The first four leaders of the umma were collectively bestowed with the honorific “the rightly guided caliphs”. They were all close companions of the prophet, and their reign was succeeded by the beginnings of imperial rule. Taking the time to appreciate this disconnect is vital and we’ll spend this episode surveying the impact it had on our classical Arab sources.
| Era | Al Tabari | Al Ya’qubi | Al Mas’udi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-dynastic | 292,505 | 26,978 | 33,750 |
| Umayyad | 384,032 | 35,056 | 57,700 |
| Abbasid | 427,829 | 42,384 | 138,250 |
| Total | 1,104,366 | 104,418 | 229,500 |
The Arabs had quite a ride between their prophet’s death and Mu’awiya’s ascendancy in late 660 AD. The upcoming dynastic period will be turbulent and tribal and in those ways not unlike the times we’ve already covered, but it will operate by a statist logic which is entirely absent from these early decades of muslim history.
I suppose it’s best to start from the beginning with Abu Bakr. His election is probably the most controversial bit about his reign, and some of the narrations on it in our sources cast him in a machiavellian light, but I think those impressions came later, well after a divided Umma looked back and tried puzzling over what went wrong. If you recall, the muslims faced some existential threats right after the prophet passed away, and that more than explains Abu Bakr’s haste to try and hold the rest of the Umma together as far as I’m concerned. I guess I should also note that critical accounts of Abu Bakr’s election mostly come from those who believe the prophet had already unambiguously named Ali bin abi Talib as his successor in his farewell speech
I find Abu Bakr’s decision to invade the empires to his north to be far more worthy of contemplation as it seemed like an unforced choice which he only made after quelling the Arabs who had left the Umma during the wars of apostasy. It was clear to me that his first targets were the neighboring Arab confederations. He wanted the Lakhmids to join him since most of them were already anti-Sassanid, and he wanted to fight the Arab Ghassanids into accepting Islam, probably because the prophet had readied an army to send to them before his passing. Still though, there is no contesting that he sent commanders with orders to conquer Palestine, Jordan, Damascus, and Aleppo, and there’s no way he didn’t know that would lead to a massive war. He did not live long enough to see it through though, and since nobody really asked him why he invaded those Byzantine lands, there is only speculation on the subject.
One theory we can dismiss right out the door is that the Arabs were trying to spread their new faith. Maybe a case can be made if we’re talking about some of the Arab-ish tribes in the Syrian desert, or those north of that in Mesopotamia, but the Arabs clearly had no interest in converting any of the settled populations, something which will become crystal clear in the dynastic era. The more sensible popular theory is that the caliph needed an outlet for all the martial energy he wielded now that the Arabs were united under him. I repeatedly stressed how little Abu Bakr liked to stray from the prophet’s ways, and since everyone still got paid in booty from raids and battles, he had to take them to war. It’s the kind of simple, straightforward, nearly causal line of reasoning that I like to avoid, but yes I’m sure the practicality of it was a big factor. Since this is the episode where I just tell you what I think, I’ll share that I don’t really blame Abu Bakr for most of what happened during his reign, he wasn’t around long enough to shape the Umma for me to hold him responsible for it. I prefer to judge him based on his execution, and since he managed to protect the Umma and was as conservative as possible when it came to determining its policies, I find him to have been an excellent regent, and believe he thought of his responsibilities as being more about preserving the Umma than leading it forward. This is a point I’ve already made, about both him and his successor. Finally, before moving on to talk about the ever-popular Omar ibn il Khattab, I should praise Abu Bakr for taking the time to pick his replacement. You heard what happened when the caliphs neglected to take the issue of succession seriously.
There is plenty to love about Omar’s reign, and it’s by far the most widely praised in the sources. He defeated the empires, and while it’s always a big draw when you can earn some glory in war, his bold and wise policy making seriously dwarfs that achievement. His exemplary handling of the year of famine and his constant shuffling of governors when the men under their charge complained about misconduct speak volumes for his sense of responsibility. His approach to adapting the caliphate to a changing world gives a rare example of creative conservative-ism: by the end of his reign everything was exactly the same, except richer, stronger, more united, better.
So plenty of positives during Omar’s time, and because of all his excellent work, the Arabs tend to excuse and forget about its negatives. Omar expelled all non-muslims from the peninsula in violation of treaties they had agreed to with the prophet, I think that’s the worst thing he did and it’s a let-down whenever I see it being brushed aside in commentaries on early history as it became a cornerstone for supremacist thinking in Islam. How much more beautiful would it have been if we had deep examples of religious pluralism and engagement under this adored figure? The Christians of Najran could have been made integral to the caliphate and showed how Islam saw itself as a successor to the Abrahamic faiths which preceded it, and not a replacement or correction as supremacist ideologies lead some to believe.
Othman is obviously the most controversial of the first four caliphs, and I think he cuts a tragic figure. If you’ve been reading the glossary entries in the different episodes you already have an idea what I mean, so I won’t repeat myself. You could say he had a hands-off management style and was particularly unfortunate to succeed an engaged and brilliant micro-manager like Omar who must have made it all look so easy. The war his supporters and detractors have fought over his legacy has indelibly marred Othman’s story, and whatever you think about him is a function of your sources and own moral intuitions, I assure you whatever you’ve heard about the third caliph, the opposite is out there somewhere.
This leaves us with the last of the four rightly-guided caliphs, Ali bin abi Talib. I can’t help but feel like I haven’t said enough about Ali, but I suspect that feeling would haunt me even if I gave him an extra episode or two, I think he’s by far the most discussed man of his generation, and I’d be cutting you short no matter how much I tried to tell you about him. So to simplify matters for myself, I’m going to narrow our discussion to Ali’s time in charge of the caliphate.
Despite never having united the entire Umma under his rule, no historical tradition disregards Ali’s claim to having become caliph. Obviously pro-Umayyad accounts being composed shortly after Ali’s defeat denied his legitimacy, but it was politically expedient for them to do so, and nobody has adopted that stance since. While some Shi’a readings still denounce Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman’s reigns as illegitimate, no Sunni histories do the same to Ali’s anymore, and they consider the prophet’s cousin another prominent member of the best generation that ever was.
The weaknesses of Ali’s reign are of course all too obvious and really had little to do with the man himself, they stemmed more from the threat he represented to the pre-existing and re-emerging order; the world of the tribal chiefs. Ali had to fight the Qurayshi elders, then contend with the confederation put together by the crafty Umayyad governor Mu’awiya, both conflicts which drew on increasingly tribal rationales to motivate their participants.
Divisions within the community only grew as the struggle between its two main parties persisted, almost pushing the goal of reuniting the umma out of the realm of possibility. This […]
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