Year 39 AH:
In this year the engagement with the Kharijites took place at Ḥarūrāʾ, by al-Nukhaylah. ʿAlī (may God be pleased with him) fought them, routed them, and killed their leaders. When the maimed man was brought to him dead, he fell in prostration, thanking God Most High. The chiefs of the Kharijites were Zayd ibn Ḥuṣn al-Ṭāʾī and Shurayḥ ibn Awfā al-ʿAbsī, each commanding a flank. Their overall head was ʿAbd Allah ibn Wahb al-Sabaʾī, while their infantry was under Ḥarquṣ ibn Zuhayr.

That same year Muʿāwiyah dispatched Yazīd ibn Shajarah al-Rahāwī to lead the pilgrimage. Qutham ibn al-ʿAbbās, who represented ʿAlī, opposed him. Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī and others intervened, and they agreed that Shaybah ibn ʿUthmān al-ʿAbdarī, the custodian of the Kaʿbah, would supervise the rites.

It is also said that the Mother of the Believers Maymūnah and the poet Ḥassān ibn Thābit al-Anṣārī died in this year; their biographies will appear later.

ʿAlī had already set out intending to confront Muʿāwiyah, but he was turned back at ʿĀnāt and became preoccupied with the war against the Ḥarūrī Kharijites—ascetics and Qur’an-reciters from among his own followers who had defected from Islam. Excessive zeal led them to declare grave sinners unbelievers and to kill men and women alike, sparing only those who acknowledged, as they saw it, their disbelief and renewed their Islam.

Ibn Saʿd reports: Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar told us, saying: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī al-Mawālī narrated to us from ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAqīl, who heard Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah say, “My father intended to march on Syria; he began fastening his banner and would swear an oath that he would not undo it until—”