upon al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr between the Maghrib and the ʿIshāʾ prayers. I found him praying, so I sat down and he seemed unaware of me. I heard him reciting Sūrat al-Baqarah; when he finished it he bowed, remaining in bowing for a long while. Then he rose for the second cycle, recited al-Fātiḥah and Sūrat Āl ʿImrān. When he gave the salām he spoke some words I could not catch; after that he began to supplicate, raising his voice as though carried out of himself, saying:

“O God of the gods! Lord of lords! O You whom no drowse can seize! Return my soul to me, lest Your servants be put to trial because of me. O You who are I and I am You—there is no difference between my inniyya (I-ness) and Your huwiyya (He-ness) except contingency and pre-eternity!”

Then he lifted his head, looked at me, and laughed several times in my face. He said, “O Abū Isḥāq! Do you not see how my Lord has planted His pre-eternity in my contingency until my contingency has been consumed in His pre-eternity, so that no attribute remains to me save the attribute of pre-eternity, and my speech issues from that attribute? All created beings are contingent and they speak from contingency; yet when I speak from pre-eternity they repudiate me, declare me an unbeliever, and will strive to kill me. In this they are excused, and for everything they do they will be rewarded.”

ʿUthmān ibn Muʿāwiyah—the custodian of the Dināwar mosque—related: “Al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr spent the night in this mosque with a group of people. One of them asked him, ‘Shaykh, what do you say about the claim made by Pharaoh?’ He answered, ‘A word of truth.’ He asked, ‘And what do you say about what Moses, peace be upon him, said?’ He replied, ‘A word of truth as well, for the two statements flow on in eternity just as they flowed in pre-eternity.’”

Al-Ḥusayn said: “Unbelief and faith differ only in name; in reality there is no distinction between them.”

Jundub ibn Zādhān, a disciple of al-Ḥusayn, said: “Al-Ḥusayn wrote to me: ‘In the name of Allah who manifests Himself through everything to whom He wills. Peace be upon you, my son. May Allah veil from you the outward form of the sacred law and unveil for you the reality of unbelief, for the outward form of the sacred law is unbelief, and the reality…’”