Note 543 — Chapter VI

According to the most probable account of historians, it never was Alí who pretended to be a God, but Abdallah, son of Wahab, son of Saba, a Jew converted to Islamism, who was the first instigator of the seditious movements to which Omar fell a victim, promulgated the doctrine, that a particle of divinity resided in Alí, the true Imám, that he is not dead, but only for a time withdrawn from the eyes of men; that he would reappear one day upon the earth, and fill it with justice, in the same manner as it is now filled with iniquities. This doctrine served as a foundation to the different sects which admitted the transmission of the Imamate to the descendants of Alí, by right of succession, and spread in the east and west of Asia, in Africa, and in Spain.