Mousa Arabi; maryam eshraqpor
Abstract
Imam Hassan’s speech on his peace with Muawiyah is one of the most credible documents that can be analyzed and investigated to go through the underlying causes of the peace and ...
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Imam Hassan’s speech on his peace with Muawiyah is one of the most credible documents that can be analyzed and investigated to go through the underlying causes of the peace and the rejection of Muawiyah’s false claims on caliphate. Muawiyah started to oppose Imam Hassan’s right to caliphate since the beginning of his imamate; he tried hard to isolate him by winning his companions over. Thus, he coerced Imam Hassan into accepting the peace. After signing the peace agreement, Muawiyah declared that Imam Hassan considered him worthy of caliphate and believed him to be the only competent person for this position. After this declaration from Muawiyah, Imam Hassan presented a sermon. A first look at the speech reveals that the introduction and the beginning have no consistency with Muawiah’s false claims. So, the writers take a closer look and use a pragmatic approach to analyze the speech to examine its latent points and to relate the introduction and other sections of the speech with Muawiyah’s claim. Using the evidence within and outside the text, the authors clarify the aforementioned vagueness, Imam’s reason for presenting this speech, and the illocutionary act of the speaker. The results of the research demonstrate the reason for the choice of this kind of speech by Imam and his goal for addressing various topics in the speech. The context of the situation, the type of audience, and even the issue of opposition of most of Imam’s close companions necessitated Imam’s dealing with seemingly irrelevant topics such as the Prophet, his companions, and Ahl al-Bayt to alter his audience’s point of view. There are even issues less relevant to Moawiyah’s speech—such as Salawat, Khums, and Sadaqah—yet they all serve his ultimate goal as they enable him to indirectly convince the audience of his right to caliphate.
