1-1 Abul Abbas Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ishaq al-Taleqani - may God be pleased with him - narrated that Muhammad ibn Sa’id ibn Yahya al-Bazury quoted on the authority of Ibrahim ibn al-Haysam al-Baladi, on the authority of his father, on the authority of Al-Muafi ibn Imran, on the authority of Israel, on the authority of Al-Miqdam ibn Sharik ibn Hani, on the authority of his father, “A Bedouin (Arab) stood near the Commander of the Faithful Imam Ali (MGB) on the day of the Battle of Jamal and asked, ‘O Commander of the Faithful! Do you say that God is One?’ The people rushed unto him and said, ‘O Bedouin! Don’t you see the condition of the Commander of the Faithful (MGB)? His mind is busy with several matters. It is not the time to ask such questions.’ The Commander of the Faithful (MGB) said, ‘Leave him alone. This Bedouin wants just what we want from this tribe.’ The Imam (MGB) then said, ‘O Bedouin! There are four meanings implied for ‘God is One.’ Two of these implications are not proper for God the Almighty, while the other two hold true. The two implications that are not proper are:1- To say that ‘He is One’ in the sense of counting in numbers. This is not proper since what has no second cannot be counted in numbers. Don’t you see that whoever says ’God is the third of the three’ is an infidel.2- To say that ‘He is One’ to imply that He is one of the people implicitly saying that He is of a type of gender. This is not proper either since it is a form of comparison while our Lord the Sublime is too great to make this (comparison).However, the two implied meanings that hold true are:3- To say that ‘He is One’ to imply that He is One and there exists nothing similar to Him. Our Lord is like this.4- To say that ‘He is One’ to imply that He, the Exalted the Sublime, is essentially One. He is not divisible in the outside world, in the mind, or in the imagination. Our Lord, the Exalted the Sublime is like this.’”