Islam • 69the twelve imams) would take no further part in political life,
since in the absence of the Hidden Imam, the true leader of
the ummah, no government could be legitimate. Their mes-
sianic piety, which yearned for the imam's return, was expres-
sive of a divine discontent with the state of the community.
Not all Shiis were Twelvers, and not all abjured politics.
Some (called Seveners or Ismailis) held that Ali's line had
ended with Ismail, the son of Jafar as-Sadiq, who had been
designated i m a m but had died before his father. They did not,
therefore, recognize the legitimacy of Jafar's second son,
Musa al-Kazim, whom Twelvers revered as the Seventh
Imam.' They also developed an esoteric spirituality that
looked for a hidden (batin) meaning in scripture, but instead
of retiring from public life, they tried to devise a wholly dif-
ferent political system and were often activists. In 909 an Is-
maili leader managed to seize control of the province of
Tunisia, giving himself the messianic title of al-Mahdi (the
Guided One). In 983 the Ismailis wrested Egypt from the
Abbasids, and set up their own rival caliphate in Cairo, which
lasted nearly two hundred years. There were also secret Is-
maili cells in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen. Members were ini-
tiated gradually into the sect by the local dai (agent). The
religion practised in the lower grades was not unlike Sunnism,
but as the initiate progressed he was introduced to a more ab-
struse philosophy and spirituality, which made use of mathe-
matics and science as a means of awakening a sense of
transcendent wonder. Ismailis' meditations on the Quran gave
them a cyclical view of history, which they believed to have
been in decline ever since Satan had rebelled against God.
There had been six great prophets (Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Jesus and Muhammad) who had each reversed this
downward trend. Each prophet had an "executor" who taught
the secret meaning of his message to those who were capable
of understanding it. Aaron, for example, had been Moses' ex-