So the Commander of the Faithful said: "Clarify your story so that whoever is present may hear and know." He said: "Yes, we were 24 tribes of the Children of Israel (Bani Isra'il), and we had rebelled and disobeyed. And your authority was presented to us but we refused, and we departed the lands and engaged in corruption. Then a comer came to us - and you, by Allah, are more knowing of him than us - so he cried out a cry among us, and he gathered us in a single gathering.

And we had been scattered, so we gathered at his cry. Then he shouted another shout and said: 'Be metamorphosed by the power of Allah.' So we were metamorphosed into different kinds. Then he said: 'O wastelands, be rivers in which these metamorphosed creatures dwell, and connect to the seas of the earth until no water remains except that in it are from these metamorphosed creatures.'" So we became as you see.

[269] And from it: What Ammar bin Yasir narrated, he said: I was with my master, the Commander of the Faithful, one day in some of the deserts of al-Hirah, and suddenly a monk was striking his bell. So he said to me: "O Ammar, do you know what the bell is saying?" So I said: "O my master, and what does the piece of wood say?" So he said: "Indeed it is striking a parable for the world and saying: 'O people of the world, leave the world, gently gently, softly softly. Indeed the Master remains an Eternal Refuge (Samad), truly truly, honestly honestly. O our Master, indeed the world has seduced us and taken us in full. There is not a day that passes in it except that it destroys a pillar from us. We do not know what we have put forward in it except when we have died.'" Ammar said: And I came to the monk and said to him: "Strike the bell."