They were around him mourning bitterly and their hearts were...

They were around him mourning bitterly and their hearts were about to be cut into pieces with sorrow that might tear the livers and with fear that might move the mountains. The world, with all its wideness, had become too narrow before them. And those people were away from the ordeal for three days being busy preparing their determinations to seize his (the Prophet’s) authority and to plunder his rule.

They did not pay any attention to any affair of him until they had determined their matter without caring for anything else. As soon as they finished burying him, they surprised his guardians and lovers with asking them either to pay homage or to be burned with their houses.

[^14] The poet of the Nile, Hafidh Ibraheem had said in a famous poem: And a saying to Ali said by Umar, Honored is the listener and great is the sayer I burn your house and let you not alive longer in it If you do not pay homage Even if the daughter of al-Mustafa [^15] is in it.

No one save Abu Hafs [^16] that has said it Before the knight and protector of Adnan [^17] If it has been supposed that there was no clear tradition showing that the caliphate was to be for one of the Prophet’s family and if it has been supposed that no one of them had good ancestry, rank, morals, knowledge, favors, jihad, faith, sincerity or excellent virtue but they were just like the rest of the Prophet’s companions, then was there any legal, rational or traditional excuse that prevented the companions from putting off their homage until the funerals of the Prophet (S) would finish???

Even if they would have ordered the army to control the situation temporarily until the matter of the caliphate would be settled??? Would it be not better for them to be somehow kind to the Prophet’s family, who were distressed with the great loss, if they had waited a little? The Prophet’s family was his deposit and his leftover among the Muslims.

Allah has said: “Certainly a Messenger has come to you from among yourselves; grievous to him is your falling into distress, excessively solicitous respecting you; to the believers (he is) compassionate”(Qur’an 9:128) .

Had this Prophet, who became so grievous when his Ummah fell in distress, who strove for its prosperity and who was so kind to his people, not had a right on them that his family would not be constrained or surprised with what it had faced while the wound was not yet healed and the Prophet (S) was not yet buried?!