[563] In modern times, some spiritual loss in the future state is popularly attributed to the burning of a criminal’s body. Here, apparently, it was intended to be emblematical of the fire of hell to which Hasan consigned the murderer. In the case of Abu Bekr’s son (p. 403), the additional indignity was added of the body being packed up in an ass’s skin.
The offer to assassinate Muâvia is hardly consistent with the expectation which Ibn Muljam must have had that he had already perished at the hand of his brother conspirator. But I give the words as I find them.
[564] The popular tradition is that he was buried at Najaf, near to Kûfa, and on the shore of the ‘Sea’ of that name, where his supposed tomb is the object of popular veneration at the present day. Others assert (but on no sufficient ground) that Hasan had the body removed to Medîna. There is, in fact, no tradition of any authority on the subject. The uncertainty is significant. Aly never had any hold on the affections of the people. His grave must have been neglected, and even lost sight of, in the troubles succeeding his death. The oblivion as to his burial-place is in strange contrast with the almost Divine honours paid to him by so many sects in later days.
[565] One of the sons died in infancy. The daughters were Zeinab and Omm Kolthûm; but he had, by other mothers, two other daughters whom he called by the same names, i.e. Zeinab the less, and Omm Kolthûm the less.
[566] The mother of this little girl belonged to the Beni Kilâb. The child lisped, pronouncing l like sh, and so was unable to say Kilâb; so when asked to what tribe she belonged, she would imitate the bark of a dog (kilâb or kalb meaning ‘a dog’), to the great delight of Aly and his courtiers.
[567] Such was the popular belief even at the Alyite court of Al Mâmun. See The Apology of Al Kindy, which faithfully represents the sentiments current at that day among the courtiers of Baghdad, p. 25.
[568] It might be thought that the teaching of Ibn Sauda in Egypt was the germ of the Divine Imâmate and Second Coming. But the traditions regarding that teaching are altogether vague and uncertain. Whatever it was, it certainly took no root; nor do we hear of it again for many years after, and then first away in the far East.
[569] His vagrant passions gained for him the unenviable nickname of The Divorcer, for it was only by continual divorces that he could harmonise his craving for new nuptials with the requirements of the Divine law, which limited his lawful wives to four. He is said to have exercised the power of divorce, as a matter of simple caprice, seventy (according to others ninety) times. The leading men complained to Aly that his son was continually marrying their daughters, and continually divorcing them. Aly replied that the remedy lay in their own hands; they should refuse to give him their daughters to wife. These divorced wives were irrespective of his concubines or slave-girls, upon the number and variety of whom there was no limit or check whatever.
[570] There are some traditions, but untrustworthy, that Muâvia was now, for the first time, proclaimed Caliph at Jerusalem.
[571] The traditions read as if the army had been previously kept up in readiness for an attack on Syria; but, as already shown, a truce at this time existed between Aly and Muâvia of indefinite duration, according to which hostilities had been laid aside.