and who grant it victory; who has bound us to the watchword of piety, made us the most entitled to it and its people; who has singled us out through the womb-ties and close kinship of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace; who, by means of Islam and its followers, has set us in the loftiest station; and who revealed on this matter a Book to be recited among the Muslims, saying:
“Allah only desires to remove impurity from you, O People of the Household, and to purify you completely” (al-Aḥzāb 33),
and He said, “Say: I ask no recompense of you for it save love for my near relatives” (al-Shūrā 23),
and He said, “And warn your nearest kinsfolk” (al-Shuʿarāʾ 214),
and He said, “Whatever Allah grants to His Messenger from the people of the towns belongs to Allah, to the Messenger, to his kinsfolk, to the orphans and to the needy…” (al-Ḥashr 7).
Thus—Exalted is He—He informed them of our superiority, made our right and our love incumbent upon them, and allotted to us the richest share of the fayʾ (state revenues) and the booty, as an honour to us and a special favour (1) shown to us; and Allah is Lord of abundant bounty. Yet the misguided Sabaʾiyyah claim that others are worthier of authority, governance, and the caliphate than we are. May their faces be disfigured!
People! Through us Allah guided mankind after their error, supported them after their ignorance, rescued them after their ruin; through us He manifested the truth and routed falsehood; through us He set right what among them was corrupt, raised the lowly, completed deficiencies, and united what had been scattered, so that men, after enmity, became people of mutual compassion, benevolence and assistance in their worldly life, and brothers reclining upon facing couches in their Hereafter. Allah opened all of this for us as a grace and a gift through Muḥammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. When He took him to Himself, his Companions shouldered the charge after him, their affair decided by mutual consultation. They took hold of the inheritances of nations, dealt justly with them, placed them where they belonged, gave them to those who merited them, and departed therefrom empty-handed. Then the sons of Ḥarb and of Marwān pounced upon it, wrenched it for themselves and passed it around; they dealt tyrannically therein, monopolised it, and wronged its people. Allah granted them respite until—“When they provoked Our wrath, We took vengeance upon them” (al-Zukhruf 55)—so He tore from their hands what they possessed by means of our hands, restored to us our right, saved through us our community, and undertook our cause and the task of granting us victory, that He might bestow favour through us upon those who had been deemed weak in the land, and bring the matter to completion with us just as He began it with us.
I hope, therefore, that injustice will not reach you from the same quarter whence goodness has reached you, nor corruption from the place whence righteousness has come. Our success, People of the Household, is only through Allah.
O People of Kūfah! You are the abode of our affection and the seat of our loving-kindness; you are the most fortunate of people with regard to us and the most honoured in our sight. I have increased your stipends by one hundred dirhams. So prepare yourselves, for I am al-Saffāḥ—the impetuous one, the avenger who annihilates.”
He was suffering from an illness, which grew severe until he sat down upon the pulpit,