Indeed, their neighbors in the Beqaa and elsewhere suffered immeasurable harm at their hands. Every night, a band of them would descend upon their neighbors and commit acts of wrongdoing whose extent none but the Lord of all servants could reckon. In their highway robbery and terrorizing of people in their homes, they followed the most atrocious practices known among criminals. Christians from Cyprus would come to them, and they would offer them hospitality and give them the Muslims’ weapons. Yet they would attack a righteous Muslim, either killing him or robbing him. Few escaped them, and then only through ingenuity.

Allah granted assistance and made it possible—through the sultan’s sincere intention, his resolve to uphold the laws of Islam, and his concern to wage jihad against those who had departed from Islam—for a lawful military expedition to be undertaken against them, as Allah and His Messenger commanded. This came after their circumstances had been exposed, their excuses removed, and their misconceptions dispelled; after they had been offered justice and fairness beyond anything they could have hoped for; and after it had been explained to them that the expedition against them followed the example of the Commander of the Faithful, ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib, may Allah be pleased with him, in fighting the Harūriyya who had departed from Islam. The Prophet’s command to fight them, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is established by mass transmission, and his descriptions of them have been reported through numerous channels.

The compilers of the authentic hadith collections recorded ten such routes of transmission, through reports from ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib, Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, Sahl ibn Hunayf, Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, Rāfiʿ ibn ʿAmr, and other Companions of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

He said of them:

“One of you will consider his own prayer insignificant compared with theirs, and his own fasting compared with theirs