Shams al-Din Muhammad, the first post-Alamut Nizari Isma‘ili imam, born in the late 640s AH / 1240s CE. He was the sole surviving son of Rukn al-Din Khurshah, the last lord of Alamut. The youthful Shams al-Din was taken into hiding during the final months of the Nizari state, shortly before the surrender of Alamut to the Mongols in Dhu al-Qa‘da 654 AH / December 1256 CE. He succeeded to the Nizari imamate on the death of his father in the late spring of 655 AH / 1257 CE.
Shams al-Din reportedly lived his life clandestinely in Adharbayjan as an embroiderer, whence his nickname of Zarduz. Certain allusions in the still unpublished versified Safar-nama of Nizari Quhistani, a contemporary Nizari poet from Birjand, indicate that he evidently saw Shams al-Din, named by him as Shams al-Din Shah Nimruz ‘Ali and Shah Shams, in Adharbayjan, possibly in Tabriz, in 679 AH / 1280 CE (see his Diwan, ed. M. Musaffa, Tehran 1371 Sh./1992, 105, 109; Ch.G. Baiburdi, Zhizn’ i tvor‘estvo Nizari Persidskogo poeta, Moscow 1966, 158, 162). In legendary accounts, and in some oral traditions of the Isma‘ilis, Shams al-Din has been identified with Shams-i Tabrizi, the spiritual guide of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi.
via The Institute of Ismaili Studies – Shams al-Din Muhammad.
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