He subscribed to tanasukh (the transmigration of souls) and to the hulūl of the godhead within himself, asserting that Allah indwells every created thing in proportion to what it can contain; that He brought into being each entity together with its opposite, so that He dwelt both in Adam and in Adam’s Iblīs, each one the antithesis of the other.

He went on to say, “The opposite is nearer to a thing than its likeness, and Allah indwells the body of anyone who displays wonders so that people may recognize Him. The divine essence assembled in Noah and his Iblīs, in Ṣāliḥ and the killer of the she-camel, in Abraham and Nimrod, and in ʿAlī and his Iblīs.”

He further declared, “Whoever people have need of is a god.”

He branded Moses and Muhammad “the two traitors,” claiming that Aaron had commissioned Moses and ʿAlī had commissioned Muhammad, but that both prophets betrayed their commissioners. He alleged that ʿAlī granted Muhammad a respite of 300 years, after which his law would be abolished.

Among his doctrines were the abandonment of prayer and fasting, the permissibility of every form of sexual intercourse, and the claim that the superior must sexually penetrate the inferior in order to implant the light within him; whoever refused, he maintained, would be metamorphosed in the next cycle.

He captivated the ignorant, became brazen, and led a faction astray. Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥusayn ibn Rūḥ—head of the Shīʿa, surnamed “the Gate”—reported his affair to the Ṣāḥib al-Zamān (the Master of the Age). Ibn Abī al-ʿAzāqir was therefore sought; he went into hiding, slipped away to Mosul, remained there for years, and then returned, by which time his claim to lordship had become public. He was joined by the vizier Ḥusayn, son of the vizier al-Qāsim ibn ʿUbayd Allah ibn Wahb—said to have been vizier to al-Muqtadir—along with the two sons of Bisṭām and Ibrāhīm ibn Abī ʿAwn. They too were wanted and went underground.

Then, in Shawwal of the year