Episode 4: Abu Bakr

The man chosen to lead the muslims after their prophet’s death was his close friend, Abu Bakr. He thus became the world’s first caliph, and was faced with the unenviable task of keeping all the peninsula’s fiercely independent-minded tribes united. His short reign had many successes, ensuring him a vaulted position in Arab memory.

---

---

Images

---

Glossary

• Abu Bakr: Arab sources don’t actually agree on the real name of Islam’s first caliph. The nickname Abu Bakr was given to him as a child on account of how much he liked tending to and playing with camel calfs: a camel calf was called a bakr, so his nickname is akin to calf guy or calf man. The name Philip has the ancient Greek roots ‘philo’ (lover) and ‘hippos’ (horses), so feel free to draw parallels with that.
  
  The most important thing that goes unsaid about Abu Bakr in this episode is that his daughter Aisha was married to the prophet. This marriage was decided after the prophet’s first wife Khadija had passed away, towards the end of the year of sadness in which Mohammad’s cause seemed to have been all but defeated in Mecca. The news about Mohammad being promised the hand of the daughter of Abu Bakr, chief of the Taym clan, must have seemed defiant to the Quraysh, a sure signal that the muslims did not intend on abandoning their religion yet.
  
  This is my interpretation at least. Some unsympathetic Shi’a sources claim this match can only be explained by Abu Bakr’s insistence, painting him as someone who always craved more influence over the prophet. Sunni histories relate Abu Bakr’s surprise at the suggestion that his daughter marry the prophet, asking whether prophets were even allowed to marry. Whatever the different attitudes about it were, the match took place, Abu Bakr’s daughter Aisha was promised to the prophet, and would move in to live with him a few years later after the hijra to Medina.
  
  This is all of course repugnant to our modern sensibilities, so maybe I should say a bit more about this strange phenomena of promising young prepubescent girls in marriage to other, sometimes much older men. It was an extremely common practice for the nomadic Arabs at the time, and – while I have no way of decisively proving it – it seems to have been most common among the more prominent clans and families. This gives the impression that it was a marker of social status: if some important people (or even many unimportant ones) couldn’t wait to establish relationships with your family, you must have been a credit to your clan. What better way of proving your social capital than by having the noblest match promise to marry your daughter? Such an arrangement had the benefit of bringing the two parties closer even before they were joined in marriage, and cost nothing in this promissory trial phase. In contrast, having an unmarried daughter who was already of age must have seemed like proof that no other families or clans were keen on getting close to you or yours, making you seem like a sort of social liability. Again, I have no way of proving any of this, but it helps me makes sense of this otherwise bafflingly oppressive social mechanism.
• Omar ibn il Khattab: one of those early Qurayshi converts who emigrated to Medina with the prophet, the muhajirun. He was the first man to pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr and remained his most trusted advisor throughout the first caliph’s reign.
• Khalid ibn il Walid: the incredibly successful general who pretty much single-handedly led the Arab armies to victory time and time again. He was a prominent youth of Quraysh, and had even commanded his tribe in their single victory against the muslims at Mount Uhud. He would go on to convert, and apart from leading a successful retreat after eight of his commanding officers died in a failed raid, he is said to have never lost a battle, and for his skill Mohammad nicknamed him “God’s unsheathed sword”.
• Musaylama: he was an old poet of the tribe Hanifa. He had preached prophecy since before Islam, but met little success. It was only after the death of Mohammad that his tribe decided to rally around his claims. The Hanifa tribe was abnormally large due to its reliance on locally grown wheat and grain. 
• Tulayha: a minor figure, the first new prophet to threaten the Umma after the Mohammad’s death.
• Lakhmids: the tribal coalition that was once employed by the Sassanids to guard their empire. They had fallen out with their patrons years before today’s events, and some had started raiding border towns since. While I don’t get into this in the episode, some time in the early seventh century a sizable battle had taken place between the empire and the nomadic tribes. It took place after the tribes had raided a few towns and the local governor had put together a proper army to vanquish the troublesome Lakhmids. These now made common cause with some nearby Arab tribes and together the two defeated the largest army they had ever seen, giving the Arabs their first victory over an imperial army. This event was so momentous that some sources even report the prophet celebrating and praising it as a divine victory. 
• Ghassanids: the tribal coalition employed to guard the Byzantine empire’s desert borders. Compared to the Lakhmids, they were on relatively good terms with their patrons. Their main discontents came from the fact that the empire did not approve of eastern christianity and deemed its monophysites heretical. More on that next time. 

---