Their holy places are, besides the Baba Yadgar above mentioned, Zarda, which is quite near, in the Dalahu Mountain, and Dukkan-i-Daud. This last is an ancient Persian sculpture representing a religious ceremony by Zoroastrians.
It is evident that there is no definite code which can be described as Ali Illahism. It appears rather to be, as in the case of the Yazidis, an agglomeration of certain of the customs of many religious systems, some of which have been adopted to give an appearance of conformity with the religion of the ruling races in order to avert persecution for the rites they practise in secret. There is no guarantee even that Zoroastrianism was the original faith, though there are strong traces of it among them. Islam has obviously never touched them to such an extent as to convert them, and the reverence paid to Ali was doubtless the same as granted to other “incarnations of the Deity,” and adopted for the reasons given above. The people are quite as ignorant of Musulman tradition as of Jewish, though certain travellers, Rawlinson in particular, thought certain of their habits to be Judaic.
The Persian opinion of their sect is as follows, as expressed in the most impartial works. It will be noticed that they give them a purely Muhammadan origin.
Their principal belief is that Ali is God, and, like the Nusairi sects, they say that to know God is impossible, because the essential entity and the non-essential (God and man) are in no way related one to the other, unless the essential entity descend from its inaccessibility and by beneficence guide men. The Divine matter and command may then become visible and cognate in order to be appreciable by man, and did so in the case of the Virgin Mary, who was made the receptacle of such a manifestation.
In every cycle some spirit is vouchsafed to guide men,[90] that of this present age being Ali bin Abu Taleb, “to whom all creatures of Heaven testify,” and him they call Qasim ul Arzaq (the Giver of Blessings).
There is current among them a belief that God Himself actually becomes visible in the most perfect men, and that He is visible in Ali.
A sect of them assert “that the saint is continuous with God, as the ray with the sun, but is not God, and yet is not other than God, neither is he separated from God nor commingled.”
Abdulla ibn Saba, an Arab, and contemporary of Ali himself, first proclaimed him to be God, declaring, “God shall not appear but in Ali abu Taleb: prophecy pointed to him and the saints were inspired by him, taking all knowledge from him, who was creator and enricher, and in whom all limitations ceased.” Ali himself, who execrated their beliefs, seized this Abdulla, and caused his followers to be cast into a pit, and fire thrown upon them. But so stubborn was their belief that as the burning brands descended they cried: “Now is the certainty of all certainty that thou art God, for the Prophet has said, ‘None but God shall punish with fire.’”
This action did not exterminate the sect among the Arabs, for after the death of Ali they asserted that he was but temporarily absent, perchance in heaven, and that the lightning was a visible sign of his presence, and the sun his manifestation.
The Persian or Kurdish section say that Ali appeared three hundred years ago and renewed their faith and law.