and reshaping classical Shiʿi themes. Jaʿfar’s esoteric interpretation of prayer suggests that the core of early Ismaili doctrine resides in the acknowledgement of the esoteric hierarchy of the daʿwa, as well as in the expectation of the coming Mahdī, while insisting on the necessity of both the esoteric and exoteric aspects of religion.