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Abu'l-Fawaris Ahmad ibn Ya'qub was an early 11th-century Isma'ili scholar and missionary (da'i) active in Syria, which at the time was largely under the rule of the Fatimid Caliphate.^[1] Abu'l-Fawaris was active in the reign of the Fatimid imam-caliph al-Hakim (r. 996–1021),^[2] and a contemporary of the fellow Isma'ili scholars, Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Naysaburi and Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani. All three elaborated Isma'ili ideas about the Imamate, apparently independently, since they do not cite each other's works.^[3]

Abu'l-Fawaris' only known work is the Risāla fi’l-imāma ('Epistle on the Imamate'), likely composed before 1017, is divided in sixteen chapters, deliberately chosen to correspond with al-Hakim being the sixteenth Isma'ili imam.^[2] In it, Abu'l-Fawaris argues about the existence of the imamate as a necessity, as the Quran, the sharia (the body of Islamic law) and the sunnah (the traditions ascribed to Muhammad) are not sufficient.^[2] The treatise has been published in a critical edition with English translation by Sami N. Makarem as The Political Doctrine of the Ismāʿīlīs: The Imamate. Caravan Books, Delmar, New York, 1977.^[4]