115 – Al-Ḥusayn narrated to us; ʿAbd Allah narrated to us; Abu ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ḍarīr related to me, and likewise Hishām ibn Muḥammad, from al-Walīd ibn Wahb al-Ḥārithī, from Yazīd ibn ʿAmr al-Tamīmī, who said:

When ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, may Allah be pleased with him, passed away, a man from Banū Tamīm who had been on his security detail stood up in the mosque of Kūfa after the funeral prayer had been performed and proclaimed:

“May Allah have mercy on you, O Commander of the Believers. Your life was a key that opened every door to good and a lock that shut out evil; you were for the people a shining light by which guidance was set apart from misguidance and good from evil. Your death, therefore, is a key to evil and a lock upon good, and your loss is grief and regret. Had the people welcomed you with the welcome you deserved, they would have eaten from above them and from beneath their feet; but they chose the life of this world over the Hereafter. Now, after you, they wander bewildered along the paths of their pursuits; misery has overtaken them and a wearying affliction has seized them. They are unravelling what you wove, just as a rope is undone strand by strand. Ruin and distance to them—what a wretched people! They sold the much for the little, the abundant for the paltry. May Allah ennoble your resting place and multiply your reward. Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of Allah.”