I have examined the particulars and the generalities of your letter, and we have taken full note of the threats he hurled at us in word and in deed. By Allah, how astonishing it is that a mere fly should buzz in an elephant’s ear, or that a mosquito—fit only for display—should deem itself an effigy! A people before you once said the same, so We destroyed them, and they found no helpers. Will you repel the truth and champion falsehood? Those who do wrong shall soon know the fate to which they will return.

Should your words aspire to sever my head or to tear my mountain fortresses from their immovable peaks, such wishes are mendacious hopes, delusive fantasies; for true essences are not erased by passing accidents, just as spirits do not vanish through disease.

If we restrict ourselves to the outward and set aside the inward, we still have in the Messenger of Allah a splendid model: “No prophet was ever harmed as I have been harmed.” (1) You know what befell his Household and his followers—the situation remains what it has always been. You are also aware of our external condition, of the caliber of our men, and of how they crave what others would evade, drawing nearer thereby to the very pools of death. As the proverb goes: do you threaten the duck with the shoreline? Therefore fashion causes for calamities and clothe yourself in the armor of affliction, for I shall most surely prevail over you by your own hand, and you will be like one who digs his own grave with his hoof. That is not difficult for Allah. So lie in wait for our decree, and recite the beginning of Sūrah al-Naḥl (2) and the close of Sūrah Ṣād (3).

An-Najm ibn Isrāʾīl said: Al-Muntajab ibn Daftarkhwān informed me, “Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn sent me to Sinān when they assailed him for the third time, and with me was al-Qutb al-Naysābūrī to threaten him. Sinān wrote on the heading of his reply: ‘The crow has come to the falcon, threatening him…,’ then quoted the verses and said, ‘That is my answer. Your master judges by the outward appearance of his troops, whereas I judge by the inward state of mine—you will soon see the proof of that.’ Then he summoned ten