Instructions for Hasan, when returning from Siffin

[1] Ibn Maytham al-Baḥrānī (vol. 5, p. 2) has quoted Abū Ja‘far ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī to have stated that Amīr al-mu’minīn wrote this piece of advice in the name of his son Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanaffiyyah, while al-‘Allāmah as-Sayyid ar-Raḍī has written that its addressee is Imām al-Ḥasan عليه السلام. But the fact is that Amīr al-mu’minīn wrote another piece of advice to Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah in brief which included a part of the same which he wrote to al-Imām al-Ḥasan. (Kashf al-maḥajjah, Ibn Ṭāwūs, pp. 157-159; al-Biḥār, vol. 77, pp. 196 - 198) In any case, whether the addressee is al-Imām al-Ḥasan or Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah, this manifesto of the Imām is a lesson of guidance to action in which the ways of success and achievement can be opened and the straying caravans of mankind can tread the path of guidance. It contains principles of correcting the matters of this world and the next, creating the sense of morality and improving economic and social matters whose like cannot be produced by the epitomes of scholars and philosophers. Its truthful preachings are a strong incentive for recalling to humanity the lessons it has forgotten, reviving the dead lines of social dealings and raising the standards of morality.