The Kitāb al-Kashf is one of the oldest Ismaili books to have reached us. This collection of six treatises contains several elements showing the proximity of Shi‘i ghulātExaggerators’ or ‘extremists.’ A term of disapproval in classical Muslim sources against what they regarded as ‘heretical’ exaggeration in matters of doctrine. circles to the early IsmailisAdherents of a branch of Shi’i Islam that considers Ismail, the eldest son of the Shi’i Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), as his successor., as it appears when comparing it with both ghulāt literature and Nusayrī texts. However, the Kitāb al-Kashf is also a testimony to the early Fatimid caliphate’s attempts to reorganise its doctrine and to legitimise its temporal power. This lecture will present some ambiguous passages of the text in which traces of early Shi‘i ideas can still be detected despite their Fatimid rewriting.

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