Hamza ibn ‘Alī ibn Aḥmad (; 985 – c. 1021) was an 11th-century Ismaili missionary and founding leader of the Druze. He was born in Zozan in Greater Khorasan in Samanid-ruled Persia (modern Khaf, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran), and preached his heterodox strand of Isma'ilism in Cairo during the reign of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. According to Hamza, al-Hakim was God made manifest. Despite opposition from the established Isma'ili clergy, Hamza persisted, apparently being tolerated or even patronized by al-Hakim himself, and set up a parallel hierarchy of missionaries in Egypt and Syria. Following al-Hakim's disappearance—or, most likely, assassination—in February 1021, Hamza and his followers were persecuted by the new regime. Hamza himself announced his retirement in his final epistle to his followers, in which he also promised that al-Hakim would soon return and usher the end times. Hamza disappeared thereafter, although one contemporary source claims that he fled to Mecca, where he was recognized and executed. His disciple Baha al-Din al-Muqtana resumed Hamza's missionary effort in 1027–1042, finalizing the doctrines of the Druze faith. Life Origin The life of Hamza ibn Ali and his exact role in the birth of the Druze movement are not entirely clear, as the chief sources about him—the contemporary Christian chronicler Yahya of Antioch, the Muslim historian Ibn Zafir, and Hamza's own epistles—are often contradictory. According to Ibn Zafir, Hamza ibn Ali was born in Zozan in Khurasan, and was originally a felt-maker. He emigrated to Fatimid Egypt, and does not appear to have been active before 1017/18, although he may have been present in Cairo already in 1013, as he describes the events surrounding the appointment of Abd al-Rahim ibn Ilyas as heir-apparent () by the Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (). Background: the Isma'ili daʿwa under al-Hakim At that time, the Isma'ili movement (), the state religion of the Fatimid Caliphate, was in turmoil due to the emergence of heterodox beliefs. These were propagated by al-Hasan ibn Haydara al-Farghani al-Akhram, an Isma'ili from the Farghana Valley. His teachings are only indirectly known, from the polemic writings refuting them by the Isma'ili , Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani. According to al-Kirmani, al-Akhram preached the imminence of the end times, when formal religion and religious law (the ) would be abolished and replaced with the pure, original paradisical worship of God. Such antinomian and millennialist concepts had been a core component of early Isma'ilism.