127. Imām Ali (a.s.) –from his letter to Ibn `Abbās: “Now, I have been informed something about you that if you have done it, then you have displeased your Lord, undermined your trust, disobeyed your Imām and betrayed the Muslims. I have come to know that you have razed the lands and consumed whatever was at your disposal. Send me your account, and know that the reckoning of God shall be severer than that of the people. Wassalām!”1
See: The Encyclopedia of Amir al-Mu'minin: (`Abdullah ibn `Abbās).
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`Uthmān ibn Hunayf
128. Imām Ali (a.s.) –from his letter to `Uthmān ibn Hunayf al-Ansāri who was his administrator in Basra, when he came to know that the people of the place had invited `Uthmān to a banquet and he had attended: “And now, O Ibn Hunayf, I have come to know that a young man of Basra invited you to a feast and you hastened towards it. Foods of different colors were being chosen for you and big bowls were being given to you. I never thought that you would accept the feast of a people who turn out the beggars and invite the rich. Look at the morsels you take, leave out that about which you are in doubt and take that about which you are sure that it has been secured lawfully.
Remember that every follower has a leader whom he follows and from the effulgence of whose knowledge he takes light. Realize that your Imām has contented himself with two shabby pieces of clothes out of the (comforts of the) world and two loaves for his meal. Certainly, you cannot do so but at least support me in piety, exertion, chastity and uprightness.”
“By God, I have not treasured any gold from your world nor amassed plentiful wealth nor added any clothes to my two shabby pieces of clothes. I have not taken from its land [even as little as] a span of the hand, nor have I taken more than a meager meal sufficient to feed a wretched animal, and indeed, in my eyes, it (the world) is more unworthy and insignificant than the gall oak fruit.
Of course, all that we had in our possession under this sky was Fadak, but a group of people felt greedy for it and another group withheld themselves from it generously. God is, after all, the best arbiter.
What shall I do with Fadak or with other than it, while tomorrow this body is to go into the grave in whose darkness its traces will be destroyed and (even) news of it will disappear? It is a pit that even if its width is widened or the hands of the digger make it broad and open, the stones and clods of clay will narrow it and the falling earth will close its aperture.
I try to keep myself engaged in piety so that on the day of great fear it will be peaceful and steady in slippery places. If I wished I could have taken the way leading towards (worldly pleasures like) pure honey, fine wheat and silk clothes; but far be it that my passions lead me and greed takes me to choosing good meals while in Hijāz or in Yamāma there may be people who have no hope of getting bread or who do not have a full meal. Shall I lie with a satiated belly while around me there are hungry bellies and thirsty livers? Or shall I be as the poet has said:
“It is enough for you to have a disease that you lie with your belly full,
While around you people are badly yearning [of hunger] for dried leather?”
Shall I be content with being called ‘The Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Mu'minin), although I do not share with the people the hardships of the world or shall I not be an example for them in the distresses of life? I have not been created to be kept busy eating good foods like the tied animal whose only worry is its fodder or like a loose animal whose activity is to fill its belly with its feed and forgets the purpose behind it. Shall I be
left uncontrolled to pasture freely, or draw the rope of misguidance or roam aimlessly in the paths of bewilderment?
Stay away from me, O world! Your rein is on your own shoulders as I have released myself from your clutches, removed myself of your snares and avoided walking into your slippery places. Where are those whom you have deceived by your jesting? Where are those communities whom you have enticed with your embellishments? They are all now confined to graves and hidden in burial places.
By God, if you [O world!] had been a visible person and a body capable of being felt, I would have inflicted on you the punishment fixed by God because of the people whom you deceived through (false) desires, the communities whom you threw into destruction and the rulers whom you consigned to ruin and drove to places of distress after which there is neither going nor returning.
Far from it! Whoever stepped on your slippery path slipped; whoever rode your waves was drowned; and whoever evaded your snares was successful. He who keeps himself safe from you does not worry even if his abode is narrow and restricted and the world to him is like a day, which is near expiring. Get away from me! For by God, I do not bow before you so that you may humiliate me nor do I let you rein on my neck, so that you may drive me away. I swear by God, (unless He wishes not), that I shall so discipline my self that feels joyful if it gets one loaf for eating, and be content with only salt to season it. I shall let my eyes empty themselves of tears like the stream whose water has flown away. Should Ali eat whatever he has and fall asleep like the cattle that fill their stomach from the pastureland and lie down, or as the grazing goats, that eat the green and go into their pen? Woe is to him, if he, after long years, follows loose cattle and pasturing animals.
Blessed is he who discharges his obligations towards God and endures his hardships, allows himself no sleep in the night but when sleep overpowers him lies down on the ground using his hand as pillow, along with those who keep their eyes wakeful in
fear of the Day of Judgment, whose bodies are ever away from beds, whose lips are humming in remembrance of Allah and whose sins have been erased through their prolonged beseeching for forgiveness. “They are Allah’s confederates. Look! The confederates of Allah are indeed felicitous!”2
“Therefore, O Ibn Hunayf, be wary of God and be content with your own loaves so that you may escape Hell.”3
