In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. From the servant in the possession of his Lord, Bahāʾ al-Dīn, small in station and worth, acknowledging servitude and yielding obedience to the ranks of the Guardian of Command, tested because of his weakness by the devils of the interregnum and the pretended Pharaohs of this age, to the brother distinguished by his virtues, a portion of success and right direction. May God prolong your time upon the path of trustworthiness and rectitude, continue your ascent to the degrees of elevation, shelter you from the darts of every misguided, accursed devil, and preserve you from the pollution of every rebellious, slanderous apostate.
Now then: praise and sanctity belong to the Lord, the exalted God, beyond the transcendence of every created being. He has particularly entrusted the guiding Imam, Guardian of Truth, with the glory of affirming His transcendence and unity, so that the structures of creation may not be confused with the meanings of origination in the realities of His wisdom. Thus He brands the souls of those who invent associations, lies, despair, and falsehood, so that people may distinguish intellect from what intellect apprehends, and these from the things constituted in their physical natures. Thus the people of reason and truth, who grasp wisdom, accept truth, and follow it, are separated from the faction of falsehood and the people of doubt, apostasy, and innovation.
You know, my brother—may God make you happy—that I rely upon you to deliver this letter to my children and brethren. I charge you to show them compassion, treating the small and the great, the distant and the near, with gentleness. Assure them of what is in my heart: that publicly and privately I pray for the good guidance of them all.
I asked you to write to me explaining their circumstances. Do they remain in repentance, obedience, faithfulness, acceptance, and agreement? Or have they fallen into the disagreement, apostasy, disobedience, and deviation that have been reported to us? I would not willingly describe those whose intentions are sound in such terms. Rather, a satanic trial has appeared to their inner selves like a mirage flashing before their eyes. May the truth turn aside the eyes of the wicked from them and send upon their enemies consuming fire and deadly heat.
If you find them upright in character, continuing to accept the words of this epistle with patience, contentment, belief, and submission; if you verify the soundness of their intentions through repudiation of the one who turned them from truth and branded them with this shameful name; if you examine how they greet you with recognition, honor, reverence, and respect, and how each attends to the rights of the others and to his own duties toward his brother—if words and deeds accord in all these things—then establish among them the beacon of truth. Make known the disgrace of whoever has wandered into falsehood and lies because his corrupt soul could not abide the truth.
Remain with them for this summer or part of it, and appoint for the affairs and reform of this community a trustworthy, noble elder: al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Khayr al-Raʾīs; Abū al-Māḍī, a visitor of purity and sanctity; Abū al-Khayr Salāma ibn Jandal; and Abū al-Faḍl Ḥamza ibn Abī Manṣūr, the noble and honorable one.
Live together, brothers of purity, in obedience. Be gentle with little children; in education, humility, honor, and regard, bring them into the company and ranks of the great elders. Strip off the garment of pride, for pride destroyed the person who led you into the company of evildoers and unbelievers. Teach the children the qualities of the Unitarians: modesty of soul and excellence of character. Soften harsh conduct toward them so that they may distinguish themselves from the cold, contentious, and hypocritical. Protect the honor of your sisters and children, and put the opponents of religion to shame by keeping their accusations from finding grounds among you. Some among them have embraced religion as an opportunity for ease, license, and the pursuit of appetite. When you admonish the community to protect the people of religion, the wickedness of that conduct will be driven back to its impure origin.
Pure brethren, remedy with gentle care the injuries done to your good name by the woman known as al-Sariyya al-Baghiyya, a supporter of Ḥasan al-Ḥāmilī and those like him. Refrain from their vile ways and unite upon the realities of religion.
Send a copy of this letter to the truthful and steadfast Shaykh Abū al-Qāsim Naṣr ibn, eloquent in heart and tongue. His noble actions bear witness to obedience, belief, and submission, and mark him as a preacher among the people of justice, chastity, and sound judgment. Let him read it in Damascus, discreetly and gently, to the brothers and sisters in whom he places confidence. Let him explain the baseness of the doctrine of the banished and accursed traitor Ṭarrād, who received his religion from the apostate, filthy hypocrite Lāḥiq, one of the first to introduce the doctrine of permissiveness. He made it a ladder for every apostate, pretending that religion was a pastime of comfort, amusement, and play, a deception of the ignorant and a source of subsistence and profit from worldly goods. O Lord! They have exposed the people of truth to trials, abuse, slander, and denunciation upon the tongues of humanity.
Pure brethren, renounce the destructive places of desire frequented by the lying pretenders. Repudiate them and their impure convictions if you are Unitarians. By the truth, I have given you sincere counsel, if you possess understanding. I am free from the pollution of these innovations, and the Guardian of the Age curses their founder to the farthest limits.
By God, had your belief been sincere tawḥīd for God's sake alone, unmixed with the brutishness of desires, fools would have found no means of gaining power over you, and you would have escaped all those afflictions.
Therefore strive, pure brethren, and cooperate in uprooting these corrupt beliefs through piety and righteousness. Tear them from the hearts of the community. May God sever the root of their inventor, break his strength, and withhold mercy from him on the day of accounting and gathering.
I have been informed that Sukayn commanded everyone and imposed upon them the payment of works, offerings, and alms, urging the community to pay these things and gathering the proceeds from them at all times. You know that exalted commands forbidding such payments were sent throughout all the regions. The people of truth accepted them. The people of apostasy, doubt, and hypocrisy disobeyed, defied the exalted commands, despaired of the Guardian of Truth, and passed from obedience into rebellion.
Several members of the community have confirmed to me that Sukayn claimed one of the highest religious ranks for himself, describing himself as the riḍā, the holder of the office of embassy and speech. He also sent secret instructors to various places to assert that the humble servant in possession of his Lord—the least of the ranks—was in fact the Imam. He had no religion in doing this; he did it for worldly gain, plotting for the goods of this passing world. The Lord curses whoever accepts this conviction and will expose the disguises of those who seek to mislead His people.
I examined Sukayn's actions and found them tainted by deception, ignorance, and corruption of wisdom arising from the poverty of his reason and deficiency of his understanding. The deluded man tampered with the epistles of the Qāʾim of the Age. In his wicked audacity he even altered the Covenant of the Guardian of the Age, invented the innovations of treacherous wrongdoers, and followed the paths of covenant-breakers, thieves, and deserters. He stirred up discord, caused the blood of Unitarians to be shed, and exposed them to the slanders of fools and the swords of opponents. He authorized young men to commit acts for which the God of the worlds will call him to account: the shedding of blood, frightening of neighbors, and the ruin of the inhabitants' condition. His object was to fill his own belly by imposing payments upon them that the foundations of religion forbid. The just Imam, Guide of all humanity, could not lawfully command this.
Had he put off the garments of arrogance and dishonor and governed the Unitarians as people of justice, fidelity, and excellence govern, he would have forbidden deeds that shame the faithful, degrade their station, and give ignorant opponents arguments against them. He would have commanded them to refrain from harming others, to act honorably, and to conceal private faults from the people of error. He would have left worldly goods to those who sought them, and contented himself and his companions with a little lawful wealth rather than much that was forbidden. He would have occupied them in safeguarding wisdom and learning fidelity, patience, and forbearance. They would have clung to tawḥīd, contentment, submission, discretion, and noble deeds, refusing to presume that a claim of religious allegiance licensed shameful offenses.
If, after receiving such counsel, they had refused to correct themselves, he should have withdrawn from them and written to me about their actions. He would then have been excused before God and His Guardian for deeds they committed without his agreement. Instead he clung to the earth like Iblīs, respecting no obligation to truth and forgetting the day of reckoning and presentation. By the truth, had he administered them with reverence, religion, and excellence, they would have been protected from their trial and truth and justice would have prevailed among them.
Repudiate him, brothers, and his actions. He has opposed God and His Guardian through falsehood, and his vile practices and character are manifest. His distortion of the truth, claims, and humiliations are notorious. Show all the epistles in your possession to the trustworthy and reliable shaykh; let no critic's blame deter you from truth. I am giving sincere counsel to you and to all the Unitarians. Accept it and you honor and prepare yourselves; reject it and you will regret your own loss and disgrace.
Trustworthy shaykh, investigate the reality of this man's condition and this discourse. Explain it to the community and cleanse them of these stains and illnesses. Read to them the relevant passage from the wisdom of the Guardian of religion in The Cause of Causes, which says that there is neither repentance nor pardon for whoever departs from truth and appoints himself among the highest ranks and gateways. Explain that no pardon belongs to whoever leads Responders away to the worship of a created being, since worship is obedience throughout all the ways of the true religion. How much worse is the person who treats the Guardian of religion as absent and redirects obedience, which is worship, to the weakest of his servants!
Trustworthy shaykh, if they fail to prepare to obey the directives and accept these virtues, and their souls prove afflicted by a chronic disease, and their hearts fail to become as clear toward one another as pure drinking water, seize the opportunity to depart from them and leave their land. The messenger is bound only to convey the message. Seek the excellent company of the obedient in the northern regions.
Make your journey to one of the coastal fortresses, either ʿAsqalān or Caesarea. Write to me concerning the country and the people for whom you take responsibility. Tell me what passes in your affairs and what happens on your journey, so that I may instruct you on what you must carry out and what you may rely upon.
Praise to God, who does not change His blessing while those who receive it remain worthy of its company, and who withdraws His gifts only from those who deny them and doubt those entrusted with them. Peace upon His Guardian, who fulfils His promise to the sincere and obedient, and destroys those who doubt his manifestation through vengeance by the sword of our Lord against rebellious deniers and associationists.
Completed. Praise belongs to our Lord alone, and thanks to His servant, the Qāʾim of the Age.