That great Imam...

That great Imam, who could say: 'Ask me before it is too late and I am no longer with you’[^2] and 'I have knowledge of the past and the future,’[^3] that indescribably wise man, who could say: ' I have been to the depths of the ocean of secrete knowledge and have been so merged in it that if I appear as I am you are like a rope trembling in a deep well, losing your balance and shaking in your agitation' that great Imam, with his indescribably extensive and profound knowledge, which we do not even have the patience to hear about, considers his ignorance to be so great and his knowledge, in compares his own limited knowledge with the infinite wisdom of God Almighty he calls himself an ignorant!

In the prayer known as Yastashir ^4 , which Imam 'Ali tells us was taught to him by the Prophet of Islam with the advice that he should teach it to his successor and recite it every morning and every evening. God Almighty is addresses thus: ' Thou art All-knowing and I am ignorant, 'This is a precise scientific fact. 'Ali is not making a polite exaggerator and he is not overstating the case by a hair's breadth. What he says is the actual truth and not a lot more or less than the truth.