Qasim-shahi Nizaris
A living tradition within Nizari Isma'ilism. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Qasim-shahi Nizaris is a living tradition within Nizari Isma'ilism. Also written Qāsem-šāhi line, the Aga Khan line.
Origin
No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. One of the two lines produced when 'an obscure dispute over his succession split the line of the Nezāri imams and their following into the Qāsem-šāhi and Moḥammad-šāhi (or Moʾmen-šāhi) branches' on the death of Shams al-Din Muhammad around 710/1310. Encyclopaedia Iranica states 'The Qāsem-šāhi branch has persisted to the present time' and that its last four imams have held the hereditary title Aqa Khan. Its imams emerged at Anjudan in central Persia in the middle of the 9th/15th century in the guise of Sufi pirs, beginning the Anjudan revival; with Mustansir bi'llah II (d. 885/1480), who took the Sufi name Shah Qalandar, they became established there. Shah Tahmasp had the thirty-sixth imam, Murad Mirza, executed in 981/1574. With the fortieth imam Shah Nizar (d. 1134/1722) the seat moved from Anjudan to Kahak near Qom and Mahallat, ending the Anjudan period. No founding year is asserted; c. 710/1310 is the death of Shams al-Din Muhammad.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Qasim-shahi Nizaris.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-qasim-shahi-nizaris.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-qasim-shahi-nizaris-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Qasim-shahi Nizaris},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-qasim-shahi-nizaris},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.