they disagreed over to Allah and the Messenger. Instead, their principal reliance is upon reports transmitted from some members of the Prophet’s Household, some of which are true and others false.

They have laid down three principles for themselves:

The first is that each of these men is an infallible imam, occupying the same position as the Prophet: he speaks nothing but the truth, no one may oppose him, and any matter in which another person disagrees with him is not to be referred to Allah and the Messenger. Thus, they ascribe to him things that he and his household themselves repudiated.

The second is that whatever any one of these men says, it is taken as established that he declared: “Everything I say I transmit from the Prophet”—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. If only they had contented themselves with reports in which Followers such as Alī ibn al-Husayn omit the intermediary! Instead, they turn to men of a later age, such as the two al-Askarīs, and say:

“Whatever any one of those men said, the Prophet said.”

Anyone with reason knows that the two al-Askarīs were no different from their Hāshimite peers who lived in their time. They possessed no knowledge that distinguished them from others and for which scholars needed to turn to them. Nor did scholars learn from them as they learned from the scholars of their own time. By contrast, in the time of Alī ibn al-Husayn, his son Abū Ja'far, and his grandson Ja'far ibn Muhammad, scholars did learn from these three—may Allah be pleased with them—just as they used to learn