[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.