The Sabai's Period

The purpose behind the composition of this book is not to string along historical events in a sequence of links and chains but to arrange the history of Sabaism in a rational and logical order. My object is to expose thier indecencies and obscenities, to unveil the crimes and mischiefs they committed and the plans and conspriracies they hatched. but in order to record the history of the rebel group which had intomitted some of its specific into the body of Islamic faith and given brith to a rash of mushroom sects, I was compelled to rely on the crutches of history, especially on those historical events which grew out of the womb of sabaism. the fact is that these events would never have popped into the liemlight if the sabais had not been active on the negative front. I intend to write a saparate book exclusively focussed on these accidents and episodes but completely strained from the legendary material that has crept into them through the prejudice of the enemies of Islam.
Now I like to focus my engeries only on those incremental details which are directly relevant to the topic and exclude those details which have only an indirect or marginal link its genesis and envolution. This selective procedure is dictated meainly by spatial restrictions.

After the mattyrdom of the innocent imam, madinah suffered an administrative vacuum. It was without a legal chief executive. In other words, during these five days, madinah was being adminstered by Ghafiqi bin Harb, one of the murders of Hadhrat Uthman. The sabais and the murderers of Hadhrat Uthman had rallied round him. A difference of opinion had cropped up among them about the nomination of the new Caliph. Hadhrat Ali was the hot favourite of the Sabais because they wanted to sanctify thier heinous act by actively seeking his patronage, though he was completely absolved of the chrage and had no share in the conspiracies of the Sabais. It has already been discussed that the vixenish Abdullah bin Saba, who was the chief engineer of these conspiracies, was aggressively active among the Egyptians. After the martyrodom of Hadhrat Uthman, pandemonium broke out among these rebels and mean rescals on the selection of the new Caliph. Some of them favoured Talha, others supported Hadhrat Zubair while still others expressed their preference for Hadhrat Ali. Some people, out of sheer mischief, opposed any one who was tipped as the Caliph. This was in tune with the conspiracy they had already worked out to dismantle the fort of Islam and to terminate the Islamic state which was spreading fast to the remote corners of the earth and which had taken gigantic strides during the golden period of Hadhrat Uthman. The number of battles and conquests that marked this period is simply un-paralelled in the history of the Muslims. At first the Sabais concentrated on the three figures of Talha, Hadhrat Zubair and Hadhrat Ali as possible candidates for the Caliphate but subsequently they switched their priorities. They first proposed the name of Saad bin abi Waqas and then the name of Abdullah, the son of Hadhrat Umar Faruq but the response of these two latter ones echoed the response of the three former ones. The earliest historian Tabri has mentioned it and his statement is reinforced by Ibn Kathir, Ibn Athir, Ibn Khalbun etc:

"Muhammad bin Abdullah, talha bin Alam Abu Haritha and Abu Haitham have related that after the martyrdom of Hadrat Uthman Ghafiqi bin Harb acted as the Amir of Madinah for five days. These people were putting in their maximum effort to persuade some one to take over as the Amir of Madinah but every one worth any weight declined their offer. The Egyptians pressurized Hadhrat Ali but he hid himself in the gardens of Madinah; and if at all they bumped into him, he would send them diplomatically away. He also expressed his complete disaffiliation from them and refused to toe their line. The Kufis exerted pressure on Hadhrat Zubair but he evaded them. They despatched messengers to him but he also refused to follow their tracks.