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Brilliance |
| Imam Ali (AS) was endowed with a quick, sharp, incisive, mathematical mind. Here are a few interesting stories in which the Imam's mathematical brilliance revealed itself. |
| A wifes share ? |
| The Imam was once interrupted while he was delivering a sermon from
the pulpit by someone who asked him how to distribute the inheritance of
someone who had died leaving a wife, his parents and two daughters. The
Imam instantly answered:
"The wife's share becomes one ninth." How ? This answer is in fact the result of a long analysis with a number of steps. Ordinarily, we have to decide on the original share of each of these heirs, in the following way: - The wife takes one eighth, in view of the presence of an inheriting child.[see Quran 4:12] The deceased's father and mother take one sixth each. [Holy Qur'an 4:11] The two daughters take two thirds of the inheritance. [Holy Qur'an 4:11] So the total will be :
This means the share becomes less than 1/8 in view of the increase of the total of the shares which are so fixed and prescribed. So the one eighth, the original share due to the wife out of twenty-four total shares, has become three shares out of a total of twenty-seven, which is one ninth. The Imam's mind went through this complex mathematical process in a
second!
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| A puzzle for you to do |
| Once two men came to the Imam to settle their dispute.
Lets call them A and B. They had had a meal together to which A contributed 5 loaves and B contributed 3 loaves. The problem was that a third person C, shared the meal with them, all three eating equals amounts. After the meal C paid them 8 dirhams and went away. When A and B wanted to divide the 8 dirhams between them, they quarrelled. A said: "I should get 5 dirhams and you B, get only 3 dirhams, This is a fair distribution," he added, "as it agrees with the rate of the loaves each of us had contributed." B refused and insisted on an equal division of the money, each getting 4 dirhams. Who was right? What was Imam Ali's reply? |
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Source: Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib: The First Intellectual Muslim Thinker by Dr.Muhammad Abdul Rauf, pgs 98-102 with slight additions. Seyed Hossein Nasr in his forward for the book praises
it such:
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