Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE UMMA t 135
caliph to succeed him. Ali was then fifty-five, married to the
Prophet’s daughter Fatima (among others) with two sons (among
others) who had been Muhammad’s favorites, Hasan and Husayn.
Ali’s caliphate (r. 656–661) was as trouble-plagued as his predecessor’s.
Important posts were still held by Uthman’s appointees,
who were often his own Umayyad relations, chief among them
Muawiya, the governor of Syria, who orchestrated and maintained
a steady drumbeat of criticism against the new caliph on the
grounds that he, if not complicitous in the deed, was doing nothing
to bring to justice, and may even have been sheltering, Uthman’s
murderers. Others, like Talha and Zubayr, abetted by Aisha, who
had been slighted—perhaps even slandered—by Ali during the
Prophet’s lifetime, saw their own chances for the succession
dashed by Ali’s appointment and were resolved to unseat him.
Ali, who had been forced to move from Medina across the steppe
to Iraq, disposed of Talha and Zubayr at the Battle of the Camel
near Basra in 656 and Aisha was sent into permanent retirement.
But Muawiya’s campaign was more persistent and his power in the
end more effective. He had the troops of Syria under his command
and support in the other provinces as well. Ali moved his own army
to oppose him and then, after an inconclusive battle at a place
called Siffin in Syria in 657, he made what proved to be a fatal
error: he agreed to submit his dispute with Muawiya to arbitration.
Immediately he lost a considerable contingent of his followers who
“seceded” from his cause—they came to be called Kharijis, “Seceders”—and
turned against their leader. Ali had first to deal with
these troublesome rebels, which he did at Nahrwan in Iraq. He won
the battle but lost his life: while the dispute with Muawiya dragged
on, the fourth caliph of Islam was struck down by a disgruntled
Kharijite in January 661. He was buried, as the story goes, at Najaf
in Iraq, which has become a major Shi‘ite pilgrimage center.
The Umayyads (661–750)
Muawiya acceded to the caliphate, moved the capital of the Abode
of Islam out of the still rebellious Holy Cities to Damascus, where