Episode 12: Ali bin Abi Talib

Legitimating succession within the caliphate was already hard enough, and the rebellion that led to Othman’s death only divided the fractured Umma further. It is in these unenviable conditions that the Hashemite Ali bin Abi Talib will prevail as the Umma’s fourth caliph, fulfilling the hopes of those who believed that he had been chosen by the prophet as his successor in his farewell speech almost 25 years earlier.

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Glossary

For the sake of clarity, I’ve broken down the glossary into three sections.

This first one lists some of the most prominent men of Quraysh.

• Al Zubayr ibn il Awwam: as one of the four remaining members of the council which had selected Othman as the Umma’s third caliph, al Zubayr stood a chance at leading the Umma himself.
• Talha bin Ubaidallah: he was another of the four remaining members of the council. While everything about these events is heavily disputed, Talha is often associated closely with the rebels when they first besieged the city, and it makes him seem like he truly thought they might install him if they overthrew Othman. These accounts fade within weeks of the siege, and Talha is never associated with the rebels who were actually involved in storming the caliph’s house.
• Sa’ad ibn abi Waqqas: yet another of the four surviving members of the council. Sa’ad had been keeping to himself for a while now, and unlike most other Qurayshis he is never implicated in agitating against Othman in any way.
• Abdallah bin Omar: not one of the electoral council, just a respected member of the Quraysh. Omar’s pious son was widely admired for his piety and demeanor. Coupled with his father’s glowing reputation as the Umma’s second caliph and you’d think he would have made a compelling choice for caliph, but like Sa’ad he kept to himself during this divisive time.

This second one is for the men the Arabs would eventually refer to as their four duhat.

• Dahiya/Duhat: the term dahiya (singular, duhat for plural) most closely translates as “shrewd manipulator” but its connotations in Arabic veer towards subterfuge, slyness, and the ability to confound others. Being deceitful or hurting someone cleverly is not enough to make a dahiya; and to that end dahiyas don’t need to be malicious – they just tended to be. I’ll list the four dahiyas next, keep in mind that when it comes to narrations about these men we need to be more skeptical. Since they earned a reputation for wisdom, later generations basically made up cute stories and attributed the wisest ones to these men. I’ll point some of this out as it happens later. Oh and their speech is ever so clever; it gleans like it has been polished by successive minds over time. 
• Mu’awiya bin abi Sufyan: dahiya number one. In my opinion the governor of Syria’s status as a dahiya is a little trumped up, and I’ll flesh out what I mean a little more as we go along.
• ‘Amr ibn il ‘As: dahiya number two makes a much more persuasive case for being a called a dahiya in my opinion. His agitation against Othman is often quoted as being some of the most effective, and may have had much to do with why the armies of Egypt were so much more receptive to armed rebellion than others. He provides Dr. Wardi with plenty of material to make the case that it was Qurayshi invective against Othman which hinted to the masses that they ought to act on their grievances against him. He, Talha, and Aisha are especially cited, but so are other prominent muslims who weren’t of Quraysh, like the Ansar, who were more open about their criticism of the wayward caliph.
• Mughira bin Shu’ba: the first two dahiyas were both Qurayshis, but the other two were from the tribe of Thaqif from Mecca’s old rival city of Ta’if. Mughyara was not only respected for his shrewdness, having joined Mohammad’s Umma right after its hijra from Mecca to Medina gave him the best Islamic credentials of these four. I’ve already skipped over how he cleverly convinced many of his tribe to join Islam, and his witty exchanges with the leading men of the bordering empires ahead of their conquest by the Arabs.
• Ziyad ibn abih: the fourth dahiya is also from Thaqif, and was most likely the son of an enslaved woman whom he is sometimes named after as Ziyad ibn Sumayya. He’d accepted Islam just before fighting for the Umma in its battles against the Sassanids in Iraq, and he made a good impression upon a Qurayshi elder, who kept him close afterwards. After his patron’s death his distinguished tribesman (and fellow dahiya) Mughira recognized his potential and kept him around as a personal assistant.

This final one is of the Hashemites and their key loyalists.

• Ali bin abi Talib: the leadership of the Umma finally returned to Hashemite hands, and Ali will be our fourth and final rightly-guided caliph.
• Hasan ibn Ali: the eldest of Ali bin abi Talib’s children, and son of the prophet’s daughter Fatima. In many ways he was his father’s protege and Ali involved him in several aspects of his leadership of the Hashemites. 
• Hussein ibn Ali: al Hasan’s younger brother is characterized as the ideal second-son in the few narrations in which he features thus far. His closeness to his father and elder brother made him their natural successor in terms of seniority within the Hashemite clan.
• Mohammad ibn il Hanafiya: this son of Ali was given a different lineal name by the Arabs to distinguish his bloodline from that of the prophet’s as his mother was not Mohammad’s daughter Fatima. He was still a Hashemite of course, and during the events described in this episode he was in his early twenties, while roughly a ten year gap between him and his two older half-brothers.
• Abdallah ibn il Abbas: Ali’s cousin was already mentioned during Omar’s reign as being one of the second caliph’s closest advisors and a major transmitter of news about his reign. This prior experience with government made him an excellent source of advice for the new caliph.
• Qays bin Sa’ad ibn Ubada: he is sometimes hyperbolically referred to as the commander of the Ansar in our sources. Qays’ father was the leader of the Khazraj tribe, and had opposed Abu Bakr’s leadership that fateful day the caliphate was established. The Ansar were increasingly embittered at how things had devolved ever since Quraysh first monopolized leadership. Many of the Ansar – Qays surely among them – found this setup unfair, and hoped a Hashemite caliph would restore their social standing to what it had been under the prophet.

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