The starting point for any investigation of early Islamic historiography has to be study of the stories, and specifically the stories of prophets. From its very beginning, Islam viewed itself as a continuation of earlier monotheistic messages and conceived of Muḥammad’s life as another chapter of dialogue between a messenger and his people. The battle that biblical figures as diverse as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus had earlier fought on behalf of monotheism and imminent redemption found its conclusion in Arabia in the early seventh century and, to Muslims, was ultimately fulfilled by the victory of Muḥammad and his companions over the polytheists, and the conquest of Mecca.
In the Qur’ān, the basic highlights of Muḥammad’s life and success are recounted in broad-brush strokes that parallel the depiction of the lives of earlier prophets. Here the long and detailed accounts in the Books of Genesis, Exodus, and Samuel that describe with vivid drama and biographical detail the lives of the Patriarchs, Moses, David, and Solomon, are no longer to be found. The Qur’ān reduces the stories of each of these individuals to a main theme, focusing in every case less on personal flaws and moral crises than on the fulfillment of religious promise and triumph over tribulation. Shifts and turns in the biblical biographies appear to have been understood in the Qur’ān on esoteric and abstract levels but were not repeated in concrete form.1 The Qur’ān seems to allude more to the mystery of change in time, human nature, and the continuing dialogue between man and God. The principles that shaped the parables in various biblical books are indirectly evoked in the Qur’ān through poetic statements that appreciate the art and irony of existence and the tragic lot of man. Biblical tales appear removed from any fixed context, in time or locale, and only rarely does one find some slip of too much information (as in the cases of Joseph and Solomon).
The Qur’ān uses a number of terms to refer to these stories: “naba’,” “ḥadīth,” “qaṣaṣ,” but perhaps most significantly “mathal.” Used mostly to describe naturalistic phenomena and how the process of life and decay is governed by divine guidance, this term is also applied to the historical sphere of nations and prophets. Mathal, roughly to be translated as “parable,” does not refer to a mere succession of facts but to the whole mystery by which God unfolds a cyclical process or a drama, which in the case of prophets and nations describes how the dispossessed are lent victory and the confident holders on power are subverted. The process rests on an artful interplay between patterns of behavior and anomaly, and interactions in life (both visible and sublimated) that lead to unusual turns in fortune for central figures. And through these plots, contradictions, and shifts one is led to recognize the poetic progress of divine justice through the earthly sphere. The same moral is applicable to different settings; whether it is the Jacob saga, the story of Joseph and his brothers, or the interactions of Moses and Pharaoh, all are viewed as parables with a common thread.
Understanding the vicissitudes of the parabolic narrative, or the divine novel (mathal), was probably the prime vocation of seers from biblical to postbiblical times and likely led some to craft stories that paralleled received parabolic structures. This exercise of pirating the modes of divine parables and adapting them to characters and issues anchored in later realities must have prevailed well into early Islamic times among Jews and Christians who lived in Arabian environments. The Qur’ān indirectly criticizes this group of individuals, who engaged in “narrating parables” (ḍarb al-mathal) as a form of religious debate,2 and insists that divine stories are the “fairest of stories” (aḥsan al-qaṣaṣ)—in reference to the purged narratives of prophetic lives as recited by Muḥammad.3 The Qur’ān follows up by discouraging believers from storytelling, too much memorializing of ancestors (dhikr al-ābā’), or parsing or interpreting stories (ta’wīl).4
The Qur’ānic reticence on telling stories in general, and prophetic stories in particular, did not, however, prevent Jewish and Christian converts after Muḥammad’s death from developing the tradition of religious storytelling anew.5 In a region stretching across the Fertile Crescent and spanning communities with a culturally cosmopolitan milieu of Greek, Arab, and Persian legend, a unique form of Abrahamic syncretism emerged in the eighth and ninth centuries that extended the frontiers of Islamic legend on many different fronts: exegetical, historical, and literary. These converted masters of storytelling not only revived the memory of biblical accounts in exegetical literature but crafted a whole new saga for the life of Muḥammad, his companions, his Hāshimite relations, and his successors in a trajectory that continued the biblical style of novelistic and parabolic accounts. The extended narrative of Islamic history now centered around a new peak in human history: the conception of Muḥammad as the Messenger of God and the seal of the Prophets who brought about the ushering in of a new cosmic cycle. Muḥammad is shown to have been, while he was alive, both successful in establishing stable political control, and adept at forging compromise at times of crisis, whether between the Medinans and Meccans or among individual followers (‘Alī, Abū Bakr, ‘Umar, and Khālid, as well as ‘Āisha and her peers).
It is after the Prophet’s death, however, that old patterns of biblical tragedy come back in full color. The central issue around which discord occurred was the question of succession, which would divide the community between those who favored allegiance to successors from the family of the Prophet, particularly ‘Alī, and those who looked back to the political leaders of the pre-Islamic era as the more worthy candidates (the clan of Banū ‘Abd Shams, from whom ‘Uthmān and the Umayyad dynasty came). For the years immediately following the death of the Prophet, little is known about this division. The short two-year reign of the first caliph, Abū Bakr, is described in the chronicles as a time when Meccan and Muslim insecurity about rival Arabian tribes and pretender prophets was the central priority for action. Thus the circumstances of Abū Bakr’s swift succession to the Prophet and the Hāshimite protest of this are relegated to the background, overshadowed by the higher religious objectives of seeking to reestablish unity and remain faithful to the message of Muḥammad (the reported initial codification of the text of the Qur’ān and the caliph’s keeping the first Muslim incursion into Syria on track are represented as key manifestations of the community’s loyalty to Islam during this time). Similarly, in ‘Umar’s reign the lingering rift over caliphal succession gets overshadowed by the story of ‘Umar’s merits as an equitable, pious, and ascetic leader, as well as by the dramatic account of the Muslim confrontation with the Sasanid and Byzantine empires. The successful Islamic conquest of the Sasanid empire provides a central image that is implicitly used to affirm the righteousness of the second caliph’s reign, irrespective of the adequacy of his original grounds for inheriting the caliphate.
Through his combination of charisma, pious example, and vigilant attention to the details of government, ‘Umar is shown to be adept both at forging a new confederation of tribal support similar to the one created by Muḥammad earlier and at maintaining this unity even as the community expanded outside Arabia. The trouble with the succession, however, is finally fully evoked during the transitions to the rule of the third and fourth caliphs, ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī. Tensions during ‘Uthmān’s reign translate into an open conflict that leads to his sudden assassination in Medina (purportedly by a band of outside invaders from Egypt and Kufa, but more likely by elements within Medina itself), and then in the ensuing double civil war that the fourth caliph, ‘Alī, had to fight, first against a coalition of companions led by ‘Āisha that claimed sympathy for ‘Uthmān, and then against the governor of Syria, Mu‘āwiya, who claimed a right to political opposition on the basis of his (i.e., Mu‘āwiya’s) kinship to the third caliph. The civil war between ‘Alī and Mu‘āwiya, which eventually stabilized in a stalemate between two Islamic centers of power in Syria and Iraq, simultaneously spawned an internal conflict in ‘Alī’s camp against the schismatic sect of the Khārijites, members of which eventually assassinated the caliph in A.H. 40/ A.D. 661.
The narrative of this early Islamic period, known as the Rāshidūn caliphate, has tended to be divided in traditional Muslim perception into a phase of triumph, under the first two caliphs, and one of sedition and civil war, under the latter two. While Abū Bakr’s and ‘Umar’s caliphates are thus viewed as times of unity, loyalty to leadership, and conquest, the times of ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī are considered marred by sociopolitical dissent, questionable behavior by rulers, and disarray in government (especially in the relations between the center and the provinces). This portrayal of a clear division between a perfect age and a phase of decline is, however, more a form of religious representation than one of actual historical fact, even if some elements of the story may be real. Perhaps an interesting way to examine the shaping of historical narrative within a religious rhetoric can be found in the way narrators describe the path toward fitna in ‘Uthmān’s reign and afterward. Fitna (a temptation or trial) was the religious term used to refer to an inexplicable moment of failure whose motives and/or responsibility was uncertain (whether entirely placed on the individual or on a divinely ordained event). Whether intended as a trial for the individual’s or the community’s faith or as something that holds other goals, the problem of fitna is never fully explained in religious rhetoric. Nevertheless, in narratives ranging in topic from the fall of Adam and Eve to the fall of ‘Uthmān, the reader can find linkages in the Islamic valuation of change (sexual, political, and moral). Why a turn happened in the community’s fortunes toward the middle of ‘Uthmān’s reign is a subject that forms a dilemma for rich discussion.6
The transition to fitna is never directly interpreted in the sources, but the various narratives that make up the accounts of the Rāshidūn caliphs provide diverse reasons for the motives for this change. The expansion of the community outside Arabia, contact with the temptations of the conquered lands and Persian culture, competition over wealth, jealousies, a drifting from the simple lifestyle of Arabia, and the relaxing of the law and its restrictions and penalties all form key reasons for changes in the behavior of the community. The second caliph is said to have warned the companions against participating in the campaigns outside Arabia,7 to confirm the tendentious message in the chronicles that the new lands will bring about the undoing of the early piety and split the community into sects. Thus, far from being the gift of a religious triumph, the conquests are cast in the chronicles as an impetus for temptation.8
But along with this view of predestined events and the religious frame for rationalizing the causes of discord comes a great focus in the sources on particular developments in ‘Uthmān’s reign that are viewed as main reasons for the deterioration that subsequently occurred. Ṭabarī’s narratives of events in ‘Uthmān’s reign, for instance, dwell extensively on the disagreement that occurred in Kufa over the equitable division of booty and the tension between the provincial leaders and the caliph’s governor. These events are portrayed as occurring simultaneously with growing trends of religious innovation (bida‘) and opinions (ra’y), some of which are associated with the policies of ‘Uthmān. The caliph’s own religious interpretations are characterized as ta’wwul (analogical interpretations or simply personal exegesis) and sometimes branded as taḥrīf (a distortion of the text of the law or of the sacred religious practice). At other times the innovation is traced to the margins of the community, where a different strand of excessive religiosity (ghuluww) is attributed to a group known as al-Saba’iyya (followers of a semi-legendary figure, ‘Abdallāh b. Saba’, who is reported to have been an ardent devotee of ‘Alī), and another attributed to the overzealousness of some companions of the Prophet (such as Abū Dharr, ‘Ammār, and Ibn Mas‘ūd).
At the same time that they survey these developments, the narratives also place considerable secular blame on the style of the third caliph’s rule as a catalyst for disaster. The sources rebuke ‘Uthmān through the words of his critics for moral and political failings, such as his favoring of his kinsmen in political appointments, his weakness in reining in their indulgencies, and his general failure to know what was happening in his name (as evidenced by the hegemony of Marwān b. al-Ḥakam in Medina and the use of the caliphal seal for treacherous or oppressive policies). Much in this representation is meant to contrast with ‘Umar’s more scrutinizing and stringent approach to affairs of state. ‘Umar had ruled more like a shepherd than a king, and his officials are represented more as legatees of a religious master and keepers of a covenant than as political commanders. Everything about ‘Umar’s government had depended on the continued functioning of a certain moral economy of relationships between the capital and the provinces in a kind of great chain of being.9
This network of virtuous interaction gets undermined during ‘Uthmān’s reign. ‘Uthmān’s famous defense that his appointments of relatives represented a form of pious filial action, along with his general attitude of stubbornness about changing his policies, made his errors not only a political issue but also a religious infraction and misinterpretation. And similarly the community followed suit in a spirit of indulgence that imitated the behavior of ‘Uthmān’s officials, if not ‘Uthmān himself. Hence, Ya‘qūbī would describe in a specialized work, Mushākalat al-Nās li-zamānihim, how various companions set out to make fortunes during ‘Uthmān’s reign, building villas and mansions in Medina and the provinces in a way that, the historian suggests, could not have happened had the leader not given license to such ambitious displays of wealth. Ya‘qūbī states about ‘Uthmān:
‘Uthmān was known for his forbearance, generosity, advancing his kinsmen and family, and ambitious spending [ittikhādh al-amwāl]; and people emulated his practices [fa-imtathala al-nās fi‘lahu]. He built a home in Medina on which he spent a large sum of money by constructing it of stone and putting teakwood on its doors. He also acquired properties in Medina, springs, and herds of camels [wa ittakhadha amwālan wa ‘uyūnan wa iblan].
Ya‘qūbī then comments about the companions, saying,
During ‘Uthmān’s time, the companions of the Messenger of God acquired great properties and built houses [ittakhadha aṣḥābu rasūl allāh al-amwāl wa banū al-dūr]. Al-Zubayr built his famous house in al-Basra, where there were many markets and commerce, and constructed other houses in Kufa, Egypt [Fuṣṭaṭ], and Alexandria. His fortune totaled fifty thousand dinars. Besides this, he left a thousand mares and a thousand slaves. Ṭalḥa also built houses and had estates to the value of one hundred thousand dinars … and left behind great wealth in gold and silver. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. ‘Awf also built himself a large and spacious house. He used to have a thousand camels and a hundred mares. A fourth of his wealth was estimated at eighty-four thousand dinars. Sa‘d b. Abī Waqqās also constructed a house in Medina … and [another companion] al-Miqdād built a castle [qaṣr] at al-Jurf [near Medina]; put stucco on it both inside and out, and put balconies on it. No one had done this in the time of ‘Umar. They only did this after he died.10
On another level, however, as mentioned above, the origin of fitna is represented as something that predated both the conquests and ‘Uthmān’s reign, and had more to do with the lingering tensions in the community over how the first succession to the Prophet had ended. Abū Bakr’s succession to the caliphate is alternately represented in the sources as a religious approximation from the act of his leading the prayer, an accident, or—in secular terms—a result of circumstances that combined the clever use of coercion and craft by the Quraysh. Whatever the real reasons were, the event caused the shift in succession away from the family of the Prophet and the creation of a tension between the Hāshimites and the Quraysh. With ‘Alī as the emblem of Hāshimite dispossession, the Saqīfa episode was viewed as kicking off a new Islamized version of the old rivalry between the Banū Hāshim and the Banū ‘Abd Shams. ‘Alī stood as the enduring victim of jealousy, the primordial blow against Adam, whose cause would come to attract all disgruntled groups, from the Saqīfa down to Ṣiffīn. To various narrators, the succession dilemma thus stood at the center of the Islamic historical narrative. Narrators not only tried to portray the rivalry between the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār as a precursor of the future rivalry between the Meccan-Syrian federation of tribes and the bedouin and Iraqi partisans of ‘Alī, but they also gave the dispute a predestined, ancestral root: the Hāshimite vs. Quraysh (Umayyad) rivalry was seen as mirroring the biblical rivalry between the lines of Jacob and Esau.11
ḤADĪTH AND HISTORY
Whatever the original crisis in ‘Uthmān’s reign was—be it tension over the succession, division of the conquered lands, or religious issues—it appears clear that from ‘Uthmān’s time onward the companion community was immersed in a mortal fight over political power. The scene of the leading companions engaged in bitter civil war barely two decades after Muḥammad’s death posed a moral dilemma to orthodox writers of the ninth century, who generally sought to look on the Prophet’s companions with unquestioning reverence as supporters of the early message. Viewing the companions as exemplars of the proper practice of the ritual and the law was a crucial matter for religious writers, who relied on the companions as transmitters of ḥadīths and as individuals who knew best the ways, or “sunna,” of the Prophet. In light of this, ḥadīth scholars tried to ignore the turbulent history of ‘Uthmān’s and ‘Alī’s reigns, opting instead to emphasize only the flattering portions of companion biographies during the Sīra (the biography of the Prophet) and the first two caliphates. And just as the biblical prophets were purged of error in the doctrine of ‘iṣmat al-anbiyā’, a similar doctrine of ‘ adālat al-ṣaḥāba emerged that downplayed negative evaluations of the companions and shielded them from blame for the conflicts that occurred.12 Within this frame, conflict was blamed on outside instigators, while the companions were portrayed as having acted in good faith, however controversial their actions were, and in the end each met redemption through death or repentance of his error and thus rediscovered their early unity. The whole chapter was thus a divine trial, according to the orthodox view, that ought not to be parsed or evaluated with prejudice for one party over another.13
This apologetic attitude toward reading companion history is known to form the overt layer for understanding Ṭabarī’s history of the civil war, according to its most prominent component narrative, which is reported by Sayf b. ‘Umar, a version of history that R. S. Humphreys has dubbed the “Sunday School” version because it seems to downplay the political responsibility of the companions.14 The apologetic on behalf of the companions is even more dramatically pronounced, however, in the much-reduced role in ḥadīth literature for historical accounts about the companions. Evidence for this can quickly be gleaned by contrasting the seeming disconnection between a chronicle such as that by Ṭabarī and the ḥadīth compilations of Bukhārī, Muslim, and others. The former gives detailed stories about the Rāshidūn caliphs and the companions, while the latter ignore this information, with a few exceptions that deal with issues of necessary religious value (either ritualistic, legalistic, or polemical). Such a division in the selection of accounts by ḥadīth compilers, however, was a purely institutional tool dating to the later ninth century, when ḥadīth had become a developed field that dominated religious ideology and social attention. That earlier generations saw things differently can partly be discerned in the great resemblance between portions of historical narratives and ḥadīth accounts (in episodes such as the Prophet’s last days, the Saqīfa story, and the Shūrā succession to ‘Umar). Historical accounts, it therefore often seems, belonged to an earlier (or different) climate of parabolic narration, which as mentioned earlier continued the tradition of biblical storytelling with a different focus, on the lives of the companions.
In spite of this distance between historical narratives and ḥadīth/sunna accounts, there remains in the ḥadīth/sunna accounts considerable material that seems in origin to have been a commentary on the very troubled fitna narrative of the Rāshidūn caliphate that canonical writers rejected. Far from reading a continuously rising tide of righteous behavior and triumph, certain ḥadīths point to a coming cycle of change,15 and even show the Prophet predicting that this change (i.e., conflict) will come from within the community rather than from without. As one ḥadīth puts it, “I do not fear that you (my community) will become polytheists after I die, but that you will compete for this world.”16 In essence, the voice of rebuke for the companions can be found in the midst of as orthodox a compilation of tradition as that of Bukhārī.17 Sometimes the warning is put in a more circumspect manner, in anecdotal information that bears more than one meaning, such as in a story after the Battle of Uḥud, when the Prophet reportedly declared that he would bear witness (presumably for the virtue) of those who fell in that battle (ha’ulā’ ashhadu ‘alayhim). When Abū Bakr then asked, “Aren’t we like them, O Messenger of God, as we converted like they did, and fought like they have [a-lasnā biikhwānihim aslamnā ka-mā aslamū wa jāhadnā ka-mā jāhadū]?,” the Prophet replied: “Yes, but I do not know what you will do after my death [balā wa lakin lā adrī mā tuḥdithūna ba‘dī].”18 Ḥadīth compendia are generally redacted to avoid any overtly negative comments on the companions’ political history and their conflicts. But once the thread of general rebuke is recognized, it can be found to form a completely different layer for reading texts and relating the religious and historical sources of the ninth century. Perhaps the most resonant image that ḥadīth uses to decry the political actions of the companions comes in a remarkable exchange between the Prophet and God on the Day of Judgment.
When the Prophet prepares to welcome his companions in the afterlife, according to ḥadīth, he will find himself prevented from receiving them. When he inquires as to why this is happening, the answer will come: “You do not know what they did after you. They have altered their behavior.”19 This is the basic conclusion in several ḥadīths, but in one version the Prophet feels some blame for what has happened and declares: “Then I say as the saintly servant [al-‘abd al-ṣāliḥ]: ‘I was among them for the time you knew …,’”20 borrowing the famous apologetic reply of Jesus in the Qur’ān. The Qur’ān recounts the latter reply in the context of a similar dialogue between God and Jesus concerning another problem, namely how Christians came to attribute divinity to Jesus and Mary.21 When Islamic narrators portrayed Muḥammad as borrowing the language of Jesus in apologizing for the companions, they were clearly hinting that the damage caused by the conflict over succession to the caliphate after the Prophet died was equivalent in travesty to the evolution of the doctrine of the trinity after Jesus’ death.
It seems clear from these ḥadīths that the basic scheme of the stories about the companions was heavily influenced by a biblical model of writing and that this process of historical writing developed simultaneously with that of ḥadīth writing, and sometimes before it. With the community set adrift as a result of the succession conflict and the civil wars after ‘Uthmān’s reign, narrators crafted a history of the Rāshidūn that was influenced by biblical narration, portraying continuity in tribulations and transformations.22 As one of the aforementioned ḥadīths shows, a comparison was sometimes made between the error of discord over the succession in Islam and the Christian disputes over Jesus and his crucifixion. However, at other times the scheme of comparison, perhaps the more prominent one in Ṭabarī’s history, highlighted similarities between the Muslim civil war and the story of the Israelites in sedition and adrift after the incident of the golden calf, the event that led to their wandering in the desert for forty years (al-tīh).23
The failure of the Islamic community to agree on a successor to the Prophet and to cohere politically is a problem that would only increase further on in time with the transition from the Rāshidūn caliphs to the Umayyad dynasty. The problem of dissent and division, however, is viewed not as something unique to the Muslim community but as the natural lot of newly emergent nations or states. Islamic tradition portrays the historical cycle of the Rāshidūn caliphate and its passage to a phase of rivalry, jealousy, and abandonment of the righteous way (left undefined as it related to the issue of political succession) as typical of what can be termed historical sunna or the sunna of nations (i.e., the normal pattern of transition).24 In its eventual divisions and rivalries, the Muslim community was portrayed as adhering to the pattern described by the Prophet.25
The ḥadīth that has the Prophet declare “You shall follow the patterns of those before you” (i.e., toward a process of decline) merits appreciation as a historical commentary rather than as a statement of religious admonishment. The possibility that this ḥadīth described a historical process and did not merely advise about the need for religious puritanism needs, however, to be combined with a better appreciation of the fact that historical narrators portray the Rāshidūn caliphate as resembling the received understanding of rise and fall in Jewish history or, rather, the fragmentation of the religion and the nation into sects and heresies (aḥzāb wa shiya‘). While information that establishes such a comparison is scarce, there is enough evidence in sources such as those gathered by Balādhurī, Ṭabarī, Ibn Sa‘d, and various ḥadīth compendia to make the case for continuity in this underlying frame, one in which the caliphs are viewed as playing the role that the prophets did in the Israelite state,26 and the chronology of the Islamic state was similarly set in equal measure to the cycle of messianic Jewish and Christian history.
Thus, the golden age of the caliphate was perceived as lasting for thirty-five years after the time of the Hijra (the migration to Mecca), until civil war broke out, and this seems synchronous with the duration in Judeo-Christian history between the death of Jesus and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem after the Jewish revolt of A.D. 66–70.27 Islamic historical narratives seem to have appropriated here a biblical chronology of a terrestrial cycle of cataclysm in which the death of Jesus (replaced in Islam by the murder of John the Baptist) began a cycle of redemptive trial for the community that defined the closure of its history.28 While in the Judeo-Christian chronology this history began with the death of a prophet, in Islam it was timed as beginning with the murder of the third caliph, ‘Uthmān, and the eventual sack of Medina was made equivalent to the sack of Jerusalem.29 There are various perceptions of the consequences of this event, which Islamic traditionists closely compare to their understanding of Judeo-Christian history. In immediate terms, the murder is viewed as setting in motion a cycle of conflict that resulted in significant destruction to the community and could possibly explain the emergence of an authoritarian, monarchical state such as that of the Umayyads.30 However, other traditions read greater eschatological implications into the third caliph’s overthrow, setting it as the first of a sequence of events that would conclude with the second coming of Jesus, as per the tradition that stated, “The first of the cataclysms is the attack on ‘Uthmān, and its final one is the emergence of the imposter of Jesus [al-dajjāl].”31
To appreciate Ṭabarī’s scheme for constructing the fitna as a parabolic myth in Islamic history, the reader must be familiar with the mythic descriptions the chronicler gives of the last days of the Israelite kingdom in A.D. 66–70, particularly of a divine declaration to Jeremiah that enumerates the transgressions that will bring to Jerusalem its undoing. Various aspects dealing with the process of fitna history—the social groups that undergo the tribulation as well as the actual failings—are described here in vivid terms. The cycle of this history is then completed with the arrival of an outside monarchal power (Bukhtnassar) that seals the end of a nation that was hitherto protected by divine grace. Although the failings of the Rāshidūn period (specifically in ‘Uthmān’s time) are not described as openly as those of the Israelite period, significant overlap is shown, including the qualities of bida‘ (innovations that part ways with tradition), taghyīr al-sunan (altering the tradition), baṭar (ingratitude and dissatisfaction with existing bounty), the overthrow of caliphs, and the use of religious charity revenues (zakāt) to subsidize family interests, which ‘Uthmān justified as “al-ṣila” (pious filial support). Equally elliptical but nevertheless related are the social groups that are targeted by this divine tribulation. In the ancient period, the divine declaration to Jeremiah names specific groups (al-aḥbār, the rabbis; al-qurrā’, the reciters of the sacred text; al-abnā’, lit. “the sons” [descendants of the prophets]; and almulūk, the princely class) and admonishes each for a certain failing. The aḥbār manipulate the law for their personal ends, the qurrā’ use religion and the temples for worldly gain rather than charitable causes, and the abnā’ have joined in this scene of chaos, greed, and disobedience, ignoring the righteous ways of their forebears (al-ābā’) and the lesson of how their obedience to the laws brought them victory. Such a picture is not spelled out in detail for the Rāshidūn period in a divine declaration, but there are echoes of these warnings and problems in the speeches of all the Rāshidūn caliphs (including ‘Uthmān).32
In his first speech after acceding to the caliphate, Abū Bakr seems to be referring to the example of the Israelites when he addresses the community, saying: “So compete in putting off your appointed times [fasābiqū fī muhali ājālikum], before your appointed times surrender you to the interruption of [your] works, for there once was a people who forgot their appointed times and became neglectful of the trust to do the [good] deeds—beware being like them [fa-iyyākum an takūnū amthālahum]. Be forewarned by [your deceased] fathers and sons and brothers [wa i‘tabiru bi’l-ābā’ wa’l-abnā’ wa’l-ikhwān].”33 The message is stated more emphatically in another version of the speech: “Be forewarned by whoever among you has died, and think of those who were before you. Where were they yesterday, and where are they today? Where are the tyrants, and where are those who were renowned for fighting and victory in the fields of war? Time has abased them…. Where are the kings who tilled the earth and cultivated it? They have perished…. The deeds [they did] are [still reckoned] their works, but the world is the world of others. We remained after them; and, if we take warning from them, we will be saved, but if we are deceived by them, we will be like them [fa-in naḥnu i‘tabarnā bihim najawnā wa in ightararnā kunnā mithlahum]…. Between God, Who has no associate, and between [any] one of His creatures there is no means of access by which he He may grant him grace or divert evil from—unless it be through obedience to Him.”34
‘Uthmān later repeats the same theme about the cycles of nations that Abū Bakr describes,35 and confirms in another speech the use of ancient history as a frame of reference, when he describes the shift from the pastoral lifestyle of the Israelites to their later political and urban environments. In a letter to his governors, ‘Uthmān declares: “To proceed: God has commanded the imāms to be shepherds [ru‘āt]; He did not command them to be tax collectors [jubāt]. Indeed, at the inception of this community, they were made shepherds and not tax collectors [inna ṣadra hādhihi al-umma khuliqū ru‘āt, lam yukhlaqū jubāt]. But your imāms are surely on the verge of becoming tax collectors rather than shepherds. If they turn out thus, then modest manners, integrity, and good faith will come to an end [fa-in ‘ādū kadhalika inqaṭa‘a al-ḥayā’ wa’l-amāna wa’l-wafā’].”36 What makes ‘Uthmān’s speeches different, however, is that they contain the expectation of transgressions that will set in motion a cycle of change for the Islamic polity. 37 ‘Uthmān is not only anxious about changes to come (some of which involve his own policies and those of his governors), but he also enumerates innovations and changes that are usually recognized in ḥadīth as those that brought about the undoing of the righteous path of the Israelites earlier.38
While the caliphs leave the comparative theme between the Arabs and the Israelites on the level of abstraction and treat it as a matter of general religious foreshadowing, other characters that have a Jewish identity later establish the comparison more specifically, once the decline sets in. The main examples of this cautioning voice are Ka‘b al-Aḥbar and ‘Abdallāh b. Sallām. As noted above, ‘Abdallāh b. Sallām was a vocal critic of the companions who challenged ‘Uthmān. When he described Medina as a city guarded by angels and spoke of the punishment that had befallen earlier nations when they overthrew their prophets and caliphs, Ibn Sallām was clearly working from a biblical model. Ka‘b al-Aḥbār is described as expressing similar forebodings about the fitan that lie in store for the community at the end of ‘Umār’s reign, and in fact he applies the comparative theme in admiration of ‘Umar well ahead of the discussion of fitan. Ka‘b al-Aḥbār, who reportedly sought out Medina and converted to Islam in the reign of ‘Umar, functions a lot like Salmān al-Fārisī in the Sīra, where there is the famous story about his wanderings in search of the final prophet in Syria, until he was guided by various ascetics and monks to Medina, where he converted at the hands of the Prophet. Later, after the conquest of the Sasanid empire, the cycle of Salmān’s role is fulfilled when he is appointed by ‘Umar as governor of Ctesiphon. Much as Salmān’s story is an idealization of a national representative for Persia, Ka‘b is a national representative of the Jews and plays a similar role in linking Israelite history with Islam. During ‘Umar’s famous trip to Jerusalem to gain the surrender of the city in A.H. 15/A.D. 637, and in the Islamic rediscovery of the temple’s sanctuary grounds, Ka‘b confirms the inevitability of Islamic conquest. While celebrating the arrival of ‘Umar and his clearing of the temple grounds, Ka‘b tells him: “O Commander of the Faithful, five hundred years ago a prophet predicted what you have done today.”39 To Ka‘b, ‘Umar’s ascetic image and his strict application of the law are equally foretold in the scripture. What the story of the conquest of Jerusalem yields here is the image of ‘Umar as a celebrated conqueror whose political achievement was so great—not just to Muslims but also to Jews, who viewed him as a liberator in Jewish history after a period of tribulation—that he came to be represented in messianic terms that are reminiscent of the way the Persian king Cyrus was represented in the sixth century B.C.40 Ka‘b, to a greater extent than Salmān, now declares the official transfer of the messianic mission from the Jews to the Arabs, as Jeremiah and Berechiah did when they recognized Ma‘ad b. ‘Adnān as the ancestor of the final prophet and thus set out to rescue him from the Babylonian invasion of Arabia.41
Toward the end of ‘Umar’s reign, just before the assassination story, Ka‘b al-Aḥbār makes another appearance, this time foretelling the imminent end of ‘Umar’s reign, an event which Ka‘b again finds foretold in the Bible. The occasion provides yet another moment of celebration of ‘Umar’s conquest of Jerusalem. The story of ‘Umar’s death provides a whole cluster of lamenting prophecies that tell of the beginning of a winding down in the cycle of Islamic history.42 As for Ka‘b, he is ready afterward to follow the next “orthodox” path of Islamic history, which recognizes the legitimacy or inevitability of Mu‘āwiya’s eventual succession as caliph. Ka‘b predicts Mu‘āwiya’s succession as he did ‘Umar’s, although without any fanfare of biblical anticipation and without any particular enthusiasm (perhaps because Mu‘āwiya represented the phase of the outside authoritarian ruler, now incorporated in the community’s history).43 Other ḥadīth writings in the same polemical context also have Ka‘b predict the rise of Syria and declare praise for its people, as the eventual dock of the early Islamic state.44 In other words, a narration that seemed highly orthodox in ḥadīth literature after the omissions and redaction had a strongly parabolic basis of biblical reformulation going back to the representational legend of ‘Umar’s messianism and the emergence of a caliphal authority that combined religious and temporal authority.45 In a similar way, the movement toward dissent and decline during the fitna of the early Islamic state was viewed as a reenactment of an earlier pattern among the Jews and Christians.46 The logic of both histories was viewed as belonging to the same religious philosophy: the community can fulfill its destiny only when it remains faithful to its covenant.
In establishing a pattern of analogy and prediction, Ka‘b al-Aḥbār, ‘Abdallāh b. Sallam, and other sages are quoted often as referring to a previous source, which they name “al-kitāb al-awwal.”47 Although this may well be a broad reference to the Bible, it can also be a moralizing construction that refers to the moral, astronomical, and historical patterns that their (or their narrators’) predictions drew upon.48 Ibn Sallām is certainly the Jewish convert who is better received in Islamic tradition than others, especially in light of prophetic ḥadīths that designate him as the scholar of the Israelites and a man destined for paradise.49 But even this does not help him during the final crisis of ‘Uthmān’s reign, when he is reprimanded and labeled again as a Jew by the opposition for his defense of ‘Uthmān’s legitimacy and for citing the prophesying traditions about the endangerment of Medina as a blessed city. The direct analogies that Ka‘b and Ibn Sallām make during the fitna, scarce and of mixed Judeo-Christian provenance as they may be, however, gradually come to a halt, and the trail of biblical commentary runs cold. Political commentaries and those that deal with predictions of historical cycles are from then on reduced drastically in the historical narrative, and indeed are altogether banished to a different, little-respected genre of ḥadīths identified as religious lore about the portents of the hour and the final judgment (al-malāḥim wa’l-fitan), a kind of Islamic apocrypha that combines historical commentaries with eschatological stories. What little discernibility there does remain for direct Jewish influences on the formation of the traditional texts becomes scattered and shuffled in the orthodox tradition, while the reference point for reporting the precursor Israelite lore—Arabized, Islamized, expanded, and transformed in exegesis—becomes ‘Abdallāh b. ‘Abbās.50 Ibn ‘Abbās’ primary contribution, however, no longer deals with casting opinions about the Rāshidūn caliphs, although there are significant stories on this subject, but instead is traditionist in nature and meant to glorify the role of the ‘Abbāsid family from the time of the Sīra until the rise of the ‘Abbāsid dynasty. The task of the historian of the Rāshidūn period, therefore, becomes more challenging and without a recognizable frame after the dissolution of the caliphate in Medina. Retrospective evaluations of the cycle of Rāshidūn history are then left to be analyzed as a religious-moral question.
TOWARD A NEW METHOD FOR RĀSHIDŪN HISTORY
In spite of its importance as the period of foundation of the faith, the establishment of the Islamic empire, and the genesis of the earliest political controversies and sects, the history of the Rāshidūn caliphate has been relatively neglected in recent decades. This was not always the case. In the later nineteenth century and up until the period of World War I and its aftermath, the history of the early caliphate attracted the primary attention of Islamic scholars. After the editing of major medieval Islamic texts, such as the chronicle of Ṭabarī, the biographical dictionary of Ibn Sa‘d, and various ḥadīth compendia, Western Orientalists eagerly sought to synthesize the narrative of the early Islamic state, down to the most detailed event and anecdote. There were various motives for this approach. The most obvious was that writing political history was considered in those days to be the main method for academic inquiry in various fields of history. But there were other motives that were more particular to the Orientalist relation to the Islamic world, ranging across diverse factors that reckoned with the political and cultural challenge that the Islamic world represented to Western colonialism.51
In that climate the complete narrative of the early Islamic caliphate was soon put in place, and this work became the reference point for other studies about Islamic law, institutions, and society. Perhaps even more noteworthy from a modern historian’s vantage point is the degree to which this historical narrative has been considered the standard version of the history of the early Islamic period, a situation that has not been challenged until recently.52 The reasons for this uniformity are varied. They include such factors as the limited amount of information that the Islamic chronicles provide about the early caliphate, the limitations of the academic paradigm, in which historians were more preoccupied with the accumulation of facts rather than with developing a source-critical sense in their reading, and last but certainly not least the intangible factor that Westerners wanted to believe that historical events and stories about the motives and actions of key historical personalities were completely accurate—that history occurred in exactly the ways described in the texts.
The unstated assumption behind such a credulous reading of early Islamic history was not only that once the miracles stopped with the biography of the Prophet, what followed constituted a plausible story about the behavior and actions of the caliphs, but more importantly that Muslims (and Arabs in particular) behave in exactly the ways that the texts describe.53 However repetitive the accounts sometimes became, and however fantastic the religious prose appeared, nothing could dissuade the Orientalist sensibility from its desire to believe in historical fact. Thus the story of contention over the succession of Abū Bakr at the Saqīfa was considered plausible because it was seen as accurately reflecting the temperaments and emotions of tribesmen; the evocation of religious statements (whether Qur’ān or ḥadīth) in argumentations was viewed as likely to have happened because that is how believers argue, and ‘Alī could make a mountain of sophisticated literary speeches and still have an audience of historians who believed that he in particular and the Arabs in general could deliver a spontaneous marathon of artful literary treatises at the drop of a hat.
More recent historians have also not departed much from the traditional credulous approach to reading history, yet these historians have remained timid about criticism for a whole different set of reasons. In part they were deferring to the pioneering philological achievement of their predecessors. But a more important factor is that these scholars have been working under a uniquely modern academic constraint, which is the compartmentalization of Arab and Islamic studies. Many Islamic historians did not venture far in critical readings because they did not consider ḥadīth and Qur’ānic exegesis to be directly relevant to historical research, and did not realize that the answers about one historical phase can only be reached through studying another. The narrative of the Rāshidūn caliphate, therefore, has been viewed as completely removed from ‘Abbāsid history. This reality greatly diminished the chances of finding textual parallels in the chronicles and exploring alternative meanings based on a new set of referrent connections and with a different appreciation for literary art and religious logic.
This situation has begun to change recently, under the influence of a growing debate between the “credulous” and the “skeptical” approaches to Islamic history. The credulous approach in this case places significant belief in the historicity of Islamic traditions about the past, and the skeptical approach ranges from placing some trust in the historicity of this tradition to complete rejection. The debate has occurred among historians as well as among religious studies specialists, and it is far from being resolved, especially since the skeptics have so far been unsuccessful in offering a coherent alternative explanation for the coalescence of Islam in the early period and the rapid formation of the Islamic state.54
Among historians, a persistent stumbling block in the debate has been the continuing belief that critical study of the historical tradition has to begin with a focus on the identities of the various historical reporters who contributed to the early Islamic chronicles, and has also to center on recovering an earlier phase of historical testimony that predated their final compilation. This analysis of the concept of isnād (chain of transmission) is widely known to form a rich background for the accounts of the early Islamic period. The names of the main reporters of Islamic history are well known: Ibn Isḥāq (d. A.H. 151/ A.D. 768), Wāqidī (d. A.H. 207/ A.D. 823), ‘Umar b. Shabba (d. A.H. 264/ A.D. 877), Sayf b. Umar (A.H. 184/ A.D. 800), Abū Mikhnaf (d. A.H. 157/ A.D. 774), and Madā’inī (d. A.H. 228/ A.D. 843). The attempts of historians to declare one narrator more reliable than another and to discern bias have taken up considerable attention. The criteria of bias have been wide ranging: a narrator could be more pro-Shī‘ī than another, more biased toward a region or a tribe, or more prone to report legend than history. While this exercise of verification does not always follow the judgments of traditional ḥadīth scholars, as is evident in biographical dictionaries, it tends to apply a modern style of academic inquiry to the traditional method of ḥadīth criticism. The deductive conclusion from the preoccupation with the veracity of some early reporting is that the present shape of the historical tradition is a result of generations of layering of reports that were once much simpler.55
The possibility that historical narratives in many instances could have been attributed to particular narrators at a later time, such as in the latter part of the early ‘Abbāsid caliphate, has never been explored (although the same critique of ḥadīths as religious texts attributed from a later period has been a standard analytic concept from Goldziher onward). This seems a necessity, however, given the fact that the historical fabric of a text such as Ṭabarī’s chronicle appears consistent in rhetorical style and language, whether it is reporting on the caliphate of the Rāshidūn or on the early ‘Abbāsids. Either certain later narrators emulated the style of the early history perfectly, which seems impossible from the perspective of a literary evaluation of the text—since a break can be discerned when it occurs, such as in the later Sāmarrā period—or the text was composed collectively at a later moment in time. Thus the efforts of modern historians to attribute particular qualities such as biases to the diverse narrators, as the guiding aspect to the historical substance of their reports in the chronicles, have not been entirely effective, given that these qualities can often be found across different accounts.56 The answer must therefore be sought in a different approach that appreciates the meanings of these narratives outside the context of their attribution and takes into account their interconnectedness.
An important recent contribution in this direction has been the work of J. Wansbrough, which argues for a new reading of Islamic texts in a referential way, and as another example of salvation history that continues from a biblical paradigm.57 Wansbrough’s work, however, centered mainly on the examples of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra and al-Wāqidī’s Maghāzī—texts that generally described a process of religious triumph—but did not delve into the more varied history of the Islamic caliphate afterward.58 His study, entitled The Sectarian Milieu, has the merit of proposing the use of literary typology for analyzing religious texts. It is not clear, however, that the explanations he proposed were the ones initially intended by the narrators, and his neglect of questions of political and historical context in the seventh–ninth centuries generally (and the early ‘Abbāsid period particularly) further undermined the utility of his premises and conclusions.59 Nevertheless, his conclusions about the need for a literary analysis of the Islamic texts, along with other historical critiques, challenged the traditional reception of the early Islamic historical narrative and motivated the revisionist debate further. Since that time, however, and in spite of the need for more source-critical assessments of chronicles and historical texts, the debate has often been fixated on seeking a new interpretation of the story of Islam’s beginning. Some of the attitudes in this new historicist trend have become almost a cliché (the need for more archaeology, the late aspect of some primary sources, and the at times variant accounts in non-Muslim sources), even if little has been done to uncover more hard evidence or to make good on the call for more textual analysis.
Interestingly, amid all of this one aspect of this revisionist enterprise has become almost a new dogma: namely, the notion that the key period for the crystallization of the faith occurred in the reign of ‘Abd al-Malik. A lot has been made of the fact that the Islamic religious credo makes its first complete appearance on coinage in ‘Abd al-Malik’s reign, regarding the function of the Dome of the Rock as a monument for declaring the religious triumph of Islam over other faiths, and about the possibility that early Islamic legal traditions reflected contemporary Umayyad legal practice that was suddenly turned into religious sunna. The chaotic scene between the times of ‘Uthmān and ‘Abd al-Malik, with their various messianic and sectarian movements championing political causes, has been viewed as the background not only for the Umayyad consolidation of political power, but also for their final discovery of Islam and a systematic program to organize a coherent Islamic ideology.60
Although the subject of Islam’s early historical formation is too broad to examine in detail here, the aforementioned historical conclusions about ‘Abd al-Malik warrant some attention, if only because they highlight the continued relevance of the traditional narrative generally, and the reliance on isnād more particularly. Aside from their speculative arguments, based mainly on the absence of historical evidence, a large part of the energy of the revisionist historical position, which built up the centrality of the Umayyads and argued that early Islamic tradition reflects Umayyad political interests and practices, comes from J. Schacht, who hypothesized an Umayyad-centered chronology for Islamic law that ignores the possibility of a more active ‘Abbāsid role at a later period.61 Schacht’s assumption partly suffered from his failure to recognize the interconnectedness among the various core spheres of Islamic religious source material (legal, ḥadīth, exegetical, and historical traditions), all of which display not only a key prominence for the ‘Abbāsids, but also a certain ‘Abbāsid style for mediating the orthodox image of other Sunnī tradition (i.e., a particular way of deploying the names of Abū Hurayra, ‘Āisha, Ibn ‘Umar, and others in the orthodox tradition).62 But the bane of Schacht and others who placed emphasis on the Umayyads as organizers of the faith has ironically been none other than credulity in certain Sunnī traditions attributed to Sa‘īd b. al-Musayyib (d. A.H. 94/ A.D. 713), Ibn Jurayj (d. A.H. 150/ A.D. 767), al-Sha‘bī (d. A.H. 103/ A.D. 721), and al-Zuhrī (d. A.H. 124/ A.D. 742), which present what seem to be sneaking facts about the Umayyads as having been the first to organize aspects of Islam. These include: the refining of the codification of the text of the Qur’ān (along with grammatical systematization), the writing down of traditions (not just ḥadīth but other reports about the companions), and the establishment of a normative picture of certain ritualistic practices.63
What completely eluded revisionist historians who placed much stock in those traditions that establish the Umayyad importance in codifying all manner of religious tradition is that these traditions are very likely to have been attributed to the Umayyads by the ‘Abbāsids or orthodox religious scholars working during the ‘Abbāsid period. The Umayyad rulers mattered to the ‘Abbāsid caliphs as kings (and as Arab kings, a point of not any minor importance) who were exercising their right or duty to safeguard the tradition. And the Umayyad rulers mattered to later Sunnī scholars of the eighth and ninth centuries as an early point for connecting religious chronology. Al-Zuhrī’s contemporaneity with the followers of the companions, as well as with the caliphs, who wielded the authority to institutionalize religious tradition, as they purportedly did by promoting the writing down of ḥadīth and lore about the companions, played a vital role in bridging the Rāshidūn period with the ‘Abbāsids. The history of the Umayyads, along with the Rāshidūn, according to this study, therefore, was represented according to political, legal, and rhetorical/ artistic concerns that were prevalent in the early ‘Abbāsid period. It was in fact Wāqidī rather than al-Zuhrī who gave the main shape to early Islamic history, and it was Hārūn al-Rashīd rather than ‘Abd al-Malik who patronized this enterprise that aimed at systematizing Islamic religious and historical textuality.64 The process was projected backward upon al-Zuhrī, who was idealized as a pioneer of ḥadīth writing, much as the narrative attributed to him was a construction of a certain way of narrating the controversies of earlier fitnas and of communicating issues of polemic, legitimation, and artful allusion on a variety of levels.
Although the present study is not mainly aimed at redating historical traditions to the ‘Abbāsid period, this issue will be an implicit conclusion accompanying the more central topic of trying to determine the original meanings of the narratives of the Rāshidūn caliphate and their original frame of construction and reference. An earlier study on the ‘Abbāsid period was crucial in guiding the new possibilities for reexamining the story of the Rāshidūn caliphs in a new light.65 The hypothesis established there—that the texts were not a product of layering but represented a unity of composition that had a discernible set of meanings—is extended here. The literary-critical approach that was earlier applied to the narratives of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate will find here additional evidence for the use of evocative intertextuality in Islamic historiography, as well as the possibility of a unity in scheme and plot line that goes beyond the mere repetition of topoi. By scrutinizing various levels of commentary in a wide range of historical narratives, this study also proposes types of political, moralizing, and religious allusion in the text that go beyond the traditional Western impression of a set of supposed Islamic themes that underlie the chronicles (nubuwwa, futūḥ, fitan, siyar, etc.).
That the ‘Abbāsid period provides the key angle for representing the history of the Rāshidūn is a topic that should warrant greater recognition and analysis in the future. Although the ‘Abbāsid caliphs were neither transmitters of ḥadīth nor considered in the rank of the companions of the Prophet, the story of the Rāshidūn addressed many political, moralistic, religious, and legalistic themes that would have mattered above all to ‘Abbāsid society in the first half of the ninth century. Questions such as how to define the scope of central caliphal rule and how to reduce the messianic component of the ‘Abbāsid revolution of A.H. 132/ A.D. 750 and make the principle of a Hāshimite imamate consistent with a legally centered and ḥadīth -based orthodoxy were issues that resonated with antecedent problems in the Rāshidūn caliphate. The problem of the succession crisis after Hārūn al-Rashīd, and al-Ma’mūn’s rise to power after the civil war of A.H. 196–198/ A.D. 811–813, were also events with precedents in the Rāshidūn caliphate and were therefore broached in the narratives in intertextual ways from the Rāshidūn to the ‘Abbāsid periods.
The ‘Abbāsid period also left its polemical and religious imprint on Rāshidūn historiography in other ways. The Miḥna that the caliph al-Ma’mūn imposed in A.H. 218/ A.D. 833 in an attempt to privilege the Mu‘tazili school of rationalist and speculative theology over the customary religious culture of ḥadīth scholars resulted in an orthodox backlash after the lifting of the Miḥna in A.H. 234/ A.D. 848. Afterward, traditionalist scholars not only placed the primary emphasis on ḥadīth as a foundation for religious dogma, law, and exegesis, but also succeeded in making the caliphs patronize the new orthodoxy. The confrontation between the Mu‘tazila and the traditionalists (usually identified with the Ḥanbalī school of Sunnī Islam) was a bitter and momentous one that affected all fields of Islamic religious science. The victims of the orthodox backlash were not only the Mu‘tazila faction and their rationalist method of speculative theology (kalām); it reached farther to affect the method of Ra’y, the hitherto well-regarded school of Ḥanafī Islam, and even Qiyās—the limited comparative exercise of analogical reasoning which al-Shāfi‘ī pioneered—which also suffered some tarnish. All this is relevant to the study of the Rāshidūn because Ṭabarī’s historical narratives often seem to weave an important thread of contention over the issue of whether it is wise (or even practicable) to rely exclusively on sunna and ḥadīth to the exclusion of Ra’y and Qiyās.
It was probably during the period when the ‘Abbāsid caliphate was based at its capital in Sāmarrā (A.H. 221–276/ A.D. 836–891) that the debate over all these issues would have flourished. That was a time of steadfast alliance between the state and the emergent class of traditionalist “‘ulamā.” The third century A.H. had begun with a spectacular phase of contention between the Mu‘tazila and the traditionalist scholars but had quickly turned into a period of coordination and systematization of religious sciences according to traditionalist standards. The reduction of the Mu‘tazila’s role as purveyors of official interpretations of the faith was one key result of this conflict, and the reshaping of the ‘Abbāsid imprint in Islamic history was another. The ‘Abbāsids had begun their rule with some very defining actions, such as the foundation of a new capital, the invention of an ‘Abbāsid messianic image that competed with the imamate of the ‘Alids, and patronage for an official account of the life of the Prophet known as the Sīra (composed by Ibn Isḥāq). However, in the aftermath of the civil war that brought al-Ma’mūn to power and the Miḥna, the interests of traditionalist scholars and caliphs quickly and irrevocably diverged. And although al-Mutawakkil had done his best to salvage a relation of cooperation and sympathy between the ‘Abbāsid court and the “‘ulamā,” it was very clear that this relation was defined by the “‘ulamā” rather than by the caliphs, as it had been in the days of al-Manṣūr. The importance of the ‘Abbāsid image in history was reduced to the contributions of ‘Abdallāh b. ‘Abbās to the narration of religious traditions (in terms of ḥadīth, exegesis, and literary heritage). The ‘Abbāsids were no longer viewed as supreme imāms who ruled by virtue of being God’s chosen caliphs, the anointed-relations of the Prophet, and individuals endowed with an understanding of mystical gnosis. Rather, in the post-Miḥna period they came to be viewed mainly as political leaders whose religious authority was symbolic and consisted of lending official support for one orthodox opinion or another. One may not discern this reduction of ‘Abbāsid prominence quickly in the work of Balādhurī and others who referred reverently to the dynasty as “al-dawla al-mubāraka” (the blessed dynasty), but the changed attitude and priorities can be partly discerned in the fact that Balādhurī compiled an even more extensive volume about the Umayyads in his work Ansāb al-Ashrāf, even though he wrote with ‘Abbāsid patronage. Umayyad history, as well as that of the Rāshidūn and the conquests, was clearly being crafted in a final version of official history that did not privilege the ‘Abbāsids over the Umayyads according to a singular criteria, but related both, as well as other phases of the early caliphate, to a range of moralizing and religious criteria whose complexity has yet to be fully appreciated by modern historians.