Shafaqna English- What follows is an extract from the book Nahjul-Balaghah, the most famous collection of sermons, letters, Tafsirs and stories attributed to Imam Ali (AS). This is a part of his letter for Hassan ibn Ali (AS) (his son), when Amir Al-muminin encamped at Al-Hadirin on his way back from Siffin, selected by Shafaqna.
I have selected for you the choicest of those matters and collected for you their good points and have kept away from you their useless points. Since I feel for your affairs as a living father should feel and I aim at giving you training, I thought it should be at a time when you are advancing in age and new on the stage of the world, possessing upright intention and clean heart and that I should begin with the teaching of the Book of Allah, and its interpretation, the laws of Islam and its commands, its lawful matters and unlawful matters and that I should not go beyond these for you.
Then I feared lest you should get confused as other people had been confused on account of their passions and (different) views. Therefore, in spite of my dislike for you being so warned, I thought it better for me to make this position strong rather than leave you in a position where I do not regard you safe from falling into destruction. I hoped that Allah (SWT) would help you in your straightforwardness and guide you in your resoluteness. Consequently, I wrote this piece of my will for you.
Certainly, the heart of a young man is like uncultivated land. It accepts whatever is strewn on it. So, I hastened to mould you properly before your heart hardened up and your mind became occupied, so you might be ready to accept through your intelligence the results of the experience of others and be saved from going through these experiences yourself. In this way, you would avoid the hardship of seeking them and the difficulties of experimenting.
Know O’ my child, what I love most for you to adopt from my will is to fear Allah (SWT), to confine yourself to what Allah (SWT) has made obligatory on you, and to follow the actions of your forefathers and the virtuous people of your household, because they did not fall short in seeing for themselves what you will see for yourself, and they did about their affairs as you would like to think (about your affairs). Thereafter, their thinking led them to discharge the obligations they came to know of and to desist from what they were not required to do. If your heart does not accept this without acquiring knowledge as they acquired it, then your search should first be by way of understanding and learning and not by falling into doubts or getting entangled in quarrels.
A part of Imam Ali’s (AS) Advice to Imam Hassan (AS)
Source: Islam Plus