A History of the Muslim World to 1405: The Making of a Civilization

by Vernon O Egger

  ‘Ali and his family came to be regarded as symbols of protest against the growing power of the Umayyads and their Syrian supporters. ‘Ali’s fate was viewed by many as a tragedy. He became a symbol of a great man who was caught in the vortex of evil forces and destroyed. More important, however, was the growing sense among some of his admirers that he had been a virtuous man who gave his life in God’s cause. In this sense, his death was a sacrifice to be emulated. Those who protested injustice, or who sought a leader with great charisma, found him to be an attractive figure with which to identify. Many Muslims would come to agree that the Alids (members of ‘Ali’s family) had been blessed and chosen by God to lead the Umma.

  Karbala

  Despite the misgivings of many Muslims that ‘Ali had failed to act with proper discretion in bringing the murderers of ‘Uthman to justice, few could go so far as to believe that he had been involved in the plot. Thus, ‘Ali’s frustrated caliphate and his assassination were a loss felt by the Umma at large. Mu‘awiya’s hounding of ‘Ali for the last five years of his life was viewed as unseemly, and although Mu‘awiya ruled with tact and propriety, he was never quite able to rehabilitate his image with a growing number of Muslims. No doubt his abandonment of Medina was a major source of hostility, at least from the Hijazis, for the city slid rapidly into the status of a backwater, while Damascus became a glittering capital city by the end of the century. Pious Muslims who considered Medina and Mecca to be the center of the world became increasingly critical of the Umayyads over the years, as it became clear that the new rulers were not as pious as their forebears had been. Tales of sumptuous palaces, wine drinking, and a generally dissolute lifestyle among the princes became the stock of anti-Umayyad sentiment.

  Mu‘awiya’s critics grudgingly acknowledged that he was not the profligate that many of his relatives seemed to be, and he managed to maintain a simple style of ruling in which he made himself accessible to petitioners. In this regard, he was continuing the tradition of Arab tribalism and of early Muslim leadership alike. He also treated ‘Ali’s sons by Fatima with great courtesy. According to Shi‘ite tradition, the elder son, Hasan, was proclaimed caliph by pro-Alid supporters in Kufa, but abdicated when Mu‘awiya threatened continued warfare. He returned to Mecca, where he lived comfortably on a generous financial settlement that Mu‘awiya granted him, until his death in 669. His younger brother Husayn became the head of the family at that point, and it was in him that many pro-Alid individuals now invested their hopes. Since Mu‘awiya had won his conflict with ‘Ali, there was no longer reason for a group called the shi‘a Mu‘awiya, but those who continued to regard ‘Ali’s family to be the source for legitimate caliphal leadership were still partisans and continued to be called the shi‘a ‘Ali, or Shi‘ites.

  The Rightful Caliph: The Shi‘ite Version

  Shi’ites rejected the conciliar selection process for caliph that resulted in the choice of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uth-man. They were convinced that the Prophet had declared ‘Ali to be his successor at a small pool (ghadir) called Khumm (hence, Ghadir Khumm, or Ghadir al-Khumm) while returning to Medina after having performed his last pilgrimage (the “Farewell Pilgrimage”) shortly before his death. The following account is from Muhammad Baqir Majlisi’s The Life of Hearts, which dates from about the year 1700, but it reflects an early tradition (note the wry reference in the last sentence to ‘Umar, the second caliph):

  When the ceremonies of the pilgrimage were completed, the Prophet, attended by ‘Ali and the Muslims, left Mecca for Medina. On reaching Ghadir Khumm he halted…. The reason for encampment in such a place was that illustrious verses of the Qur’an came powerfully upon him, enjoining him to establish ‘Ali as his successor. He had previously received communications to the same effect, but not expressly appointing the time for ‘Ali’s inauguration, which, therefore, he had deferred lest opposition be excited and some forsake the faith. This was the message from the Most High in Sura 5:67: “O Messenger, publish that which has been sent down to you from your Lord, for if you do not, then you have not delivered His message. God will protect you from men; surely God guides not unbelieving people.”

  Being thus peremptorily commanded to appoint ‘Ali his successor, and threatened with penalty if he delayed when God had become his surety, the Prophet therefore halted in this unusual place, and the Muslims dismounted around him.

  … Having ordered all the camel-saddles to be piled up for a minbar [pulpit] or rostrum, he commanded his herald to summon the people around him. When all the people were assembled, the Prophet ascended the minbar of saddles, and calling unto him the Commander of the Believers (‘Ali), he placed him on his right side. Muhammad now rendered thanksgiving to God, and then made an eloquent address to the people, in which he foretold his own death, and said, “I have been called to the gate of God, and the time is near when I shall depart to God, be concealed from you, and bid farewell to this vain world. I leave among you the Book of God, to which if you adhere, you shall never go astray. And I leave with you the members of my family who cannot be separated from the Book of God until both join me at the fountain of al-Kawthar.”

  He then demanded, “Am I not dearer to you than your own lives?” and was answered by the people in the affirmative. He then took the hands of ‘Ali … and said, “Whoever receives me as his [master or ally], then to him ‘Ali is the same. O Lord, befriend every friend of ‘Ali, and be the enemy of all his enemies; help those who aid him and abandon all that desert him.”

  It was now nearly noon, and the hottest part of the day. The Prophet and the Muslims made the noon prayers, after which he went to his tent, beside which he ordered a tent pitched for the Commander of the Believers. When ‘Ali was rested Muhammad commanded the Muslims to wait upon ‘Ali, congratulate him on his accession to the Imamate, and salute him as the amir, or commander. All this was done by both men and women, none appearing more joyful at the inauguration of ‘Ali than did ‘Umar.

  SOURCE: Williams, John Alden, ed. Themes of Islamic Civilization. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1971, 63–64.

  MAP 3.1 The Age of Sectarian Development, 650–950

  At the end of his life, Mu‘awiya’s tact and political judgment abandoned him. In 680, he shocked many Muslims by insisting on the recognition of his son Yazid as his successor. The sudden imposition of the dynastic rule of an unpopular family provoked a severe reaction. The leaders of Medina refused to acknowledge Yazid, insisting that the new caliph be selected by consensus, as had been done previously. The deep-seated hostility in Iraq to the family of ‘Uthman now erupted anew, especially in Kufa, which had maintained a strong sympathy for the memory of ‘Ali. Leaders of that city invited Husayn to lead resistance to Yazid. Husayn set out for Kufa with several dozen armed followers and family members, but a military detachment sent by Yazid intercepted him on a plain called Karbala, not far from Kufa. There, on the tenth day of Muharram (the first month on the Islamic calendar), he and most of his followers were brutally killed.

  Gilded dome of Mosque of Imam Shrine in Najaf, third holiest place for Shia Muslims, in South Iraq.

  Before 680, Shi‘ism had been the conviction that someone from ‘Ali’s family should exercise caliphal power. Before Karbala, this sentiment could be emotional and passionate, but we have no evidence that it had developed the characteristics of a religious movement. The negotiations between the Kufans and Husayn, for example, include no trace that support or lack of support for him was a matter of religious allegiance, but rather was predicated on the implementation of justice.

  Karbala marked a transition in this respect. Although religious ritual would not be worked out for several decades, there is an unquestionably different tone to Shi‘ite sentiment after 680. Kufans felt a profound sense of guilt at not having come to the aid of Husayn’s little band, and for a growing number of followers, his death was interpreted as a sacrifice made on behalf of God’s people. The narrative account of his death became elaborated
and embellished as time passed, and many Muslims, as they heard it, felt that they participated vicariously in his suffering during those agonizing last hours before Husayn and his followers, abandoned and suffering from thirst, were finally cut down without mercy.

  The Abbasid Revolution

  In the aftermath of Karbala, the idea that an Alid was more qualified than an Umayyad to be the caliph took on unprecedented strength and widespread support. The fervent supporters of an Alid caliphate, however, were frustrated in their hopes that one of the sons or grandsons of Hasan or Husayn would take up the cause. For the next six decades, their families were known for producing more religious scholars than political activists.

  The accession of Yazid in 680 brought forward an opportunity for an Alid challenge to the Umayyads, but it came from an unexpected quarter. From 682 to 692, four successive Umayyad caliphs had to contend with a revolt by ‘Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, a son of one of Muhammad’s closest companions. Ibn al-Zubayr claimed to be caliph, and he had a strong base of support in his home in the Hijaz as well as in Iraq, both of which broke loose from Umayyad control for several years.

  Meanwhile, in Kufa, a man named Mukhtar took advantage of the Umayyads’ loss of control over Iraq to raise a separate revolt. He claimed to be advancing the cause of Ibn al-Hanafiya, a son of ‘Ali and a half-brother to Hasan and Husayn. Ibn al-Hanafiya lived in Mecca, and was known as a gentle religious scholar. There is no evidence that he had any contact with Mukhtar, but the latter was able to take control of Kufa in 685–686.

  Mukhtar claimed that Ibn al-Hanafiya was not merely the rightful caliph, but also the mahdi, a messiahlike figure who would bring justice in place of the oppression and wickedness that now prevailed in the world. Mahdi literally means “guided one,” with the implication of “rightly guided one.” Within the first few decades of Islam there arose informal traditions to the effect that the end of history would be heralded by a Muslim Mahdi and by Jesus. In some accounts, Jesus was predicted to precede the Mahdi, and in others the Mahdi came first. The influential Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), on the other hand, identified the Mahdi with Jesus himself. Some Muslims thought that the Mahdi was already present: The Umayyad caliph Sulayman (715–717) claimed to be the Mahdi, and ‘Umar II (717–720) for several years was widely regarded by many pious scholars as the Mahdi. As we shall see, the doctrine of the Mahdi became an integral feature of Shi‘ism, but only marginal to Sunni doctrine.

  The Umayyads crushed Mukhtar’s uprising in 687, but the depth of the religious evolution that was taking place in Shi‘ite circles may be ascertained by the speculations that began to appear when Ibn al-Hanafiya died in 700. Some of his admirers claimed that in fact he had not died, but rather was in concealment on Mt. Radwa in the Arabian Peninsula, where he was nourished by springs of water and honey and protected by a lion and a leopard. In the fullness of time, he would return to put an end to the tyranny of the transgressors and to bring about a reign of righteousness. Other followers of Ibn al-Hanafiya desired to have a leader in the flesh instead of on a remote mountain, and they turned to his son Abu Hashim for spiritual leadership. This disagreement among Ibn al-Hanafiya’s followers prefigured the complexity of the early history of Shi‘ism, which is replete with numerous groups claiming one or another charismatic figure as their spiritual leader and the rightful caliph.

  The movement that centered on Ibn al-Hanafiya and his son is important for two reasons: the evidence it provides that certain Alid leaders were beginning to be viewed as messianic figures and its connection with the revolutionary movement that eventually overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in 750. The potential that Shi‘ite sentiment held for challenging the Umayyads was becoming clear to the dynasty’s opponents, and early in the eighth century, one group—the Abbasids—began cultivating that sentiment in a remarkably astute way. As we have seen, some Muslims felt that the leadership of the Umma should reside in the descendants of ‘Ali and Fatima (and thus of the Prophet himself), while others were satisfied with leadership that lay in the hands of any of ‘Ali’s descendants (such as Ibn al-Hanafiya).

  In addition to the relatively small group of people who held passionately to this “pro-Alid” sentiment was a much larger number of Muslims who were convinced that the ideal ruler should at least be a member of “the family of the Prophet.” Defining the boundaries of “the family” was frequently a contentious enterprise, but all could agree that it was contained within the clan of Hashim and not of the clan of ‘Abd Shams, from whom the Umayyads were descended. One of the families in the Hashimite clan was that of ‘Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet. Its members are known as the Abbasids, and they became famous as the group that overthrew the Umayyads.

  The Abbasids’ success was due in no small part to the fact that they organized a sophisticated underground movement that was able to elude the best efforts of the Umayyads to ferret it out. Several Alids attempted ill-advised revolts against the Umayyads after 720, but the Abbasids patiently bided their time before challenging the might of the state. Because of the movement’s secrecy, details about it are shrouded in obscurity, but the leaders exploited Alid sentiment by making two seemingly incompatible claims regarding their intentions. To those groups that had been attracted to the figures of Ibn al-Hanafiya and his son Abu Hashim, they claimed that the Ab-basid family had inherited the mantle of spiritual leadership from them. The Abbasids claimed that when Abu Hashim died in Palestine in 716, he had designated Muhammad ibn ‘Ali, a great-grandson of ‘Abbas, to be his spiritual heir. By implication, Muhammad ibn ‘Ali or his successor would be the caliph in the event of the overthrow of the Umayyads.

  By the decade of the 740s, however, the leaders of the Abbasid movement were trying to make their cause attractive to an even wider spectrum of Muslims, and they broadened their propaganda by claiming that they would replace the Umayyads by “the accepted (agreed-upon) one from the family of Muhammad,” the Prophet. The implication was that, once the Umayyads were overthrown, a consensus would determine the best-qualified member of the Prophet’s clan to be the caliph. The ideal of having the leadership of the Umma once again in the hands of the family of the Prophet was one shared by a multitude of Muslims.

  Muhammad ibn ‘Ali lived in what is now southern Jordan, but the political activism that he directed was based in Iraq and Khorasan. Initially, Kufa was the actual base of operations. As a large urban center with a long history of antipathy towards the Umayyads, the city provided a warren of alleys in which Abbasid leaders and agents could operate for several years with relative security. On the other hand, the city’s loyalty to ‘Ali and Husayn was so pronounced that Umayyad police eventually placed the markets and public spaces under constant surveillance. Because of the increasing pressure from the government, the Abbasids estabilished a third base five hundred miles to the northeast, in Khorasan’s capital of Merv.

  Merv was a happy choice. It was remote from Damascus, it had a large Arab population as well as a rapidly growing non-Arab Muslim population, and it was a center of discontent against the Umayyads. As we saw in the previous chapter, the Arab settlers there had assimilated in many ways to Persian culture. Many of the Arabs bought land or became merchants in this entrepot that opened onto Central Asia. They resented being conscripted into the massive military campaigns of 705–715, which forced them to abandon their farms or businesses for most of the year. Discontented with Umayyad policies, many Khorasani Arabs looked to the family of the Prophet for leadership. Merv’s community of Persian-speaking Arabs produced many of the subsequent leaders of the Abbasid movement.

  The decade of the 740s proved to be decisive for the crystallization of the Abbasid movement. The Great Berber Revolt shook the authority of the Umayyad government and forced it to shift thousands of troops into North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. In 743, Muhammad ibn ‘Ali died and was replaced by his son Ibrahim. In the same year, the caliph Hisham died. The Abbasid leadership soon moved to take advantage of the death of Hisham by sending a re
presentative to Khorasan to begin the revolution. Almost nothing is known of this man’s background except that he seems to have been a convert from Iraq. The name by which he was known from that time on, however, was Abu Muslim ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Muslim al-Khorasani, which literally means “Father of a Muslim, servant of the Merciful, son of a Muslim, from Khorasan.” The name is a masterpiece of anti-Umayyad propaganda, suggesting to all who heard it that the Abbasid movement was interested not in tribal or ethnic identities, but only in the welfare of the Muslim community as a whole.

  Abu Muslim assumed the leadership of the anti-Umayyad movement in Khorasan, and in 747, he raised the black banners of revolt. He sent an army westward while he stayed in Khorasan to secure the movement’s base. The campaign was a stunning success. The Umayyads, discovering Ibrahim’s link to the movement, arrested him and had him executed, but the revolutionary army continued its inexorable march, taking Kufa in September 749. A period of uncertainty regarding the leadership of the movement followed. Abbasid agents sent correspondence to the leading Alid figures from the peninsula, offering them the caliphate, but they could not negotiate an arrangement suitable to both sides. Abu Muslim’s representatives in Kufa then selected a brother of Ibrahim named Abu al-‘Abbas as caliph. During 750, the Abbasid army moved into Syria and Egypt and destroyed the last vestiges of Umayyad power. All but one of the members of the former royal family were murdered. The shedding of blood was so common an occurrence, in fact, that the new caliph’s title, “al-Saffah” (“the blood shedder”) seemed apt. The only Umayyad prince who survived—‘Abd al-Rahman—escaped into the Iberian Peninsula, where we shall hear from him again in his capacity as the founder of the independent state of Andalus. The Abbasids quickly consolidated power and remained in Kufa for the next decade before establishing their permanent capital in the new city of Baghdad.