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Some accounts trace the descent of Obaid from Abd Allah ibn Maimun el-Kaddah, the founder of the Ismailian sect, of which the Carmathians were a branch.
The Ezbekieh Gardens, opposite the Continental Hotel, form really a small park in the centre of the city, and are a great resort for tourists as well as residents. The Ismailian is the fashionable quarter of the city, and it is said that many wealthy citizens have left their former luxurious native homes for a modern residence in the new section.
It has already been related that the Ismailian sect of the Muhammedans had introduced the doctrine of a coming Messiah, or Mahdi, who was to be the last of the imans, and the incarnation of the universal soul.
Except in the matter of decay, I found little change in the native portion of the city since my visit in 1898; but the aspect of the city proper has grown modern. Fine new streets, public buildings and residences, are seen everywhere in the Ezbekieh and Ismailian quarters of the city, while certain sections suggest a European capital.
To prudent statesmanship he added a large generosity, and his love of justice was among his noblest qualities. So far as outward acts could show, he was a strict Moslem of the Shiah sect, and the statement of his adversaries that he was really an atheist seems to rest merely upon the belief that all the Fatimites adopted the esoteric doctrines of the Ismailian missionaries.