As the member of a heterodox religious minority in a country where literary efforts have been cramped and insulated by decades of conflict, the intellectual figure and the works of Sayyid Zamānuddī n ‘AAdī m Ğaī ḥūn are still scarcely known outside its very own community, the Ismailis of Afghan Badakhshan. Drawing primarily upon oral sources recorded on the field by the author, supported when possible by archival research, the article explores some salient moments of the life of this 20th century poet, who was born in nowadays Tajikistan but spent most of his life on the Afghan side of the border. These episodes offer a glimpse of the relatively unknown reality of the relations between the Afghan Ismailis and the majority Sunni Afghans in the kings’ era before the start of the Afghan conflict.