by Tahir Shah
Throughout the Islamic World, they are known simply as ‘The People of the Cloak’.
Lying on his death-bed, the Prophet Mohammed urged his closest followers to gather around. He would soon quit the mortal world, he said, but before departing, he wanted to bequeath to them the two most precious things in his possession: The Holy Qur’an, and his family. This second part of his legacy may have seemed strange, but it is one which has preoccupied the Islamic World ever since.
Often known in the East as The People of the Cloak, Mohammed’s immediate family and their descendants, are revered by all Muslims, whether they be Sunnis or Shi’a. No other family commands such respect or devotion, nor has any other had such a dynamic bearing on the Islamic World’s religious, political and cultural development.
A great number of the Prophet’s direct descendants have been people of astonishing ability. They have ruled as Caliphs and Kings, have excelled as philosophers and mathematicians, as poets, men and women of belle lettres and geographers, as warriors, military tacticians and, of course, as celebrated religious scholars. Others have been leading Sufis, members of the Islamic brotherhood of mystics.
The Prophet’s direct descendants are bound by a rigid verbal code of obligation. Raised to excel in everything they do, they are taught that achievement is of paramount importance: that they must uphold the pillars of the Islamic Faith, perform acts of anonymous charity, and lead by their own example. Most important of all, however, is the development of a sense of ‘selflessness’.
The People of the Cloak are believed by Muslims to embody the purity and virtues of the Prophet Mohammed himself. To them, his family carries this purity in their veins, the very bloodlines of the Prophet. Such sanctity, it is believed, allows the People of the Cloak alone to recognize the revelations hidden in the teachings of the Qur’an: teachings to which ordinary men are blind.
But this integrity comes at a price. Members of the Prophet’s close family are expected to live exemplary lives, according to an ancient framework of conduct and obligation. This states that in striving for modesty they must never be boastful or ostentatious, and that they must stand apart from all other men. The emphasis is on honour, chivalry and, above all, on generosity – especially in performing acts of anonymous charity.
This code binds the clan to uphold the true message of the Islamic Faith, and to speak out against misrepresentation. In times such as these, when deviant factions seek to ‘hijack’ the religion, its members are expected to act as a mouthpiece for moderation.
Mohammed’s family have been associated with the spread and development of Islam since the faith’s conception almost fourteen centuries ago. Indeed, it was a conflict over the succession after the Prophet’s death, which led to the only major sectarian split in Islamic history. The dramatic result was the Shi’a minority dividing from the Sunni majority.
In the years after Mohammed’s death, religious scholars collected every scrap of information about his life; and thousands of people who had known the Prophet, however briefly, were asked to recount his acts, aphorisms and teachings. Known as the ‘Hadith’, these fragments are regarded as sacred in themselves, ranking second only to the Qur’an in the reverence with which they are held. They are underpinned by the belief that, as a completely pure person, Mohammed’s every action can be taken as a lesson in Islamic behaviour.
The Hadith forms the extraordinary framework by which Muslims can be reminded of the true path. Covering virtually every conceivable area of life, it stresses modesty and moderation, good manners, high ideals, and decent behaviour towards the ill-fortunate. The Hadith can act as an invaluable guide for non-Muslims, too. If in doubt about on how to behave in an Eastern land, search the Hadith, follow the Prophet’s example, and one is unlikely to go wrong.
The Hadith’s scope is astonishing: ranging in scope from charity to the treatment of animals, from cleanliness to marital law, and from usury to self-control.
It is from the Hadith that The People of the Cloak are said to derive their name. The story goes that while staying at his daughter Fatima’s house, Mohammed complained of tiredness. Hearing this, his daughter fetched a fine camel-wool cloak and laid it over her father. The Prophet’s face is said to have lit up and ‘shined like the full moon’. As he lay there, his grandsons, Hassan and Hussain, arrived and asked if they might join their grandfather beneath the cloak. They did so, as did Ali (Mohammed’s son-in-law) and lastly, Fatima herself.
When all five were under the cloak, the Prophet prayed to God, beseeching Him to keep his flesh and blood untainted. Speaking through the archangel Gabriel, God confirmed the purity and the importance of the Prophetic line.
Mohammed’s clan, the Hashemites, are regarded with respect by Muslims as, to a lesser degree, is the Quraish, the wider tribe to which the clan belongs. But it is the descendants of Mohammed’s closest relatives – those who lay with him beneath the cloak – who are held in highest esteem. Sometimes simply known as ‘The Five’, they are respected by both major branches of the Muslim Faith, by Sunni and Shi’a alike.
According to Islam, Mohammed was descended from the Prophet Abraham; and like him, he sought to rid his community of idols, to transform it into a monotheistic society. He was selected by God not as a son, but as a messenger. Whilst the Islamic Faith reveres Abraham, Moses, Jesus, amongst other Biblical prophets, it asserts that they were just that – prophets. According to Islam, Mohammed was the last Prophet.
His daughter Fatima is regarded with extraordinary reverence, especially by the Shiites, because she was married to Ali.
When Ali’s own father lost his fortune and became impoverished, Mohammed took him in, he himself having been cared for as a child by Ali’s father. Then, when Mohammed was called by God to be His messenger, Ali was among the very first of his converts. Remaining loyal throughout his entire life he even, as the story goes, slept in Mohammed’s bed to impersonate him on the night that the Prophet made his famous flight to Medina. It was this allegiance, his loyalty which the Shi’a believe has automatically entitled Ali and his descendants to be the leaders of Islam.
Born to Fatima and Ali, Mohammed’s grandsons – Hassan, and his younger brother, Hussain – were forced to acquiesce to the rule of the Umayyed Caliphate who succeeded their father.
The sectarian split within Islam, which divided the religion into two main branches – Sunni and Shi’a – is often likened to the Protestant-Catholic divide in the Christian Church. Whilst the Christian split didn’t take place until over a thousand years or so after the death of Christ, the Sunni-Shi’a rift happened within a lifetime of the Prophet’s death.
Most importantly, the division of Islam took place not for doctrinal reasons, but because of succession: and the question of which members of the Prophet’s family ought to succeed him. Western observers on Islamic themes often tend to neglect this point. There is no better way to understand the Sunni-Shi’a division than to study The People of the Cloak’s role in the early years of Islamic history.
Upon Mohammed’s death, the leaders of the fledgling Muslim Faith gathered to decide who would be the Prophet’s political successor. Following a heated debate, Abu Bakr was elected the first Caliph (literally, ‘Successor’) in Islam. But Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, who had not been present at the meeting, later protested that he ought to have been considered. Whilst Ali did swear allegiance to Abu Bakr, however, and eventually became the Fourth Caliph of Islam in 656 AD, the damage had been done. His followers, known as Shiites, came to insist that only members of the Prophet’s family can lead the Islamic faith. It is their belief that Ali’s lineage is the truest line to follow and that only members of Ali’s family may lead. The Shi’a call this dynasty Ahlul Beit, ‘The People of the House’.
The Sunnis, by contrast, believe that any right-minded Muslim can be named as a Caliph, or a leader, although they too regard descendants of the Prophet with unequalled reverence. Sunnis accept the Prophet’s instruction that a person o
ught not to be taken merely on birth but also on his own merits. This theme, enduring through the development of Islam, raises the question as to whether Mohammed’s family enjoys privileges which it has not earned.
By the close of the eighth century, the Shi’a branch of Islam had begun to develop its own clear doctrines: rejecting, for instance, the tradition of the Hadith, and instead collecting their own doctrines, and interpreting the Qur’an in substantially different ways from the Sunni tradition. This key divergence in the interpretation of basic Islamic values came about directly as a result of allegiance to The People of the Cloak.
While Sunni Islam has no well-established hierarchy of priests, the Shi’a employ titles such as Ayatollah, and its clergy wear distinctive religious dress. The Shi’a revere a line of Imams – the word means literally ‘Leader’ – all of whom had Ali as their ancestor. Different groups of Shi’a stop at different Imams in Ali’s family tree – regarding theirs to be the final true guide – and, accordingly, these Shiite subgroupings are known as ‘Fivers’, ‘Seveners’ and ‘Twelvers’.
The People of the Cloak, this inner circle of Mohammed’s family, were largely responsible for the extraordinary speed with which the new Islamic Faith spread East and West. For, when the Prophet sent his closest relatives out to preach the Word, he placed absolute trust in them: certain that they would not corrupt his message nor be swayed by the spoils of war. Whilst Islam was still confined to the Arabian peninsula at the time of Mohammed’s death, within a century it had spread as far east as Persia, and as far west as the Atlantic shores of Morocco.
After the conversion of Arabia, and the subjugation of Syria and Jerusalem, Islam spread like a wildfire into the east: sweeping into Mesopotamia, Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan and Samarkand. At much the same time, the new Faith swept westwards, through Egypt, across North Africa and up into Spain. The fall of Toledo in 712 AD completed the conquest of Iberia’s Gothic kingdom. But Islam didn’t stop there. It conquered Sicily and, for a time, pushed on into southern France.
In the centuries after Mohammed’s death, Islam developed from a fledgling religion, into a structured political and cultural force, in which the Prophet’s family became interlinked with a sequence of Islamic dynasties, or Caliphates. Under some of these, the sciences and the arts were patronized, although others fostered nothing but nepotistic avarice.
Whilst the Sunnis, who make up about ninety per cent of all Muslims, believe that the Prophet died without naming a successor; the Shi’a maintain that he had named his chosen successor: his son-in-law, Ali. The Sunnis hold the First Caliphate in very high esteem, while the Shi’a therefore despise it, except for Ali, who was the last of its four Caliphs.
On Mohammed’s death, his father-in-law Abu Bakr was elected to lead Muslims with the title Khalifa, or ‘Caliph’. In Islam all men are to be regarded as equal and therefore, strictly speaking, this means that there is no convention of a monarchy. The Caliph’s role was to act simply as a guide, ensuring not only that the Islamic Faith remained pure, free from distortion, but also that it continued to spread.
Abu Bakr was the first in a line of four Caliphs, each of whom was elected upon his own merits, and none of whom founded a specific dynasty of his own. After Abu Bakr came Omar, then Othman, and eventually Ali, all four of whom were advisors and close companions during the Prophet’s life. Like him, they were all also warriors and military tacticians, and were committed to spread the mission of Islam.
The Abbasids were Hashemites, tracing their ancestry through the Prophet’s uncle, Abbas. When their dynasty replaced the Umayyeds, it regained the Islamic leadership for the Prophet’s family, for the Umayyeds (who preceded them) had not been People of the Cloak. The Abbasids reigned for five hundred years, until overthrown in the Mongol invasion of 1258 AD.
The Abbasid Caliphate concentrated not on the spread westward, as the Umayyeds had done, but pushed East – towards Persia – moving their capital to the new city of Baghdad; and promoting not just Islam, but the sciences, the arts, and trade as well. Under leaders such as al-Ma’mun and Harun ar-Rashid, Islam entered its golden age. The era saw the Islamic World grow larger and increasingly diverse, with wildly differing ethnic groups meeting and mingling as equals for the first time.
Taking their name from Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed through whom they were descended, the Fatimids were a strong Islamic dynasty, with a sphere of influence that dominated much of North Africa and Arabia. Their leadership lasted almost two centuries, from the middle of the tenth century.
The Fatimids were a distinct movement in that they were not Sunnis, but of the minority Shi’a branch of Islam and, as such, they totally rejected the co-existing Abbasid Caliphate, with its capital at Baghdad. Their view being that only Ali’s descendants could hold the title of Caliph, they saw their role as being to destroy the Abbasids and install a Shi’a Caliphate in their place.
The descendents of The People of the Cloak have, over centuries, radically affected the Islamic societies in which they lived. Their combined contribution has led to developments in the religion itself, as well as in areas of the sciences, literature, and the arts. Indeed, for The People of the Cloak, nothing is so important as scholarship. For this reason one finds that many of its members, who have been revered as kings or military tacticians, have excelled in literature and the sciences.
A selection of important figures from the Prophetic family:
Jalaluddin Rumi
The greatest Sufi mystic and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi was born in Balkh, Afghanistan, early in the thirteenth century, and died in Turkey, where his mausoleum can still be seen at Konya. Regarded not only as a scholar of extraordinary intellect, he was also a man who embodied the Sufi code of ‘selflessness’. His epic literary treatise, The Mathnavi, which runs to more than twenty-six thousand couplets, is considered to be one of the most important of all Sufi texts. Rumi’s scholarship spanned many disciplines, ranging from mathematics to botany; indeed, seven centuries before the birth of Charles Darwin, Rumi even published a paper on evolution in the natural world.
Following his death, Rumi’s disciples continued to study his work, from the centre they had established at Konya. There they established the order of Mawlawiyah, which involves a form of trance-induced dance. They are known in the West as ‘Whirling Dervishes’.
Al-Idrisi
At the height of its expansion, Islam was spreading at lightening speed. As its message moved both east and west, a geographical understanding developed, charting new peoples and far off lands. Born in 1100 AD, Al-Idrisi was the brightest light of his new Arab interest in geography, travelling widely from his birth place in Ceuta, (the tiny Spanish enclave in northern Morocco), through North Africa, much of Europe and as far as southern England. Eventually, he settled in Sicily, where he became an adviser to the Norman King, Roger II.
It was in the Sicilian Court he produced his greatest geographical work: Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq (‘The Pleasure Excursion of One Who is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World’). Accompanied by a silver planisphere, upon which was depicted a detailed map of the known world, Al-Idrisi’s monumental work was translated into Latin and other European languages in the years after his death. It formed the basis for all European geography of the age.
Harun ar-Rashid
Harun ar-Rashid, the celebrated Abbasid Caliph, is known in the Occident largely because his kingdom was immortalized in A Thousand and One Nights: a collection of tales that will give a European audience a wide variety of Arab folk heroes, including Ali Baba, Aladdin and Sindbad. Under Harun’s Caliphate, folklore and storytelling did indeed flourish, along with science, and the arts.
Harun himself was infamous for touring his kingdom by night in disguise to see first hand what his people wanted, and what they thought of his rule; and whilst his court brimmed with wealth, pomp and grandeur, Harun ar-Rashid himself strived for knowledge. Under his Caliphate, Baghdad reached unsurpassed heights of sc
ientific development.
Al-Ma’mun
The illegitimate son of Harun ar-Rashid, Al-Ma’mun succeeded his half-brother Amin as Caliph of the Abassid dynasty; and it was under his patronage that the very greatest era of Islamic scholarship took place, centred at Beit al-Hikmah – ‘The House of Wisdom’ – which AlMa’mun established at Baghdad in 830 AD. Dedicated to gathering and translating ancient books, the Beit al-Hikmah was staffed by not only Muslims, but by Christians, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists. Its single aim was to make all the knowledge of the world available in the Arab language. With time, these translations ensured that many of the Latin and Greek texts were preserved during the European Dark Ages.
Among the scholars attached to the House of Wisdom was the legendary astronomer and mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, whose works introduced ‘Arab’ numerals and the science of algebra to Europe.
Saladdin
With a name that translates as ‘Righteousness of the Faith, son of Joseph, son of Job’, Saladdin Yusuf ibn Ayyub was the feared adversary of the Christian Crusaders. In the West, his name is equalled in notoriety only by that of Harun ar-Rashid.
On July 4, 1187, aided by his own military good sense and by a phenomenal lack of it on the part of his enemy, Saladdin trapped and destroyed an exhausted and thirst-crazed army of crusaders at Hattin, near Tiberias in northern Palestine. So great were the losses in the crusader ranks in this one battle, that the Muslims were quickly able to overrun almost all of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, relieving the Franks of their eighty-eight-year hold on the city. In doing so, Saladdin established himself as the Sultan, forming the Ayyubid Dynasty – which encompassed much of modern Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Palestine.
Mir Sayed Ali
Regarded as the greatest Persian miniature painter of the sixteenth century, Mir Sayed Ali was born in Tabriz, and travelled to India at the invitation of the Mughal Emperor, Humayun. Leading the work at the Imperial atelier – first in Kabul, and then in Delhi – he oversaw the production of a series of gigantic paintings in the miniature style. The series is on an epic scale, running to more than fourteen hundred individual illustrations.