Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Existential Unity

What was at a distance in it was merged in a unity whose sides are perpetuity and eternity.

Literature is originality in thinking, sense, imagination and taste, and it conncts between its author and other creatures in an absolute exsitential unity; then it expresses itself with a life rising on principles of this unity, and with an aesthectic style, which is a living incarnation of the interaction between the author and the cosmos.

As science has been dividing, art has been uniting. When science was seeing things as they are creatures that should be separated and scattered, art was looking at things as they are creatures divided outwordly by integrated in their sources and reality which leads to the idea of cosmic comprehensiveness and complete association among the different existence aspects. Literature has but this comprehensiveness!

If philosophers have discerned existence unity during late periods, the literary man had discerned it since man has been, and since the seeds of art and sensations of literature had been at his bottoms. That is because the evidence of philosopher is his reason and syllogism both of which are limited considening the living human structure. The evidence of an author is his feeling and inspiration, both of which is a quick flaming appearance of whole exitence. Then, the philosopher’s viewpoint at the cosmos as an interacting integrated unity is but a superficial view in comparison with the author’s one. The philosopher witnesses, watches analogizes then records. His mean is the mind alone; the mind is a thing of the living human, rather say it is a side of him. The author interacts with the cosmos and life in a direct, continuous interaction as he senses and ask inspiration with his mind, feeling, imagination, temper and taste as a whole, namely with his whole existence. He is, therefor, prior and deeper. So the author is the philosopher’s master: his master and guide since he has existed and his master and guide forever!

If this is the matter, and it is as such, Ali bin Abi Talib is agreat one of this society in viewpoint and style: the society of eternal authors who look at the stars of the sky, the sands of desert, the water of seas, the garment of nature they discover suddenly that they are things of their selves, these selves which feel that there is in the cosmos one thorough existential power that has been since eternity in perpetuity and will remain forever.

Michael Na’eemah, who represents the artist’s power to feel deeply of pantheism in our contemporary Arabic literature, says: “Rather how could he been author who doesn’t sense his roots in perpetuity and eternity, and senses what has passed and what will come, this sense this feeling of sublime beauty which warps up all creatures, inspite of the differences in their aspects in one scarf, is what you can see in the masterpieces of literature genius, whatever the topics of these masterpieces varies whatever their conditions differ from each other. So if you hear the voice of the great poet speaking on Christ’s mouth, saying: “Think of the lilies of the field, how they grow; but I tell you that even Sulaiman in his glory was not dressing as one of them!”, then you have heared one of the greatest voice, the cosmos, has heared realized the most interesting sight piercing the bottoms of the whole beauty and you will wonder: “How can dust, reocks and clouds of sky bring such a splendor and beauty, the beauty of field lilies while they are growing, if this panthism had not been, and if beauty had not been the axis of the one existence, and the joint of its parts from beginning to end? It is, at the same time, the theme of thinking and feeling to the artist, the small creator!

Likewise is the wonderfal saying of christ when some people came to him with a prostitute who had made herself opened to punishment according to their laws:

Anyone of you who has not committed asin should come and throw stones at this prostitute!”

When you hear the great poet saying of Sulaiman bin David’s tongue:

“A generation goes, another one comes, the earth exists for ever. The sun rises and sets, then it hastens to its position from which it goes out. The wind goes towards the south, and rotates to the north, rotates and circles in its journey then returns its circles! All rivers head for the sea, the sea is not full, then they belong to the position from which the rivers flow there so as to flow again:

And when you hear him saying:

“I am the flower of sharoon and the lily of vallyes, like a lily among thorns, so my sweetheart among girls like an apple in the trees of wood, so my love among the boys. I longed for, then I sat in his shadow, and his fruit is sweet in my mouth. Flowers have appeared in the earth, and time of harvest came, the voice of pigeon has been heard in our land.”

“O’ my dove which is in the pits of rock and secrets of castles, show me your countenance, make me hear your voice, as your voice is nice and your visage sweet, until the day breezes and shadows are defeated. O’ my love return and be like a deer or some stag on Bater Mount.

“Beautiful you are, O’ my sweat heart! Beautiful you are and your eyes are like two doves behind your veil, your hair is like a herd of goats, appearing from Jal’ad Mount.

Your lips are like a bunch of scarlet, your speech is sweet. Your checks are like one-half promgranate behind your veil. Your neck is like David’s tower buit for weapons a thousand shields were footened to it all the shields of tyrrants. Unitl the day breezes and shadows vanquished go ahead to Al-Mar Mount and Al-Labban Hill come with me from lebanon, O’bride. Look with me from Lebanon, from Amanah’s head from Harmoon’s head, from folds of lions, from mountains of tigers. Your lips drop honey, O’ bride, and beneath your tongue, a honey and yogurt the fragrance of your dress is like that of Lebanon.

“Fountain of Paradise, a well of living water and rivers from Lebanon, O’ north wind blow, O’ South come, and breeze upon my paradise so that its sweets are poured!”

If you heard that, and realized it rightly, you understood that Sulaiman dirnks his poetry from the same fountain from which Christ has been satisfied, even if the topic differs.

Also one of that is the saying of Victor Hugo, one the great genius artists after the French Revolution, it is a dialogue among the planets in which the peot makes us see the human as being lost, and that he together with the earth he live on, are to disappear, because they are diminishing inside the wideness of the one wonderful cosmos:

What is this worthless weak voice which whispers?

O’ earth, what is the aim of your circling in your narrow, finite horizon?

Are you but a grain of sand accompanied by a whit of ash?

As to me, I am in the blue huge sky, drawing a huge frame, so the spacial distance, being frightened and terrified, my beaty is deformed!

And my halo, which changes nights’ paleness into sanguineous redness like balls of gold rising and decreasing, interchanging in the holder’s hand,

They go away, collect, and catch seven of the great huge moons!

And here is the sun answering:

Be silent, there in a corner of skies, O’ planets, you are my citizens!

Be quiet! I am the guardian and you are citizens.

You are like two cars running side by side to enter the door.

Within the smallest volcano I have, Mars and the earth they Enter without catching sides of the entrance!

Here are the stars of the small bear glittering like

Seven livnig eyes, having suns instead of grains!

Here is the road of galaxy drawing a beautiful,

Flourishing forest full of sky stars!

O’ lower planets, my position is extremely far from yours,

So that my fixed bright stars, which are similar to groups of spreading islands in water,

And my numerous suns, with respect to your incapable weak eyesight,

In a distant corner in the sky, similar to a sad desert in which sound disappears,

Are not but a slight of red ashes has spread at night!

Here are the stars of another galaxy depicting worlds that are not less than those worlds, spreading in the air; that surrounding which has no sand or stone in its sides, and its waves go, yet do not ever return to its seasides. Lastly here is the god speaking:

“I need not to do anything but to blow and so everything becomes dark.”([1] )

And here is what Ali bin Abi Talib says of the peacock’s description:

“The moust amazing among them in its creation is the peacock which Allah has created in the most precise symmetry, and piled up 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 folded toil and raises it up so as to overshadow its head. You would imagine its feathers to be sticks of silver and what he has grown on it like suns and their halos of pure gold and green emeralds. If you liken it them to what land germinates, you would say that it is a bouguet collected of evey flowers of spring. If you likened them to clothes, they would be like embroidered garments or amazing variegated clothes of Yemen. If you liken it to ornaments you would say, like stones of different colours with encompassed with ornamented silver: the peacock walks with vanity and pride, browsing through its tail and wings laughs admiring the beauty of its dress and the hues of its scarf,. But when it casts its glance at its legs it cries loudly with a vioce which indicated 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 of its comb it has a green ornamented crest the loophole of its neck is like a pitcher, its goblet and its stretch upto its belly is like the hair-dye of Yemen in colour or like a silk cloth put on a polished mirror.

Alonge the opening of its ears there is a line of bright white with the colom of daisy bright white 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, lustre, silken brightness and brilliance. It is therefor like scattered blossoms which have not been seasoned by the rains of spring or the sun of 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 together and grow till they return to the state that existed before their falling away. The don’t change its previous colours, nor does any color occur in the other than its own place. If you carefully look at one of the hairs of its feathers it would look like a red rose, another time an emerald green and sometimes a golden yellow. How can sharpness of intellect reach the description of this, or how can the faculty of mind get to it or the utterances of describers manage to tell of it.

And here is a slight of his speaking on the creation of the sky and the earth:

He brought forth creatures by His omnipotence, Dispersed winds through His compassion, and Has made firm the shaking earth with rocks. When Almighty Then originated the horizons, expanse of firmament and strata of winds, He flowed into it Water whose waves were stormy and whose surges leapt one over the other. He loaded it on dashing wind and breaking typhoons. Then Almighty created forth wind and made its movement sterile, Perpetuate its position, intensified its motion and spread it far and wide. 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 firmament throwing its front position on the rear and its motionless to its heaving.

I appeal to you not to waste these excellent masterpieces which Imam’s genius reveals to the human being and portrait for him how the grand and fine creatures are equal, so are the sun and the moon, the water and stone, the big and the small one, the easy and the difficult thing, in the meaning of existence. And how they all take part in the description of being, so they are integrated co-operating to produce the great chant the chant of the one existence which the big lofty tree can not be glorified at the expense of the small growing plant, and it is inadequate to glorify the broad sea and scorn the stream whose water is lost among herbs and stones.

Ali says:

“You actuate your mind until it Reachs its extremity it will not lead you anywhere, Except that the Originator of ant is the Originator of the date-palm and that not the strong and the delicate and he heavy and the light and the strong and the weak in his creation but the same, So is the sky, the air, the winds and the water. Therefore, look at the sun, the moon, vegetation, plants, water, stone, the alternation of this night and day, the pouring forth of these streams, the large number of the mountains, the height of these peaks … etc.”

Then listen to him saying:

“You do not get any boon except by forfeituring another and no one of you advances a day in age except by canelling another of his life. Nothing more is added to his eating unless it reduces what was there before. No effect appears for him unless a mark disappears. Nothing is renewed to one unless a new thing of what he has becomes old. No new crop comes up unless a crop has been reaped. Ancestors had gone whose branches we are”.

It is the one existence speaking about itself on Ali’s tong we:

In my memory this simile between an extract of Amroa Al-Qais (peotical works), and many extracts of Ibn Abi Talib’s literature; they all pour out into the meaning of thorough existential unity. Then it adds to it by a unique start to overcome the oppressor and aggressor, to support the weak of plants, the land, the animal, and low land until existence straightens up strong and brilliant.

The cosmic poet Amroa Al-Qais tells first in summary:

“I sat for that flash watching from which place rain comes, and how wonderful what I saw! Rain came from four sides, extremely heavily. I saw it from a distance; its right was, as I think, on Qatan Mount, its left of Al-sitar and yadbal mount. Water went streaming heavily here and there, hence its floods overturn trees in a violent manner, and it passes with splashes by Al-Qanan Mount. Thus obliging its ibexes to descend.

Afterwards the poet says:

O’ Tayma, deserted with its palms’ stems, no castle left but rock-buildings,

Thubair, during downpour like and old man covered with a garment,

The peak of Mujaimer at morning due to rain, flood like spindle’s circle,

The barren desert threw everything, so came Yemeni with coloured dresses,

Valley’s birds, morning, ane like ecstasy of bright nectar,

Beasts at evening as fit they were drowned on its remote borders like roots of onion.

You see that Amroa Al-Qais watches how rain makes all palm trees of Tayma fall, and sweeps its buildings so that nothing was left but that of great rocks. As for Thubair Mount, proud of its highness over low surrounding land, rain covered it except its head and hence it seemed like some people head wrapped in a striped garment. Rain continues its circumambulate round the mountain, then it throws all its weights in deserts which stayed for a time barren, having no plant or water, but it grows herbs, coloured flowers similar to coloured sweet clothes that a yemeni merchant spreads before people’s eyes. Rain did well to these barren deserts; so they became brilliant meadows, where birds sing highly ecstatically. As for beasts which were allowing themselves to prey upon weak animals and birds, rain has humiliated them and drowned them, so they flooded on water like roots of land onion.

Thus rain seems in the great pre-islamic poet’s thought, which pursuse its juorney till the end, as if it represents power of controlling existence. He is strong, just, compassionate, support-ing the weak represented by low land and small birds, so it fills the valley with plants, flowers, and colour, and brings happiness to the hearts of birds, so they glee and sing. It plays with the strong, represented by mountains, which it restrains from every side and weakens their concern. It destroys the violent attackers represented by wild animals, so it subdues and drown them, and makes them worthless.

Here is Ali, who feels of rain what Amroa Al-Qais had feel of it as representing the felt just compassionate power, as he says in the end of a long speech:

“When cloud threw down all the water it has loaded up Allah grew vegetation on the plain earth and herbage on dry mountains. As a result, the earth felt pleased with its decorated gardens and boast of her dress of soft vegetation and the ornaments of its blossoms. Allah made all this as means of sustenance for the people and feed for the cattle.”

And Ali sums up the distant idea in what Amroa’ Al-Qais witnessed at the doing of rain to the mountains and beasts with this word: “Whoever feels proude over time, time humiliates him.”

These masterpieces which passed in this chapter, stem from one source despite the difference in their topics, the voriety of their goals, and the disparity of their circumstances. They all have this originality in thought, sense imagination, and taste which connect between its author and the whole creatures within an absolute existential unity.

I think wherever you go in Ali bin Abi Talib’s literature you feel this originality which always prompts him to recognize the hidden connections latent behind aspects of life and death, behind the forms which differ at the one fixed truth wich does not differ. His forceful integrated disposition is but the disposition of the true literary man who wants to intensify existence in his mind and heart alike, on basics that have no room for new and old.

It is evident from Nahj Al-Balaghah that Ibn Abi Talib’s sociological and ethical theories, directly or indirectly, stem from this one comprehensive look to the existence. How close is death to life in the norm of existence. How close are the two sides of good and evil. How often do sadness and happiness come together in one heart at the same time, so do idleness and activity in one body. Many a remote one be nearer than a near one” - in Ibn Abi Talib’s literature - and many a hope may lead to deprivation”, and a trade may lead to loss.” It is not surprising the possibility of Ibn Abi Talib’s saying on people: “Whoever digs a hole for his brother will fall in it, and whoever violates another’s veil, the defects of his house revealed, and whoever prides himself on people will be humillialed.

The one existantial circle decides on people, things, and creatures as a whole to be subjected to its balanced basis which Imam realized in his intuition, mind, and taste alike, in an amazing realiztion, what it conveys of clarity. Then due to its plentifulness in supplying its realizer with power on revelation, so he expresses this realization with words forming mathematical principals that deal with phenomena and penetrate them to the fixed deep existential origins behind them.

Hence Ibn Abi Talib equals with the peaks of existence on one level in viewing the one life, in the deep feeling of one existence, and then his literature is a successive cries starting from a genius heart hoping to penetrate things to see its bottoms, so as to be sure of this realization, and to understand that what differs each other is constant on a basis, and what differs being stemmed from an origin, and what was at a distance was connected in a unity whose sides are perpetuity and eternity.

Style and Oratorical Genius

Such an eloquence if it speaks of rebuke it will pounce on the tongue of storm violently! And if it threatens spoil and spoilers it will explode into volcanoes having lights and sounds. And if it calls for contemplation, it will associate with your source of sense and origin of thought and so it drives you to what it wants and connects you with the cosmos fitly.

Form incorporates with meaning as heat does with fire, light with the sun, air with air; you are not before it but like a person before the flood while it slopes, the sea as it surges and the wind as it encircles.

But when he speaks to you on the splendour of existence and beauty of creation it writes, on your heart, with an ink of the stars of the sky.

Some expression has the gleam of flash, and the smile of the sky during the nights of winter.

This is as to the subject. As for style, Ali bin Abi Talib is the magician of performance literature can not be without style, and the structure is innate to meaning, and the image is not less than the substance. And which art with its conditions of directing is less in concern than the conditions of the subject.

Ali bin Abi Talib’s portion of artistic taste, or the aesthetic sense, is rare in existence. This taste was the natural controlling measure for his literary disposition, as for his disposition, it is one of those who have talent and originality, who see, hence feel and realize then their tongues start ahead with what their hearts surge and the perceptions of their sens to show in a spontaneous rush. Therefore Ali’s literature was charactarized by faithfulness and so was his life. Faithfulness is but the first feature of the unique art and the measure of style which does not deceive.

The conditions of rhetoric, which is the fitness of speech for the situation, has not come together for an Arabic literary man as they had for Ali bin Abi Talib. His composition is an ideal for this rhetoric after the Quran. It is succinct with clarity, strong, vigorous, perfectly harmonized related to what is between its expressions, meanings, aims agreement, sweet, in tone at the air, having a musical effect. It eases and softens at positions which do not need hardship. It becomes hard and violent in other positions especially the hour of speaking on hypocrites, trickers, and this world seekers at the expense of the poor and the oppressed, and holders of lost rights. Ali’s style is frank like his heart and mind, faithful like his intention, so it is not surprising to be a method for rhetoric.

Ali’s style reached a level in sincerity that even rhyme became above artificiality and affectation. So it is, despite the plentifulness of interchanging, rhymed sentences, far from artistry and nearer to be of overflowing disposition.

Look to this rhymed speech and what it contains of soundness of disposition: “Allah knows the uproar of beasts in the deserts, the sins of people in seclusions, the clashes of whales in deep seas and the popple of waters by stormy winds”. Or to this speech of one of his sermons: “So is the sky and the air, the winds and the water, so look at the sun and the moon, vegetation and plants, water and stone, the succession of this night and day, the springing of these seas, the large number of the mountains, the height of their peaks, the diversity of these languages, and the variety of tongues…etc”. I plea to you to keep this rhyme which flows spontanously then he decorated them with piercing stars and ran through them a shining sun and an effulgent moon in a revolving orbit and a moving ceiling…etc.” If you try to change a rhymed word in all these wonders with another unrhymed one will know how its shining fades and its beauty faints, and taste loses its originality and accuracy which are the evidence and measure. Rhyme in these Allawiyan speeches is an aristic necessity which disposition requires, that disposition which intermixed with artificility highly as if they are of one metal which changes into poetry, having rhythms and tunes accompanying meaning with verbal images of their atmosphere and nature.

There are marvels in Imam’s rhyme which add melody on melody, in a nice way and dissolves the effect in effect in refrains which nothing is more rhythmical on hearing than them, or more loved in reverberation. An example of that is what we have mentioned of his rhymes before. Then here are these words, delicious to the ear and taste alike: “I am a new day, and I am a witness upon you, hence do through me what is good and say what is good.”

If we say that Ali’s style has frankness of meaning, eloquence of performance, soundness of taste, we indicate to the reader to return to this Masterpieces of Nahj Al-Balaghah to see how Ali’s words explode from sources whose bottoms are for in their material, and in which a wonderful artistis dress it undulates and runs. Take thses nice expressions of his speech: “Man is hidden under his tongue” and his saying: “longanimity is a kinsfolk”, or his saying: that whose trunk softened his branches thickened or his saying:

“Every container beeomes narrower with what is put in it except the container of knowledge as it becomes wider, or his saying “if a mountain loves me, it will crumble” or in these wonderful sayings: “knowledge guards you, while you have to guard wealth. Many a man is enchanted by good speech of him. When this world advances to anyone (with its favours) it attributes to him other’s merits; and when it turns away from him it deprives him of his own merites” All people should be equal in right before you. Do good and do not despise any part of it because the small part of it is big and the little amount of it is much.

The warehousers of wealth have perished although they are alive no rich person has been relished with but with which a poor has suffered of hunger.

Then listen to this expression which reaches the peak of artistic beauty as he wanted to deseribe his ability in disposing of kufah city however he likes he said: “Nothing (is left to me) but kufah I grasp it and spread it out).

You can see, in these sayings, an originality of thought and expression; this originality which always accompanies the true literary man and He does not miss it unless he has missed the literary charcacter itself.

Ali’s style reaches the peak of beauty in oratorical situations, namely the situations in which his vigorous sentiments break out, his imagination glows hot pictures of the events of life that he had experienced popple in it. Thus rhetoric fills his heart, and flows out on his tongue like the outflowing of seas. His style is characterized, in the situations like these by repetition seeking avowal and influence, and the use of synonyms, the choosing of lucid resounding words. Somethime the different kinds of expression atternate varying from statement to interrogation exclamation, to condemnation. Places of stop are strong, and healing to the psyche. This has the meaning of rhetoric and the spirit of art. Take an example of which, the famous jihad sermon, with which Ali addressed people when Sufyan bin Awf Al-Asadi raided upon Al-Anbar city in Iraq and killed his governor there:

This is the brother of Ghamid whose horses have reached Alanbaar and killed Hassan ibn Hassan Al-Bakri. They have removed your horses from their armory garrison, and killed righteous men of you.

“I have been told that the person of them has been breaking into the house of Muslim women and allied women taking off her anklet and her bracelet her necklace and her earrings; then they got back laden with wealth no one of them wounded and no blood of them was shed. If any Muslim dies of grief after all this he is not to be blamed but rather to me the matter is worthy of death.

How strange! how strange! By Allah it put one’s heart to death and brings grief to see the agreement of those people on their wrong and your dispersion from your right. Woe and grief befall you. As you have become a target at which arrowa are shot. You are raided on and don’t raid on, you are invaded but you don’t invade. Allah is disobeyed and you are contented with it.

Look to Imam’s ability in these summed up words. He advances gradually in stirring his hearers’ feeling till he reaches with them to what he wants. He proceeded through way having eloquence of performance and power of influence. He tells his people of Sufyan bin Awf’s invasion of Al-Anbar, which implies dishonour that afflick them. Then he fells them that this aggressor killed Amir Al-Muminin’s governor among others, and he is not satisfied, rather he inserted his sword in many necks of their men and families.

In the second paragraph of the sermon, Imam went to the position of Zeal for the hearers, to the impulse of determination and ardour of every Arab’s self, that is woman’s honour. Ali knows that some Arabs do not sacrifice themselves but to protect a woman’s reputation a young woman’s honour, yet he scolds those people for sitting without protecting the woman whose shelter was violated by invadors and they went safely without any wound or loss of life.

Then he shows what feels of astonishment and confusion, about a strange matter as his enemies cling to the wrong and support it, they adopt evil and so invade Al-Anbar to practice it, while his champions slacken in assissting the right, they let it down and fail to defend it.

It is natural that Imam gets angry in such a situation, so his phrase carries all the anger agitated in his self, hence it comes hotly, severe, rhymed, tornapart, malcontant “Woe and grief befall you. You have become the target at which arrows are shot. You are raided on you do not raidon. You are invaded and you do not invade. Allah is being disobeyed you are contented with it.

His passion may arouse and break, some of which crowds the other like these successive torn up words: “I never felt weak, coward, nor did I betray or being languid.” And this passion may be burnt with a rebellious pain which comes from people for whom he wanted welfare. While they didn’t want it for them-selves due to aheedlessness in their minds, and weakness in their determination, so he addresses them with this furious, rebellious speech, saying: “What is the matter with me! I see you wakeful but sleeping, present but absent, hearing but deaf and speaking but dumb…etc.”

Arab orators are many, and oratory is one of literary arts which had been known during periods of pre-islamic and Islam, especially in the era of the Prophet and Prudent Caliphes as they were in need of it. Yet the great orator of the Mohammedon era is the Prophet, without dispute. As for the prudent Caliphes and the following of Arab periods as a whole, no one reached the extent Ali bin Abi Talib has reached in this respect. The esay uttering, which Ali had, was an element of his character, so was the powerful eloquence for what is included of the elements of disposition and artificiality a like. However Allah facilitated for him the complete equipment which oratory requires of other constituents that we mentioned before. Allah characterized him with sound nature, sublime taste, and fascinating eloquence, then provisions of knowledge which Ali was distinguished from his mates, right evidence, irrefutable power of persuasion, and rare genius in improvisation. Add to that his truthfulness which has no limits, which is a necessity in every successful serman, as well as his numerous painful experiences which revealed, to his great mind, people’s natures, morals, and society’s features and impulses. Then there is the solid belief which is hard to be complied with, and that deep pain mingled with deep sympathy, and purity of heart, soundness of conscience and noblity of aim.

It is hard to find, in the personalities of history, one who gathered all these conditions that make their holder a unique orator, except Ali bin Abi Talib and very few people. You are not to do anything but to review these conditions, then review famous orators in the two worlds the eastern and the western, so as to realize that our speech is right with no exaggeration.

Ibn Abi Talib, on pulpit, is calm, very confident in himself and in the justice of his speech. Then he has a strong acumen, quich-witted, discovers people’s inner selves, the desires of spirits, and the bottoms of hearts, his heart is overflowing with feelings of liberty, humanity, and virtues. When his magical tongue started off in what his heart arose, he furnished people with it stirs in them sleeping virtues and faint feelings.

As for his oratorical composition, it can not be described except that it is the basis of Arabic rhetoric. Abu Hilal Al-Askari, author of “Al-Sina’atayn” says: “The importance is not in mentioning the meanings only, but it is in the goodness of expression, as well as its purity, its fineness, its splendour, its honesty, its clarity, and plentity of its sweets and water, in addition to rightness of formulation and structure, and emptiness of the crookedness of versification or formation.

Some words are grand as it pulls the tails of purple, proudly and arrogantly. Some words have a clatter like creeping soldiers in tinplates. Some are like a two-edged sword. Some are like a thick veil which throws on some feeling so as to shelter sharpness and reduce their hardship. Some have the smile of sky in the nights of winter! Some speech works like alash, some flows like a pure spring.

All this is true of Ali’s sermons in their vocabulary and expressions. In addition, a sermon becomes better if it is impressed by these verbal features, on the view of “Al-Sina’atayn’s” author. How is it if they were like Ibn Abi Talib’s sermons which comprise the splendour of these characteristics of expression with the splendour of meaning and its powerfulness and grandeur.

Here is something of what we have said in the third volume of our book “Imam Ali: the voice of Humanitarian Justice” as to Imam’s eloquence, especially in his sermons:

It is a method for rhetoric taking, from thought, imagination, and feeling, masterpieces connected with sublime artistic taste as long as man remains, and his imagination, feeling and thought remain, interrelated consistent with its masterpieces, balanced, exploding with blazing sense and distant perception, flowing with the agony of reality, heat of truth, and the eagerness to know what is beyond this reality, harmonious comprising of beauty of topic and that of directing to the limit that the expression mingles with significance, or form with meaning, as heat mingles with fire, light with the sun, air with air; you are not before it but the way a person is before the flood while it slopes, the sea as it surges, and the wind as it encircles. Or like one in front of the natural event which must be necessarily as it is exitstent of unity that one cannot separate its ingredients except he wants wipe off its existnece and make it whithout existence.

An eloguence when it speaks of rebuke it pounces on the tongue of storm violently! And when it threatens spoil and spoilers it will explode into volcanoes having lights and sounds! And when it elaborates in a logic it will address minds and feelings, and locks every door or every proof except what it prooves expatiatly and when it calls for contemplation it associates the source of your senses and the origin of your thought, and so it drives you to what it wants and connects you with the cosmos fitly, and unifies in you the powers for discovery strongly. And if it indulges you, you will recognize a father’s compassion, logic of paternity, truthfulness of human fidelity, and the heat of love that starts and does not end! As to when it speaks to you of the splendour of existence beauties of creation and perfections of the cosmos, it writes on your heart with an ink of the stars of sky!

It is an eloquence of the rhetoric, and a revelation of the revelation. It is an eloquence that connected with the roots of Arabic eloquence: what has been and will be, so that one, describing its autheor, said that his speech is under the Creator’s speech and above that of the created.

All Ali’s sermons exclude indications of personality as though their meanings and expressions are preoccupations of his psyche itself, and the events of his time which flames in his heart like fire burning in its stove under the blowing of the north wind. Hence he improvises the sermon with flowing sense, rich feeling, and a vigorous direction strikingly beautiful.

So were Ali’s improvised sayings: they are at the very strong manner that an improvised saying could be as for truthfulness, depth of thought, and technicality of expression so that the moment his lips utter them it went a proverb.

One of his improvised masterpieces is his saying to a man who praised him so much although he did not admire him: “I am below what you express and above what you feel in your heart”.

Likewise when he decided to do a great task by himself, where his companions hesitated and failed, they came to him, referring to the enemies, and said: “O’ Amiralmuamineen we save you them he said you cannot save me yourselves, so how can you save me others? Before me, people used to complain of the inequity of their rulers but now I complain of the inequity of my people; as if I am the led and they are the leaders”.

And when Muawiyah’s companions killed Mohammed bin Abi Bakr, and the news of his murder reached him, he said: “Our grief over him is in so much as their joy for it, as they have been lessened a hated and we have been lessened abeloved.

He was asked: which of the two is better: justice or generosity? He replied: Justice puts things in their places while generosity takes them out of their directions; justice is a general ruler while generosity is an accidental benefit. So, justice super-ior and better improvising, he said describing believer.

“A believer, his cheerfulness is in his face his sorrow is in his heart the most broad - chested (tolerant), and a very humble - hearted. He hates high position and detest reputation renown. His grief is long, his concern is far - reaching, his silence is much, and all time he is occupied. He is grateful and enduring, of bright demeanour, and of soft temperament!”

And an ignorant stubborn man asked him about a dilemma, at onece he replied: Ask me for understanding but do not ask me for obstinacy, because the ignorant person who tries to learn is like a learned man, but the learned arbitrary man is like the ignorant stubborn.

In summery Ali bin Abi Talib is a great literary man, grew up on experiencing life, on flexibility with the styles of eloquence, so he has owned what art requires: of originality in the autheor’s personality, And the special education in which personality grows and originality condenses.

As for language, our beloved Arabic language which Marshlosh , in the first volume of his book A Trip to the East, uttered this intelligent saying: “Arabic language is the richest, the most expressive, the most, and the most amiable in effect among other languages of the world. With the structures of its verbs, it follows the flight of thought and portraits it accurately; with the tunes of its sonic syllables it imitates the cries of animals, growling of escaping water, swarming of wind and bombing of thunder.” As for this language, as Marshlosh mentioned its features and what he did not mention, you could find its origins and branches, the beauty of its colours and magic of its eloquence in Imam Ali’s literature.

It was a literature serving man and culture.