off-shoots. Towards the end of the reign of the sixth Fatimite Khalif, al-Hakim, who may have been a religious fanatic, perhaps insane, or possibly an enlightened religious reformer of views far ahead of his age--his real character is one of the problems of history--there arrived in Egypt certain Persian teachers holding doctrines of transmigration and of theophanies, which seem to be endemic in Persia, and these persuaded al-Hakim that he was an incarnation of the Deity. A riot followed the open preaching of this claim, and the preachers fled to Syria, then a part of the Fatimite dominions, and there founded a sect which still exists in the Lebanon under the name of the Druzes. Soon after this al-Hakim himself disappeared; some said he was murdered, others said he had retired to a Christian monastery, and was recognised there afterwards as a monk; others believed he had gone up to heaven, and more than one claimant appeared asserting that he was al-Hakim returned from concealment. The other off-shoot shows a more definitely philosophical bearing. In the days of al-Mustansir, al-Hakim’s grandson, one of the Isma`ilian missionaries, a Persian named Nasir-i-Khusraw, came from Khurasan to Egypt, and after a stay of seven years returned home. This seems to have coincided with a kind of revival in the Isma`ilian sect, which now regarded Cairo as its headquarters. The Qarmatians had quite passed away; al-Hakim, whatever his later eccentricities, had been a patron of scholarship, the founder of an academy, the _Daru l-Hikma_, or “House of Wisdom,” at Cairo, and had enriched it with a large library, and was himself distinguished as a student of astronomy. The reign of his grandson was the golden age of Fatimid science, and apparently Shi`ites from all parts of Asia found their way to Egypt. In 471 another da`i or missionary, Hasan-i-Sabbah, a pupil of Nasir-i-Khusraw, visited Cairo and was received by the Chief Da`i, but not allowed to see the Khalif, and eighteen months later was compelled to leave the country and return to Asia. There were two factions in Cairo, the adherents respectively of the Khalif’s two sons, Nizar and Musta`li; Nasir-i-Khusraw and Hasan-i-Sabbah had already made themselves known as supporters of the elder son Nizar, but the court officials in Egypt adhered to the younger son Musta`li. When the Khalif al-Mustansir died in 487 the Isma`ilian sect divided into two new branches, the Egyptians and Africans generally recognising Musta`li, the Asiatics adhering to Nizar. This latter group had already been well organised by Nasir-i-Khusraw and Hasan-i-Sabbah, who for several years previously had been preaching the rights of Nizar. On his return home, about 473, Hasan-i-Sabbah had secured possession of a stronghold known as Alamut, “the eagle’s teaching” (cf. Browne: _Lit. History of Persia_, ii. 203, espec. note 13), and this became the headquarters of the sect of Nizaris or Assassins, who figure so