وصيته عند رجوعه من صفين

[1] The life of Amīr al-mu’minīn was that of a labourer or a cultivator. He worked in fields of other persons, cultivated barren and untilled lands, providing means of irrigating them, made them cultivable and planted orchards therein. Since these lands were cultivated by him they were his property but he never paid heed to property, and, declaring them a trust, gave up his proprietorship; but in consideration of the Prophet's kinship he assigned the management rights of this trust to Imām Ḥasan and Imām Ḥusayn one after the other. Yet he did not tolerate any additional rights for them but like other children gave them merely the right to take from it only for their livelihood, while the balance he ordered to be spent for the common good of the Muslims and for charitable purposes. Thus, Ibn Abi’l-Ḥadīd writes: Everyone knows that in Medina, Yanbu‘ and Suwayqah, Amīr al-mu’minīn had dug several springs from under the land and brought under cultivation many barren and uncultivable lands. Thereafter, he gave up rights over them and declared them as trusts for the Muslims. When he left the world, nothing was owned by him. (Sharḥ Nahj al-balāghah, vol. 15, p. 146)