Usbek to the mullah Muhammed Ali, guardian of the three Tombs at Com [1]

What good do the fastings of the Immaums and the mullahs’ hair-shirts do us ? [2] The hand of God has twice grown heavy on the children of the Law : the sun becomes dark and seems to shine only on their defeats ; their armies assembled, and were scattered like dust.

The Osmanli empire is shaken by the two greatest failures it has ever undergone [3] ; a Christian mufti can barely sustain it [4] ; the great vizier of Germany [5] is the scourge of God, [6] sent to chastise the followers of Omar [7] ; everywhere he spreads the wrath of heaven angered by their rebellion and their betrayal. [8]

Sacred spirit of the Immaums, you weep night and day over the children of the Prophet whom the detestable Omar has led astray ; your entrails are stirred at the sight of their calamities ; you desire their conversion and not their loss : you would see them reunited under the standard of Ali by the tears of the saints, and not dispersed into the mountains and deserts by terror of the infidels.

Paris this 1^st day of the moon of Chalval 1718