Why then did she not heed the dogs of Hawab? Why did she not insist on turning back instead of going on to Basra? Perhaps the dogs did not howl loud enough, or perhaps it was hindsight that would make them far more ominous than they seemed at the time. But then Aisha would always be very good at hindsight, and thanks to Ali, she’d live long enough to have it.
Ali had indeed rejected the call to punish Othman’s assassins. They had, after all, been the first to acclaim him Caliph, and their leader was his own stepson, so while he did not approve of the assassination, neither could he condemn it. “I cannot say if Othman was killed justly or unjustly,” he said, “for he was himself unjust.” Yet his statement implied approval. If Othman had been unjust—if he had betrayed the sunna, as Ali maintained he had, and contravened the law and the spirit of Islam—then the assassins had acted in good faith. Though Ali stopped short of calling Othman an apostate, his reasoning was clear: as with the killing of an apostate, no punishment was called for.
Instead of retribution, Ali called for reconciliation. Revenge was not the way forward, he said. Islam needed to look to the future instead of to the past. That was why he had accepted Talha’s and Zubayr’s pledges of allegiance, withered hands or no. It was why he still sent letters to Mecca and Damascus instead of troops, demanding allegiance rather than forcing it. Anyone who misunderstood this as a desire to avoid conflict at all costs, as a position of weakness instead of strength, would find himself gravely mistaken.
But if Ali hoped to avoid bloodshed, it was already too late. When the news arrived of the Meccans marching on Basra under the command of Aisha and her brothers-in-law, he was left with no option but to set out from Medina with his own army to stop them. Yet even as he was en route to Basra, the violence had already begun.
Aisha and her brothers-in-law had miscalculated. They had confronted the Basrans with a terrible conundrum of split loyalties, and the townspeople resented its being forced on them. They respected Aisha as the leading Mother of the Faithful and acknowledged the merit of her call for revenge for Othman, but they respected Ali even more. He had replaced Othman’s corrupt governor of the former garrison town, and the new governor—a man of integrity, committed to the rule of law—was popular. So the men of the Meccan army were not welcomed with open arms, as they had expected; in fact, they were not welcomed into the town at all. The new governor insisted that they set up camp beyond the town limits. “Let us wait for Ali to arrive,” he said—the last thing Aisha and her brothers-in-law wanted.
That night—“a cold, dark night with wind and rain,” according to the records—Talha and Zubayr led a raid on the town. They forced their way into the mosque and fought pitched battles with the townspeople, killing dozens of them. By dawn they had taken over the treasury and the granary, where Ali’s governor confronted them. “By God if I had enough men, I would not be satisfied until I killed you for those you have killed,” he said. “Because you have killed our Basran brothers, your blood is now halal—sanctioned—for us. How can you consider the shedding of Muslim blood lawful? Were those you killed last night the ones who killed Othman? Don’t you fear God’s loathing?” But against an army of such size, the governor was powerless. He was seized and whipped, his hair and beard were torn out by the roots, and he was thrown in jail. All Basra hunkered down, waiting to see what would happen when Ali arrived.
Riders reached him quickly with the news: the town taken, the governor humiliated, townspeople killed. Ali was dismayed; if Talha and Zubayr did not fear God’s loathing, he did. “God, undo what they have done and show them their evil,” he cried out. “Spare me the killing of Muslims as they have done, and deliver us from people such as they.” But he was a realist as well as an idealist; even as he prayed for peace, he prepared for war.
He sent his sons Hasan and Hussein north to Kufa, there to raise an army of reinforcements. Within the week they met him at Basra with a force several thousand strong. There were now some ten thousand troops on each side, and for the next three days the two armies, the one headed by Ali, the other by Aisha and her brothers-in-law, set up camp across from each other on a wide, shallow plain just outside the town.
Would the show of force be enough in itself to deter the Meccans? Ali evidently hoped so, yet as he addressed his newly massed army, his words would prove horribly prophetic. “To set things right is what I intend,” he told them, “so that the community may return to being brothers. If the Meccans give us allegiance, then we will have peace. But if they insist on fighting, this will be a split that cannot be repaired. So men, restrain yourselves. Remember that these people are your brothers. Be patient. Beware of rushing into anything without guidance, for if you win the argument today, you may lose it tomorrow.”
The nightmare loomed ahead—the one thing they most dreaded, and the one thing that now seemed all but inevitable: fitna.
Arabic is a subtle and sinuous language. Like all Semitic languages, it plays on words, taking a three-consonant root and building on it to create what sometimes seems an infinite number of meanings. Even the exact same word can have different connotations, depending on the context. Perhaps the best-known example is jihad, struggle, which can be either the inner striving to live the Islamic life and attain a higher level of spiritual consciousness, or the external armed confrontation with those seen as enemies of Islam.
The sensitive Islamic term fitna is still more complex. The root is the word for being led astray. It can mean trial or temptation, intrigue or sedition, discord or dissension. It always implies upheaval, even chaos. But the most common meaning is civil war—the most uncivil warfare of all. Tribes, clans, even families split against themselves; cousins and in-laws take opposite sides; brothers may even fight brothers, and fathers, their own sons. Fitna is the terrible wrenching apart of the fabric of society, the unraveling of the tightly woven matrix of kinship, and it was seen in the seventh century, as it still is today, as the ultimate threat to Islam, greater by far than that of the most benighted unbelievers.
So as the two armies faced each other across that divide of sandy, rock-strewn soil, even as they sharpened their knives and swords and steeled their nerves, they debated among themselves as to whether they were really ready to commit the ultimate sin: to shed the blood of other Muslims. Every word they uttered was haunted by the fear of division and its consequence, fitna.
“Talha and Zubayr swore allegiance and obedience to Ali,” said one veteran Basran warrior, “and now they come in rebellion, seeking revenge for the blood of Othman. They have created a split between us.”
War was inevitable, retorted another fatalistically. As well ask the Euphrates to flow upstream as to deny this. “Do the people think they can say ‘We believe’ and then not be tested?”
But such a test? The Meccan troops too were having second thoughts. “We are in a flat, unhealthy land,” said one, and there was no denying the aptness of the metaphor, for this was exactly how southern Iraq, this seemingly endless riverine plain with its canals and swamps, mosquitoes and midges, seemed to the warriors from the Hijaz mountains. The air was dense and moist instead of bracingly dry, the blue of the sky pale with humidity. They had followed Aisha only to find themselves out of place, disoriented.
Even Talha had doubts. He sat alone and “flicked his beard against his chest,” the gesture of a troubled man. “We were all united against others,” he said, “but now we’ve become like two mountains of iron, each seeking to finish the other.”
Others resisted the pressure to take sides. An elderly companion of Muhammad’s complained that “there’s never before been a situation where I didn’t know my next step, but now I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.” One tribal leader simply left, riding off into the mountains of Persia, saying that if the two armies wanted to kill each other, they could do so without him and his men. His parting words left no doubt what he thought: “I would rather be a castrated slave herding nanny goats with lopsided udders, than shoot a single arrow
at either of these two sides.”
Many of the Basrans vacillated, unsure which side to support. “No person who has embraced this fitna will be able to extricate himself from it,” warned one.
“This will lead to worse than what you most hate,” said another. “It is a tear that won’t get mended, a fracture that will never be repaired.”
And a third simply mourned. “The millstone of Islam is out of balance,” he said, “and look how it turns unevenly.”
But the strongest warning—the one that would echo in men’s minds and make them wish they had listened harder—came from Abu Musa, an elderly companion of the Prophet’s and a former governor of Kufa under Omar. “Fitna rips the community apart like an ulcer,” he said. “The winds fan it, from the north and the south, the east and the west. And it will be endless. It is blind and deaf, trampling its halter. It has come at you from a place where you were safe, and leaves the wise man as bewildered as the most inexperienced. He who sleeps through it is better off than he who is awake in it; he who is awake in it is better off than he who stands in it; he who stands in it is better off than he who rides into it. So be wise and sheathe your swords! Remove your spearheads and unstring your bows!”
There was one last hope, and that depended on the three men in command. As twenty thousand men watched with bated breath, Ali rode out between the two armies on his dark bay battle horse, and Talha and Zubayr rode out to meet him. They came to a halt, as one warrior put it, “so close that the necks of their horses crossed over each other.” Still on horseback, they talked, and then there was a mass murmur of approval from each side as Ali gave the sign to bring up a tent so that they could continue their negotiations in the shade. They negotiated for three whole days, and as they talked, so too did their men. “Some stood opposite others and some went across to others,” one Meccan remembered, “and all we talked about and intended was peace.”
There was one person strikingly absent from that tent, however. Aisha took no part in the negotiations, though her agreement was surely necessary. This was the woman who had inspired the Meccan army to march eight hundred miles to this flat, humid plain, the woman who had called on them to take revenge for Othman and in whose name they had gathered. Did she too hope for a peaceful resolution? Did Muhammad’s voice still sound in her ears, warning against dissension, or had she forgotten about the waters of Hawab?
If there was to be a battle, she would not be on the sidelines, not this time. She would be at the very center of the fighting, the rallying point for her men. Was she so entranced by the anticipation of it that she hoped, even against her better judgment, that the negotiations would fail? Was she relieved or disappointed when Ali, Talha, and Zubayr emerged from that tent at the end of the third day and gave the signal to stand down? She would never say.
If it was not peace the three men had agreed on, at least it was not war. They had, in effect, agreed to disagree. Each one had sworn that however this was to be resolved, it would not be by force. None of them would give the order to strike the first blow. So in the words of one warrior, “when they retired to bed that night, there was peace. They slept as they never had before, because they were free from what they had been on the point of doing, and had withdrawn their plans for battle.”
But while they slept, he continued, others did not. “At the same time, those who had stirred up the question of Othman spent the worst night of their lives, for now they were about to be brought to account. All night they were busy in discussion until they decided on a surprise attack. They kept it secret, slipped out of the camp before dawn, and attacked at first light.”
It was never clear exactly who they were. Were they Marwan’s men, setting off the fight, as they had the day Othman was assassinated? Were they acting under orders from Aisha, dismayed at Talha’s and Zubayr’s retreat from confrontation? Or were they simply young hotheads, as most prefer to believe, primed for battle and with that supreme disdain of youth for death? The accounts are confused, as battle accounts always are. A small group, certainly, but the smallest group can set huge armies into motion. Three or four men can do it easily. The clanging of steel rises from a single sector, curses and battle cries carry through the still air of early morning, and suddenly thousands are involved. In the terror and desperation of battle, there is no time for questions. Who struck the first blow is the last thing on anyone’s mind as every man fights for his life.
Perhaps it is enough to say that with two such huge armies face-to-face, with every man fully armed and geared up to fight, outright battle was the only possible outcome. All we know for sure is that nobody would take “credit” this time, not for this battle, not for the thousands who were to die on this October day in the year 656.
And so it began, the first battle in the war that it seemed nobody wanted yet nobody could avoid—the civil war still being fought in the twenty-first century and in the same place it all began, Iraq.
chapter 9
A ROAR WENT UP FROM AISHA’S FORCES AS HER CAMEL WAS LED onto the field of battle. It was a red riding camel—the best kind, fast and sturdy—and the canopy set on top of it was draped not with muslin but with chain mail and, over that, red silk.
The howdah towered over the vast array of horsemen and infantry. More visible than any banner, it was an instant rallying point for Aisha’s men. The most prominent, the most outspoken, and the most beloved of the Prophet’s widows, the one who had cradled his head as he lay dying, was not merely on the sidelines; she was right here, among them, right at the heart of battle. Under the command of the Mother of the Faithful, there was nothing they would not do.
Through the chinks in the chain mail, Aisha had a clear view of the whole field. She could see where her lines were doing well and where they were being pressed, call for one sector to be reinforced or another to advance. Her commands were relayed by runners to Talha, who was in charge of the horsemen, and to Zubayr, at the head of the foot soldiers.
As the red silk fluttered over her armored canopy, her high voice pierced through the early-morning air, all the more chilling for being disembodied, its source hidden from sight. “You are heroes, by God. You are like mountains!” she urged her warriors. “Show your valor, sons of mine! Show these murderers what you can do! May they rue the day they were born! May their mothers be bereaved of them!”
And again and again, the urgent refrain: “Death to the killers of Othman! Death to all who support them! Revenge for Othman!”
This was the traditional role of women in battle, though never before from the center. Usually they stayed at the rear, where they urged on their side, mocking the virility of their enemies and daring their own fighters to feats of valor. Their shrill ululations were designed to strike fear in the hearts of the other side, much as the eerie sound of bagpipes in a very different part of the world. They cut through the funk of fear and overrode the sounds of bodies colliding, of steel clashing, of men panting in each other’s grip, gasping as steel entered flesh, moaning as they lay injured and dying.
It was women who called for blood, and if any doubted what they were capable of, people still talked with awe of the aristocratic Hind, whose husband had led the Meccan opposition to Muhammad and his followers. Her father had died in the first major battle between the Meccans and the Medinans, and she knew who had killed him: Muhammad’s uncle Hamza. So when the Meccans marched on Medina to do battle again, it had been Hind who led the chanting, taunting Muhammad’s men and daring them to advance; Hind who had been fired up with the thirst for revenge and who put a price on Hamza’s head; Hind who roamed the battlefield after the two sides had fought to a standoff, who strode from corpse to corpse, searching for the one she wanted.
She found it, and when she did, she uttered a cry of victory that years later still froze the blood of those who had heard her. She stood astride Hamza, gripped her knife with both hands, and plunged it deep into his body, gouging him open to rip out not his heart but something far larger and far more viscer
al—his liver. Ululating in triumph, she held that liver up high above her head and then, in full view of all, she crammed it into her mouth, tore it apart with her teeth, spat out the pieces, stamped on them, and ground them into the dirt.
Who could ever forget the sight of that blood running from her mouth and streaming down her chin and her arms, of those eyes gleaming with revenge? It was so compelling that people still referred to her son, half in taunt, half in admiration, as the Son of the Liver Eater. Never to his face, though, for he was none other than Muawiya, the man who had become the powerful governor of Syria. Like his mother, he was not one to be trifled with.
Yet even Hind had stayed in the rear during the fighting itself. Even she had been too much the urban aristocrat to ride into the thick of battle. That was the kind of thing nomadic women were known for: women like the fabled Umm Siml, who had led her tribe in fierce resistance against Abu Bakr’s forces during the Wars of Apostasy. Poets still celebrated her in long odes to the romance of the desert. They praised the sacred white camel she had ridden on and the absolute fearlessness and devotion she had inspired in her men until both she and the camel were finally slain. But Umm Siml had not been a Muslim—not by Abu Bakr’s reckoning, in any case. She had been an apostate. So when Aisha rode out onto that battlefield outside Basra on her red camel, it was the first time a Muslim woman had led men into war. It was also to be the last.
After the Prophet Page 11