It is well-known that the interrelated ideas of esoteric knowledge (‘ilm al-bāṭīn) and interpretation (ta‘wīl), as qualities borne by the sole righteous Imam, were central to Fatimid Ismaili thought and were amongst its most distinctive characteristics. Over the Fatimid period, a significant body of ta‘wīl literature was produced, much of which has only recently come to the attention of modern scholarship through the production of critical editions. The Kitāb Ta‘wīl al-sharī‘a, compiled and articulated by al-Qāḍī al-Nu‘mān on the authority of the fourth Fatimid Imam al-Mu‘izz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341-65/953-75), is one such work. This treatise became influential in subsequent periods and was mandated by later Fatimid dā‘īs as a pre-required reading for those seeking intellectual advancement in the doctrines of the da‘wa. This paper examines how the ideological and doctrinal content of the Ta‘wīl al-sharī‘a itself was conditioned by an over-riding interest in preparing the audience, that is the Fatimid dā‘īs, with a body of doctrine relevant to the dominant intellectual debates of the 10th and 11th century. It is thus now apparent that much of the content of the Ta‘wīl literature was deeply concerned with producing affirmations or reposes to cosmological and eschatological doctrines circulating in that era, particularly those dominant in theological debates that were then still raging between the Mu‘tazila and other schools of thought. While secondary impressions of ta‘wīl once suggested that it was narrow and insular in its own idiosyncratic methods, the Ta‘wīl al-sharī‘ā indicates instead a body of thought resonant with the dominant intellectual streams of the time.