by John McHugo
If these changes at the top in the major provinces of the empire had led to a successful consolidation of Ali’s authority, it would have been a revolution against the dominance of the Quraysh. His success, however, was limited. He established control of Basra and appointed Qays bin Sa‘d as governor of Egypt. He was the son of Sa‘d bin Ubadah, the leader of the Ansar who had been roughly treated by Umar at the meeting of the Ansar on the night after the death of the Prophet.
But Ali had a weakness that prevented him strengthening his grip on power across the empire in its entirety. This was the fact that Uthman had been murdered, and that his relatives were entitled to justice. This meant that Ali’s own position had been made uncomfortable by his attempt to stay neutral on the question of whether Uthman’s death had been justified.
Mecca refused to acknowledge him. As an act of disrespect, a young member of the Quraysh even chewed up the letter he wrote calling for the city to pledge allegiance.16 The allegation that Ali was responsible for the murder of Uthman was made publicly by Aisha, who was now living in the city. It was frequently repeated, often in poetry written to lampoon him. The city soon became resolutely hostile to his cause, although there is no doubt that, for many of the worldly-wise Quraysh, the call for justice for the murder of Uthman was primarily a convenient excuse.
Aisha flung her weight behind Talha and Zubair, the two Companions who had the most credible claims to lead the community as an alternative to Ali. As we have seen, Aisha had a deep-seated hostility to Ali. It has been suggested that her real motivation was the removal of Ali rather than justice for Uthman,17 since she had also incited a rebellion against Uthman herself.18 Alongside Talha and Zubair, she was opposed to Uthman’s policy of relying on Tulaqa’ (Meccans accepting Islam only after the fall of Mecca) and other relatives from his immediate clan, but the three of them were all Quraysh loyalists in a wider sense. They argued that there should be another electoral college, a Shura or ‘consultation’, as instituted by Umar. They went to Basra where they hoped to raise support, but found that loyalties there were divided, and they had to fight a battle before they could even enter the city. While Aisha used her natural charisma and status as the Prophet’s pre-eminent widow to encourage men to enlist in the rebellion against Ali, there were disputes between Zubair and Talha as to who should have seniority over the other. These were demonstrated when one of them led the congregational prayers, thus taking precedence. Ali’s response was to go to Kufa, the other big garrison town in Iraq. He had very substantial support there, and it would become his de facto capital.
The rebellion of Aisha, Talha and Zubair was defeated fairly easily when the armies met on the occasion that has gone down in history as the Battle of the Camel. It took place on 8 December 656, just over six months after the murder of Uthman and the acclamation of Ali as his successor. Zubair seems to have fled from the battle scene at an early stage and to have been murdered nearby, while Talha was killed in the fighting. The last stand was a melee around the camel that carried Aisha in an armoured litter. This was ended when Ali ordered the camel to be hamstrung, so that it threw off its load. Fleeing Basrans pleaded that they belonged to ‘the religion of Ali’ in order to save their lives – but this probably meant no more than a statement that they had now, in their defeat, belatedly accepted that Ali was the leader of the community.19 A chastened Aisha, who had been wounded by an arrow through her arm, threw herself on Ali’s mercy. His cousin, Abdullah bin Abbas (the same who had given an account of the Prophet’s last hours that was inconsistent with Aisha’s) was given the task of sending her back to Medina. Entering the house where she was staying without asking her permission, he rudely told her that she was nothing but one of the nine ‘stuffed beds’ (i.e. widows) the Prophet had left behind, and that she owed everything to the Prophet’s blood relatives.20 She was sent back to Mecca and prevented from having any further political involvement. She lived out her final years in remorse for her role in leading Muslims to fight each other, and also regretted her incitement against Uthman.21
III
The immediate challenge to Ali’s supremacy had been dealt with. But the underlying problem of deciding how to respond to the call from Uthman’s kin for justice remained. Ali’s position was that he needed to establish his authority before he could do so. He therefore required Mu‘awiya in Syria to pledge allegiance before he could take action. Mu‘awiya had originally been appointed by Umar and had deep roots in the province. His family had had strong trading connections there for generations, and had already owned property in what is now Jordan before the coming of Islam. He had built up the Syrian army and made sure that it was loyal to him personally. It faced the Byzantine frontier, and was the largest and most professional army in the Arab empire.
Mu‘awiya consistently refused to swear allegiance, and stated that he held Ali responsible for the murder.22 His position was that, once the murderers had been dealt with, there should be a Shura (‘consultation’) – but it should be dominated by the Syrians, who now had the right ‘to be judges over the people’ – code for the almost certain selection of Mu‘awiya himself.23 Uthman’s widow sent him the bloodstained shirt her husband had been wearing when he was killed. It was taken round the Syrian garrisons to whip up war fever. Mu‘awiya called on Ali to punish the murderers. Yet in Syria, as in Iraq, there were many who did not want the matter resolved by war.
Some of the leaders of the mutineers against Uthman were among Ali’s principal supporters, especially Malik al-Ashtar, who was Ali’s enforcer in Kufa. Another was Abu Bakr’s son Muhammad – who it will be remembered was one of the leading mutineers, and allegedly the murderer of Uthman. Muhammad was now part of Ali’s family. He had been only two when his father died. Ali had then married Abu Bakr’s widow, Asma, who was Muhammad’s mother. This was an attempted gesture of reconciliation, which may have been intended to heal the rift with Aisha but was also designed to bring the whole Muslim community together. Muhammad had therefore grown up in Ali’s household and was his stepson. It would have been inconceivable for Ali to repudiate him now.
A kind of catch-22 had arisen: it was not realistic for Ali to withdraw his support for these men, even if he wished to do so, before he had Mu‘awiya’s pledge of allegiance. Ali’s consistent position was one of neutrality: he did not say that Uthman was wrongfully killed, nor that he was killed as a wrongdoer.24 Yet there was no possibility of obtaining Mu‘awiya’s allegiance unless he came off the fence. The impasse probably suited Mu‘awiya well. History shows him to have been a coldly calculating individual. The cynicism of his quest for justice for Uthman was apparent to many. It was also demonstrated by a secret offer he made to pledge allegiance to Ali on condition that he continued to control Syria and Egypt, and would not be bound to accept any successor designated by Ali on his death.25 If Ali had accepted this offer, it might well have led to the permanent fragmentation of the Muslim empire.
On Mu‘awiya’s side of the divide, there were the Qurayshi loyalists and the forces that made up the army of Greater Syria, which Mu‘awiya was able to swing behind him. Although the forces Ali might be able to bring against him were potentially more numerous, they were less united. Kufa was notorious for infighting among its garrison, which was composed partly of devout early converts to Islam who had been among the original conquerors, and tribesmen who were late-comers to the religion. The two groups also had very different financial interests when it came to the revenues of the conquered land. Ali’s response was an appeal to the brotherhood of all believers and to emphasise the spiritual nature of his leadership. In rousing speeches he was able to describe Mu‘awiya and his followers as ‘the enemies of God’ and ‘the murderers of the Muhajirun and Ansar’.26 Some remained neutral, and refused to take sides, but Ali won many of the early converts over to his cause. Support for him snowballed as tribal leaders returning from campaigns in Iran joined him. In the early summer of 657 he led an immense army up the Euphrates towards Syria. It encounte
red Mu‘awiya’s forces at Siffin, north of Raqqa. There was a clear reluctance to settle the issue on the battlefield, and the armies remained in encampments near each other for three months, skirmishing intermittently.
Eventually, Ali declared that Mu‘awiya’s Syrians had failed to answer his call to the Qur’an and to repudiate their falsehood.27 As was customary in the run-up to battles among the Arabs, individual combats took place as well as skirmishes between prominent figures and tribal leaders with small retinues. When full-scale fighting eventually started, about a week after these first exchanges, the Syrians seem to have had the better of the first day. But thereafter the battle ebbed and flowed, and there was even a suggestion that Ali and Mu‘awiya should decide it by single combat. Mu‘awiya refused, but Ali is reported to have ‘cleft in two’ a champion foolhardy enough to decide to stand in Mu‘awiya’s place.28 Eventually, towards noon on the third day of fighting, it looked as though Ali’s forces were gaining the upper hand. Some soldiers in the centre of the Syrian army tied copies of the Qur’an to their lances (or probably just verses of the Qur’an) and cried out ‘Let the Book of God decide between us and you. Who will protect the border towns of the people of Syria after they are all gone, and who will protect the border towns of the people of Iraq after they are all gone?’29
This could be seen as an offer by the Syrians to surrender. Mu‘awiya had claimed to be leading his army in a moral cause: justice for the slain caliph. Hitherto, his position had been that the sword should be the judge between his forces and those of Ali. Now, however, he had in effect appealed to arbitration on the basis of the Qur’an. He can only have done so because he sensed he was losing the battle. For his part, Ali called on his men to continue the fight. He knew that Mu‘awiya and those around him were not religious people, and that their sudden appeal to the Qur’an was nothing more than a stratagem to stop the battle before they lost. Yet many of the devout men in his own army had been fighting to call the Syrians to the Qur’an and to repentance. They therefore demanded that he stop the battle. One of their leaders even said to him, ominously: ‘Ali, respond to the Book of God since you have been summoned to it. If not, we shall hand you over to these people or we shall do with you as we did with [Uthman].’30 Threatened with mutiny, Ali had no alternative but to order his great captain Malik al-Ashtar to stop his advance towards the Syrian camp – something that Malik al-Ashtar at first refused to do, as he was reluctant to see victory slip from Ali’s grasp.
When the fighting was over, Mu‘awiya proposed that each side appoint a representative. The two men appointed would discuss the issues that had led to the fighting, and find a way to restore peace. They would use the Qur’an as the basis for their arguments. This made the proposal very hard to reject. Needless to say, Mu‘awiya appointed a representative who could be relied upon to further his interests. This was Amr ibn al-‘As, the original conqueror of Egypt. Ali, on the other hand, was forced by pressure from devout soldiers to appoint an individual who would be even-handed between him and Mu‘awiya. The pause in the fighting had left his camp in disarray. He and many of his followers had wished to continue the fight until victory, but he had to accommodate the wishes of the devout majority whose interests were not necessarily identical to his own.
Not only had Mu‘awiya saved his army from defeat, but he had cleverly manoeuvred Ali into a position where they appeared as equals, even as rival claimants to the leadership of the community. This implicitly denied Ali any right to consider himself the caliph. Mu‘awiya objected to Ali’s styling himself with the caliphal title ‘Commander of the Faithful’ in the agreement. Reluctantly, Ali omitted it. He saved face before his followers by reminding them of a precedent: Muhammad’s consent to the omission of the title of ‘Prophet of God’ in the agreement with the pagan Meccans at Hudaybiyya.
Ali was also compelled to nominate Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari as his representative in the forthcoming peace talks. But Abu Musa was a less-than-ideal person to nominate to protect Ali’s interests. Although Ali had confirmed him as governor of Kufa at the start of his reign, Abu Musa had stayed neutral in Ali’s struggle with Talha, Zubair and Aisha. Ali had had to dismiss him when he approached Kufa on the way to confront the rebels. Although Abu Musa was clearly loved in Kufa, he had had a controversial record on the distribution of booty to his men when campaigning during the conquests. But there were reasons why he might appeal to the devout. He was known for his beautiful recitations of the Qur’an and the care with which he said his prayers.
The arrangement reached is often described as an arbitration agreement, but in reality it was an agreement to find a way as to how the Muslim community should now proceed. It did not state the question the two representatives were to decide. Their task was to take a just decision that would restore peace, and end division and war in the community. It is hard not to see acceptance of the agreement, which was on terms suggested by Mu‘awiya, as a failure of leadership by Ali. The majority of his army may have wished to stop fighting, but he also had robust supporters who were charismatic leaders of their own men and who had protested when it stopped. As soon as it became apparent that Mu‘awiya’s conduct was cynical, they wished to resume fighting. If Ali had shown resolution, he could probably have persuaded many if not most of the ‘peace party’ to resume fighting. It has been suggested that Ali may have been haunted by the way in which his supporters had turned away from him at the time when each of Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman had become caliph, and that this memory of these experiences may have paralysed his resolve. He may also have been influenced unconsciously by the role of a tribal sheikh, the usual figure of authority in Arabia before Islam. A sheikh has to obtain and keep the consent of his followers in order to lead them. This was a much lesser degree of authority than the firm leadership that was now Ali’s right as the successor of the Prophet. From the reputation he had already earned as a warrior, we can safely assume that a lack of physical courage was not his reason for compromise and allowing procrastination.31 He probably knew that the process was doomed, but hoped it would vindicate him by making Mu‘awiya’s dishonesty plain.32
IV
There was another adverse consequence for Ali. Large numbers had been killed in the three days of fighting at Siffin. The civil war in the community – for that was what the struggle between him and Mu‘awiya had become – was a scandal, and as such raised a question mark over his claims. It threatened to split the community into two, and left the rather fluid and uncertain frontiers of the expanding empire undefended while the Arabs fought among themselves. Many of the devout men who had followed Ali had turned their swords and spears against fellow Muslims only with the greatest reluctance, and after much soul-searching. Others in the army might have been fighting because of personal loyalty to Ali, or for tribal honour, prestige, or the hope of booty, but these men had been fighting for Islam. Now some of them were devastated and confused. What had it all been for? How could Ali arbitrate with a man who was ultimately nothing more than an unscrupulous war lord, a Taliq who was the son of Abu Sufyan and Hind, the greatest and most cynical Tulaqa’ of them all? Furthermore, as one of the two men appointed to reach an agreement was a partisan of Mu‘awiya and effectively held a veto, it was not realistic to expect anything positive to result from the discussions. Once the large army Ali had put together began to disperse, everybody knew it would be very difficult to reassemble. Some of those pondering these questions came to a conclusion: sovereignty and judgement belonged to God alone. The question of authority over God’s community could not be decided by a kind of arbitration process. By approving this, Ali had shown that he was not the true leader of the community.
The agreement was read out to the two armies by al-Ash‘ath, a partisan of Ali who had fought in the battle and had played an important role in the discussions that had followed. He is said to have played a leading part in persuading, or cajoling, Ali into accepting the agreement and consenting to the appointment of Abu Musa al-Ash‘ari as the rep
resentative for Ali and the Iraqi side. When they heard what al-Ash‘ath had read out, two men in Ali’s army shouted ‘no judgement except God’s’, and charged the Syrian battle line to meet their deaths. Another cried out, ‘Will you appoint men as arbitrators in the affairs of God? No judgement but God’s. Where are our dead, Ash‘ath?’ Then he charged at al-Ash‘ath, slightly wounding his horse, before he was called back by his fellow tribesmen.33
These were portents of what was to come. While Ali’s forces were riding back to Kufa, there were scuffles as groups of men called out, ‘No judgement but God’s,’ while other groups shouted back and angrily accused them of betraying their leader and their community. Men struck each other with their riding whips. As the army reached Kufa, 12,000 men are said to have withdrawn from it, including some who had originally backed the arbitration but had come to view it as a mistake. They swore allegiance to God and to the Qur’anic precept of commanding what is right and forbidding what is wrong.34 In their view, Mu‘awiya and his representative Amr ibn al-‘As were no better than polytheists and should have been fought. Ali persuaded some of them to return, but others set out from Kufa and Basra to join them.
These disillusioned men who withdrew from Ali’s army are known to history as the Kharijis, literally ‘those who left’, or ‘those who walked out’ or possibly, ‘those who went forth for jihad’. They preached a faith that was pure and excluded all others who claimed to be Muslims. They rejected the leadership of both the Quraysh and their own tribal leaders. Their departure was over a matter of principle, while those who stayed with Ali had reasons for doing so that were equally principled. His remaining followers offered him a new oath of allegiance, in which they swore they would be friends of those he befriended and enemies of his enemies.