and transactions of his as are required by his participation in the human state. Since some truths were revealed to him in a brief and abstract form, and he himself described them in the light of his insight and according to common comprehension, the metaphors and allusions in his descriptions sometimes may need explanation, or even interpretation. There are, indeed, some truths that the human mind can grasp only by way of comparison. For example, once in the presence of the Prophet, a loud noise was heard. The Prophet said, “This is the noise of a rock that has been rolling down for seventy years and has now reached the lowest depths of Hell.”(7) An hour later the news came that a famous dissembler who had recently turned seventy years old had died and gone to Hell, thus explaining the event the Prophet had described by means of an eloquent comparison.

THIRD PRINCIPLE

If any related tradition is in the form of tawatur,(8) it is indisputable. There are two kinds of this sort of report: one is those reports about which there is ‘explicit consensus,’ the other is ‘consensus in meaning.’ The latter is also of two kinds: the first includes those concerning which the consensus is implied ‘by silence.’

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(7) Muslim, Janna 31; Musnad iii, 341, 346.
(8) Tawatur is the kind of report that is transmitted by numerous authorities and about which there is no room for doubt, that is, a report concerning which there is a consensus of opinion.(Tr)