At some point close to or immediately after the advent of the Fatimids in North Africa, Abu’l-ʿAbbās, brother of the famous Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Shīʿī, was asked to compose an explanation of the stipulations governing zakāt and ṣadaqa and how such payments and patient compliance in observing them is connected to the daʿwa and access to ta’wīl-based knowledge. The work was called Mafātīḥ al-niʿma (The Keys to Grace) and it dates to a period before 911, which is when its author was put to death. Thus all its material about the Ismaili hierarchy, the role of the dāʿī and the imam, and the science of ta’wīl—to whom is it revealed and under what circumstances—is as early, perhaps earlier, than any other sources we have. Moreover, given the prominence of the man who wrote this treatise, it has critical political importance for the formation of the new Fatimid state.