I have put my trust in our Lord, the divine al-Ḥākim, whose existence the usurpers and deniers, the doubters and the impious, have denied. I seek access to Him through the Guardian of His truth, the truthful Imam: through whose imamate the knowing Unitarians were guided, and from whose obedience the disobedient, apostate and denying unbelievers have turned away, ruined by their own deeds.
From the least of servants, who acknowledges himself a possession and a sincere counsellor, the servant of the guiding Imam, the standing Messiah, to everyone capable of eloquent speech and utterance: a demonstration against the religions and nations, Arab and non-Arab alike; a rebuttal of the assertions of unbelieving fabricators and a refutation of the beliefs of doubt-ridden pretenders who claim religion and faith but deny the manifestation of tawḥīd, confirmation, and certainty. They object to the Creator’s will and intention, hasten to slander the awaited Imam, the Qāʾim of the Resurrection, the possessor of disclosure who explains the Creator’s unity, and, despite knowing his rank, reject his command and commit disobedience. They have cast off the bond of what the Creator required concerning the open declaration and knowledge of His unity.
Now then: praise belongs to our Lord, the God al-Ḥākim, who gives existence to existent beings, and to the guiding Imam who stands for the Call of tawḥīd in each renewed age. He is the proof before the nations, the banner of divine praise and the balance of equity through the cycles and eras. Through him the argument reaches all regions and peoples of the earth. I, the possessed servant, acknowledging my weakness and deficiency beside the exalted ranks that preceded me, shall speak.
When I considered the sects that deviate from the truth, their misguidance and the contradictions of their various creeds, I found one party nearer to the truth in its words, yet no less deficient in understanding than the other opponents. They confess tawḥīd by imitation rather than through an intervening proof, demonstration or certainty. They accept it as a received tradition without examination and verification. For all this, they are bitterly hostile to the Unitarians, stubbornly denying the just Imam, the Qāʾim of Religion, and joining themselves to every other hostile sect in order to curse the people of truth.
One of their accusations is that we declared divine unity before its appointed moment: we disclosed what we were supposedly never commanded to disclose at that time, proclaimed the sincere profession of unity in every region, and possessed no military power sufficient to fend off the plots of the enemies and hypocrites. Others even acknowledge that what we said is true, but insist that we spoke prematurely: what had been commanded to remain concealed, we made public to those who opposed us.
My answer to these heedless and unjust people is this. In admitting that we manifested and publicly proclaimed the tawḥīd of our Lord al-Ḥākim, they have spoken truth. But in treating this as an offence they have denied the Creator's judgments and made themselves associators. They accuse men who obeyed the Creator's command and did not disobey Him; they condemn servants who complied with the will of an Imam whose obedience is required. Can any created being defeat the will of his Creator? Can a servant object to the One he worships because the latter commands that His unity and worship be declared?
How could sound understanding allow the will of human beings to prevail over the will of the Creator concerning what His servants have explained and revealed? How could anyone maintain that He intended a matter to remain secret, yet His servants overcame His intention and published it against His will? People of equity, judge between us and those who reject divine wisdom through folly and stubbornness.
Have these people forgotten what is recorded in the authoritative writings concerning the final Imam, through whom God brings the servants together in obedience and manifests religion over all religion? The comparison was made with the ninth month, Ramaḍān, and with the birth of a child after nine months of pregnancy; the embryo becomes strong during the seventh month. The corresponding interpretation concerns al-Muʿizz and the sequence of unveiling: after the seventh of the two weeks, beyond which there is no other week, the completion comes with the Qāʾim and the second disclosure. Did not al-Muʿizz announce that revelation would occur at the second of the second? What more could a person of understanding ask without rejecting the Creator's wisdom?
If disclosure were a matter that human beings could carry out or postpone whenever they pleased, religious order would collapse and the divine power would be rendered ineffectual. It is far from the Creator to be governed by the will of creatures in what He has prescribed for their worship. Nor could the teachings previously made known through the truthful servants be overturned. Those teachings divide time into two conditions, the cycle of concealment and the cycle of disclosure. The world cannot escape this distinction, whether people assent or refuse.
By God, the hearts and inward eyes of these people have been sealed through their injustice. The just disclosure has laid bare the secrets of the people of truth, while the Creator will disclose the wrong committed by those who denied Him, retreated from the truth, broke their word and attacked its people. Is this not the event promised to you? Was it not the object toward which the earlier teachers of religion pointed, and for which people of insight waited?
Your corrupt deeds have prevented you from fulfilling the obligations you profess. Disputes with the adherents of denial have kept you from joining the people of truth. You have approved the unjust shedding of the blood of innocent Unitarians, and have participated in a great crime through the deeds of those whom you supported. If you do not repent of these offences, the punishment will reach you from quarters in which you supposed yourselves safe. You opposed the Creator's command and the killing of His friends, repeating the conduct of earlier ages.
Consider what was said in the thirty-eighth gathering of wisdom. A person's first duty is to know the abstraction and transcendence of the divine Creator from all descriptive properties. The first boundary of such abstraction is the difference between maʿrifa and ʿilm, recognition and knowledge. Through the proper understanding of unity, right guidance and support are completed. All other things are known through tawḥīd; tawḥīd itself is not deduced from other things in the same way. The teaching negates what can be perceived with the eyes, but affirms existence without subjecting it to the limits of direction and sensory comprehension.
To distinguish recognition from knowledge is to avoid mistaking descriptions of visible beings for the truth of the divine Lord. We have learned that success is not achieved without stripping the truth of the attributes of creatures. During the cycle of concealment, expressions concerning sons and fathers, mothers, spouses and offspring were used; they were signs adapted to the world before the completed time of disclosure. The Creator is removed from those relations. Once the command to disclose unity came, they could no longer serve as literal attributes of the One worshipped. Those who stopped at the rank of the Imam instead of distinguishing servant from Worshipped One failed to understand the meaning of the teaching.
The same gathering says that after a person knows the object of this first obligation, discerning His name and description in the proper way, another obligation follows: knowing the commander and prohibitor, the one who gives directions and forbids acts. He is just, not unjust, and does not impose on a soul more than its capacity. The teaching thus directs us to the Imam who stood for the Call of tawḥīd, received the Creator's order and prohibition, and passed them on to those who obeyed. He does not become the transcendent Creator merely by conveying the command. I say: seeking tawḥīd is an obligation for knowing believers, and the highest obligation and greatest honor is to accept the command of the God of the worlds.
I have already examined this party at length in an epistle called al-Tanbīh (“The Admonition”). There I explained this division and the command for the public manifestation of beliefs. Let the heedless learn: the one who commands and forbids is the Imam of the Unitarians, the Qāʾim throughout the cycles, and the executor of the Creator's order. He carried out the disclosure and instructed the true Unitarians to receive it. That this was lawful and necessary is established by the noble public decree that gave the people freedom to declare their religious beliefs and required the uncovering of their positions.
Whoever rebels against accepting this command, resorts to refusal and denial, objects to it, and rejects it has rejected the Creator’s command and departed from the company of Unitarians who profess openly. The command says: 'Remove from yourselves the sources of fear and aversion; free yourselves of corrupt anxieties and imagined dangers. The Commander of the Faithful has placed you in a position where you may choose. You need no longer hide what you believe or bear the burden of secrecy. Let each of you sincerely perform the acts demanded by the beliefs he actually follows, and do not claim that restraints or impediments prevent you from displaying them. The Commander of the Faithful has cut off that excuse by making his intention plain and urging you to declare your profession.'
After this honored decree was read, the declaration of tawḥīd spread by the Creator's order. Those who accepted His judgment and were satisfied with His decree made their religious profession known openly, despite the opposition of the apostates. They proclaimed their beliefs in the regions of the earth, in submission to the One who commanded and forbade. The obedient hurried to answer the summoner of truth; the divine order established the Call's public manifestation.
At Cairo the Call was announced; the house named Dār al-Anmāṭ was appointed for the Creator’s servant and Guardian. The herald called for the renewal of tawḥīd and truth. People came from the horizons to accept the guiding summons, and a covenant of tawḥīd was taken from those who wished to enter the religion of truth. The authority of judges and officials of the police, together with the instruments of governmental coercion, was removed from those who answered the guiding Qāʾim. Their status was raised above the judgments of the prior religious law and from the bondage of its covenants. What more visible favor could be imagined?
People of religion, how could there be a clearer announcement? Distinguished and ordinary alike heard it. It identified the Qāʾim who administered the Call and broadcast the wisdom through the world to heal thirsty hearts. The obedient, it is said, had been disposed in their natures to recognize this Imam: they acknowledged his wisdom, guarded his covenant, preserved his ranks, and surrendered their souls and spirits to his guidance. They did not cling to bodies that must perish, nor grieve over the end of men who had oppressed them.
Justice requires obedience to the just Imam in what pleases or displeases a person. The Creator is just, not tyrannical. During the age of concealment He judged hearts and secret intentions, rewarding and punishing according to what lay hidden. But this is now the age of the Resurrection, the public disclosure of religious beliefs, whether the world wills it or not. Before that disclosure the sects and schools might have concealed their positions; after it, the adherents of truth can be distinguished by open profession from deniers and hypocrites. This is the festival of breaking the fast, the moment they had been promised. They failed to heed it because they rejected the guidance of the Qāʾim.
As the third gathering of the second hundred made clear to the people charged with preserving and reporting the teaching—those who turned away from it while looking to the people of rejection and unbelief—the Day of Breaking the Fast belongs to the Master of Disclosure. Before his appearance is the time of his concealment; now those of the elect whom God has enabled may establish the Call in his name among His creatures. After noon, following his appearance, the obligation changes: during concealment the respondent’s offering of his life as ransom is accepted, whereas whoever responds after his appearance finds his redemption suspended. After the opening, when a person merits it, the ruling upon him is like that upon the sacrifice itself: “Faith will not benefit a soul that had not believed before, or had not earned good through its faith.” This has two allegorical meanings: the passing of the breaking of the fast and the forms of purification, and the cessation of acceptance of works when the Qāʾim appears, when change becomes obligatory. Thus the noble gathering established that the Day of Breaking the Fast belongs to the Master of Disclosure.
Do you suppose that the Creator Himself, transcendent above delimitation, is the one called 'the possessor of breaking the fast'? Far be it from Him to fall under an expression tied to blindness and sensory deficiency. It signifies His servant, the guiding Qāʾim, whom He commanded to take covenants from all the nations, declare His unity, and make the distinction intelligible. When the gathering says that the chosen ones may conduct the Call in 'his name', is it possible to think they conduct it without an intermediary? If you say that the transcendent Creator performs an earthly missionary administration under His own finite identity, you have assigned Him a rank below some being superior to Him. That is a contradiction of the unity you claim to protect.
Your reasoning overturns the foundations of religion. The festival of breaking the fast has already passed: the guiding Imam fulfilled what the authorized gathering had described. The Day of Sacrifice and its reckoning will come upon the deniers. The Daʿāʾim al-Islām explains the Days of Pilgrimage through the covenant, the ranks of the Imams, and the stages of the anticipated completion. The Day of Tarwiya, on which pilgrims bring themselves and their beasts water, indicates the seventh Imam, al-Muʿizz. The Day of ʿArafa, when worshippers wait in expectation of mercy and relief, signifies the Imam who comes immediately before the Qāʾim, al-ʿAzīz, through whom his appearance was anticipated.
People of transcendence, are you going to say that the Creator is a father or a son, or will you confess that He is the one God beyond such relations? Expressions about parents, children, the Qāʾim of Resurrection and the Master of the Covenant were permissible metaphors in the period of concealment, when language used what was known among the creatures to point toward the higher truth. Once divinity and tawḥīd appeared in disclosure, the Unitarians were obliged to understand what those expressions truly signified. The Creator is beyond number, genealogy and description; His servant is the Imam who stood to explain those very metaphors.
The teachings of the early gatherings were read repeatedly to the believers; their words sounded through the West and through Fusṭāṭ year after year. But when those who had heard them saw the fulfillment they recognized, they denied it: 'When there came to them what they recognized, they disbelieved in it; the curse of God is upon the unbelievers.' Their deeds made them blind in heart and eye, and led them backwards into an attack upon the pure. It was just, therefore, that their professed beliefs be made visible. The apostates' lies and slanders, their accusations against the friends of truth and their flight from the covenant, would separate the obedient from the disobedient and provide the basis of just judgment.
Had the Call not been established through the public proclamation of tawḥīd, how could a faithless denier be distinguished from a believing worshipper? How could one recognize the person who kept the covenant and the one who broke it? The Imam was asked when the Hour would come, and replied, that it would come when no concealed evil remained without manifestation. The Resurrection would arrive against the worst of the nations through the best and purest: the people who raised truth, who applied the just Imam's commands, and who demanded an account of those who had committed great crimes and violated the rights of the Unitarians.
Some of the deniers simultaneously call the Creator the Imam and the chief of his Proofs and Callers; then, when confronted, they proclaim that He is transcendent. Either they make the Worshipped One a rank among His servants, or they must affirm the distinct just Imam, bearer of the covenant, who declares the truth of tawḥīd and transcendence. The second is correct. That Imam will take account of the torment inflicted upon the earlier Unitarians, who were tested by those who claimed religious authority while abusing them.
You subjected believers to the sword, murdered them, drowned them in the sea, burned them with fire, scattered their remains, plundered their households, captured women and children, and killed men in numbers. The heads of Unitarian men were hung upon the necks of their sisters and daughters, and nursing children harmed before their mothers. You paid no regard to kinship, covenant, youth or old age; the innocent were dragged away, their possessions taken.
Why did you not even treat the Unitarians according to the terms you recognized for Jews and Christians, by taking a poll tax, rather than slaughtering them? The covenant made before the concealment required you to guard the Lord's friends, yet you violated it. No earlier people committed so grievous an outrage after receiving warnings and clear proofs. We appeal from you to the divine Lord and His Guardian.
An opponent may ask: if the Call was true and conducted by the divine command, why did its followers suffer persecution instead of triumphing? The answer is that a member of the Call, having accepted the covenant, was already furnished with evidence and obliged to stand firm; the fact that he suffered does not annul what he knew. But if truth were to defeat every opponent by force at once, the deceitful might accept the Call merely from fear. There would be no way to distinguish those who freely chose the truth from those compelled to conform. Punishment could not justly fall on one who had merely obeyed under coercion.
Concealment therefore forms part of the trial. If the guiding Call had remained externally victorious, accompanied by unbroken military power and obvious worldly security, opponents from all religions would have professed its doctrines under threat of the sword. Then the genuine believers and those like cattle who repeated an imposed formula would appear equal. The divine judgment and the different rewards due to obedience and disobedience would be obscured. The Creator's wisdom instead gave people a choice; the two groups could reveal their dispositions in what they did when no external compulsion settled the matter.
Consider the early gatherings again. They repeatedly established the argument and pointed toward the imminent disclosure of tawḥīd and the appearance of the standing Imam. Once the Creator appointed His servant and he publicly summoned people, the distinction between Worshipped One and Imam became plain. That was the justice needed by the Unitarians. Persecution itself gave the obedient a field for patience, endurance and meritorious action. Had they never suffered trials, there would have been no occasion for their voluntary steadfastness to be made known; the unbelievers are recompensed according to their chosen denial and the people of truth according to their chosen obedience.
I have not undertaken here to refute every sect and doctrine. Elsewhere I have done so with proofs and the rules of disputation, by the favor of the guiding Imam. My present purpose is to answer people who claim to belong to the religion yet have committed the worst deviations: they joined the enemies of the Call in violence and slander and acted against the very men through whom its doctrine had been explained. They refer to themselves as Unitarians or migrants, although their actions resemble the people who expelled the believers from their homes. Their profession cannot transform injustice into obedience.
The books of wisdom tell of the groups of denial gathering against a single saved group. The account of the sixtieth and thirtieth gatherings, and of the spiritual conjunction of the Prophet and Legatee, is cited to show that both are servants under the one Creator. How can one of the two be declared the single uncreated Lord when the earlier teaching repeatedly speaks of their conjunction and their shared obligations? The unity belongs to the Creator of both individuals and pairs, not to either of the paired ranks. Submit to the One without partner; receive the light of the Qāʾim's instruction rather than the darkness of these men, before regret comes upon the soul for neglecting the true ascent.
The seventh admonishes believers to take care while warnings and obedience can still help them, while the outward practice is accepted and the inward meaning remains available to the seeker. It says they stand between an inward truth about to appear and another wisdom that is still concealed. Look, people of justice: the inward was disclosed, the Call openly arose, and the covenant was taken from the nations. What stronger proof can remain against one who rejected the truth after its fulfillment?
The teaching also directed people to act according to the outward law while its time remained and to pursue the inward meaning while it was still concealed. These actions were accepted, and their rewards hoped for, until the last of the pure guided Imams, the Qāʾim of Resurrection, should stand and unveil the inward entirely. The earlier deeds would then be vindicated, while someone who neglected them until too late would wish to recover the opportunity but be unable. Why, then, do you still look for a hidden inner meaning after the appointed disclosure? The age in which that search counted as obedience has ended. What was formerly called the rank of Imam has been assigned to the servant who announced tawḥīd; the transcendent Lord is no longer to be referred to as though He were that finite administrative rank.
Here is a passage from the eighth gathering, concerning explanation and proclamation: whenever one of the former Imams passed away, a successor rose after him. But after the Qāʾim—peace upon him—none shall rise, for he is the completion and end of the cycles. And from the tenth gathering of the second hundred, recited by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: the middle prayer is the afternoon prayer, after which there is no additional voluntary prayer. In the same way the Qāʾim comes at the end of all those ranks, and there is no successor after him, for the affairs of this world have reached their end. O people of understanding, the world's appointed time has ended with his manifestation and the disclosure of tawḥīd. The Creator is transcendent beyond spouse, child and parent altogether. This world has been the realm of outward things, the hereafter concerns the inward, and tawḥīd is the inward of the inward.
Use what remains of the period in which repentance and pardon are accepted. Judge justly between yourself and other people, do not slide through pride and injustice into falsehood, and do not return to stubbornness after the clear explanation. If you have understanding, seek truth, acknowledge the Creator's transcendence above fathers, children and genealogies, and believe what the gatherings state about the Qāʾim's having no successor.
The same doctrine is confirmed by public information about the succession arrangements of al-Ḥākim. A well-known decree named ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Ilyās as the caliph's successor 'during my life and after my death'; earlier he had been designated heir of the Muslims, while al-ʿAbbās ibn Shuʿayb was designated heir of the believers. The decree that appointed them obliged gratitude for its benefits. Yet their designations and authority came to an end; neither retained the power to govern Islam or faith after the appearance of the standing Imam. These arrangements were thus signs of former ranks whose appointed periods were completed, not indications that the divine Lord Himself would be father to a human successor. The names are ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Ilyās as heir of the Muslims and al-ʿAbbās ibn Shuʿayb as heir of the believers.
These are the realities of wisdom among the people of tawḥīd and faith, the jewels of true knowledge established by evidence and proof, as set forth in the interpretation of the Pillars of Islam. After such explanation, guidance and clarification, what remains except to reject the command of the exalted Creator, envy the people of truth, and oppose the people of religion? In decisive speech and conclusive proof, each community and sect must be confronted with what it itself believes, and addressed through the texts it studies, observes and preserves. The people of inquiry and disputation make those texts a measure and a criterion. Whoever objects after the testimonies of truth have been set before him reveals his poor discernment and ignorance. The erring party claims to build, but God pulls down its building.
Among the things established in the twenty-fifth gathering of the second hundred, which ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz recited, is an indication of tawḥīd and a proof of truth for the obedient and rightly guided. The Master of Disclosure put people to the test, until three persons appeared who were distinguished by their worth and fitness for deputation and succession. They reached the utmost extent in giving and went forward toward the unseen with mercy before them. You yourselves witnessed the words of the three and heard their call to tawḥīd. You saw the great burdens they bore for the deliverance of the nations, giving of their pure souls and bodies and declaring the disclosure of tawḥīd openly to particular people and to all. What greater grace or more decisive proof could you seek than the success of this ordered affair? And from the twenty-sixth gathering, which silences those who argue falsely and rebukes the stubborn: the three went forth with brightness and radiance, openly confronted the people of hypocrisy, and sought permission until the manifest command should reach them. The lofty commands had repeatedly required disclosure and witness before those people. They gave the truth to those entitled to it and withheld none of it; testimony was established that, by the higher choice and command, they had declared and unveiled the truth.
These earlier written testimonies had existed before the later disclosure. You, opponents of truth, thereby bear witness against yourselves: the very doctrines you received predicted this event. Had you followed the earlier teachers honestly, your former piety would have led you toward the Qāʾim rather than to the persecution of his friends. Instead your minds have been mixed with the doctrines of the adversaries so thoroughly that warning no longer moves you; habituation to denial has made you incapable of clear reflection.
The party of error, apostasy and reversal cannot distinguish the bounds of disclosure and obedience from the bounds of Satan and Iblīs. As the one-hundred-and-fifty-sixth gathering says: how great is the difference between the mighty and the mighty! Of creatures formed together, one may rise to accomplish what entire nations, even by their combined effort and cooperation, could not accomplish. This makes plain the Creator's power and the excellence He bestows upon one of His servants above many peoples and creatures. And from the one-hundred-and-seventy-first gathering comes a rebuke of the nations for their deeds and an explanation of what their error has brought them to: they did not keep faith with the Imam through whom wisdom appeared. There are two kinds of envy: Satan's envy of Adam—peace upon him—because of his station, and the envy of a weak man who slanders another in order to gain a piece of worldly goods and satisfy his appetite. 'God's punishment is greater, if they but knew.'
From the passage recited before this, confirming this and matters like it, comes the word of God, the most truthful of speakers: 'This is indeed the true narrative. There is no god but God, and God is the Mighty, the Wise. If they turn away, God knows the corrupters.' Nor does He waste the reward of those who do good. I have now fulfilled my purpose in establishing the argument against the denying factions. So praise belongs to our Lord al-Ḥākim, God of the worlds, and thanks to His Guardian, the Qāʾim of truth, who takes vengeance upon the apostates and rebels by the Lord's sword. He suffices His weak servant on the day when creatures are presented and the oppressed lay claim against their oppressors.
Written in the month of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the twenty-second year of the Qāʾim of the Age, who recovers the right from associators, deniers, hypocrites and tyrants. Completed by the favor of the Guardian of Command, received and authenticated.