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But Maymun was without doubt a real character. Abu l-Feda refers to him as a native of Qaraj or Ispahan, who professed to be a Shiʿite, but was really a Zindiq, i.e., a follower of the heresies of Marcion, Bar Daisan, and Mani, or else a materialist (Abu l-Feda, Annales Moslem., ii. 311). Used in this sense “materialist” means an Aristotelian, i.e., one who believed in the eternity of matter and so did not accept the Qurʾanic teaching of creation ex nihilo. Ibn Khaldun states that Maymun migrated to Jerusalem with a number of his disciples and became well known as a magician, fortune teller, astrologist, and alchemist (cf. Quatremère: Journ. Asiatique, Aug., 1836). The Fatimid advocates, as represented by the Druze writers, fully admit the descent of the Fatimids from Maymun, but claim that he was of the family of ʿAli (cf. De Sacy: Chrestom., ii., note 3 on page 95), which seems as though Maymun’s position as an ancestor of Abdullah’s family was beyond question.

In the passage already quoted Maqrizi describes ʿAbdullah as “learned in all the canon law and customs and sects,” so that it seems that he, the fortune teller’s son, was credited with being the original teacher and founder of the sect. Perhaps Maymun himself was the founder of a minor off-shoot of the Ismaʿilian body,—we hear of followers who went with him to Jerusalem,—and ʿAbdullah succeeded him as head of this group but, himself a student of philosophy like so many other Shiʿites, and participating in rationalistic opinions, used his position to form a kind of free-masonry, in which he developed more fully the principles already indicated by Jaʿfar as-Sadiq, and so made the Aristotelian and neo-Platonic teaching somewhat modified in a Persian guise, the “hidden meaning” of the Qurʾan. Probably he too was responsible for the efficient organizing of the sect, although its missionary propaganda was, as has been noted, reproduced from that of the Hashimites. He is said to have been the author of a book called al-Mizan, “the balance” (Abulfeda: Ann. Mus., ii. 310). According to Nuwairi, who used the history of Abu l-Hasan b. ʿAli Akhu-Muhsin, himself a descendant of Ismaʿil b. Jaʿfar and a contemporary of the chief activity of the Ismaʿilian sect, ʿAbdullah assumed Shiʿite views, not because he wanted to get men to recognise the Imamate of Ismaʿil or his son Muhammad, but simply as a device to attract adherents: such was Akhu-Muhsin’s view, no doubt a prejudiced one, but of some weight as undoubtedly the judgment of many contemporaries. It is, however, quite as probable that the ʿAlid theories were derived from the existing sect of which Maymun had been head, and were left unaltered by his son when he took it in hand.