Crossword-Solution: ISMAILIANS 10 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 12

After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians,--a party of fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will.

The Ismailians may be best regarded as one of the several sects of Shiites, who originally were simply the partisans of Ali against Omar, but by degrees they became identified as the upholders of the Koran against the validity of the oral tradition, and when, later, the whole of Persia espoused the cause of Ali, the Shiite belief became tinged with all kinds of mysticism.

The Ismailians believed, for instance, in the coming of a Messiah, to whom they gave the name Mahdi, and who would one day appear on earth to establish the reign of justice, and revenge the wrongs done to the family of Ali.

The Ismailians regarded Obaid himself as the Mahdi, and they also believed in incarnations of the “universal soul,” which in former ages had appeared as the Hebrew Prophets, but which to the Muhammedan manifested itself as imans.

The Ismailians also introduced mysticism into the interpretation of the Koran, and even taught that its moral precepts were not to be taken in a literal sense.