their enemy. They claim that whatever scripture those two made public was intended to keep the common people at bay, and that it contains hidden secrets: whoever knows them becomes one of those who have attained complete perfection.

They say, “Allah has made lawful for us whatever we desire of obscenities and evil deeds, and the taking of people’s wealth by any means. None of the duties incumbent upon the common people—prayer, zakat, fasting, and so forth—is incumbent upon us.” For, in their view, someone who has attained this level knows that there is neither Paradise nor Hell, neither reward nor punishment.

Their leaders hold two positions regarding the affirmation of “the Necessary Existent,” the Originator of the world. Some deny Him and claim that the Peripatetic philosophers disagree on everything except the Necessary Existent. They treat the remembrance of Allah and His name with contempt, to the point that one of them writes the name of Allah and the name of His Messenger on his nether parts. There are many similar examples of their unbelief.

The proponent of the well-known missionary call, together with the Ismā‘īlīs who followed this doctrine in the fortresses of Alamūt and elsewhere in Khurāsān, in Yemen, in the mountains of Syria, and elsewhere, adhered to the doctrine of the ‘Ubaydids about whom the question was asked.

Ibn al-Sabbāh, who headed the Ismā‘īlīs and whose followers al-Ghazālī used to debate, came to Egypt during the reign of al-Mustansir—whose reign was the longest among them—and learned their secrets from him. During al-Mustansir’s reign, al-Basāsīrī’s uprising occurred in the fifth century, in the year 450 AH, when al-Basāsīrī took up arms in rebellion against the Abbasid caliph al-Qā’im bi-Amr Allāh