{He said, "No blame will there be upon you today. God will forgive you; and He is the most merciful of the merciful"}1. As for Jacob, he promised them, saying: {He said, "I will ask my Lord for forgiveness for you; indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful"}2. There are many locations [for interpretation]; among them what our Lord, our Sheikh Abu Abd Allah al-Husayn ibn Hamdan al-Khasibi—may God brighten his face—interpreted, and among them what I have interpreted. There is no fault in my speech in that, for I am a branch among his branches. All that I say and mention, the merit belongs to him. He learned it from the blessings of God which He caused to flow through his hand to his son Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Rifa’i—may God raise his degree—and through him it reached me. By God, I swear truthfully that I have not cited in the interpretation of this surah any of the speech of the Ishaqiyya except that which they did not hold uniquely to our exclusion and that which we agreed with them upon. I wanted to clarify that in its place but I feared length which would bore the listener.
Every time you encounter in this Surah, or any other, the words: [I, the Aziz, the Wise, and the High, the Great], it is the speech of the Meaning—Mighty and Sublime. Every time you encounter the words: [We, with Us, to Us, and We created], it is the speech of the Name. [That which we have interpreted belongs to the Nusayriyya and none other, for the religion of God is not taken except from them, and its reality is not found except with them.]
(545) This is supported by what was related from our Master al-Hasan al-Askari—exalted be his glory—that some of his Shia asked him: "O my Master, from whom shall I take the landmarks of my religion, and by whom shall I be guided to the path of Truth, for opinions have differed?"