The Dawoodi Bohras of Gujarat

The Coming of the Da’wa to Gujarat

The Tayyibi Ismaili presence in Gujarat began in the second half of the 11th century, during the era of the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Mustansir (the 18th Imam in the Bohra reckoning). According to community tradition, the Imam dispatched a missionary named Maulai Abdullah (RA) from Yemen to India, and he reached the prosperous port of Cambay — modern Khambhat — around 460 AH / 1067 CE. Maulai Abdullah is remembered as the first Wali al-Hind, the head of the da’wa in India, working under the broader authority of the Fatimid and later the Yemeni da’wa.

Gujarat in this period was an outward-looking land of merchants and seafarers, with a string of Arabian Sea ports linking it to the wider Indian Ocean world that the Fatimid da’wa already touched (see Fatimid Caliphate). It was into this commercial milieu that the early da’is quietly taught the Ismaili faith, gathering converts among traders, artisans, and at times figures close to the ruling courts.

The most celebrated early converts in Bohra tradition are Raja Bharmal and Raja Tarmal, described as ministers connected to the Solanki (Chaulukya) court of Anhilwara Patan under King Siddhraj Jaisinh, whose long reign fell in the early 12th century. Maulai Yaqoob (RA), remembered as a son of Bharmal, is honoured as the first wali of Indian birth to lead the da’wa in India — a marker of how quickly the community put down indigenous roots. As with much of this early period, the precise genealogies and dates rest on community tradition and devotional literature rather than independent contemporary records, and details vary between sources.

The Early Gujarati Centers

From its first foothold at Khambhat, the da’wa spread to a network of Gujarati towns that would remain Bohra centers for centuries. Tradition names Cambay (Khambhat), Patan, Sidhpur, and later Ahmedabad among the early strongholds where the community grew in numbers and confidence. These were not isolated outposts but nodes in Gujarat’s trade and craft economy, which helps explain the community’s enduring mercantile character (see Bohra History).

This was missionary work carried out under conditions that were sometimes dangerous. The early da’is are honoured in Bohra memory as much for their hardships as their successes. Among the most revered is Syedi Fakhruddin (RA), counted as one of the first martyrs of the Indian da’wa, who is traditionally said to have been killed at Galiakot — in the Rajasthan borderlands adjoining Gujarat — while engaged in the work of the da’wa. His dargah at Galiakot remains a place of pilgrimage for the community. Other early da’is, such as Maulai Nuruddin (RA), are associated with missionary journeys into the Deccan, showing that Gujarat served as a springboard rather than a final boundary.

Not all of this growth endured uninterrupted. By the 15th century, parts of the Bohra community of Patan are recorded to have shifted away from the Mustali Ismaili allegiance toward mainstream Sunni Islam — a reminder that the community’s history in Gujarat was shaped by political pressures, the policies of local rulers, and the wider currents of Indian Islam, and was never simply a story of uninterrupted expansion.

The Transfer of the Dawat from Yemen to India

For the first several centuries of the Tayyibi da’wa after the occultation (satr) of the 21st Imam al-Tayyib (AS), the administrative center of the community lay in Yemen, where the line of Du’at Mutlaqeen resided (see Dai Al Mutlaq Institution). India — and Gujarat above all — was a growing province of this Yemen-centered da’wa, with Indian students travelling to Yemen to study and Indian believers sending their religious dues there.

Over time the demographic and financial balance tilted decisively toward India. A pivotal figure in this shift was Yusuf Najmuddin ibn Sulayman (RA), the 24th Da’i al-Mutlaq, who hailed from Sidhpur in Gujarat and is remembered as the first Indian-born believer to hold the supreme office of the da’wa. Although he had risen to the leadership, he continued to reside in Yemen, where he died around 974 AH / 1567 CE and was buried.

It was under his successor, the 25th Da’i al-Mutlaq Jalal Shamsuddin ibn Hasan (RA), that the headquarters of the da’wa were transferred from Yemen to Gujarat in the latter half of the 16th century. Mounting pressure from the Zaydi rulers of Yemen made the position there increasingly difficult, while the Indian community had become the heartland of the faith. This relocation marked a turning point: from this time forward, the seat of the Dawoodi Bohra da’wa would rest in India, and Gujarat would be its spiritual and administrative home.

The Succession Dispute and the Dawoodi Identity

The transfer of the da’wa to Gujarat was soon followed by the defining schism of the community. On the death of the 26th Da’i, Dawud ibn Qutubshah (RA), a dispute over the succession divided the Tayyibi community between supporters of Dawud Burhanuddin ibn Ajabshah (RA) in India and supporters of Sulayman ibn Hasan in Yemen.

The Indian majority, predominantly Gujarati, upheld Dawud Burhanuddin and became known as the Dawoodi Bohras; those who followed Sulayman became the Sulaimani Bohras, a smaller community whose leadership remained in Yemen. Community tradition holds that the Mughal authorities of the time examined and recognised Dawud Burhanuddin’s claim. From this point the Dawoodi line of Du’at Mutlaqeen was firmly anchored in Gujarat, and the community’s identity as the Dawoodi Bohras took its mature form (see Duat Mutlaqeen).

The Great Gujarati Centers: Ahmedabad to Surat

With the da’wa now seated in India, its headquarters moved among several Gujarati and central-Indian towns over the following centuries. Ahmedabad served as a principal center in the period after the transfer, and at various times the seat of the da’wa is associated with towns such as Jamnagar, Ujjain, and Burhanpur, reflecting the political turbulence of the late Mughal and post-Mughal era. The community’s leadership eventually settled in Surat, the great Gujarati port and the most important Bohra center of the early modern period.

Surat’s prominence was reinforced by learning. The community’s foremost institution of religious education, the academy later known as Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah, traces its origins to a dars (seminary) established in Surat in the early 19th century, and Surat remains the site of its principal campus. The city anchored the Bohra world through the colonial period until, in the 20th century, the 51st Da’i al-Mutlaq Syedna Taher Saifuddin (RA) reorganised the community on modern lines and shifted its central headquarters from Surat to Bombay (Mumbai), where the seat of the da’wa remains today.

Even as the community’s institutional center moved to Mumbai and its members spread across India and into a worldwide diaspora, Gujarat retains a singular place in Bohra life. Its towns hold many of the community’s oldest mosques, mausoleums, and shrines; its dialect underlies the community’s liturgical Lisan al-Da’wa (Gujarati written in Arabic script with Arabic and Persian vocabulary); and its merchant heritage shaped the commercial ethos for which the Bohras are widely known. Gujarat is, in the fullest sense, the land in which the Dawoodi Bohra community was made.