Masterpieces of Rhetoric Methood (nahj Al-balagha)

The Hypocrites

They change into many colours, and adopt many ways. In every path there is one of their victims and they have a mean to approach every heart, and they have tears for every grief. They lend each other eulogies and expect reward from each other. When they ask something they insist on it, if they blame they unveil, and if they pass a verdict they commit excess.

They have prepared for every truth a wrong way, for every erect thing a tilted, for every living being a killer, for every door a key, and for every night a lamp. They attempt to reach their greedy aims by despair, in order to maintain with it their markets, and to popularize their ornamated merchandise.

It Has Become Eternal For Them

Describing those who deserted this world:

The approach of danger do not frighten them, and the adversity of circumstances does not grieve them. They do not mind earthquakes, nor do they pay heed to thunders. They are departed and not waited. They are present but don’t attend. They had been together but are now scattered. Their accounts are unknown and their houses are silent, not because of duration of time or distance of place, but because they have been made to drink a cup (of death) which has changed their speech into dumbness, their hearing into deafness, and their movements into stillness.

They are neighbours not feeling affection for each other, and friends who do not visit each other. The bonds of their knowing each other have been worn out and the connections of their friendship have been cut asunder. Everyone of them is therefore alone although they are together, and they are strangers, even though friends. They are unaware of morning after a night or an evening after a day. The night or the day when they departed has become eternal for them.

Carrying Them Towards Their Dangers

Describing the present world:

Its dweller is a traveller, and its resident is departing. It is drifting with its people like a ship when severe winds dashes in the deep sea. Some of them sinks and die, while some others escape on the surface of the waves, where winds push them with their currents and carry them towards its horrors. So whoever has sunk cannot be restored, and whoever escapes is on the way to perdition.

They Were Of Longer Ages

Caution about the states of this world:

So now, certainly I caution you against this world for it is sweet and green, surrounded with lusts, is ornamented with hopes and decorated with deception.

No person gets a rejoicing from this wold but successdes it with tears, and no one gets its comforts in the front but to face hardships in the rear. It is just worthy of this world that in the morning it supports a man but in the evening it does not recognize him. If one side is sweet and pleasant the other side is bitter and distressing. No one secures enjoyment. From its freshness but he has to face hardship from its calamites. No one would pass the evening under the wing of safety but that his morning would be under the feathers of the wing-tips of fear.

How many a man relied on it but it distressed him; how many a man felt peaceful with it but it knocked him down; how many a man were prestigeous but it made him mean and how many a person was proud but it made him humilliated. Its realm is spoliated., the strong in it is defeated and the rich is afflicted with misfortune. Its neighbour is plundered.

Are you not (residing) in the houses of those resided before you, who were of longer ages, more lasting traces, and farther hopes, were more in numbers and had greater armies. How they devoted themselves to this world and what adevotion it was how they showed preference to it and what a preferance it was! Then they departed it without any provision that could convey them through. Did you informed that she accepted to pay a ranoom for them or had she given them any support, or afforded them a good company?

Woe to your inhabited streets

Describing the destiny of Barrah

Woe to your inhabited streets and decorated houses with their wings like the wings of vultures and trunks like the trunks of elephants; from those people whose murdered is not mourned and their lost is not searched for. I have turned this world over on its face, valued, it according to its (low) value, and looked at it with its own eye.

O’ my Allah! Our mountains have dried up Seeking rain, full of kindness, sympa-thy, humbleness to the Creator of the Cosmos and the glory of existence O’ my Allah! Surely our mountains have dried up and our earth has become dusty. Our cattle are thirsty and are bewidered in their enclosures. They are moaning like the moaning of mothers for their dead sons. They are tired of going to their meadows and longing for their watering place. O’ my Allah! Have mercy on the groan of the groaning and the yearn of the yearning.

O’ my Allah! We have come out to Thee when the years of drought have crowed over us like thin camels, and clouds have disappointed us. Thou art the hope for the afflicted and succour for the seeker. We call thee when the people have lost hopes, cloud has been denied and cattle have perished, that do not punish us for our deeds and do not call to account for our sins, and spread Thy mercy over us through raining clouds, rain fed blossoming, amazing vegetation, and heavy down pours with which you enliven what have died and restor with it all what has been lost.

O’ my Allah, give rain from Thee which should be life giving. Satisfying, thorough, wide-scattered, purified, blissful, plentiful and invigorating. Its vegetation should be exuberant, its branches full of fruits and its leaves green.

With it Thou reinvigorates the weak among Thy slaves, and revive the dead among Thy cities. O’ my Allah! Irrigate us with which our high lands get covered with green herbage, streams get flowing, our sides grow green, our fruits thrive, our cattle prosper, our farflung areas get watered and our dry areas get its benefit, with Thy vast blessing!

Backbiting

Preventing the backbiting of people:

Those who do not commit sins should take pity on sinners and other disobedient people. Gratefulness to Allah should be mostly their indulgence. How it would be with the absent who blames his absent brother and disgraced him with his affliction.

O’ slave of Allah! Do not be quick in exposing anyone’s sin for he may be forgiven for it and do not feel yourself safe even for a small sin as you may be punished for it!

Today Goes and Tomorrow Comes

Know, O’ slaves of Allah! That your oneself is a watcher over you; your limbs are watchmen and truthful vigil-keepers who preserve your actions and the numbers of your breaths. The gloom of a dark night cannot conceal you from them, nor can closed doors hide you from them. Surely tomorrow is close to today.

Today departs with all that it has and tomorrow will com following it. It is as though everyone of you has reached the place of his solitude. So what a house of loneliness a residence of solitary and an isolated exile!

Alas! The Journey is Far

It is related that when Dhirar ibn Hamzah Al-Dibabi went to Mu’awiyah and Mu’awiyah asked from him about Imam Ali, Dhirar said: I stand witness that I have seen him on several oceasions when night had spread and he was standing in the niche (of the mosque) holding his beard, groaning like a man bitten by a snake and weeping as a grieved man, saying:

O’ world, o’ world! Get away from me. Why do you present yourself to me? Or are you eager for me? May you don’t get that opportunity to impress me. Deceive other than I. I have no concern with you. Your life is short, your importance is little and hope in you is mean humble. Alas! The provision is little, the way is long, the journey is far, and the goal is hard to reach! The summoning is difficult.

The Nature Of Existenc

A sermon indicating imam’s deep realization of nature and conditions of existence:

(in this world) with every dosage there is a choke and with every morsel there is chocking. You do not get any benefit in it except by foregoing another and no one among you advances a day in age except by the taking away of a day from his life. No meals is renewed to one unless a previous one was exhusted. No mark apears for him unless a mark disappears. Nothing new comes into being unless a new becomes old. No new crop comes up unless a crop has been reaped. Those roots are gone whose off-shoots we are.

He Has Run in it A Luminous Moon

Imam recalls the creation of the earth and the sky:

When Almighty created the openings of atmosphere, expanse of horizons and strata of winds. He flowed into it a water whose waves were stormy and whose surges leapt one over the other. He loaded it on the dashing wind and breaking typhoons. Then Almighty created forth a wind and intensified its motion. Then He ordered the wind to raise up deep waters and to intensify the waves of the oceans. So the wind churned it like the churning of curd and pushed it fiercely into the horizons throwing its front position on the rear and the stationary on the flowing till its level was raised.

Then He decorated them with stars and the light of meteors and hung in it the shining sun and a luminous moon under a revolving sky, and a moving ceiling.

The Rising Of Water

Describing Allah’s Omniscience

Allah knows the groals of besats in the forests, the sins of slaves in seclusions, the intersecting of whales in deep seas and the clashing of water by stormy winds!

Creation Of Bat

An example of Allah’s fine production, wonderful creation and deep sagacity which He has shown us in these bats which keep hidden in the daylight although daylight reveals everything else, and are mobile in the night although the night shuts up every other living being; and how their eyes get dozzled and cannot make use of the light of the sun so as to be guided in their movements and so as to reach their known places through the direction provided by the sun.

Allah has prevented them from moving in the brightness of the sun and confined them to their places of hiding instead of going out at the time of its shining consequently, they keep their eyelids down in the day and use night as a lamp and go with its help in search of their livelihood. The darkness of night does not obstruct their sight nor does the gloom of darkness prevent them from movement. As soon as the sun removes its veil and the light of morning appears, and the rays of its light enter upon the lizzards in their holes, the bats pull down their eyelids on their eyes and live on what they had collected in the darkness of night.

Glorified is He who has made the night as day for them to seek livelihood and made the day for rest and stay. He has given them wings of flesh with which, at the time of need, they rise upwards for flying. They look like the ends of ears without feathers or canes. Of course, you can see the veins quite distinctly. They have two wings which are neither too thin so that get torn in flying, nor too thick so that they prove heavy.

When they fly their young ones hold on to them and seek refuge with them, getting down when they get down and rising up when they rise. The young does not leave them till its limbs become strong, its wings can support it for rising up, and it begins to recognize its places of living and its interest. Glorified is He who creates everything without imitation of a previous pattern of some one else.

Creation of the Peacock

The most amazing among them in its creation is the peacock, which Allah had created in the most precise symmetry arranged its hues in the best arrangement with wings whose ends are inter-leaved together and whose tail is long. When it moves to its female it spreads out its folded tail and raises it up so as to overshadow its head, as if it were the sail of a boat being pulled by the sailor. It feds proud of its colours and swaggers with its movements.

You would imagine its feathers to be sticks of silvers and what he has grown on it like suns and their halos of pure gold and green emeralds liken it to what land germinates, you would say that it is a bouquet of flowers collected of every flowers of spring. If you likened them to cloths, they would be like embroide red garments or amazing variegated clothes of Yemen. If you liken it to ornaments then you would say like stones of different colours encompassed with ornamented silver., the peacock walks with vanity and pride, browsing through its tail and wings and laughs admiring the beauity of its dress and the hues of its scarf.

But when it casts its glance at its legs it cries loudly with a voice which indicates its call for help and displays its true grief, because its legs are thin like the legs of Indo Persian cross-bred cocks.

On the place its comb it has a green ornamented crest. The loop hole of its neck is like a pitcher stretch up to its belly is like the hair-dye of Yemen in colour or like silk cloth put on a polished mirror which looks as if it has been covered with a black veil, except that on account of its excessive lustre and extreme brightness it appears that a lush green colour has been mixed with it.

Along the openings of its ears there ia a line of bright white with the colour of daisy. With its whiteness it shines on the black background. There is hardly a hue from which it has not taken a bit and improved it further by regular polish, lustere, silken brightness and brilliance. It is therefore like scattered blossoms which have not been seasoned by the rains of the spring or the sun of the summer.

It may sheds its plumage and puts off its dress. They all fall away one by one and grow again. They fall away from the feather stems like the falling of leaves from twigs, and then they begin to join in together and grow till they return to the state that existed before their falling away. They don’t change its previous colours, nor does any colour occur in other than its own place.

If you carefally look at one of the hairs of its feathers it would look like a red rose, another time an emerald green and sometime a golden yellow. How can sharpness of intellect reach the descrip-tion of this, or how can the faculty of mind get to it, or the utterances of describers manage to tell of it. Even its smallest parts have made it impossible for the imagination to pich them out or for tongues to describe them.

Creation of the Ant

Look at the ant with its small body and delicate form. It can hardly be seen in the corner of the eye, nor by the perception of the imagination how it moves on the earth and strive for its livelihood. It carries the grain to its hole and deposits it in its place of stay. It collects during its hot summer for its cold winter, and during strength for the peroid of its weakness.

Its livelihood is guaranteed, and it is fed according to fitness. Allah, the kind, doer not forget it and (Allah the lover) does not deprive it, even though it may be in dry stone or fixed rocks. If you have thought about its digestive tracts in its high and low parts, the rib cartilages of its belly, and its eyes and its ears in its head you would feel difficulty in describing it. Exalted is He who made it stand on its legs and erected it on its pillars (of limbs). No other originator took part with Him in its origination and no one having power assisted Him in its creation.

If you tread on the paths of your imagination and reach its extremity it will not lead you anywhere except that the Originator of the ant is the Originator of the date-palm, because everything has (the same) precision and detail, and every living being has little difference! Nothing, the grand and the delicate, the heavy and the light, the strong and the week, but to Him are the same!

Creation of the Locust

If I wish I can tell about the locust. Allah gave it two red eyes, lighted for them two moon-like Iris made for it small ears, opened for it a suitable mouth and gave it keen sense, gave it two canines to cut with, and two sickle to grip with. Farmers are afraid of it in the matter of crops since they cannot drive it away even though they may join together. Till it at last enters the fields and satisfies its desires (of hunger) from them although its body is not equal to a thin finger.

Forgive Me

A Supplication of Imam

O’ my Allah! Forgive me what Thou knowest about me more than I do. If I return thou return to forgiveness. My Allah forgive me that with what I sought nearness to Thee with my tongue then my heart diverged from my intention. My Allah forgive me gesures with the eye, vile utterances, inattentions of mind and slips of speech.

What have I suffered

Spoken on the evening of the day in which he was struck:

I was sitting when aslumber overtook me. I saw the Prophet of Allah appear befor me, and I said: “O’ Prophet of Allah! What a crookedness and antaganism I had faced from your nation. The prophet of Allah said: “Invoke (Allah) evil upon them”, I said, “Allah may change them for me with better ones, and change me for them with a worse one.

Forgiveness of the killer

Made shortly before his martyrdom when he had been fatally wounded by a blow from the sword of Ibn Muljam:

Yesterday I was your companion and today I am a lesson for your, while tomorrow I shall be leaving you. If I survive I shall be in charge of my blood, and if I die then death is a promised event. If I forgive, it is for me a means of nearness (to Allah) and for you a good act. Therefore do forgive!

Oppressed

Describing the oppression he under-goes:

I have been continually oppressed since Allah chooses that the prophet dies till today. I was as well oppressed before Islam: my brother Aqil was striking me when my brother committed a wrong.

The three Oxen

We see to mention here this proverb, as it is one of the most beautiful of Arab proverbs spoken on the tongue of animal. Then because it is the first proverb that Ibn Al-Muqaffa’ mentioned in his well-known book ‘Kallilah and Dimnah’. It is a call for unity and prevention of disorder,. It is strange that this attributed proverb has not been mentioned in Nahj Al-Balaghah, despite the many editions nor in the books whose authors rectify what has been passed by the collector of ‘Nahj’.

There had been three oxen in a jungle; one is white, the others are balck and red. There was also a lion, which could not win over them (to eat) because of their unity against him. The lion told the black ox and the red ox: nothing indicates our being here in this jungle except the white ox, as its colour is clear, but my colour is like your colour; if you leave me eat it the jungle will be untroubled for us only!

They told him: as you like, so eat him. Then the lion ate the white ox. Days passed, the lion told the red, my colour is like yours; let me eat the black ox so that the jungle becomes for us alone! The red ox agreed telling the lion to eat him! Then he told the red ox: “I am eating you inevitably”! He said: let me shout three times. So he said: “Do it”. He shouted: “Beware: I had been eaten the day the white ox was eaten”.

([^1]) Hajar: is a city in Bahrain full of palm trees. He says you were like the person who carries dates to its source and calls his master to a duel in archery – they are proverbs used for the carrier of a thing to its origin and the one who claims one who claims learning more than his teacher.