علي بن الحسن العبدي الكوفي

We will amuse ourselves here and move on Wednesday and join the Commander of the Faithful Ali (as) before he says the Friday prayers. While they were eating lunch, they saw a lizard. They hunted the lizard and Amr ibn Harith took it by hand, opened his palm and jokingly said, ‘This is the Commander of the Faithful! Pledge allegiance to him.’ Those seven individuals pledged allegiance to the lizard and Amr ibn Harith himself was the eighth person who pledged allegiance to the lizard. They returned on Wednesday night and arrived at Madaen on Friday. They did not disperse and were all together. The Commander of the Faithful Imam Ali (as) was delivering the Friday prayer sermon at the mosque. Once they came into the mosque, Ali (as) looked at them and said, “O people! God’s Prophet (sw) disclosed one-thousand narrations to me each of which has one-thousand gates each of which has one-thousand keys. I heard God - may His Majesty be Exalted - say, ‘One day We shall call together all human beings with their (respective) Imams…’ I swear by God that there will be eight people who shall be resurrected with their leader which will be a lizard. I could name them one by one for you if I wish.”Asbaq added, “I saw that Amr ibn Harith had become so sorry and ashamed that he held his head down just like a date palm branch.”

I heard the Messenger of Allah, O Allah, grant compensation to Muhammad and his family worthy of their services to Your cause, saying, “Al-Kufah is the skull and the spear of Allah, most Blessed, most High, and the mine of faith, thus you must accept from them. I can inform you that the Messenger of Allah stayed in Makkah one day and one night hungry. Then he went out and I went with him (the Messenger of Allah). We passed by a group of friends who were eating lunch. They said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, join us for lunch.’ He (the Messenger of Allah) said, ‘Yes, make room for your Prophet.’ He (the Messenger of Allah) sat between two men and I also sat down. He (the Messenger of Allah) took a loaf and made it into two portions, then he (the Messenger of Allah) looked at their curry and asked, ‘What your curry is made of?’ They replied, ‘It is made of eel, O Messenger of Allah.’ He (the Messenger of Allah) threw the piece of bread from his hand and left. Abu Sa‘id has said, ‘I stayed behind to find out people’s opinion. People differed. One group said that the Messenger of Allah has made it (eel) unlawful. The other group said, ‘He (the Messenger of Allah) did not make it unlawful but just left, had he made it unlawful he would have prohibitted eating it.’ He (abu Sa‘id) has said, ‘I memorized what they had said and followed running to join the Messenger of Allah, then we met a group of friends eating lunch; and they asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, join us for lunch.’ He (the Messenger of Allah) said, ‘Yes, make room for your Prophet.’ He (the Messenger of Allah) sat between two men and I also sat with him. When he took a piece of bread and looked at their curry, then asked, ‘What your curry is made of?’ They replied, ‘It is made of lizard, O Messenger of Allah.’ He (the Messenger of Allah) threw the piece of bread from his hand and left. Abu Sa‘id has said, ‘I stayed behind and people differed. They were two groups. One group said, ‘The Messenger of Allah has made it unlawful and for this reason, he (the Messenger of Allah) did not eat.’ The other group said, ‘He (the Messenger of Allah) just left. Had he made it unlawful he would have prohibited us from eating.’ I then followed the Messenger of Allah until I joined him and we passed by the foot of al-Safa’ where cooking pots were boiling. They said, ‘O Messenger of Allah if you can wait until our cooking pots are ready.’ He (the Messenger of Allah) asked them, ‘What is in your cooking pots?’ They replied, ‘Our donkeys that we used to ride, have failed to move so we slaughtered them.’ The Messenger of Allah went close and turned the cooking pots with his foot, then he (the Messenger of Allah) left fast. I stayed behind and certain ones of them said, ‘The Messenger of Allah has made the flesh of donkeys unlawful’ and others said, ‘No, he did not do so. He only emptied out your cooking pots so that you never slaughter your stumpers.’ Abu Sa‘id has said that the Messenger of Allah sent for me and when I arrived in his presence he (the Messenger of Allah) said. ‘Call for me Bilal.’ When I brought Bilal in, he (the Messenger of Allah) said, ‘O Bilal climb on abu Qubays hill and announce that the Messenger of Allah has declared, eel, lizard and domestic donkeys unlawful for food. So have fear of Allah, most Majestic, most Glorious, and do not eat of fish except what has peels and the peels have scales, because Allah, most Blessed, most High, has metamorphosed seven hundred nations who had disobeyed the executors of wills after the messengers. Four hundred of them remained on land and three hundred of them went in the sea’, then he read this verse. ‘. . . We turned their existence into ancient tales by making them disintegrate totally.’ (34:19)” (The above Hadith is from ‘ Ammah narrators and its style is very different from those of the Khassah narrators).

“What is wrong with people who changed the Sunnah (traditions) of the Messenger of Allah and deviated from his will? Do they not fear that severe suffering may befall them? He then recited the following verse of the Holy Quran. “Have you not seen (considered) those who changed the blessings (Word) of God through disbelief and led their people to destruction? (14:28). They will suffer in Hell. What a terrible place to stay! (14:29). He then said, “We are the blessings of Allah which He has granted to people. Through us will succeed those will be successful on the Day of Judgment.”