So God sent him down from the heaven of recognition, as He said: {He said, "Then get out of it, for indeed, you are expelled. ❁ And indeed, upon you is My curse until the Day of Recompense."}¹. This is the briefest version of the story of Iblis. His name preceded as Azazil, and among his names are: al-Shayşaban, and Bidhabakht ibn Shawman; he was known by these names in the passing ages.

(494) This is supported by what we related from our Master Amir Almuminin—exalted be his glory—that he said upon the pulpit of his greatness in Basra: "I produced Iblis and disgraced him by My knowledge; it is not that I wronged him, but his evil deed brought him to this end."

(495) It was related that our Master Amir Almuminin—exalted be his glory—met Umar one day in one of the streets of Medina and said to him: "O Bidhabakht ibn Shawman, how many times have you known the road to Khorasan as inhabited?" He replied: "I recall it as inhabited in seventy cycles; once I was a vulture, once an elephant, and once a Bactrian camel. I would be slaughtered and killed, and then You would revive me—and other than that which You know, O my Master."

None of the narrators of Hadith or biographies mentioned that they knew the wilderness known on the road to Khorasan was at any time inhabited; he only knows it as inhabited because of his antiquity and age in the Adversity, and according to how long he has lived in the passing epochs and former ages.

Among what was related from our Master al-Sadiq—exalted be his glory—is that he said: "By God, God never sent a prophet but that he was Muhammad, nor a successor but that he was Ali Amir Almuminin, nor two adversaries to them both but that they were the First and the Second."