Ibn Hawshab

Ibn Hawshab — fuller name al-Hasan ibn Faraj ibn Hawshab, later honored as Mansur al-Yaman ("the Conqueror of Yemen") — was one of the most important early missionaries (da'is, "summoners") of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam. He is best known from a sira, an autobiographical account quoted by later writers, which is the main source for his life but also a partisan one.

According to this account he was born near Kufa in southern Iraq, into a Twelver Shia family, and earned his living as a craftsman. The death of the eleventh Twelver imam in 874 without a clear heir reportedly threw him into a crisis of faith, and an Ismaili agent won him over to the movement, which preached the imminent coming of a mahdi (a divinely guided restorer).

Around 881 he was sent on mission to Yemen, traveling by way of the Mecca pilgrimage and landing first at Aden. From bases in the western highlands he built a network of followers and fortified strongholds, and by the 890s controlled much of the region in the name of the hidden Ismaili imam, earning his honorific title.

His later years were marked by conflict with his former colleague Ali ibn al-Fadl, who broke away and besieged him. He died in 914 (302 AH). Sunni and Ismaili traditions assess him very differently — as either a heroic founder or a subversive — and several theological works attributed to him are of uncertain authorship.