On this path treaded the reformers who preferred the...

On this path treaded the reformers who preferred the darkness of jails to the luxury of palaces. With their swords and the words of right, they faced the tyrants. Ahlul-Bait (a.s.), their followers, and the descendants of Ali bin Abi-Talib (a.s.), offered, throughout the reigns of Abul-Abbas al-Saffah, al-Mansoor, al-Hadi, al- Mahdi, al-Rasheed, and the rest of the Abbassid dynasty, their blood for the sake of the faith. They filled up the cells and dungeons.

On their bodies palaces were built, and in their pillars they were thrown alive. Their heads were carried from one city to another. A tragic, heartrending story about the savagery and brutality of the Abbassids was recounted by Hamid bin Quhtubah, a senior assistant of al-Rasheed, to one of his closest friends.[^77] The story says that when al-Rasheed was in Toos (Khurasan-Iran), he sent for Hamid bin Qurtubah.

Al-Rasheed asked him about his loyalty to him, to which question Hamid answered that he was quite ready to carry out whatever task he might assign him. When al-Rasheed felt Hamid was staunchly loyal to him and that he was capable of doing what he wanted him to do, he ordered his servant to give him a sword and take him to a closed house in whose center there was a well. There were three big rooms in the house.

When Hamid opened the door of the first room, he saw twenty men; young, middle-aged and old, from the descendants of Ali bin Abi-Talib and Fatimah (a.s.). They were all in shackles and chains. The servant ordered him to kill them and throw their bodies into the well, which he did. In the second room there were also twenty men. Hamid killed them all with his sword. And he did the same thing to the fettered men in the third room who were also twenty in number.

This story was kept a guarded secret for a long time, in the cells of the terrorist rulers and murderers. He had murdered for no convincing reasons at all, obsessed by the feeling that he had lost his humanity and was metamorphosed into a blood-thirsty animal, and being desperate from Allah's forgiveness, Hamid bin Quhtubah divulged that horrible secret. In the holy month of Ramadham, Ubaidullah al-Bazzaz al-Nishapoori, an intimate friend of Hamid called on him.

Ubaidullah had just arrived from a long journey. Hamid bin Quhtubah was preparing his lunch. Hamid asked his friend to eat, hut Ubaidullah excused himself by saying that he was fasting. "Maybe the prince has an excuse and a religiously acceptable reason for not fasting.