The recovery of Fatimid-era works produced by the Ismaili da’wa substantially improved our understanding of this Shiite dynasty and its history. However, much, perhaps most, of the material we now have for this purpose was all but inaccessible until fairly recently. Previously locked away in sectarian libraries in the Yemen and India, many important books and treatise are now emerging from obscurity and entering the main stream of modern scholarship. Thanks to those who have located, edited and translated this legacy over the preceding three or four decades, we can at last begin to match the literature of the Ismailis with the policies and pronouncements of the government they created and supported.
Click here for the audio at the source: http://www.international.ucla.edu/news/article.asp?parentid=125703
Ismailimail 
This is a fantastic lecture by Professor Paul Walker, who pays generous tribute to his colleague Professor Ismail Poonawala and spends the last 10 minutes of the lecture talking about my(and his) favourite Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-theologian Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, whose seminal intellectual treatises during the 8th century Shiite renaissance contributed significantly to the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate.
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Professor Paul Walker is outstanding and his book “Abu Yakub al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary” is highly recommended and a definite must-read.
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I fully agree!! I have read that book, one of the first published by the IIS(in 1996), about 10 times and I still do not feel that I have fully grasped all it is trying to say. I need to read it another 10 more times! This is a real tribute to the intellect of Chicago’s Paul Walker himself. It is truly amazing to me that a scholar who does not even belong to our Ismaili tradition can have such an effect on someone who does belong to our Ismaili tradition!! Pooonawala and Walker(not sure but I think Poonawala is a Mustelian not Nizari Ismaili) are like eager intellectual detectives, constantly on the hunt for original Nizari Ismaili manuscripts. Once they find one they hone in on it like ravenous bloodhounds, translate and analyse it to pieces so that schmucks like you and me can revel in the new knowledge they have just uncovered! Walker’s 40+ minute lecture talks about the discovery of a few such manuscripts. For me this is nirvana!
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can you please fix the video and put it on youtube? i can’t access it. thnx
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