The Imam’s own poverty and rigorous austerity was indeed proverbial. That this was far from a simple shunning of the world for its own sake, however, is made clear in the exchange between the Imam and an ascetic, ʿĀṣim b. Ziyād, whose family complained to the Imam that he was too abstemious. The Imam tells him to think of his family and not to cut himself from the good things (al-ṭayyibāt) that God has permitted. ʿĀṣim retorts, ‘O Commander of the Faithful, and here you are, in your rough clothes and your coarse food!’ The Imam replies, ‘Woe to you, I am not like you. God, the exalted, has
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