Muḥammad the Prophet is my brother and father-in-law,
Ḥamza, the master of martyrs, is my uncle;
Jāʿfar, the man who flies with the angels
Morning and evening, is my mother’s son;
Muḥammad’s daughter is my bride and my partner,
And our flesh and blood are intertwined;
Aḥmad’s grandsons are my own two sons;
So who among you, then, has a status like mine?
I was the first of you all to enter Islam,
Still a boy whose adolescence had not yet begun.
ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib
Imam al-Bayhaqī said, ‘These lines of poetry should be memorised by anyone who is ignorant of the truth about ʿAlī, so that he can recognise his proud place in Islam’.
Extract taken from Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī’s al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Muḥriqa, as quoted in the forthcoming book ‘The Perfect Family – Virtues of the Ahl al-Bayt’
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