Abstract

Nasir Khusraw was a leading Ismaili poet and theologian-philosopher of the Fatimid period whose writings have had a major formative influence on the Ismaili communities of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. The bulk of his surviving work was produced in exile in a remote mountainous region of Badakhshan where he sought refuge from persecution in his native district of Balkh. This is the first of his doctrinal treatises to be translated into English. Consisting of a series of 30 questions and answers, it addresses some of the central theological and philosophical issues of his time from an Ismaili perspective, ranging from the creation of the world and the nature of the soul to the questions of human free will and accountability in the afterlife.