After completing the book Ahadith-e Ma'navi (Spiritual Hadiths) and the thirty-volume collection Tafsir-e Ma'navi (Spiritual Exegesis), and after the ledger of my years had passed forty-four, then — in accordance with the verse 'Then you came [at the time] decreed, O Moses' [Qur'an 20:40] — the decree of destiny came to turn upon the orbit of the favor of the King of Vision. By the inward grace of the Commander of the Faithful (AS) I was so honored, and gates of wilaya were unveiled upon the heart of this old servant of the tavern of ruin, and the command was issued to write a composition that would comprise the words of the Commander (AS) and his sira. That command held sway over all the world, and the preliminaries of the work came together one by one — with the turning of the compass, the gathering of sources, and the ordering of thoughts.
So I combed through the books of the early authorities, beginning with the oldest of them, written in the very age of the Commander of the Faithful (AS), and moved forward year by year and century by century. In all, I surveyed more than two hundred narrative, historical, and literary sources — some of which by themselves ran to dozens of volumes — line by line and hadith by hadith, searching for material that would portray Mawla Ali (AS) as he truly is, not as the author of this or that book had pictured him from his own vantage point, and that would display the many dimensions of his complete personality — so that it might serve as a model for his true Shia.
Remarkably, I found that every hadith scholar had looked upon Ali (AS) from one vantage and seen him from a single angle. Thus the comprehensive personality of Ali (AS) has been broken into fragments and lies buried between the lines of voluminous tomes. Nahj al-Balagha, for instance, looked at the sayings of the King of Eloquence through the lens of rhetoric and recorded whatever seemed fitting from that perspective. Or Saduq, in Man La Yahduruh al-Faqih, sought out the juristic opinions of Ali (AS). Or the historians were dazzled by the wars and statecraft of Ali (AS). Likewise, the writers of sira pursued his manners and customs, and the sages pursued the wisdom in the speech of Ali (AS).
The book Kalam al-Amir, which has now matured and taken shape — more than a thousand pages of it already written — portrays a relatively comprehensive personality of the King of Men and better displays the fullness of his mastery.
Kalam al-Amir is not an encyclopedia, nor a compendium of all his sayings. Rather, in this world that has broken into headlong haste — whose people have become the very image of 'frightened asses fleeing from a lion' [Qur'an 74:50-51], and in which leisure is a rarity — it is a spiritual yet complete selection from the Alavi sira. The criterion for choosing the hadiths in it was the same criterion upon which the book Ahadith-e Ma'navi (Spiritual Hadiths) had earlier been written:
Hadiths that settle deep within the heart, that have been balm for its pain and life for its core — as though they transform the heart and create a light within it. Hadiths that raise the very center of gravity of a person's knowledge — as though, after hearing those words, one becomes, without exaggeration, another human being: one who has heard, understood, drunk deep, and been left in wonder. Such are the hadiths I have chosen.
And truly it is difficult — hard indeed — to read page upon page and to set aside the repetitions, the obvious, the self-evident, the abrogated, the ambiguous, the doubtful, the juristic, the natural-scientific, the occult, the accounts of things past and things to come, the allegories and the Isra'iliyyat — and to read on, and read again, until you come upon that which is singular, pure, and gleaming like a jewel: that whose goodness and beauty the human intellect, as human — apart from any creed or era — recognizes within itself.
That which could be written in letters of gold above the door of any house, anywhere in this world, and be acted upon, and lead to felicity. That which, when anyone hears it, they ask: who spoke so beautifully? Speech that is itself light, and proof that its author is a possessor of light. In this sense, this book is a miracle among the miracles of the wilaya of Ali (AS). The proof that Ali (AS) is that exalted one is these words; and the proof that he is Imam is these blessings.
Note carefully, then, that here — as with the Qur'an — we proceed from the truth of the speech, and its accord with reason and primordial nature, to the truth of its author. In jurisprudence it is otherwise: there, the proof of a hadith's authority is the establishment of its attribution to the Proof of God (AS), and reason has no independent path to its soundness by appealing to its accord with rational goodness. In hadiths of this kind, therefore, the soundness of the text, the solidity of the speech, and the loftiness of the expression place in our hands a proof far stronger than soundness of chain — which is in any case merely conjectural — for accepting the hadith and acting upon it. In principle, in such cases the hadiths are guidance toward what reason itself perceives, not the founding of a ruling to which reason has no access.
As I have said, the book begins with the writings of the first century, the time of Ali (AS), and proceeds century by century through the compositions of the Shia. The name of the source appears at the end of each hadith and also in the page header. I saw no need to compile a bibliography or to introduce the references and sources in detail, since with a simple search comprehensive information about any of those books is within the reader's reach. The compositions of the Shia are, on the whole, familiar to most Shia, and in our era further acquaintance is possible through a search available to everyone.
At the end of some hadiths, in parentheses, I have provided helpful explanations concerning the meaning of the hadith and the notable figures whom the hadith sometimes concerns, or whose names appear in its text.
Kalam al-Amir exists by the grace of the Commander, and is dedicated to the Commander:
'O mighty one! Adversity has touched us and our family, and we have come with merchandise of little worth; so give us full measure and be charitable to us. Indeed, God rewards the charitable.' [Surah Yusuf: 88]
May the peace, blessing, and salutation of God and of the Commander be upon the ear that hears the words of the Commander, upon the breath that spreads them abroad, and upon the soul that acts upon them and by them gives life to itself and to those near to it!
'O you who believe! Respond to God and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life; and know that God intervenes between a man and his heart, and that to Him you shall be gathered.' [Surah al-Anfal: 24]