It didn’t take long before Ali’s army was destroyed by...

It didn’t take long before Ali’s army was destroyed by successive attacks [by the enemy]. Suddenly, the Commander of the Faithful realized that his troops were all in disarray, many of them fled the battlefield and there was no one left except a few children and relatives, those were the ones who strongly defended the Imam.

The Commander of the Faithful told them to resist, persevere and manage them, and at this moment, he met Mālik Ashtar and called him while saying: “Go and meet these people and tell them: Where are you running to, as you cannot escape from the death that you are running away from? And from a life in which there would be nothing…