A Message from Allah to Allamah Tabatabaei

I am Shah Husayn Wali! God says [to you] “in these 18 years when have I ever let you go hungry that you have now abandoned your studies and fallen into the thought that until when will the relations between Iraq and Iran remained strained and when will they send us money!

When I was studying in Najaf, I used to earn my living by receiving a monthly wage from Tabriz. Once, as a result of a conflict between the two countries [Iran and Iraq], my monthly salary was stopped and my savings were dwindling. One day I was sitting at the table studying when suddenly my train of thought was disrupted by the worry that until when will the strained relations between Iraq and Iran continue as we don’t have any money, and we are strangers in this land. As soon as this though entered my mind I realized that someone was knocking loudly on the door. I went and opened the door and saw that there was a man at the door. He was tall, his beard was dyed with henna, his turban (amama) was tied in a special manner on his head, and he was wearing a distinctive outfit. As soon as the door opened he said, “Salamun Alaykum”.

I replied his salam, and he said,

“I am Shah Husayn Wali! God says [to you] “in these 18 years when have I ever let you go hungry that you have now abandoned your studies and fallen into the thought that until when will the relations between Iraq and Iran remained strained and when will they send us money!” Farewell to you!” I also bid him farewell and closed the door.

I sat at the table. At that time I lifted my head from my hands, and then a number of questions arose for me – that did I actually walk to the door, or did I witness this scholar sitting here with my head in my hands?! Had I been asleep or awake?! Had the man called himself Shaykh Husayn Wali or Shah Husayn Wali. His appearance was not appropriate with the title Shah, nor was I sure that he was a Shaykh!

Some time passed and these questions remained unanswered, until a letter arrived from Tabriz that I should go there.

In the morning, according to my regular schedule, I went to Najaf’s Wadius Salam [graveyard] between dawn and sunrise, and walked between the graves reciting Sura Fatiha. Suddenly I saw a grave that was obviously an important one. I read the gravestone and saw that after many inscriptions in praise of the deceased it was written: the late Shah Husayn Wali! I realized that it was the same individual that had visited my home in Najaf. I looked at the date of his death and saw that it was nearly 300 years earlier.

I was surprised at his sentence “in 18 years when have we ever let you go hungry”, because I had spent 9 years in Najaf, and I was 35 years old. So why 18 years?! After some thought I understood that it was exactly 18 years that I had put on the turban (amama) and the clothes of a soldier of Imam Zaman (aj)!”