by John McHugo
The six therefore chose Uthman, and it is easy to see hard-nosed, practical realities behind that decision. It was the first – and last – occasion on which there was a genuine election by a group of the leading Companions. Uthman was chosen because he was the candidate around whom opposition to Ali could unite. The fact that he had married not one daughter of the Prophet, as had Ali, but two, would have strengthened his candidature. He had not sought the office. Others had chosen him for it, and almost thrust it upon him. This may have given him a misplaced confidence as to the strength of his position as ruler. He adopted the new title of Khalifatu’llah: ‘God’s deputy [on earth]’, a more imposing title than Abu Bakr’s ‘successor to the Prophet of God’. The difference between the two titles tends to get lost in English translation, since the holder of each title is usually just referred to as ‘the Caliph’. Yet, as we shall see in Chapter Four, the word khalifah or caliph can mean two different things: ‘successor’ (the way Abu Bakr used the title as the successor to the Prophet) or ‘deputy’ (as Uthman used it to describe himself as ‘God’s deputy [on earth]’). His choice of title must have indicated his own belief in the strength of his authority. Unfortunately, this showed itself in a highhandedness and tactlessness which in time would drain almost all mainstream support away from him.2
Like it or not, and despite Umar’s policy of promoting those who had been early converts, the Qurayshis were providing the main body of leadership for the new empire – for that is what the polity established by Muhammad had now become. The Muslim, Arab warriors had lost their freedom to raid each other, but instead had become the empire’s military caste, which lived on the labours of the indigenous, non Muslim and non-Arab populations of the conquered lands. Now the warriors were subject to military discipline which could be brutal, and involved floggings for various offensives – a development that was the very antithesis of the old tribal ethos in which a tribal leader’s authority was based on the consent of his followers. Their stipends and pensions, as well as the hope of once unimaginable quantities of booty, were the price they were paid in return.
Umar had been able to send the Muslim armies out of Arabia to carry out undreamed-of conquests. This must have appeared as a mark of divine favour, but could not alter the fact that this Arab and Muslim empire, which had existed for only a decade or so, was fragile. Byzantium had been defeated in Greater Syria and Egypt, but counterattacks were still possible and the core of the Byzantine Empire was intact. The other great empire the Muslims had attacked was Persia, which at that time covered Iraq as well as the whole of Iran and considerable territories further east. The King of Persia had been repeatedly defeated in battle, but he was still at large as a focal point for resistance, and the Iranian heartland was unsubdued. The grip of the conquerors on the vast territories they had occupied was tenuous. Although internal frictions and disputes over the spoils of victory had not yet erupted into bloodshed, they could easily do so at any time. Umar may have taken the very first steps towards putting the government of the empire onto some sort of formal basis, but that work had scarcely begun. The prestige of being Muhammad’s successor was the source of his authority. Now that Umar’s immense force of personality was absent, the Muslim community was entering a new and very difficult period.
The empire was constantly expanding as the Arab warriors surged on, and Uthman’s reign was concerned with maintaining its unity. Internal pressures that could tear it apart had begun to build up. On the one hand, further expansion was needed in order to avoid the risk of the Arab conquerors turning against each other. On the other, provincial governors were now becoming very powerful figures in their own right, and it was frequently they – rather than Uthman himself – who initiated further campaigns of conquest. Thus, the governors of Greater Syria and Egypt built fleets manned by local (and therefore Christian) sailors who defeated the Byzantine navy off the Lycian coast in 655 and forced Cyprus to pay tribute. In Iran, organised resistance was finally ended as the Arabs pushed their way across the Iranian plateau. This, too, was to a considerable extent an initiative of local governors in Kufa and Basra, the Arab garrison towns that had been established in southern Iraq during Umar’s reign.
Uthman’s greatest achievement in religious terms was to produce an approved text for the Qur’an. This removed one serious source of potential discord, especially as the Companions of the Prophet who could recall him receiving the revelations were now ageing. As more of them died, there was the risk that crucial recollections of parts of the sacred text would be lost. Uthman also tried to exert a greater degree of control over the provinces and their governors. This was an implicit admission that he lacked some of the authority that had radiated from Abu Bakr and Umar. The establishment of greater control meant challenging vested interests, especially when he reduced the financial position of the garrisons and tried to ensure that more of the revenues of the provinces went to the central government. Many early converts and individuals who had fought bravely for Islam during the campaigns of conquest found they were losing out.
Uthman’s response was to appoint new governors on whom he knew he could rely. These were invariably from the Banu Umayya, the dominant section of the Quraysh to which he belonged. Their task was to enforce his authority. Right from the start of his reign he gave preference to relatives, who soon occupied all the major governorships. Some of his closest relatives, especially his cousin Marwan bin al-Hakam, became key figures behind his rule. Despite criticism, which he brushed aside, he continually made grants to his extended family from state funds. He even argued in his own defence that he was implementing the Qur’anic injunction to provide for one’s kin.3 He also transformed rich estates in the conquered territories that had been considered communal lands of the Muslim community into crown lands of which he could dispose at will.
As a result of these policies, Uthman gradually lost the support of the surviving Companions of the Prophet. Some of those who had elected him were openly critical, while others remained silent. The same applied to the mass of the Quraysh, who were jealous at the way in which he was favouring his closer relatives.4 Beyond the Quraysh, there were those who felt excluded by the prominence of that tribe. Discontent grew in the Iraqi garrison city of Kufa, among the army in Egypt, and in Medina itself – the original home of the Ansar. Eventually there was even talk among the Companions of jihad against Uthman.5
All this put Ali in a delicate position. He became a focus for those who were discontented with the way things were going. He disagreed with the Caliph on some questions of devout Muslim practice, and the interpretation and enforcement of religious law. Uthman had a half-brother, Walid bin Uqba, whom he appointed as governor of the garrison town of Kufa in Iraq, even though he was a habitual drunkard. Ali had him punished by flogging – and may even have carried out the sentence himself.6 At the same time, he stood up for individuals whom he considered to be devout and worthy Muslims but who might have incurred the Caliph’s displeasure. He publicly called on Uthman to acknowledge past mistakes and apologise for them. For a while, Ali tried to help Uthman by mediating and urging him to repent. At one point, Uthman did acknowledge his mistakes, but his cousin Marwan believed this had been a fatal sign of weakness, and he angrily dismissed aggrieved soldiers with threats of violence. In frustration, Ali washed his hands of the situation.7
The atmosphere grew steadily worse. By 655, the same year in which an Arab fleet defeated the Byzantine navy off the coast of Lycia while victorious Arab soldiers were pushing further across the Iranian plateau, Uthman faced serious discontent at home. In the early summer of 656, an angry and potentially violent crowd of mutineers surrounded his house in Medina, telling anyone who cared to listen about their demands. In the final sermon Uthman preached, he was interrupted by volleys of pebbles. These knocked him unconscious and he had to be carried out of the mosque. Several days later, a group of mutineers from Egypt, whom he had persuaded to return home in the belief that he had listened to their grie
vances and would look into them, reappeared. They were carrying a letter, ostensibly written by Uthman himself, to the governor of Egypt, telling him to have the mutineers flogged on their return. They had taken it from a messenger who had tried to pass them on the road. Whether or not the letter was a forgery – as Uthman insisted it was – it seems clear that his cousin Marwan was behind it.8 Ali, for one, was convinced the Caliph had not written it. Uthman, however, did not help himself. He seems to have swung between moods in which he publicly acknowledged that he had made mistakes and others in which he imperiously clung to the prestige and dignity of his office. It has even been suggested that these vacillations could have been signs of a breakdown that impaired his judgement.9
As Egyptian army rebels besieged his house, demanding his replacement by another ruler, Uthman justified himself by writing letters in which he maintained that he had kept his promises. He claimed that he had ordered appropriate redress for grievances, and stated that the punishments in the Qur’an would be applied to all wrongdoers without fear or favour. At the same time, he stressed the dignity of his office. He pointed out that Abu Bakr and Umar had not been held to account in the way that he had been. Nor had they been threatened with retaliation for their actions, or asked to resign. He repented of whatever sins he might have committed, but refused to step down as demanded. It is also clear that he did not envisage using force to defend his position. Instead, he looked to the Companions and the widows of Muhammad, ‘the Mothers of the Faithful’, for powerful moral support. Despite this, a number of men went to his house to guard it. These included Ali’s son Hassan.
Up to this point violence had been unheard of between Muslims, save for punishments for crimes. Now it began to look ominously possible. The mutineers would not back down from their demand that the Caliph resign, while Uthman stubbornly refused to do so. Niyar bin Iyad, an elderly Companion of the Prophet, called for Uthman to appear before the crowd outside the gate. When the Caliph came out onto the balcony, Niyar insisted that he step down. A former slave of Marwan dropped a rock on Niyar, killing him instantly. When the crowd demanded that the murderer be handed over, Uthman asserted that he did not know the identity of the killer. The following day, 17 June 656, after crowds had gathered during a noisy night, the palace was stormed. Uthman told the defenders to go to their own houses and protect themselves, saying that the assailants wanted only him. Despite the Caliph’s wishes, there was fighting and a number of the participants were killed. One of those who are alleged by tradition to have slain the Caliph was Muhammad, a son of Abu Bakr, who was one of the leaders of the mutineers from Egypt. He is said to have grabbed Uthman by the beard while he was sitting reading the Qur’an, and to have shoved his sword into the Caliph’s forehead.
The murder of Uthman brought violence to the heart of the community’s political life. As his position weakened in the period leading up to his death, his kin reproached Ali for failing to act more decisively to protect him. Ali seems to have been pulled in two directions. On the one hand, he owed Uthman loyalty as the head of the community and as a kinsman. On the other, he believed Uthman was misgoverning the community and not acting in accordance with Islam’s true principles.10 Both the community itself and its new empire were unstable. The old rivalries between Mecca and Medina, Muhajirun and Ansar, early converts to Islam and latecomers, Qurayshis and non-Qurayshis, the devout and the cynical, had become more intense as a result of the vast wealth that came from the revenues of the conquered territories, the spoils of war and payments of tribute.
II
There is no doubt that Ali believed he was now entitled to the succession. He had once told Abu Bakr that he had a better title than the latter to succeed the Prophet. The only reason he had finally offered his allegiance to Abu Bakr, then subsequently to Umar and Uthman, was concern for the unity of Islam and the good of the community. Mu‘awiya bin ‘Abi Sufyan, the powerful governor of Greater Syria who would in due course emerge as Ali’s rival, satirised the manner in which Ali had acquiesced in the authority of the first three caliphs. He wrote Ali a deliberately insulting letter in the run-up to the civil war that was to break out between them:
Yet each one [Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman] you envied, and against each one you revolted. We knew that from your looking askance, your heavy speech, your heavy sighing, and your holding back from the caliphs. To each one of them you had to be led as the male camel is led by the wood stick through its nose in order to give your pledge of allegiance while you were loath.11
After the murder of Uthman, the situation was very different to that which had prevailed on those earlier occasions. Now Ali believed that the community was turning to him to lead it. As news of Uthman’s murder spread, Companions of the Prophet approached Ali and offered their allegiance. It is reported that initially he refused to accept, but then asked that the pledges should be made publicly in the mosque. When he went to the mosque the day after the murder, he seems to have been acclaimed as the leader by an excited congregation. This included pledges by Zubair and Talha, two of the leading Companions who had been members of the electoral college of six that had selected Uthman as caliph. They would have been potential candidates for the leadership themselves. Subsequently, they had become openly hostile to Uthman’s policies. Although they now offered Ali their allegiance, they would later claim that they were coerced into doing so, as would a few others.
The fact is that there does seem to have been an atmosphere of intimidation created by some of Ali’s supporters, such as Malik al-Ashtar, but this was probably without the approval of Ali himself. Malik al-Ashtar was a physically imposing man who was known to be a brave and very able warrior. He had led a party of 200 men from Kufa to Medina to protest against Uthman, and had been one of the murdered caliph’s most vociferous critics. He and his men had taken part in the siege of the caliph’s house. It is easy to believe that he could be very intimidating. Yet this was not Ali’s approach. He excused some leading figures who did not wish to swear him allegiance, and let them depart.12 Others simply absented themselves, and he did not try to prevent them from so doing.
Opponents to his rule gathered in Mecca. These consisted of two main groups. First, there were those who believed the caliphate should remain in the hands of the Quraysh, because they were uneasy about the main sources for Ali’s support: the Ansar and soldiers from non-Qurayshi tribes. Although Ali himself was from the Quraysh, this support made him unsuitable in their eyes. Another group went further. They might be described as loyalists to Uthman, who believed that a kind of dynastic principle had now been established and that the successor should come from his family.
For Ali, it did not matter that he had not been formally elected by a college of the most eminent surviving Companions, nor that he lacked the backing of the grandees of the Quraysh. He was convinced of the rightness and justice of his position, and for him that was the end of the matter. His sermons and speeches were uncompromising. In one report of his first homily as caliph, he is said to have warned the congregation that God had prescribed two remedies for the community: the sword and the whip. Now he was the imam, or leader, he might forgive past misdeeds. This was a hint that he might show clemency to those who had not supported him in the past, but a warning that he would not to those who transgressed in the future. He compared Uthman to a raven that had thought only of his stomach. It would have been better for that raven if his wings had been clipped or his head cut off, since he had left a Muslim community that was now lukewarm. Hard work was now needed to restore it to what it should be. Ali is also said to have reminded the congregation that the virtuous among the close relatives of the Prophet had a high spiritual status. This family had divine knowledge that enabled them to sit in judgement in the way that God would do. The faithful should follow them, and would then receive right guidance. If they failed to do so, God would lead them to perdition.13
Ali was a courageous man who was determined to act in accordance with his religious conscience. He
forthrightly reproached the community for its backsliding and tepidness, as well as its disloyalty and failure to give him the support he needed. Such pronouncements were occasionally offset by warm praise for acts of loyalty. Ali did not attack the memory of the rule of Abu Bakr and Umar – in fact, he seems to have admired the austerity and sternness that were characteristics of Umar’s rule, and often followed the precedents he had set. He is also on record as describing them both as righteous emirs who had followed the Qur’an and the Prophet’s custom. By contrast, he believed that the community had gone astray under Uthman, or at least it had become apparent during his reign that it had done so. Uthman had himself provoked the rebellion that led to his death. However, on the question of whether Uthman’s death had been justified or it had been murder, he generally tried to remain silent or at least to avoid committing himself to a position.14
One of Ali’s first policies was to set about removing the provincial governors appointed by Uthman. This may have been politically unwise – but a lack of political judgement was a character flaw in Ali.15 The existing governors of the major provinces had all been appointed by Uthman (save for Mu‘awiya in Syria who had already been appointed by Umar but was closely related to Uthman). He was warned that the governors would stir up opposition to him if he deposed them, and that they could easily rally behind the cause of justice for Uthman. This might tempt Talha and Zubair to go back on their pledge of allegiance to him. Nevertheless, he pressed ahead and decided to remove them all except for the governor of Kufa, Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari, who had been the choice of the Kufan rebels against Uthman.