22 – Al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṣafwān al-Baradhaʿī narrated to us; ʿAbd Allah narrated to us; my father—may Allah have mercy on him—narrated to us, from Hishām ibn Muḥammad, that Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Jaʿfī related to them, from Jābir, from Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn, who said: ⦗36⦘
When Allah—Exalted is He—willed to honor ʿAlī by bringing about the death of Ibn Muljam, the latter spent the night in a mosque belonging to the clan of Banū Asad. When darkness had fallen, he slipped away to one of the houses of Kindah.
A week earlier, ʿAlī had mounted the pulpit and declared: “It has been decreed—by the tongue of the unlettered Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him peace—that no believer will ever hate you and no unbeliever will ever love you. Ruined indeed is the one who bears sin and fabricates falsehood.
“Last night I saw in a dream a devil who struck me a blow that dyed my beard with fresh blood flowing from my head, yet it caused me no distress. Know, O ʿAlī, that you are to be killed, Allah willing. What, then, is the most wretched of men waiting for but to stain this (my beard) with this (the blood of my head)?” He passed his right hand over his beard and then over the crown of his head, after which he descended from the pulpit.
On the night he was attacked, he went out for the ʿishāʾ prayer. The geese around him began to cry out, and he said, “Let them scream; among them are shriekers, and among women will be mourners.”
The wicked man lay in ambush until the very moment ʿAlī habitually emerged. He came and stood in the shadow of the doorway. The Commander of the Believers stepped out, and he struck him a single blow. Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah was close by; he seized Ibn Muljam, and the people rushed to kill him. ʿAlī said, “Easy! Do not mutilate him while I still live. If I survive, I will either take my legal retribution from the man or grant him a pardon for the sake of Allah. If I die, then a life for a life.”