which God gave him because of his good dealings with God.
He told me that he had acquired nothing of what he possessed except from me, although I had no knowledge of this. I only call to God, and God knows who responds. ‘On the day God gathers the messengers and says, “What response did you receive?” they say, “We have no knowledge; You alone are the Knower of the unseen things”’ [al-Ma’ida 5:109].
They spoke truly, and so the matter is: no one has knowledge except one whom God teaches.
Apart from this divine way of teaching, there is only preponderant supposition, a chance coincidence with knowledge, or a decisive conviction founded on estimation. Knowledge, however, there is not. All the ways leading to knowledge contain ambiguities; the pure soul whom God has acquainted with these ambiguities cannot trust that knowledge has certainly been attained through them, except by the divine way. This is His saying, exalted is He: ‘If you are wary of God, He will give you a criterion’ [al-Anfal 8:29], and His saying, ‘He created the human being; He taught him clarification’ [al-Rahman 55:3, 4]. Thus he makes clear what is within himself. This Pole has wondrous secrets.
(The Third Pole, upon the Footing of Moses)
As for the third Pole—who is upon the footing of Moses, peace be upon him—his Sura is ‘When God’s victory and the opening come’ [al-Nasr 110:1]. His Abodes equal its verses in number, and it has a quarter of the Qur’an.
This Pole was among the Pegs and was then transferred to Polehood, just as the second Pole was among the Imams and was then transferred to
