Al-Mamoun sat for the consoling...

Al-Mamoun sat for the consoling, then he stood up and walked to the place in which was our Master -asws . He said, ‘Prepare the place for us for I want to wash him -asws . I went near him and said to him what my Master -asws had said, about the washing and the enshrouding and the burial. He said to me, ‘I will not object to that’.

Then he said, ‘It’s your concern, O Harsama!’ He (the narrator) said, ‘I did not cease standing until I saw the tent to have been struck its back, and everyone in the house was below me, and I heard the exclamations of Takbeer, and the Oneness, and the Glorifications, clanging of the pots, and the pouring of water, and strong fragrance of perfume I had not smelt more aromatic than it.

He (the narrator) said, ‘Behold, I was looking at Al-Mamoun who was overlooking upon me from one of the high places of his house. He shouted at me, O Harsama! Haven’t you been claiming that the Imam -asws is such, no one can wash him except an Imam -asws like him? So where is his -asws son -asws Muhammad Bin Ali -asws from him -asws , and he -asws is at the city of the Rasool -asws , and this one is at Toos, at Khurasan?’ He (the narrator) said, ‘I said to him, ‘O commander of the faithful!

We are saying that the Imam -asws , it is not obligatory that he -asws can only be washed by an Imam -asws like him -asws . So if an exceeder were to exceed and washes the Imam -asws , it would not invalidate the Imamate of the Imam -asws due to the transgression of his washer, nor would it invalidate the Imamate of the Imam -asws who is to be after him -asws , by him -asws having been overcome upon the washing of his -asws father -asws .

And if Abu Al-Hassan Ali -asws Bin Musa Al-Reza -asws had been left at Al-Medina, his -asws son -asws Muhammad -asws would have washed him -asws apparently, and he -asws will not be washed now as well except and he -asws would be from where he -asws is hidden!’ He (the narrator) said, ‘He was silent from me. Then the tent was raised, and there I was with my Master -asws wrapped up in his -asws shroud. I placed him -asws upon his -asws bier, then we carried him.

Al-Mamoun prayed Salat upon him -asws and so did entirety of the ones present. Then we came to the place of the grave. We found them striking with the shovels beside the grave of Haroun in order to be a Qiblah for his -asws grave, and the shovels were digging from it, not digging even a particle from the soil of the ground. He said to me, ‘Woe be to you, O Harsama!