Section (1)

When the second session was convened, after the Friday Prayer (2) on the twelfth of Rajab, they had brought along the eldest of their shaykhs (3)—a man who had not been present at the first sitting (4). They had consulted among themselves, reached an accord, and conspired together, arriving with a strength and preparedness unlike what they had shown before; the first session had come upon them unexpectedly, just as it had upon the one addressed, who was simultaneously the respondent and the debater.

When we gathered—and I had brought what I had written in reply to (5) their earlier questions, whose answer they had asked to postpone (6) until this day—I praised Allah with the khutbat al-ḥājah (the “sermon of need”), the sermon of Ibn Masʿūd.

I then said: “Allah has commanded us to unity and harmony, and He has forbidden us from division and discord. He said in the Qur’an: ‘Hold fast, all of you together, to the rope of Allah, and do not be divided’ (Āl ʿImrān 103). And He said: ‘Indeed, those who split their religion and became sects—you, [Muhammad], are not of them in anything’ (al-Anʿām 159). And He said: ‘And do not be like those who became divided and differed after clear proofs had come to them…’”