In this paper I chart a revival of the memory of the Fatimid Empire and Caliphate in Nizari Ismaili literature between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the connection with the Fatimids was consistently recalled within a genealogical framework, in Nizari literature produced between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries it was not the Fatimids, but rather the Nizari state based at Alamut, and in particular the doctrine of the qiyama, which served as the primary focal point of communal memory. Following the collapse of the Safavid state in Iran in the early eighteenth century the Nizari imamate underwent a dramatic shift in its social and political position. This shift concomitantly led to a reformulation of the historical vision of the community which increasingly emphasized the Fatimid inheritance in place of the qiyama. I argue that this shift in emphasis towards the Fatimids as a legitimation model was spurred by two related developments. The first is the shift in the political status of the imamate beginning in the eighteenth century, which for the first time in centuries placed the Nizari Imams in positions of political power and social authority beyond the bounds of the Ismaili community. Accordingly, the Fatimid state came to replace that of Alamut as a model for political leadership and legitimacy within a religiously pluralistic environment. The second is the context of the Ismaili engagement with Twelver Shiʿism in post-Safavid Iran, in which the Fatimid inheritance formed a critical element in legitimizing the religious authority of the Imams within a broader Shiʿi context. The Fatimid emphasis took on particular import in the writings of Imam Hasan ʿAli Shah (Aga Khan I), in which the claim to the Fatimid legacy assumed an important role in the context of his conflicts with the Qajar rulers of Iran.