Arba'in — Page 193
ARBAIN NUMBER FOUR 193 Ali Shah should compete with me in writing a commentary of any chapter of the Holy Quran in eloquent and fluent Arabic. If he excels and prevails, then I will have no issue in accepting his eminence. Thus having laid forth this matter, I published an invitation to him employing absolutely pure intentions, but the deceptive manner which he has adopted in response to my invi- tation, has made it clear that he possesses no aptness of the Holy Quran nor any proficiency of knowledge. In other words, he [Pīr Şahib] plainly adopted the way of evasion, and behaved deceit- fully like ordinary run-of-the-mill tricksters by issuing the follow- ing announcement that: First, I should settle with him my beliefs concerning Hadith and the Quran. Then, if Maulawi Muhammad Husain Batalavi and two other friends of his, state that the beliefs of Pir Mehr Ali Shah are correct, then I should forthwith imme- diately take baiat [a pledge of allegiance] at his hand. Only after my taking allegiance will he then consider giving me permission to write the commentary in Arabic! On reading this reply of his, I felt like weeping for his sorry state and lost all hope that I had had regarding him desiring to find the truth. The reason for writing this Announcement now is not that we hold any remaining hope for his character. Instead, I am writing this because, notwithstanding that two months have elapsed since this incident, his associates have not ceased¹* from obnoxiously 1. In his book 'Asā'-e-Mūsā, Munshi Ilāhī Bakhsh, Accountant, has also mentioned all that he cared to say regarding Pīr Şahib's false victory. But what matters is if a person, while remaining just and decent, should ac- tually prove a point. It is obvious that if, according to Munshi Şahib, Pīr Mehr Ali Shah has some measure of knowledge of the Holy Quran and command over the Arabic language, as he has laid claim to possessing,