[571] Movákef means properly “stations,” such as those of the Muselmans in their pilgrimages and visits to sacred places; but this word serves as a title to several books or treatises of metaphysics and scholastic theology.
[572] احاديث ahádís, means sometimes the tenets of the Koran, at others, the sayings relative to Muhammed, five thousand two hundred and sixty-six in number; according to some writers, seven thousand, genuine and forged.
[573] The manuscript of Oude reads ابن بالونه Ebn Balúnah. Want of accuracy in proper names is particularly to be regretted in the historical part of any work; it prevents me, particularly in this place, from giving a positive notice of each of the persons introduced in the text.
[574] The two words in italic are not in the text of the edition of Calcutta, nor in the manuscript of Oude. We find here abruptly a passage, distinguished in the translation by marks of quotation, which belongs to the author of the Faváid al madany (see p. [372]), and makes, perhaps, a part of the preface of this work.
[575] We have (see [note 1], p. 367. 368) given the names of the twelve Imáms. The tenth, Alí, born in the year of the Hejira 212, A. D. 827, being kept a close prisoner all his life in the city of Askar, called also Sermenrai, in Syria, he devoted himself to study and religious exercises, but did not succeed in calming the jealousy of the ruling khalif, an Abbaside of the family of Motavakel, the mortal enemy of the whole race of Alí, and was poisoned in 868 A. D.
The name “Askerite,” from the city of Askar, was also given to his son Hasan, above-mentioned, the eleventh Imám, whose son, Muhammed, born in 868 A. D., also called Abu ’l Cassem, as the prophet Muhammed, was the last of the twelve Imáms. He is distinguished by the surnames Mantazar, “the expected;” Kayim, “the stable;” Mahdi, “the director, guide;” and others. The followers of this Imám say, that in his ninth year he was concealed by his mother in a cell or grot, from which he had not returned in the year 899 A. D.—(See Abulfeda, Hist. Moslem., vol. II. p. 223.) The Sonnites say that he was drowned in the Tigris in 879 A. D. Some Shiâhs maintain, he died in 941, in his seventy-fifth year; other Shiâhs pretend that he is still living in the grot where he was concealed; and all agree in the belief that he will reappear in the world, immediately before the second coming of the Messiah, for uniting all the Muselman sects into one, and all the different religions in Muhammedism. Several impostors assumed the name of Mahdi, but in vain; nevertheless, two great dynasties were founded under that name, viz.: the Almohads and Fatemites.—(Herbelot.)
[576] According to the Shiâhs, Mahdi made two retreats or eclipses, the great and the minor. The minor was that, during which he now and then gave news of himself, and decided all the questions which the Muselmans proposed, by means of certain messengers who carried them to him very secretly, succeeding each other without knowing each other. This intercourse lasted until the year of the Hejira 326, A. D. 937, in which year one of these messengers, called Alí, died, after having brought a letter from Mahdi, by which this Imám announced to him that he (Alí) would die in six days, and forbade him to leave the commission of visiting him to any other person. It is from this time that begins “the great retreat or absence” of Mahdi: for, after the death of this Alí, no information was received concerning the Mahdi, if not by revelation. This statement, found in Herbelot, is confirmed by that above.
[577] Mâtemed Abáśí, son of Motavakel, was the fifteenth khalif of the Abbasides. He began to reign in the year of the Hejira 256, A. D. 869, and died in 279, A. D. 892.
[578] Rás í , the son of Mukteder, was the twentieth khalif of the Abbasides. His reign began in the year of the Hejira 322, A. D. 933, and ended in 329, A. D. 940. The period included between the beginning of the reign of Mâtemed and the end of that of Rási, is seventy-one years, differing by two from the period above stated; the minor absence might have begun two years before Mâtemed’s reign.