Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/316

661] believed, "My father shall yet live." "Then, Lady," replied the fanatic, "whence these tears? Listen. That sword I bought for a thousand pieces, and a thousand more it cost to poison it. None may escape its wound."

It soon became evident that the wound indeed was mortal. They asked the Caliph whether, if he died, it was his will that his son should succeed to the throne. Still true to the elective principle, ʿAlī answered: "I do not command it, neither do I forbid. See ye to it." Then he called Al-Ḥasan and Al-Ḥosein to his bedside, and counselled them to be steadfast in piety and resignation, and kind to their younger brother, the son of his Ḥanefite wife. After that he wrote his testament, and continuing to repeat the name of the Lord, so breathed his last. When they had performed the funeral obsequies, Al-Ḥasan arraigned the assassin before him. Nothing daunted, Ibn Muljam said: "I made a covenant with the Lord before the Holy House at Mecca, that I would slay both ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya. Now, if thou wilt, I shall go forth and kill the other, or perish in the attempt. If I succeed, I will return and swear allegiance unto thee." "Nay," said Al-Ḥasan, "not before thou hast tasted of the fire." He was put to death, and the body, tied up in a sack, was committed to the flames.

ʿAlī died sixty years of age. His troubled and contested reign had lasted but four years and nine months. In his youth he was one of the most distinguished heroes in the early wars of Islām. But after the Prophet's death he took no part in any of the military expeditions. In his later years he became heavy and obese, and his bald and portly figure was a subject of ridicule to his enemies. For a time he was content with a single wife, the Prophet's daughter Fāṭima, by whom he had three sons and two daughters, the progenitors of the Seiyid race—the nobility of Islām. After she died, he took many women into his harīm, both free and servile, by whom he had, in all, eleven sons and fifteen daughters. ʿAlī was a tender-hearted father. In his later years a little girl was born to him, with whose prattle he would beguile his troubles; he had her always on his knee, and doted on her with a special