"Have mutual liaison and give-and-take.

"Have mutual liaison and give-and-take. Beware of turning your faces from, and of renouncing, one another. Do not abandon bidding good and forbidding evil, lest vicious people may overrule you, and then in such a case, your invocations will not be responded to (by Allah)." Then he said: "O, Banu Abdul Muttalib, certainly I do not want you to wade through the blood of the Muslims, crying: "Amir al-Mu'minin was murdered. You certainly kill for me no one but my killer.

"Wait till I die by this stroke of him (bin Muljam), then strike a single stroke against him, and do not disfigure his body, for I had heard the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) saying: 'Avoid mayhem even with a rabid dog'."(173) Such was the heroic end of this great man! The loss to the Mission and the nation was the gravest after the loss of the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.).

By the death of Imam Ali (a.s.) the nation lost: A heroism that had become the song of the time; A courageous history that has never dreamt of its like; A wisdom no one can fathom, save Allah; A purity, the like of which was only in the prophets; An abstinence from the pleasures of life that could be attained only by the nearest to Allah; An eloquence such as to be the echo of Book; and A jurisprudence, and a thorough knowledge of the laws of religion, that made him the 'gateway of the city' of the Prophet's knowledge, and the authority to whom the Islamic nation referred in all its affairs.

Peace be upon Amir al-Mu'minin the day he was born, the day he was martyred on his alter, and the day he shall be raised alive. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. Endnotes Al-Baladhiri, Ansab Al-Ashraf, vol. 2, p. 177. Look up Sharh Nahj al-Balaghah by Ibn Abi al-Hadid, vol. 4, p. Al-Arbili, Kashf Al-Ghummah, vol. 1, chapter on Imam Ali (a.s). A Brief History of the Fourteen Infallibles, World Organization for Islamic Services, (Tehran: 1984), pp. 51.52.

Ibn al-Sabbagh al-Maliki, al-Fusul al-Muhimmah fi Ma'rifat al-A'immah, Ch. 1, p. 13. Al-Bihar, vol. 35, p. 18. Ibn al-Sabbagh, al-Fusul al-Muhimmah, Ch. 1, p. 14. Ibn Abi al-Hadid. Sharh Nahj al-Balaghah, p.151. Sirat bin Hisham, chapter on Ali bin Abi Talib, the first male who accepted Islam, p. 284; Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 35, p. 44; Sharh Nahj al-Balaghah, vol. 1, p.15. Khalid Muhammad Khalid, Fi Rihab Ali, 2nd ed., Dar al-Andalus, Beirut, p.46. Sharh Nahj al-Balaghah, vol. 1, p. 15.

Ibn Abi al-Hadid, Sharh Nahj al-Balaghah, vol. 1, p.15, quoting al-Baladiri and al-Isfahani.