The Ninetieth Assembly, the Assembly of Tuesday, the Third of Sha`ban, 368 AH.

Ibn Abi’l `Awja’ was from the students of al-Hasan al-Basri. He deviated from monotheism. It was said to him: You abandoned the school of your companion to enter that which has no basis and no reality? So, he said: Surely, my companion was confused – he would venture into free will, then he would venture into fatalism. I do not think he has a school that he [consistently] remains upon. He said: He came to Mecca to disturb and denounce the pilgrims. The scholars hated sitting with him and receiving his questions due to his filthy tongue and corrupted thinking. So, he met al-Sadiq Ja`far b. Muhammad (as) and sat with a group of his peers. Then, he said to him: O Aba `Abdillah! Gatherings are trusts, and everyone that has a cough must cough. So, do you permit me to speak? So, al-Sadiq (as) said: Say what you wish. So, Ibn Abi’l `Awja’ said: Until when do you want to continue stepping on here, taking refuge to this stone, worshiping this House made of mud and clay; running around it like donkeys? If anyone were to think or reflect on this, he would know that this action is not founded on wisdom or insight. So, speak, for you are the head and the pillar of this matter, and your father founded it and organized it. So, al-Sadiq (as) said: He who is led astray by Allah, who blinds his heart, hates the truth and is uncomfortable with it. Satan becomes his friend, and he leads him to the avenues of destruction. This is the House that Allah chose to examine the worship of His creatures and their obedience in coming toward it. He encourages them to venerate it and visit it. He made it the place of His prophets and the qibla of those who pray to Him. It is a way to His satisfaction and a path that leads to His forgiveness. It is derived from the uprightness of perfection and the gathering of greatness. Allah created it two thousand years before He stretched out the Earth. He is more rightful to be obeyed in what He commands and what He prohibits and rebukes, for Allah is the Originator of spirits and forms. So, Ibn Abi’l `Awja’ said: You have spoken, Aba `Abdillah, by resorting to that which absent. So, he said: Beware – how could He be absent when He is the witness over His creation? He is nearer to them than the jugular vein. He hears their words, He sees their persons, and He knows their secrets. It is only the creation that moves away from a place, and becomes busy with a place, and becomes absent from a place, and becomes heedless of what happens in the place he moved away from. As for Allah, the Great, the King, the Judge, no place is absent from Him and no place busies Him, so no place is closer to Him than another. By Him who commissioned him with firm signs and clear proofs, and aided him with His support, and chose him to preach His message, we have validated his claim that his Lord sent him and spoke to him. So, Ibn Abi’l `Awja’ walked away from him, and said to his companions: Who threw me into this ocean? I asked you to seek wine for me, yet you threw me onto a hot coal. They said: You were a fool in his gathering. He said: Surely, he is the son of the one who shaved the heads of those you see.

Amir al-Mu’minin `Ali b. Abi Talib (as) said: By Allah, your world is nothing to me but a journey over a sweet waterfall: when the captain shouts out to them, they abandon ship. In my eye, its delight is like drinking scalding water and pus. It is a gulp of bitter, toxic water. It is snake poison. It is a bottomless cup. It is a strangling necklace of fire. I have repaired my armour until I felt shame from the one who repairs it, and he said to me: “hoist it off as a donkey hoists [its rider].” So, I said: “Get away from me”, for in the morning, the people praise the night, and the remanent of drowsiness passes. Had I wished, I would have robed myself in rugs embroidered with brocade, I would have eaten the kernels of the Earth with chicken breasts, and I would have drunk clear water with the thinnest of your glasses. However, I trust Allah when He says, “Those who desire the life of the present and its glitter, to them we shall pay (the price of) their deeds therein – without diminution. They are those for whom there is nothing in the Hereafter but the Fire: vain are the designs they frame therein, and of no effect and the deeds that they do!” (11:15-16) So, how can I be patient on a fire, for if a spark of which was to be dislodged on earth, it would burn its vegetation; and even if a pea were to be secured, then this fire would ripen it? And which is better for `Ali: for him to be close to the Owner of the Throne, or to be in flames, lowly, banished, resented for his crime, lying? By Allah, to sleep on thorns as a bed, with my clothes were beneath me, laid onto the mix of dust and thorns; or to be dragged while shackled in my chains is more beloved to me than meeting Muhammad on the Day of Reckoning having betrayed an orphan, and oppressing him with his money intentionally – and I have never oppressed the orphan nor the non-orphan! A soul hastening its travel to its trials, And its parts spread under the depths of the Earth, And even if it was to live very long, Then it would still dismount in proximity to the Owner of the Throne. My Shi`a! Beware, for this world has bitten you with its canines, grabbing soul after soul, just like its wolves, and the camels of departure have been prepared for their riders. Surely, this conversation has intersecting branches, so none of you should say that the speech of `Ali is contradictory, for this talk is interdependent. It has reached me that a man from the residents of Mada’in has followed, after being on the upright religion (al-Hanifiyya), the disbelieving mercenaries, and worn the sewn gifts of his town‘s political head, and perfumed himself with the musk of these containers in the morning, and wears the incense of India when he leaves, and he smells the aroma of the flowers of the garden around him, and the cushions of the Romans have been spread on his bead. Woe to him! After he has reached seventy years of age, and around him is an old man on the ground due to his old age, and an orphan aching from aggravation and from the desire to taste meat, he did not even console them with the surplus of his sweet blessings. If Allah gives me power over him, then I would antagonize him the antagonization of an upright person, and I would apply the penalty (hadd) on him twice, and I would strike him eighty times after carrying the penalty, and I would not give him an excuse for his ignorance. Woe to him! Does he not feel? [Does he not wear] clothing of wool, clothing of hair? [Does he not eat] plain bread? Does he not feed one in need at night? Does a tear on his cheek not roll at night? If he was a believer, then his matters in what he does not own would be organized. By Allah, I have seen `Aqil, my brother, impoverished, until he requested from the small measure of ḥis grain weighing device, and then he returned asking for an exorbitant measure of your barley to feed his hungry ones, and he almost went on his third famishing day, and I saw his children, their colours matted from the suffering, as if their faces have been severely changed from the cold. When he returned and repeated his speech, I listened to him so it piqued his interest, and thought I would corrupt my religion and follow what pleases him, so I heated a piece of iron to rebuke him, because he cannot get near it or be patient on its heat. Then, I brought it near to his body, so he shouted from his pain, the shouting of an extremely ill person moaning from his illness. He almost insulted me wrongfully due to his suppression, and the burning of the flaming heat of illness caused from his impoverishment, so I said to him: “May the mourners mourn you, `Aq̣il. Do you moan from an iron playfully heated by a human, and drag me to a Fire angrily ignited its Compeller? Do you moan from the pain, and I don’t moan from the flames [of Hell]? By Allah, if reward was to be lifted from nations, and they were to be left in their graves as weak bones, would I feel embarrassed from the spite of an Observer, who exposed hidden wicked actions which can be abrogated? So, patience on a world whose hardships pass like a night and its dreams. How many a soul sleeping soundly in its pavilion, and a sinner screaming in hellfire? And do not be surprised by this, but be surprised by what we have been tested with, from a person who knocked with folded [food] in plates, and a Ma`jūna (sweet) laid in bowls. So, I said to him: “Is this a donation? Or nithr? Or zakat? All of that is forbidden for us, the Household of Prophethood, and we have been given in its place the khums of the close of kin in the Book and Sunna.” So, he said to me: “No this, nor that, but it is a gift.” So, I said to him: “May the mourners mourn you! Do you trick me away from the religion of Allah with a Ma`juna dipped in your sugar, and a yellow Khabisa (sweet) you’ve brought to me with the juice of your dates? Are you confused, crazy, or insane? Aren’t the souls asked about even the amount of a mustard seed? So, what about a prepared Ma`jūuna that I bitterly eat?” By Allah, if I was given the seven pens, with all the universes under it, and all its inhabitants would obey me, giving me all their possession, with the cost of disobeying Allah by robbing a grain of barley from an ant for me to chew, then I would not accept and would not want. Your world to me is more lowly than a leaf crushed by the teeth of a grasshopper, and dirtier to me than the bones eaten by a pig which spits the chewed remanent, and is more bitter to my heart than the desert gourd chewed by an ill person to the point that he gets tired of it. So, how can I accept the things strongly folded inside it, kneaded with the saliva or pus of a snake? O Allah! I have fled from it the fleeing of a female horse from the one who rides it. “I show him the night and he shows me the moon (missing the obvious)” Do I give up the fallen hair of a female camel, and give up tied horses in their parking place? Do I catch cyclones of scorpions in their den, or do I tie the killer snakes on my bed? So, let me be sufficed from your world with my salt and loaves, for with God-wariness, I beg for my salvation. What is for `Ali and a perishing blessing, and sweetness produced from sins? I shall, alongside my Shi`a, meet Our Lord with bitter eyes and empty stomachs, “that Allah may purify the believers [through trial] and destroy the disbelievers” (3:141); and we seek refuge om Allah from wicked actions.