The Struggle for
Leadership of the Community,
34 - 73 / 655-692
In the generation after Muhammad’s death in 632 C.E. (that is, from
about 31/650 until 73/692), the community of Believers was torn
apart internally by a bitter dispute over the question of leadership.
This dispute manifested itself particularly in two periods of open
strife among the Arabian leadership of the Believers’ movement,
which we can call the First and Second Civil wars (35-40/656-661
and 60-73/680-692, respectively). Because many of the key participants in these events were actually related to one another by blood or
marriage, the Civil Wars— particularly the First— have something of
the quality of an extended and very bitter family quarrel. The loss
of unity manifested in the Civil Wars has made them very painful
events for many Muslims up to the present. For many contemporaries, it was simply heartbreaking that the companions of Muhammad, who had worked shoulder to shoulder for over two decades—
and with resounding success— to spread God’s word and to establish
the rule of God’s law on Earth, should now come to blows. Later Muslim tradition, reflecting this discomfiture, referred to these events
as fitan (singular, fitna), a Quranic word meaning “seduction” or
“temptation”— in this case, implying the temptation to pursue personal
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MUHAMMAD AND THE BELIEVERS
power and worldly advantage at the expense of communal or spiritual
interests. It is not clear when this term is first used, but it may go back to
the Civil Wars themselves.
Background of the First Civil War
As we have seen, on the death of Muhammad in 11/632, the Believers in Medina agreed to recognize Abu Bakr as their political leader.
This act not only secured the succession but also institutionalized
the notion that the Believers should remain a single, united community. We also noted that Abu Bakr was succeeded bv ‘Umar ibn alKhattab (ruled 13-23/634-644) and then by ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan
(ruled 23-35/644-656) and how under these leaders the first great
wave of expansion of the Believers’ movement took place. There can
be little doubt that these first leaders of the community were recognized by the Believers because, at the time they were selected, they
embodied in important ways the central values to which the Believers were dedicated. The Believers at this time were still very much
united in their goals and outlook, and all three men chosen to lead
them had been close associates of Muhammad from early in his
career. Those who held the position of leadership bore the title amir
al-mu’minin, “commander of the Believers,” a title about which I shall
have more to say presently.
We should not allow the apparent smoothness of succession to
mislead us into thinking that the question of leadership was simple
or clear-cut, even in those early days. For one thing, the Qur’an
seems supremely unconcerned with the question of temporal leadership. It offers no explicit guidance whatsoever on how succession
is to be arranged or even on the requirements for leadership of the
community. Nor, apparently, had Muhammad clearly designated
anyone to succeed him. It was therefore not a straightforward matter for the early Believers to decide what leadership of the commu-
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nity meant, let alone who should exercise it or how the selection
should be made, and in fact each of the three commanders of the
Believers was chosen in a different manner. As we have seen, Abu
Bakr was acclaimed leader at a meeting involving many Medinese
Helpers and some Meccan Emigrants. 'Umar was appointed by Abu
Bakr on his deathbed to be his successor. ‘Umar, on the eve of his
own death, named six leading contenders for leadership of the community and instructed them to meet as a council (shura) and come
to unanimous agreement on which one of them should be his successor. (To provide the conferees with an incentive to avoid deadlock, he also left instructions that if they had not reached unanimity
within a few days, those in the minority should be killed.) Numerous reports also suggest that some people may have refused to recognize one or another of the new commanders of the Believers for a
time after their selection. Many of these reports involve the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, although it is not clear
how many of them are later inventions designed to bolster the claim
of ‘Ali’s descendants. There are reports involving other persons as
well.
The fact that Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman each received broad
support on their accessions, however, enables us to deduce a few
things about what the early Believers seem generally to have been
concerned with in choosing their leaders. All three had been close
associates of Muhammad during his lifetime, and their dedication to
the Believers' movement was beyond any doubt. Although they were
all from the tribe of Quraysh and were Meccan Emigrants (like most
of Muhammad’s earliest followers), each was from a different clan of
Quraysh, and none was from the prophet’s clan of Hashim. Their
broad acceptability to the early community suggests that the Believers generally did not yet see narrow genealogical or lineage criteria,
beyond their membership in Quraysh, as a decisive factor in choosing their leaders— in striking contrast to the social traditions of
Arabia. Rather, their close association with Muhammad and their
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reputation for piety and upright behavior seem to have been the paramount concerns in their selection.
The Believers’ more or less consistent support of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar,
and, during the first years of his reign, ‘Uthman, was doubtless
facilitated by the fact that during these roughly twenty years the
Believers’ movement was enjoying phenomenal worldly success,
probably beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. As we have seen, during
this time they vanquished their opponents in Arabia and expanded
their presence in new areas at a pace that must have suggested to
many that God was, in fact, on their side, and that their goal of establishing a public order based on their understanding of God’s
word was, in fact, in accord with God’s will. The glow of such success, which had brought to them resources, lands, and slaves, probably made it easier for many to ignore whatever irritations or complaints they may have had— to dwell on which, in the context of
such God-granted success, might have seemed not only petty but
even positively blasphemous. But conditions appear to have changed
during the reign of ‘Uthman, and dissatisfaction with ‘Uthman’s
leadership of the community became increasingly acute, starting
sometime around 30/650-51— that is, about twenty years after Muhammad’s death.
A number of practical factors can be proposed to explain this increasing tension among the Believers. By the early 30s/650s, the
Believers had to go farther afield from their amsar to wage raids and
campaigns of conquest, and the areas to be raided or conquered
were less developed, more rural, and hence less rich in booty than
the rich lands of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt that had been conquered
earlier. There were also more migrants coming to the amsar as muhajirun among whom stipends had to be divided. There are hints in
the sources that the governors tried to reduce or eliminate stipends
altogether, and this doubtless led to some grumbling.
Another sore point involved the disposition of the conquered
lands. Almost immediately after the conquests, there had emerged a
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TEXT OF QUR’AN 8 (ANFAL/SPOILS): 41
Know that whatever you take as booty, one-fifth is for God and His
apostle and the close kinsmen and orphans and poor and the ibn alsabil. . . (The last term, usually translated “wayfarer,” is interpreted
by some as poor Believers or poor muhajirun. The implication is that
the four-fifths not reserved for God and His apostle— or later, for the
state— should fall to the conquerors as booty.)
dispute between the soldiers who had participated in the campaigns
and the amir al-muminin, ‘Umar, over this issue. The soldiers wished
to see all conquered lands divided among themselves, with only the
traditional one-fifth reserved for the amir al-muminin ; they pointed
to Qur’an 8:41 and to the prophet’s division of the lands of Khaybar
as warrant for their claim. ‘Umar (and later ‘Uthman), on the other
hand, argued that conquered lands whose inhabitants were still in
occupation— which in most districts were the majority— were different from the regular soldiers’ booty of war and became collective
property of the whole community; the inhabitants of the land should
remain on them and pay taxes for the benefit of all of the Believers.
Only abandoned lands, in their view, were booty to be divided
among the soldiers. The picture is not clear, however; many places
reached ad hoc agreements with the conquerors, and sources provide very contradictory and confusing accounts of how landholding
and taxation actually developed.
In addition to the tension over distribution of lands, moreover,
there was resentment among many of the soldiers who had actually
effected the conquests (or, as time went on, those soldiers’ sons), because some well-connected individuals from the tribe of Quraysh,
such as Talha ibn ‘Ubaydallah and Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwam, increasingly emerged as large landowners of great wealth. But this came about
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through caiiphal grants or through various real estate transactions
(including trades for properties in Arabia), not because they had participated in the conquest, which is what irked the soldiers. One of
‘Uthman’s governors in Iraq, Sa‘id ibn al-‘As, enraged the soldiers in
an address by referring to Iraq as “a garden for Quraysh”; his arrogant
remark sparked a mutiny— led by a hero of the conquests there,
Malik al-Ashtar al-Nakha‘i— that eventually caused Sa'id to be ejected
from the town by the Kufans.
A further practical problem that faced the amir al-muminin, particularly by ‘Uthman’s time, was that of management of what was
becoming a far-flung empire. As the areas controlled by the Believers grew, the proper supervision of distant military commanders,
governors, sub-governors, tax agents, and the sometimes turbulent
amsar themselves, w’ith their mixed tribal populations, became ever
more challenging. Moreover, this was happening at a time w'hen the
core of the Believers’ movement, those from Mecca and Medina,
w'as changing; as the years passed, more and more of the Believers
who had actually known the prophet died off, and many others
were becoming too old to be active as military commanders or governors. ‘Uthman and his main subordinates increasingly had to look
to a younger generation of Believers to hold important posts; yet
the qualifications and commitment of many of these younger Believers were less obvious to those around them. Indeed, one of the
charges raised against ‘Uthman w ? as that of using “youths” in important posts.
In addition to these practical concerns, there were probably other
factors related to social and economic realities that generated tension
among the Believers, but of which little record has survived. These
may have included social disagreements among tribesmen of various
tribes now living in close proximity in the amsar. The earlier settlers
of the amsar saw themselves being swamped by increasingly large
waves of newer immigrants from Arabia, including both new fighters
and families of those already there. In addition, there was competition
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among individual leaders or tribal groups for influence with the local commander or governor, disputes over pay and benefits received
from (or demands of military service to) the state, and squabbles
stemming from the tribesmen’s differing access to private economic
activities such as pastoralism, commerce, or artisanship.
Also very important was a growing sense among the Medinese
Helpers and some other Arabian Believers, especially those early
converts of humble origins, that the affairs (and financial benefits) of
the new state were being increasingly dominated by powerful members of Quraysh. Abu Bakr had followed closely the policy inaugurated by Muhammad himself in his last years of providing important
posts to some of those Meccans who had earlier been among his bit-
terest opponents— the policy of “conciliation of hearts” that had so
incensed some of his earliest followers. Abu Bakr s appointment of
Khalid ibn al-Walid, ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, and Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan, all of
whom had joined the Believers’ movement late in Muhammad's life,
can be seen in this light. On his accession, ‘Umar moderated this
policy, and relied more heavily for important appointments on those
who had been early adherents of the prophet; he dismissed some,
like Khalid ibn al-Walid, whom he considered to be too concerned
with worldly affairs. Yet his policy was hardly consistent in this regard; he retained ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, widely known for his worldly orientation, as governor of Egypt after ‘Amr conquered it.
As important as these practical issues may have been, however,
there is good reason to think that the internal tensions that afflicted
the community of Believers in the 30s/650s also revolved around the
question of piety and how it related to leadership of the community.
Competition over land, pay, status, and influence were important
not only in their own right, but especially because the Believers sawin them indications that some of their leaders were not acting in
accordance with the high principles of piety (including equitable
treatment of all Believers) that were a central concern of the Believers’ movement. Differences in status or influence or wealth were
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irksome, but people had long been familiar with such things; what
was intolerable to many Believers seems to have been the thought
that their leaders should be lax in trying to eliminate such inequities,
or worse still, should be actively engaged in favoritism, giving some
Believers an advantage over others. This concern came to a head
during the time of the third amir al-muminin, ‘Uthman— resulting, as
we shall see, in his murder.
A number of ‘Uthman’s policies seem to have aroused sharp opposition. One charge raised against him was that of favoring members of his own family, the Umayyads, for important (and probably
lucrative) positions such as key governorships. For example, he removed two governors in Iraq who were well-known companions of
the prophet and heroes of the conquest, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas and
Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, and replaced them with his half-brother
Walid ibn ‘Uqba and another relative, ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Amir ibn
Kurayz (who was also granted by ‘Uthman large date plantations in the
vicinity). When Walid ibn ‘Uqba was forced to resign in disgrace
(for drunkenness), ‘Uthman replaced him with another Umayyad,
his second cousin Sa‘id ibn al-‘As. He also took the governorship of
Egypt out of the hands of the redoubtable ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, who had
conquered it and then managed its affairs and who was very popular
with his troops, and replaced him with ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi Sarh, a
foster brother and close ally of ‘Uthman and his family. The new
governor may have been under orders to tighten central control over
Egypt’s finances, which would have compounded his unpopularity,
as revenues formerly retained in the province were forwarded to Medina. In Syria, ‘Uthman placed the governorship in the hands of his
younger kinsman Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan; he had, admittedly,
been first appointed by ‘Umar, but ‘Uthman increased his power by
giving him control over the main garrison at Hims as well as over
Damascus. ‘Uthman’s detractors took these signs of family favoritism
as a moral failing on his part. It has been suggested that ‘Uthman
was, as amir al-muminin, merely trying to ensure firm control over
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the increasingly complex affairs of the empire by relying on individuals over whom, as a relative, he had strong personal influence. It is
impossible to know which of these motivations was uppermost in
‘Uthman’s mind, but it is worth noting that 'Uthman distributed
many estates from the conquered lands, not only to his Umayyad
kinsmen, but also to important leaders from many groups, including
some of the leaders of the conquests, such as Jarir ibn ‘Abd Allah and
Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas. 'Uthman was not deaf to complaints of impiety, and he was able to dismiss relatives who were suspected of
misdeeds; as we have seen, his half-brother Walid ibn 'Uqba was
dismissed as governor of Kufa (and flogged) for drinking wine, which
sowed deep enmity between ‘Uthman and Walid’s family, notwithstanding their close family ties.
‘Uthman was also criticized for matters that had nothing to do
with worldly gain, however, and those allegations highlight the fact
that he was faulted above all for his perceived moral failings— his
lack of piety— when, as amir al-muminin, he was expected by the
Believers to be a paragon of piety. A few accounts in the traditional
sources describe minor alterations in the pilgrimage ritual made by
‘Uthman. Despite their apparent insignificance and despite the fact
that the Qur’an is vague on how to do the pilgrimage (as it is on details of most rituals), these alterations seem to have caused consternation among some people, perhaps because the pilgrimage rituals
had been affirmed by the prophet himself. Among the most impor-
tant of ‘Uthman’s “innovations,” however, may have been his decision to codify the Qur’an text.
The stories about this are many and confused; some scholars argue that the Qur’an text as we have it was already codified at the
time of Muhammad’s death, but many reports tell of people collecting parts of the revelation that survived the prophet only in people’s
memories or in scattered, partial written copies. One stream of tradition holds that ‘Uthman asked a team of companions led by Zayd
ibn Thabit to collect and compare all available copies of the Qur’an
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and to prepare a single, unified text. This aroused opposition not
perhaps because of the procedure itself, but because once the new
Qur’anic “vulgate” was established, ‘Uthman had copies sent to the
main amsar with orders that they be used there in place of regional
versions that were considered authentic by their followers and that
these earlier copies be burned. Despite this, several of the earlier versions of the Qur’an survived— for example, those associated with the
early Qur’an reciters Ibn Mas'ud (died 33/653) in Kufa, Ubayy ibn
Ka‘b (died 29/649 or 34/654) in Syria, and Abu Musa al-Ash'ari (died
42/662) in Basra, among others, whose copies (or memories) could not
be blotted out. There were also copies of parts or all of the Qur’an in
the hands of some of the prophets widows and of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar,
‘Ali, and other companions. Ibn Mas'ud is said to have refused to
destroy his copy when ‘Uthman’s vulgate arrived in Kufa, but in any
case the readings of companions who had been teaching those
around them how to recite the text could easily have survived in their
memories and been copied down again later, even if the original
variant codices were destroyed. (Vestiges of these codices seem to
survive in compilations of recognized Qur’anic variant readings that
form part of the science of Qur’anic recitation.)
All of these factors, then, contributed to the rising tide of criticism
against ‘Uthman’s conduct as amir al-muminin. Open opposition to
his rule seems to have broken out first in the amsar of Fustat in
Egypt and Kufa and Basra in Iraq. Groups of dissidents from these
towns then marched to Medina to confront ‘Uthman himself. The
traditional Muslim sources provide us with lengthy reports about the
events of the mutiny and those that followed, which we call the First
Civil War; our sources refer to these events as the first fitna, using a
pejorative Qur’anic word meaning “temptation, seduction” (by the
lure of worldly advantage). The goal of all these reports is either to
demonstrate ‘Uthman’s guilt or to exculpate him (or, similarly, to
provide moral judgments on other participants in the events). Hence
it is difficult, if not impossible, to reach a clear verdict today on the
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relative responsibility of different actors through the thicket of charges
and countercharges these reports provide. We can discern quite
clearly, however, the basic course of events, the individuals and groups
involved, and the main issues at stake because most sources regardless
of tendency agree.
This much seems clear in evaluation of ‘Uthman’s role in these
events: Whether or not he engaged in controversial innovation or was
guilty of moral failings, real or perceived, he seems to have lacked the
decisiveness of character needed to deal effectively with the problems
with which, as amir al-muminin, he was confronted. His prior history
showed no outstanding activity, military or otherwise, except for his
early decision to follow Muhammad and his generous support of the
Believers’ movement from his own personal fortune. Perhaps he was
too inclined to leave important decisions to others, including his own
relatives, whose good judgment he trusted; perhaps his trust was
sometimes misplaced; perhaps he failed to anticipate or even to recognize the depth and character of discontent and tension within the
community he led. In any case, the mutiny against him inaugurated
a sequence of events that saw the Arabian Believers— hitherto the
core of the Believers’ movement— fragmented in a bitter battle for
leadership.
The Course of the First Civil War (35-40/656-661)
Although critics of ‘Uthman’s regime were active in several centers,
including Kufa (where they had, as we have seen, driven out his governor Sa'id ibn al-‘As) and Basra, it was a group of agitators from the
garrison of Fustat in Egypt who played the leading role in the unfolding of events that led to the First Civil War. After raising demands against ‘Uthman’s governor of Egypt, ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi
Sarh, these agitators made their way toward Medina to confront
‘Uthman himself, arriving in late 35/May 656. There they were
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joined by groups of insurgents from Kufa and Basra; this joining of
forces suggests that there may have been some coordination of activities even before they marched on Medina. For several weeks 'Uthman
(or his supporters) and his opponents engaged in negotiations to deal
with the insurgents' grievances, but as time went on his critics grew
bolder and his supporters seemed to dwindle in number. Eventually,
the aged amir al-mu’minin, besieged in his house in Medina, was
attacked and killed (end 35 /June 656).
The fact that the amir al-muminin could be murdered in his own
home by a group of provincial malcontents demonstrates that
‘Uthman had lost the effective support of those longtime Believers
in Medina who, under other circumstances, could surely have defended him and dispersed the rebels. Evidently the native Medinese Helpers, who were distressed at the degree to which they saw
themselves increasingly sidelined in the distribution of influential
positions and valuable properties by powerful men of Quraysh,
were no longer inclined to rescue ‘Uthman. As for ‘Uthman’s Quraysh
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kinsmen, many seem to have made only halfhearted efforts to
defend him— either because he had antagonized them by his policies or because they had concluded that his cause was hopelessly
compromised— and some may even have encouraged the dissidents.
These included the ambitious Talha, the aggrieved ‘Amr and Walid,
and many others. The prophet’s esteemed widow ‘A’isha, “mother of
the Believers,” still only in her early forties, may or may not have
incited the rebels by letter, but her decision to leave Medina on pilgrimage just when the mutiny was coming to a head makes it clear
that she had no desire to exert her considerable influence among
the Believers to calm the rising tide of opposition to 'Uthman, even
in dire circumstances. Ali ibn Abi Talib, who perhaps had more influence than anyone with the population of Medina, must have
been torn, as he believed himself to be more entitled to the office
‘Uthman held; at any rate, he was not able to prevent ‘Uthman’s
death, and sources disagree on how hard he tried. It is difficult to
avoid the impression that by the time of the mutiny, many leading
members of the community in Medina were already anticipating
‘Uthman's abdication or removal from office and were maneuvering to secure what they thought would be the best outcome for
themselves. It may be that some of these figures miscalculated matters and encouraged the mutiny in the hope that it would merely
force ‘Uthman to change his policies, only to see events get out of
hand.
The immediate beneficiary of ‘Uthman’s death was Ali ibn Abi
Talib, the prophet’s cousin and husband of his daugher Fatima. He
seems to have had the strong support of the Medinese Helpers and
of some of the mutineers, particularly those from Kufa; they constituted the shi'at ‘Ali, the “party of Ali” (for now merely his political
bloc, but eventually to become the nucleus of the Shi‘a, who held—
and still hold— Ali and all his descendants in special reverence).
The day following ‘Uthman’s murder, Ali received the oath of allegiance as amir al-muminin in the mosque of Medina. He had very
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little support from other members of Quraysh, however, some of
whom aspired to the leadership themselves. Leading figures from
Quraysh simply left Medina quickly without swearing allegiance to
'Ah—or withdrew after they had given it and then repudiated it— to
gather in Mecca, their hometown. ‘A’isha, shocked to learn of the
accession of ‘Ali (whom she is said to have detested because he had
questioned her virtue many years earlier), remained in Mecca after
her pilgrimage and gathered her close relatives Talha and Zubayr,
whose claims she supported, around her. The Umayyads who happened to be in Medina at the time of ‘Uthman’s death— notably
Marwan, at this time the Umayyad clan’s patriarch— also left and
gathered in Mecca.
From Medina, ‘Ali quickly named new governors for various provinces, intending to replace nearly all those who had served ‘Uthman,
some of whom had been unpopular. Mecca and Syria, however, rejected ‘Ali’s claims to lead the community. In Syria, ‘Uthman’s kinsman Mu'awiya, the longtime governor, argued that ‘Ali could not
claim to rule until he had brought to justice ‘Uthman’s killers, who
were now in his entourage.
In Mecca, ‘A’isha rallied most of Quraysh opposed to ‘Ali and they
now called for vengeance for the slain ‘Uthman, despite the fact that
they had done so little to save him. They also called for the convening of a shura or council to decide the question of who should lead
the community. Not only Talha and Zubayr, but also ‘Uthman’s
grown sons and many other powerful members of Quraysh joined
the opposition, including ‘Uthman’s former governors of Yemen,
who came with much wealth. Deciding that they should go to Basra
to gather forces there before attacking ‘Ali, they set out in 36/October 656. Arriving in Basra, they skirmished with ‘Ali’s governor and
his troops and eventually took control of the city.
'Ali set out to confront them. He sent his son Hasan, along with
the leader of the Kufan mutineers against ‘Uthman, Malik “alAshtar” al-Nakha‘i, ahead to Kufa to secure it from ‘Ali’s governor,
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Abu Musa, who though pious was only lukewarm in his support of
Ali. There Hasan quickly raised an army of Kufans to join Ali,
who arrived and made camp east of the city. When Ali’s force was
ready, he marched on Basra. Both Ali’s army and that of his Meccan
opponents were multi-tribal, and most tribes had members in both
armies, some backing Ali, some backing A’isha and her followers.
This created hesitation in the hearts of many of the soldiers; moreover, there were in each army people who thought it was wrong for
Believers to fight other Believers openly and who therefore withdrew
and refused to back either side. The actual battle (called the Battle
of the Camel because the epicenter of the fighting was around the
camel carrying A’isha’s litter) took place not far from Basra, and it
cost many lives on both sides. But Ali’s forces carried the day, and
both Talha and Zubayr were killed. Ali promptly took control of
Basra (which remained, however, a strong center for pro- c Uthman
sentiment for many years); he also sent A’isha back to Medina with
strict instructions that she stay out of politics thereafter. A number of
prominent Meccans in A’isha’s army evaded capture; some of them
eventually made their way to join the Umayyad Mu'awiya, who had
remained in Syria. Ali eventually went back to Kufa, which became
his main base of activity.
Ali’s choice of governors to replace those of ‘Uthman gives us
some idea of the goals of his regime. Where 'Uthman had relied
heavily on his own Umayyad kinsmen, Ali relied on the Medinese
Helpers (whom he sent as governors to Medina, Egypt, Kufa, and
Basra before the Battle of the Camel) and members of his clan of
Hashim (selected as governors for Yemen, Basra after the Battle of
the Camel, and Mecca). (The main exceptions were two members
of other Quraysh clans who were very loyal to Ali; Muhammad ibn
Abi Bakr was sent as a replacement to Egypt, and another Qurayshite was made governor in eastern Arabia). One surmises that his
intent was to place the Believers’ movement and the new state once
again in the hands of those who, in his view, were most likely to lead
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it in the spirit of the prophet and his insistence on strict piety. It was
intended to be a decisive departure from the leadership and policies
of ‘Uthman, roundly criticized for his impiety, who had relied on
kinsmen from that clan of Quraysh— the Umayyads— who had long
resisted Muhammad’s message and whose commitment to it ‘Ali
(and the Helpers) still considered suspect.
Ali now had control, more or less, of the Hijaz, Iraq, and Egypt
(although in the latter there was a strong faction that called for revenge for the slain ‘Uthman and held aloof from Ali’s governor). He
now turned his attention to the sullen opposition of Mu'awiya, who
for almost twenty years had been governor of Syria and who had not
yet tendered his recognition of Ali as amir al-muminin. Ali’s envoys
invited Mu‘awiva to obedience, but Mu'awiya knew that recognizing Ali would mean his own dismissal as governor of Syria. From
Mu'awiya’s point of view, furthermore, Ali’s acclamation as amir almuminin by the Medinan mob that had murdered his kinsman
'Uthman was invalid. Whereas Ali might accuse Mu'awiya of being
a lukewarm Believer, slow to join the movement and a participant in
the worldly minded regime of ‘Uthman, Mu'awiya could point out
that Ali’s supporters included the mutineers themselves, whom Ali
had never punished even though they were guilty of the unpardonable sin of killing a fellow Believer. It is not surprising that a number
of prominent early Believers, such as the leader of the conquest of
Iraq, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, decided that they could back neither
party in clear conscience and so withdrew in self-imposed isolation
for the duration of the First Civil War.
Mu'awiya’s political position was strengthened in late 36/early
657 by his conclusion of an alliance with ‘Amr ibn al-'As. The two
were not natural allies; Amr had borne a grudge against the Umayyads ever since ‘Uthman had removed him from the governorship of
Egypt, and there was some suspicion that the Egyptian mutineers
had been instigated in part by Amr. Yet Amr also knew that Ali,
whose policies revealed a strong preference for Medinese Helpers
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161
and Hashimites, would never agree to make him part of his administration. His one hope of regaining his governorship of Egypt was
to ally himself with Mu'awiya, which he now did, in exchange for
assurances that he would again govern it. Fortunately for Mu'awiya,
the divisions among the Arabian Believers in Egypt— the soldiers—
meant that ‘Ali’s governors there had their hands full and were in no
position to threaten Mu'awiya’s Syrian base, at least for the time being. ‘Amr’s job was to make sure it never happened.
At the end of 36/May 657, 'Ali assembled his army in Kufa and
marched out to confront Mu'awiya and to force his submission. In
Syria, meanwhile, Mu'awiya likewise gathered his troops and moved
toward the Euphrates to block ‘Ali’s advance. Neither leader had the
unwavering support of the people they ruled, as many on both sides
thought it wrong that Believers should march against one another in
open warfare. The two armies drew near each other in June, near
the town of Siffin on the Euphrates, between Raqqa and Aleppo. A
long period of desultory skirmishing and fruitless negotiation ensued
between the two leaders. A pitched battle finally occurred in Safar in
37 /late July 657 and lasted several days, with heavy casualties. Finally,
Mu'awiya’s forces appeared one morning with copies of the Qur’an
hoisted on their lances, a gesture taken by many in 'Ali’s army as an
appeal to stop fighting and let the dispute be settled by the principles
of their holy book— which, whatever their disagreements, was the
thing that united the two sides. The fighting stopped at once; in
'Ali’s camp, some of those who had been lukewarm supporters of the
idea of marching against Mu'awiya in the first place now pressed ‘Ali
to negotiate, while others insisted that he press the offensive, feeling
themselves on the verge of victory. Those in favor of negotiation prevailed. ‘Ali reluctantly agreed to submit the dispute to arbitration, to
take place at a neutral venue in a few months’ time, and equally reluctantly accepted his supporters’ demand that he appoint as his negotiator Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, his erstwhile governor of Kufa. ‘Ali’s
followers were evidently impressed by Abu Musa’s piety, but ‘Ali
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doubtless would have preferred someone who, unlike Abu Musa,
backed him unequivocally. Mu'awiya appointed ‘Amr ibn al-‘As as
his negotiator.
The divisions among ‘Ali’s supporters grew more acute as he
marched his army back to Iraq. Although the majority still agreed
with his decision to submit the rivalry over leadership to arbitration,
a sizable minority grew increasingly vocal in their rejection of the
idea of arbitration. Perhaps fearing that they might be called to account for their role in ‘Uthman s murder, this minority now argued
that ‘Ali, by agreeing to arbitration, had taken the decision out of
God’s hands— that is, out of the hands of the soldiers who battled “in
God’s way”— and put it into the hands of mere men, the arbitrators.
This, they held, was a grave sin, and they called on ‘Ali to repent for
it, and to express their view they began to circulate the slogan, “No
judgment but God’s!” These ultra-pious Believers were dedicated
to strictly righteous behavior in accordance with the Qur’an and demanded such righteousness, especially from their leaders. In their
view, by agreeing to arbitration, 'Ali and his followers had not only
squandered any claim to lead but had actually left the faith itself and
had to be fought as unbelievers. After a time they withdrew from
'Ali’s army and encamped at a place called Nahrawan, some distance from Kufa. They came to be called Kharijites (Arabic khawarij,
“those who go out”), although the exact significance of their name
remains unclear. Perhaps they were so designated because they “went
out” from 'Ali’s camp or because by breaking solidarity with 'Ali they
were felt to have left the community of Believers; or perhaps their
name is a more positive reference to “coming forth in the way of God”
(for example, Q. 60:1).
The arbitrators convened, probably in Dumat al-Jandal in northern Arabia between Syria and Iraq in late 37/spring 658. The details
of their discussions are obscure, but they seem to have tried to settle
the question of leadership of the community of Believers by referring
to the Qur’an. As a first step, they agreed that ‘Uthman had been
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163
unjustly murdered, but they were unable to reach further agreement
and broke up, calling for the convocation of another shura of leading
Believers to decide who should be amir al-muminin. Whether or not
this decision was the result of a ruse by Mu'awiya’s negotiator, 'Amr,
as claimed by pro-'Alid sources, is hard to ascertain. But whatever its
authority, announcement of this decision had major consequences.
Mu'awiya and his followers now found themselves vindicated in
their insistence on seeking vengeance for ‘Uthman’s murder, in particular against ‘Ali and his followers, who included the murderers.
Furthermore, Mu'awiya was some time thereafter acclaimed in Syria
as amir al-muminin. The position of 'Ali as amir al-muminin, on the
other hand, was undermined by the arbitrators’ announcement, and
‘Ali promptly denounced it and called on his supporters in Kufa to
prepare to march, once again, against Mu'awiya in Syria.
Before doing so, however, 'Ali had to deal with the Kharijites
gathered at Nahrawan. These self-righteous pietists, having withdrawn from ‘All’s forces in protest over his actions and policies,
now considered anyone who recognized ‘Ali’s leadership to be similarly guilty of sin and, for this reason, eligible to be killed as an
apostate, an ex-Believer. A number of people in the vicinity of Kufa
had been done in by them, and ‘Ali’s soldiers were unwilling to
embark on a new campaign against Mu'awiya, leaving their families unprotected in Kufa, unless the Kharijites were either won over
or eliminated. 'Ali made a number of efforts to secure the Kharijites’
allegiance once again, all of which were rebuffed by the Kharijite
leaders— although a large number of individuals did accept his offers of immunity and withdrew quietly from the Kharijite ranks.
Filled with pious zeal and convinced that ‘Ali and his men were
now apostates, the remaining Kharijites felt that they had no choice
but to fight them until they vanquished the “unbelievers” or met
their fate as martyrs in what they considered to be God’s way. They
attacked ‘Ali’s larger forces and were cut down almost to a man
(end 37 /May 658).
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The Kharijites are commonly described as the “first sect” in Islam,
as if they were an offshoot or aberration from the original principles
espoused by the Believers of Muhammad’s day. But in fact, the intense piety and militancy of these early Kharijites represented the
survival in its purest form of the original pietistic impetus of the Believers’ movement. They can therefore be considered the best representatives in the generations following the death of the prophet of
the original principles of the Believers’ movement of Muhammad’s
day— although they may have followed an extreme form of these
principles, because the prophet himself seems to have been more
flexible and practical than they in his dealings with his opponents. It
is possible— although the evidence is scant— that the intensity of
their commitment was rooted in a conviction that the Believers were
the vanguards establishing God’s kingdom on Earth in preparation
for the Last Judgment that was soon to dawn (or that was, through
their actions, already dawning).
The massacre at Nahrawan was a pyrrhic victory for ‘Ali. He had
secured his home base, Kufa, but the slaughter of something like fifteen hundred Kharijites, among whom were a large number of early
Believers well known for their exemplary piety, undermined Ali’s
moral claim to lead the community. Moreover, after the battle, Ali’s
Kufan forces made clear their reluctance to embark on a new cam-
paign against Mu'awiya, whose forces (as they knew from Siffin) included many tribesmen from their own tribes. Ali was forced to remain in Kufa and consider his options.
These options became increasingly limited. Mu'awiya’s position,
already buoyed by the declaration of the arbiters at Dumat al-Jandal
and the Syrians’ recognition of him as amir al-mu’minin, was further
strengthened by developments in Egypt. There, as we have seen,
Ali’s governor Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr faced a determined (and, it
seems, growing) body of troops who remained incensed at the murder of 'Uthman and were therefore reluctant to recognize Ali’s leadership. Learning that Ali was preoccupied with the Kharijites,
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165
Mu'awiya dispatched ‘Amr ibn al-‘As with a strong detachment of
troops to Egypt. These joined forces with the Egyptians already
opposed to ‘Ali and destroyed Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr’s army. ‘Ali s
governor was caught and killed shortly thereafter. By early 38/August
658, Egypt was once again firmly in the hands of ‘Amr ibn al-'As, its
former conqueror, and solidly in Mu'awiya's camp.
‘Ali’s cause also began to show signs of unraveling closer to home. A
near-mutiny in Basra was quelled but revealed the erosion of his support even in Iraq; and a temporary, but sharp, quarrel with his cousin
c Abd Allah ibn al-‘Abbas, whose backing was important to him and
whom he could hardly afford to alienate, revealed (as had numerous
other episodes) ‘Ali s tendency to antagonize people and to misjudge
situations. This quality had probably been a major reason for his failure to win recognition (even from his Quraysh kinsmen) commensurate with his ambition and early role in the community of Believers.
The arbitrators apparently now met for a second time in the
month of Sha'ban 38/January 659, this time at Mu'awiya’s behest, at
Adhruh (today in southern Jordan). But inasmuch as ‘Ali had dismissed his arbitrator, Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, after the first round, this
meeting was really a public-relations ploy by Mu‘awiya. In the meeting, Mu'awiya’s negotiator, ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, tricked the pious Abu
Musa into declaring that he considered ‘Ali deposed as amir almu’minin by pretending that they were in agreement that both contenders should be dismissed; but once Abu Musa had made his statement, ‘Amr stood up and declared his recognition of Mu'awiya for
the position. Whatever propaganda advantage Mu'awiya may have
gained from this episode, however, does not seem to have translated
into any immediate advantage on the ground.
Mu'awiya now took the initiative in his struggle with ‘Ali. He began sending periodic raiding parties from Syria to the Euphrates region and into northern Arabia, hoping to win over groups under ‘Ali s
control, or those who remained neutral (38/659). ‘Ali also sent a few
raids into the Euphrates region but seems to have been preoccupied
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in the period 38-40/659-661 with his confrontation with the Kharijites. Many of the latter who had gathered at Nahrawan had dispersed
before the battle, and numerous groups of them continued to disrupt
southern and central Iraq. Driven now not only by their pious scruples but also by the desire to avenge their many kinsmen and fellow
Kharijites who had fallen at Nahrawan, they demanded that people
reject ‘Ali as impious, sometimes killing as apostates anyone who refused to join them. Ali was able to suppress these uprisings, but his
killing of yet more Kharijites only deepened the hostility of those who
remained.
Mu'awiva now dispatched a force to Arabia under his general Busr
ibn Abi Artat, which marched through the Hijaz and into Yemen
and Hadramawt. Whether or not the many reports of atrocities committed by Busr during this campaign are to be believed, or whether
they are to be ascribed to anti-Mu'awiya propaganda, remains unclear; likewise, it is not clear whether Ali took any significant measures to counter this advance. But the campaign resulted in the expulsion of Ali’s governors and brought all the major towns of these
regions— not only the symbolically all-important holy cities of Mecca
and Medina, but also Ta’if, Tabala, Najran, Sana", and others— under
Mu'awiya’s control.
Ali’s position was now dire; his control was limited to Iraq, and even
there he was plagued by the continuing opposition of the surviving
Kharijites and lukewarm support of many others. As he was attempting (yet again) to rally his forces for a campaign against Syria, however,
he was struck down in the mosque of Kufa by a Kharijite assassin (Ramadan 40/}anuary 661). Ali paid the ultimate price for his long, unhappy relations with these ultra-pious erstwhile supporters.
Upon Ali’s death, his followers in Kufa recognized his son Hasan
ibn Ali as their leader and amir al-muminin. Hasan had none of his
father’s ambition, however, sitting passively in Kufa awaiting developments, rather than marching against Mu'awiya. He entered into
desultory correspondence with Mu'awiya, who meanwhile gathered
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167
a large army of his own. Mu'awiya soon enough marched with his
army down the Euphrates and secured Hasan’s agreement to abdicate; Hasan agreed to recognize Mu‘awiya as amir al-muminin, in
exchange for a lifetime pension that allowed him the leisure to pursue his many love affairs, and he never played a role in politics again.
Mu'awiya was duly recognized by the Kufans in Rabi c II 41 /August
661. Except for a few bands of Kharijite holdouts, the Believers once
more were united under a single amir al-muminin.
The First Civil War had involved economic and other practical
issues but was fundamentally a debate over the nature of future leadership in the community of Believers, particularly its relationship to
issues of piety and morality. In the bitter struggles that took place
after ‘Uthman’s death, each claimant or group based its claim on a
different set of criteria for what constituted appropriate leadership for
the Believers.
The most central criterion, to which all groups and contenders
made frequent appeal in some way, was that of piety, reflecting the
central thrust of the original Believers’ movement itself. The most
unalloyed expression of this was found among the Kharijites, for
whom piety was not merely an important criterion; it was the only
criterion that mattered. In their view, only the most pious Believer
was entitled to lead, and they rejected decisively all considerations of
kinship, ethnicity, or social status. Any leader who was, in their eyes,
adjudged as sinful had either to do penance or to be removed from
office, for to follow a sinful leader was itself a sin that disqualified one
from membership in the community of true Believers and endangered one’s future in the afterlife.
Other groups tended to combine concern for piety with other criteria. Many pious Believers linked it with the notion of “precedence”
(sabiqa )— that is, they felt that the community could best be led by
men who had been among Muhammad’s first and most loyal backers,
because these would understand better than anyone else how to lead
the community in accordance with Muhammad’s ideals. Prominent
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early Emigrants, such as Talha ibn ‘Ubayd Allah, Zubayr ibn al‘Awwam, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf, and ‘Ammar ibn Yasir adhered to
this view, as did many Medinese Helpers, and all of the first four
commanders of the Believers— Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman, and ‘Ali —
had impressive credentials in this regard. It was a claim that was directed especially against those who had opposed the prophet, or had
joined him only late in his career, such as many of the Umayyads.
A third criterion for leadership that emerged at an early date was
that of kinship to the prophet. ‘Ali, as the prophets cousin and son-inlaw, is presented by later tradition as having raised this claim most
forcefully, even though he was no more closely related than other
cousins of the prophet, such as ‘Abd Allah ibn al-‘Abbas. On the
other hand, ‘Ali’s close kinship with Muhammad obviously did not
persuade most of the community to favor him over his three predecessors, so other considerations must have been uppermost in their
minds. Moreover, in several places the Qur’an emphasizes that ties
to other Believers outweigh even the closest ties of kinship (for example, Q. 9:23).
Finally, there were those who asserted a claim to leadership based
on effectiveness in practical matters, service to the Believers’ move-
TEXT OF QUR’AN 9 (TAWBA/REPENTANCE): 23-24
O you who Believe! Do not take your parents and siblings as friends
if they prefer disbelief (kufr) to Belief. Whosoever of you draws close
to them, these are the oppressors. Say: if your parents and children
and siblings and spouses and tribe and your wealth that you earned
and the trade whose sluggishness you fear are dearer to you than
God and His Apostle and striving ( jihad) in His way [that is, for His
cause], then wait until God brings His Decision. For God does not
guide sinful peoples.
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169
ment, and recognition by members of the community. Many disparaged (and still disparage) this claim as merely a cover for the
seizure of power by those who lacked “real” qualifications of the
three kinds enumerated above, such as 'Amr ibn al-'As or Mu'awiya
ibn Abi Sufyan, who had been slow to embrace the Believers’ movement and were sometimes less than models of piety. But they had in
their favor the strong argument that in his final years Muhammad
himself had pursued the policy of "conciliation of hearts,” by which
he gave even some of his bitterest former opponents important positions. This policy, which was also followed by Abu Bakr, was based
on recognition of the fact that the Believers’ movement, if it was to
succeed in the world, needed to be in the hands of decisive men
having the practical capacity to lead. Someone suggested to 'Umar,
on his deathbed, that he appoint as his successor his son ‘Abd Allah,
who was highly esteemed for his piety, but 'Umar replied, “How can
I appoint someone who can’t even divorce his own wife?” In making this statement, he was presumably voicing not merely his own
judgment on his son’s character but also the sentiment of many who
knew that force of personality was a crucial ingredient in successful
leadership.
The fact that piety was such a central feature of the early Believers’ movement helps explain why the First Civil War was such a
traumatic event for the Believers— as it was happening, in the decades after it, and for Muslims ever since. The Believers had faced
other setbacks with relative equanimity— serious military defeats by
armies of impious states, for example— but had responded to these
setbacks with alacrity and increased vigor and confidence, even
though such setbacks could have been viewed by them as a sign that
they no longer enjoyed God’s full favor. They do not seem to have
done so partly, perhaps, because the Qur’an itself makes clear that
the righteous would have to fight unbelief and unbelievers, and
hence some setbacks would be inevitable and simply spurred the
Believers to greater efforts. But the First Civil War was different. It
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not only split the community of Believers; it divided its members on
precisely that issue around which their communal identity was focused, the question of piety or morality. They were in open disagreement over whether ‘Uthman had acted justly or not; and after his
assassination, they were in even sharper disagreement over whether
the mutineers and other main actors had acted morally. Moreover,
regardless of what stand one took on the mutiny, it meant that the
very leaders of the community— the persons w'ho should, by all tokens, be most morally distinguished— had been called into doubt
regarding their morality, because one could hardly claim that both
‘Uthman and ‘Ali were sinless. Only much later, after the passage
of a generation or more had made the community numb to the pain
of the events of the First Civil War and keenly aware of the danger of
fragmenting the community that lay in any attempt to insist that one
side or the other was at fault, did the community come to consider
both ‘Uthman and ‘Ali (along with Abu Bakr and ‘Umar) rashidun,
“rightly guided ones,” whose leadership was to be acknowledged as
valid by everyone.
Between Civil Wars (40-60/661-680)
Muawiya's final emergence as the sole amir al-muminin in 40/661 —
called the “year of coming together” ( c am al-jama c a ) by Muslim
tradition— ushered in two decades of relative calm. During this period the Believers once again turned their attention to implementing
the movements goal of spreading God’s rule and ensuring a righteous order in areas they controlled.
Mu'awiya appointed as governor men whose loyalty to him and
capacity to manage the affairs of their sometimes turbulent provinces were unquestionable. Many were Umayyads, such as his second cousin Marwan ibn al-Hakam and Sa‘id ibn al-‘As, rivals whom
he played against one another in serving as governor of Medina, or
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171
‘Abd Allah ibn Amir, a distant relation who was his first governor of
Basra. Other governors were not Umayyads but were selected for
special reasons. He entrusted Mecca to the distinguished Khalid ibn
al-As, of the Makhzum clan of Quraysh, who had served as ‘Umar’s
governor there and was well liked in the city. Egypt was, naturally, in
the hands of Amr ibn al-As (of the Sahm clan of Quraysh), who with
Mu'awiya’s consent appointed his younger nephew ‘Uqba ibn Nafi‘
(of the Fihr clan of Quraysh) to invade and govern North Africa.
Mughira ibn Shu'ba, a man of Thaqif (the tribe of Ta’if) was appointed governor of Kufa; an early follower (and bodyguard) of the
prophet, he was in some ways an unsavory character, but Mu'awiya
doubtless valued his ability, toughness, and reliable support. The
most interesting of Mu'awiya’s appointments, however, was Ziyad
ibn Abihi (“Ziyad, son of his father"), a man of dubious paternity but
undeniable executive and financial skill, who had been raised among
the Thaqif tribe of Ta’if. He had been a stalwart supporter of Ali
during the civil war, and though relatively young had been appointed
by Ali as his governor of Fars province because of his brilliant ability.
After Ali’s death, Ziyad remained in Fars and in control of the
provincial treasury and for some time held aloof from Mu'awiya.
Mu'awiya finally won him over by recognizing him as his own halfbrother (that is, as the son of his own father, Abu Sufyan, now safely
in the grave and unable to object). This generous gesture paid handsome dividends for Mu'awiya, who appointed Ziyad— henceforth
known as Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan— to the governorship of Basra, replacing Ibn Amir in 45/665; later Ziyad was appointed governor of
Kufa as well, so that he ruled the entire eastern portion of the empire. He did so with great effectiveness, and Mu'awiya never regretted his decision.
Mu'awiya’s key governors supervised a resumption of the conquests
into new areas. By this time the institutions of the Believers’ regime
had matured into something that had the unmistakable features of
a state— not only a standing army, but also a network of tax collectors
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and a rudimentary chancery and bureaucracy. For this reason, the
character of the conquests after 660 differed also in some measure
from the earliest conquests of the 630s and 640s. Above all, those
early conquests had been driven by the Believers’ burning desire to
supplant what they saw as the worldly, sinful regimes of Byzantium
and Sasanian Iran and to erect in their stead a new, righteous order
dedicated to the observance of God’s law. The initial conquests had
a centralized impetus but had nonetheless been carried out ad hoc,
in response to the unpredictable developments on various fronts; and
we might say that the embryonic regime in Medina that provided
such centralized direction as existed was dwarfed by the military
forces that were at its service. By Mu'awiya’s day and thereafter, on
the other hand, the conquests gradually became more institutionalized and routinized. The standing armies now operated from a number of well-established, fixed bases— the amsar, particularly Hims,
Fustat, Kufa, and Basra— to which soldiers returned at the conclusion of a season’s campaigning; and campaigns were for the most
part undertaken on a regular basis and for a predetermined duration
(often six or twelve months). Moreover, although the idea of spreading God’s rule— waging “jihad on God’s behalf” (jihad fi sabil
allah )— and of establishing the Believers’ righteous regime remained
important, the new campaigns were also driven by the practical
needs of the state for a steady flow of booty and captives to meet the
payroll of soldiers’ stipends and pensions. In short, by Mu'awiya’s
time the conquests had become less an expression of a charismatic
moral-religious imperative, as they had been in the early years of
the Believers’ movement, and more an institutionalized state policy.
This transformation coincided with the gradual disappearance from
the scene of the last companions who had actually known the
prophet.
An important front of new expansion during this period was in
North Africa. Under ‘Umar and ‘Uthman, the Believers’ armies
had established themselves as far west as Tripolitania in Libya, but
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173
despite some notable victories farther west they had only launched
ephemeral raids into the Byzantine Provincia Africa (roughly modern Tunisia). During Mu'awiya’s time, armies penetrated farther
west and established a new misr at Qayrawan (50/670), which became in subsequent years not only the main military staging point
for invasions into the western Maghrib but also an important economic and cultural center. There was at first a period of peaceful
coexistence with the settled Christian Berbers of the Awraba tribe
in the Aures mountains led by their chief Kusayla (or Kasila), and it
seems possible that they joined the Believers’ movement. But a little
later still, with the re-appointment of ‘Uqba ibn Nafi' (in 62/681, just
after Mu'awiya’s death) there seems to have been a change of policy,
which resulted in warfare between the Berbers and the Arabian Believers. This did not go well at first— ‘Ubqa ibn Nafi 1 was killed near
Biskra, and the Believers were almost forced to abandon their new
misr at Qayrawan, but eventually Kusayla was defeated. Resistance
to the Believers’ expansion by the Berber population would continue
for many years, but the establishment of Qayrawan did much to consolidate the Believers' presence in the eastern Maghrib; soon regular
raids in this area became an important source of booty, particularly
of slaves, for the Umayyad rulers.
Another wave of expansion, meanwhile, was also being undertaken in the east, dependent administratively on Basra and Kufa.
Abd Allah ibn Amir dispatched troops to Sistan and reconquered
Zaranj and then Kabul, but resistance tightened up thereafter.
His successor in Basra, Ziyad, neglected barren Sistan and concentrated instead on expanding into the richer areas in and adjacent to
Khurasan. He sent several campaigns to advance eastward from the
misr at Marv against the Hephthalites or White Huns (a nomadic
people who lived along the Oxus river), and eventually sent fifty
thousand men from Basra to be stationed permanently in Marv to
strengthen the garrison there. Ziyad's action must also be seen in the
context of his concern for stabilizing Basra and strengthening his
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control over it and Kufa; Basra in particular had become crowded
with new immigrants from Arabia, so the transfer of many fighting
men helped reduce crowding and concomitant tensions in the town.
Besides suppressing numerous Kharijite risings, he also took measures in both Kufa and Basra to rationalize (and perhaps to reduce?)
soldiers’ pay, and to reorganize the settlements in order to improve
his ability to administer the towns. After Ziyad’s death in 53/673, his
son and eventual successor as governor of Basra, ‘Ubavd Allah ibn
Ziyad, pursued similar policies.
A final area of expansion during Mu'awiya’s reign was to the
north, against the Byzantine Empire. Besides the regular— almost
annual— summer campaign into Anatolia, Mu'awiya sent troops at
least twice in efforts to seize the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.
The first (49/669) returned quickly, but the second, which was coordinated with a naval assault, besieged the city for three years (5457/674-677) before finally giving up. On the maritime front, Arwad
(off the Syrian coast) and Rhodes were occupied at this time (53/673),
and Crete was raided.
Yet under the surface of relative calm that prevailed during
Mu'awiya’s reign, the fundamental disagreements among the
Believers— especially among those of the west Arabian ruling eliteremained unresolved. Sometimes they came to the surface, as for
example in the brief confrontation between Mu'awiya’s governors
in Kufa and a group of malcontents led by Hujr ibn ‘Adi al-Kindi.
Hujr and his companions, erstwhile supporters of ‘Ali, increasingly
objected to the practice of Mu'awiya’s governors, Mughira and Ziyad, of praying for forgiveness for ‘Uthman and cursing ‘Ali during
mosque services. (This policy of cursing one’s opponent— called
sabb — had apparently been started by ‘Ali during the civil war, but
Mu'awiva and his backers proved only too glad to respond in kind.)
Hujr and his group heckled the governors and pelted them with
pebbles to express their displeasure; they were eventually hunted
down and sent off to Mu'awiya in Syria, where Hujr and a few others
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175
were executed. Although a relatively minor episode, it reveals that
the issues of the First Civil War— especially the question of ‘Uthman’s
piety and whether his murder had been justified and the legitimacy
of 'Ali’s claim to lead the community— were still unresolved and lay
dormant.
Hujr’s rising also may have been related to other, more mundane,
issues. An account related by the ninth-century Byzantine chronicler Theophanes notes that Mu'awiya reduced the stipends of soldiers in Iraq and increased them in Syria. Although unsupported by
other sources, this report is suggestive and plausible. Perhaps this
policy, if in fact it was a policy, was simply Mu'awiya’s attempt to reward the Syrian troops who had remained loyal to him during the
civil war and to punish the soldiery of Iraq who had backed ‘Ali. Or
perhaps Mu'awiya (who, as we have seen, launched at least two attempts to seize Constantinople from the Byzantines) thought that
the central challenge the Believers faced, now that the Sasanian dynasty had fallen, was the contest with Byzantium and so adopted a
policy on stipends to emphasize the importance of the Byzantine
front and to reward the soldiers who fought on it. In any case, such a
policy— reducing the stipends of Iraq’s soldiery— could easily have
helped push soldiers discontented for other reasons over the line to
outright rebellion.
Mu'awiya’s reign also masked other tensions. He had apparently
acquired large estates in Medina and elsewhere, sometimes by
methods that left the previous owners feeling plundered and resentful. These he seems to have worked as investments; one report
relates that he held properties in Yamama that were worked by four
thousand slaves, and several dams bearing inscriptions mentioning
him, still visible today in Medina and Ta’if, represent vestiges of
his efforts to develop his holdings. It seems likely that many in the
community were envious and resentful, particularly Quraysh or
Medinese whose parents had been close followers of the prophet
and who therefore thought that they should be prime beneficiaries
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of the Believers’ regime but who realized that they were being left
behind.
It is worth reiterating at this point that the early Believers’ movement had an ecumenical quality that allowed it to accommodate
within itself, in addition to those Arabians who followed Qur’anic
law, many Jews and especially (it seems) Christians who shared a
commitment to righteous living. It is generally assumed that the tax
administration in Mu'awiya’s time was manned largely by Syrian
Christian or (in Egypt) Coptic scribes and in Iraq by Zoroastrian
scribes of Aramaean or Persian stock. Mu'awiya’s chief financial
administrator was a Syrian Christian, Sergius (in Arabic, Sarjun)
ibn Mansur. (His son John— John of Damascus— would serve later
Umayyads in the same capacity before being recognized as a saint of
the Byzantine church.) Christians seem to have participated even in
the Believers’ military operations. Mu'awiya himself had, from his
earliest days in Syria, established close ties with the powerful Kalb
tribe that dominated the Syrian steppe, a tribe that had long been
monophysite Christian. To cement the alliance, he married Maysun, the Christian daughter of the chief of the Kalb, Malik ibn Bahdal, and Kalbite troops formed an important contingent in his military, receiving a large stipend for their services. As we shall see, some
of the troops in the Umayyads’ Syrian army, even during the Second
Civil War, were still Christian. The north Mesopotamian monk
John bar Penkaye, who wrote about 67/687, chronicles the begin-
ning of Muhammad’s teaching and the Believers’ movement and
how they made raids each year; he notes that among the Believers
were “Christians, not a few,” of various denominations.
The relative “openness” of the early Believers’ movement to participation by Christians (and, perhaps, Jews and Zoroastrians?) thus
seems to have continued beyond the middle of the seventh century.
Mu'awiya still chose to style himself amir al-muminin, “commander
of the Believers,” as a number of contemporary inscriptions show,
and some papyrus documents into the middle of the first century
The Struggle for Leadership of the Community , 34 - 73 / 655-692 177
AH/seventh century C.E. refer to the “jurisdiction (or maybe the
era) of the Believers" ( qada ’ al-muminin). There is, as yet, no documentary indication that the ruling elite, or people in general, were
giving up this broader identity as Believers in favor of a more narrowly defined identity as "Muslims,” distinct from other righteous
monotheists. That shift, as we shall see, would not take place until
after the Second Civil War.
The Second Civil War (60-73/680-692)
Although Mu'awiya had emerged in 40/661 as the victor of the First
Civil War, the basic questions over leadership that had been at issue
during the war had never really been settled; they had rather been
made temporarily moot by the fact that the logical claimants for
leadership at that time had been reduced to one. But on Mu'awiya’s
death in Rajab 60/April 680, the latent tensions dividing the ruling
elite among the Believers quickly bubbled to the surface. Hoping to
secure a smooth succession, Mu'awiya in his last years had issued a
decree naming his son Yazid ibn Mu'awiya heir apparent. Yazid was
not an unlikely candidate; he had led one of Mu'awiya’s campaigns
against Constantinople and was the son of Mu'awiya’s Kalbite wife
Maysun, so he was well liked on both counts by the Syrian army.
Consequently, there were few objections to Mu'awiya’s designation
of him as heir apparent, except from several members of the Arabian
elite, some of whom aspired to lead the community themselves.
Significantly, all of them were of Quraysh, and all but one was the
son of an earlier amir al-muminin, or of someone who had claimed
that office during the First Civil War: 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Husavn ibn 'Ali, 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, 'Abd Allah ibn ‘Umar,
and ‘Abd Allah ibn al-'Abbas. After Mu'awiya’s death, the last three
recognized Yazid as amir al-muminin; presumably their opposition
had been mainly to Mu'awiya’s efforts to get the oath of allegiance
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to Yazid sworn in advance, and not to Yazid himself. But Husayn
ibn ‘Ali and ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr refused to recognize Yazid.
Slipping away from Medina to avoid the Umayyad governor there,
they sought sanctuary in the sacrosanct confines of the haram of
Mecca.
In Kufa, the many people who had formerly supported ‘Ali took
hope on Mu‘awiya’s death and wrote to ‘Ali’s younger son Husayn
in Mecca, inviting him to come to Kufa, where, they assured him,
he would find strong support in making a bid to become amir almuminin. (As we saw earlier, his older brother Hasan had abdicated
in favor of Mu'awiya and withdrawn from politics at the end of the
First Civil War.) We can at this point begin to refer to the people
who were loyal to ‘Ali and his descendants as “Shi'ites” or “the Shi'a,”
even though at this early state the “party of ‘Ali” (Arabic, shi 'at 'Ali)
had not yet developed the full range of theological doctrines found in
later Shi‘ism.
To prepare the way for a bid to be amir al-muminin, Husayn sent
to Kufa his cousin Muslim ibn ‘Aqil ibn Abi Talib, who was warmly
received by the Shi'ites there; he lodged at the house of one of Kufa s
Shi'ite leaders, a man named Mukhtar ibn Abi ‘Ubayd. But the
Umayyad governor, ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, got wind of their plans
and was able to track down Muslim, who was executed for conspiring against the regime.
Husayn, however, had set out for Kufa with a small group of
his family before word of Muslims demise reached him. Outside
Kufa, his little group was intercepted by ‘Ubayd Allah’s troops,
who had been sent to look for him. Negotiations carried out over
several weeks were fruitless; Husayn refused to recognize Yazid as
amir al-mu’minin, nor would he withdraw, and ‘Ubayd Allah would
not let him enter the city. Finally, a battle was fought at Karbala 5 ,
75 km (46.6 mi) northeast of Kufa, where Husayn and virtually all
of his following were cut down (Muharram 10, 61 /October 10,
680).
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179
POEM OF 'ALI IBN AL-HUSAYN 1BN 'ALI I BN AB1 TAL1B
Said to be the first member of al-Husayn’s family killed at Karbala These
verses were supposedly declaimed by him as he strode into battle against the
Umayyad forces, units of which were led by Shabath ibn Rib'i al-Riyahi and
Shamir ibn Dhi l-]awshan (hemistich 3). The last line is a reference to the
Umayyad governor, ' Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, whose father had been recognized
by the caliph Mu‘awiya as his half-brother. The poem captures some of the
central ideas that would be developed by the Shia, notably the ‘Alids’ legitimacy rooted in closeness to the prophet and the idea that the righteous should
wage struggle against tyrants, even in the face of hopeless odds. Whether or
not the poem is authentic, it shows that these ideas were in circulation by the
time of the relatively early author, Abu Mikhnaf (died 157/773-774).
I am ‘All son of Husayn son of ‘Ali;
We and the household of God are closer to the prophet
Than Shabath and Shamir the vile.
I strike you with the sword until it bends.
The blows of a Hashimite youth, an ‘Alid,
And today I will not stop defending my father.
By God, the son of the bastard shall not rule over us!
[Abu Mikhnaf, Maqtal al-Husayn ihn Ali, ed. Kamil Sulayman alJmburi (n.p.: Dar al-mahajja al-bayda’, 2000), 139.]
T he snuffing out of this little insurrection had been an easy task
for c Ubayd Allah’s much larger force but was to have momentous
and enduring consequences. Although in the short term it had removed one of Yazid’s rivals from the field, the killing of Husayn —
'Ali’is son and the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, in whose veins
the blood of the prophet flowed— as well as much of his family,
shocked many Believers and contributed to the impression that
Yaziid was impious. The Shi'ites of Kufa who had invited Husayn to
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rebel were now full of remorse for having failed to support him but
for the moment could do little. After the death of Husayn, ‘Ubayd
Allah expelled the Shi'ite leader Mukhtar, who made his way to
Mecca to explore the possibility of joining forces with ‘Abd Allah ibn
al-Zubayr in resisting Yazid’s rule. The aristocratic and dour Ibn
al-Zubayr, however, never one to warm to the idea of cooperating
with anyone who might rival his own claims, rebuffed Mukhtar’s
advances, and Mukhtar withdrew to his hometown, Ta’if, for a
time.
Yazid’s efforts to win support in the Hijaz met with no success. He
invited a delegation of prominent Medinese to Damascus to try to
win them over, but many still nursed feelings of having been injured by Mu'awiya’s policies. Added to this, their reports of Yazid’s
less-than-abstemious lifestyle at court generated further outrage, not
sympathy, among the Medinese, who were shocked that one so lacking in piety could claim to lead the Believers. The Medinese also
resented the Umayyads for another reason; after the First Civil War,
Mu'awiya had confiscated estates in the town from the Medinese,
who had generally backed 'Ali, reducing some Medinese virtually to
the status of serfs. In 63/68Z-683, therefore, the Medinese repudiated Yazid’s claim to leadership and expelled Yazid’s governor, who
had chided the Medinese for interfering with the Umayyads’ reaping
of profits from the land.
In Mecca, Ibn al-Zubayr also repudiated Yazid in an insulting
sermon in which he referred to his reputed fondness for unusual animals and dissolute living: “Yazid of liquors, Yazid of whoring, Yazid
of panthers, Yazid of apes, Yazid of dogs, Yazid of wine-swoons,
Yazid of barren deserts” (the rhyming qualities of the original are, of
course, lacking in the translation). Ibn al-Zubayr then defeated an
armed force (led by his own brother ‘Arm, who was captured and
killed with exquisite deliberation) that had been sent by Yazid to arrest him. With the Hijaz now in open revolt, Yazid organized a large
Syrian army and dispatched it to the Holy Cities. Prominent in this
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181
force were tribesmen of Kalb and of the still largely Christian tribe of
Taghlib, some of whom reportedly marched with a cross and a banner of their patron, St. Sergius. The Medinese now expelled all members of the Umayyad family and their supporters from Medina-
said to be one thousand strong. Yazid’s army marched south into the
Hijaz and took up a position in the basalt lava field (harm) east of
Medina. After a few days of fruitless efforts to persuade the insurgents to recognize Yazid, battle was joined. The Medinese (descendants of the Helpers and many non-Umayyad Quraysh who had
long lived in Medina) seemed to be on the verge of victory, but the
Syrians turned the tide. Many Medinese were killed, including
many Quraysh, and Medina was subjected to three days of pillage.
The so-called “Battle of the Harra” (end 63/August 683) may even
have resulted in the enslavement of some Medinese. Then the defeated Medinese were forced to swear allegiance to Yazid as amir
al-muminin.
Yazid’s army now continued its march south toward Mecca to
bring to heel Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, whom Yazid had from the
start seen as his most serious rival. Mecca was besieged for several
weeks (early 64/September 683); during the siege there was desultory
skirmishing, and at one point the Ka'ba (that is, the hangings on it)
were set afire and burned. But in the midst of the siege, word arrived
that Yazid had unexpectedly died in Syria (Rabi‘ I 64/November
683). Learning this, the commander of the Syrian forces, who had
never been very keen on the attack on Mecca or on Ibn al-Zubayr,
broke off the siege and began negotiations with Ibn al-Zubayr, in
which he invited him to march with him back to Syria to accept the
post of amir al-muminin. Ibn al-Zubayr, however, refused to leave
Mecca. The Syrian forces withdrew and headed north to Damascus.
With the death of Yazid, the fortunes of Ibn al-Zubayr seemed to
improve greatly, while that of the Umavyads suffered a serious blow.
Ibn al-Zubayr declared himself commander of the Believers in
64/683. In Syria, some recognized Yazid’s young son Muawiya (II)
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as amir al-mu’minin, but outside Syria and even within it many people looked to other possibilities; we have seen that the commander of
Yazid’s army was disposed to recognize Ibn al-Zubayr, as were some
members of the Umayyad family. Ibn al-Zubayr, already recognized
as amir al-muminin in Mecca and Medina, sent a governor to Egypt
and, after a period of confusion in Iraq, managed to bring it, too,
within his sphere, sending his brother Mus'ab there as governor.
Backers of Ibn al-Zubayr again expelled the Umayyads and their
supporters from Medina.
Meanwhile, Mu'awiya II died after only a few months, leaving the
Umayyads in total disarray. Those groups that had been tightly allied to the Umayyad dynasty and therefore had the most to lose if the
office of amir al-muminin were to be held by someone else, naturally
were the most eager to find an Umayyad claimant. These included
especially the chiefs of the powerful Kalb tribe of central Syria,
which had been allied to Mu'awiya I and Yazid by marriage; ‘Ubayd
Allah ibn Ziyad, whose service as governor of Iraq for Mu'awiya
and Yazid made him eager to see a continuance of Umayyad rule
there; and Sarjun ibn Mansur, the Christian chief administrator for
Mu'awiya and Yazid. But some erstwhile supporters of the Umayyads, led by Dahhak ibn Qays (of the Fihr clan of Quraysh) and supported by the Qays tribes of northern Syria, backed Ibn al-Zubayr,
who was now recognized over the whole empire with the sole exception of Damascus and its environs. Ibn al-Zubayr duly appointed
Dahhak his governor of Damascus, in absentia. Even the head of
the Umayyad family, the aged Marwan, appears to have been on the
verge of recognizing Ibn al-Zubayr (according to some reports, he
actually did so). But eventually he was persuaded by ‘Ubayd Allah
ibn Ziyad and Hassan ibn Malik ibn Bahdal, chief of the Kalb tribe,
to claim the leadership for himself. The Umayyad family met at
Jabiya, in the Jawlan plateau southwest of Damascus, where Marwan
was recognized by them as amir al-muminin; and, after gathering his
loyal supporters (particularly the leaders of Kalb and of the Judham
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183
tribe of Palestine), Marwan confronted Dahhak and those who
backed Ibn al-Zubayr at Marj Rahit, northwest of Damascus. In
the battle, Dahhak was killed and his backers, particularly those of
the Qays tribes, were utterly routed, with heavy loss of life (Muharram 65 /August 684). This battle reinforced the close tie between
the Umayyads and the Kalb tribe and stabilized Marwan’s position
in Syria, but it sowed intense animosity between Kalb and its allies
on the one hand and Qays on the other that would continue to fester for more than a century, bedeviling later Umayyad attempts to
build a unified Syrian army. Marwan quickly moved to consolidate
his power in Syria and Palestine (not least against the claims of rival
Umayyad clan leaders) and then seized Egypt from Ibn al-Zubayr’s
governor by the middle of 65 /early 685. When he died a few months
later, Marwan was able to hand over to his son and successor, the
vigorous 'Abd al-Malik, a secure base on which to restore Umayyad
power.
In Iraq, meanwhile, Ibn al-Zubayr’s grip was being shaken by
developments among the Shi'a of Kufa. Mukhtar ibn Abi c Ubayd,
who as we have seen had been expelled from Kufa by Yazid’s governor 'Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad after the battle of Karbala’, returned in
Ramadan 64/May 684 after more than three years in Mecca and alTa’if. During that time, he had tried repeatedly to interest c Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr in an anti-Umayyad alliance, but the proud Ibn
al-Zubayr would have none of it. Mukhtar began building a populist
movement among the Shi'ites of Kufa, calling for the establishment
of just rule and succor for the downtrodden. He also called people to
recognize Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, son of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib by
Khawla, a captive of the Hanifa tribe taken during the ridda, as amir
al-muminin ; Mukhtar asserted that Muhammad ibn al-Hanifiyya
was the rightful claimant not only because of his ‘Alid ancestry but
also because he was the eschatological redeemer (mahdi) whose arrival would vanquish evil and (finally) establish a just regime on
Earth. (This is the first recorded instance in which the concept of
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the mahdi is evoked among the Believers.) Mukhtar’s movement
won broad support in Kufa not only among the Shi ‘a but also among
Kufa’s many mawali — former captives and their descendants. It also
appealed to a number of the common fighting men, who resented
the dominant elite of the city (regardless of whether the latter supported the Umayyads or Ibn al-Zubayr). Mukhtar tried to win over
the tribal notables of Kufa also, whose support he deemed indispensable, but there was always an implicit conflict between their interests
and the populist, “leveler” nature of Mukhtar’s ideology; one source
reports that the notables complained to Mukhtar, “You have taken
aim at our mawali, who are booty which God bestowed upon us, and
this whole country likewise; we freed [that is, conquered] them hoping for the reward and recompense (of God) in that, and for thanks;
we are not pleased that you should make them partners in our
spoils.”
With tensions running high, word arrived in Kufa in late 66/early
summer 686 that ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, the former Umayyad governor who had dispatched the forces that had killed Husayn at
Karbala 1 , was marching from northern Syria toward Iraq with a Syrian army. Almost two years earlier, a group of Kufans called the
“Penitents” (tawwabun), who regretted their failure to support
Husayn at Karbala 5 , had marched out to face the same ‘Ubayd Allah
as he marched an army toward Iraq. They met him at ‘Avn Warda on
the border between northern Syria and Iraq and were cut down (Jumada I 65/January 685), but following it, ‘Ubayd Allah had become
bogged down trying to subdue the Jazira region. Now, eighteen
months later, he was ready and had begun his march toward Iraq.
Mukhtar quickly organized a force, commanded by the brilliant
Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar, and sent it northward to block ‘Ubayd Allah’s
advance.
Ibn al-Zubayr’s governor in Kufa, and the tribal notables who
backed him, immediately took advantage of the absence of most of
Mukhtar’s forces to organize an attack on Mukhtar, whom they
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185
hoped to get rid of once and for all. But Mukhtar was able to recall
Ibrahim, who returned with his men only a few days after his departure. In the struggle that followed (end 66/July 686), Mukhtar’s
forces went into battle shouting the slogans “Vengeance for Husayn!”
and “O Victorious One, kill!" (the latter a reference to a messianic
redeemer), and those notables who had, under the Umayyads, had
any part in supporting the campaign against Husayn were killed.
When the failure of their rebellion became obvious to the notables,
nearly ten thousand of them fled from Kufa to take refuge in Basra
with Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr, and Mukhtar’s followers razed the houses
of those who had fled. Muhktar exacted an oath of allegiance from
the people of Kufa, promising to avenge the “people of the house”
( ahl al-bayt, used in reference to the prophet's family— here meaning especially ‘Ali and his descendants)— and appointed governors
over Kufa’s dependencies in the east, a vast area that included Armenia, Azerbaijan, Mosul, Hulwan, and the rest of central and northern Iraq.
With Kufa more securely under control, Mukhtar again dispatched
forces under Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar to deal with the approaching
Umayyad army. Ibrahim’s men, flush from their recent victory in
Kufa, were eager to avenge the deaths of both Husayn and the Penitents, and blocked ‘Ubayd Allah’s passage in northern Iraq, near the
Zab river. Again the tide went in their favor; at the battle of Khazir,
near Mosul, ‘Ubayd Allah’s force was crushed (partly because Qays
contingents in the Umayyad force, still smarting from their defeat at
Marj Rahit two years earlier, deserted), and ‘Ubayd Allah himself and
a number of other important Umayyad commanders were slain (Mu-
harram 67/August 686). This gave Mukhtar control of northern Iraq
as well as Kufa and was a serious setback for ‘Abd al-Malik’s plan to
reconquer the empire.
The revenge of the expelled Kufan notables was not long in coming; encouraged by them, Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr began planning his
effort to reclaim Kufa. By the middle of 67/early 687, they were
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ready and marched on Kufa. Mukhtar’s forces were defeated in a first
clash at Madhar and were pushed back to Harura 5 and eventually to
Kufa itself, which was put to siege. When Mus'ab and his Kufan supporters finally took the city in Ramadan 67/April 687, Mukhtar was
killed, along with six thousand of his supporters.
The elimination of Mukhtar and his movement put Iraq once
more in the control of Ibn al-Zubayr, but his regime thereafter was
hardly calm; the Zubayrids faced numerous Kharijite rebellions in
Iraq, Fars, and especially in eastern Arabia, where a massive rebellion among the Hanifa tribe of the Yamama region of eastern Arabia, led by the Kharijite Najda ibn ‘Amir, removed a large piece of
territory from the Zubayrid realm. In 68/June 688 no fewer than
four different leaders headed pilgrimage caravans to Mecca, representing those recognizing Ibn al-Zubayr, the Umayyad ‘Abd alMalik, the Kharijite leader Najda, and the ‘Alid Ibn al-Hanifiyya.
Meanwhile, in Syria ‘Abd al-Malik had to deal with a variety of
threats to his power before he could think about launching another offensive against Ibn al-Zubayr to recover from the setback
suffered by his forces at the Battle of the Khazir River. In early
67 /summer 686, he had to suppress an uprising led by a leader of
the Judham tribe in Palestine who had declared his support for
Ibn al-Zubayr. He also had to deal with the northern front, where
the Byzantine emperor had organized— and backed with money
and troops— the invasion of the Syrian coastal regions as far south
as Lebanon by a warlike mountain people from the Amanus, the
Mardaites. Only by concluding a costly and humiliating treaty
with the Byzantine emperor was ‘Abd al-Malik able to secure the
Mardaites’ withdrawal. Thus it was in 69/689 that he left Damascus on a first campaign to try to dislodge Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr
from Iraq, but in his absence his distant cousin and rival ‘Amr
ibn Sa'id ibn al-‘As seized Damascus and advanced his own claim
to lead the Umayyad dynasty. ‘Abd al-Malik had to cancel his
Two coins of rivals to the Umayyads. The upper coin, issued by a governor
of ‘Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, was minted in Darabjird, in Fars in western
Iran, in the year 53 (of the Sasanian “Yazdegird era”), corresponding to
683-684 c.E. The name legend by the bust, in Pahlavi, reads ABDULA
AMIR I-WRUISHNIKAN, ‘“Abdullah, amir al-mu minin’’ The lower
image shows a coin issued in Ardashir Khurra (in western Iran) in AH 75,
corresponding to 694-695 C.E., by the Kharijite rebel Qatari ibn al-Fujaa,
whose name appears in the name legend along with AMIR I-WRUISHNIKAN, Pahlavi for amir al-mu’minin. The reverse shows a fire altar. In the
obverse margin, the Kharijite slogan la hukma ilia lillah , “There is no
judgment except to God.”
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campaign and return to put down this rebellion and, eventually,
execute ‘Amr. He also needed to quell the stubborn opposition to
the Umayyads among the Qaysi tribesmen of Qarqisiya’ along the
Euphrates (71-72/summer 691).
It was only in 72/late 691, therefore, that ‘Abd al-Malik was ready
to embark on a definitive campaign against Ibn al-Zubayr’s position
in Iraq. After making contact with the many groups and leaders in
Iraq who had been alienated by Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr’s government
there, ‘Abd al-Malik advanced. He met Mus'ab’s army at Dayr alJathliq on the middle Tigris (somewhat north of modern Baghdad)
and defeated it easily, as many of Mus'ab ’s troops melted away or refused to fight for him. In the end Mus'ab was captured and executed
(mid-72/end 691). 'Abd al-Malik entered Kufa and was recognized
there as amir al-muminin.
'Abd al-Malik then sent his loyal commander Hajjaj ibn Yusufsoon to be his governor in Iraq— with a force of two thousand Syrians
against Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca. This small force was augmented in
the following weeks by others and was joined by another that 'Abd
al-Malik had earlier dispatched to the northern Hijaz to guard Syria
against any attempt by Ibn al-Zubayr to invade it. Hajjaj encamped
first in Ta’if (his hometown) to collect his forces before closing in
on Mecca. Toward the end of 72/March 692, the city was blockaded
and a siege begun; after six months, during which many of Ibn alZubayr’s forces deserted because of the hopelessness of the situation
or were lured away by promises of amnesty, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr
was decisively defeated and killed in a battle outside the city (Jumada
I, 73/September 692). ‘Abd al-Malik was finally recognized in all the
amsar and their dependencies as amir al-muminin. After twelve years
of strife, the Second Civil War was finally over, and Umayyad rule
had been restored.
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Reflections on the Civil Wars
Several noteworthy points emerge from the accounts of the civil
wars. First, in both civil wars, but particularly in the first, one is
struck by how tightly the dispute is concentrated on the issue of who
could best claim to rule the community of Believers. Moreover, it
seems that most people saw the leadership as belonging properly
within a small group— basically Quraysh. (The Kharijites were the
main exception to this view.) This gives the civil wars, particularly
the first, the quality of an extremely bitter family feud, as most of the
principals in the civil wars were related to one another, often quite
closely, by ties of blood or marriage, or at least knew one another
personally.
Second, the civil wars were striking for the savagery with which
they were carried out. There are many episodes in which our sources
describe captives being executed in cold blood, in which sons are
executed before their fathers, or men killed by, or at the order of,
their relatives ('Amr ibn al-Zubayr by his brother 'Abd Allah; 'Amr ibn
Sa'id by ‘Abd al-Malik), in which the vanquished were massacred in
large numbers (Nahrawan, Khazir, Mukhtar’s followers in Kufa, Battle of the Harra). This may have something to do with the crude
temper of the age and with the brutal manners of many participants,
who were rough and unrefined bedouins or peasants. But it surely
also owed much to the ideological character of many of the conflicts
within the civil wars. This led people to demonize their opponents
as the very embodiment of evil and also made them keenly aware
that a defeated enemy who had not fully repented was, for ideological reasons, always a threat to rebel again, so it was safer to eliminate
him. Moreover, the intensely ideological character of the early Believers’ movement made the elimination of such “allies of the devil”
morally acceptable, even praiseworthy, in peoples’ minds. The Penitents who met their deaths at ‘Ayn Warda were doubtless convinced
of ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad’s status as a representative of the devil;
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Kharijite groups executed as apostates anyone whose observance of
proper Belief did not conform to their own stringent requirements;
the Kufan notables who slaughtered Mukhtar’s mawali supporters
saw them as interlopers who had unjustly usurped their God-given
property rights. But old-fashioned revenge played a large part in many
bloody events as well— whether it was the Umayyads taking revenge
on the Medinese at the Battle of the Harra for their expulsion from
the city and for the murder of ‘Uthman, or Mukhtar’s followers ex-
acting vengeance from the Kufan notables and on 'Ubayd Allah’s
troops for the murder of Husayn.
Third, with the Second Civil War in particular, we are palpably
moving into a new phase in the history of the community of Believers. The era of the companions of the prophet is rapidly drawing to
a close, and the dramatis personae are now members of a younger
generation who had no memory of the prophet or of the struggles
that shaped his life. One senses an attenuation of the intensely charismatic quality of the early movement, with its clear-sighted concern for piety and observing God’s will; the commitment to piety is
still there, but it has become more routinized and less personal and
is tempered among many Believers with more practical and thisworldly concerns. The conquests by now apparently had become
less a matter of the personal zeal of individual Believers driven by
visions of an impending Last judgment and more a lucrative form
of state policy intended to keep revenues and plunder flowing into
the treasury.
Fourth, we see in the civil wars— and particularly in the second—
the emergence of those fissures that have, ever since, divided the onceunited community of Believers. ‘Ali’s claims to be amir al-muminin
during the First Civil War become gradually transformed into the
beginnings of a true sectarian movement, Shi'ism, that held the
family of ‘Ali in special reverence; it received its defining event in
the massacre of 'Ali’s son Husayn at Karbala’ in the Second Civil
War, an event that came to be commemorated by later Shi'ite groups,
The Struggle for Leadership of the Community, 34 - 73 / 655-69 2
191
right down to today, and that gave Shi ‘ism its special identity focused on the idea of martyrdom as a means of advancing the cause
of the downtrodden. It would be a century and more before Shi ‘ism
would fully refine many of its central concepts, such as the notion of
the imamate or ideal, God-guided leader of the community, but the
later movement has its roots in the First and Second Civil wars.
These events thus became the starting point for the construction of
two different narratives of legitimation in the Islamic communityone Shi'ite, focusing on the family of ‘Ali, and the other (eventually
called Sunni) focusing on the sequence of actual power-holders, including the Umayyads. We have also seen how a third group, the
ultra-pious Kharijites, emerged during the First Civil War; although
constituting only a small minority of Muslims today, they were quite
significant in the first several centuries of Islam.
Fifth, the events of the long, intermittent conflict suggest decisively that the Hijaz, despite being the home of the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, the cradle and spiritual focus of the early Believers’ movement, was not an effective base from which to project
power on an imperial scale— and the community of Believers, with
its far-flung amsar dominating most of the Near East, had by the
time of the civil wars ascended to a truly imperial scale. More effective as bases of power were those areas that had a solid tax base (especially Egypt and Iraq) and a fairly sizable, stable population. The
Hijaz offered neither of these and increasingly became a political
backwater (or, at least, a side channel) in the history of the community of Believers.
Economic and other practical issues surely contributed a great
deal to these conflicts— indeed, it was the fact that so much was at
stake economically that made the struggle worth embarking on for
many participants. The accounts of Mukhtar’s revolt reveal clearly
that Kufa was torn by serious social and economic tensions, pitting
the descendants of the first conquerors, who formed a kind of Arabian
aristocracy, against the descendants of former captives (mawali); at
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times there was added a heavy overtone of social distance separating
those whose native language was Arabic from those whose mother
tongue was something else. Social and economic tensions of this
kind probably always existed; what is striking is that such grievances
were articulated into a coherent political movement by the claim
that a just leader (or maybe a mahdi, an eschatological savior) would
solve the problem. In other words, the Believers’ movement, even as
late as the Second Civil War, brought with it the conviction that
such routine social injustices and oppression were no longer acceptable, that a new and more just order was attainable. The Believers’
movement thus mobilized people to act in ways designed, they believed, to resolve social and economic tensions that were more or less
endemic in premodern society (and maybe in all societies). In this
sense, we must see the ideology of the Believers’ movement as the
prime cause of these historical developments, rather than the latent
economic and social tensions that the movement articulated, for such
tensions are always found.
The very fact that the civil wars were for the most part a struggle
within Quraysh over leadership means that the broader community
of early Believers— especially those non-Arabian Christians and Jews
who had joined in the movement— were not prominently visible in
these struggles. In the Second Civil War, there were moments when
Christians, at least, seem to have been involved. As we have seen,
the Umayyads’ Christian administrator, Sarjun ibn Mansur was active in encouraging the Umayyads to make a bid for leadership
against Ibn al-Zubayr after the deaths of Yazid and Mu'awiya II. Did
he really feel himself to ...
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