A Second Explanation of the Above Postscript

A Second Explanation

of the Above Postscript [^12]

[^12]: My brothers have written down both explanations, since they found them useful. Otherwise one of them would have been sufficient.

In addition to corroborating the predictions about the Unseen at the end of Sura al-Fath, the verse, “All … are in the company of those on whom is the grace of God – of the Prophets, the Veracious, the Witnesses, and the Righteous: how goodly a company are these!”(4:69) elucidates what is meant by the people of the Straight Path and the verse “the path of those whom you have blessed”(1:7) and describes the luminous, large, familiar, attractive caravan travelling the lengthy road leading to eternity. It vigorously urges the believers and the intelligent to join, follow, and accompany it. In addition to its explicit meaning, like the verses at the end of Sura al-Fath, this verse indicates through allusive and figurative meanings – called in rhetoric ma‘ārīḍ al-kalām [^13] and mustatba‘āt al-tarākīb [^14] – the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and Hasan (May God be pleased with him), the fifth Caliph. It gives news of the Unseen in several respects, as follows:

[^13]: See, Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-‘Arab, vii, 183; Qurṭubī, al-Jāmi‘ bi-Aḥkām al-Qur’ān, x, 191, 199.

[^14]: See, Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-Bārī, i, 406; al-Munāwī, al-Ta‘ārīf, i, 32, 55; al-Hamawī, al-Adhānat al-Adab, ii, 194.

Just as the above verse states through its explicit meaning that the caravan of the Prophets, the group of the Veracious, the community of the Martyrs and Witnesses, the category of the Righteous, and the class of the generation following the Companions are the people of the Straight Path and those among mankind who receive elevated divine bounties, and are ‘the doers of good;’ so too it indicates in a manner predicting the Unseen that the best and most excellent of those groups are found in the World of Islam, like this: it points to the heirs of the Prophets who follow on in succession through the mystery of the legacy of the Messenger of the End of Time’s (UWBP) prophethood, and to the caravan of the Veracious who follow on from the source of veracity of the Strictly Veracious One, and to the convoy of the Martyrs, who are bound through the rank of martyrdom to three of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, and to the community of the Righteous, who are tied to it through the mystery of “And those who believe and do good works,”(2:82, etc.) and to the categories of the generation following