The Fatimid state institutionalized missionary training in Cairo colleges.

Evidence

It was not enough merely to formulate ideology; there was also the more practical business of disseminating it. In this respect, the Mission performed many tasks which a modern observer, depending on his point of observation, might classify as education or propaganda. In Cairo, the Fatimids founded great libraries and colleges among whose purposes was the training of missionaries to go out into the field, and the further instruction of those converts whom they sent home for this purpose. Many eager aspirants came to Cairo from Sunni lands in the East, to imbibe wisdom at the fountainhead, and then return to their own countries as exponents of the Isma ili message and workers for the Fatimid cause. One such was the Persian poet and philosopher Nasir-i Khusraw. A convert to Isma ilism, he went to Egypt in 439/1047, and returned to preach the faith in Iran and Central Asia, where he won a considerable following. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 397

Categorization

• XREF: Centralized creedal instruction and dispatches of trained agents anticipates modern institutionalized da’wa; connects to reader’s interest in how Islam was organized as a legible, propagable project for rival power centers.