Foretelling the capture of Basra and the Mongol conquest

About important happenings at Baṣrah

O Aḥnaf! It is as though I see him advancing with an army which has neither dust nor noise, nor rustling of reins, nor neighing of horses. They are trampling the ground with their feet as if they are the feet of…

as-Sayyid ar-Raḍī says : Amīr al-mu’minīn pointed to the Chief of the Negroes, (Ṣāḥibu’z-Zanj). [1]

Then Amīr al-mu’minīn said : Woe to you (the people of Baṣrah’s) inhabited streets and decorated houses which possess wings like the wings of vultures and trunks like the trunks of elephants; they are the people from…

[A part of the same sermon referring to the Turks (Mongols) :] I [2] can see a people whose faces are like shields covered with rough-scraped skins. They dress themselves in silken and woollen clothes and hold dear…

One of his companions said to him: O Amīr al-mu’minīn, you have been given knowledge of hidden things. hereupon Amīr al-mu’minīn laughed and said to the man who belonged to the tribe of Banū Kalb :

O brother of Kalb! This is not knowledge of hidden things (‘ilmu’l-ghayb ), [3] these matters have been acquired from him (namely in Prophet) who knew them. As regard knowledge of hidden things, that means knowledge of…

Therefore, Allāh alone knows what is there in the wombs, whether male or female, ugly or handsome, generous or miserly, mischievous or pious, and who will be the fuel for Hell and who will be in the company of the…