An Ismā‘īlī Shekhinah: the Divine Magic of Egypt in Fāṭimid Ta'w

Historians, both contemporary and medieval, have regarded the Fāṭimid conquest of Egypt as merely one stop on their path to a worldwide Shī‘ī empire. The Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī dā‘īs (missionaries), however, tell a different story. For Ja‘far b. Manṣūr al-Yaman in particular, Egypt was not an intermediary stage nor a layover on the way to Baghdad and Constantinople, but a land of divine magic where God's connection with His chosen regents was particularly strong, where miracles could take place, and where God's favor upon His imams was most strongly felt. Ja‘far’s notion that a particular land could be more favorable for prophecy may have influenced the writings of the Andalusian Jewish thinker Judah Halevi (1075 – 1141), who argued for a proto-nationalistic view of Israel as a land where prophecy descends on God's elite (ṣafwa) and where the shekhinah, or divine presence, can be most strongly felt, highlighting the already-established intellectual exchange between Fatimid Ismaili and Jewish thinkers