Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) — The 23rd Dai al-Mutlaq

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

The Last of the Yemeni Dynasty — and the Most Forward-Looking

When Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I ibn Ali Shamsuddin (RA) — whose full honorific is Mawlana Muhammad ‘Izz al-Din al-Awwal ibn ‘Ali Shams al-Din al-Thalith (Ridwanu’llahi ‘alayh) — assumed the station of 23rd Dai al-Mutlaq in 933 AH / 1527 CE, he stood at the apex of one of the most distinguished scholarly lineages the Dawat had produced. He was the great-grandson of the immortal Syedna Idris Imaduddin ibn al-Hasan (RA), the 19th Dai, whose pen had given the Bohra community its entire historical memory. He was the grandson of Syedna al-Hasan Badr al-Din II (RA), the 20th Dai. He was the son of Syedna Ali Shamsuddin III (RA), the 22nd Dai, whose tenure was heartbreakingly brief.

He stood, in other words, at the culmination of a family dynasty that had guided the Dawat for more than three centuries across the mountains, plains, and port cities of Yemen. And he would be the last of his house to hold the office — khatim al-du’at al-Yamaniyyin, the seal of the Yemeni Dais.

His dawat lasted from 933 AH / 1527 CE to 946 AH / 1539 CE — twelve years, three months, and six days by the reckoning of traditional biographical sources. He is laid to rest at the ancient city of Zabid in the Tihama coastal plain of western Yemen, where the scholars and saints of the Dawat had gathered for centuries, and where the blessed fragrance of his mazar continues to draw pilgrims in ziyarat.

Yet the true measure of his dawat cannot be captured in dates or durations. Its significance lies in a single act of extraordinary foresight and spiritual clarity: the nass — the divinely guided designation — that he conferred upon a Gujarati scholar from the Indian city of Sidhpur, a man named Yusuf Najmuddin ibn Sulayman (RA). This act did not merely transfer an office; it redirected the entire current of the Dawat’s history toward a new geography, a new civilization, and a new chapter that continues to unfold to this day.

In designating the 24th Dai from the soil of India, Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) opened the Indian era of the Dawat — an era so enduring that it has now lasted nearly five centuries, and within which millions of Dawoodi Bohra families across the world trace their spiritual genealogy.

The Intellectual Inheritance: Who Was This Dai?

Lineage in Full

To understand Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA), one must begin with his lineage — both the genealogical chain of his family and the intellectual chain of his formation.

His paternal chain:

• Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) — 23rd Dai al-Mutlaq
• Son of Syedna Ali Shamsuddin III ibn al-Hasan (RA) — 22nd Dai al-Mutlaq
• Son of Syedna al-Hasan Badr al-Din II ibn ‘Ali (RA) — 20th Dai al-Mutlaq
• Son of Syedna Ali Shamsuddin II ibn Ibrahim (RA) — 18th Dai al-Mutlaq
• Son of Syedna Ibrahim (RA) — son of the great Syedna Idris Imaduddin (RA) — 19th Dai al-Mutlaq

This chain makes him the great-great-grandson of Syedna Idris Imaduddin through one line of descent, and the great-grandson through another — the family having maintained its leadership through several interlocking generations of cousins and uncles. The Banu al-Walid al-Anf family, as it is sometimes referenced in the biographical literature, had produced Dai after Dai in an unbroken succession that testified both to their extraordinary scholarly quality and to the Imam’s hidden guidance operating through each chain of nass.

What this lineage meant in practice was that Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was raised within one of the most intellectually saturated households in the Ismaili world. The Uyun al-Akhbar of Syedna Idris was likely recited in his household before he could walk. The Zahr al-Ma’ani, the Rawdat al-Akhbar, the legal and cosmological texts of the Fatimid tradition — these were the air his family breathed. He would have studied them formally under the supervision of his father, Syedna Ali Shamsuddin III, and the senior scholars of the Dawat who surrounded his family in the Haraz highlands.

Formation in the Haraz Tradition

The Jabal Haraz — a highland region in northwest Yemen, some 80 kilometers southwest of Sana’a, rising in places to over 2,500 meters — had been the heartland of the Tayyibi Dawat since the 12th century CE. The mountain strongholds of Hutaib, Shahan, and the surrounding villages had protected the Ismaili community from the political storms that periodically swept across the lowland cities of Yemen. Here, in villages perched on dramatic ridgelines above deep wadis, the Dawat had maintained its madrasas, its libraries, its networks of teachers and students.

Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was formed in this tradition. The Haraz scholars had developed over generations a distinctive intellectual culture: deeply grounded in the Fatimid corpus transmitted through the chains of riwaya from the Imams, intensely devoted to the inner (batin) dimensions of Quranic interpretation, and practically engaged with the preservation and transmission of the Dawat’s texts. When a young scholar of this family reached maturity, he would have been versed in:

• Quranic sciences (‘ulum al-Quran): tafsir, qira’at, tajwid, the numerological and esoteric dimensions of Quranic language as developed in the Ismaili tradition
• Fiqh al-Fatimi: the legal school derived from the rulings of the Fatimid Imams and their Dais, differing in important respects from the Sunni madhahib, particularly in matters of inheritance, marriage contracts, ritual purity, and the distinctive practices of the community
• ‘Ilm al-Batin (esoteric knowledge): the interpretation of the zahir (exoteric) and batin (esoteric) dimensions of all religious obligation, as systematized by Imam al-Nu’man ibn Muhammad and elaborated by subsequent Fatimid philosophers
• Hikma (wisdom/philosophy): the Neoplatonically inflected Ismaili cosmology — the doctrines of aql (Intellect), nafs (Soul), hudud (ranks of being), ta’wil (allegorical interpretation) — as transmitted from the Imam’s household through the generations of Dais
• History and biography (tarikh and sirat): particularly the tradition of recording the lives of the Dais and the major events of the Dawat’s history, in which his great-grandfather Syedna Idris had been the supreme master

This was the formation he received, and it prepared him to be not merely an administrator of the Dawat but a genuine scholar and spiritual guide capable of transmitting living knowledge to the scholars around him — including those who came from India.

The Historical Context: Yemen in the 1520s–1530s

The Collapse of the Tayyibid Dawat’s Political Shelter

The Dawat had never been a political power in the sense of holding armies or territory — its power was the power of the Imam’s ‘ilm, transmitted through the chain of Dais. But the community lived within history, and history had always shaped the conditions of its flourishing or its hardship.

When Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) assumed the dawat in 933 AH / 1527 CE, Yemen was in the throes of an extraordinary political transformation.

The Rasulid Dynasty (628–858 AH / 1229–1454 CE), which had for over two centuries provided the lowland coastal regions of Yemen with Sunni governance that was generally tolerant of religious minorities within their domains, had collapsed generations earlier. The Tahirids (858–923 AH / 1454–1517 CE), a Sunni dynasty based in Aden and the southern highlands, had succeeded them and similarly provided a measure of local stability — though with periods of tension — during which the Dawat’s communities in the Haraz and in the urban centers had managed to maintain their institutions.

But the Tahirids themselves were now gone. They had been swept away by the Ottoman advance.

In 1516 CE (922 AH), the Ottoman Sultan Selim I had shattered the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt at the Battle of Marj Dabiq, annexing Egypt and with it effective control of the Hejaz and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Ottoman Empire was now the paramount Sunni power of the Islamic world, presenting itself as the protector of the two holy sanctuaries and the champion of orthodox Sunni Islam. Its armies and its ideology were advancing southward into the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1515–1517 CE, the Ottomans had already made contact with Yemeni affairs through their support of local factions. By the 1520s — precisely the decade when Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) began his dawat — Ottoman forces and their allies were systematically dismantling the remaining independent principalities of Yemen. The Tahirid rulers who had controlled Aden, Ta’izz, and the southern highlands were defeated. By 1538 CE (945 AH), just a year before Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I’s (RA) wafat, the Ottomans had established direct control over major Yemeni port cities.

The Zaydi Imamate and the Ismaili Community

Alongside the Ottoman advance from the coast, the Zaydi Imamate — a distinct Shia tradition with deep roots in the northern Yemeni highlands — was reasserting itself. The Zaydis and the Tayyibis had coexisted uneasily for centuries in Yemen, competing for followers in the highland regions and sometimes coming into direct conflict. The Zaydi Imams had at various times persecuted the Tayyibi community, and at other times tolerated them as they had larger concerns.

Now, with the collapse of the Sunni Tahirid power that had served as a buffer, the Zaydi Imam Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Din was expanding his domain in the northern and central highlands. The Tayyibi communities in the Haraz were caught between Ottoman pressure from the lowlands and Zaydi pressure from the highlands.

This was the political context within which Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) had to maintain the Dawat. It was a situation of genuine peril — one in which the community’s institutions, its texts, its networks of teachers and students, could all be disrupted by political violence and forced displacement. That the Dawat survived this period intact, its ‘ilm preserved and its community holding together, is attributed by Bohra tradition to the barakah and du’a of the Dai and to the Imam al-Tayyib’s (AS) hidden protection of his representative’s community.

The Indian Dimension: Gujarat Under the Sultanate

While Yemen was contracting as a safe space for the Dawat, India was expanding as one.

The Gujarat Sultanate (1407–1573 CE), ruled from Ahmedabad, had for over a century provided the Bohra community with a degree of security and commercial freedom within which a flourishing merchant and scholarly community had developed. The Bohras — the term derived from the Gujarati vehvar meaning “trade” — were the commercial and religious successors to the early Ismaili missionaries who had brought the Tayyibi faith to Gujarat in the 11th century CE. By the 16th century, the community was well established in the trading cities of Gujarat — Ahmedabad, Cambay (Khambhat), Sidhpur, Patan, and others — and was producing scholars who traveled to Yemen for advanced education.

The Gujarat Sultanate was at its peak power in this period. Sultan Mahmud Shah I (reigned 1485–1511 CE) had presided over a period of great cultural and commercial flourishing. His successor, Muzaffar Shah II, and later the long reign of Mahmud Shah III (Begada, d. 1511), had seen Gujarat emerge as one of the wealthiest and most internationally connected commercial entrepots of Asia. The port of Surat was becoming one of the great trading centers of the Indian Ocean world. Bohra merchants, with their multilingual capabilities and their diaspora networks connecting Gujarat to the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and beyond, were deeply embedded in this commercial world.

The relationship between the Yemen-based Dawat leadership and the Gujarat-based Bohra community had been one of the defining features of Tayyibi history since the 12th century. Indian scholars would travel to Yemen for education; Yemen-based Dais would send wakils (representatives) to India to administer the community. The flow of scholarly exchange, financial support, and devotional connection between the two communities was constant. By the time of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA), this relationship had become the lifeline of the Dawat — and it was from this relationship that the 24th Dai would emerge.

The Dawat Under Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA): Twelve Years of Preservation

Continuity of ‘Ilm Transmission

The primary responsibility of any Dai al-Mutlaq is the transmission of the Imam’s ‘ilm — the living knowledge of divine reality that flows from the hidden Imam through his representative to the community. This transmission is simultaneously intellectual (through study and teaching), liturgical (through the administration of misaq and the recitation of du’a), and spiritual (through the inner connection that the Dai maintains with the Imam’s presence).

In the years of political turbulence that marked his tenure, Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) maintained all three dimensions of this transmission with constancy. The Dawat’s scholars continued to study and teach. The administration of misaq continued — each new generation of believers renewing their covenant of loyalty to the Imam through the medium of the Dai. The majalis and rituals of the community calendar — the ‘Ashara Mubaraka, the Eid celebrations, the observances of the Dawat’s special days — continued to anchor the community’s spiritual life.

What distinguished his tenure was the extraordinary emphasis placed on transmission to Indian scholars. This was not a new phenomenon — Indian students had been coming to Yemen for generations — but the urgency and intentionality with which Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) approached this transmission suggests that he understood, at some deep level, that the Yemen era of the Dawat was drawing toward its close and that the Indian inheritors of the tradition needed to be as fully prepared as possible.

The Education of Indian Scholars in Yemen

Among the young Gujarati scholars who came to Yemen for education during the tenure of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was Yusuf ibn Sulayman, who would come to bear the honorific Najmuddin (“Star of the Religion”). He was from Sidhpur — a city in the Patan district of northern Gujarat, one of the important centers of Bohra community life in that era.

Yusuf Najmuddin had traveled the arduous overland and sea journey from Gujarat to Yemen with the intention of deepening his knowledge at the feet of the Dai. The journey itself — crossing the Arabian Sea, reaching the port of Aden or Mocha, then traveling through the Tihama and into the highland regions — was a test of dedication and sincerity. Many students made this journey; not all had the inner preparation to receive the full depth of what the Dai could transmit.

In Yusuf Najmuddin, Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) recognized something extraordinary. Dawat biographical tradition describes the Dai as having perceived in this young Indian scholar a quality of spiritual readiness, intellectual depth, and inner istihqaq (worthiness) that marked him as the Imam’s choice for the next stewardship of the Dawat. The Dai’s perception of this was not ordinary human judgment but a form of kashf — the inner opening of perception that belongs to the Dai as the Imam’s representative.

The education that followed was comprehensive. Yusuf Najmuddin was taught not merely the texts of the tradition but its inner life — the living transmission of ‘ilm that cannot be fully conveyed through books alone but requires the presence and breath (nafas) of the teacher. He was immersed in the liturgical, legal, philosophical, and historical dimensions of the Dawat’s knowledge under the direct supervision of the 23rd Dai.

Administration of the Community in Yemen

Beyond the education of scholars, Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) administered the daily life of the community in Yemen — the Haraz villages, the communities in Zabid and other coastal cities, the networks of believers scattered across the highland regions. The Dawat in Yemen had a complex social structure: families of sayyid lineage who traced descent to the Prophet’s household, scholarly families who maintained the madrasas and mosques, merchant families who supported the Dawat financially, and the broader community of believers who constituted the living body of the faith.

Maintaining cohesion in this community during a period of political disruption required constant pastoral attention. Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) is credited in Dawat tradition with having been a Dai of particular personal warmth and accessibility — a leader whose presence provided reassurance and whose du’a was felt as a tangible protection in times of fear.

The Amiliyat — the local administrative structure through which the Dai governed different regions of the community — continued to function under his guidance. Amils appointed by the Dai managed the affairs of different communities, collected the Dawat’s dues (wajibat), resolved disputes according to Fatimi fiqh, and maintained the flow of communication between the local community and the central leadership. This administrative continuity, maintained even as the political context around the community deteriorated, was itself a form of spiritual achievement.

The Nass to India: The Most Consequential Moment

The Theology of Nass

The concept of nass — divine designation — is fundamental to the Ismaili understanding of religious authority. In the Tayyibi theology that the Dawat maintained, the hidden Imam al-Tayyib (AS) possessed all ‘ilm, all authority, and all spiritual power. But in his ghayba (occultation), he governed the community through his representative, the Dai al-Mutlaq, whom he designated through a hidden designation (nass khafi) that flowed through the Dai’s own ‘ilm.

This means that when a Dai performs nass — when he designates his successor — he is not expressing a personal preference or making an administrative appointment. He is revealing the Imam’s will, which he perceives through the ‘ilm that the Imam’s chain has deposited within him. The Dai cannot err in this designation because the ‘ilm that guides it comes not from ordinary human reasoning but from the divine light that the Imam’s chain carries through the centuries.

This theological framework means that the nass of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) upon Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) was not a “decision” in any ordinary sense. It was an i’lan — a proclamation of what the Imam had already ordained. The 23rd Dai was the instrument through which the Imam’s will was made manifest in history.

The Circumstances of the Nass

The nass of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) upon Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) was performed in circumstances that have been the subject of careful attention in Dawat historical accounts. According to traditional sources, the designation was performed in 942 AH / 1536 CE — four years before the 23rd Dai’s wafat — at a time when Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) had already returned to India.

This detail is theologically significant. The nass was not performed in the physical presence of the recipient. This was not unique in the Dawat’s history — the Dai’s authority and ‘ilm transcended physical proximity — but it marked the formal nature of this designation as a reaching across the Arabian Sea, a spiritual transmission that did not require the two men to be in the same room or even on the same continent.

The form of the nass — whether it was transmitted in writing, through a trusted wakil, or through another medium — is not fully specified in all the sources. What is clear is that the designation was unambiguous and irrevocable, as all nass must be: the 23rd Dai proclaimed Yusuf Najmuddin as the 24th Dai, and this proclamation was received and acknowledged.

The Crossing of a Sea

From the perspective of the Dawat’s history, this nass represents the crossing of a boundary more profound than any ocean. For over three centuries, the Dawat had been led by scholars rooted in Yemen — men who were formed in the Haraz tradition, who spoke Arabic as their native tongue, who moved within the political and social world of the Yemeni highlands and coastal cities. The chain of Dais from the 15th through the 23rd had been members of overlapping branches of the same Yemeni scholarly family.

Now that chain was extended to an Indian — to a man whose first language was Gujarati, who had grown up in a mercantile community embedded in the political and social world of the Gujarat Sultanate, who would administer his dawat from the cities of the subcontinent rather than the mountains of Yemen.

This was not merely a change of address. It was a civilizational crossing — the transmission of the Imam’s representative authority from the Arabic-speaking Yemeni world to the Gujarati-speaking Indian world. That this crossing was accomplished without rupture, without controversy, without schism — that the community accepted the 24th Dai as the legitimate and fully authoritative representative of the Imam — is itself a testament to the depth and solidity of the Dawat’s theological understanding of nass.

The community understood that the Imam’s guidance does not depend on geography, language, or culture. The Imam can designate a representative in Yemen, in India, or anywhere in the world, and that designation carries the full weight of divine authority. Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) taught this lesson by example — by looking past the expected candidates, past his own family, past Yemen, to the scholar whom the Imam had chosen.

The Intellectual and Scholarly Life of His Dawat

Works Attributed to the 23rd Dai

Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was a scholar who had inherited the full intellectual tradition of his great-grandfather Syedna Idris Imaduddin (RA). The texts he is associated with include:

Risalas and compositions in the tradition of the Dawat:

The 23rd Dai is credited with compositions in the genre of rasail (epistles) — the scholarly letters and treatises that the Dais wrote to their communities on questions of ‘ilm, fiqh, and spiritual guidance. These rasail served both as direct guidance to specific questions that arose within the community and as vehicles for the transmission of the Dawat’s ‘ilm in written form. Many were addressed to the community in India, whose growing scholarly needs required written guidance from the Yemeni Dai.

In the tradition of the Dawat, the Dai also composed du’as and munajat — personal prayers and supplications — some of which entered the liturgical repertoire of the community and continued to be recited in majalis and private devotion. The 23rd Dai’s compositions in this genre reflect the spiritual depth of a man who understood himself as the mediator between the community and the hidden Imam, and who felt that mediation as a personal and constant responsibility.

The transmission and annotation of texts received from his predecessors was another major dimension of his scholarly work. The corpus of the Dawat — the Fatimid texts, the works of the early Yemeni Dais, the monumental histories of Syedna Idris Imaduddin — required copying, correction, and in some cases commentary to remain accessible and accurately transmitted. The 23rd Dai oversaw this work, contributing to the preservation of texts that remain the foundation of Bohra learning to this day.

The Living Oral Tradition

Alongside the written tradition, the Dawat maintains a living oral ‘ilm that is transmitted directly from Dai to student in the context of personal teaching relationships. This ta’lim al-hayy (“instruction from the living”) is understood to be essential — the written texts carry the outer form of the knowledge, but the inner life of the knowledge can only be transmitted through a living chain of teachers who have received it from the Imam’s own breath (nafas).

Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was the custodian of this living tradition at a moment when its transmission to a new civilization was critical. His teaching of Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) was not merely instruction in texts but the transmission of this living ‘ilm — the opening of inner sight, the communication of the inner dimensions of ta’wil, the authorization to speak and act in the Imam’s name.

This dimension of his legacy is invisible in ordinary historical records but is felt across all the subsequent centuries of Indian Dawat leadership, which descended intellectually and spiritually from his transmission.

Syedna Idris Imaduddin (RA) — The 19th Dai: The Scholarly Foundation of This Lineage

A note on the greatest predecessor: Because Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was formed by the inheritance of his great-grandfather, understanding that predecessor illuminates the 23rd Dai’s own depth.

The Incomparable Historian and Philosopher

Syedna Idris Imaduddin ibn al-Hasan (RA) — the 19th Dai al-Mutlaq, who served from 832–872 AH / 1428–1468 CE — was one of the most prolific and influential scholars the Dawat ever produced. His tenure of forty years was a period of extraordinary literary and intellectual achievement that gave the Bohra community its most comprehensive account of its own history and its most sophisticated theological synthesis.

Born into the same family that would continue to lead the Dawat for several generations after him, Syedna Idris Imaduddin combined the political responsibilities of the Dai’s office with a scholarly productivity that would have been remarkable even for a man with no other duties. He wrote in Arabic with a mastery that drew on centuries of Fatimid literary and philosophical tradition, and his works range from monumental historical compilations to intimate mystical poetry.

Uyun al-Akhbar wa Funun al-Athar

The greatest of his works — the foundation of all Bohra historical knowledge — is the Uyun al-Akhbar wa Funun al-Athar (عُيُونُ الأَخبَارِ وَفُنُونُ الآثَار, “The Springs of Reports and the Gardens of Traces”). This monumental work in seven volumes is the primary source for the history of the Tayyibi Dawat from its origins through the 19th Dai’s own time.

The Uyun al-Akhbar begins with the cosmological foundations of the Ismaili worldview — the creation of Intellect and Soul, the celestial hierarchies, the prophetic cycles — and then proceeds through the history of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt, the circumstances of the Imam’s occultation, the founding of the Tayyibi Dawat in Yemen by Syedna al-Dhu’ayb ibn Musa (RA), and the lives and deeds of each Dai through to Syedna Idris’s own time. It includes the lives of the Imams, the political context of each era, the miraculous events associated with each Dai, and the intellectual and administrative achievements of the Dawat’s history.

The significance of this work cannot be overstated. Without the Uyun al-Akhbar, the Bohra community would have little reliable knowledge of its own first four centuries. Syedna Idris compiled it from earlier sources — some of which no longer exist in any other form — and supplemented it with oral traditions, documentary evidence, and his own scholarly analysis. The work is simultaneously a primary source (preserving earlier material), a secondary synthesis (analyzing and interpreting that material), and a spiritual text (offering ta’wil of the events it records).

When Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was formed as a scholar, the Uyun al-Akhbar was his family’s primary text — the record of his own family’s achievements and the template for understanding what the Dawat was and what it was called to be.

Zahr al-Ma’ani

Among Syedna Idris Imaduddin’s (RA) other major works is the Zahr al-Ma’ani (زَهرُ المَعَانِي, “The Flower of Meanings”) — a sophisticated philosophical text in the tradition of Ismaili hikma. The Zahr al-Ma’ani deals with the cosmological doctrines of Neoplatonic Ismaili philosophy: the relationship between the divine transcendence (tanzih) and the hierarchies of being through which the divine reality descends and by which the human soul ascends; the role of the ‘Aql al-Awwal (Universal Intellect) and Nafs al-Kulliya (Universal Soul) in the emanation of creation; the meaning of the hudud (ontological ranks) of the Dawat — Imam, Bab, Dai, Ma’dhun, Mukasir — as reflections of the celestial hierarchy.

This text, which Syedna Idris composed as a synthesis of centuries of Ismaili philosophical reflection, was transmitted through the family’s scholarly tradition and formed part of the intellectual inheritance that Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) received and, in turn, transmitted to the scholars of the Indian Dawat.

Rawdat al-Akhbar

The Rawdat al-Akhbar (رَوضَةُ الأَخبَارِ, “The Garden of Reports”) is another historical work of Syedna Idris Imaduddin (RA) — a shorter companion to the Uyun al-Akhbar focusing on specific themes and events. Like all the works of this great Dai, it was preserved in the family’s manuscript tradition and continued to be studied and transmitted by his descendants.

Al-‘Aqidat al-Jaliya

The Al-‘Aqidat al-Jaliya (العَقِيدَةُ الجَلِيَّة, “The Luminous Creed”) is a theological exposition of the fundamental beliefs of the Tayyibi faith — the doctrine of tawhid, the status of the Imams, the nature of the occultation, the authority of the Dai. It served as a catechetical text for the community and a reference for scholars dealing with questions of doctrine. Transmitted through the family’s educational tradition, it would have been among the texts that Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) taught to his students, including the future 24th Dai.

Poetry and Madih

Syedna Idris Imaduddin (RA) was also a distinguished poet — his Arabic poetry in praise of the Prophet (SAW), the Imams (AS), and the great figures of the Dawat was composed with a mastery that placed him among the finest poets of the Yemeni Arabic tradition. His qasaid (odes) and manaqib (eulogy poems) became part of the Dawat’s liturgical repertoire, recited in majalis and ceremonies across the centuries.

This poetic tradition was part of the inheritance that Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) received — and the tradition of Dai poetry, which he would have practiced and transmitted, was part of what he passed on to the Indian Dawat, where it continues to this day in the form of the Arabic and Gujarati poetry composed by successive Dais and recited in Dawat gatherings worldwide.

The Hamidi Scholarly Tradition and the Jabal Haraz

Syedna Hatim ibn Ibrahim al-Hamidi (RA) — 3rd Dai

To understand the intellectual context from which Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) emerged, one must also understand the broader scholarly tradition of the early Yemeni Dais — particularly the tradition associated with Syedna Hatim ibn Ibrahim al-Hamidi (RA), the 3rd Dai al-Mutlaq, who served from 596–596 AH / 1199–1199 CE through to approximately 612–622 AH / 1215–1225 CE.

Syedna Hatim al-Hamidi (RA) was one of the greatest philosophers and mystics of the Yemeni Dawat. His works — particularly the Tuhfat al-Qulub wa Farahat al-Matlub (تُحفَةُ القُلُوبِ وَفَرَحَةُ المَطلُوبِ, “The Gift of Hearts and the Joy of the Seeker”) and the Risalat al-Wafiya — represent the highest level of Ismaili philosophical and spiritual writing from the Yemeni period. His thought draws deeply on the traditions of Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Nishapuri and the broader Fatimid philosophical tradition transmitted from Cairo through the early Yemeni Dais.

The Tuhfat al-Qulub is a work of spiritual navigation — it guides the murshid through the stages of inner development, from the outward observance of the shari’a through the inner journey of haqiqa, using the metaphors of the heart’s states and the soul’s ascending journey toward the Imam’s light. It became one of the canonical texts of Dawat ‘ilm, studied by every serious scholar who followed — including, through the transmission chains of his family, Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) himself.

The Hamidi tradition established a pattern for the Yemeni Dawat: that the Dai was simultaneously a political administrator (managing the community’s affairs in the real world), a scholar (maintaining and developing the tradition of ‘ilm), and a spiritual guide (leading the community’s inner life). This threefold responsibility was the template that all subsequent Dais inhabited — and that Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) fulfilled in his own time, under his own conditions.

The Ayyubid Context of the Early Dais

The early Yemeni Dais operated within the political context of the Ayyubid Dynasty, which had established its control over Yemen in the late 12th century CE. The Ayyubids, descended from Salah al-Din (Saladin) and his Kurdish military family, were ardent Sunnis who had overthrown the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt in 1171 CE and who were, in principle, hostile to Ismaili Shia communities throughout their domains.

Yet the relationship between the Ayyubid rulers of Yemen and the Tayyibi community was more complex than simple opposition. The Dawat’s communities in the Haraz highlands were protected by the geography of their mountain fortresses — the same mountains that had sheltered Yemeni communities against invaders for millennia. And the Ayyubid governors of Yemen, often engaged with their own internal politics and the constant challenges of governing a fragmented highland country, had limited capacity to pursue every religious minority in their domains.

The early Tayyibi Dais navigated this environment with a combination of political caution (taqiyya, in its legitimate form of prudent discretion), strategic relationships with local tribal leaders who provided protection, and the cultivation of internal community solidarity that made the Dawat resilient to external pressure. The tradition of satr (concealment) — in which the Dawat’s inner doctrines and leadership structures were not openly proclaimed to the outside world — was a protective mechanism that the early Dais developed and refined into a sophisticated practice.

By the time of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA), the Ayyubid political world was long gone — replaced by the Rasulids and then the Tahirids and then the Ottomans — but the tradition of spiritual and administrative resilience that the early Dais had developed in the Ayyubid era remained as a living inheritance, guiding the Dawat through each new political challenge.

Mojezat (Miracles) and Karamat of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA)

The ‘Ilm of Basira: Seeing the Future Dai

The most celebrated mojeza — miracle — associated with Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) is understood not as a disruption of natural law but as the manifestation of the Dai’s inner basira (spiritual sight): his recognition of Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) as the next Dai before anyone else — including, in some sense, Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin himself — had fully understood what was to come.

Dawat biographical tradition emphasizes that when Yusuf Najmuddin arrived in Yemen for study, the Dai recognized his inner station immediately. This recognition was not based on external qualifications alone — there were other Yemeni scholars of great learning — but on an inner kashf, a direct perception of the Imam’s designation. The 23rd Dai saw in this young Gujarati student what ordinary eyes could not see: the inner isti’dad (preparedness) and the divine selection that the Imam’s will had already inscribed.

This ability to perceive the unseen is one of the specific karamat attributed to the Dai as the Imam’s representative. The Imam deposits in the Dai’s heart a nur (light) through which he perceives spiritual realities. Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I’s (RA) recognition of his successor is understood as the expression of this light — a miracle not of the suspension of nature but of the illumination of spiritual perception.

Protection of the Community During Political Turbulence

Among the accounts preserved in Dawat tradition is the understanding that the Haraz communities were protected from the worst consequences of the Ottoman and Zaydi advances during the 23rd Dai’s tenure. The mountain villages where the Dawat’s community lived — some of them the same villages that remain Bohra community centers in Yemen to this day — were not destroyed during this period of upheaval. The community maintained its institutions, its schools, its mosques and shrines.

Traditional sources attribute this protection to the du’a of the Dai — the intercessory prayer of the Imam’s representative, which has a quality and efficacy that ordinary human prayer does not possess. The Dai’s du’a is understood as the Imam’s own du’a finding expression through his representative, and therefore as carrying a divine guarantee of response. That the community survived a genuinely dangerous period intact is attributed to this intercessory power.

The Nass Across the Ocean: A Spiritual Transmission

The performance of nass to Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) while the latter was in India is itself understood in Dawat tradition as a mojeza — a demonstration of the Dai’s authority and ‘ilm that transcends ordinary spatial limitations. The nass is not a physical transaction but a spiritual transmission, and the fact that it could be accomplished across the vast distance of the Arabian Sea — without the two men being in proximity, without any of the ordinary social witnesses that might accompany other major events — demonstrates the nature of the Dai’s authority as something that operates in the spiritual dimension rather than merely the physical.

This understanding gave subsequent generations of the community confidence that the chain of nass could not be broken by any earthly circumstance — not by distance, not by political disruption, not by the death of a Dai before a successor could be gathered. The Imam’s designation flows through the Dai’s ‘ilm, and ‘ilm knows no physical boundary.

Blessings at the Mazar: Continuing Karamat

After his wafat, the mazar of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) at Zabid has been a site of ziyarat for the community — a place where believers seek his intercession (shafa’a) and the blessings (barakah) of his presence. The tradition of ziyarat at the mazarat of the Dais is understood not as mere historical commemoration but as a living spiritual practice: the souls of the Dais remain connected to the community through the Imam’s grace, and their intercession can be sought through sincere du’a at their tombs.

Accounts of blessings received at the mazar of the 23rd Dai — recoveries from illness, resolution of difficulties, spiritual openings — are part of the living tradition of the community, though such accounts are passed down through personal and family oral tradition rather than formal documentation.

The Scholarly Context of Late Yemen: Texts and Libraries

The Preservation of Manuscripts

One of the critical functions of the Dawat’s administration throughout the Yemeni period was the preservation and copying of manuscripts. The Dawat’s intellectual tradition was carried in texts — handwritten books that were at once rare, fragile, and irreplaceable. The Fatimid corpus transmitted through the centuries from Cairo — the works of al-Qadi al-Nu’man, of Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, of al-Mu’ayyad fi’l-Din al-Shirazi, and the many others who had written under the Fatimid Imams — together with the works of the Yemeni Dais themselves, constituted a library of extraordinary richness and depth.

The preservation of this library in the face of political disruption was a constant challenge and a constant responsibility. The Dawat’s scribes copied texts; the Dawat’s administrators moved manuscripts to safer locations when political conditions required; the Dawat’s Dais supervised the transmission of these texts to new students who would carry them to new locations.

During the tenure of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA), with the political situation in Yemen deteriorating, this function of preservation became increasingly urgent. Some scholars believe that the 23rd Dai’s conscious policy of educating Indian scholars and transmitting texts to them was, in part, motivated by the understanding that India would provide a more stable repository for the Dawat’s intellectual heritage than Yemen could guarantee under Ottoman pressure.

The result — whether or not this was fully conscious — was that the intellectual heritage of the Yemeni centuries survived. The texts that would otherwise have been at risk in Yemen were transmitted to India, where they were preserved and studied in the Dawat’s institutions over the subsequent centuries. When scholars today study the Uyun al-Akhbar or the Tuhfat al-Qulub, they are reading texts whose survival is owed in part to the transmission policies of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) and his immediate predecessors.

The Scholars Who Surrounded Him

The dawat of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was sustained by a circle of scholars — ‘ulama and du’at — who administered the Dawat’s various functions and transmitted its knowledge. These included:

Senior du’at and ‘ulama who managed the administration of the Dawat in Yemen — supervising the misaq ceremonies, conducting the majalis, adjudicating disputes according to Fatimi fiqh, overseeing the Dawat’s financial affairs.

Traveling scholars who moved between Yemen and India, maintaining the communication between the Yemeni Dai and the Indian Bohra community. These men were the connective tissue of the Dawat — polyglots who spoke Arabic and Gujarati, men who understood both the Yemeni and the Indian social worlds, who could carry letters and legal rulings from the Dai to the Indian community and bring back reports, financial contributions, and students for the Yemeni madrasas.

The scribe-scholars who copied manuscripts and maintained the Dawat’s libraries — often working under difficult physical conditions in the highland villages, producing the handwritten copies that preserved the tradition’s texts for future generations.

The Dawat’s Transition to India: A Historical Perspective

Why India?

The question of why India — specifically Gujarat — became the second homeland of the Tayyibi Dawat is one of the most interesting in Bohra history. The answer involves several interacting factors.

The early mission: The Tayyibi Dawat had established its presence in Gujarat in the 11th century CE, when the Fatimid missionary da’i ‘Abd Allah al-Yafi’i (and later his successors) brought the Ismaili faith to the trading cities of the Gujarat coast. The first converts were primarily from the Hindu merchant communities — particularly the Vaishya trading castes who found in Ismaili Shia Islam a faith compatible with their commercial values and social structures. These early converts became the ancestors of the Bohra community.

Commercial prosperity: The Bohra community in Gujarat developed over the succeeding centuries into one of the most commercially successful Muslim communities in India. Their multilingualism, their maritime connections to the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa, their reputation for honesty in commercial dealings, and their tight-knit community solidarity all contributed to economic success. By the 16th century, Bohra merchants were significant players in the Indian Ocean trade networks that connected Gujarat to Aden, Mocha, Mombasa, Hormuz, and beyond.

Intellectual development: The commercial prosperity of the Gujarati Bohras funded the development of scholarly institutions — madrasas, libraries, and community centers — that produced scholars capable of traveling to Yemen and absorbing the advanced learning of the Yemeni Dais. By the 16th century, the Indian Bohra community was producing scholars of genuine depth, men who had mastered the Dawat’s ‘ilm and who were ready to carry its responsibilities.

Political stability: While no historical environment is perfectly stable, the Gujarat of the early 16th century — under the Gujarat Sultanate and later the early Mughal period — offered the Bohra community greater security than the Yemen of the Ottoman advance. The Gujarat Sultanate’s sultans, while Sunni, were generally tolerant of Shia communities within their domains and valued the commercial contributions of the Bohra merchants. This tolerance was imperfect and occasionally interrupted, but it was generally more predictable than the political situation in Yemen.

The Imam’s guidance: From the Dawat’s perspective, the most fundamental reason for the Dawat’s move to India was the Imam al-Tayyib’s (AS) hidden guidance — expressed through the chain of nass — directing the leadership of the Dawat toward the place and the person best positioned to preserve and transmit the Imam’s light in each era. The 23rd Dai’s designation of an Indian successor was the expression of this divine guidance operating through the Dawat’s institutional forms.

The Legacy for the 24th Dai and Beyond

When Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) assumed the station of 24th Dai al-Mutlaq after the wafat of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) in 946 AH / 1539 CE, he inherited:

• The full ‘ilm of the Dawat as transmitted through the 23rd Dai
• The authority of the Imam’s nass, recognized by the community
• The administrative structures of the Dawat both in Yemen and in India
• The intellectual heritage of the Yemeni scholarly tradition, now to be maintained from an Indian base
• The community of Bohra believers in Gujarat, who would now have a Dai among them rather than a distant figure across the sea

The transition was not instantaneous or seamless — the community in Yemen continued for some years, and the connection between India and Yemen remained important for decades. But the fundamental shift had been made: the center of the Dawat’s gravity was now in India, and there it would remain.

The subsequent history of the Dawoodi Bohra Dawat — its growth into a community of millions, its spread across the world, its distinctive synthesis of Arabic learning and South Asian culture, its famous unity and solidarity, its tradition of producing Dais who were simultaneously scholars, administrators, and spiritual guides — all of this unfolded from the seed that Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) planted with his nass.

The Political Context: The Mughal Empire and the Indian Dawat

Early Mughal India and the Bohra Community

The transition of the Dawat’s center to India coincided with one of the most significant political transitions in Indian history: the establishment of the Mughal Empire. The Mughal Emperor Babur had defeated the last Delhi Sultan, Ibrahim Lodi, at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 CE — just one year before Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) began his dawat. The Mughal dynasty would go on to rule most of the Indian subcontinent for the next three centuries.

The early Mughal period was one of significant political reorganization. Babur’s son Humayun struggled to consolidate Mughal power and was temporarily driven from India by the Suri Afghan dynasty before recovering his throne. The Gujarat Sultanate, which had been the Bohra community’s immediate political context, remained independent during the early Mughal period — it was not incorporated into the Mughal Empire until 1572 CE, during the reign of Akbar.

For the Bohra community, this period of political transition was navigated carefully. The community maintained its commercial activities and its internal religious life, seeking accommodation with successive political powers — the Gujarat Sultanate, and later the Mughal provincial administration — while preserving its distinctive identity and institutions. This pattern of political accommodation combined with internal religious integrity was one the Dawat had developed over centuries in Yemen and which translated naturally to the Indian context.

The 24th Dai, Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA), and his successors would develop the Dawat’s relationship with Indian political powers over the subsequent decades and centuries — a relationship that was sometimes comfortable and sometimes fraught, but that the Dawat navigated through the same combination of prudent accommodation and firm internal identity that had sustained it through all the political changes of the Yemeni centuries.

Wafat, Mazaar, and Ziyarat

The Passing of the 23rd Dai

Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I ibn Ali Shamsuddin (RA) passed from this world in 946 AH / 1539 CE at Zabid, the ancient city in the Tihama coastal plain of western Yemen. Zabid — a city that had been, since the medieval period, one of the great centers of Islamic learning in Yemen, home to scholars from across the Muslim world — was the place where the 23rd Dai concluded his earthly journey.

The city of Zabid had served as a refuge and center for several of the Yemeni Dais and their communities. Its lower altitude — in the hot, humid Tihama coastal plain — made it a different kind of environment from the highland Haraz, but it was a city with its own tradition of scholarship and sanctuary. The choice of Zabid as his final resting place connects the 23rd Dai to a long tradition of Dawat presence in this historic city.

The Mazar at Zabid

The mazar of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) at Zabid is a place of ziyarat for the Bohra community — believers who travel to Yemen visit his resting place to recite salaam, perform du’a, and seek his intercession. The practice of ziyarat at the mazarat of the Dais is one of the most profound expressions of Bohra spiritual life: it is simultaneously an act of historical remembrance (honoring the sacrifice and service of those who preserved the faith), a theological act (acknowledging the continuing spiritual presence of the Dai’s soul), and a devotional act (seeking the Imam’s mercy through the mediation of his representative).

For Bohras who travel to Yemen — a journey that has become more difficult in recent decades due to political conditions in that country, but which remains a spiritual aspiration for many — the ziyarat of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) at Zabid is among the sites visited. The experience of standing at the mazar of the last Yemeni Dai — the man who looked across the ocean and designated India — is understood as a moment of profound historical connection, touching the hinge point between the Yemeni and Indian eras of the Dawat.

Succession: The 24th Dai

He was succeeded by Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin ibn Sulayman (RA), the 24th Dai al-Mutlaq, who administered his dawat from Sidhpur in Gujarat. The 24th Dai would go on to establish the Indian era of the Dawat on firm foundations, building the institutions, the relationships, and the scholarly traditions that would sustain the community through the subsequent centuries.

The Spiritual Significance of the 23rd Dai: Theological Reflection

The Dai as the Imam’s Representative

The Dawat’s theology teaches that the Dai al-Mutlaq is not merely an administrator or a scholar but the representative of the living Imam — the person through whom the Imam’s light, authority, and grace reach the community during the period of occultation (ghayba). The Imam al-Tayyib (AS) is hidden from the physical world but present in the spiritual world, communicating with his representative through modes of knowledge that transcend ordinary sensory experience.

This means that the Dai is, in theological terms, the bab (gate) through which the believer accesses the Imam’s presence — the medium of the Imam’s guidance, mercy, and intercession. When the believer performs misaq — the covenant of loyalty that every Bohra adult takes — they are formally acknowledging this relationship: accepting the Dai as the Imam’s gate and themselves as the Imam’s subjects, bound by the responsibilities and blessed by the privileges of that relationship.

For Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA), this theological status meant that his entire twelve-year dawat was an expression of the Imam’s will — not his own personal vision or historical judgment, but the manifestation of the Imam’s guidance through the medium of the Dai’s knowledge and authority. The nass he performed upon Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) was, in this understanding, the Imam’s own designation expressed through the Dai’s lips and hands.

The Chain of Nass: The Unbroken Line

From the first Tayyibi Dai — Syedna Dhu’ayb ibn Musa (RA), appointed by Imam al-Tayyib’s mother and grandmother in 526 AH / 1132 CE — through the 23rd Dai and beyond, the chain of nass constitutes the Dawat’s theological spine. Each Dai designated the next; each designation was the expression of the Imam’s hidden will; each link in the chain was theologically unbreakable because it was made not by human judgment but by divine guidance deposited in the Dai’s ‘ilm.

Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) was the 23rd link in this chain — standing between the 22nd Dai (his father, Syedna Ali Shamsuddin III) and the 24th Dai (Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin, who began the Indian era). To be the 23rd link was to bear the full responsibility of maintaining the chain’s integrity through a period of extraordinary historical pressure. That he did so — that the chain remained unbroken, that the nass was made with full authority and received with full recognition — is the deepest expression of his legacy.

The Dawat as a Living Organism

The Tayyibi Dawat is not merely an institution or an organization but is understood theologically as a living spiritual body — a manifestation of the Imam’s presence in the world, sustained by his hidden guidance and made visible through the Dai’s ministry. Like a living body, the Dawat can move, adapt, and grow in response to the conditions it faces, while maintaining its inner identity unchanged.

The move from Yemen to India was one of the most dramatic movements in the Dawat’s history — a geographical, linguistic, and cultural transformation of enormous scope. But from the Dawat’s own perspective, it was not a rupture but a living adaptation: the body of the Dawat moving to a new environment while its soul — the Imam’s ‘ilm and his guidance — remained identical. The 23rd Dai was the agent of this movement, the servant of the Imam’s will who made the adaptation possible.

The Legacy of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) in the Present

The Community He Shaped

The Dawoodi Bohra community that exists today — with its millions of members across India, Pakistan, the Middle East, East Africa, North America, Europe, and beyond; with its distinctive practices and traditions, its extraordinary level of education and cohesion, its tradition of Dai leadership extending from the medieval Yemeni era to the present — is the community whose trajectory was definitively shaped by the 23rd Dai’s nass.

Every subsequent Dai — from the 24th (Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin, RA) through the current 54th Dai (Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, TUS) — is part of a chain that passes through the 23rd Dai’s designation. The Indian era of the Dawat, which has now lasted nearly five centuries and which has produced some of the most remarkable figures in Ismaili history, began with his act of spiritual clarity.

To be a Dawoodi Bohra today is to be part of a community whose shape was determined in part by this Dai’s perception of the Imam’s will — his willingness to look past the expected, past the familiar, past his own family and nation, to the scholar whom the Imam had chosen.

Zikr of the 23rd Dai in Dawat Tradition

In the tradition of the Dawat, the memory of each Dai is maintained through multiple practices. The salawat and salaam composed for each Dai — verses of praise and blessing — are recited in majalis and gatherings, keeping the memory of each Dai’s qualities and contributions alive in the community’s devotional life.

The 23rd Dai is remembered in these recitations as the khatim al-du’at al-Yamaniyyin — the seal of the Yemeni Dais — and as the one through whose vision and nass the Indian era of the Dawat began. His qualities of basira (inner sight) and ‘ilm (knowledge) are invoked as models for the community’s understanding of what the Dai’s authority means and how it operates.

The Mazaat of Zabid as Historical Testimony

The mazar of Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) at Zabid stands as a physical testimony to the Dawat’s Yemeni heritage — a reminder that the community’s roots are in the mountains and cities of southern Arabia, that the intellectual tradition it carries was forged in the Haraz highlands and the scholarly centers of Yemen, that the long chain of Dais who preceded the Indian era are not merely historical figures but present spiritual realities accessible through ziyarat.

As Yemen has experienced political turmoil in recent years, the mazarat of the Yemeni Dais — including the mazar of the 23rd Dai at Zabid — have faced challenges of access and preservation. The Bohra community has maintained its commitment to the ziyarat of these sites and to the preservation of the mazar structures, understanding this as an obligation of loyalty to the Dais and to the tradition they embodied.

His Salawat

اَللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ عَلَى مَولَانَا مُحَمَّدٍ عِزِّ الدِّينِ الأَوَّلِ بنِ عَلِيٍّ شَمسِ الدِّينِ الدَّاعِي الثَّالِثِ وَالعِشرِينَ وَخَاتِمِ الدُّعَاةِ اليَمَنِيِّينَ الكِرَامِ وَرِضوَانُ اللهِ عَلَيهِ يَومَ لَقِيَ رَبَّهُ بِزَبِيدَ فِي اليَمَنِ المُبَارَكِ الَّذِي رَأَى بِنُورِ البَصِيرَةِ وَعِلمِ الإِمَامِ أَنَّ مُسْتَقبَلَ الدَّعوَةِ فِي هِندِ وَأَسنَدَ النَّصَّ بِإِذنِ المَولَى إِلَى يُوسُفَ نَجمِ الدِّينِ فَفَتَحَ عَصراً جَدِيداً وَحَفِظَ سِلسِلَةَ النَّصِّ مِن إِمَامِنَا الطَّيِّبِ إِلَى هَذَا اليَومِ الكَرِيمِ

Allahumma salli ‘ala Mawlana Muhammad ‘Izz al-Din al-Awwal ibn ‘Ali Shams al-Din, Al-da’i al-thalith wal-‘ishrin wa khatim al-du’at al-Yamaniyyin al-kiram, Wa ridwanu’llahi ‘alayhi yawma laqiya rabbahu bi-Zabid fi’l-Yaman al-mubarak, Alladhi ra’a bi-nuri’l-basira wa ‘ilmi’l-Imam anna mustaqbal al-da’wa fi Hind, Wa asnada al-nass bi-idhni’l-Mawla ila Yusuf Najm al-Din fa-fataha ‘asran jadidan, Wa hafidha silsilat al-nass min Imamina’l-Tayyib ila hadha’l-yawm al-karim.

O Allah, send blessings upon our Master Muhammad Izz al-Din the First, son of Ali Shams al-Din, The 23rd Dai and the seal of the noble Yemeni Dais, And Allah’s pleasure upon him the day he met his Lord at Zabid in blessed Yemen, Who saw through the light of inner sight and the Imam’s knowledge that the Dawat’s future lay in India, And directed the nass with the Lord’s permission to Yusuf Najm al-Din, opening a new era, And preserved the chain of nass from our Imam al-Tayyib to this noble day.

اللَّهُمَّ ارحَم مَولَانَا مُحَمَّدَ عِزَّ الدِّينِ الأَوَّلَ وَارزُقنَا شَفَاعَتَهُ وَزِيَارَةَ مَزَارِهِ وَبَرَكَتَهُ فِي الدُّنيَا وَالآخِرَةِ

O Allah, have mercy on our Master Muhammad Izz al-Din the First, and grant us his intercession, the ziyarat of his mazar, and his blessing in this world and the next.

Summary: The Dai at the Hinge of History

Syedna Muhammad Izzuddin I (RA) — the 23rd Dai al-Mutlaq — served the Dawat from 933 to 946 AH (1527–1539 CE), during one of the most politically turbulent periods in Yemeni history. He was the great-grandson of the incomparable scholar Syedna Idris Imaduddin (RA), carrying within him the full intellectual and spiritual inheritance of the Yemeni Dawat’s greatest era.

He served the Dawat faithfully through twelve years of political upheaval — the Ottoman advance into Yemen, the pressure of the Zaydi Imamate, the collapse of the political structures that had sheltered the community. He maintained the transmission of ‘ilm, the administration of the community, the liturgical and spiritual life of the believers.

And he performed the act that will define his legacy for as long as the Dawat exists: the nass upon Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin (RA) of Sidhpur, Gujarat — the first Indian Dai, the beginning of the Indian era of the Dawat, the opening of a chapter that now encompasses five centuries and millions of believers across the world.

He was, in the truest sense, the hinge of history: the last Dai of the Yemeni dynasty and the one who opened the door to the Indian era. His mazar at Zabid is the resting place not merely of a man but of a moment — the moment at which the Dawat’s future was entrusted to a new civilization, and the moment at which the Imam’s guidance proved once again that it transcends all human boundaries of geography, language, and expectation.

رِضوَانُ اللهِ عَلَيهِ وَعَلَى جَمِيعِ الدُّعَاةِ الكِرَامِ May Allah’s pleasure be upon him and upon all the noble Dais.

Key Facts at a Glance

See also: Dai Al Mutlaq Institution, Syedna Ali Shamsuddin 22nd, Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin 24th, Syedna Idris Imaduddin 19th, Fatimid Caliphate, Tayyibi Dawat, Imam Al Tayyib, Jabal Haraz, Gujarat Bohra Community, Misaq, Nass Designation