A. L. M. Nicolas quotes in Chapter 3 of his “Essai sur le
Shaykhisme,” II, p. 43, the following extract from the Sharh-i-Qasidih of
Siyyid Kázim:
“I have announced that every hundred years there are a
chosen few who spread and sow the precepts which explain that which is lawful
and that which is unlawful; who tell of the things that were hidden during the
hundred preceding years. In other words, in every century a learned and perfect
man is found who causes the tree of religious law to revive and bloom; who
regenerates its trunk to such an extent that at last the book of Creation comes
to its end in a period of twelve hundred years. At that moment, a certain
number of perfect men will appear who will reveal certain very intimate things
which were hidden.... Therefore, when the twelve hundred years will have been
completed, when the first cycle is ended, which depended upon the appearance of
the Sun of the Prophet and of the Moon of the Vilayat, then the influence of
that cycle is ended and a second cycle begins in which the intimate precepts
and hidden meanings of the former cycle are explained.”
He [Nicolas] himself then adds these words:
Nicolas further adds in a footnote the following words: “The
name of Ahmad mentioned above would lead one to believe that it refers to
Shaykh Ahmad, but one cannot say, however, in speaking of Lahca, that it is the
best of lands, or of the purest air. We know, on the contrary, that all the
Persian poets sing the praises of Shíráz and of its ideal climate. It is only
necessary to see what Shaykh Ahmad himself said of his country.”
(Footnotes to
chapter 2 of ‘The Dawn-Breakers’, included by Shoghi Effendi)
