Even if you secure what you have asked, it won't last more than one night.
You will wait so long for the fulfillment of your desire,
That you will eventually secure what is going to destroy you.
Therefore, do not heap up so many fancies in your head.
You can never deceive a man like 'Ali with your cunning!
You have tested him sufficiently in the past
And seen that he built up what you demolished.
If his clutches penetrate you even once,
He will skin you. You who skinned others." (137)

Siffin, the battlefield of right and wrong

In Mu'awiyah's army five hundred Qur 'ans were placed on spearheads.
al-Mas'udi

We saw how Mu'awiyah, despite all his indebtedness to 'Uthman cunningly abstained from helping him, and delayed help to 'Uthman so long that dissatisfied Muslims finally killed 'Uthman. Maybe he intended thereby to remove a great obstacle in the way of his own aspirations to become the caliph. But following 'Uthman's assassination, and Contrary to Mu'awiyah's expectations, Imam 'Ali was chosen as caliph by the people and it was him who took charge of the affairs and with his usual determination demanded allegiance and submission from him.
But Mu'awiyah had made an evil and ruinous plan. He wished to fight the Imam under the pretext of the innocence of 'Uthman and claiming revenge for his blood, an excuse, which had been brought up first in the battle of al-Jamal.
He hoped that in this way he would fulfill the great desire of his own and the will of his father Abu Sufyan, and seize control of the whole wide realm of Islam. Consequently he hung the bloody garment of 'Uthman by the pulpit of the mosque of Damascus, and commissioned a number of white-bearded and affectedly meek old men to gather round it and weep. Then in his sermon he declared 'Uthman to be an innocent guardian of