The Kitab al-Irshad of Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 413/1022) is one of the chief sources on the early history of Shi‘i Islam containing the lives of the twelve Imams in one book. Although mainly perceived as a collection of Shi‘i traditions, this work has had tremendous impact on the way early Shi‘i history has been perceived and studied by the tradition itself as well as by Western academia. However, little attention has been paid to the internal subtleties of the Kitab al-Irshad and to how its author builds his arguments, constructing the fundamental elements of Twelver Shi‘i doctrine and its main historical narrative, relating in particular to the doctrine of twelve Imams and the occultation of the twelfth and last Imam in Twelver Shi‘i Islam. Little attention has also been paid to the narrative structure of this work and the way in which Shaykh al-Mufid weaved the core Shi‘i doctrines into that narrative, further shaping and systematizing them. In fact, one could even say that he used narrative as a principal tool of historical discourse to articulate and further refine those very core doctrines. In analysing this work, I will therefore address the following questions: what use does Shaykh al-Mufid make of narrative and narrativity in articulating the history of the Shi‘i Imams up until the 4th/11th century? And: How does his work compare against other representatives of the Muslim literary and historical tradition (e.g. works of hadith, sira, tabaqat and ta'rikh) of his and earlier times? In this respect, it is particularly interesting to understand whether his work is a response to works of history such as those of al-Baladhuri (d. ca 279/892) and al-Tabari (d. 310/923), or, whether it is also a response to similar developments in other branches of Islam thus representing an attempt to delineate an independent Twelver Shi‘i identity. In addressing these questions, I also investigate how the author plays across a range of disciplines to reach his goal of compiling the biographies and the traditions of the twelve Imams. I argue that one of the important achievements of this work is the creation of a unifying narrative structure for the life story of each of the twelve Imams as well as the totality of the twelve life stories in response to important developments within Shi‘i Islam and within the Muslim tradition in general.