Ismailis of China: history, culture and tradition
In China’s Xinjiang region, a small Ismaili community sustains its faith through ritual and story. IIS hosts a lecture on the Ismaili Tajiks of this community. The hybrid event takes place on Wednesday 16 September at the Aga Khan Centre, London, and online. Dr Amier Saidula will explore how rituals, oral traditions and vernacular knowledge sustain religious heritage and identity.
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Annual Graduate Conference 2026
IIS will host its Annual Graduate Conference on Monday 28 September at the Aga Khan Centre in London and online. This year’s theme, “Muslim Lives in Transition: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Times”, explores how Muslim lives are shaped by both continuity and change.
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Fatimid Sicily: History, Memory, and Legacy
How is the Islamic past imagined in contemporary Palermo, Sicily?
The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) hosts a two-day conference on Fatimid rule in Sicily. The event runs Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 October at the Aga Khan Centre, London, and online. A parallel exhibition, Islamic Traces, follows Palermo residents of different faiths and none as they search for the city’s Islamic past. Through architecture, landscape, language and the arts, they bring their imagined pasts to life in the present.
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‘Reducing Middle East tensions potentially lessens sectarianism and opens doors for women
Two separate developments involving improved relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and women’s sporting rights demonstrate major shifts in how rivalry for leadership of the Muslim world and competition to define Islam in the 21st century is playing out in a world in which Middle Eastern states can no longer depend on the United States coming to their defence.’
James M Dorsey
9 October 2021

‘Initial Taliban moves fail to convince Afghanistan’s neighbours and near-neighbours’
By James M. Dorsey
China-India Brief #188
August 28, 2021 – September 14, 2021

‘Taliban surge in north Afghanistan sends thousands fleeing’
Associated Press, 13.7.21