He wrote to his governors...

He wrote to his governors, (We will never forgive anyone, who narrates something about the virtue of Abu Turab or any of his family).[^2] The orators hurried to respond. They began to curse Ali (as) on every minbar throughout the state. They declared their quittance from him and began to defame him and his family. The minbars, upon which Imam Ali was cursed, were more than seventy thousand ones. The public responded to the orators and believed them.

You may estimate how many men sitting before each minbar of those seventy thousands and how many women and children were behind each one of those men, who certainly would listen to his sayings as he listened to the orator’s sayings. Their flesh would grow with those fabrications and their blood would flow in the veins with them.

Then Mo’awiya wrote to his governors: (Don’t accept any witness of the followers of Ali or his family)[^3] to tighten the grip around the Shia, to disgrace them and to let them be liable to the oppressions of their enemies and to being a target for their arrows. Then Mo’awiya assigned great gifts and high positions for whomever narrated traditions ascribing virtues to Othman and his companions.

Once again, he wrote to his governors, (Criticizing Othman increased and spread in every country and every side. When this book reaches you, invite people to narrate traditions talking about the virtues of the companions and the first caliphs. Do not let any tradition narrated by any Muslim about the virtues of Abu Turab unless you fabricate same virtues to be, ascribed to the companions.

This will make me delighted and will refute the virtues of Abu Turab and will be harder to them (the Shia) than to mention the virtues and favors of Othman). ^4 As soon as the book reached the hearings, the imaginations flew to invent news and to create traditions, some of which ascribed untrue virtues to the companions, the others defamed Ali (as), and this was the main aim of the fabricated traditions.

We are not in need of saying or referring to the value of this muchness of traditions whether those that ascribed untrue virtues to the companions or those that defamed Ali (as). They were full of excessiveness, ridiculous ignorance, deadly grudge, and malicious enmity. Neither these traditions nor those had any value and they would not resist the hammer of criticism for a moment. They were born illegally and built upon a base of salt so as soon as moisture reached it, it melted.