1 The Modern Resurrection of Nizārī Ismaili Islam: The Reforms of the Aga Khans Khalil Andani (Assistant Professor of Religion, Augustana College) This is the AUTHOR’S PRE-EDITED DRAFT of the Submitted Chapter. Readers are encouraged to cite and reference the final version to be published in Emad Hamdeh and Natana Delong-Bas (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Reform (forthcoming) This version of the chapter has been slightly modified for the non-specialist reader on Academia.edu; Any text in dark blue was removed during the editorial process and will not appear in the published version due to word length constraints. This chapter analyzes several longstanding reforms enacted within Nizārī Ismaili Muslim communities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the Aga Khans, the modern hereditary Ismaili Imams. Prior studies have focused on the Aga Khans’ socio-economic and communal reforms within a narrative of the Ismailis as a modern, progressive, and enlightened Muslim community. This chapter focuses on theological, ritual, and institutional reforms that have received less scholarly coverage. These include radical changes in Ismaili religious identity and practice, the suspension of the Ismaili religious hierarchy (ḥudūd al-dīn), modernization of Ismaili socio-economic activities including gender roles, and the institutionalization and bureaucratization of the Ismaili Imamate. While these reforms have been successful in delivering socio-economic and communal benefit for Ismaili communities, several new challenges have emerged in their wake, such as: difficulties in articulating Ismaili belief and praxis vis-à-vis legalistic Islam, bureaucratic challenges to grassroots expressions of Ismaili identity, and the virtual dissolution of constructive theology from Ismaili bureaucratic institutions. This chapter analyzes the nature and impact of several longstanding religious reforms enacted by the Aga Khans, the four most recent hereditary Imams of the Nizārī branch of Ismaili Muslims (hereafter referred to as “Ismailis”), among the global Ismaili community during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unlike Sunni reformist discourses that utilize concepts of ijtihād, tajdīd, or iṣlāḥ to justify Islamic reform, the Ismaili Imams’ authority is rooted in classical Ismaili understandings of the Imamate and the qiyāma (resurrection) – two doctrines that effectively naturalize the ideas of reform and continuous reinterpretation as something inherent to the Ismaili tradition. The major modern Ismaili religious reforms include: the construction and consolidation of a pan-Ismaili identity for various Ismaili communities worldwide that suspended their historical precautionary dissimulation (taqiyya); a major reform of ritual praxis through which the Imam abolished the obligation for Ismaili Muslims to perform sharīʿa rituals like ablutions, the