124. Imām Ali (a.s.) –in his letter to Ziyad, his governor in Persia (Fārs): “And now, my envoy has indeed brought me strange news. He thought that you have said to him something that should remain between you and him, that the Kurds had rebelled against you and ruined much of the taxes and you have told him not to report this to the Commander of the Faithful.
O Ziyad! I swear to God that you are a liar, and if you do not discharge the taxes, I shall inflict upon you such punishment that will leave you with an empty hand, a heavy back and humiliated, unless you take responsibility for whatever of the taxes you have ruined.”1
See: The Encyclopedia of Amir al-Mu'minin: (Ziyad ibn Abih).
3/11-3
Shurayh al-Qādi
125. Nahj al-Balāghah: “It is narrated that Shurayh ibn Hārith who was the judge (qādi) of the Commander of the Faithful at Kufa purchased a house for eighty dinārs during his term. The Commander of the Faithful came to know of this and sent for Shurayh and said to him: “I have come to know that you have purchased a house for eighty dinārs and that you have written a document for it and you had witnesses for it.”
Shurayh replied, “Yes it is so, O Commander of the Faithful.”
The Commander of the Faithful cast an angry look at him and said: “O Shurayh, indeed someone [the angel of death] will come to you who will not look at your document nor question you about your evidence, but will take you out of it [the house] open-eyed and throw you in your grave empty-handed. Beware! O Shurayh, if you have purchased this house from money other than yours or paid the price of it from an unlawful source, then you have incurred the loss of this world as well as of the next. If you had come to me at the time of purchase, I would have written for you a document like this paper and then you would not have liked to purchase the house even for one dirham and nothing more than that. This is the document:
“This is the purchase made by a humble slave [of God] from a deceased person who has been forced to depart [for the next world]. He has purchased a house from the houses of deceit in the area of mortals and place of those liable to perish. This house has four boundaries:The first boundary ends up with the sources of blights, the second boundary ends to the sources of distress, the third boundary ends up with devastating desire and the fourth boundary ends up with deceitful Satan and towards this fourth opens the door of this house.
This house has been purchased by one who has been deceived by desires from one who is being driven by death at the price of leaving the honor of contentment and entering into the humility of want and submissiveness. What a great loss this buyer will suffer.
If the purchaser encounters some (evil) consequences of this transaction, then it is for Him who dismantles the bodies of monarchs, snatches the lives of despots, destroys the domain of Pharaohs like Cyrus, Caesar, Tubba`, Himyar and all those who amass wealth upon wealth and go on increasing it, build high houses and decorate them and collect treasures and preserve them for children, (Yes! It is for Him) to take them to the place of accounting and judgment and the position of reward and punishment, when the verdict will be passed “…and it is thence that the falsifiers become losers.”2 This affair can be testified by the intellect when it goes forth from the shackles of desires and is free from the attachments of this world.”3
