the Emigrants and the Helpers](1), and those who followed them with excellence. Nor is this unprecedented(2) among the Rāfidīs(3). Their alliance(4) with the Jews, Christians, and polytheists, and their assistance in fighting the Muslims(5), are known to the elite and common people alike. (* It has even been said: “Whenever a Jew and a Muslim fought, or a Christian and a Muslim, [or a polytheist and a Muslim](6), the Rāfidī would side with the Jew, the Christian, [and the polytheist](7).” *) (8).
The third point:
Everyone knows that the Ismāʿīlīs and Nusayrīs are among the sects that outwardly profess Shiism, although inwardly they are unbelievers who have cast off every religion. The Nusayrīs are among the extremist Rāfidīs who claim divinity for Alī. By the consensus of the Muslims, these people are more deeply steeped in unbelief than the Jews and Christians.
The Ismāʿīlī Bātinīs are even more deeply steeped in unbelief than they are, for their doctrine amounts in reality to sheer negation. As for the adherents of the “Greatest Secret” and the “Supreme Proclamation”—the latter being(9) their final rank(10)—they belong to the eternalists, who maintain that the world has no agent: neither a cause nor a
(1) The text enclosed in square brackets is omitted from (N), (M), and (W).
(2) (A) and (B) read: “This is not far-fetched,” while (W) reads: “This is nothing novel.”
(3) (N) and (M) read: “of misguidance.”
(4) (W) reads: “Their alliance has already been mentioned.”
(5) (W) reads: “in fighting and corrupting the Muslims.”
(6) The text enclosed in square brackets is omitted from (N) and (M).
(7) “And the polytheist” is omitted from (N) and (M).
(8) The text enclosed between asterisks is omitted from (W).
(9) (N), (M), (H), (W), (S), and (R) read: “which is.”
(10) *Al-balāgh al-akbar* (“the Greater Proclamation”) is an Ismaili Bātinī technical term. By it, they mean bringing the person they are recruiting to the final stage, at which he completely casts off Islam. They placed this after seven levels and called it “the Seventh Proclamation”; at times, they made the scheme consist of nine levels. See *Bayān Madhāhib al-Bātiniyya* (An Exposition of the Doctrines of the Bātinīs), pp. [0–9], 17; al-Ghazālī, *Fadāih al-Bātiniyya* (The Infamies of the Bātinīs), p. [0–9]2. As for *al-nāmūs al-akbar* (“the Greatest Secret”), al-Daylamī states in *Bayān Madhhab al-Bātiniyya*, p. [0–9]3, that Abu al-Qāsim al-Qayrawānī, author of *Kitāb al-Balāgh*, said in one passage of his book: “The supreme secret was to deceive this inverted world.”