By Allah, the son of Abū Quḥāfah has donned the garment of the caliphate, knowing well that my position in relation to it is like that of the pivot in relation to the millstone: the mill revolves around me and I am the axis. I am the lofty mountain whose summit no flood can reach and upon which no bird can fly. Yet I drew a curtain between myself and the caliphate and turned away from it. I began to reflect: should I attack with a severed hand, or endure a darkness so blinding that the grown become feeble, the young grow old, and the believer strives until he meets his Lord? I saw that patience was more prudent, so I endured, though in my eye was a mote and in my throat a bone. I saw my inheritance being plundered. He recounts the appointment of the second caliph, likening it to sharing the udder of the she‑camel between two, and describes the harshness and roughness of that rule with powerful metaphors of an unmanageable camel: if its reins are pulled tight its nose is torn, and if they are left loose it plunges into destruction. He then describes the shūrā in which he was placed on a level with men over whom he had undeniable superiority, and speaks of their envy, obstinacy and deviation. He portrays the third caliph as gorging himself on Allah’s wealth like a camel in spring pasture, until his rope broke and his gluttony brought him down. Finally he describes the people swarming to him for allegiance so that al‑Ḥasan and al‑Ḥusayn were almost trampled, and when he did accept the caliphate three groups opposed him: those who broke their pledge, those who left the religion, and those who committed wickedness. He swears by the One who split the grain and created life that had the presence of supporters and the covenant Allah took from the scholars not to remain silent in the face of the tyrant’s gluttony and the oppressed’s hunger not bound him, he would have cast the reins of the caliphate on its shoulders and watered its end with the same cup as its beginning, and would have regarded this world in his eyes as worth less than the sneeze of a goat.