After telling the story of Fadak...

After telling the story of Fadak, Ali ibn Abi Talib says: “If I wished, I could have taken the way leading towards (worldly pleasure like) pure honey, fine wheat and silk clothes, but it cannot be that my passions lead me and greed takes me to choose good meals while in the Hijaz or in Yamamah there may be people who have no hope of getting a piece of bread or who do not have a full meal. Shall I lie with a satiated belly while around me there may be hungry bellies and thirsty livers?

Or shall be as the poet has said: It is enough for you as a disease that you lie with your belly full while around you there are people, who may be badly yearning (of hunger) for dried meat .”[^21] Such is the mentality and performance of Ali ibn Abi Talib as compared to others! The cursed Hajjaj lived a life of fifty-four,