This article is an exploration of how a fourth/tenth-century Muslim author makes ingenious use of radically extra-canonical and unusual narratives for the defense of serious theology. The theology in question is the occultation of the Twelfth Imām, a defining tenet of Twelver Shi’ism. The extra-canonical narratives, meanwhile, include a selection of Arabic stories about the Buddha. The study explores how the unexpected appearance of these stories in the text, al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq’s Kamāl al-dīn wa-tamām al-niʿmah, reflects and responds to the epistemological challenges facing its author, and how, far from being a peripheral curiosity, they constitute part of a highly developed authorial strategy.