The Crusades and the Templars 73remarkable multifaith society that is politically dominated by Islam, but
in which a large proportion of believers in other faiths manage to live
without difficulty, in a kind of symbiosis for which we would search in
vain to find an equivalent in other societies."
Islam opened for Christians numerous doors toward social under-
standing and harmony. On the Muslim side, the principle artisans of
this action were the Ismaili sects, particularly the Karmates and the
Assassins.
The Ismaliens were a bough of the Shiite branch of Islam. Karmate
propaganda, born from Ismailism, took on the form of a large reform
movement that was both social and religious in scope. From the ninth
to eleventh centuries, this movement shook the Muslim world, includ-
ing Syria, Persia, India, and especially Egypt, where it led to the instal-
lation of the Fatimid dynasty. It was in Egypt that a command center
for the majority of Ismailian sects, the Dit ul Hikmat, was founded.
In the social sphere, Karmatism is characterized by the organization
of labor and groups of workers into professional corporations (sinf; pi.
asnaf), which seem to have been in existence since the tenth century and
were connected with religious brotherhoods (tariqa; pi. turuq). It is
important to note that the contemporary recollections of asnafs and
turuq in Shiite sects emphasize both the spiritually and socially educa-
tional value of labor.^26 The hierarchical degrees—apprentice, worker,
foreman, and master—were the rule, as were the obligation to mutual
assistance and the initiatory oaths.^27 Trade secrets were gradually
passed on to each grade in accordance with a legal custom (dustur),
which was transmitted orally.
The kinship of these professional brotherhoods with the
Christianized collegia of the late Roman empire is obvious. Among
their members could be found not only Arabs but converts—mainly
Christians and Jews. In lands that had become Muslim it seemed that
there was some sort of transformation taking place in the various mod-
els of Latin and Byzantine institutions that had survived.
The Karmati movement, which is the source of these Muslim insti-
tutions, stands out both religiously and philosophically in its intro-
duction to Islam of basic foreign assumptions—primarily those that
were Hellenic, Neoplatonic, pseudo-Hermetic, and "Sabine." By