Ali ibn Abi Talib

so fight your passion with your reason and cover the flaw of your character with your forbearance.

deal with your enemy by bounty, for that is one of the two victories.

whoever attempts a matter by disobedience to God is the farther from what he hoped and the nearer to the coming of what he feared.

It is that I saw, in the outskirts of Dār al-Salām, near the bank of al-Zawrāʼ, the Commander of the Faithful and the prince-bee of those who profess God's oneness, ʻAlī — may God be pleased with him and ennoble his face — in a long annunciatory dream (mubashshirah), the upshot of which was that he, may God ennoble his face, was turned toward me with the gaze of solicitude and was attending to my …

So when you have believed that a reality appears in one abode in an accidental, dependent form and in another in an independent form, make that a familiarizing for yourself, by which you may break the force of your temperament’s recoiling from it at the outset of reflection — until certainty comes to you, and you ascend to the clear horizon, and see with the eye of direct vision what exposition is …

…in which they used to blow from the gate of the city of knowledge, and from the ark of bounty that came to rest upon the Jūdī of judgement and forbearance — upon the Prophet, and upon him be blessing and peace, greeting and honour.

ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib had more than one wife, and there were born to him of them several children, among them three each of whom was named Muḥammad;

and they went on with it after Islam, so that they called Ḥamzah, the Prophet's uncle, “the Lion of God” or “the Lion of the Messenger of God,” and likewise ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, for the courage of the two of them (2);

I never saw a thing without seeing God before it, or after it, or in it, or with it — each of these being ascribed to one of them.

and next to them in excellence and in the caliphate is our master ʻAlī ibn Ṭālib — may God ennoble his countenance.

It is necessary that he be of Quraysh, and the office is not confined to the Banū Hāshim, or to ʻAlī — may God ennoble his countenance.

And the truthful Messenger, God's blessing be upon him and upon his family, said, in a noble tradition mentioned by our master the Imām ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, may God ennoble his face, in a sermon of his:

Now either it signifies precisely the very thing sought and answers to it in every respect, with neither excess nor deficiency — and this is called (signification by correspondence) (*muṭābaqah*), as with the simple terms:

and likewise from ʻAlī, God be pleased with him, that he said: