ibn Qays, who told Ali that his clan would not fight for him if he refused the Syrians' call, as reported in Waq'at Siffin and Moruj. Ali might have thus faced a mutiny, and was forced to recall al-Ashtar, who is said to have advanced far towards the Syrian camp, reportedly separated from victory by "a horse's gallop." He initially refused to stop fighting, perhaps sensing imminent victory. Contrary to all these reports, an account by al-Kufi suggests that Ali welcomed the call to arbitration, even comparing it to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya (628) by Muhammad. This account is also what John Kelsay and Reza Aslan prefer, with the latter saying that most of his men pleaded with Ali to ignore the call to arbitration but he accepted it and cited the Quranic verse 2:193, "if [the enemy] desists, then you must also cease hostilities." Notwithstanding these two, modern authors tend to view Ali as opposed to the arbitration, including Madelung, McHugo, Donner, Poonawala, and Ayoub. Iraqis' motives As for the motives of al-Ash'ath, Ali had confirmed him in his post as the governor of Azerbaijan under Uthman, but also warned him in a letter about embezzling public funds. The governor might have done so during his tenure under Uthman, and thus perhaps contemplated joining Mu'awiya in rebellion but was dissuaded from doing so. Ali later supported Hujr ibn Adi, a rival of al-Ash'ath within the Kinda tribe, and then removed the latter from his military post just before leaving Iraq, replacing him with Hasan ibn Makhduj. These last two belonged to different Yemenite tribes and the appointment thus rekindled old tribal rivalries, according to Ayoub. While al-Ash'ath is also known to have expressed concern over the insecurity of Iran and the Byzantines' threat during the civil war, Kennedy suggests that he also preferred a weakened Ali. Jafri similarly writes that al-Ash'ath and other Kufan tribal leaders would have benefited from a deadlock between Ali and Mu'awiya: On the one hand, they would have lost their tribal power under a victorious Ali, who likely intended to restore the Islamic leadership in Kufa at the cost of its tribal aristocracy that had emerged under Uthman. On the other hand, Mu'awiya's victory would have meant the subjugation and loss of Iraq as the base of their power. Therefore, they reluctantly participated in Siffin and readily accepted the arbitration offers. The opinion of