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.

The life, career, and thought of Abū Ḥamīd al-Ghazālī (1058-1111) have continued to captivate scholars of Islamic thought for the last several decades. Being well versed in Ash‘arite kalām, falsafa, and Sufism, al-Ghazālī is often credited with formulating a unique synthesis of these divergent streams of Islamic theology and philosophy. At the same time, al-Ghazālī is remembered for his infamous refutations of the Philosophers and the Ismā‘īlīs in texts whose publication shortly preceded al-Ghazālī’s own spiritual crisis in the last decade of the eleventh century. This paper revisits the pivotal question of the Ismā‘īlī influence upon the cosmology of al-Ghazālī and demonstrates that al-Ghazālī adopted certain features of the Ismā‘īlī cosmology present in the Persian Ismaili thought of Abū Ya‘qūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 971) and Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. 1004-1088). The paper first attempts to ascertain one of the Ismā‘īlī sources to which al-Ghazālī had access by examining some of the Ismā‘īlī doctrinal material presented in his Faḍā’iḥ al-Bāṭiniyya and tracing this material back to eleventh-century Ismā‘īlī treatises. This analysis concludes that the Wajh-i Dīn of Nāṣir-i Khusraw was a likely source for al-Ghazālī’s knowledge of Ismā‘īlī doctrines. Secondly, the paper demonstrates the great commonality between al-Ghazālī’s “two-worlds” cosmology of spiritual-physical correspondence (muwāzana) laid out in his Mishkāt al-Anwār and Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s two-world Ismā‘īlī cosmology which is equally based on correspondence. Finally, the paper re-examines al-Ghazālī’s higher cosmology in the “Veils” section of the Mishkāt where he explains how the true God transcends both the “Lunar Angel” (whom the Aristotelians worship as the First Mover) and the “Solar Angel” (the Obeyed One, whom the falāsifa worship as the Necessary Existent). This section critically appraises the prior conclusions of Hermann Landolt (1991) and Frank Griffel (2010) on the “Veils” section and argues that al-Ghazālī derived his theological interpretations of the God of the falāsifa and the Aristotelians as well as his polemical strategy of evoking Sun and Moon worship from Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s Ismā‘īlī cosmology and the Wajh-i Dīn in particular. The paper concludes that al-Ghazālī likely appropriated Ismā‘īlī cosmological ideas and polemical tactics from Nāṣir-i Khusraw and re-presented them in his Niche of Lights. Even if this conclusion is not certain, the results of this study call for a reassessment of the degree of Ismā‘īlī influences on the thought of al-Ghazālī.

In many religious traditions, there exists a certain tension between traditional forms of knowledge and esoteric forms of knowledge. In many cases, esoteric knowledge is accused of “adding” to premises which have already been established by scripture or praxis. However, what can be said about this tension when the fundamental principles of religious belief accept esoteric knowledge as a truth? Who wields authority of this knowledge? In this paper, I propose to examine the role of the dāʿī muṭlaq in Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlism, the highest rank within the religious hierarchy of that tradition. Following the occultation of the last Ṭayyibī Imam, al-Ṭayyib Abī’l-Qāṣim, the dāʿī muṭlaq becomes supreme head of the Ṭayyibī community. This invested within the dāʿī a particular authority over religious knowledge, in any form. With what was formerly a scholarly position, the rank of the dāʿī becomes a hereditary, sacerdotal position which implies specific epistemic and cosmological claims about the nature of the world. My argument is two-fold: firstly, the nature of religious knowledge in Ismāʿīlism, in particular here, the Ṭayyibī form, is defined in such a way that its transference and propagation is ritualized act. Secondly, that the dāʿī muṭlaq has essentially acquired by proxy the ability to transmit religious knowledge in lieu of the Imam. The dāʿī has come to occupy a sacred space originally reserved for the Imam – the focus of ritual action – while the Imam has retreated into the role of a largely cosmological principle, an “imam absconditus” as one might say, whose function is largely to guarantee the legitimacy of the dāʿī and provide a source for the reception of knowledge. I will argue that certain shifts in Ṭayyibī thought reflect the historical circumstances of the Imam’s occultation. Cosmologically, the dāʿī is elevated to a manifestation of a celestial intellect. Symbolically, he becomes associated with the qiblah, and epistemologically, the provider of esoteric initiation. All of these have specific ritual contexts, as the dāʿī becomes the new focus of ritual action. To examine this, I will look at a variety of historical Ṭayyibī texts, including Kanz al-Walad, Zahr al-Maʿānī, and others. I will also make some reference to the modern context of the dāʿī muṭlaq in order to illustrate the development of the office and its claimed ownership of religious knowledge.