In the name of the God who carries His command and will into effect whenever He chooses, by His volition and His word. May God prolong the lives of the pure and trustworthy elders and of the excellent, chosen community.
Reports have reached us about people who profess religion and faith, yet have taken to arrogance, dissension, and an unmistakable deficiency of judgment. In every district they have joined together in license and immorality, rejecting the repeated warnings against these ugly actions, which properly belong to obstinate and rebellious people. They have neglected The Crushing of the False Pharaoh and the reproaches directed at those who disregarded the letter of the trustworthy martyr, the shaykh Abū al-Yaqẓān. Ibn Abī Ḥaṣiyya, the renegade—may God remove him—has repeated such assertions in our time among the residences of the families of ʿAbd Allāh and Sulaymān. They are immersing themselves in error, discord, and corruption worthy of a lying and coarse fellow such as he.
It has become common knowledge that he has split the people of al-Bustān and others into factions, filled their vessels with the defilement of doubt, and turned them into companions and followers of the devils. He takes aside whichever of the pure believers he has tempted—such as Faraj ibn Saʿd Allāh and others of the excellent and pure—and deceives them with the claim that he will disclose to them religious knowledge they have not yet attained. He decorates for them unbelief outside the truth, although its falsity has already been demonstrated in The Crushing of the Pretending Pharaohs. There is no need to repeat its proofs here: they have silenced the tongues of the arrogant who dispute without knowledge. This renegade has made his claims a ladder to fornication and the pursuit of fleeting goods, daring to oppose the Most High Creator and the teachings of the guiding Imam who stands at the head of the age. Recognize his wrongdoing: his acts and scandals are already manifest. God will expose and recompense those who commit these offenses.
I have sent to the Mountain a circular forbidding this little band the practices by which it has departed from the people of truth. I send it to you also. Its contents, including repudiation and condemnation of those who profess this religion while declaring lawful the acts of this band, are binding. Such people follow the servants of the pharaohs of past cycles and their immoderate, renegade followers, imitating their deeds in order to mislead the world. I have sent the circular to all the elders of al-Bustān as an admonition and an argument against them and against the entire families of ʿAbd Allāh and Sulaymān. Here is the circular:
"In Your name, O God, Master of the Command, the just Imam and Qāʾim of this age and time!
"To the fanatical, denying party, blinded to the truth after having known it and received instruction: the beginnings of their actions have turned them toward degradation and distorted forms, toward an abhorrent and humiliating condition outside the truth. Their hearts are lost in bewilderment; they turn away from the truth and cannot restrain themselves from destructive vices. They have followed the cries of the devils of the interval, when falsehood must be distinguished from truth, and the rabble and dregs of the nations. Their souls have made attractive to them the hypocrisy, obstinacy, and debauchery they knew in former times. The verses and the wise remembrance do not restrain them, nor do they stop imitating the disgusting actions of pretenders, because their souls have become intermixed with impurity and shameful deeds.
"Their souls are too weak to bear the truth, being diseased and ruined; in their own nature they reproduce the filthy offenses and violation of covenants in which they were caught in previous times. Through their deception they have become accustomed to companionship with the devils of the successive cycles, their spirits mingling with rebellion against the Imams of the ages. They expect neither a life to come nor a reward, and they do not understand. The interval has robbed them of their reason and intelligence, and obedience to devils has made them forget their spiritual ranks and the doors through which they were taught.
"O misguided company! Have you found no warning in the miraculous wisdom of the Guardian of the Age that has reached you through his servant? Alas for you! Have you learned nothing from the decisive verses on divine unity and the books of the righteous? Where are you going, away from the truth? What religion do you claim to practise while persisting in abominations? No possessor of understanding came to defeat you in argument and so beguile you; no teacher arrived with knowledge better than what you had already learned to deceive and destroy you; nor did a man of worldly wealth arrive to seduce you with his possessions. You have forgotten the followers of Abū Jawf, while your lowest parts have become your highest.
"Look at the practices you have adopted. You have no cause for them except that your souls are habituated to the orders of devils and stained with ignorance and opposition. You seek distinction through the very depravity in which you have become singular, though on the Day of Presentation and Judgment you will have to answer for it. With what argument will you defend yourselves? Which piece of knowledge that came to you gives you grounds for doubt? God is your adversary, and you are the wrongdoers.
"We have learned that Mukhallā is the cause of this great innovation and scandal. May God neither raise his standing, nor bring his project to completion, nor prolong his life except for punishment, disgrace, and exemplary retribution. May He place him among the low, profligate pretenders who have been led away from the truth.
"No admonition or further letter remains for you among us, rabble of the nations. The bonds of relationship and kinship between us have been severed. Have you run to these abominations after learning of the prohibition issued against the innovations of the apostates? You had received the book sent to the trustworthy appointee, the associate of divine unity and right guidance, and had read The Crushing of the Pretending Pharaohs. Yet you have forgotten the landmarks of self-restraint and praiseworthy religion and chosen rebellion, unbelief, obstinacy, and denial. Enter whatever road to immorality you find; commit whatever outrage against the sanctity of religion you can discover. You have openly resisted the people of religion and truth and unsheathed the swords of falsehood against all creation.
"Understand what is set forth in the wisdom of the Qāʾim, the Imam—may God's peace rest upon his remembrance—concerning those who carry out your actions, under the images of transformed creatures, male and female. He explains the condition of one who invites another man to his own wife under the image of the jarīth, a kind of river fish. The man who makes his wife available to another falls into the shame of such an act, and his degradation is manifest in the worlds: outward disgrace now and torment for the grievous sins he has acquired thereafter.
"Likewise, when the wisdom describes women displaying themselves who obey men of immorality and betrayal and have departed from the realities of religion, it gives the image of the hare. The hare represents a woman who betrays her husband and brings misery upon herself. Through the defilement of her soul and the gravity of her condition, she does not purify herself of her pollution and enters the houses of God carrying inward corruption and a curse.
"These are descriptions, in the wisdom, of those who commit offenses and depart from the truth and the reality of religion. The pure friends of the faith are innocent of their deeds, while such descriptions belong to apostates and usurpers."
Whoever belongs instead to the company of the truthful and obedient, among the sincere, pure and certain Unitarians, recognizes the unity of our Lord, the divine al-Ḥākim, the Almighty who requites through His guiding Guardian those who persist in opposition, obstinacy and resistance. Such people acknowledge the imamate of the guiding Qāʾim, through whom the nations are delivered in their times and cycles. They also recognize that al-Muqtanā is His weak and insignificant servant, especially when compared with the exalted ranks of honor and light that preceded him.
Let such a person honor himself by rejecting the abominations of these coarse fools, repudiating them and remaining faithful to the wisdom of the Qāʾim, the guiding Imam. Through the refinement of his soul let him distinguish himself from those given to vice and the distorted minds of beasts, without joining them in speech or action. This faction and those who repeat their words belong to impurity, hypocrisy and folly. With their filth, ugliness and corruption they have effaced the signs of religion and departed from truth. May God banish and curse them for fabricating additions to religion, stirring up sedition against the pure followers of its ranks, and grafting on to it the uncleanness of those who apostatize and oppose its truth and wisdom.
I commend the people of reverence, obedience and restraint—and those who have repented and confessed their error—to God, who grants His Guardian victory, triumph and deliverance of His friends, bringing them from the constriction of devils into the breadth of justice and relief. God is sufficient for His weak servant al-Muqtanā, who follows the easy path of truth; He humiliates those who choose the crooked, difficult road of falsehood.
God knows, in His kingdom and power, how greatly I cherish my brother elders—may God sustain them in obedience—and the elders of the household of ʿAbd Allāh. I ask the Guardian of the Truth not to remove them from His near station but to make their passage easy. I mean the pure shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, Salāma ibn Ḥasan, Ḥamza ibn Muḥammad, and Ḥasan and his son Ḥusayn, together with their community of people faithful to their word and to the truth; and the pure elders of the family of ʿAbd Allāh, among whom are Rajāʾ, Ibrāhīm, ʿAbd Allāh, Ḥusayn and another Ibrāhīm, with the faithful and virtuous people in their company.
Let their community know—may God confound the enemies of truth—that the people are on a journey and its end is near, though they are heedless; they stand upon the edge of a crumbling bank of their own actions while wandering in their intoxication. This reminder concerns the young men who have rebelled against the truth without understanding. Their names and relationships have become known to us through their disobedience and their characteristics. They are enamored of falsehood and far removed from the truth, threatening God's path and daring to harm His friends through wrongdoing. Let supplications be made against them for their injustice toward the proofs and signs of God; let us entreat His power to strike them as He struck the mighty and pampered people of ʿĀd. Let Him join them to those who turned away from obedience, and let the aggressor receive his due punishment. God does not waste the reward of those who act well.
As for what the pure shaykh mentioned about having left his home and settled elsewhere: if he did so to avoid those already named who have departed from truth, and to be rid of their evil, write to us, by the established channel, the names of everyone who persists in hypocrisy, foolishness, dissension and conflict, so that we may add them to the list of these defiant men: Barakāt, Mūsā, Muzāḥim, al-Shamālī, Naṣr, and the doubting wrongdoer Muẓaffar. Their names are recorded with those of the other rebels whom Satan has mastered, who have departed from the company of believers and exposed themselves to punishment with the usurpers.
Concerning the pure shaykh's report about his son—may God protect and restore his health—the nature of his food and drink must be established, and whether the mixture has entered the stomach cavity, or whether the condition is one of general weakness. The physician must also see him with his own eyes and hear his account, so that a useful medicine can be prescribed after a complete examination. If he is sent to us with a trustworthy person, we shall undertake his care. May God ease his recovery and grant him and the good community what we wish for them.
As for what the pure shaykh and the elders of the household of ʿAbd Allāh said about establishing an account, the brethren have not explained the matter to us in a clear letter, and it remains obscure to us. The matter calls for clear proof and demonstration. We have sent an accounting into far-off regions; in that discussion, what was potential did not come into actuality until after the tenth and ninth years.
I give the pure elders of the families of ʿAbd Allāh and Sulaymān my most complete greetings, and wish the approved blessing upon everyone around them, great and small. I have united these two communities in a single copy of this letter because I regard them as one soul in obedience and good deeds. Do not forget the pure shaykh Abū al-Darʿ and his companions: let them share in the blessing that God grants those whom He knows to be good and worthy.
I commend the community to God, who knows the hidden things within His creation and carries out His command by His will and volition. Praise belongs to God, who manifests His truth even if the associators hate it, and whose will is carried out despite the apostates. He suffices the weak, lowly, possessed servant in bringing what was spoken into being. This rebuke is finished. Praise belongs to our Lord alone, and thanks to His Guardian and servant.