people. This is akin to a general threat: it does not necessarily apply to a particular individual unless its conditions are met and its impediments are absent. The same holds true of cursing. All this assumes that Yazīd committed an act by which ties of kinship were severed.

Yet the same occurred among many members of Banū Hāshim—both Abbasids and Tālibids—who fought one another. Are all of them, then, to be cursed? Likewise, if someone wrongs one of his relatives, especially a distant relative separated from him by several generations, is he to be cursed by name? If all such people were cursed, everyone encompassed by the wording would be cursed, and consequently so would the majority of Muslims.

Allah Most High says:

“So would you perhaps, if you turned away, spread corruption in the land and sever your ties of kinship? Those are the ones whom Allah has cursed, leaving them deaf and blinding their sight.”

[Surah Muhammad: 23, 22]

This is a general threat against everyone who does so. Yet some members of Banū Hāshim did far worse to one another than Yazīd did.

If the necessary consequence of this position were accepted, a great many members of Banū Hāshim—Alids, Abbasids, and other believers—would be cursed (1).

As for Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzī, he wrote a book on [the permissibility] (2) of cursing Yazīd, in which he refuted Shaykh Abd al-Mughīth al-Harbī, who used to forbid it.

It is said that when Caliph al-Nāsir learned that Shaykh Abd al-Mughīth forbade this, he went to him and questioned him about it. Abd al-Mughīth recognized that he was the caliph but gave no indication that he knew him. He said, “Good sir, my purpose is to restrain (3) people’s tongues from cursing (4) the caliphs and rulers of the Muslims. Otherwise, if we were to