from Yazīd (5) ibn al-Aṣamm, who said: ʿAlī declared, “The men I have killed and the men Muʿāwiyah has killed are all in Paradise.”

Ṣadaqah ibn Khālid related—from Zayd ibn Wāqid, from his father, from their elders—that when Muʿāwiyah had been given the pledge of allegiance and news reached him that ʿAlī was fighting the people of Nahrawān (1), he wrote to the leading figures around ʿAlī, such as al-Ashʿath, enticing them with promises and lavishing gifts upon them, until they inclined toward Muʿāwiyah and grew reluctant to march with ʿAlī. ʿAlī kept repeating his appeals, yet no one paid heed to his words.

Muʿāwiyah used to say, “After Ṣiffīn I fought ʿAlī with neither an army nor equipment.”

Shuʿbah narrated: Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allah al-Thaqafī (2) informed us—he heard Abū Ṣāliḥ say:

“I witnessed ʿAlī place the mushaf (codex of the Qurʾan) upon his head—so close that I could hear the rustling of its pages—and he prayed:
‘O Allah, I asked them for what is in it but they withheld it from me. O Allah, I have grown weary of them and they have grown weary of me; I have come to hate them and they have come to hate me; they have driven me to conduct that is not of my character. So replace me for them with someone worse than I, and replace them for me with people better than they. Melt (3) their hearts as salt dissolves in water.’”

Mujālid reported—from al-Shaʿbī, from al-Ḥārith, from ʿAlī—who said:
“Do not resent the authority of Muʿāwiyah; were you to lose him, you would see heads rolling (4) from their shoulders.”

When the Commander of the Believers ʿAlī was killed, the people of Iraq pledged allegiance to his son al-Ḥasan and prepared to set out for Syria in battalions like mountains. Al-Ḥasan was a nobleman of great stature, who held