Preparing for the era of satr (seclusion) of the 21st Fatimi Imam al-Tayyib, the 20th Imam al-Amir had commissioned al-Hurra al-Malika, the Sulayhi queen of Yemen, to establish the office of al-Dai al-Mutlaq to head the Imam’s Dawat as his representative and vicegerent. In Yemen, al-Hurra al-Malika appointed Syedna Zuʾaib bin Musa as the first al-Dai al-Mutlaq. The Dai heads Dawat-e-Hadiyah during the seclusion of the Imam and continues to conduct the Mission on his behalf. Syedna Zuʾaib led and guided the community from Yemen, where a number of succeeding Dais after him were based. In the 16th century, the seat of Dawat-e-Hadiyah was transferred to India where it remains to this day. The 24th Dai, Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin, was the first incumbent to this office in India.
In the twentieth century, as the Dawoodi Bohra community began to expand and its members settled across the world, the need for an administrative setup to administer the global community’s spiritual and worldly affairs—while preserving its religious identity, cultural heritage and close-knit ethos—became all the more necessary. Therefore, the 51st al-Dai al-Mutlaq, Syedna Taher Saifuddin, began the process of institutionalising Dawat-e-Hadiyah as an organisation with a global presence, a process taken further by both his successors, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin and Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the 52nd and 53rd incumbents of the office of al-Dai al-Mutlaq. Today, Dawat-e-Hadiyah is both a continuation of centuries of history, legacy and tradition and at the same time, a modern and dynamic organisation that embraces the best of contemporary administrative practices to fulfil the needs of a vibrant global community.
