Thus, people of understanding should draw lessons from Allah’s established way and His momentous dealings with His servants, and from the conduct and customs of nations—especially in a tremendous calamity such as this, news of which reached East and West, and whose sparks spread throughout the lands of Islam. In it, hypocrisy raised its head and disbelief bared its fangs and molars. The pillar of Scripture was almost uprooted and destroyed, the rope of faith severed and torn away, and the heartland of the believers laid waste. This religion itself nearly vanished under the domination of the wicked Tatars.

The hypocrites and those in whose hearts was disease thought that Allah and His Messenger had promised them nothing but delusion, and that the party of Allah and His Messenger would never return to their families. That notion was made appealing in their hearts; they entertained evil thoughts and were a people doomed to ruin.

A trial descended that left even the forbearing bewildered, reduced the sober man to the state of one intoxicated, and left the discerning man, beset by anxious thoughts, neither asleep nor awake. The hearts of acquaintances and brothers became estranged, until each man was too preoccupied with himself to help those in distress.

Through it, Allah distinguished those endowed with insight and certainty from those whose hearts harbored disease, or hypocrisy and weakness of faith. Through it, He raised some people to lofty ranks, brought others down to abysmal depths, and expiated the sinful deeds of still others. So many kinds of affliction arose that it became a miniature of the Great Resurrection. For people were divided during it into the wretched and the blessed, just as they will likewise be divided