The chief peculiarities of Shaykh Ahmad’s views seem to have
been as follows. He declared that all knowledge and all sciences were contained
in the Qur’án, and that therefore to understand the inner meanings of the
latter in their entirety, a knowledge of the former must be acquired. To
develop this doctrine, he used to apply cabalistic methods of interpretation to
the sacred text, and exerted himself to acquire familiarity with the various
sciences known to the Muslim world. He entertained the most exaggerated
veneration for the Imáms, especially the Imám Ja’far-i-Sádiq, the sixth of them
in succession, whose words he would often quote.... About the future life, and
the resurrection of the body also, he held views which were generally
considered to be heterodox, as previously mentioned. He declared that the body
of man was composed of different portions, derived from each of the four
elements and the nine heavens, and that the body wherewith he was raised in the
resurrection contained only the latter components, the former returning at
death to their original sources. This subtle body, which alone escaped
destruction, he called Jism-i-Huriqliya, the latter being supposed to be a Greek
word. He asserted that it existed potentially in our present bodies, ‘like
glass in stone.’ Similarly he asserted that, in the case of the Night-ascent of
the Prophet to Heaven, it was this, and not his material body, which performed
the journey. On account of these views, he was pronounced unorthodox by the
majority of the ‘ulamás, and accused of holding the doctrines of Mullá Sadrá,
the greatest Persian philosopher of modern times.
(Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1889, article 12, pp.
890–91; Footnotes included in Chapter 1 by Shoghi Effendi)
