BOHRA

also spelled Bohora, in general, any Shi'i Isma'ili Muslim of the Musta'li sect, living in western India. The name is a corruption of a Gujarati word, vahaurau, meaning to trade. The Bohras include, in addition to this Shi'i majority, often of the merchant class, a Sunni minority who are usually peasant farmers. The Musta'li sect (see Isma'ilite), which originated in Egypt and later moved its religious centre to Yemen, gained a foothold in India through missionaries of the 11th century. After 1539, by which time the Indian community had grown quite large, the seat of the sect was moved from Yemen to Sidhpur, India. A split resulted in 1588 in the Bohra community between followers of Da'ud ibn Qutb Shah and Sulayman, who both claimed leadership of the community. The followers of Da'ud and Sulayman have since remained the two major groups within the Bohras, with no significant dogmatic differences, the da'i, or leader, of the Da'udis residing in Bombay, the leader of the Sulaymani in Yemen.