This paper investigates the tradition of the Kalām-i pīr, a fundamental text preserved among the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿīs of the Badakhshan region of Central Asia attributed to the eleventh-century Ismāʿīlī poet and missionary Nāṣir-i Khusraw. The first major study of the text was undertaken by Wladimir Ivanow, who produced an edition and translation of the work in 1935. Ivanow judged the Kalām-i pīr to be a “forgery” of an earlier text committed by the sixteenth-century Ismāʿīlī author Khayrkhwāh Hirātī, who falsely ascribed his work to Nāṣir-i Khusraw. Ivanow concluded that the text is to be understood primarily as a specimen of Ismāʿīlī philosophical writing, and that the attribution to Nāṣir-i Khusraw is merely fanciful and unrelated to the work. Since that time, Ivanow’s interpretation of the text has remained authoritative among scholars of Ismāʿīlism. In recent years, however, multiple new manuscripts of the work, as well as a range of related materials have come to light, suggesting the need for a thorough re-evaluation of the text and its history. In this paper I demonstrate, based on research in multiple collections of Ismāʿīlī manuscripts, that Khayrkhwāh Hirātī likely had no role in the development or transmission of the text, and that the present redaction of the work should instead be dated to the mid-eighteenth century. Furthermore, I argue that the attribution to Nāṣir-i Khusraw is not merely incidental to the text, but rather is central to understanding the interpretation and significance of the text among the Ismāʿīlīs of Central Asia. Its development and attribution must be considered within the context of the social and religious history of Badakhshan in the eighteenth century, an era which saw an energetic expansion of the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa in the region and the development of a flourishing hagiographical tradition connected with Nāṣir-i Khusraw. This paper draws as well upon a series of oral histories and ethnographic observations which demonstrate a much wider range of significances and forms of extra-literary engagement with the text as a sacred object among Central Asian Ismāʿīlīs, which indicate the role of the text as an agent of conversion and Islamization. In summary, this paper challenges the interpretation which views the Kalām-i pīr primarily as a philosophical text; more broadly, it suggests a revision of the framework by which we understand both the legacy of Nāṣir-i Khusraw and the historical process of conversion among the Ismāʿīlīs of Central Asia.