(99) It is transmitted from him with a broken chain. Al-Mughni 11/227. See also al-Tamhid (Fath al-Barr, the fiqh re-ordering of Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s al-Tamhid), ed. al-Maghrawi, 10/591, Book of Divorce, chapter: The waiting period of a widow ends with childbirth. (100) ʿAbd Allah b. Masʿud al-Hudhali, Abu ʿAbd al-Rahman, was among the earliest converts and one of the foremost scholars of the Companions. He possessed numerous virtues and died in the year 32 AH—some say the following year—in Madina. Al-Taqrib, p. 323. (101) Ibn Qudama, al-Mughni 11/227–228; al-Khattabi, Maʿalim al-Sunan, margin of Sunan Abi Dawud 2/729, Book of Divorce, chapter: The waiting period of a pregnant woman. (102) Among the relevant reports is what Imam al-Bukhari recorded in his Sahih 5/2037 (nos. 5012–5014), Book of Divorce, chapter on the verse, “And for those who are pregnant, their term is until they deliver” (Q 65:4), from the hadith of Sabiʿa al-Aslamiyya, including the wording: “The Prophet gave me a legal ruling that once I had delivered I could remarry.” Muslim, Sahih, Book of Breast-feeding, chapter: A widow’s waiting period ends with childbirth, 2/1122, no. 1484, relates the episode in full. (103) Abu al-Sanabil b. Baʿkkak b. al-Harith al-Qurashi—his given name is said to have been ʿUmar, though other opinions exist—was a well-known Companion. Al-Taqrib, p. 646. (104) The very wording cited by the author is found in Ahmad, Musnad 1/447. After quoting it, al-Haythami comments, “Its transmitters are those of the Sahih.” It is also recorded by al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 7/429. See the previous annotation. (105) Sabiʿa bt. al-Harith al-Aslamiyya, wife of Saʿd b. Khawla; she was a Companion. Al-Taqrib, p. 748. (106) The phrase “fa-inna al-waqiʿ” (“for what actually occurred”) appears only in the marginal gloss of the manuscript. (107) I remark: ʿAli, may Allah be pleased with him, was close to military victory at Siffin, yet he accepted arbitration by the Book of Allah when invited to do so and therefore suspended the fighting. He believed—or so he later stated—that “the whole Book of Allah is in my favour,” meaning that judgment would support him. He thus expected to reach his objective through arbitration rather than continued combat, but the arbitration failed and did not yield the result he had hoped for. Thereafter he was unable to march against Syria and bring it into the community and the bayʿa because of the emergence of the Khawarij and the loss of resolve among parts of his army. What Shaykh al-Islam appears to mean by saying that he did not achieve victory is that the Caliph ʿAli did not attain his broader aim of incorporating Syria under his rule. As for ʿAli himself, it is well known that he never lost a battle he entered. Those, such as Saʿd b. Abi Waqqas, who refrained from the fighting did so on the basis of their own ijtihad; we cannot claim they sought thereby to betray ʿAli—so how could such a charge stand? None of us doubts that ʿAli was closer to the truth than Muʿawiya, as shown by the hadith of ʿAmmar. Regarding Shaykh al-Islam’s statement that Muʿawiya and his followers were given victory and opened new lands even though they withheld support from ʿAli, it may be answered that Muʿawiya’s party had another overriding concern, namely legal retribution (qisas) for ʿUthman’s blood. Their fighting was prompted by an external issue, not personal hatred. It was their own ijtihad, for which they are rewarded. Indeed, they loved him, as proved by the sound hadith in which ʿAli said: “By Him who split the grain and created the soul, it is the covenant of the Prophet to me that none loves me except a believer and none hates me except a hypocrite.” Sahih Muslim 1/64, Book of Faith, chapter: Loving ʿAli is part of faith. Without doubt they were believers, for Allah describes them thus: “If two groups of the believers fight…” (Q 49:9). Hence it is clear that Muʿawiya and his companions—may Allah be pleased with them—did not fight out of enmity but in pursuit of retribution for ʿUthman; otherwise, they maintained the mutual loyalty of believers toward him and never opposed him either before or after the battles. Consequently, there is no contradiction between the hadith and historical reality, all the more so because the hadith is not sound in all its components—only certain parts have authentic chains, as explained above (pp. 20–21). (108) At this point the author avoided saying “they abandoned him” and wrote instead “they did not fight with him,” because Saʿd transmitted in the two Sahihs and elsewhere hadiths on ʿAli’s merits and had pledged allegiance to him, yet declined to support him militarily since he deemed it impermissible for Muslims to fight one another. Authentic reports record his statement: “Bring me a sword with eyes and a tongue that can say, ‘This one is a believer and that one is an unbeliever’,” or words to that effect. (109) Ibn Abi Sufyan. (110) During their rule the Umayyads achieved victories in jihad for the sake of Allah, just as the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs had before them. Yet at Siffin—their only battle against ʿAli—they did not prevail; they were on the verge of defeat had ʿAli not halted the fighting when they requested arbitration by the Qur’an. (111) The original text reads: “and they conquered.” (112) This is because no one loves him except a believer and no one hates him except a hypocrite—similar to what is reported about the Ansar: “A sign of faith is to love the Ansar, and a sign of hypocrisy is to hate the Ansar,” and in another wording: “None loves the Ansar except a believer, and none hates them except a hypocrite …” Al-Bukhari, Book of the Merits of the Ansar, chapter: Loving the Ansar is part of faith, 3/1379, nos. 3572–3573.