Scholars of medieval Islamic philosophy and mysticism have increasingly noted parallels between Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī theology and the texts produced by contemporary Muslim and Jewish thinkers in Iberia and North Africa.
Although I accept the need for a robust, sociological explanation of how proprietary Ismā‘īlī ideas and texts could have moved beyond these closed communities, I want to qualify this narrative of Fāṭimid propriety by comparing two da‘wah texts (al-‘Ālim wa-l-ghulām and Kitāb al-kashf) by Ja‘far ibn Manṣūr al Yaman (d. 10th c.) and The Guide of the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides (d. 1204). I will argue that Maimonides’ Guide, though focused on the esoteric interpretation of Jewish sources, not only echoes the rhetoric of esoteric initiation found in Fāṭimid da‘wah literature, but likewise follows the Ismā‘īlīs in framing hierarchical initiation as the analogue to the Active Intellect’s initiation into the hierarchy of separate intellects under God.