نسخة السجل الذي وجد معلقا على المشاهد في غيبة مولانا الإمام الحاكم
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
The good end belongs to whoever awakens from the sleep of the heedless, leaves the ignorance of the ignorant, and attains certainty. Let him hasten to repent before God Most High and before His Guardian, His Proof to the worlds, His deputy upon earth and trustee over His creatures, the Commander of the Faithful. Let him seize the opportunity for salvation among the pure and God-fearing, neither denying the Day of Judgment nor disbelieving in what is unseen. Let him hold that the Hour is coming suddenly, beyond doubt, and that God does not waste the reward of those who do good.
There is no aggression except against the wrongdoers: the rebellious devils, wicked apostates, every contemptible habitual swearer, covenant-breakers and aggressors, corrupt tyrants, the people of opposition and hypocrisy, deniers of the Day of Judgment, those who have incurred wrath, and those who have gone astray. Praise belongs to God with the praise of the grateful, praise whose end shall never be exhausted throughout eternity.
May God bless the master of the messengers, Muḥammad, sent with the Qurʾān to all creation as bearer of good tidings and warner, and bless the rightly guided, guiding Imams from his progeny, noble recorders and witnesses over the worlds, who clarify to people the matters about which they disagree and question one another, guiding them to the great message and the straight path. May God's sublime and lofty peace rest upon them until the Day of Judgment.
Now then, people: you have already received admonitions, promises, and warnings from the Guardian of your affairs, the Imam of your age, the successor of your prophets, the Proof of your Creator, and His deputy, who bears witness over you in your stations. The grave sins you have committed have been met with excuse and warning sufficient to reach whoever hears, obeys, and follows guidance, struggles against his own passions, and prefers the hereafter to this world.
Yet you continue to swim in the valley of ignorance and to plunge and play in the wilderness of error, until you meet the day of which you were warned. No indeed, you shall know! Again, no indeed, you shall know! If only you knew with the knowledge of certainty.
You all know that God Most High has entrusted His Guardian and deputy on earth, the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—with outward and inward favors. The Imam of your age has shared these with your nobles and commoners, distinguished and ordinary alike, in the fullest measure possible through his generosity and kindness, according to what he judged proper. He did not withhold his abundant gifts.
He has graciously remitted for you, alongside that, the rightful due that God Most High obligated you in His Book to pay him from what your right hands possess, while refusing to take a share for himself in the affairs of this world, out of disdain for it and rejection of it, despite his power and ability, according to a matter decreed in divine wisdom, which he himself knows best.
You have now received, through his favor and abundant generosity, blessings the like of which no human being among your ancestors ever obtained, nor any nation before you among the Emigrants and Helpers of earlier ages. You did not obtain these from God's Guardian because of any entitlement or any deed performed by a man or woman among you, but only as his gift, kindness, compassion, and mercy toward you, and as a test to determine which of you is best in deeds. Thus you might recognize the worth of the favor, kindness, grace, and abundant generosity he bestowed upon you in his age beyond what he gave those who came before you.
Give abundant thanks to God and His Guardian for what he has granted you of his bounty. Perhaps you will be grateful and act in a manner pleasing to him, multiplying the good deeds of earlier nations in proportion to what God's Guardian has multiplied for you in his own age.
Among his great outward gifts are heaped-up treasures of gold and silver, marked horses, cattle, and other provisions, estates, landed holdings, and the varied goods of this world. He has raised both your distinguished and ordinary people to high degrees and lofty stations, that you might follow the paths of people of understanding. He honored you with the finest titles and granted you dominion in the east and west, over plain and mountain, land and sea. You are its kings, sultans, and revenue-collectors; necks are freed for you through the support of God's Guardian, and delegations and factions submit to you.
“If you tried to count God's blessings, you could not enumerate them.” You have enjoyed ease through the generosity of the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—without labor, and after this you hope for a good return.
Among his inward gifts is your adherence, in the outward ordering of your affairs, to allegiance to him, through which you gain honor in your worldly life and hope for salvation and success in the hereafter. You boast of your faith before God and His Guardian, but rather it is God who has favored you by guiding you to faith. You display obedience while clinging to disobedience. If you had remained upright upon the middle path, you would have been given abundant sweet water.
Among his inward gifts is his revival of the customs of Islam and faith, the religion approved by God, through which in his age you were exalted above all schools and religions. He separated you from idol-worshippers, exposed their abasement and deprivation, and demolished their churches and the visible monuments of their religions, which had stood since ancient times. The protected communities (al-dhimma) submitted to you willingly and unwillingly, and people entered God's religion in crowds. He built and strengthened congregational mosques, repaired and adorned places of worship, established prayer at its appointed times, almsgiving according to its rights and duties, pilgrimage and jihād, restored the Sacred House of God, and upheld the pillars of Islam.
He opened his treasuries, spent in God's path, protected pilgrims with his armies, dug wells, secured roads and regions, restored watering places, distributed charity to the people, covered nakedness, ended injustices, and removed from your nobles and commoners the taxes and dues that God Most High had imposed upon you as obligations. He divided the land among the people span by span and made it circulate among them over times and ages. He opened the doors of his Call to you and gave you access to the wisdom God had granted him, so that through it he might guide you to God's mercy and summon you to obey God, His Messenger, and His Guardians—peace upon them—and attain the stations of the righteous.
Yet you hated knowledge and wisdom, and were ungrateful for grace and favor. Yet you cast these gifts behind your backs and preferred worldly life to them, as the Children of Israel had done before you in the story of Moses—peace upon him. God's Guardian did not compel you.
He closed the gate of his Call to you, disclosed wisdom to you, and opened outside his palace a House of Knowledge containing every branch of religious science and its disciplines. He endowed it with books on what is lawful and unlawful, legal disputes and judgments, and what is contained in the scriptures of the ancients, the scriptures of Abraham and Moses—peace upon them both. He supplied paper, provisions, ink, and pens, so that you might acquire knowledge, gain insight, and be delivered from ignorance.
Previously you had struggled to obtain even a portion of this learning, but when it was offered you rejected it, neglected it, and turned away from it all. This only increased your flight. Passion drew you toward grave sins; you made yourselves capable of wrongdoing, rejected knowledge, displayed ignorance, and multiplied your offenses and corruption upon the earth until it nearly complained to God Most High of your oppression.
God's Guardian—peace upon him—continued to confront this, hoping that your distinguished people might be rescued or your ordinary people delivered from drunkenness and ignorance. But you only increased in tyranny, disobedience, and division.
You whisper among yourselves about falsehood, aggression, and disobedience to the Messenger. The enemy of God and the enemy of the Commander of the Faithful has withdrawn his hand from corruption out of fear of the power of God's Guardian, and has accepted peace and a truce. Thus the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—has no enemy who openly fights him and no adversary who resists him. Everyone is afraid and trembling before his awe.
But you, the distinguished and ordinary people gathered in his presence, sheltered by his state and encompassed by his authority, and bound to obey him, have become treacherous and divided. You fight one another like the Romans and the Khazars, daring to offend God without fear or restraint. Neither God's religion nor reverence for your Imam nor certainty prevents you from shedding blood and violating the sanctity of households.
Ignorance has overcome you. You do not accord God His due reverence or acknowledge that the Imam of your age is one, and that Islam and faith have gathered you under obedience to God, His Messenger, and the allegiance of the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him. “To God we belong and to Him we return.” What calamity could be greater, and what could give your enemies more cause to rejoice at your expense?
People, you have injured yourselves and your religions, and through you God's Guardian, the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—has been injured. There is no strength or power except through God, the Most High, the Magnificent.
Do you heedless people feel secure against suffering what befell the Companions of the Thicket and the people of Tubbaʿ? Have you not heard God's words: “Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with ʿĀd, Iram of the pillars, who transgressed in the lands and spread much corruption therein, so your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment? Your Lord is ever watchful.” And His saying: “Did We not destroy the former peoples, then follow them with the later ones? Thus do We deal with the guilty.” The Book of God contains many such examples of what befell obstinate opponents, hypocrites, and those who spread corruption upon earth.
God Most High and His Guardian—the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—have become angry at the great excesses of all the people. For this reason he withdrew from among you. God, Possessor of Majesty and Generosity, said, “God would not punish them while you were among them.”
The displeasure of God's Guardian indicates the displeasure of the Lord—blessed and exalted is He. Among the signs of the Imam's anger are the closing of the gate of his Call, the suspension of his gatherings of wisdom, and the removal from his palace of the administrative offices of his friends and servants. He withheld his greetings from the people, although he had previously gone out to them from his presence. He forbade them to sit upon the benches beneath the porticoes of his sanctuary.
He stopped leading them in prayer at the festivals and during Ramaḍān. He forbade the muezzins to greet him at the time of the call to prayer or mention him then. He forbade people to call him “Our Lord” or to kiss the ground before him. He prohibited them from dismounting from their riding animals before him, though they had been required to do so.
He then wore wool in its various colors and rode a she-ass. He forbade the usual riding in his procession and refrained from enforcing the legal penalties upon the people of his age. Many other things were concealed from the world, and people remained heedless of them all. Satan had gained mastery over them and caused them to forget the remembrance of God: “Those are Satan's party; surely Satan's party are the losers.”
Thus God's Guardian, the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—left all creation neglected, plunging and playing in the wilderness and blindness they had preferred to guidance. He left them as Moses had left his people, until destruction nearly descended upon them without their knowledge.
He withdrew while they differed and doubted concerning him, wavering in their wrongdoing, neither obeying the truth nor returning to God's Guardian. God Most High said, “If they referred it to God, the Messenger, and those vested with authority among them, those who can draw sound conclusions would know it.”
People, the words of God Most High are the greatest admonition, and the warning in this exhortation makes plain your poverty and your need for the pardon of God Most High and of His Guardian, the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him. Through forgetfulness comes heedlessness; through heedlessness comes discord; through discord comes destruction.
God—blessed and exalted is He—said, “If, when they had wronged themselves, they had come to you and asked God's forgiveness, and the Messenger had asked forgiveness for them, they would have found God accepting of repentance and merciful.” He also said, “God loves those who repent and those who purify themselves.” And God—blessed and exalted is He—said, “When My servants ask you concerning Me, I am near; I answer the call of the one who calls upon Me when he calls.”
Hasten, hasten, people! Stand in an open place upon the first road taken by the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—when he concealed himself before your very eyes. Gather there with your children and yourselves. Purify your hearts, devote yourselves sincerely to the Lord of the worlds, and repent to God with sincere repentance.
Seek every means of entreating Him to pardon you, forgive you, and show you mercy by returning His Guardian to you and inclining his heart toward you. He is mercy to you and to all His creation, as God—blessed and exalted is He—said to His Messenger: “We sent you only as a mercy to the worlds.”
Beware, beware that any one of you attempt to follow the traces of the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—or uncover news of him. Do not depart from the first road; remain there and entreat God, all of you, with your very spirits. When mercy overshadows you, God's Guardian will come forth before you by his own choice, satisfied with you and manifest among you.
Persist in this night and day before the inevitable event comes to pass, the striking calamity strikes, and the gate of mercy is closed, while punishment descends upon those who oppose and obstinately resist. Whoever has warned has discharged his responsibility, and whoever has advised you has protected himself and taken precautions. This address is directed to those among you who possess understanding, and its application concerns them. The will belongs to God—blessed and exalted is He—and success comes through Him.
Peace upon whoever follows guidance, fears the consequences of ruin, and believes the excellent words of his Lord.
Written by a servant of the government of the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him—in the month of Dhū al-Qaʿda, in the year 411 AH.
May God bless Muḥammad, master of the messengers and seal of the prophets, and bless his pure family. God suffices us and is the best Trustee.
Let the officials charged with this matter preserve this admonition to the God-fearing. Let no one prevent its copying or reading; may God benefit whoever is enabled to act according to what it contains of obedience to God and obedience to His Guardian, the Commander of the Faithful—peace upon him.
Forbidden, forbidden is it for anyone not to copy it and read it to the repentant in Jāmiʿ Asfal (the Lower Mosque). Forbidden, forbidden is it for anyone able to copy it to fall short of doing so.
Praise belongs to God alone.