from him any benefit or advantage whatsoever, except that he wastes his life and wealth, undertakes arduous journeys, waits endlessly by night and day, and antagonizes the great majority for the sake of someone who entered a cellar and has neither acted nor spoken. Even if his existence were known with certainty, these poor people would derive no benefit from him. What, then, when rational people know that they are left utterly empty-handed, and that al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Askari neither fathered nor left any offspring, as stated by Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī (1), Abd al-Bāqī ibn Qāni (2), and other scholars of genealogy?

They say that he entered the cellar after his father’s death, when he was either two, three, five, or approximately that many years old. According to the explicit text of the Quran, a child of such an age is an orphan whose property must be preserved until sound judgment is discerned in him, and he must be cared for by whichever of his relatives is entitled to his custody (3). When he reaches seven years of age, he is instructed to purify himself and pray. Someone who had neither performed ablution nor prayed, and who—according to the explicit text of the Quran—remained under his guardian’s authority with respect to both his person and his property, could not lawfully be the Imam of the people of faith, even if he existed and could be seen with one’s own eyes. How much less so when he is nonexistent or missing throughout this long occultation?