Outliving the Dynasty That Commissioned It

The Fatimid Caliphate fell in 1171 CE, but Da'a'im al-Islam did not fall with it. The text passed into the keeping of the Tayyibi branch of Ismailism, which had already separated from the mainline Fatimid da'wa earlier in the twelfth century over a disputed succession, and it survived there as an active legal reference rather than a historical curiosity.

The Dawoodi Bohra community, the largest surviving Tayyibi Ismaili group, concentrated historically in western India and Yemen, continues to treat Da'a'im al-Islam as authoritative under the guidance of its Da'i al-Mutlaq, the community's senior religious leader, applying it to questions of ritual practice and personal law within the community today. This continued use sets Da'a'im al-Islam apart from the broader legal and doctrinal development of the Nizari Ismaili branch associated with the Aga Khan, which followed a different institutional and doctrinal path after its own split from the Fatimid line in 1094 CE and does not draw on the text in the same direct, applied way the Tayyibi Bohra tradition does. The text also circulated to a lesser extent among Nizari Ismaili communities in earlier centuries before their own doctrinal development diverged further, though it is the Tayyibi and Dawoodi Bohra line that has preserved it as an actively applied legal reference into the present day.