al-Qasrī. It has also been related of them that many among them affirm the prophethood of Bayān ibn Sam‘ān, (1 then many of them claim that Abū Hāshim Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya expressly declared Bayān ibn Sam‘ān to be a prophet 1) (1) and made him an imam (2).
They also reported that the Mughīriyya—the followers of al-Mughīra ibn Sa‘īd—claimed that he used to say that he was a prophet, that he knew Allah’s Greatest Name (3), and that their object of worship was a man of light with a crown upon his head. He had the same bodily members and form as a man, as well as a hollow interior and a heart from which wisdom sprang. The abjad letters were as numerous as his limbs.
They said, “The alif marked the position of his foot (4), because of its curvature.” He mentioned the letter hā and said, “If you saw where it was on him, [you would see] something tremendous (5).” He would insinuate to them
(1) The passage between markers 1–1 is absent from (Ayn).
(2) The account of the Bayāniyya given here is the same as that cited by al-Ash‘arī in *al-Maqālāt*, 1/66–67, with slight differences in wording. Bayān ibn Sam‘ān al-Nahdī al-Tamīmī emerged in Iraq after 100 AH. Khālid ibn Abd Allah al-Qasrī had him burned to death in 119 AH. On him and his sect, see: *Lisān al-Mīzān*, 2; al-Tabarī, *Tārīkh*, 5/456–457; al-Ash‘arī, *al-Maqālāt*, 1/95; *al-Milal wa-l-Nihal*, 1/136; *al-Farq bayna al-Firaq*, pp. [0–9]7, 138, 145–146, 163; *al-Tabsīr fī al-Dīn*, pp. [0–9]9, 70, 72; *Usūl al-Dīn*, pp. [0–9]3–74, 331; Ibn Hazm, *al-Fisal*, 5/44; al-Maqrīzī, *al-Khitat*, 2/349, 352–353; al-Nawbakhtī, *Firaq al-Shī‘a*, pp. [0–9]9, 50, 55; *A‘yān al-Shī‘a*, 14/173–174; and Mutahhar ibn Tāhir al-Maqdisī, *al-Bad’ wa-l-Tārīkh*, 5/130, Paris ed., 1916. See also the forthcoming note on the Bazīghiyya (p. [0–9]03).
(3) (N) reads: “the Supreme.”
(4) (Ayn) reads: “his two feet.” In (N), the text is incomplete and disordered.
(5) (B) and (A) read: “If you saw its position, you would see something tremendous in him.” The reading adopted here is that of (Ayn) and *al-Maqālāt*, 1. In (N) and (M), the word “you would see” is omitted.