The Need for the Imam — Page 64
64 of support, their failure and frustration continues to become apparent with each passing day. For example, during the days when the almanacs were widely reporting that both the sun and the moon would be eclipsed in the coming month of Ramadan, many people had began to think that perhaps this was the sign of the advent of the Promised Imam. This caused the Maulaw i s to fear lest people should incline towards me, for I was the only one claiming to be the Mahdi and the Messiah. In order to conceal this sign, some of them began to proclaim that the eclipse of the sun and the moon would not take place in the coming month of Ramadan, and that it would only take place when their Imam Mahdi appeared. But when the eclipses of the sun and the moon did take place in the month of Ramadan, they started making excuses and saying that these eclipses were not in conformity with the words of Hadith, because the Hadith says that the lunar eclipse would take place on the first night and the solar eclipse on the middle of the month, while in my case, the lunar eclipse took place on the 13 th night and the solar eclipse on the 28 th of the month. But when it was explained to them that the Hadith did not mean the first night of the moon, as the moon of the first night was not called Qamar , but Hil a l, and the Hadith contained the word Qamar and not Hil a l. Therefore, what the Hadith meant was that the moon