May God reward you for it!

May God reward you for it!” He then told them, “Would you not testify that there is no god but God [ Allah ], and that Muhammad is his Servant and Messenger that His Paradise is real and His Hell-Fire real; that death is real; that the resurrection after death is real; that the Hour shall without a doubt come; that God resurrects all those who lie in their graves?” They said: “Nay, we shall testify to all this!” To which he replied, “O God be Thee Witness!

O People God is my Guardian and I guardian of the faithful. I am more so than their own selves. For whomsoever I am a guardian, he too [i.e. `Ali] is his guardian. Lord, guard over the one who guards over him, and be a foe to his foe.”[^3] Thus, of a considerable number of like traditions, these two outstanding Prophetic hadiths provide for the embodiment of both kinds of authority in the Prophet's Household.

The Islamic current upholding the devotional act based on the Prophet's full stipulations believed in these authorities, and comprised those Muslims who were the benevolent friends of the Household. But whereas the socio-political authority belonging to every Imam implies the exercise of power while he lives, intellectual authority is a permanent, unconditional reality unconfined to the period of his lifetime. Therefore, it has a living, practical meaning for every period.

So long as the Muslims needed a definitive understanding of Islam, an acquaintance with its provisions, legality, prohibitions, concepts and moral values, there will be need for an intellectual Divinely-defined authority epitomized, firstly, by the Book of God; secondly, by the Prophet's Tradition ( sunnat rasulihi ) and that of the immaculate descendents, if the Household, who never have and never would diverge from the Books as indeed the Prophet himself has stipulated.[^4] Fronts they very outset, the second tendency, which upholds independent legal judgement rather than the devotional act according to the text, had decided.

with the death of the Prophet on transferring the authority for exercising political power to some leading personalities of the Muhajirin, thereby conforming with shifting and rather maleable considerations.