1. The rays of truth are not hidden from sight
Though obscured from the one deprived of vision

2. And the word of God was not sent down veiled
From insights amid fancy and thought

3. The caller called it white, pure
Upright, benign - innocent in nature

4. God established it as an upright religion
The bearer of good news brought it to jinn and man alike

5. While paganism persists obstinately
In its ignorance and polytheism immersed

6. So he undertook the weight of the message resolutely
The most steadfast of the steadfast

7. And revelation came to him in miraculous, invaluable stars
While polytheism was subdued and Islam triumphed

8. And the word of God rises above those who deny it
Just as the sign of the rock erased the sign on the rock

9. Until the minaret of religion shone radiantly
With the melodious chant and the ringing chant

10. And a group believed in the Messenger of God
Those whom divine decree gave precedence therein

11. The clear light purified their hearts
As vegetation is purified by the rain that falls on it

12. Their breasts embraced faith so they expanded
With resolve and they stood by it victoriously

13. They girded themselves with the legions of faith and stirred
Spending between the two jihads their very souls

14. The Trustworthy of God took them under His protection so they thrived
Between the two trustees, with the Qur’an their burden

15. Revelation nourished them in the cradle of the message from
One stage to the next, like water in trees

16. The light of their essences, the light of their forms
The light of their natures in deed and speech

17. The Highest Assembly was too narrow for their status
Not in the nature of man but in the nature of God

18. How often Gabriel brought them aid in troops
From the heavens to the devoted of soul

19. The best of generations, the companions of the Chosen One and likewise
The rule of the two caliphs is inseparable from influence

20. When God’s Messenger passed away, their number
Was as the prophets, the just in rule and conduct

21. All of them saints who committed no major sin
Without repenting thereof, so they are innocent

22. And the devoted in faith, my attention is drawn
To the praise of them in the decisive chapters

23. And in dissociating from one who betrayed loyalty
The generality of praise in scripture is invalidated

24. Love and hate are two obligations necessitated
By partisans for and against righteousness

25. And the command is built on deeds and how they occurred
While praise and blame are purely inconsequential

26. The most honoured of creation are the most God-fearing
So lineage avails nothing without God-consciousness

27. What favouritism - no slippery path brings me closer
To one without piety, nor do I court danger

28. Neither lineage, nor family, nor companions distinguish them
In religion from others - such is the decree manifest

29. He summoned the clan openly at the top of Mount Safa
And the Messenger of God warned them with forewarning

30. Consider then the wisdom of specificity - how it came
To the nearest of kin from nomad and settled alike

31. That they may know that duty is not due to lineage
Which avails naught, without God none bears responsibility

32. Had duty been negated by nobility
God's justice would be suspended in human nature

33. And God's argument with obligation is inescapable
No difference in the command - lowly and elite

34. To messengers and the Highest Assembly, though supreme
In righteousness, are mandated without excuse

35. All are girded in the age of obligation
Why should one not infallible be excluded?

36. We do not diminish people's rights unjustly
Nor do we care about critics' disapproval

37. God has brought us the Qur'an as clear proof
And the Sunna of truth, consensus and tradition

38. Thus we found no disobedience in God's decree
Due purely to closeness counted as righteousness

39. Nor true piety in obedience to God's command
Out of love - an unjust ruling - not sound

40. The perfection of my Lord's oneness is love of His obedient
And hatred of His enemies openly and in secret

41. O you who blamed the righteous for their adherence
You have maligned - woe to you - the religion in blindness

42. They are God's proofs - the people of righteousness
Their resolves never swerved from the Chapter of the Groups

43. When did you find fault in Abul-Sibtain’s conduct
While you know best the people of clay and ruins

44. You judged him after joining him flesh to flesh
With seventy thousand felled like an ancient structure

45. You judged him after Umar and his spirit's comfort
To the Gardens - and after the eminent Purity

46. You judged him after God's judgement of him, in what
Assuages rancour, and you were certain of gaining

47. You executed God's edict at the outset
Why then mimic arbitration in the end?

48. Your war on the transgressors opened its wounds
By your Lord's judgement - you strayed not nor erred

49. You accepted the disrobed of Umar, rent asunder
By the forearms of religion - the winds tore it to pieces

50. You did not heed religion's advisers knowingly
Would that you had never heeded the accursed Ash'ath

51. So turn its supporters toward Iraq, for the gates
Of Syria are barred to you by the full moon

52. The patrons of religion have rejected your probity
And the command of the covetous bodes ill

53. What rule when the appointer of it has been disgraced by God?
God did not leave this judgement to mankind

54. I have no doubt about your intention
Nor is my judgement analogical

55. Since you were not content with judgement, your fighting
And fighting one content with the Nile are not the same

56. You wronged Abul-Sibtain heedlessly
Caution left you, and you were made captive by fear

57. As for fighting Ibn Sukhr after the caliphate
Of God spilled into the abyss of his throat

58. You judged him by God's limits which dashing winds
Blow away, crumbling to dust

59. With what command of yours are we content, O Abu al-Hasan?
The arbitration of their warlords? Or their killers of the pious?

60. Or your resolve to follow their Ash'ath stubbornly
Who licked your hide without attaining triumph?

61. The pearl of the world suckled him but did not wean him
While you were sated with her blood in immersion

62. He ceaselessly tore at the steeds of God, ill-omened
Their withers lathered with gore

63. Did you not fight him as apostate? Then when
His claws clung, he cast down the peace of one breathing his last

64. He casts his treacheries at you cunningly
Adding to the rancour of the Most High - may He kindle it!

65. You followed the steps of his hypocrisy staggering
As if a tail in the haunches of a mule

66. He turns his wily politics between his two ministers,
Amr and Iblis, with roses and breasts

67. Your resolve was split, O prince, by his profane politics
Splitting most evilly

68. Once you ruled them in God's limits which demolish
The ruling of the whites and the blacks together

69. Woe to it! It raised its guileful parchments
Though their implications are to be discarded as dust

70. Wait, O Abu al-Hasan! She who displayed herself
False in religion - beware of her

71. The rancours of Lat and Uzza inscribed them
Beneath the cloak, the work of Uthman's evil

72. Do not clothe Abul-Sibtain in disgrace
That garment is folded over embers

73. The Banu Shams have not moved past their heathenism
The blood of the blues is on their filthy fangs

74. So what is the parchment of Siffin you drew up
If not a parchment between cornerstone and rock?

75. You forgot Badr the unique, O Abu al-Hasan
The pagan plot there of cunning and betrayal

76. And the day the factions came at you with their elite
So you scattered the elite of the people in panic and flight

77. And the conquest of Mecca with the ravines gloomy
While you are the radiant moon of Islam

78. The people only converted under duress
With the Lat still between hearing and sight

79. When will you see Hashim sincere beneath the cloak?
And the slit of the wound between breast and stomach?

80. Ibn Hind has no interest in avenging the household
Though he pretended - would that the household were in Hellfire!

81. He held back from it while it cried for help
Until it was gone, so he did what he desired

82. The wretch waited for Uthman's murder
Then began braying amid the reds and cattle

83. Wailing in Syria, bereft, displaying for them
The shirt of Uthman - the weeping of leaves by sorcery

84. Until he folded its beginning with its end
Under a pretext no larger than a fingernail

85. He came to you pounding the war drum
Ardently in unbelief, in ignorance and uncouth zeal

86. Hypocritically, following in his steps
As if a tail in the haunches of a mule

87. Turning his wily politics between his two ministers,
Amr and Iblis, with roses and breasts

88. By the glorious - your resolve and success - so his profane politics split
Most evilly

89. Verily you were among ministers who rebelled against him
Solace enough you are not among them today

90. What was the sin of the advisers of religion that
Your winds uprooted them, leaving none surviving?

91. A remainder of God - their bones were scattered
By the naked sword - cheaper than magic

92. You slew them while praying, without treachery
As if a sudden onslaught - while they were on guard

93. How you magnified them the day of Ahl al-Bayt, elevating them
While today you cast them like chaff and cattle

94. The tax-collectors were contemptible to you
Though you had long belittled them at daybreak

95. You did not kill the group for poor religion
Rather the matter was predestined

96. You killed them on accounts you used to establish
Excuse for killing - no real excuse

97. What of Dhu al-Thadiyya but a deceitful tale invented
For war, falsely suggesting the validity of reports?

98. As for the hadith of Marwaq's people, it is not considered
Sound by one who judges equitably

99. You exonerated yourself by an arbitration you were tricked into
While you were most qualified to rule them

100. They ruled by God and chose you - yet their view
Was a kind of nonsense

101. You said they had gone astray though they stepped
Truthfully in the truth without crookedness or deviation

102. Pace after pace, following the Sunna
Of the Chosen One, Abu Bakr and Umar

103. The people changed not in the Dar nor Jamal
They were true to their oath, not altering it

104. You healed your soul's rancor by shedding
The core of religion and faith, blood pouring forth

105. The blood of Ibn Wahb and Hurqus and their ink,
Zayd ibn Husn - the elite of the Pure

106. The blood of twenty thousand slain when you gathered them
Amid worship, fierce as torrents of rain

107. May the blood make you shake, O Mansur, for it made
The heavens and earths tremble in dread

108. Had your spear pierced Hurqus, all creation would have shared
In casting them into Hellfire

109. O Strife that wrought havoc on religion, its zealotry
Melting stone in horror

110. I am grieved to speak the truth - they
Are a people you killed tyrannically, without excuse

111. Though they are saints of God - loving them
Is obligatory, and hating them most abhorred

112. May God pray on their souls and water
Their bones from the origin and the abundance

113. O Sedition that destroyed religion, its ardours
Make solid matter melt in fear

114. I do not regret speaking truth - they
Are a people you killed unjustly, without excuse

115. And they are friends of God - loving them
Is obligatory, and hating them most horrific

116. God prayed for their souls and watered
Their bones from the original and the offspring