open to error, have been mixed up with the words of the Hadith. Their words have been supposed to be part of the Hadith, and the meaning has been obscured. It does not appear to be conformable with reality and in a way has become allegorical.

Also, in early times the social collectivity and its collective personality had not developed as it has at the present and the idea of the isolated individual was predominant, the extensive attributes and widescale actions of the community, therefore, were ascribed to the persons who led them. In order to be worthy and fitting for superhuman, universal attributes, those persons had to have gigantic bodies and be of vast stature and have colossal power and strength a hundred times surpassing their own, so that is how they were depicted. This was not conformable with reality, and the narration became allegorical.

Also, although the circumstances and attributes of the two Antichrists differ from each other, they have been confused in narrations that have come down to us in absolute form; one has been supposed to be the other. Also, the circumstances of the Great Mahdi do not fit the narrations alluding to the earlier Mahdis, and these have become allegorical Hadiths. Imam ‘Ali (May God be pleased with him) mentions only the Islamic Antichrist.

This marks the end of the Introduction. Now we embark on the ‘Matters’.

[Now, with Divine assistance, out of hundreds of examples of those hidden events of ‘the Unseen’, twenty-three ‘Matters’ will be explained extremely concisely, since they have been spread by atheists with the idea of corrupting the beliefs of the ordinary people. I beseech dominical mercy that these ‘Matters’ will cause no harm, as the atheists surmised, but that when it is seen that each is a miraculous prophetic utterance and their true interpretations are proved and made clear, they will be an important means of strengthening the belief of the ordinary people. And I entreat my Compassionate Sustainer to forgive my faults and errors.]