Peak of Eloquence Nahjul Balagha By Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib - English Translation - Letter 41

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To One of His Officers

I had made you a partner in my trust and my chief man. For me, no other person from my kinsmen was more trustworthy than you in the matter of sympathizing with me, assisting and respecting my trust. But when you saw that time had attacked your cousin, the enemy had waged war, the trust of the people was being humiliated and the community was trackless and disunited, you turned your back against your cousin and forsook him when others forsook him. You abandoned him when others abandoned him and betrayed him when others betrayed him. Thus, you showed no sympathy to your cousin, nor did you discharge the trust.

It seems as if you do not want to please Allah through your jihad, as if you do not stand upon a clear sign from your Lord, and as if you have been playing tricks with this umma (Muslim community) in order to earn (the pleasure of) this world, watching for the moment of their neglectfulness in order to usurp their wealth. As soon as it was possible for you to misappropriate the umma’s trust, you tended to turn around and attack (them), making a swift leap to snatch away whatever you could from their property. Such a property was intended for their widows and orphans. You did so like a wolf snatching a wounded and helpless goat. Then you happily loaded it off to Hijaz without feeling guilty for having thus acquired it. Allah’s woe be upon your ill-wishers! It was as though you were sending to your family what you had inherited from your parents.

Glory to Allah! Do you either not believe in the Day of Judgement, or you do not fear the exaction of account? O you who were counted by us among the men possessing sound minds, how can you enjoy food and drink when you know that you are eating and drinking what is unlawful? You are purchasing bondmaids and wedding women with the money of the orphans, the poor, the believers and the participants in jihad to whom Allah had dedicated this money and through whom He had strengthened these cities. Fear Allah and return to these people their properties. If you do not do so and Allah grants me power over you, I shall excuse myself before Allah about you and strike you with my sword with which I did not strike anyone but that he went to Hell.

By Allah, even if Hassan and Hussain (x) had done what you did,

there would have been no leniency for them, and they could not have won their way with me till I had recovered from them the right and destroyed the wrong produced by their unjust actions. I swear by Allah, the Master of all beings, that I will not be pleased to regard their money which you have appropriated as lawful for me and to leave it to my successors by way of inheritance. Mind yourself and consider for a while as though you had reached the end of life and had been buried under the earth. Your actions will then be presented before you in the place where the oppressor cries “Alas!” while whoever wasted his life yearns for return (to the world) “... but there was no time to escape” (Holy Quran, 38: 3).