Al-Sijistani's life is obscure,[2] as references to him are found mostly in isolation in hostile Sunni heresiological works, while Isma'ili sources usually do not provide any details about him.
[3] He was given the nickname 'cottonseed' (Arabic: khayshafūj, Persian: banba-dāna or Bandaneh) in several near-contemporary non-Isma'ili works that mention him, but the origin and significance of it are unknown.
[7] Furthermore, as the historian Paul Walker comments, "[a]s they exist now, it is in some cases difficult to determine the original form of the texts", as many survive only in translations or paraphrased summaries.
The aim of the work is to 'unveil' divine knowledge (gnosis, irfan), and deals with the concepts of the Oneness of God (tawhid), the stages of creation, the nature of prophethood, and resurrection (qiyāma).
[8] Based on its containing passages supporting the idea of metempsychosis, it likely belongs to the early phase of al-Sijistani's career, before he accepted Fatimid orthodoxy.
Corbin also published a full French translation in 1988 as Le dévoilement des choses cachées: Kashf al-Maḥjûb, Recherches de philosophie Ismaélienne (Lagrasse, Verdier).
[13] For Walker, it is perhaps the "[best] place to look for a definition of [Isma'ili Shiism] in its fourth / tenth-century manifestation",[13] while Farhad Daftary, points out that it "presents a summary exposition of Ismaili doctrine and preserves remnants of the mythological cosmology propounded by the early Ismailis, including the spiritual beings called jadd, fatḥ and khayāl which mediated between the spiritual and the physical worlds".
[15] The work was first published in a critical edition, with a partial French translation (Le livre des sources) in Henry Corbin's 1961 Trilogie Ismailienne (Tehran, Département d’Iranologie de l’Institut Franco-Iranien and Paris, A.
[16][12] An Arabic edition was published by Mustafa Ghalib in 1965 (Beirut, al-Maktab al-Tijari), and an English translation by Paul Walker in 1994 as part of The Wellsprings of Wisdom: A Study of Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani's Kitab al-Yanabi (Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press).
[18] The work is one of al-Sijistani's earlier writings, composed as a defence of his predecessor and teacher, Muhammad al-Nasafi, against the accusations of antinomianism by Abu Hatim Ahmad ibn Hamdan al-Razi.
According to Walker, these can be summarized as "faith in God, His angels, His books, His emissaries, the last day, salvation after death, and paradise and hellfire".
[16] An English translation is part of a 1983 doctoral dissertation by M. Alibhai (Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistānī and Kitab Sullam al-Najāt: A Study in Islamic Neoplatonism, Harvard University).