In many religious traditions, there exists a certain tension between traditional forms of knowledge and esoteric forms of knowledge. In many cases, esoteric knowledge is accused of “adding” to premises which have already been established by scripture or praxis. However, what can be said about this tension when the fundamental principles of religious belief accept esoteric knowledge as a truth? Who wields authority of this knowledge? In this paper, I propose to examine the role of the dāʿī muṭlaq in Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlism, the highest rank within the religious hierarchy of that tradition. Following the occultation of the last Ṭayyibī Imam, al-Ṭayyib Abī’l-Qāṣim, the dāʿī muṭlaq becomes supreme head of the Ṭayyibī community. This invested within the dāʿī a particular authority over religious knowledge, in any form. With what was formerly a scholarly position, the rank of the dāʿī becomes a hereditary, sacerdotal position which implies specific epistemic and cosmological claims about the nature of the world. My argument is two-fold: firstly, the nature of religious knowledge in Ismāʿīlism, in particular here, the Ṭayyibī form, is defined in such a way that its transference and propagation is ritualized act. Secondly, that the dāʿī muṭlaq has essentially acquired by proxy the ability to transmit religious knowledge in lieu of the Imam. The dāʿī has come to occupy a sacred space originally reserved for the Imam – the focus of ritual action – while the Imam has retreated into the role of a largely cosmological principle, an “imam absconditus” as one might say, whose function is largely to guarantee the legitimacy of the dāʿī and provide a source for the reception of knowledge. I will argue that certain shifts in Ṭayyibī thought reflect the historical circumstances of the Imam’s occultation. Cosmologically, the dāʿī is elevated to a manifestation of a celestial intellect. Symbolically, he becomes associated with the qiblah, and epistemologically, the provider of esoteric initiation. All of these have specific ritual contexts, as the dāʿī becomes the new focus of ritual action. To examine this, I will look at a variety of historical Ṭayyibī texts, including Kanz al-Walad, Zahr al-Maʿānī, and others. I will also make some reference to the modern context of the dāʿī muṭlaq in order to illustrate the development of the office and its claimed ownership of religious knowledge.