to call others to follow him on it. This obligation has been codified in a spiritual hierarchy in which each successive link in the chain of precedence is duty-bound to bring others into the fold. Thus is the man in the parable obliged to wander through many countries as a teacher, until he comes upon a foreign community which is divided on questions of spirituality, and whose interest in religion, proximity to the true path and shared religious affiliation with Islam necessitate the man's intervention. Here he takes on a didactic role, answering questions that the individuals of this community pose to him in order to further pique their interest. The most receptive of these becomes his pupil, and he trains this acolyte in the divine argument (ḥujja) concerning the Shī'ī imams and saints ([[Wali|awliyā]]). The Sage then commands his disciple to adhere to the outer meaning of the Qur'an (ẓāhir). Indeed, all revealed books are complementary in their divine origin, acting in a successive chain of authority mirroring the spiritual hierarchy of the sheikh-murid relationship. The Sage asks five things of his pupil: to adhere to his commands; to conceal nothing from him; to expect selectivity from the Sage in answering his questions; to wait for the Sage to broach new topics; and to hide any concerns he might have from his father. Indeed, the character of the disciple's father seems to stand in for a potentially hostile community from which Shī'ī Muslims are obligated to conceal their true beliefs for fear of violent reprisal (taqiyya). After a period of study spent under these strictures, the disciple earns regular contact with the sheikh and delivers his oath (bay'a) to him. After this point the Sage reveals to him the inner beliefs of the Ismāʿīlī Shī'īs (bāṭin), including the esoteric interpretation of Qur'anic cosmology, which is structured along the intermediaries of prophets, imāms and saints linking human and divine. Citations References Daftary, Farhad (1998). A Short History of the Ismailis. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Haji, Hamid (2008). “Jaʿfar b. Manṣur-al-Yaman” in Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol. XIV, Fasc. 4. Ḥammādi, Moḥammad b. Mālek (1939). Kašf asrār al-bāṭeniya wa aḵbār al-Qarāmeṭa, ed. Moḥammad Zāhed b. Ḥasan Kawṯari, Cairo. Morris, J.W. (2001). The Master and the Disciple: an Early Islamic Spiritual Dialogue. London, LB Taurus. Morris, J.W. (2005) “Revisiting Religious Shi'ism and Early Sufism,” in Reason and Inspiration in Islam. Ed. T. Lawson.