Ali Ibn Abi Talib - Volume 2 of 2

586 'Ali's attitude towards the Kharijites and Shia
This RZdi adviser was planning to destroy the caliph's state,
annihilate the Sunnis, and then establish a state on the basis of the
RSdi Shiite madh-hab. He took advantage of his position and the
heedlessness of the caliph to cany out his conspiracy against the
caliphate. The conspiracy consisted of three stages:
(a) Weakening the army and putting pressure on the people by
trying to stop the salaries of the Muslim troops. Ibn Katheer said:
'The vizier Ibn al-'Alqami tried to dismiss the troops and erase
their names from the records. The number of troops at the end of
al-Mustansir's reign was nearly one hundred thousand, but Ibn
al-'Alqami kept trying to reduce their number until there were
only ten thousand left."i148
(b) Corresponding with the Tatars. Ibn Katheer (may Allah have
mercy on him) said: 'Then he wrote to the Tatars and
encouraged them to attack the counhy, telling them that it would
be easy and informing them of the real situation of the state and
its weakness.""49
(c) Forbidding the people from fighting and deceiving the caliph.
He prohibited the common folk from fighting the ~atars,"~~ and
he gave the caliph and his court the impression that the king of
the Tatm wanted to make a peace deal with them. He suggested
to the caliph that he should go out and stand before the king so
that a peace deal could be signed on the basis that half of the
produce of Iraq would be theirs, and the other half would be for
the caliph. The caliph went out to meet him with seven hundred
riders from among the judges, jurists, commanders and
prominent people. This trick resulted in the killing of the caliph
and the leaders and elite of the Umrnah who accompanied him,
without requiring any effoa on the part of the Tatars.
Those RSdi Shia - or rather, hypocrites - suggested to
Hulagu that he should not make a peace deal with the caliph. The