A Minor Schism in the Indian Dawat
Among the several offshoots that have separated from the main body of the Tayyibi Mustaali dawat over the centuries, the Hebtiah Bohra (also written Hebtiahs or Hibtia) are among the smallest and least documented. Unlike the great divide of 999 AH / 1591 CE that produced the Dawoodi and Sulaimani communities — see Dawoodi Sulaimani Split — the Hebtiah schism was a local affair that never grew beyond a handful of families clustered in and around Ujjain in central India. It is remembered less for any large following than for what it illustrates: the way in which the question of nass (divine designation) has, at moments of succession, occasionally produced a dissenting minority that broke from the line accepted by the overwhelming majority of mumineen.
The break occurred in the mid-eighteenth century, at the transition from the 39th to the 40th Dai al-Mutlaq. Because the surviving record is thin and several dates are given in the sources, the episode must be described with appropriate caution. What is clear is the basic shape of events: the recognised line of the dawat continued unbroken under the designated successor, while a small group declined to accept him and followed a leader of their own.
The Succession after the 39th Dai
The 39th Dai al-Mutlaq, Syedna Ibrahim Wajihuddin (RA), led the dawat for some eighteen years from the city of Ujjain in Malwa, having shifted the seat of the dawat there from the older centres of Gujarat and Kathiawar. He passed away on 17 Muharram 1168 AH (corresponding to 1754–1756 CE in the different reckonings used by the sources). Before his wafat he had conveyed the nass to his son, Syedna Hebatullah-il-Moayed Fiddeen (RA), who thereupon became the 40th Dai al-Mutlaq and is recognised as such throughout the Dawoodi line. For his life and the circumstances of the succession, see Syedna Ibrahim Wajiuddin 39th Dai and Syedna Hebatullah Moayed Fiddeen 40th Dai.
It was at this juncture that the dissent arose. The overwhelming majority of the community in Ujjain, across Malwa and throughout Gujarat accepted Syedna Hebatullah-il-Moayed Fiddeen (RA) as the legitimate 40th Dai. A small group, however, did not — and it is from this refusal that the Hebtiah branch takes its origin. The schism therefore belongs to the very beginning of the 40th Dai’s tenure rather than to the period of the 39th, even though it is the death of the 39th Dai that set the succession in motion.
Ismail bin Abdul Rasool and the Naming of the Group
The dissenting faction in Ujjain coalesced around Ismail bin Abdul Rasool and was supported by his son, Hebatullah. According to the accounts preserved in the dawat tradition, it is this Hebatullah — the son of the dissenting leader — after whom the group came to be called the Hebtiah Bohra, and not the legitimate 40th Dai who happened to bear the same blessed name. The coincidence of the two names is one of the more striking and confusing features of the episode, and it is worth stating plainly: the Hebtiah Bohra are named for the breakaway claimant’s son, not for Syedna Hebatullah-il-Moayed Fiddeen (RA), against whose recognition the group in fact set itself.
As with every Bohra succession dispute, the substance of the disagreement turned on nass — the explicit, divinely sanctioned designation by which a Dai appoints his successor, transmitted under the authority of the hidden Imam. The mainstream community held the nass to have been clearly conveyed to Syedna Hebatullah-il-Moayed Fiddeen (RA); the dissenters disputed this. Because the conferral of nass is by its nature a private and often deliberately discreet act — historically kept so to protect the dawat from political interference and danger — disputes of this kind could not be resolved by appeal to a public record acceptable to all sides. On the doctrine itself, see Nass In Bohra Tradition and Dai Al Mutlaq Institution.
A Small and Localised Community
By every account the Hebtiah Bohra remained a very small group. They were concentrated in Ujjain, the city that had become the seat of the dawat under the 39th Dai, with only a scattering of families elsewhere. They did not spread into the great Bohra commercial centres of Surat, Ahmedabad or Burhanpur in any significant number, nor did they establish the kind of broad institutional life that characterised the mainstream community.
The sources that mention the Hebtiah Bohra at all — chiefly brief notices in surveys of the Bohra communities — treat them as one of the minor Tayyibi offshoots alongside the larger Sulaimani and the smaller Alavi communities. They are routinely listed in the standard enumeration of Bohra sub-groups (Dawoodi, Sulaimani, Alavi, Hebtiah and others) without any claim that they ever rivalled the main line in numbers or influence. Detailed information about their internal organisation, their own line of leadership after Ismail bin Abdul Rasool, and their later history is sparse, and much that might be said with confidence about the larger communities cannot be said about this one. Readers should treat specific claims about their numbers, leadership succession or survival into the present with caution, as the documentary record is genuinely limited.
Significance within the Pattern of Schisms
The historical importance of the Hebtiah schism lies not in its scale but in its place within a recurring pattern. The Tayyibi dawat in India experienced a series of succession disputes — most consequentially the Dawoodi–Sulaimani divide at the 27th Dai, and later the emergence of the Alavi Bohras from the Dawoodi mainstream — and the Hebtiah break is one of the lesser instances of the same phenomenon. In each case the question was identical: to whom had the nass truly been given?
From within the Dawoodi understanding, the very smallness and impermanence of groups such as the Hebtiah is itself read as significant. The community holds that the barakah of the hidden Imam, Imam al-Tayyib (AS) — see Imam Al Tayyib — guides the body of mumineen to the rightful Dai, so that the overwhelming majority is led to recognise the true bearer of nass while dissenting claims fail to take root. The Hebtiah episode, on this reading, neither threatened nor weakened the dawat; the line continued without interruption through Syedna Hebatullah-il-Moayed Fiddeen (RA) and his successors down to the present.
This article is offered as a factual notice of a minor historical schism, not as a polemic. It concerns a sensitive matter of succession, and where the sources are uncertain — particularly as to exact dates, the later fate of the group, and the details of its internal life — that uncertainty has been preserved rather than resolved by invention. For the broader context of the community from which the Hebtiah separated, see Bohra History and Dawoodi Bohra History.