Political upheaval created receptivity to Isma’ili messianic ideology.

Evidence

The Isma ili message had considerable appeal, to many different elements in the population. It was a time of great upheavals in the Islamic world—of eco­ nomic change, political disruption and intellectual malaise. As in late Umayyad times, there were many who felt that the Islamic community had gone astray and that a new leader, with a new message, was needed to restore it to the true path. There was a withdrawal of consent from the existing order, a loss of con­ fidence in hitherto accepted answers. The Abbasid Caliphate, and with it the Sunni order, seemed to be breaking up; some new principle of unity and au­ thority was required to save Islam and the Muslims from destruction. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 399

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels modern analyses linking social dislocation to receptivity to revolutionary ideology; could feed a comparative Islam-West piece about the structural preconditions of ideological appeal.