History of Mola Ali ibn Abi Ṭalib
Alī, in full ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, (born c. 600, Mecca, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]—died January 661, Kufa, Iraq), cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, and fourth of the “rightly guided” (rāshidūn) caliphs, as the first four successors of Muhammad are called. Reigning from 656 to 661, he was the first imam (leader) of Shiʿism in all its forms. The question of his right to the caliphate (the political-religious structure comprising the community of Muslims and its territories that emerged after the death of Muhammad) resulted in the only major split in Islam, into the Sunni and Shiʿi branches.
Names and sources
ʿAlī is known within the Islamic tradition by a number of titles, some reflecting his personal qualities and others derived from particular episodes of his life. They include Abū al-Ḥasan (“Father of Ḥasan” [the name of his oldest son]), Abū Turāb (“Father of Dust”), Murtaḍā (“One Who Is Chosen and Contented”), Asad Allāh (“Lion of God”), Ḥaydar (“Lion”), and—specifically among the Shiʿah—Amīr al-Muʾminīn (“Prince of the Faithful”) and Mawlāy-i Muttaqiyān (“Master of the God-Fearing”). The title Abū Turāb, for example, recalls the time when, according to tradition, Muhammad entered a mosque and, seeing ʿAlī sleeping there full of dust, said to him, “O father of dust, get up.”
Except for Muhammad, there is no one in Islamic history about whom as much has been written in Islamic languages as ʿAlī. The primary sources for scholarship on the life of ʿAlī are the Hadith and the sīrah literature (accounts of the Prophet Muhammad’s life), as well as other biographical sources and texts of early Islamic history. The extensive secondary sources include, in addition to works by Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims, writings by Christian Arabs, Hindus, and other non-Muslims from the Middle East and Asia and a few works by modern Western scholars. However, many of the early Islamic sources are coloured to some extent by a bias, whether positive or negative, toward ʿAlī.
Life
Early years
ʿAlī’s life, as recorded especially in the Sunni and Shiʿi texts, can be divided into several distinct periods separated by major events. The son of Abū Ṭālib and his wife Fāṭimah bint Asad, ʿAlī was born, according to most older historical sources, on the 13th day of the lunar month of Rajab, about the year 600, in Mecca. Many sources, especially Shiʿi ones, record that he was the only person born in the sacred sanctuary of the Kaʿbah, a shrine said to have been built by Abraham and later dedicated to the traditional gods of the Arabs, which became the central shrine of Islam after the advent of the religion and the removal of all idols from it. ʿAlī was related to the Prophet through his father and mother: Abū Ṭālib was Muhammad’s uncle and became his guardian when the boy’s father died, and Fāṭimah bint Asad acted as the Prophet’s mother after his biological mother died. When ʿAlī was five years old, his father became impoverished, and ʿAlī was taken in and raised by Muhammad and his wife Khadījah. At age 10 ʿAlī became, according to tradition, the second person after Khadījah to accept Islam. Although ʿAlī’s father refused to give up his devotion to traditional Arabic polytheism, he accepted ʿAlī’s decision, telling him, “Since he [the Prophet] leads you only to righteousness, follow him and keep close to him.”
From Mecca to Medina
The second period of ʿAlī’s life, lasting slightly more than a decade, begins in 610, when Muhammad received the first of his revelations, and ends with the migration of the Prophet to Medina in 622. During this period ʿAlī was Muhammad’s constant companion. Along with Zayd ibn Ḥāritha, who was like a son to the Prophet, Abū Bakr, a respected member of the ruling Quraysh tribe of Mecca, and Khadījah, he helped to form the nucleus of the earliest Meccan Islamic community. From 610 to 622 ʿAlī spent much of his time providing for the needs of believers in Mecca, especially the poor, by distributing what he had among them and helping them with their daily chores.
Both Sunni and Shiʿi sources confirm the occurrence in 622 of the most important episode of this period. Muhammad, knowing that his enemies were plotting to assassinate him, asked ʿAlī to take his place and sleep in his bed; Muhammad then left Mecca secretly with Abū Bakr and reached Medina safely several days later (his arrival marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar). When the plotters entered Muhammad’s house with drawn daggers, they were deeply surprised to find ʿAlī, whom they did not harm. ʿAlī waited for instructions and left sometime later with Muhammad’s family. He arrived safely in Qubā on the outskirts of Yathrib, which soon became known as Mādinat al-Nabi (“City of the Prophet”) or simply Medina, on the instructions of the Prophet. According to some sources, he was one of the first of the Meccan followers of Muhammad to arrive in Medina.
Alī and Islam to the death of Muhammad
ʿAlī was 22 or 23 years old when he migrated to Medina. Shortly after his arrival, the Prophet told ʿAlī that he (the Prophet) had been ordered by God to give his daughter Fāṭimah to ʿAlī in marriage. This union affected the entire history of Islam, for from it were born a daughter, Zaynab—who played a major role during the Umayyad period in claiming the rights of the family of the Prophet after her brother Ḥusayn was killed in Iraq—and two sons, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn. The latter two are the ancestors of those known as sharīf or sayyid (meaning “noble” and “master” respectively)—that is, descendants of the Prophet and thus, in the eyes of some Muslims, legitimate heirs to leadership of the Islamic community. Ḥasan and Ḥusayn also became the second and third imams of the Shiʿah (respectively) after ʿAlī. Although polygyny was permitted, ʿAlī did not marry another woman while Fāṭimah was alive, and his marriage to her possesses a special spiritual significance for all Muslims because it is seen as the marriage between the greatest saintly figures surrounding the Prophet. The Prophet, who visited his daughter nearly every day, became even closer to ʿAlī, once telling him, “You are my brother in this world and the Hereafter.” After Fāṭimah’s death, ʿAlī married other wives and fathered many other children. During this period ʿAlī was given several important assignments, such as reciting to a large gathering of pilgrims in Mecca in 630 a portion of the Qurʾān that declared that Muhammad and the Islamic community were no longer bound by agreements made earlier with polytheists. One year later ʿAlī was sent to Yemen to spread the teachings of Islam. The Prophet also designated him as one of the scribes who would write down the text of the Qurʾān, which had been revealed to Muhammad during the previous two decades. ʿAlī’s role in the establishment of the written version of the Qurʾān is among the most important of his contributions to Islam.
ʿAlī was also deeply involved in the military defense of the Islamic community, according to both Sunni and Shiʿi sources. The Quraysh sought to destroy the community in Medina in a series of attacks that are known in Islamic history as ghazwah (“raid” or “conquest”). ʿAlī participated in all but one of these battles, and he was commander at the battles of Fadak in 628 and Al-Yamān in 632. He also had the special role of protecting Muhammad at the battles of Uḥud in 625 and Ḥunayn in 630. He fought the leading warrior of the Quraysh, Talḥah ibn Abī Talḥah, who boasted that he would defeat any Muslim sent against him. When Talḥah himself was defeated, he pleaded for mercy from ʿAlī, saying “Karrama Allāhu wajhahu” (“May God illuminate his face with nobility”). This benediction became one of ʿAlī’s titles; used especially by Sunnis, it is usually accompanied by other customary formulae of peace and benediction.
The traditional accounts of ʿAlī’s strength and courage in these battles and his yearning for justice made him an epitome of chivalry throughout the Islamic world. In the Battle of Khaybar in 629, against a group of Medinese Jews who, having reached agreement with the Muslims and then broken their word, had barricaded themselves in a fort, ʿAlī is said, according to a very popular legend, to have torn off the door of the fort with one hand and used it as a shield. According to another legend, the archangel Gabriel, speaking to the Prophet and referring to Dhū al-fiqār, a sword that ʿAlī received from Muhammad, stated: “There is no chivalrous person but ʿAlī. There is no sword but Dhū al-fiqār.”
As Islam began to spread throughout Arabia, ʿAlī helped to establish the new Islamic order. He was instructed to write down the Hudaybiyyah agreement, the peace treaty between the Prophet and the Quraysh in 628. When Muhammad finally conquered Mecca in 630, he asked ʿAlī to guarantee that the conquest would be bloodless; this was accomplished as a result of the surrender of the Meccans and Muhammad’s forbidding the victorious Muslims from taking revenge on the Meccans, a command that ʿAlī ensured was obeyed completely. He ordered ʿAlī to break all the idols in the Kaʿbah and to purify the shrine after its defilement by the polytheism of the pre-Islamic era, which Muslims call al-jāhiliyyah (“the age of ignorance”). ʿAlī also was charged with settling several disputes and putting down the uprisings of various tribes.
At Ghadīr Khumm in 632, while returning to Medina from his last pilgrimage, the Prophet made certain statements about ʿAlī that have been interpreted in very different ways by Sunnis and Shiʿis. According to both traditions, Muhammad said that ʿAlī was his inheritor and brother and that whoever accepted the Prophet as his mawlā (“master” or “trusted friend” but also, contradictorily, “client” or “protegé”) also should accept ʿAlī as his mawlā. The Shiʿah regard these statements as constituting the investiture of ʿAlī as the successor of the Prophet and as the first imam. The Sunnis, by contrast, take them only as an expression of the Prophet’s closeness to ʿAlī and of his wish that ʿAlī, as his cousin and son-in-law, inherit his family responsibilities upon his death. Many later Islamic Sufis and esoterists also interpret the episode as the transfer of the Prophet’s spiritual power and authority to ʿAlī (mawlā is related to wīlāyah or walāyah, meaning “rule,” “initiation,” “spiritual authority,” or “power”), whom they regard as the walī (literally “friend,” usually translated as “saint”) par excellence.
ʿAlī and the first caliphs
Upon the death of the Prophet in 632, ʿAlī and Muhammad’s family took charge of the arrangements for his funeral. At the same time, discussions began concerning who should succeed Muhammad. Both the anṣār, the people of Medina who had embraced Islam, and the muhājirūn, those from Mecca who had migrated to Medina, wanted the successor to come from their group. In order to avoid division, the leaders of the community assembled at saqīfat Banī Sāʿidah (“the room with the thatched roof of the tribe of Banī Sāʿidah”) to choose a successor. After much debate, Abū Bakr was named caliph (khalīfah, “successor”), the ruler of the Islamic community. By the time ʿAlī finished with matters pertaining to the funeral of the Prophet, he was presented with a fait accompli. He did not protest but retired from public life and dedicated himself to studying and teaching the Qurʾān. He was often consulted, however, by Abū Bakr and his successor, ʿUmar, in matters of state. ʿAlī accepted the selection of ʿUmar as caliph and even gave one of his daughters, Umm Kulthūm, to him in marriage.
After the death of ʿUmar in 644, ʿAlī was considered for the caliphate along with five other eminent members of the community. One of them, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, withdrew but asked that he be trusted with choosing the next caliph, a request that was granted. He questioned both ʿUthmān and ʿAlī and decided in favour of the former. ʿAlī recognized the caliph’s authority, according to Shiʿi sources, but remained neutral between ʿUthmān’s supporters and his opponents. ʿAlī even sent his own sons to protect ʿUthmān’s house when he was in danger of being attacked. When ʿUthmān was murdered in 656 by those who considered him weak and who accused him of nepotism, ʿAlī admonished his children for not having defended ʿUthmān’s house properly. ʿAlī himself was then chosen as the fourth and last of the rightly guided caliphs.
ʿAlī’s caliphate and last years
The period of the caliphate of ʿAlī, from 656 until his death in 661, was the most tumultuous in his life. Many members of the Quraysh turned against him because he defended the rights of the Hashimites, a clan of the Quraysh to which Muhammad had belonged. He was also accused of failing to pursue the murderers of his predecessor and of purging ʿUthmān’s supporters from office. Foremost among his opponents was Muʿāwiyah, the governor of Syria and a relative of ʿUthmān, who claimed the right to avenge ʿUthmān’s death. In his confrontation with Muʿāwiyah, ʿAlī was supported by the anṣār and the people of Iraq. Before he could act, however, he had to deal with the rebellion of two senior companions, Talḥah and Zubayr. Joined by ʿĀʾishah, daughter of Abū Bakr and third wife of Muhammad, the two had marched upon Basra and captured it. ʿAlī assembled an army in Kufa, which became his capital, and met the rebels in 656 at the Battle of the Camel. Although a peaceful settlement had nearly been reached before the fighting started, extremists on both sides forced the battle, in which ʿAlī’s forces were victorious. Talḥah and Zubayr were killed, and ʿĀʾishah was conducted safely back to Medina. ʿAli then turned his attention north to Muʿāwiyah, engaging him in 657 at the Battle of Siffin, the most important contest of early Islamic history after the death of the Prophet. With his army on the verge of defeat, Muʿāwiyah, on the advice of one of his supporters, ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAṣ, ordered his soldiers to put pages of the Qurʾān on their lances and asked ʿAlī to allow the dispute to be resolved by reference to Qurʾānic rules. ʿAlī’s army, seeing the sacred text, put down its arms, and ʿAlī was forced to arbitrate. He chose an upright observer, Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī, and Muʿāwiyah chose ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAṣ. After ʿAlī lost the arbitration, Muʿāwiyah refused to submit to his authority; Muʿāwiyah then defeated ʿAlī’s forces in Egypt, where ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAṣ became governor.
Matters were made even worse by the fact that a group that considered arbitration to be a violation of the teachings of the Qurʾān rebelled against ʿAlī while also opposing Muʿāwiyah. ʿAlī’s attempts to reason with the rebels failed, and they left Kufa and Basra and assembled at Al-Narhawān. In 658 ʿAlī’s army dealt a crushing blow to the group that came to be known as the Khārijites (“Seceders”).
Although he continued to have staunch supporters, ʿAlī’s authority was weakened in many areas during the last two years of his caliphate. A number of prominent Muslims even met in Adrūh in 659 with the thought of deposing both ʿAlī and Muʿāwiyah and appointing as caliph ʿAbd Allāh, son of ʿUmar, but they did not reach a final decision. Meanwhile, some of the Khārijites decided to assassinate ʿAlī, Muʿāwiyah, and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAṣ. Although the latter two escaped, ʿAlī did not: on the 19th of Ramadan in the year 661, he was struck in the back of the head with a poisoned sword while praying in the mosque of Kufa. He died two days later and was buried in Al-Najaf. Along with Qom in Iran, Al-Najaf became—and remains to this day—one of the most important seats of Shiʿi learning and also a major pilgrimage site.
Shiʿism, Sufism, and the chivalric orders of ʿAlī
Shiʿism
The significance of ʿAlī in all aspects of the religious and intellectual life of Shiʿah Islam can hardly be overemphasized. In the daily call to prayer in Shiʿi countries, and in some Shiʿi mosques in Sunni countries where such an act does not cause major opposition, his name is mentioned after that of the Prophet in the formula ʿAlīun walī Allāh (“ʿAlī is the friend of God”). In the annual religious calendar of the Shiʿah, the 19th through the 21st of Ramadan is a time of intense prayer and supplication, marking the last three days of ʿAlī’s life. Many Shiʿis spend the nights of this period, called aḥyāʾ, in mosques reciting both special prayers, many of them attributed to ʿAlī, and canonical prayers, the latter usually at least 100 times. The devotion to ʿAlī, not only as the heir of the Prophet but also as the first imam and the ancestor of all subsequent imams, has a central place in the religious consciousness of Shiʿism. There is also a vast body of Shiʿi devotional literature in both poetry and prose in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Gujarati, and many other languages related to ʿAlī.
Sufism
Nearly every Sufi order traces its lineage to Muhammad through ʿAlī. Sufis, whether Sunni or Shiʿi, believe that ʿAlī inherited from the Prophet the spiritual power (wilāyah or walāyah) that makes the inner journey to God possible. Numerous references are also to be found to him in later Sufi works. For example, such hidden or occult sciences as jafr, the science of the symbolic significance of the letters of the Arabic alphabet, are said to have been established by ʿAlī.
The futuwwāt
In Islamic civilization, the futuwwāt (“spiritual chivalry”) were military and economic orders similar to the knightly fraternities and guilds of medieval Europe. Combining craftwork or service in the military or government with spiritual discipline, these orders have played a major role in Islamic history by drawing their members more fully into the spiritual life and ethos of Islam (the craft orders still survive in some areas of the Islamic world). Whether known as futuwwāt or by other names, such as the akhi (“brotherhood”) movement in Anatolia, all of them have been associated with ʿAlī, who received the quality and power of spiritual chivalry from the Prophet. In Western terms, one might say that ʿAlī is the “patron saint” of the chivalric orders and guilds of Islam.
Metaphysics and the Nahj al-balāghah
Metaphysics
In later Islamic philosophy, especially in the teachings of Mulla Sadra (c. 1571–1640) and his followers, ʿAlī’s sayings and sermons were increasingly regarded as central sources of metaphysical knowledge, or “divine philosophy.” Members of Sadra’s school, which still survives, regard ʿAlī as the supreme metaphysician of Islam and believe that he was the first person to have used Arabic terms to express philosophical ideas. For centuries, Muslim philosophers considered ʿAlī’s sayings—such as “I have never seen a thing except to have seen God before it” and “If the veils were to be removed from the mysteries of the world, it would not add to my certitude”—to be proof of his supreme metaphysical understanding. His widely known saying “Look at what is said and not at who has said it” summarizes a main characteristic of Islamic thought, in which schools predominate over individuals and ideas are judged by their inherent philosophical value rather than by their historical sources.
The Nahj al-balāghah
Numerous short sayings of ʿAlī have become part of general Islamic culture and are quoted as aphorisms and proverbs in daily life. They also have become the basis of literary works or have been integrated into poetic verse in many languages. Already in the 8th century, literary authorities such as ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Yaḥyā al-ʿĀmirī pointed to the unparalleled eloquence of ʿAlī’s sermons and sayings, as did al-Jāḥiẓ, an Arab man of letters, in the following century. In the 10th century one of the outstanding scholars of Shiʿism, Sayyid Sharīf al-Raḍī, assembled many of ʿAlī’s sermons, letters, and short sayings dealing with various subjects in the Nahj al-balāghah (“The Path of Eloquence”), which became one of the most widely read and influential books in the Islamic world, though it was nearly completely neglected in Western scholarship until the late 20th century. Although some Western scholars have cast doubt upon its authenticity, the matter has never been in question among the great majority of Muslims. The book continues to be a source of both religious and literary inspiration for both the Shiʿah and the Sunnis.
Dhū al-faqār
Dhū al-faqār, in Islāmic mythology, the two-pointed magical sword that has come to represent ʿAlī, fourth caliph and son-in-law of Muḥammad. Originally owned by an unbeliever, al-ʿĀṣ ibn Munabbih, Dhū al-faqār came into Muḥammad’s possession as booty from the Battle of Badr (624). He in turn passed it on to ʿAlī, and the sword, said to have borne an inscription ending in the words lā yuqtal Muslim bi-kāfir (“no Muslim shall be slain for [the murder of] an unbeliever”), eventually rested with the ʿAbbāsid caliphs.
As ʿAlī’s legendary status grew, the importance of his association with Dhū al-faqār also increased. Particularly in legends surrounding the Battle of Ṣiffīn (657), Dhū al-faqār, the two points of which were useful for blinding an enemy, is credited with enabling ʿAlī to perform phenomenal military feats, decapitating or cutting in half more than 500 men.
In Muslim countries, fine swords have traditionally been engraved with the phrase lā sayfa illā Dhū al-faqār (“there is no sword but Dhū al-faqār”), often with the addition wa lā fatā illā ʿAlī (“and there is no hero but ʿAlī”).
imam, Arabic imām (“leader,” “model”), in a general sense, one who leads Muslim worshippers in prayer. In a global sense, imam is used to refer to the head of the Muslim community (ummah). The title is found in the Qurʾān several times to refer to leaders and to Abraham. The origin and basis of the office of imam was conceived differently by various sections of the Muslim community, this difference providing part of the political and religious basis for the split into Sunni and Shiʿi Islam.
Among Sunnis, the chief leader of the community became known as a caliph (khalīfah), who succeeded Muhammad in his administrative and political, but not religious, functions. He was appointed by men and, although liable to error, was to be obeyed even though he personally sinned, provided that he maintained the ordinances of Islam.ʿAlī, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was the fourth of these caliphs.
In Shiʿi Islam, ʿAlī was the first leader to command spiritual authority (imamate) over the whole Muslim community after Muhammad’s death. Political disagreement over succession to ʿAlī after his death (661) propelled the Shiʿi concept of leadership along a separate course of development, as these partisans of ʿAlī attempted to preserve leadership of the entire Muslim community among the descendants of ʿAlī (known as Ahl al-Bayt). The Shiʿah considered ʿAlī’s descendants to possess a special capacity to attain superior religious knowledge (ʿilm) that entitled them to absolute spiritual authority. Disagreement over how this religious knowledge was obtained led to schism after the death of the fourth imam: while Zaydis believed that Zayd ibn ʿAlī should become the fifth imam because he had attained the highest degree of learning, many believed that Muḥammad al-Bāqir possessed superior ʿilm by pedigree. Zaydi Shiʿism, which survives today as the third largest sect of Shiʿi Islam, continues to view the imamate as belonging to the descendant of ʿAlī most worthy of political-spiritual leadership through his own earning.
Those who followed Muḥammad al-Bāqir as the fifth imam began developing ideas of a special, divine ʿilm that was supernaturally inherited. Under Neoplatonic influences of the 9th–10th centuries CE, this doctrine matured in its expression as infallible illumination by the Primeval Light, God, through divine appointment (naṣṣ). But already in the mid-8th century this nascent view of the imamate was being challenged when Ismāʿīl, the son and designated successor of the sixth imam, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, died before Jaʿfar, leading to a succession crisis when Jaʿfar died. Some of the Shiʿah maintained that the imamate had passed to Ismāʿīl’s line anyway. This group, called the Ismāʿīliyyah, believed that his son Muḥammad became the seventh imam, and the subsequent line of imams passed into modern times, the Ismāʿīlī imam now being known as the Aga Khan. A subsect, known as the Seveners, believed that Muḥammad never died nor had any successor. Instead, God hid him in occultation (ghaybah) to return in the last days as the mahdī, an Islamic messianic deliverer.
The most prominent faction, however, believed that the imamate passed to Mūsā al-Kāẓim, another son of Jaʿfar. The strength of this faction was seen in the decision of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Maʾmūn to name as his heir the faction’s eighth imam, ʿAlī al-Riḍā. This decision was highly controversial from the start, however, and ʿAlī died before he could become caliph. In the late 9th century, another succession crisis ensued when this faction’s 11th imam, Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, died without any known sons. The most successful group to emerge from this crisis taught that Ḥasan did have a son, Muḥammad, who had gone into occultation in his infancy and would return as the mahdī to usher in the Day of Judgment. This group, known as the Twelver Shiʿah for their belief in exactly 12 imams, remains the predominant Shiʿi sect.
The concept of the imamate can also be found in other, smaller expressions of Islam, such as the Ibāḍī branch based in Oman, which is neither Sunni nor Shiʿi. Imam has also been used as an honorary title, applied to such figures as the theologians Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī, Mālik ibn Anas, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-Ghazālī, and Muḥammad ʿAbduh.
ʿĀʾishah, in full ʿĀʾishah bint Abī Bakr, (born 614, Mecca, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]—died July 678, Medina), the third wife of the Prophet Muhammad (the founder of Islam), who played a role of some political importance after the Prophet’s death.
All Muhammad’s marriages had political motivations, and in this case the intention seems to have been to cement ties with ʿĀʾishah’s father, Abū Bakr, who was one of Muhammad’s most important supporters. ʿĀʾishah’s physical charms, intelligence, and wit, together with the genuine warmth of their relationship, secured her a place in his affections that was not lessened by his subsequent marriages. It is said that in 627 she accompanied the Prophet on an expedition but became separated from the group. When she was later escorted back to Medina by a man who had found her in the desert, Muhammad’s enemies claimed that she had been unfaithful. A subsequent Qurʾānic revelation asserted her innocence; the Qurʾān furthermore criticized and stipulated punishment for those who slander virtuous women. ʿĀʾishah had no important influence on her husband’s political or religious policies while he lived, but he is said to have recognized her knowledge of Islam by counseling his Companions to “take half your knowledge from Humayra,” Humayra (“Little Red One”) being his term of endearment for her. When Muhammad died in 632, ʿĀʾishah was left a childless widow of about 18, although some sources suggest she was older. She remained politically inactive until the time of ʿUthmān (644–656; the third caliph, or leader of the Islamic community), during whose reign she played an important role in fomenting opposition that led to his murder in 656. She led an army against his successor, ʿAlī, when he refused to bring ʿUthmān’s murderers to justice, but she was defeated in the Battle of the Camel. The engagement derived its name from the fierce fighting that centred around the camel upon which ʿĀʾishah was mounted. Afterward she was allowed to return to Medina. She spent the rest of her days there in disbursing alms, transmitting Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet), and interpreting the Qurʾān. Traditional sources describe ʿĀʾishah as learned in religion, issuing legal opinions and engaging in consultation with the older male Companions of the Prophet. About a sixth of the hadiths recorded by al-Bukhari in his famed work Al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ are cited on her authority. Modern Muslim feminists regard ʿĀʾishah as personifying an early Islamic idealization of women as the social and legal equal of men, valorized for their contributions in both the private and public spheres.
Caliphate, the political-religious state comprising the Muslim community and the lands and peoples under its dominion in the centuries following the death (632 CE) of the Prophet Muhammad. Ruled by a caliph (Arabic khalīfah, “successor”), who held temporal and sometimes a degree of spiritual authority, the empire of the Caliphate grew rapidly through conquest during its first two centuries to include most of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Spain. Dynastic struggles later brought about the Caliphate’s decline, and it ceased to exist as a functioning political institution with the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258.
This article covers the history of the original caliphal state based in Arabia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia in the 7th–13th century. See caliph for a general discussion of the titular position that heads a caliphate; see also Fāṭimid dynasty and Caliphate of Córdoba for other historical examples of caliphates.
Leadership after Muhammad
The urgent need for a successor to Muhammad as political leader of the Muslim community was met by a group of Muslim elders in Medina who designated Abū Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law, as caliph. According to the majority of Muslims, the Prophet himself had left no instructions for the selection of a leader after him, although a small minority—the precursors of the group later known as the Shiʿah—advocated for ʿAlī’s claim to the Caliphate. It would be anachronistic to assume that this early group supported ʿAlī because he was a cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet. Rather, the early literature indicates that the legitimate caliph was expected to have been an early convert to Islam (precedence in converting to Islam was termed sābiqah in Arabic) and to possess a constellation of moral excellences (faḍāʾil in Arabic), such as truthfulness, generosity, courage, and, above all, knowledge. The caliph’s authority was largely epistemic—that is to say, based on his superior knowledge of both religious and worldly affairs. Later, during the Umayyad period (661–750), there was a growing emphasis on kinship to the Prophet as a criterion of legitimate leadership, likely because the Umayyads wished to thereby compensate for their lack of sābiqah, having accepted Islam late during the Prophet’s lifetime. In response, supporters of the claim to leadership of ʿAlī and his descendents emphasized their lineal descent from the Prophet’s family as a marker of their legitimacy. By the 10th century the orthodox Sunni majority had also come to acknowledge kinship as a factor by understanding legitimate leadership to inhere in descent from the Quraysh, Muhammad’s natal tribe, to which the first four caliphs also belonged.
Although the reigns of the first four caliphs—Abū Bakr, ʿUmar I, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī—were marred by political upheaval, civil war, and assassination, the era was remembered by later generations of Muslims as a golden age of Islam, and the four caliphs were collectively known as the “rightly guided caliphs” because of their close personal associations with Muhammad. The rightly guided caliphs largely established the administrative and judicial organization of the Muslim community and directed the conquest of new lands. In the 630s Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Iraq were conquered, Egypt was taken from Byzantine control in 645, and frequent raids were launched into North Africa, Armenia, and Persia.
The Umayyads
The assassination of ʿUthmān and the troubled caliphate of ʿAlī that followed sparked the first sectarian split in the Muslim community. By 661 ʿAlī’s rival Muʿāwiyah I, a fellow member of ʿUthmān’s Umayyad clan, had wrested away the caliphate, and his rule established the Umayyad dynasty, which lasted until 750. Despite the largely successful reign of Muʿāwiyah, tribal and sectarian disputes erupted after his death. The majority of Muslims regarded the Umayyads as nominally Muslim at best, given their worldly and opulent lifestyles. They were also unpopular on account of their having established dynastic rule by force. Their reign is contemptuously referred to in later sources as mere “kingship” (mulk)—in contrast to the caliphate, which was supposed to be based on the superior personal merits of the ruler and established through a process of consultation with the people. In a conscious effort to confer legitimacy on themselves and to acquire a religious aura, the Umayyads chose the title khalīfat allāh, “the deputy of God,” in contradistinction to the first two caliphs in particular, who are said to have deliberately shunned such a self-aggrandizing title.
There were three Umayyad rulers between 680 and 685, and only by nearly 20 years of military campaigning did the next one, ʿAbd al-Malik, succeed in reestablishing the authority of the Umayyad capital of Damascus. ʿAbd al-Malik is also remembered for building the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Under his son al-Walīd (705–715), Muslim forces took permanent possession of North Africa, converted the native Berbers to Islam, and overran most of the Iberian Peninsula as the Visigothic kingdom there collapsed. Progress was also made in the east with settlement in the Indus River valley. Umayyad power had never been firmly seated, however, and the Caliphate disintegrated rapidly after the long reign of Hishām (724–743). A serious rebellion broke out against the Umayyads in 747, and in 750 the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān II, was defeated in the Battle of the Great Zab by the followers of the Abbasid family.
The Abbasid caliphate
The Abbasids, descendants of an uncle of Muhammad, owed the success of their revolt in large part to their appeal to various pietistic, extremist, or merely disgruntled groups and in particular to the aid of the Shiʿah, who held that the Caliphate belonged by right to the descendants of ʿAlī. That the Abbasids disappointed the expectations of the Shiʿah by taking the Caliphate for themselves left the Shiʿah to evolve into a sect, permanently hostile to the Sunni majority, that would periodically threaten the established government by revolt. The first Abbasid caliph, al-Saffāḥ (749–754), ordered the elimination of the entire Umayyad clan; the only Umayyad of note who escaped was ʿAbd al-Raḥman, who made his way to Spain and established an Umayyad dynasty that lasted until 1031.
The period 786–861, especially the caliphates of Hārūn (786–809) and al-Maʾmūn (813–833), is accounted the height of Abbasid rule. The eastward orientation of the dynasty was demonstrated by al-Manṣūr’s removal of the capital to Baghdad in 762–763 and by the later caliphs’ policy of marrying non-Arabs and recruiting Turks, Slavs, and other non-Arabs as palace guards. Under al-Maʾmūn, the intellectual and artistic heritage of Iran (Persia) was cultivated, and Persian administrators assumed important posts in the Caliphate’s administration. After 861, anarchy and rebellion shook the empire. Tunisia and eastern Iran came under the control of hereditary governors who made token acknowledgment of Baghdad’s suzerainty. Other provinces became less-reliable sources of revenue. The Shiʿah and similar groups, including the Qarmaṭians in Syria and the Fāṭimids in North Africa, challenged Abbasid rule on religious as well as political grounds.
Competing claims
Abbasid power ended in 945, when the Būyids, a family of rough tribesmen from northwestern Iran, took Baghdad under their rule. They retained the Abbasid caliphs as figureheads. The Samanid dynasty that arose in Khorāsān and Transoxania and the Ghaznavids in Central Asia and the Ganges River basin similarly acknowledged the Abbasid caliphs as spiritual leaders of Sunni Islam. On the other hand, the Fāṭimids proclaimed a new caliphate in 920 in their capital of Al-Mahdiyyah in Tunisia and castigated the Abbasids as usurpers; the Umayyad ruler in Spain, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, adopted the title of caliph in 928 in opposition to both the Abbasids and the Fāṭimids. Nominal Abbasid authority was restored to Egypt by Saladin in 1171. By that time the Abbasids had begun to regain some semblance of their former power, as the Seljuq dynasty of sultans in Baghdad, which had replaced the Būyids in 1055, itself began to decay. The caliph al-Nāṣir (1180–1225) achieved a certain success in dealing diplomatically with various threats from the east, but al-Mustaʿṣim (1242–58) had no such success and was murdered in the Mongol sack of Baghdad that ended the Abbasid line in that city. A scion of the family was invited a few years later to establish a puppet caliphate in Cairo that lasted until 1517, but it exercised no power whatsoever. From the 13th century onward a variety of rulers outside Cairo also included caliph among their titles, although their claims to universal leadership of the Muslim community seem to have been more notional than real.
The caliphate in the modern era
The concept of the caliphate took on new significance in the 18th century as an instrument of statecraft in the declining Ottoman Empire. Facing the erosion of their military and political power and territorial losses inflicted in a series of wars with European rivals, the Ottoman sultans, who had occasionally styled themselves as caliphs since the 14th century, began to stress their claim to leadership of the Islamic community. This served both as means of retaining some degree of influence over Muslim populations in formerly Ottoman lands and as means of bolstering Ottoman legitimacy within the empire. The caliphate was abolished in 1924, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Turkish Republic.
In the 20th century the reestablishment of the caliphate, although occasionally invoked by Islamists as a symbol of global Islamic unity, was of no practical interest for mainstream Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It did, however, figure prominently in the rhetoric of violent extremist groups such as al-Qaeda. In June 2014 an insurgent group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS] and the Islamic State [IS]), which had taken control of areas of eastern Syria and western Iraq, declared the establishment of a caliphate with the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph. Outside extremist circles, the group’s claim was widely rejected.
Ḥasan, in full Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, (born 624, Arabia—died 670, Medina), a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (the founder of Islam), the elder son of Muhammad’s daughter Fāṭimah. He belongs to the group of the five most holy persons of Shīʿah, those over whom Muhammad spread his cloak while calling them “The People of the House.” After his father, ʿAlī, he was considered by many of his contemporaries to be the rightful heir to Muhammad’s position of leadership.
As a child, Ḥasan lived with Muhammad for seven years, and after the latter’s death in 632 he was politically inactive until the end of the reign of the caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (the caliph was the titular leader of the Islamic community). ʿUthmān was murdered in 656, an action in which Ḥasan took no part. ʿAlī, Ḥasan’s father, became the next caliph, and in the civil wars that soon broke out Ḥasan was sent to the important Iraqi city of Kūfah to secure acceptance of ʿAlī’s rule and, if possible, obtain military reinforcements. Later he fought in the Battle of Ṣiffīn, which, although not a defeat, did mark the beginning of a steady deterioration in ʿAlī’s position. After ʿAlī was murdered in 661, never having chosen a successor, a large number of his followers pledged their loyalty to Ḥasan, and Ḥasan himself stressed his own close connections with the Prophet Muhammad.
When Muʿāwiyah I, the governor of Syria and the man who had led the rebellion against ʿAlī, refused to acknowledge Ḥasan as caliph and began to prepare for war, Ḥasan was able to offer considerable resistance: he dispatched a force to meet Muʿāwiyah and then himself headed a larger force. With little money left, Ḥasan, not a warlike person, was plagued by defections from his army. Although some of his followers resented it fiercely, he opened peace negotiations and later in 661 abdicated the caliphate to Muʿāwiyah. Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī obtained a generous pension and was allowed to live quietly in Medina. Ḥasan died in 670. Many early sources say his death was the result of poisoning by one of his wives, Jaʿdah bint al-Ashʿath, in conspiracy with Muʿāwiyah.
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