تقسيم العلوم وإثبات الحق وكشف المكنون
Composed by Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥāmid al-Tamīmī, the designated Caller, Dhū Maṣṣa, who draws his knowledge from the Riser of the Age, Ḥamza ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad, Guide of the Respondents, avenger against the associators through the sword of our Lord al-Ḥākim—exalted be His remembrance.
I place my trust in our Lord, the eternal Creator, and seek access to Him through His guardian, the Riser of the Age, Ḥamza ibn ʿAlī. Praise belongs to the Originator of the Cause of causes, the Eternity of eternities, who appears without limitation in antiquity and is not a produced being. Glory and exaltation are His beyond the descriptions of nations.
He has drawn near to us through us and expanded our understanding through our own forms. He has appeared to us in the manner of our actions so that our minds might receive Him. Therefore we do not say that this visible form is He in such a way as to confine Him and place bounds upon Him—exalted is He far above that! Rather we say that He is it by way of concealment, nearness, and reassurance, without limit, resemblance, or likeness. As the Qurʾān says: “Like a mirage on a plain, which the thirsty one supposes to be water; when he comes to it, he finds it nothing, but finds God there” (Qurʾān 24:39).
Consider this visible form as a mirage which, from afar, you see as water; when you come to it to verify it with your eyes you find no water. Similarly, when you regard the apparent form with the eye of nature you suppose it to be a form like yours, but when you approach it with the eye of knowledge you no longer find it to be a form: you find God there. The divinity of our Lord is the eternal and everlasting One who neither receives limits nor admits description.
There is another likeness for the manifest form. Someone looking into the substance of a mirror sees the counterpart of his own image without touching it, grasping how it is there, or defining its essence. When he seeks to touch the image, he touches his own image; when his image changes, the image before his eyes changes. This is so when his vision is sound and unaffected by defects; a defective mirror or eye does not display his true likeness. In the same way, a person's sight of this visible form corresponds to the measure and soundness of his knowledge. I bear witness that everything visible and hidden, concealed and made public, is consummate wisdom; warnings are of no avail.
He originated a brilliant, radiant light, making it the element from which true sciences issue and spiritual forms arise. This is the Universal Intellect, the First Preceder, possessing beginnings and endings. Things have sprung from it and return to it. Our Lord—glory be to Him—is exalted beyond all these descriptions: nothing is like Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.
That light exists in every age, time, season, and interval. Our Lord transfers it in every age and time, under a name and attribute, as one who summons people to pure tawḥīd, who has not preached in the associating Call and knows no Call other than that of divinity. In our present age it is the servant and possession of our Lord, Ḥamza ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad, Guide of the Respondents, avenger against unbelievers and associators. Our Lord—glorious be His remembrance, mighty His name and sovereignty—has no other to be worshipped beside Him.
Now then. A person desired an answer to a book called The Division of the Sciences and Disclosure of the Hidden. My master, the Riser of the Age and perfect light—may the best peace and greetings of his Worshipped One rest upon him—ordered me to compose this book. I returned to my own soul and examined the limit of its understanding and the utmost reach of its power, and found it unequal to the work. Yet it was not possible for me to disobey him. I understood with certainty that he had ordered the composition only because his support would reach me and his knowledge would guide me, since supplies from our Lord—exalted be His remembrance—reach him directly and are withheld from the rest of humankind.
I became certain that power was passing from him to me, for I draw from him and receive a special remembrance from him. When his command came, I felt a strength unlike any I had known in the whole of my earlier life. I therefore composed this book by the instruction and spiritual writing with which he strengthened me. Whatever in it is right and eloquently expressed comes from him and returns to him; whatever in it is error or fault comes from me and is attributed to me. In our Lord I have trusted and sought help, and in His guardian, the Riser of Truth, I have taken refuge. There is no strength or power except through the exalted, all-knowing Creator; He suffices me and is the best helper.
Knowledge is divided into five divisions: two belong to religion, two to nature, and the fifth is the noblest and greatest. This last is genuine knowledge, the very thing intended, the goal to which the indications point. For its sake the dwelling was established, and among its inhabitants appeared the affair of our Lord al-Ḥākim, the Creator.
Each of the first four divisions is itself divided into numerous branches, whose explanation would take much speech; that is not the purpose here. The fifth division, however, is one thing. It does not change or become invalid, fall into separate parts, or fade away. We will come to our purpose in its proper place, if our Lord wills; through Him comes success in every matter.
The first two sciences are the sciences of religion: the science of the outward (ẓāhir) and the science of the inward (bāṭin). These are a pair; there is no tawḥīd in them, nor in any age in which they appear under a religious law.
The first science, the outward, belongs to the Speakers (nuṭaqāʾ): Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad. Adam is excluded from their number, because resolution (ʿazm) means firm intention, determination, and decisiveness, while the Book says of Adam, “We did not find in him determination.” Thus the firm Speakers are five. Each was entrusted with a religious law for those entitled to it, and each had before him a Foundation and legatee to succeed him after his departure. Noah's was Shem; Abraham's was Ishmael; Moses' was Joshua son of Nun, “after him Aaron”; Jesus' was Simon; and Muḥammad's was ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.
Not one of these Speakers passed away without pointing to his Foundation. The Foundation rose to interpret what the Speaker had brought, so that they became a pair. Thus the Book says, “Of everything We created pairs.” This indicates that the single one beyond the two is the intended and sought-for object. The first member of the pair indicates the second, and the second indicates the third, which is the purpose, the goal, and the end.
The Qurʾān declares in this sense: “A wall will be placed between them, having a gate: within it is mercy, and outside it, facing it, is punishment.” Thus the outward side faces punishment, and it and its possessor constitute punishment; the inward contains mercy, but the text does not say that the inward is mercy. A thing may contain something without being identical with it. So the inward points toward mercy. Mercy is the third division of religion and the fifth division of the sciences.
The outward designation refers to its possessor, the Speaker, and the inward designation refers to its possessor, the Foundation. Neither is the thing sought: both are servants employed to point toward something else. What they indicate is the goal, which is the fifth division of knowledge and the third division of religion. The first two divisions are religious and the other two concern nature; the fifth alone is the genuine division, the singular object of all indication. We call the divisions of nature “sciences” because the term is applied to them. All four receive the name of science figuratively, not in the true sense. Truth belongs to the fifth division.
Someone may ask: Why was the claim of divine significance not made for any earlier Foundation, but was made for ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, and remains current even today? To answer we must explain the earlier ages, their stations, and the strength and weakness of their people.
Know, seeker after guidance into the realities of things, that before the Adam here referred to there were ages called the ʿAlm, Ramm, Ḥinn, Jinn, and Binn. The Binn were a people who had escaped uncertainties, recognized the Worshipped One, and worshipped Him. Our Lord—glorious be His remembrance and mighty His name—was then visible and manifest, bringing His creatures familiarity through names and attributes. When they abandoned the Worshipped One, inclined away from truth and its possessor, and followed passions in their religion, our Lord became concealed.
The Book says, describing creation, that man was “created from an extract of clay.” Here the reference is to the creation of religion and to corruption in the religions of those who preceded. The partial Adam and the third Adam serve before the universal Adam al-Ṣafā. The Jinn turned back and departed from our Lord, while Adam and his party, meaning his offspring, his Eve, and the believing Unitarians, did not depart from knowledge of Him. Adam established no outward law. Therefore the Book says of him that no determination was found in him; determination means the binding and decisive establishment of law. The people of that age had turned back and followed their opinions. Then occurred the story of Abel and Cain and the extraordinary events told about them. The partial Adam and his companions summoned people to the unity of our Lord on Mount Sarandīb, while Iblīs and his soldiers filled the horizons with unbelief and the pursuit of their passions in religion.
Then Noah son of Lamech arose as a Speaker. He was the first to establish a religious law, forbade obedience to Adam, and directed people toward the absent non-existent and toward himself. For this reason he was also called the second Adam: the people of his law took their beginning from him, and he stood to opponents in the position of a father. His Foundation was Shem.
Then arose Abraham, whose Foundation was Ishmael. The strength of their knowledge of tawḥīd was comparable to the stage of the clinging clot in the formation of a human being. Next came Moses son of ʿImrān and his Foundation Aaron; the understanding of their age in tawḥīd resembled the stage of the morsel of flesh. Then Jesus son of Joseph arose, his Foundation being Simon al-Ṣafā; the understanding of their era concerning tawḥīd was like the stage of bones in the formation of a human being.
All these people possessed understanding and worldly sciences: medicine, philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and dialectical argument. Yet they pointed to the unity of the absent non-existent and did not know our Lord—exalted be His remembrance. They knew only the Preceder, the highest point of their knowledge, while the Preceder and Follower supplied them. The Universal Intellect and his Proof were among them without being recognized; our Lord was hidden from them because of their opposition, until their cycle was completed.
Another Speaker then appeared, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, and after him came the line of entrusted successors, extending to Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ. Among his descendants was Saʿīd, son of al-Salghlagh, called the Mahdī. Their minds' attainment of tawḥīd resembled the stage at which bones have been clothed with flesh and a complete human form has been marked out but has not yet received a living, speaking spirit. Wisdom did not require our Lord to manifest Himself among people who were like the dead. The Book says, “You shall die, and they shall die,” meaning the imams and people of that cycle, not ordinary bodily death; to tell men what every ignorant person and child already knows about bodily death would not be worthy of the Wise One.
When a well-formed bodily image lacks only the entry of the spirit that will make it living and speaking, that spirit signifies knowledge of tawḥīd. Thus we say that, although the Speaker and Foundation in this period were stronger than their predecessors, they did not know our Lord. Had they known Him, He would have been manifest and unveiled before them. Rather, in His wisdom He remained hidden from them because of their corrupt beliefs. The Universal Intellect and his Proof supported the Speaker and Foundation, strengthening their enterprise and their resolve, so that wisdom and the form of tawḥīd could grow to completion at the close of the sixth Speaker's age and the rise of the seventh.
When wisdom required this and the appearance of our Lord in a lofty, royal human form was near, the Universal Intellect and his Proof appeared to strengthen the Speaker's affair. Yet they did not enter his religious law or adopt his religion. The Universal Intellect gave advice and counsel in that time, and the elders of the Age of Ignorance turned to him and accepted his advice. Muḥammad belonged to his household by way of upbringing, and so too did his Foundation; this did not mean that he was the bodily father of either one. The Speaker, according to this account, was born in the mountains of Syria, grew up among merchant caravans traveling to and from the Ḥijāz, and then worked in mountains associated with Abū Ṭālib, from which his affiliation with him arose. The Foundation was born in Mecca. That Speaker's age was clearer and more powerful than the ages before it. That is why the claim of unity came to be made concerning ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, rather than the earlier Foundations.
Another reason is that the Qurʾān and earlier cycles contain indications of the appearance of ʿAlī the Most High. The expression “ʿAlī the Most High” would not have been used unless our Lord knew that a person named ʿAlī would rise and that unity would be claimed for him. Gabriel said to them, “My Lord and yours is ʿAlī the Most High,” but they grasped it as a claim and not in its reality. In the account of the ascent, the Speaker said: “When I was in the fourth heaven I saw an angel most closely resembling ʿAlī; the angels visited him. I said to Gabriel, ‘My beloved, has my brother ʿAlī preceded me into heaven?’ He answered, ‘No. The angels longed for ʿAlī, and so an angel was created for them and named ʿAlī, whom they visit.’” The Foundation had not looked into the heaven that the Speaker claimed. The Speaker imagined that ʿAlī was his Foundation, whereas the indication passed on to another person named ʿAlī.
The fourth heaven and the ascension refer, figuratively, to rising through knowledge of the order of the Call. The Speaker advanced in it and in its structure: first he was a Respondent serving under Jesus' law; then he became a Mukāsir; then he became a Speaker. This is the reason for the ascent: he rose from one station to the next. When he had ascended those stations, he was told that in future manifestations a form would appear in the fourth heaven. He was not told that this form was the heaven itself.
The seven heavens are the concealed Imams. The first, the heaven nearest the world, is Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad; the second is Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl; the third is Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad. In the third's time relief approached, for the third heaven came close to the fourth. Our Lord—exalted is He—appeared in Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad's time in a human form, but that form did not hold earthly kingship; it appeared under the name Abū Zakariyyā. The Universal Intellect appeared before him in a form named Qārūn, a distinguished non-Arab figure in the Call who did not associate another with Him in tawḥīd. At the end of his life, when he was an old man, he sent the Mahdī to Yemen. Our Lord also revealed His Proof, the Universal Soul, under the name Saʿīd al-Ṭāʾī.
The fourth heaven came into being with the rise of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad, a descendant of Maymūn. Our Lord appeared in a form named ʿAlī, while the preceding visible form, called Abū Zakariyyā, was named Ṭālib. Thus arose “ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib,” ʿAlī the Most High to whom the indications point.
The fifth heaven appeared with Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh, also called the Mahdī as a covering; he too belonged to the descendants of al-Qaddāḥ and of al-Ḥusayn. Our Lord appeared in a form called al-Muʿall, in the regions of Palmyra and the East, dressed as a merchant. That visible form nevertheless inspired awe in the hearts of people and displayed signs of wealth and prosperity. Such was profound wisdom.
The sixth heaven appeared with al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad, likewise of the line of Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ. The form of tawḥīd continued as it had appeared. The seventh heaven arose with ʿAbd Allāh, father of the Mahdī, who took charge of the affair. The form of tawḥīd likewise remained as before. ʿAbd Allāh bore the name Aḥmad; thus Saʿīd was called “son of Aḥmad.” This was the Mahdī whose name had been employed to prepare the way for him and to accustom the world to it.
The Seat (kursī) was the one to whom our Lord entrusted the deposit and whom He commanded to serve our Lord the Qāʾim. The first manifestation of our Lord to the world was in a form called al-Qāʾim, at which time He first appeared in earthly sovereignty.
Seeker, receive with strength what I have brought you and be grateful. This is what has been revealed to us concerning the manifestations. Our Lord—exalted is His praise—knows better and judges more wisely. He has no partner in His dominion, and none may object to His deeds. You have no reason to pursue the remembrance of what is past, for you are enriched by what now exists: our Lord al-Ḥākim, revealed and manifest before you, and His visible Proof, who renders the intelligent free of the need to search the past.
We now return to the five divisions. We have explained the outward and inward and established that the outward is not the object intended. Its designation as “knowledge” is figurative. Likewise the inward is not the object intended, for the sought-for goal is the tawḥīd of our Lord—exalted be His remembrance—in which salvation lies. The second division is therefore also called “science” figuratively. The meaning of outward and inward belongs to their possessors, the Speaker and Foundation. These are two servants of our Lord al-Ḥākim, employed within His kingdom in our age. Whoever knows them knows them, and whoever neglects learning remains ignorant of them. There is no tawḥīd in them.
The third and fourth divisions are two other sciences: the treatment of nature and the treatment of the speaking animal, the human being, together with the beasts. The first is called a physician, the other a veterinarian. Both kinds of healer attempt to treat what they do not truly know. They inherit their science by imitation from earlier philosophers, just as people of the outward law inherited their sciences from Speakers and philosophers. At most they have opened a human abdomen and looked at what is inside, then pronounced judgment upon it. But the inside of a person who has been killed and died does not work as it does in a living human being; their judgment about the living speaking person is therefore not reliable.
How often do you see a physician proud of his skill and confident in his medicine who treats a patient and kills him in the course of treatment? Eye doctors and surgeons have blinded many people; veterinarians and those who treat birds have likewise killed many. Whatever success they obtain is by coincidence in the things treated and by judgments drawn from their observations and preferences. This is their strongest argument, but in the knowledge of realities it is the weakest. The four divisions do not possess the reality; truth lies elsewhere.
Having dismissed the two divisions of medicine, we return to the two religious sciences, the outward and inward, and find no genuine reality in either. We discover that the third division of religion is tawḥīd of our Lord—exalted be His remembrance. These are the four divisions, and the fifth is their noblest. So, too, in other matters, greatness attaches to the fifth: there are four natures, while the fifth is above them; the Proofs (ḥujaj), whose fifth is the highest. One is counted, then another makes two, a third makes three, and a fourth completes the pair of pairs, as in “We created everything in pairs.” When a further one is added, tawḥīd is complete: four individuals form an outward pair and an inward pair, while the unity sought is beyond both. It is the fifth division.
That is the knowledge of the division of the sciences, the establishment of truth, and the unveiling of what was concealed. In the age of Adam the Universal Pure One, when people denied the Creator and sought the non-existent, the name and knowledge of our Lord were hidden, concealed, and not permitted to be disclosed. They were kept in hearts until our Lord appeared in the form of the Qāʾim. The appearance of the form together with the concealment of tawḥīd occurred for a purpose decreed by wisdom. No Unitarian could openly proclaim the unity of our Lord, so it remained hidden and concealed. So it remained in the times of al-Manṣūr, al-Muʿizz, and al-ʿAzīz. All are one, and He manifested His wisdom to us.
When our Lord al-Ḥākim rose in the form of tawḥīd, what was hidden was unveiled, and our Lord was affirmed in His unity openly, before Him. One would not be denied, killed, or imprisoned for this. The unveiling of what was concealed thus means the tawḥīd of our Lord, for there is nothing concealed that equals it or exceeds its dignity. In our present age it has been unveiled; every concealment has been lifted, the intended goal has been attained, and His promise has been fulfilled without failing.
Whoever proclaims tawḥīd, renounces denial, recognizes our Lord—exalted be His remembrance—and affirms His unity in accordance with what has been unveiled; whoever directs himself toward Him according to His command, turns toward Him by the light He originated, receives the deposit from that light, and fully recognizes the promised Riser of the Age appointed for his own time—such a one belongs to the victorious. He need not fear a return to the accursed Iblīs or grieve over separation from the contemptible Ghaṭrīs. Such people devote themselves to obedience to the Guide of Respondents and listen to the sciences of tawḥīd recited to them. These are the victorious.
Praise and favor belong to our Lord. We trust Him in prosperity and adversity, hardship and ease. He suffices me and is the best support and helper.
Here ends The Division of the Sciences, Establishment of Truth, and Disclosure of What Is Hidden. Its composition was completed in the month of Muḥarram, in the third year of the manifestation of the Guide of Respondents, our Lord's servant and possession, avenger against the associators through the sword of our Lord. In Him I seek help.