A Qurashi Family in the Service of the Dawat
The Banu al-Walid al-Anf were an Arab family of the Quraysh — the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) — who settled in the highlands of Yemen and became deeply bound to the fortunes of the Tayyibi Ismaili mission. Their genealogists traced the line through the Qurashi clans descended from Abd Manaf ibn Qusayy, and the family carried the tribal epithet al-Abshami al-Qurashi, reflecting a descent associated with the Abd Shams branch of Quraysh. The distinctive surname al-Anf (literally “the nose,” a mark of pride and nobility) is generally attributed to an ancestor.
The family’s link to the Fatimid Caliphate reached back to the Sulayhid era. According to the Tayyibi tradition preserved by their own historians, the ancestor Ibrahim ibn Abi Salama, called Ibrahim al-Anf, served the Sulayhid founder al-Malik al-Mukarram Ali al-Sulayhi (RA) and was sent as an envoy to the Fatimid Imam-caliph al-Mustansir Billah (AS) in Cairo. Through such service the family entered the inner circle of the Yemeni Dawat generations before any of its members held the supreme office. When the Imamate of Imam Al Tayyib (AS) passed into concealment and the institution of the Dai Al Mutlaq Institution was established to lead the believers in his absence, the Banu al-Walid were already among the most trusted scholarly houses of the mission.
From the Hamidi Dais to the Banu al-Walid
The Tayyibi Dawat in Yemen was first led by Dais drawn from the Banu Hamdan — the so-called Hamidi line. The office of Dai al-Mutlaq began with Dhu’ayb ibn Musa al-Wadii (RA), the first Dai, established under the regency of the queen Hurrat Al Malika (RA). He was followed by Ibrahim ibn al-Husayn al-Hamidi (RA), the second Dai, and then by Hatim ibn Ibrahim al-Hamidi (RA), the third Dai, who died in 596 AH / 1199 CE, and Ali ibn Hatim al-Hamidi (RA), the fourth Dai, who died in 605 AH / 1209 CE.
It was upon the death of Ali ibn Hatim that the leadership of the Dawat passed, for the first time, into the hands of the Banu al-Walid al-Anf. The transition marked the beginning of a long period — recalled in later tradition as lasting roughly three centuries, with only one or two interruptions — during which the office of Dai al-Mutlaq was held overwhelmingly by members of this single Qurashi family. The shift was not a rupture but a continuation: the Banu al-Walid had long served as senior teachers and assistants within the Hamidi Dawat, so the office moved between two closely allied scholarly houses of the Yemeni highlands.
The Founding Dai: Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Walid
The first of the family to hold the supreme office was Syedna Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Walid (RA) (born c. 1128 CE), who became the fifth Dai al-Mutlaq in 605 AH / 1209 CE and served until his death in late 612 AH / December 1215 CE, reaching a great age. His full name is recorded in the chains as Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Ja’far ibn Ibrahim ibn Abi Salama ibn al-Walid al-Abshami al-Qurashi, linking him directly to the family’s Sulayhid-era ancestor.
He was one of the most prolific theologians the Yemeni Dawat produced. A substantial body of treatises is attributed to him, many setting out the doctrines of Tayyibi Ismailism — its cosmology, its conception of haqaiq (the higher truths), and the spiritual rank of the Imam Al Tayyib (AS). Several of his works survive and have been published in modern times, while others remain in manuscript within community libraries. His tenure inaugurated the family’s leadership of the Dawat and established the scholarly tradition his descendants would carry forward.
A Dynasty of Scholars
The office did not pass to Ali ibn Muhammad’s son immediately, but the family’s hold soon became firm. His son Syedna al-Husayn ibn Ali ibn al-Walid (RA) became the eighth Dai al-Mutlaq, serving from 627 AH / 1230 CE until his death in 667 AH / 1268 CE — a long tenure of nearly four decades. He too was a major theologian; works on Tayyibi cosmogony and eschatology, including treatments of the mabda (origin) and maad (return) and an allegorical reading of the story of the fall of Adam (AS), are associated with him.
He was succeeded by his own son and chief assistant, Syedna Ali ibn al-Husayn (RA), the ninth Dai al-Mutlaq (667–683 AH / 1268–1284 CE), whose tenure was shaped by political turbulence in Yemen that forced the Dawat to move among the highland fortresses for safety. Later in the chain stands Syedna Ibrahim ibn al-Husayn (RA) of the same family, remembered as a long-serving Dai of the late seventh and early eighth centuries AH (active into the 1320s CE). Across these generations the Banu al-Walid combined the spiritual authority of the office with sustained literary output, anchoring Tayyibi doctrine in a written corpus that the community still studies.
Idris Imad al-Din: The Great Historian
The most celebrated member of the family was Syedna Idris Imad al-Din ibn al-Hasan (RA) (1392–873 AH / 1468 CE), the nineteenth Dai al-Mutlaq, who led the Dawat from 832 AH / 1428 CE until his death. Born at Shibam in the northern Yemeni highlands, he was descended from the Banu al-Walid al-Anf, and his immediate family had itself produced Dais: his grandfather Abdallah Fakhr al-Din (RA) was the sixteenth Dai, and his father al-Hasan Badr al-Din (RA) and an uncle also held senior rank in the mission. Idris first resided at the citadel of Haraz — long a stronghold of the Yemeni Dawat — and governed as a religious and political leader who navigated alliances with the Rasulid and later Tahirid rulers while contending with the Zaydi imams of the highlands.
Idris is best remembered as the foremost historian of the Ismaili tradition. His monumental Uyun al-akhbar (“Choice Sections of Reports”) is a multi-volume history reaching from the time of the Prophet (SAW) through the Imams and the Fatimid Caliphate, drawing on Fatimid-era sources now otherwise lost. His Nuzhat al-afkar continues the narrative into the Tayyibi period in Yemen, and his theological work Zahr al-maani expounds Tayyibi doctrine. These writings remain foundational for the history of the Fatimids and of Tayyibi Ismailism, and his mausoleum at Shibam is a site of ziyarat for Bohra pilgrims.
Legacy and the Move Toward India
The Banu al-Walid al-Anf retained the leadership of the Dawat into the early sixteenth century, when the office passed out of the family’s hands as the centre of gravity of the Tayyibi mission shifted decisively from Yemen toward India. The twenty-third Dai, in 946 AH / 1539 CE, designated an Indian successor, Syedna Yusuf ibn Sulayman (RA) — a turning point that ended the long Yemeni-Qurashi monopoly of the office and inaugurated the era in which the Dawat would be led from the Indian subcontinent. (Precise dates and the order of the later Yemeni Dais vary between sources and should be checked against the community’s own records.)
The endurance of the Banu al-Walid across roughly three centuries is one of the defining features of the middle period of Tayyibi history. Their significance lies not only in the unbroken line of Dais they supplied but in the intellectual tradition they built: a library of theological and historical works — from the treatises of Ali ibn Muhammad to the histories of Idris Imad al-Din — that preserved the Fatimid inheritance and gave the Dawoodi Bohra community much of its scholarly foundation. Their story bridges the queenship of Hurrat Al Malika (RA) and the early Hamidi Dais on one side, and the eventual flowering of the Dawat in India on the other.