and the Prophet had said, “The rebellious faction will kill him.” ʿAmr then went in to Muʿāwiyah and said, “ʿAmmār has been killed.” Muʿāwiyah replied, “ʿAmmār has been killed—so what?” ʿAmr said, “I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, ‘The rebellious faction will kill him.’” Muʿāwiyah retorted, “You have slipped in your own urine! Did we kill him? It was ʿAlī and his followers who hurled him in front of our spears—or, he said, in front of our swords (1).
Shuʿbah relates—from Abū Maslamah, from Abū Naḍrah, from Abū Saʿīd, from Abū Qatādah—that the Prophet ﷺ said to ʿAmmār, “The rebellious faction will kill you (2).”
Abū ʿAwānah in his Musnad, and likewise Abū Yaʿlā, transmit through the isnād of Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Bāhilī: Yaḥyā ibn ʿĪsā narrated to us, al-Aʿmash narrated to us, Zayd ibn Wahb narrated: that ʿAmmār said to ʿUthmān, “You have set Quraysh upon the people’s necks; they attacked me and beat me.”
ʿUthmān became angry and said, “What have I to do with Quraysh? They attacked a man from among the Companions of Muhammad ﷺ and beat him. I heard the Prophet ﷺ say to ʿAmmār, ‘The rebellious faction will kill you, and his killer will be in…’”
(1) Its chain of transmission is sound. It is also reported by Abd al-Razzaq (no. 20427) and, through his route, by Ahmad, 4/199. See likewise Majmaʿ al-zawaʾid, 7/242 and 9/297.
“The soles of your feet are wet with urine” means: you have slipped and erred.
This was a specious argument advanced by Muʿawiya—may Allah pardon him.
ʿAli, may Allah honour him, replied that by the same logic the Prophet would have killed Hamza as soon as he sent him out.
Ibn Dihya remarks: this riposte of ʿAli is a crushing argument that admits no reply and a proof that allows no objection.
Al-Manawi, in Fayd al-qadir, 6/336, cites ʿAbd al-Qahir al-Jurjani in his book al-Imama: “The jurists of the Hijaz and Iraq, whether from the hadith or the rationalist schools—among them Malik, al-Shafiʿi, Abu Hanifa, al-Awzaʿi—and the vast majority of theologians and Muslims, unanimously agree that ʿAli was in the right when he fought the people of Siffin, just as he was in the right against the people of the Camel; that those who fought him were baghi (rebellious) and unjust toward him, yet they are not deemed unbelievers for their rebellion.”
Al-Qurtubi adds (p. 6138): “…It has been settled among Muslim scholars, and established by religious proof, that ʿAli was the legitimate imam, that anyone who rose against him was a rebel, and that fighting such a rebel is obligatory until he returns to the truth and accepts reconciliation.”
(2) For the documentation of this hadith, see p. 419, note 1.