Lessons from Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

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207

SERMON 207

When Amir al-mu'minin's
companions expressed displeasure about his attitude
concerning Arbitration, (1) he
said:

O' people, matters
between me and you went as I wished till war exhausted you. By
Allah, it has overtaken some of you and left others, and has
completely weakened your enemy. Till yesterday I was giving orders
but today I am being given orders, and till yesterday I was
dissuading people (from wrong acts) but today I am being
dissuaded. You have now shown liking to live in this world, and it
is not for me to bring you to what you dislike.

(1).
When the surviving forces of the Syrians lost ground and were
ready to run away from the field Muawiyah changed the whole phase
of the battle by using the Qur'an as his instrument of strategy,
and succeeded in creating such a division among the Iraqis that,
despite Amir al-mu'minin's efforts at counselling, they were not
prepared to take any forward step, but insisted on stopping the
war, whereupon Amir al-mu'minin too had to agree to arbitration.
Among these people some had actually been duped and believed that
they were being asked to abide by the Qur'an but there were others
who had become weary of the long period of war and had lost
courage. Then people got a good opportunity to stop the war, and
so they cried hoarse for its postponement. There were others who
had accompanied Amir al-mu'minin because of his temporal authority
but did not support him by heart, nor did they aim at victory for
him. There were some people who had expectations with Muawiyah,
and had started attaching hopes to him for this, while there were
some who were, from the very beginning, in league with him. In
these circumstances and with this type of the army it was really
due to Amir al-mu'minin's political ability and competence of
military control and administration that he carried the war up to
this stage, and if Muawiyah had not adopted this trick there
could have been no doubt in Amir al-mu'minin's victory because the
military power of the Syrian forces had been exhausted and defeat
was hovering over its head. In this connection, Ibn Abi'l-Hadid
writes:

Malik al-Ashtar had
reached Muawiyah and grabbed him by the neck. The entire might
of the Syrians had been smashed. Only so much movement was
discernible in them as remains in the tail of a lizard which is
killed, but the tail continues hopping right and left. (Sharh
Nahj al-balaghah, vol. 11, pp.30-31)