It is difficult to clearly demarcate the history of science from the history of religion in the Medieval Islamic world, where questions of science were often posed within a religious framework, and vice versa. Among the most interesting (and most enigmatic) episodes in this dual history of science and religion centers around the figure of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and his supposed influence on the development of proto-Ismāʿīlī doctrine. The present article attempts to situate Jābirian doctrines vis-à-vis Ismāʿīlī metaphysics by analyzing their respective attitudes towards history and the natural world. The emphasis is on an identification of typological affinities that point to an intellectual and spiritual genealogy between the two doctrinal systems, although the historical circumstances of this genealogy must for now remain inconclusive. I thus begin with an overview of Jābirian alchemy and the related theme of “the Science of the Balance.” This “science” is, in effect, a hermeneutical methodology whereby the objects of the physical world are metaphysically related to the words by which they are named; by measuring and manipulating the phonemes of these names, the scientist can effect changes in physical bodies while at the same time penetrating into the inner meanings of things. Thus, the cosmos is seen as one grand discourse that is subject to interpretation by the Science of the Balance. From here I move on to consider the place of natural science in early Ismāʿīlī doctrine. I refer in particular to the works of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī and Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī. I pay special attention to the emphasis each one places on the cosmological role of the natural sciences, and the ways in which natural science intersects with the performance of scriptural exegesis. The connection between exegesis, cosmology, and sacred history is also discussed. After having considered the role of natural science and scriptural exegesis in the Jābirian corpus and early philosophical Ismāʿīlism, I proceed to offer some preliminary occasions for comparison. Methodologically, both make use of a hermeneutic principle whereby history and the natural world are regarded as exterior signs of interior truths, and are therefore in need of interpretation. That is, the world itself is discursive, and its perfection lies in the performance of exegesis and transmutation. Beyond this fundamentally similar application of hermeneutics to history and the natural world, typological affinities are also evident in the details of their treatment of letter symbolism, cosmology, mineralogy, and sacred history.