318. Imām Ali (a.s.) – from his letter to Ibn `Abbās when he was his agent in Basra: “You should know that Basra is the place where Satan descends and mischief happens. Therefore, keep the people of this place pleased with good treatment and untie the knots of fear from their hearts.”1
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Direct Contact with People
319. Imām Ali (a.s.) – in his instructions to Mālik al-Ashtar: “Set aside for those who have requests from you a portion (of your time) in which you yourself are free (to attend) to them. Hold an open audience for them and therein be humble before God who created you. Keep the soldiers and aids that are your bodyguards and police away from them so that their spokesman may address you without stammering (in fear). I heard the Messenger of God (s.a.w.) say on more than one occasion: “A nation in which the rights of the weak are not taken from the strong without stammering shall never be sanctified.”
“Then there are certain matters of your affairs in which you must carry out personally. Among them are: responding to your administrators when your secretaries are unable to do, and meeting people’s need the same day presented to you. Do not
prolong your seclusion from your subjects, for the rulers’ seclusion from their subjects is a kind of constraint and will result in a lack of knowledge of the affairs. Seclusion from people deprives the rulers from acquiring the knowledge of what they are unaware of and then as a result they begin to regard great matters small and bad matters good. The great appears to them as small and the small as great and the beautiful will appear as ugly and the ugly as beautiful.”2
1.. Nahj al-Balāghah, Letter ۱۸, Bihar al-Anwār, vol.۳۳, p. ۴۹۲, h. ۶۹۹.
2.. Nahj al-Balāghah, Letter ۵۳, Tuhaf al-`Uqul, p. ۱۴۲.
