Mu'jam Kabir Tabarani 10544 — Abdullah bin al-Zubayr

Aban bin al-Walid (may Allah have mercy on him) said: Abdullah bin al-Zubayr (may Allah be pleased with them both) wrote to Sayyiduna Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both) regarding the pledge of allegiance, but he refused to pledge allegiance to him. Yazid bin Mu'awiyah thought that he had refused only for his (Yazid's) sake, so Yazid bin Mu'awiyah wrote to Sayyiduna Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both): To proceed: It has reached me that the heretic Ibn al-Zubayr invited you to pledge allegiance to him in order to bring you into obedience to him, so that you would become a supporter of falsehood and a partner in sin; and you refused him and held back, because of the self-knowledge Allah has granted you regarding our right as the people of the house. May Allah reward you with the best of what He rewards those who maintain the ties of kinship and fulfil their covenants. Whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget your kindness, your maintaining of ties, and (my) giving you a fine reward, in keeping with the standing you deserve among us in obedience, honour and kinship with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). So look to those of your people who are with you, and those from distant regions who come to you, whom Ibn al-Zubayr bewitches with his tongue and his embellished speech, and turn them away from him; for they are more obedient to you and more attentive to you than to that heretic, rebel and renegade. Peace. Sayyiduna Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both) wrote back to him: To proceed: Your letter has reached me, in which you mention Ibn al-Zubayr's invitation to me, and that I refused out of recognition of your right. If that is so, I am not seeking your kindness by it; rather, Allah alone knows my intention. And you have written to me that I should incline the people towards you and turn them away from Ibn al-Zubayr. No joy and no delight! Dust and stones in your mouth! You are thwarted (in your hopes) if your soul gives you such desires, and you are surely the ruined and the lost. And you wrote to me mentioning your hastening to show me kindness and maintain ties with me. So, O man, withhold your kindness and your ties from me, for I am withholding from you my affection and my support. By my life! Of what is in your hands and is ours, you give us only a little, and withhold from it the broad and long portion. You have no father! Do you think I will forget your killing of Husayn and the young men of Banu Abd al-Muttalib, the lamps in the darkness and the stars of light? Your troops, at your command, left them so that they lay fallen on a single field, soaked in blood, stripped in the open, neither shrouded nor pillowed, the winds blowing dust over them, the wolves attacking them and the lame hyenas circling them, until Allah brought for them people who had no share in their blood, who shrouded them and buried them. And by Allah, it is because of them and of me that Allah favoured you, so that you sat in this seat in which you (now) sit. Whatever else I may forget, I shall not forget that you set over them that illegitimate son of an illegitimate son, attributed to a wicked, immoral woman, distant in kinship, base on his father's side and his mother's, through whose adoption into his own lineage your father earned shame, sin, humiliation and disgrace in this world and the Hereafter; for the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "The child belongs to the (owner of the) bed (that is, the marriage), and for the fornicator is the stone (deprivation)." Yet your father claimed that a child can belong to one other than the (owner of the) bed (that is, through fornication), and that this does not harm the fornicator, and that his child is attached to him just as the child of an adulteress is attached to one of sound lineage. Your father killed the Sunnah out of ignorance and deliberately revived misguiding innovations. And whatever else I may forget, I shall not forget that you forced Husayn to leave the sanctuary of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) for the sanctuary of Allah, and that you sent men towards them and secretly planted (men) among them, (saying): If he becomes aware of you, fall upon him at once. You kept at this until you drove him out of Makkah to the land of Kufah, your horses and troops roaring at him like lions, out of enmity towards Allah, His Messenger and his household. Then you wrote to Ibn Marjanah to meet him with horses, men, spears and swords; then you wrote to him to hasten and not delay, until you had him and the young men of Banu Abd al-Muttalib who were with him killed, the household from whom Allah removed impurity and whom He purified thoroughly. We are those people, not like your coarse, ignorant, donkey-hearted forefathers. And you knew that he was the most honoured of the people of al-Batha (Makkah) in former times, and remains the most honoured today. You defiled your stay in the two sanctuaries and made fighting there lawful; but he (Husayn) disliked being the one through whom the sanctuary of Allah, the sanctuary of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and the sanctity of the Sacred House would be violated. So Husayn asked you for a truce and requested to return, but you seized the opportunity of the scarcity of his helpers and the complete extermination of his household, as though you were killing a household of the Turks or of Kabul. So how can you demand my friendship and seek my support, when you have killed my cousins, your sword is dripping with my blood, and you are the one who shed my blood? If Allah wills, my blood will not go unavenged with you, nor will you escape my retribution; and even if you outstrip us in it, we accept what the prophets and the families of the prophets accepted: their blood remained (unavenged) in this world, but the appointment is with Allah. Allah suffices as a Helper for the oppressed and as an Avenger against the oppressors. And the most astonishing thing of all, and by your Lord the strangest thing of the age, is that you had the daughters of Banu Abd al-Muttalib, and their little children, carried to you in Syria, to show the people that you have overpowered us and that you humiliate us; whereas, by Allah, it is through them and through me that Allah has favoured you, your father and your mother on the side of women. And by Allah! You may spend your nights and days safe from the wounds of my hand, but your wound will surely grow great through my tongue and through my making and unmaking (of affairs). So let not argument provoke you; Allah will grant you only a little respite after your killing of the family of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), until He seizes you with a painful seizure and takes you out of the world sinful and condemned. So live, may you have no father, as long as you wish; what you have committed has already ruined you before Allah. When Yazid read the letter, he said: Ibn Abbas has always been firm in evil.