#  Knowledge Like Life-Giving Rain  

 





June 01, 2026

 

 

 [ Jamel Velji, Ph.D. ](https://www.cmc.edu/academic/faculty/profile/jamel-velji) 

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey

*The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.*

Imagine living in a world where you are told that most of what is around you is only an opaque refraction of true reality. This was the world of those initiated into Fatimid Ismailism, an interpretation of Islam emphasizing that behind the literal text of scriptures and behind what we perceive through our senses is the *batin*, the hidden. Among the Fatimids, this *batin* is elucidated through a process called *ta’wil*, a return to the one.

The Fatimid Ismailis developed *ta’wil* into a sophisticated hermeneutical process tethered to an organizational hierarchy called the *da’wa*, the call. The *da’wa* was at once a summons to true Islam and a formal structure. At the top of this *da’wa* was the Shia Imam, the descendant of the Prophet Muhammad via his wife Fatima. The Imam is the locus of the divine on earth. He and his authorized agents of various ranks unveil hidden truths to true believers, who, in turn, gain spiritual upliftment through increasing apprehension of the true nature of reality. *Ta’wil* texts provide a record of some of these disclosures.

*Ta’wil* helped to transform the religio-political terrains of tenth-century North Africa by arguing that a revolution would arrive and return Islamic leadership to its righteous custodians, the Shia Imams. This revolution led to the establishment of the Fatimid dynasty (909-1171) and, in the process, the founding of the city of Cairo. The Fatimids continued to deploy *ta’wil* for more than a century, indicating how central *ta’wil* was in conveying spiritual truths to true believers. For historians of religion, studying *ta’wil* can tell us much about the process of world-making, particularly when the world that is apparent is not the world as it should be.

Among Fatimid insiders, transcripts of *ta’wil* served as substrates for salvation, for they divulged the *batin* of reality. *Ta’wil* could be made from virtually anything; in early Fatimid texts, *ta’wil* is tied to vast cosmological and terrestrial expanses. A *ta’wil* account of creation found in a text titled *The Master and the Disciple*, translated by James Morris, reads: “Hence their imam is like the immensity of the sun in comparison with the (other heavenly) lights: it is impossible for it to be veiled from (people’s) vision—indeed the sun is his symbol and outer aspect. And their *hujja*, the gateway (*bab*) to their imam, is like *an illuminating moon*, for the moon is his outer aspect and his symbol. And their *dai*s are like shining stars, for the stars are their symbols and outer aspects.”

Similarly, another Fatimid text, *The Book of True Guidance*, likens life-giving rain to knowledge of religion mediated through the *da’wa*, and “the growth of plants is similar to the growth of the believer through knowledge of religion.” In a *ta’wil* text of a Fatimid legal compendium, death itself points to the structure and function of the *da’wa*. Burial in a praiseworthy condition symbolizes believers’ spiritual ascent through different ranks until becoming connected to the *hujja*, a rank of the *da’wa*, and then, finally, to the *naqīb*, the highest rank of the *da’wa*. In this same text, the author states that the earth, as the locus of burial, is analogous to the *hujja*.

Building upon the oft-repeated Qur’anic refrain that “most people do not know” the extent of the divine, its creation, and God’s intervention in bringing religion to humanity, *ta’wil* conceives of a world in which most people only see the visibly apparent. Reared by the teachings of the Imam, the Shia elect are the only ones who can perceive the salvific truths hidden behind everyday existence.

Echoing Jonathan Z. Smith’s observation that all ritual possesses a gnostic dimension, *ta’wil* gains its traction from the fact that the world we experience is different from the way it ought to be. The Fatimids rose to power intending to return the custodianship of Islam to the Shia Imams. Yet these hopes never materialized, and the Fatimids ended up ruling over a population that mostly subscribed to other interpretations of Islam. The continued production of *ta’wil* allowed the Fatimids to issue hidden transcripts from external phenomena that maintained an alternate vision of reality; *ta’wil* made the *batin* immanent, coherent, and salvific for true believers.

David Hollenberg argues that we might even consider *ta’wil* to be a kind of continuing apocalypse. It is a dynamic unveiling between the other world and this world, an unveiling that is mediated through the exclusive ontology of the Shia Imam who serves as the bridge between both worlds. In a sense then, whatever happens in the apparent realm does not really matter.

*Ta’wil* transcripts cross boundaries, bridge times, and fuse the here with the hereafter to make the world over and into the way it ought to be.



 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ Islam ](/topic-tags/islam)
- [ Researcher Reflections ](/topic-tags/researcher-reflection)