Abū ʿAbd Allāh Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad,21 God’s blessings on him, was asked about the cause of disagreement among the Muslims after the Messenger of God and the circumstances that led to it. He asked the questioner, “Did they disagree during the life of the Messenger of God?” “How could they disagree,” the questioner replied, “when the Messenger of God was with them, explaining to them the matter over which they disagreed, so that they might adopt his ruling?” The Imam responded, “You have spoken the truth. In like fashion, if the one who assumed authority after the Messenger had been apprised of the matters regarding which he was consulted, he would have answered them whenever they posed questions regarding their disagreement. However, the one who assumed authority did not know the answers to all the questions that were referred to him, so he asked the people about many things that he did not know, and they gave him conflicting answers on those topics. Disagreement occurred as a consequence. If they had submitted to the true authority and accepted his word, then no two of them would have disagreed over the religion of God, just as they did not disagree during the life of the Messenger of God.”
9 This is just part of what has been related about early disagreements. Later, control over people’s affairs was assumed by the Umayyads and the Abbasids, who had no knowledge of God’s permitted and forbidden things and no ambition or desire to uphold the sacred law, but whose only desire and ambition, instead, was to seek the trappings of this world. When they obtained power, they became engrossed in the mundane and turned away from all else. They handed over control of the religion to commoners who claimed to be learned in the law. The rulers did this in order to appease the jurists and to attract thereby their support in attaining their own desires, despite their ignorance. The jurists took free rein and vied unhampered for leadership among themselves. They multiplied, and with increased numbers, their various inclinations caused them to split into factions, and their distinct views on legal questions led them to oppose one another. This occurred because the rulers had left them to their own devices, violating the fundamental principle of the Sacred Law and the obligations that God imposed on those who would uphold it, including the duty to maintain the religion, protect its sanctity, and combat those who go against it.
10 The first of the Umayyads who championed this approach and rose up to preach it, after the people had denounced ʿUthmān for his heretical innovations, was Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān.22 He stood up to preach when he was first sworn in as Caliph. He thanked God and praised Him, extolled the Prophet and His family with the dignities that God had bestowed on them, and praised Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUthmān. Then he said: “Hear me! I have assumed this position after them, following the dissension which you have seen. I have leaned toward the world and it has leaned toward me, putting me in possession of itself, and I have knelt upon it with my full weight like a camel stallion kneeling down. I am her son, and she is my mother. You will find me better than those who come after me, just as I am worse than those who have gone before me. I will show clemency for your ignorance, forgive you for your slips, and leave you to choose matters of your faith as you please. May God have mercy on the man for whom I alone am sufficient and who is sufficient for me. If he asks me for some matter directly and without subterfuge, then I will help him to get it and treat him justly.” Then he complained of a pain in his leg, and asked them for permission to sit, so they granted him permission. He sat and preached to them, and he was the first to innovate giving a sermon while sitting. As he testifed against himself, he was among the worst of people, and, as he also mentioned, those of the Umayyads who came after him were yet worse than he.
11 Then rule passed to the Abbasid caliphs, who all followed the path of the Umayyad dynasty before them, leaving the people to dispute over matters of the religion during their era and focusing their attention on mundane matters. The first and best among them23 was addressed concerning this, and he replied as his advisors suggested: “Let the people alone to adopt whatever they will concerning their religion, and they will let you alone to pursue worldly wealth and power.” These usurpers, though God had imposed on all those who occupied their position the duty to uphold the religion, became engrossed with the pursuit of wealth and power and left matters of religion to those who pledged allegiance to them, accepted their rule, became their devoted supporters, and called themselves their scholars and jurists. These scholars and jurists vied with one another over rank, increased in number, and claimed authority over the common people. Since they were incapable of proper knowledge of the Book and the Practice, they disagreed and derived legal rulings for the Muslim nation on their own. For they were loath to refer the questions over which they disagreed to those whom God had ordered them to consult, out of a desire to maintain their superior position and so that those over whom they claimed authority would not view them as incompetent and consequently turn away from them.
12 This is a summary statement of the cause of their disagreement up until the advent of al-Mahdī, the Divinely Guided One24 of the nation, a member of the Family of the Prophet, the stock of the House of Mercy. Reports from the Messenger of God that convey the glad tidings of his uprising and relate what would occur—the establishment of the faith of God at his hands and during his days—are so numerous that to present them would take too long and exceed the scope of this book. Among them is the Prophet’s statement: “The Divinely Guided One will be from among my descendants. He will revive my practice, fulfill my command, and demand revenge for the people of my House. He will fill the earth with justice and equity, just as it is now filled with tyranny and injustice.”25 The Divinely Guided One, the Mahdī, arose, and he revived the practices of old, put an end to innovations, and silenced the concoctors of lies who were in disagreement over the religion. He erected the light tower of the faith and raised its standard. He instituted its laws and made its rulings straight, compelling the nation to its path and eradicating innovations and heresies from it as well as disagreement and dispute concerning it.26
13 A certain miscreant surreptitiously slipped al-Mahdī a petition, as if to advise him without revealing himself, on which was written, “If the Commander of the Faithful had only treated the common people according to the doctrine of Zayd,27 which most of them adopt concerning inheritance, then from this he could pay into the treasury a tremendous sum.” When al-Mahdī read his statement, he became quite furious and ordered that the man be sought out and tracked down, so that he might make an example of his punishment. The man could not be found, and his identity remained a mystery, for he had not shown himself but had delivered his petition by stealth. Al-Mahdī, God’s blessings be upon him, observed: “This sinner wanted the people to witness us violating God’s ruling on account of worldly greed. We, however, obey God by upholding His faith and by ruling according to what is right among his worshipers. God did not cause us to rise up in order to hoard the goods of the world without His permission or for the sake of something other than Him. We have expended our lives and our blood for His sake alone, so that we might uphold His faith and champion His truth, and revive the Practice of our forefather, His Prophet.”
14 Al-Mahdī, peace be upon him, commanded that no two subjects meet to negotiate concerning something lawful or forbidden except according to what he had established, the true doctrine according to the Book of God and the Practice of His Prophet Muḥammad. The Commanders of the Faithful among his descendants,28 God’s blessings upon them, followed him in adopting this principle and, after his passing, imposed it on the populace, so that the religion returned to its original state and came back to the proper order on the necklace-cord of God’s wards, the Imams. The prediction of the Messenger, God’s blessings upon him and his family, was fulfilled. For having mentioned the Divinely Guided One, he stated, “He will come from the descendants of this boy,” pointing to al-Ḥusayn, God’s blessings on all of them. Then he said, “Through us, God opened the religion, and through us, He will seal it.”29 This is similar to the report transmitted from the Prophet in which he said, “The religion began as a stranger, and will return to being a stranger just as it began, so blessed on that day are the strangers.”30 In this regard there are many other long reports and numerous similar accounts that we have omitted for the sake of brevity.
