Umm al-Kitab (Ismaili book)

The Umm al-Kitab (Arabic: أمّ الکتاب, romanized: umm al-kitāb, lit. 'mother of the Book') is a major work of Ismailism from the late eighth century, from the town Kufa.[1] They must have been multicultural in language, since it includes Arabic, Persian and Aramaeic terms and orthodox and heterodox Jewish, Zorastrian and Mandaean motifs appear. Tone and stylistic forms hint, they were probably people of middle class origin, with distance to other Muslim groups, like the politically active Shiites and advocating asceticism.[2]

The treatise offers an esoteric hermeneutics concerning cosmology, the nature of man and worship within a Qur'anic context,[3] in form of a discourse of the fifth Shi'i Imam Muhammad al-Baqir responding to thirty questions raised by a group of disciples.

The book might try to reconcile dualistic cosmologies, as found among the pre-Islamic Persians, with Islamic monotheism. Several principles of evil, such as the Persian figure Ahriman, are said to be merely a later incarnation of the fallen angel Azazil, who in turn owes his existence to God (Allah).[4]