What prevents you from claiming your right that you have abandoned? And you find a hundred thousand of your followers who would strike with the sword before you!" He said to him: "Sit down, O Khurāsānī, may Allah safeguard your right." Then he said: "O Ḥanīfah, light the oven (tannūr)." She lit it until it became like a glowing ember, and its top turned white. Then he said: "O Khurāsānī! Get up and sit in the oven." The Khurāsānī said: "O my Master, O son of the Messenger of Allah, do not punish me with fire! Excuse me, may Allah excuse you." He said: "I have excused you." While we were like that, Hārūn Al-Makkī approached, with his sandal on his index finger. He said: "Peace be upon you, O son of the Messenger of Allah." Al-Ṣādiq (may his glory be exalted) said to him: "Throw the sandal from your hand, and sit in the oven." He said: So he threw the sandal from his index finger and then sat in the oven. The Imām began to converse with the Khurāsānī about Khurāsān, as if he had witnessed it. Then he said: "Get up, O Khurāsānī, and look at what is in the oven." He said: So, I got up to him and saw him sitting cross-legged. He came out to us and greeted us. The Imām said to him: "How many like this man do you find in Khurāsān?" He said: "By Allah, not even one." He (may his glory be exalted) said: "No, by Allah, not even one. Indeed, we are in a time when we do not find five supporters. We know the time better."¹

Abū ‘Abdillāh (may his glory be exalted) said to Al-Mufaḍḍal (from him is peace): "O Mufaḍḍal, how many companions do you have?" I replied: "Very few." When I returned to Kūfah, the Shī‘ah attacked me and tore me apart completely, eating my flesh and insulting my honor, until some of them met me and jumped in my face, and some sat for me in the streets of Kūfah intending to strike me. They accused me of every slander, until that reached Abū ‘Abdillāh (may his glory be exalted). When I returned to him the second year, the first thing he met me with after greeting me was: "O Mufaḍḍal, what is this that has reached me, that these people are saying to you and about you?" I said: "And what do I care about their saying?" He said: "Indeed, that is on them. Are they angry? Woe to them! That you said: 'Your companions are few.' No, by Allah, they are not our followers. If they were our followers, they would not have been angry at your words and would not have been disgusted by them. Allah has described our followers with something other than what they are upon."²