This dissertation presents a critical edition of Maʿāṣim al-hudā wa-l-iṣāba fī tafḍīl ʿAlī ʿalā al-ṣaḥāba (“Strongholds of Guidance and Rectitude, Demonstrating ʿAlī’s Superiority Over the Companions”), the final extant unedited text of the famed Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī theologian, missionary, and spy Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 1021 CE). It also features an accompanying study that contextualizes the work and expounds upon its significance. Although the text initially appears polemical, asserting as it does the superiority of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the candidate favored by the nascent Shīʿī movement to succeed the Prophet Muḥammad, over Abū Bakr ibn Abī Quḥāfa, who would be favored by the Sunnīs, Maʿāṣim al-hudā is a remarkably ecumenical treatise, offering a far more positive portrayal of Abū Bakr and the other Companions of the Prophet than

any prior extant Ismāʿīlī text. The work thus offers a unique insight into the ways in which sectarian difference was navigated in the premodern Islamic context. This critical edition is based upon seven of the nine extant manuscript witnesses to the work. The accompanying study is divided into three chapters. The first offers an overview of al-Kirmānī’s life and works, an analysis of Maʿāṣim al-hudā’s form and contents, and a defense of the text’s authenticity. The second situates the text within the broader context of Fāṭimid Egypt, demonstrating its departure from previous approaches to the subject matter. It further contextualizes the work within the reign of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh (d. ca. 1021) and identifies Maʿāṣim al-hudā as the sole surviving primary source from a five-year period in which the caliph sought to merge Sunnī and Shīʿī elements into a syncretic Muslim tradition. The third chapter uses Maʿāṣim al-hudā to revisit an ongoing academic debate over whether al-Ḥākim intended to disinter the bodies of the Prophet Muḥammad and the first two caliphs and rehouse them in three sanctuaries he built between Cairo and Fusṭāṭ. It ultimately argues that newly revealed evidence from Maʿāṣim al-hudā renders the outright dismissal of this theory no longer tenable.