The death of the Prophet on 13 Rabī‘ I, 11/8 June 632 meant that the Muslim community was faced with a number of problems which had not arisen during his lifetime. He had left no generally acknowledged successor and had made it clear that he was “the seal of the Prophets”, the last and greatest, and there could be no question of anyone inheriting his role. The first question which confronted the Muslims, therefore, was one of leadership: Who should lead the umma and what status and power should such a leader have? Was he to be the first among equals, like a tribal chief, arbitrating and solving disputes, or was he to have a more real and effective power, even a measure of divine sanction for his decisions? Was he to be chosen by the community or to take power by some process of hereditary succession within the Prophet’s clan? If the question of leadership was in doubt, so too was the question of deciding who were to form the élite in the new community, whether to choose those who demonstrated their piety and zeal for Islam from an early stage or those who had political experience and status before the coming of Islam. These questions were to become the major concerns of the Muslims in the years which followed Muḥammad’s death, and the problems they caused, compounded and complicated by the conquests and settlements of the surrounding areas, were to prove extremely intractable. It was a very unusual situation in the history of human societies, since there were no precedents and no established and generally accepted ideas of authority and social structure which the community could use as reference points. The political and constitutional issues were entirely new and required new solutions. The experimental nature of early Islamic politics goes a long way to explaining the confusions and difficulties which occurred.
During the Prophet’s lifetime, the tensions within the umma resulting from the incorporation of the Meccan oligarchy and had been kept under control, and the efforts to subdue and win over the rest of Arabia must have absorbed the energies of the whole community. After his death, however, the divisions came to the surface once more.
The Anṣār were concerned lest the Muhājirūn make common cause with their relatives from the Quraysh of Mecca and use their joint strength to control the umma and the city of Medina itself, leaving only a subservient role to the Anṣār. There was a clear injustice in this, since the Anṣār had welcomed both Muḥammad and his supporters at a time when his own people had rejected him; they had stayed with him through the days of adversity, and to be thrust aside in this time of prosperity was wholly wrong. In order to counter this threat, the Anṣār gathered as soon as Muḥammad’s death became known, intent on electing one of their own members, if not as the sole leader of the umma, at least as an equal partner with a leader from the Quraysh. The Anṣār held a meeting in a hall in Medina, the saqīfa of the Banū Sā‘ida, to decide on their course of action, but old divisions between the different clans meant that they had not reached a decision when events were taken out of their hands by the prompt action of the leaders of the Muhājirūn.
Within the Quraysh group of Meccans and Muhājirūn, there were also important differences, and once again the main problem was the integration of the Meccan leaders into the Islamic élite. Some members of the Muhājirūn, among whom ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb was the most important, remained suspicious and hostile towards these new converts, while others, like Abū Bakr, were more prepared to accept them and put their talents to good use. In addition, there was the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib, who had married Muḥammad’s daughter Fāṭima. He was perhaps too young at this time to be generally accepted as a candidate for leadership, but he had known Muḥammad very well and had been brought up in his household. His two sons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn had been very dear to their grandfather. In the confusion immediately following the Prophet’s death, ‘Alī was occupied in washing the body and preparing it for burial and so played no part in the discussions, but he was soon to emerge as an important focus for political loyalties, especially among the Anṣār.
When Muḥammad’s death became known, the Muslims were, in the words of a contemporary, “like sheep on a rainy night”. While the Anṣār debated in the saqīfa of the Banū Sā‘ida, ‘Umar seized the initiative by swearing allegiance to Abū Bakr as a leader. Then, the triumvirate of Muhājirūn leaders, Abū Bakr, ‘Umar and ‘Abū ‘Ubayda b. al-Jarrāḥ, went to the meeting place of the Anṣār and put an end to their deliberations, obliging them to acquiesce in their own choice. The next day, Abū Bakr was formally acknowledged as a leader, in the mosque before the whole community.1 In the Muslim tradition, Abū Bakr was acknowledged as both Commander of the Faithful (Amīr al-Mu’minīn) and Caliph (khalīfa). Commander of the Faithful was the term by which the ruler was usually addressed and the term used in decrees and correspondence. It stresses the secular role of the ruler as a leader of the faithful (Muslim) people in warfare and administration. The term khalifa appears first in poetry in the writings of Ḥassān b Thābit (d 54/674.) and on a few coins. Even then, the exact significance of term is problematic. Crone and Hinds (God’s Caliph) have shown that the title, which is first securely attested in the time of ‘Uthmān, was khalīfat Allāh, the implication being that the early caliphs and their Umayyad successors were the deputies of God on earth and claimed some sort of divine sanction for their rule. By the third/tenth centuries, the title was usually taken to be khalīfat rasūl Allah the Successor the Messenger of God), pointing to a secular role with no divine approbation. Abū Bakr could not be a Prophet but at the same time it was unthinkable that he should take a secular title like king, which would deny the unique nature of the umma and imply a degree of power which he did not have. The title khalīfa, however, left many questions open and left scope for the office to develop. He was acknowledged by the taking of the bay‘a, that is, an oath of allegiance by the members of the community, and the taking of the bay‘a, not a coronation ceremony, was to formalize the accession of all succeeding caliphs. Abū Bakr was the first of the four caliphs (his successors being ‘Umar, ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī) who led the community from 11 to 40 (632–661) and are often known as the Rāshidūn or “rightly guided” caliphs, to distinguish them from the Umayyads who followed them. During this period, the great Islamic conquests were begun and the outlines of the Muslim state were decided.
Abū Bakr was in many ways an ideal choice. Now an old man, he had been one of the first converts to Islam; it was with Abū Bakr as his sole companion that Muḥammad had made the perilous journey from Mecca to Medina at the time of the Hijra, and it had been Abū Bakr who led the prayers during the Prophet’s last illness. He was also related to Muḥammad by marriage, since his daughter ‘Ā’isha had married Muḥammad and become his most influential wife. It was not just his close connections with the founder of the umma which made Abū Bakr acceptable, however; he showed qualities which were to prove invaluable to the community in the difficult early years and were to have a profound effect on its development. He was gracious and diplomatic, with a vast knowledge of the tribes and tribal politics of the Arabian Peninsula, all perhaps a heritage of his Quraysh origin. But, like Muḥammad, he also had a very clear sense of what was really important; he might be polite in his dealings but he never compromised on essentials. It has been said of him that he became caliph because he was everybody’s second choice; he was the most acceptable of the Muhājirūn to the Anṣār of Medina. ‘Umar seems to have tried to secure the appointment of Abū ‘Ubayda, a man whose views were closer to his own, but soon realized that he would not command sufficient support and turned to Abū Bakr. The Meccans also accepted his authority more readily than they would have ‘Umar or one of the Anṣār. Nonetheless, hostility did remain and the Anṣār still felt that they had been cheated of their rightful status, while ‘Alī was very reluctant to accept a coup d’état in which he had played no part.
Abū Bakr soon made it clear that he would continue in Muḥammad’s tradition. He showed this immediately in the case of Usāma’s expedition to Syria. Before his death, Muḥammad had arranged an expedition to Syria which was to be led by Usāma, son of his adopted son Zayd b. Ḥāritha, who had been killed by Byzantine troops in the area three years before. This expedition aroused some misgivings in Medina, especially among the Anṣār, because they felt that Usāma was not a fit person to lead it simply because he was his father’s son, and perhaps because they did not wholeheartedly support the aim of invading Syria. Abū Bakr was determined that the expedition should go, partly because the Prophet had ordered it and to cancel it would lay him open to the charge of betraying Muḥammad’s wishes, but partly too to stress his commitment to the same policy, the expansion of the Muslim state towards Syria. In the event, the raid was not a great success, but the whole episode had shown the new caliph’s determination and sense of purpose.
His determination was certainly needed. The years preceding Muḥammad’s death had seen the extension of some sort of Muslim authority over much of the Arabian Peninsula. The nature of this authority had varied greatly from one area to another. The Ḥijāz and its cities were firmly incorporated in the Muslim state, accepting Islam and paying the ṣadaqa tax. In the Najd and the areas of northeast Arabia, some tribes, like the Ghaṭafān, Asad and Ṭayy, had mostly agreed to pay the tax and accept Islam, while others, farther from Medina, like parts of Tamīm, paid taxes but were not converted to Islam. The Banū Ḥanīfa of Yamāma had allied with Medina but had never paid taxes or acknowledged the religious nature of Muḥammad’s office; with his death, they united in opposition to Medinese control around their own Prophet, known to history as Musaylima. In Baḥrayn and ‘Umān, the position was different again. Here, some local leaders had formed alliances with Muḥammad in order to secure their own position against their local enemies. In Baḥrayn, al-Mundhir b. Sāwā, the local king who had previously been the Persian agent in the area, now turned to the Muslims, and he may have agreed to send the taxes to Medina instead. In ‘Umān, the sons of the Persian agent Julanda sought Muslim support against their local rivals and seem to have agreed that the ṣadaqa should be paid and distributed to the local poor. In south Arabia and Yemen, the situation was more complicated, some tribal leaders making alliances with the Muslims and others remaining hostile. In Yemen, it was the abnā’, the descendants of the Persian garrison, who sought support against their enemies.
The response to the Prophet’s death depended on the local circumstances. The tribes of Najd tried to arrange a compromise whereby they remained Muslims but no longer had to pay the tax to Medina. The Tamīm were as divided as always, some supporting the prophetess Sajāh., while others continued to look to Medina. Musaylima and the Banū Ḥanīfa could simply feel relieved that their most powerful rival in the peninsula was no more. In Baḥrayn and ‘Umān, the local supporters of the Medina alliance found their position seriously weakened; al-Mundhir b. Sāwā in Baḥrayn was killed, while the sons of Julanda in ‘Umān were forced to flee to the hills by their rivals. Throughout south Arabia, those who had opposed the Muslim alliance took advantage of the situation, while those who had relied on it were temporarily forced onto the defensive – some, like al-Ash‘ath b. Qays al-Kindī, even rejected their allegiance to Islam and joined the opposition. Except in the Ḥijāz and the cities of Mecca, Medina and Ṭā’if, the system of alliances and conversions which had been developed during the Prophet’s last years disintegrated.
Attitudes in Medina to those developments seem to have been confused. It seems that the Anṣār and perhaps ‘Umar and those among the Muhājirūn who shared his attitudes were unsure as to how far force should be used to restore the position. Abū Bakr, however, showed no such hesitation. The Prophet had punished those who broke their alliances with him and had forced them to surrender to his authority, and his successor was going to follow in the same tradition. In this view, he was supported by some Muhājirūn and by a number of Meccans. Perhaps to show their zeal for their new-found faith, or because of their wish to restore the Meccan trading commonwealth, new converts, especially from the influential clan of Makhzūm, provided much of Abū Bakr’s support in the campaigns which followed. Among the Makhzūmīs were ‘Ikrima b. Abī Jahl, son of that Abū Jahl who had led the opposition to Muḥammad in Mecca and who had died at the battle of Badr, and the man who was to prove the greatest of the early Islamic generals, Khālid b. al-Walīd.
Traditionally, these various upheavals were known as the Ridda. This word is usually translated as “apostasy” and implies that those who were involved had previously been Muslims but had rejected their new faith. As we have seen, this was not the case in many areas, and each part of Arabia had rather different problems and attitudes.
Abū Bakr faced these challenges with energy and determination. Almost as soon as Muḥammad was dead, the Najd tribes sent representatives to ask that, while remaining Muslims, they should not be obliged to pay taxes to Medina. While many among the Anṣār and the Muhājirūn were prepared to accept such terms, Abū Bakr was not and he at once collected an army and marched out to defeat a small section of the Ghaṭafān at Dhū’l-Qaṣṣa, the last time a caliph was to lead an army in person until the disturbances after the death of ‘Uthmān, thirty years later. After this small victory, Abū Bakr entrusted the command of the Muslim army to Khālid b. al-Walīd, the Makhzūmī who had commanded the Meccan cavalry at the battle of Uḥud. While the nucleus of his forces was recruited in Medina, many Muslims distrusted Khālid; he faced continuous criticism from the Anṣār and, it would seem, from ‘Umar. Nevertheless, Abū Bakr continued to support him and he won a series of brilliant victories. He turned his attention first to the Najd tribes. Here, after the breakdown of negotiations with Medina over the taxation issue, Ṭalḥa b. Khuwaylid al-Asadī, an experienced tribal chief, had put together a coalition of tribesmen from the Ṭayy, Ghaṭafān and Asad. Khālid succeeded in detaching some of the tribes of Ṭayy from the alliance and defeating the rest at Buzākha. Thereafter, his progress in northeast Arabia encountered little serious opposition, and it seems that he was able to recruit reinforcements for his small army among the Tamīm and other tribes of the area.
With this augmented force, Khālid moved on to attack the most serious problem the Muslims faced, the Banū Ḥanīfa, led by their Prophet Musaylima. Yamāma, where the tribe lived, was a settled agricultural area of palm trees and grain growing, an area which sometimes exported grain to the Ḥijāz. Until 630, it had been ruled by a Christian “king”, Hawdha b. ‘Alī, who had worked in alliance with the Persians. On his death, his place was taken by Musaylima, who proclaimed himself a Prophet for the Yamāma and Ḥanīfa as Muḥammad had for the Ḥijāz and its people. Unlike Muḥammad, however, Musaylima does not seem to have aspired to more than local power and was able to suggest that the peninsula be divided into two different spheres of influence. In the face of Khālid’s advance, the Ḥanīfa were, in the main, united and determined to fight, both for their Prophet and for their local independence. In a hard-fought battle at ‘Aqrabā’ (11–12), Khālid defeated the Ḥanafīs with a great slaughter; while Musaylima was killed in the fighting, the survivors of the defeated army agreed to accept the control of Medina.
Compared with the battles fought by Khālid, the campaigns in the rest of Arabia were on a smaller scale. In Baḥrayn, al-‘Alā’ b. al-Ḥaḍramī, who had been Muḥammad’s agent in the area, was able to reestablish the Medina alliance after some hard fighting. In other areas, the Muslim armies were independent of Khālid’s. ‘Ikrima b. Abī Jahl had been Muḥammad’s agent with the Hawāzin tribes, traditionally closely attached to Mecca. When ‘Ikrima was instructed to reassert the Muslim presence in ‘Umān, he did so with an army largely raised from among the Hawāzin themselves. In the same way, the army which Muhā-jir b. Abī Umayya led to Yemen was recruited, not in Medina but in Mecca and among the Bajīla tribes and the people of Najrān en route. Muslim authority was soon reestablished among the divided peoples of Yemen, and the tribes of the area were encouraged to participate in the campaigns being launched from Medina towards Syria. In south Arabia, taxation seems to have been the main source of discontent, and a rebellion among the Kinda was rejoined, against his better judgement, by al-Ash‘ath b. Qays. After the defeat of this rebellion by Muhājir b. Abī Umayya, al-Ash‘ath was sent to Medina, where, in honour of his status as a great chief, he married Abū Bakr’s sister and, despite his role as an “apostate”, was integrated into the Muslim élite.
The Muslim success in Arabia can be ascribed to a number of factors. The most important of these was the continuing loyalty of the people of the Ḥijāz, city-dwellers and nomads alike, to the umma. While some may have disagreed with the policies of Abū Bakr and Khālid, there was no significant Ridda. The Ridda wars were in fact the conquest of Arabia by the urban people of the Ḥijāz, the Quraysh and the Thaqīf, and their allies. While the Ḥijāzīs were united, their opponents were not. Tribal divisions and feuds meant that in every area, even among the Ḥanīfa of Yamāma, there were factions who were eager to make alliances with the Muslims to secure their local position. Not only did the Muslims have powerful forces, they also had the powerful ideological backing of the new religion. Of their opponents, only the Ḥanīfa seem to have had a religious objection to the acceptance of Islam; elsewhere, the objections were based on attachment to old traditions, local independence and, above all, the reluctance to pay taxes to Medina. There were substantial Christian populations, not only among the settled folk of Najrān but among the nomad Tamīm and in Baḥrayn and other coastal areas in the east, but the Christians never made any effort to unite against Islam at this stage. Also important were the consequences of the breakdown of the Persian Empire; in Baḥrayn, ‘Umān and Yemen, Muslim power was based on those who had previously looked to the Persian kings and their Lakhmid vassals for leadership and support. With the collapse of the Persian Empire under the assaults of Heraclius, these groups looked for new allies and naturally found them in the expanding and dynamic umma. In addition to all these factors, many men joined the Muslim community because of the opportunities it was seen to provide. The Ridda wars were the first stage of the Arab conquests, and the expeditions to Syria took place at the same time as the campaigns in the Arabian Peninsula. They provided an opportunity for those who wished to abandon the old bedouin life and seek new and exciting destinies within the Islamic community, and many left their tribal homelands to join up.
On 22 Jumādā II 3/23 August 634, Abū Bakr died. His reign had been short but his achievement was enormous. He had maintained the traditions of the Prophet and had set the Muslim community on the road to expansion; he had seen the conquest of Arabia almost completed and the conquest of Syria begun. Despite the differences between them, he had maintained ‘Umar as one of his closest advisers, and there seems to have been little complaint when he designated ‘Umar as his successor. ‘Umar appears in Muslim tradition as the epitome of the stern, uncompromising, incorruptible ruler. He is famous for his personal austerity and the high standards he expected from those entrusted with office. But, like Abū Bakr before him, he was a man of very considerable practical ability. Not only did he direct the Islamic conquests, but he also developed the system of settlement and in particular the dīwān system with its arrangements for paying pensions to the conquerors rather than distributing lands among them, a system which was to have far-reaching results for the political future of the Islamic world. But the most famous achievement of his reign was, of course, the great conquests in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt which transformed the ancient world.
In terms of the internal politics of the Muslim community, ‘Umar showed a marked preference for appointing long-established members of the Muhājirūn to the most important posts; his colleague Abū ‘Ubayda, for example, was sent to take over command in Syria, while another early Meccan Muslim, Sa‘d b. Abī Waqqāṣ, was sent to perform the same task in Iraq, and al-Zubayr b. al-‘Awwām was sent to help the recently converted ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ in Egypt. The Anṣār were given few important posts, while among the newly converted Meccans, ‘Umar favoured the Umayyad family, Yazīd and Mu‘āwiya, sons of Abū Sufyān. The Makhzūmīs whom Abū Bakr had promoted, Khālid b. al-Walīd and ‘Ikrima b. Abī Jahl, were by contrast reduced in power and status.
‘Umar’s domestic policy meant that great prestige was accorded to those with sābiqa (precedence in Islam), that is to say that the highest posts were to be entrusted to those who had become Muslims the earliest. This did not mean that people who showed great valour or commitment could not rise above their allotted position on occasion, but in general, long devotion to the cause was regarded as the main qualification for membership in the élite. By contrast, tribal origin and membership of ashrāf families was not to be considered important. One result of this was that the early Islamic leadership was drawn almost entirely from the settled people of the Ḥijāz and above all from the Quraysh of Mecca and the Thaqīf of Ṭā’if, with the Anṣār a poor third. It also meant that some people who had enjoyed great power and influence before the coming of Islam, such as al-Ash‘ath b. Qays al-Kindī and Ṭalḥa b. Khuwaylid al-Asadī, found their position much reduced and their ancient glory considerably diminished. Not surprisingly, they bitterly resented this change of fortune, and in this they were joined by many of their fellow tribesmen, who preferred to look for leadership from their traditional chiefs than from the new Muslim élite, with whom they had little in common. They were not only resentful, but powerful – a combination which was to prove dangerous in the long run.
Muḥammad had made Syria his most important objective, and it was natural that the early caliphs should consider expanding the Muslim world in that direction. There was no break with the Prophet’s policy or with the Ridda campaigns and no sharp dividing line between Syria and Arabia. The object of the Ridda campaigns was to ensure that all Arab tribesmen accepted the authority of Medina and the Muslim leadership and this applied as much to the bedouin of the Syrian Desert and the lands along the Euphrates as it did to those in ‘Umān or Baḥrayn.
The expeditions against Syria were organized in Medina. It is sometimes imagined that the Arab conquests of these areas were an unplanned migration of vast numbers of ill-disciplined tribesmen. Examination of the sources, however, reveals a very different picture. The armies were assembled and the leaders appointed – always from leading groups in the Ḥijāz – by the caliph, who decided who should be despatched to which front. Men tended to join not in tribes, but in fairly small groups or as individuals, and the different armies always contained men from different tribes. Nor were the numbers vast; there were probably only about 24,000 men involved in the conquest of Syria and considerably fewer in Iraq, and there is no evidence that they took their families or their herds with them. These first expeditions were not migrations of barbarian tribes driven by pressure of population or moved by religious enthusiasm to invade neighbouring territories; they were organized military expeditions led by an élite anxious to enforce and maintain its authority over the bedouin. After the success of the conquests, there were further waves of immigration, and it was then that families and dependents would have arrived.
There is also a widespread view among non-Muslims that “Islam was spread by the sword”, the implication being that it was violence or the treat of violence that ensured the success of the new religion. However, it is important to bear in mind the difference between conquest and conversion. The early Muslim conquests were certainly achieved by violence – armies were defeated and many men were killed. This conquest was essentially a political act which established Muslim rule over non-Muslims. It was also, in historical terms, a very swift process, most of the central Middle East, including Egypt and Iran, being conquered less than twenty years after the Prophet’s death. Conversion of the majority of the subject populations to Islam, however, was a much slower process: although figures are very speculative, it was probably four centuries before a bare majority of the population of the area were converted to the new religion. It was also a largely peaceful and attractive change because people, whether for religious or social and economic reasons or both, elected to adopt Islam, and Muslim political hegemony certainly produced a favourable environment for this. So perhaps we can conclude that Islam was not spread by the sword, but without the sword, Islam would not have spread, or at least not in the way it did.
Apart from the Prophet’s example, the reasons for the conquests are fairly clear. It was intolerable that there should be Arab tribes which did not accept the authority of Medina; from there, it was easy to argue that the same applied to the Arab inhabitants of settled centres such as Ḥīra and Damascus. At the same time, such conquests were vital for maintaining the hold of the leadership over the bedouin. As has already been pointed out, raiding and warfare were essential for the economic survival of the tribesmen. The establishment of a pax Islamica in Arabia meant that such opportunities were no longer available; one Muslim tribe should not raid another. Only by directing the energies of the tribesmen against an outside enemy could the unity of the Muslim state be preserved. The ghazw had been an essential part of Arab life in the Jāhiliyya (the times before Islam) – now, under Islam, all the Muslims were to cooperate in launching raids against their opponents. In addition, the launching of the conquests gave the Muslim leadership great powers of patronage; only those who were Muslims could participate in the conquests and share the rewards, which were to be determined by the Medina government. Many a tribesman must have felt that joining the armies of Islam was a way to an earthly, as well as a heavenly, paradise. The conquests were, in short, a necessary consequence of the unification of Arabia under Muḥammad and Abū Bakr; without this external opportunity, the hold of Medina over the Arab tribes would inevitably have disintegrated; “expand and survive” was the political philosophy.
The Arab conquests in Syria and Iraq pose the historian an unusual problem. The Arab literary sources which describe them are very full, with a great deal of anecdotal and circumstantial details about battles and the heroes who participated in them. They are, however, hopelessly confused about the chronology and order of the main events. What has come down to us are several apparently authoritative accounts which seem to be incompatible with each other; no amount of comparison and emendation can persuade them to agree on more than a general outline. It would not be helpful, however, to accept one outline, for arbitrary reasons, and claim that all the others were false. No annals were written in the years immediately after the events; details were preserved by oral tradition, just as details of the ayyām (lit: “days”, i.e. battles) of the Arabs had been preserved in pre-Islamic tradition. By then, they had not been preserved as a year-by-year historical narrative but rather as unconnected vignettes, short stories to illustrate the heroic deeds of an ancestor or fellow-tribesman in the great days. When Muslim annalists, like Ibn Isḥāq and al-Wāqidī, came to use this material more than a century later in the early ‘Abbasid period, they, like the modern historian, wanted to put these details into a logical order. They knew the names of the battles and sieges, and the names of many individual participants with records of their doings and they tried to construct a framework which would provide an outline chronology. Like modern historians too, they reached a number of different conclusions. The inevitable result is that none of the outlines can be accepted without hesitation; the details might be more reliable than the general picture.
The conquest of Syria seems to have taken place in three distinct phases. Before the Ridda campaigns had ended, Abū Bakr had despatched four armies, each with its own leader. Abū ‘Ubayda, Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān and Shuraḥbīl b. Ḥasana all went to the area east of the Jordan, while ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ, who had traded with Gaza before the coming of Islam, was sent to the southern borders of Palestine. Each of these armies was probably fairly small, about 7,000, but smaller still in the case of ‘Amr’s, and composed mostly of the settled people of the Ḥijāz but also of Najdīs and Yamanīs as they became available. The object at this stage seems to have been to subdue the Arab tribes of the Syrian borderlands like the Judhām and Lakhm rather than to conquer the entire province. These preliminary campaigns occurred during Abū Bakr’s reign, and before his death the caliph ordered that Khālid b. al-Walīd should join the forces in Syria. After the defeat of Musaylima, Khālid had gone to the lower Euphrates area, where he offered support to local tribal leaders against the Persian garrisons of the riverain cities. Abū Bakr, however, clearly saw Syria as the more important front, and Khālid, with a fairly small force, crossed the desert, perhaps in spring 13/634, to join the armies in Syria. This great march, which has excited the admiration of many subsequent writers, was made either through the oasis of Dūmat al-Jandal in the south or via Palmyra in the north and it is typical of the sources that we have fairly detailed accounts which completely contradict each other. We can, however, be certain that Khālid was transferred from one front to the other, and this illustrates again how firm a hold the caliph kept on the conduct of operations.
The arrival of Khālid must have coincided more or less with the death of Abū Bakr, and Khālid was replaced as the commander-in-chief by ‘Umar’s ally Abū ‘Ubayda. Between 13 and 16 (634–637), there occurred three battles of which we have fairly detailed descriptions: Ajnādayn, probably in southern Palestine, Fiḥl (Pella) in the Jordan valley and the greatest of them on the Yarmūk river to the south of Damascus. There were also a number of sieges of towns, although it would seem that Damascus, Caesarea and Tripoli were the only centres to put up prolonged resistance. What order these events happened in is not at all clear, but it seems that the battle on the Yarmūk was the last decisive confrontation. What we can be sure of is that by the year 16/637, the power of the Byzantine army in Syria was broken and the country lay open to the Muslim armies. In the nature of the sources, we also have a good deal of information about the numbers and composition of the armies, especially on the Yarmūk. The Byzantine force was probably larger than that of the Arabs and besides a contingent of Armenians, it also contained a large number of Arabs from the tribes of the Syrian borderlands, the Lakhm, Ghassān and Judhām, which had been traditionally allied to the Byzantines; it is possible that there were as many Arabs fighting for the Byzantines as there were fighting for Islam. The Muslim army consisted of large numbers of Qurashīs, volunteers from Yamāma tribes who had been sent up after the end of the Ridda in their homeland, and some members of tribes from the northern Ḥijāz who had presumably joined up en route. Conspicuous by their absence were the Anṣār of Medina and members of the Najdī and eastern Arabian tribes. The makeup of the conquering army was to have lasting effects on the political life of the country.
After the defeat on the Yarmūk and the final fall of Damascus, which must have occurred by 16/637, the Byzantines put no more armies into the field. Abū ‘Ubayda as the supreme commander moved north to Homs, from where he sent out Khālid to reduce Qinnasrīn, Antioch and Aleppo, all of which fell without difficulty. Meanwhile, ‘Amr seems to have finished operations in southern Palestine. It was at this stage too that the Emperor Heraclius, who had directed campaigns without being present in person at any of the battles, finally abandoned Syria, laid waste the frontier lands of Cilicia and retreated to the fastnesses of Anatolia. A few coastal cities, notably Caesarea in the south and Tripoli farther north, resisted for a few more years with the aid of naval support from Byzantium.
The fall of Jerusalem was probably the immediate cause of ‘Umar’s visit in about 17/638, since it was said that the Patriarch Sophronius would surrender to only the caliph. It was the only time he left Medina to visit the scene of the conquests he had done so much to organize, and his ragged and austere appearance made a great impression. Jerusalem was much revered by the Muslims and it was only appropriate that the caliph should come in person to take possession, but there were other, more worldly matters which demanded his attention as well. At about this time, the plague, which had been endemic in Syria since the middle of the sixth century, struck at the nomad conquerors, and many perished, including the leading Muslim generals Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān and Shuraḥbīl b. Ḥasana. A new governor was found in the person of Yazīd’s brother, Mu‘āwiya b. Abī Sufyān. His family had owned estates in the Balqā’ in Transjordan in pre-Islamic times, and he now supervised the settlement and organization of the province. ‘Umar attempted to establish a Muslim garrison town at Jābiya, the old Ghassanid centre south of Damascus, where the Muslims were to live separate from the local population, as they did in Kūfa and Baṣra in Iraq. In Syria, however, this scheme soon broke down, perhaps because many of the existing inhabitants of the area were Arabic-speaking, and Damascus, rather than Jābiya, became the Muslim capital. The rest of the province was divided into junds in which divisions of the conquering army were settled. These were Homs, where most of the settlers were Yamanīs under the leadership of al-Simt. b. al-Aswad al-Kindī, Damascus, Urdunn (or Jordan) based on Tiberias, and Palestine. Arabs, both native Syrians and conquerors, were settled in the coastal and frontier areas to defend them against Byzantine attack. This dispersal of the Muslims, under the control of Mu‘āwiya, avoided many of the tensions which emerged in the Iraqi cities of Kūfa and Baṣra. The settlers in Syria were a fairly close-knit group from the élite in Islamic society, and Mu‘āwiya was in a position to control any further immigration into the province. Some problems still remained, notably the tensions between old-established Arab tribes like the Judhām and Kalb and newly arrived settlers – but in general, under the presiding genius of Mu‘āwiya, Syria remained calm and organized throughout the period of the first four caliphs.
To the north and east of Syria, across the Euphrates river, lay the Jazīra, the “island” between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was natural that Abū ‘Ubayda turned his attention in this direction when the conquest of Syria had been completed. He appointed a Qurashī, ‘Iyād. b. Ghanm, a member of his own clan of Fihr, as the leader of the expedition. ‘Iyād. had been involved in the conquests from the beginning when he had accompanied Khālid b. al-Walīd on his early Iraqi campaigns – he had fought at the battle of the Yarmūk, and there are reports that Abū ‘Ubayda wished ‘Iyād. to succeed him as the governor of Syria but that he was overruled by ‘Umar, who chose Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān and his brother Mu‘āwiya instead. As might be expected, there was an important Qurashī element in the small (5,000 men) force, and the rest of the troops seem to have been drawn from the Anṣār or from Ḥijāzī tribes like the ‘Abs and Sulaym, whose members were to be influential in Armenia for centuries to come. The campaign involved no important battles and no long sieges, as the defenders seemed to feel that there was no possibility of support from Byzantium. ‘Iyāḍ’s force crossed the Euphrates in Sha‘bān 18/August 639 and made a show of force outside Raqqa (Callinicum), which soon surrendered. He then went on to the capital, Edessa, once Heraclius’ headquarters, where the bishop negotiated terms after a short resistance. With the fall of Edessa, most of the other towns soon surrendered, and ‘Iyād. even went as far as the territory of Akhlāṭ, north of Lake Van, before returning to the plains. His subordinates fanned out across the Jazīra, subduing the other towns until he joined up with Muslim forces operating from Iraq. Sinjār and Niṣībīn were conquered from the Jazīra, while Mosul remained in the Iraqi sphere of influence. By 20/641, he was back in Homs, of which he had been appointed the governor and where he died later in the same year. In the Jazīra, he was eventually succeeded by ‘Umayr b. Sa‘d, one of the very few Anṣār to achieve high office, and in 25/645–646 ‘Uthmān incorporated the province into Mu‘āwiya’s Syrian domains.
The settlement of the province was different from Syria, Iraq or Egypt in that there was no attempt to establish Muslim garrison towns like Kūfa, Jābiya or Fusṭāṭ. Although the details are very uncertain, it seems as if ‘Iyād. had made a series of treaties with the leaders of the urban communities which guaranteed their property and freedom of worship in exchange for a tax called jizya (which later meant poll tax but probably referred to general taxes on property and individuals at this early stage), while payments in kind for the support of the Muslims were taken from rural areas. In a few districts where there was more prolonged resistance – Sumaysāṭ, for example – ‘Iyād. left an agent with a few men, but in the main tax collection was left to the local people. A peculiar problem was caused by the Banū Taghlib, Christian Arabs who inhabited the middle Euphrates area. They stubbornly refused to accept Islam but demanded to be taxed as bedouin, that is, to pay the ṣadaqa demanded of other tribes but not the demeaning poll tax. ‘Umayr b. Sa‘d, who was the governor by this time, consulted ‘Umar, who was in favour of strong measures until it was pointed out that they might defect to the Byzantines, and in the end a compromise was reached with the Taghlib paying the ṣadaqa but at double the rate demanded of Muslim tribes. When ‘Uthmān entrusted the area to Mu‘āwiya, he ordered him to settle more tribesmen in the Jazīra to relieve pressure in the towns of Kūfa and Baṣra, and quite large numbers of Tamīm, Asad, Qays and other tribes from the northeast of Arabia were moved and were to form the nucleus of the Qays party in the area in Umayyad times. In the end, the province was divided into districts named after the tribal groups who had dominated it: Diyār (country of) Muḍar, Rabī‘a and Bakr. In contrast to Iraq, this moving of tribes did not involve their abandonment of the nomad way of life, and they were assigned areas of unused land away from existing urban and agricultural communities. The Arab immigration does not seem to have swamped the local culture (as it came to do in Iraq), and Syriac Christianity, to say nothing of the paganism of the Sabaeans of Ḥarrān, continued to flourish throughout the early Islamic period. Mu‘āwiya also stabilized the northern frontier, establishing garrisons on the upper Euphrates, notably at Malaṭya (Melitene), which became an important Muslim base in the wars against the Byzantines.
Contemporary with the conquest of the Jazīra was the extension of the Arab conquests to the west, to Egypt. The sources for the conquest of Egypt are more helpful than those for Syria or Iraq; we have an early and full Arab account in the work of Ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥakam and an almost contemporary Coptic account in the work of John, bishop of Nikiou. The conquest of Egypt was also unusual in that it was to a large extent the achievement of one commander, ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ. Arabs from the Ḥijāz had traded with Egypt before the coming of Islam; there are reports that ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ was among them, and his military campaigns certainly show a degree of familiarity with the country. When ‘Umar came to Jābiya to settle the affairs of Syria, ‘Amr asked him for permission to lead an invasion of Egypt. ‘Umar seems to have given only grudging and reluctant consent, and the army which accompanied ‘Amr was only some 4,000 in number, recruited among the tribe of ‘Akk from the southern Ḥijāz. No leading companions or important Meccans chose to accompany him.
In Egypt as in Syria, the Persian invasions had severely shaken the Byzantine hold on the country, and the invaders had been in control for about ten years when they were finally forced to withdraw to defend their homelands in 627, when Muḥammad was already well established at Medina. In 631, Heraclius entrusted the administration of Egypt, both civil and religious, to one Cyrus, bishop of Phasis in the Caucasus. Cyrus, now a patriarch of Alexandria, was determined to enforce the Orthodox faith among the native population of Egypt, who were almost entirely Monophysites of the Coptic Church. For ten years, he persecuted dissenters with great savagery, and there can be no doubt that he alienated much of the local population from Roman rule. To some extent, this had happened in Syria, where there were substantial Monophysite communities, but there the persecution was sporadic and the Monophysites were balanced by substantial Melkite (i.e. Orthodox) populations, especially in Palestine. In Egypt, almost the entire rural population was Monophysite in sympathy, with its own alternative hierarchy, and the persecution was more determined and sustained.
How far ‘Amr was aware of these factors is impossible to gauge. There is no evidence that the Copts invited the Arabs to invade or that they gave them active help. However, they offered the imperial armies no support or local levies, and this passive attitude of the local people may explain something of the ease of the conquests.
‘Amr’s small troop probably entered Egypt in the late autumn of 18/639 and soon took Faramā (Pelusium), the first port on the Nile delta, before moving on to attack the great fortress known as Babylon, just to the south of the site where Cairo was later constructed. ‘Amr was clearly anxious not to advance straight across the waterways of the delta to the capital at Alexandria and reckoned rightly that if he could destroy the bulk of the Byzantine army before entering the delta, his task would be much easier. During this time, ‘Amr’s small forces were joined by a larger number, perhaps 12,000, under al-Zubayr b. al-‘Awwām and other senior companions of the Prophet; it is noteworthy, however, that ‘Amr retained command. With these new troops, he was able to defeat the Byzantine forces at Heliopolis, to the north of modern Cairo, in Rajab 19/June 640 and in September began the siege of Babylon. The siege lasted some seven months, while Cyrus, probably in Alexandria, made futile attempts to negotiate with the invaders. The news of the death of Heraclius, in February 641, finally persuaded the defenders to surrender on terms, which they finally did in Rabī‘ II 20/April 641. The Arab forces then advanced on Alexandria, defeating the Byzantines again at Nikiou en route. Alexandria, well fortified and easily supplied from the sea, should have been able to hold out for many months but in the event, confusion amounting almost to civil war in Byzantium and in the local garrison paralysed the resistance, and Cyrus made terms for the surrender of the city. After an eleven-month period of grace, it was finally surrendered in Shawwāl 21/September 642 and the Arabs were in control of the whole country. Despite a Greek counterattack three years later in 25/645, the Muslim hold on Egypt was never seriously threatened again until the time of the Crusades.
Settlement followed conquest. A new town was established for the Muslims at Fusṭāṭ, by Babylon, and this, rather than Alexandria, became the new capital; as usual, the Arabs chose a site on the edge of the settled lands in easy communication with Arabia. Outside Fusṭāṭ, Arab settlement was very limited; there was a small garrison in Alexandria and some other towns, but no large-scale immigration followed the conquest. The administration of the Byzantines was taken over and streamlined, but many of the old methods and officials continued to be used at a local level, while Arabic language documents were issued by the governors from the first year after the conquest. The Coptic hierarchy, relieved from persecution, was allowed the same rights as the Melkites. The Arabs remained a small minority, the spread of Islam and the Arabic language was slow and the province played a very limited role in the politics of the early Islamic state.
The conquest of Iraq, an area which was to play a vital and central role in the formation of the Islamic state, began as a sideshow, almost by accident. As with the conquest of Syria, exact chronology is difficult to ascertain but here at least, the general outline of events is clear. Iraq had always had a secondary place in the calculations of the Quraysh, and the Prophet had sent no expeditions there. The Sawād of Iraq was certainly wealthy but its canals and agricultural landscape were much less attractive for nomads than Syria or the Jazīra, with their rich grazing grounds. The first attacks on Iraq were a natural follow-up to the Ridda campaigns, and it was partly as a result of this that the participants in the conquest were in marked contrast to those in Syria. The Quraysh were hardly represented at all, whereas there was a considerable number of Anṣār from Medina and Thaqafīs from Ṭā’if. In addition to these settled people, there were many tribesmen from the neighbouring areas of northeast Arabia, Tamīmīs and members of the Bakr b. Wā’il confederation, especially the Shaybān, and there were also some from the southern Ḥijāz, Azdīs and Bajalīs under the command of their tribal leader, Jarīr b. ‘Abd Allāh. In the course of the conquest, reinforcements were needed and it was in these campaigns that tribesmen who had joined the Ridda against the Muslim community after Muḥammad’s death were allowed to participate and establish their position in the Islamic system. The conquest of Iraq, in short, was largely carried out by those who were already second-class citizens in the new regime, while the élite turned their attention to Syria.
The Arab incursions in Iraq had begun before the arrival of any Muslim army. From the dissolution of the Lakhmid kingdom of Ḥīra by the Persian authorities in 602, the nomads had been taking an increasingly aggressive stance towards the settled people. This process was hastened by the catastrophes which affected the Persian Empire, Heraclius’ invasion of Iraq, the death of Khusrau II in 628 and the consequent civil war. Raids which might otherwise have led to reprisals were now allowed to go unpunished. Among the Arab leaders was Muthannā b. Ḥāritha from the Shaybān tribe, who enlisted the help of Khālid b. al-Walīd, who had just finished his campaigns against the Ridda in northeast Arabia, to give him support in his raids.
In this way, Muslim armies first came into conflict with the Persians. Khālid helped Muthannā to capture some districts along the edge of the desert, notably the largely Arab city of Ḥīra, but Syria remained the priority and Khālid was ordered west, leaving the local tribes to continue their forays on their own. On his accession in 13/634, ‘Umar sent a Thaqafī, Abū ‘Ubayd, to take control of this activity with a small army of about 5,000, mostly Anṣār of Medina with some recruits picked up from the desert tribes on the way. This army was decisively defeated by the Persians at the Battle of the Bridge and Abū ‘Ubayd himself was killed. ‘Umar could not allow such a defeat to go unavenged, but for a year or two, the shortage of manpower meant that there was little he could do about it. As contingents became available, he sent them to the front, notably the 1,500 Bajalīs under Jarīr b. ‘Abd Allāh, but eventually he was forced to relax the principle that men who had joined the Ridda could not share in the conquests and for the first time men like Ṭalḥa b. Khuwaylid al-Asadī from the Najd and al-Ash‘ath b. Qays al-Kindī from south Arabia, both tribal chiefs who only two or three years before had been in arms against the Muslims, were allowed to participate. These reinforcements were put under the command of a Qurashī of impeccable Muslim credentials, Sa‘d b. Abī Waqqāṣ, who had been with the Prophet at Badr and who proved an acceptable leader for this disparate army. Even compared with the forces which conquered Syria, the army Sa‘d led was small, probably no more than 12,000 men. Against him, the Persians assembled a much larger number under the veteran general Rustam. The battle which followed at Qādisiyya was decisive, the Persian host was totally defeated and very shortly afterwards the Persian capital at Madā’in (Ctesiphon) was occupied by Sa‘d and his victorious army (probably 16/637). A further victory at Jalūlā’ a few months later, forced the Persian king Yazdgird III to withdraw to the Iṣfahān area and secured the position of the Muslims, small groups of whom now moved to take control of the towns and villages of Iraq as far north as Mosul.
Southern Iraq and the neighbouring province of Khūzistān were taken in a separate campaign by a separate army. The Muslim force seems to have been small, about 4,000, and there was some fierce fighting around the port of Ubulla and the town of Sūq al-Ahwāz, but there was no single decisive battle like Qādisiyya. On this front, the core of the army seems to have been recruited among the Thaqīf of Ṭā’if. The first commander sent by ‘Umar, ‘Utba b. Ghazwān, had married into the Thaqīf, while his successor, al-Mughīra b. Shu‘ba, was the first of many Thaqafī governors who were to be influential in Iraq. After al-Mughīra was dismissed by ‘Umar in 17/638 for alleged adultery, he was replaced by Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī, a companion of the Prophet who was to prove an important moderating influence in the politics of Iraq.
By the year 17/638, the Muslim armies had taken control of almost all of the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. The Persian king, his court and much of the ruling class had fled to the Iranian plateau, but many of the peasants and the small landowners and administrators known as dihqāns had remained on the land. At first, Sa‘d’s men stayed in the Persian capital at Madā’in and some of them seem to have been given land. The Caliph ‘Umar, however, soon reversed this policy and ordered Sa‘d and al-Mughīra b. Shu‘ba in the south to found garrison towns where the Muslims could be settled, just as he had ordered ‘Amr not to settle in Alexandria but to develop a new town at Fusṭāṭ. Two settlements were founded, both on the edge of the desert. The veterans of the central Iraq campaign were established at Kūfa, near the old centre of Ḥīra, while those of the southern campaign were settled at Baṣra. A mosque and governor’s palace were established in each town to act as a focus, and the troops were settled in tribal groups so that they could be more easily administered and controlled through their leaders. ‘Umar’s decision was partly made on military grounds; if the Muslims were dispersed throughout the area of the Sawād, they would be vulnerable to outside attack, whereas kept together they would be in a much stronger position to defend their gains. The threat of a Persian counterattack was very real. Isolation in Muslim communities would help to prevent the newly converted Muslims from being affected by local beliefs. Settlement in cities was also intended to solve the problem of governing the nomad tribesmen. If they were left to their traditional way of life, the fragile unity which had been encouraged by Islam and enforced by the campaigns against the Ridda would soon be lost and the desert would become as ungovernable as it had been in pre-Islamic times. Only if the tribesmen were settled and involved in further campaigns of conquest could they be controlled.
If the Muslims were not to remain nomads, they were not to become farmers either. The land was to remain in the hands of the previous owners, if they had not fled at the time of the conquest, and they were to pay taxes to the Muslims as they had previously paid to the Sasanian government, basically a land tax (kharāj) based on the area and type of crops cultivated and, for non-Muslims, a poll tax (jizya) on each adult male, although the terminology used to describe these taxes remained fluid until the ‘Abbasid period. Lands which had been abandoned by the Sasanian royal family, the upper aristocracy and the Zoroastrian priesthood were to become the common property of the Muslim community, but the administration of the lands, known in Arabic as the ṣawāfī, was to be a subject of controversy for years to come. The government would then distribute this money to the Muslim settlers in the form of salaries known as ‘aṭā’. ‘Umar laid down the principles according to which ‘aṭā was to be distributed in a system known as the dīwān. The dīwān recorded the names of all those entitled to salaries and the rates at which they were to be paid, for not all Muslims were to enjoy the same pay. The different scales were paid according to the individual’s sābiqa, that is to say his precedence in Islam. We can see this process most clearly in Iraq, where the earliest participants in the war against the Persians were to be paid at the rate of 3,000 silver dirhams per month, while those who arrived later would be paid proportionally less, down to those who had only migrated to Baṣra or Kūfa after the conquests, who could not expect more than 200 dirhams. This naturally resulted in social tensions and anomalies; a new privileged class was created among those who enjoyed the highest salaries, and it was quite possible for one man to be getting ten times the amount given to his neighbour, even if they came from the same tribe and background, simply because he had joined the armies of Islam five years before. This could be particularly galling if the late arrival belonged to a family which, in the tribal scale of values, had enjoyed high prestige, and it was no wonder that ‘Umar’s system was defended with enthusiasm by those who had come early but caused strong resentment among many latecomers.
The rule of the various provinces was entrusted to leaders called amīrs, a term which can be loosely translated as governors. In ‘Umar’s reign, these were almost always those who had led the original conquest and had naturally stayed on to organize administration and settlement; Sa‘d b. Abī Waqqāṣ remained the governor of Kūfa; Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī, who had completed the conquest of southern Iraq, stayed in Baṣra. In Syria, the position was complicated by the deaths of both Abū ‘Ubayda and Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān in the plague, but succession passed naturally to Yazīd’s brother Mu‘āwiya, while in Egypt ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ retained control of the land he had so recently won. These amīrs tended to be fairly independent of the government in Medina and responsive to the needs of the men they had led to victory. In particular, despite some pressure from ‘Umar, they seem to have retained most of the revenues of their provinces for the benefit of the Muslims who had settled there, rather than sending any surplus to Medina, and this fiscal autonomy was to prove a source of conflict later.
In 23/644, ‘Umar was assassinated by a Persian slave in Medina; there seems to have been no political motivation behind this deed. His ten years as caliph had seen the expansion of the Muslim conquests throughout Egypt and the Fertile Crescent and the beginning of the attacks into Iran. Just as significant, it had seen the development of many important Muslim institutions, the system of taxation, the dīwān, the urban settlements and the development of a privileged group of those who received the highest ‘aṭā’. Though he gave orders and guidance to his amīrs, there was little in the way of central government or direct control from Medina, where the caliph lived in pious simplicity, avoiding both the power and the pomp of Byzantine emperor or Sasanian king.
On his deathbed, ‘Umar had appointed a shūrā, or committee, to choose a successor. This had six members, all of them Muhājirūn from the Quraysh, and neither the Anṣār of Medina nor more recent converts were represented. Two possible candidates emerged, ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, and ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān, who came from the Meccan clan of Umayya but had supported the Prophet from the very beginning of his mission. The election was a question of both personalities and policies. It seems that ‘Alī was offered the leadership if he would guarantee to continue the policies of his predecessors, by which was meant the continued predominance of the Quraysh in the leadership of the Muslim community. He refused, perhaps because he realized that the continued grip of the Meccan aristocracy was dividing the umma and he wished to have the power to open the leadership to other groups as well, especially the Anṣār, with whom he had forged close links. For ‘Uthmān, however, the conditions posed no problems; despite his early adherence to Islam, ‘Uthmān had retained his links with his clan and benefited from the experience in practical affairs which his upbringing as a Meccan merchant had given him. He became caliph with a definite political programme, to ensure that the Muslim empire, for such it now was, remained under the control of the Quraysh, a policy the origins of which went back to the practice of the Prophet himself. In some ways, he reacted against ‘Umar’s attempts to build a new Islamic élite based on sābiqa, and turned back to the well-tried methods of clan government. He believed in the centralization of power; governors were to be chosen and dismissed by the caliph and both political and the all-important financial affairs of the provinces were to be decided not by local leaders, but in Medina. He also set about producing a single, definitive version of the Qur’ān. Muslim society was to be ordered according to the provisions of the Holy Book, and it was essential, therefore, that the text be generally agreed upon and that variant readings did not develop in different areas. In practice, the differences do not seem to have been very significant, but the fact that the caliph decided that he should organize this process was an important sign of his authority over the whole community. His programme was a bold attempt to create a viable administrative system for the new empire, but it naturally aroused opposition from many who regarded it as a breach with ‘Umar’s policies and a betrayal of the principles of Islam. The opposition crystallized around two issues: the declining status of the Islamic élite of early converts, especially in Kūfa, and the question of whether or not surplus revenue from the provinces (that is, the residue after the local ‘aṭā’ had been paid) should be forwarded to Medina – and it was a combination of these two grievances which led to the disasters of the end of the reign.
He also saw that the expansion of the Muslim state had to continue if the needs of all the members of the umma were to be satisfied. In the west, there were expeditions to Nubia and North Africa as well as the development of Muslim naval power in the Mediterranean under the control of the governors of Syria and Egypt. Cyprus was forced to pay tribute, and in 34/655 the Muslims won a decisive naval victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of the Masts off the Lycian coast. In the east, ‘Uthmān’s reign saw the effective conquest of the Iranian plateau. This movement had begun under ‘Umar in 21/642 when the Iranians had tried to mount a counterattack on the Arabs to regain Iraq. This counterattack was met and defeated at the battle of Nihāvand in the Zagros Mountains. This battle meant the destruction of a large part of the Iranian army and laid much of western Iran open to Arab raids; during the next two years, troops from Kūfa took Iṣfahān, Hamadhān, Qazvīn and Rayy and even ventured as far as distant Ardabīl in Āzarbayjān, but permanent settlement was only gradually undertaken. It is interesting to note that some latecomers to Iraq participated in these conquests and were able to improve their status, and we find tribal chiefs like Jarīr b. ‘Abd Allāh al-Bajalī and al-Ash‘ath b. Qays al-Kindī powerful in the newly won territories; neither of these developments was likely to please the earlycomers in Kūfa. As before, separate expeditions were mounted from Baṣra under the leadership of Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī and from 24/645 these forces were engaged in a long, hard struggle to take Fārs, the heartland of the Sasanian monarchy. The area was defended by many castles and fortified towns, and it took five years to subdue it; nowhere else did the Arabs encounter such sustained popular resistance by the local inhabitants.
In the year 30/650, the Arabs began a new series of expeditions in Iran. From Kūfa, the governor, Sa‘īd b. al-‘Āṣ, led his men along the north of the Iranian plateau, where they attempted to conquer the mountain peoples of that area, but the expedition achieved little before it returned to base, thus aggravating the increasing tensions within the city. The Baṣran forces, however, marched along the southern fringes of the Iranian desert, pursuing the Sasanian king Yazdgird III as he fled eastwards trying to rally support. Detachments were left to make terms for the submission of Kirmān and Sīstān, while, in 31/651 ‘Abd Allāh, b. ‘ūmir, the newly appointed governor, reached Nīshāpūr, capital of the rich, northeastern Iranian province of Khurāsān. Here, he and his men spent the winter and secured the submission of most of the local princes, who agreed to pay tribute. The Muslims then returned to Baṣra leaving a small detachment at Marv. This was not a conquest in the sense that the taking of Syria or Iraq was; it was rather a raiding expedition which secured the payment of large annual tributes. The army of Baṣra was to collect this money, but it was not to settle in the area nor was it to set up a new administrative system. The local princes and magnates were to collect the taxes in the way that they had always done and were content to accept a Muslim rule that was certainly no more onerous than that of the Persian kings and which could provide protection for the settled people of the area against the marauding Turks to the northeast.
In much of Khurāsān, and in the mountains to the south of the Caspian in the areas known to the Arabs as Ṭabaristān and Daylam, the indigenous aristocracy retained its power and influence by treaties with the Arabs. This was in marked contrast to western Iran, to Fārs especially, where the prolonged fighting and the defeat of subsequent rebellions led to the virtual extermination of the ancient aristocracy. It is worth noting too that the Arab conquests mostly affected urban areas and the plains. Arab armies avoided the mountainous areas where traditional rulers, social structures, religions and languages survived almost unchallenged. This contrast was to have profound effects on both the political history of the area and the cultural life, since it was precisely in those areas where the local aristocracy remained that Persian culture survived most vigorously. For the moment, however, it is enough to note that before ‘Uthmān’s death, all Sasanian Iran was subdued, either by conquest or by treaty, but that Arab settlement in the areas was very limited indeed. Nor was the conquest totally secure; in western Iran, there were rebellions after the death of both ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī, while in Khurāsān the presence of the Turks along the eastern frontier meant that conditions were often unsettled.
Arab tradition divides ‘Uthmān’s reign into six good years at the beginning and six bad, the traditional turning-point being his loss of the Prophet’s signet ring. In about the year 30/650–651, the problems began to increase; ‘Uthmān tried to deal with them intelligently but he totally underestimated the strength of feeling and his attempts to cope with the discontent simply made the position worse. By the year 35/656, the position was so bad that rebellions in the provinces and disturbances in Medina itself led to the caliph’s murder under dramatic circumstances. He was killed in his own house, defenceless and unarmed as he sat reading the Qur’ān. The assassination was one of the most traumatic incidents in early Islamic history and its effects were to have a profound bearing on the future development of the Islamic state. It is important, therefore, to examine the causes of this tragedy in detail and to ask the question, who killed ‘Uthmān and why?
There were three main regions of discontent, Kūfa, Egypt and Medina. Because of the way the sources were compiled, we know more about the Kūfan events than those elsewhere, and it is there that we must start. In ‘Umar’s time, Kūfa had been dominated by the earlycomers, those who had participated in the first campaigns. In many cases, these were not men who came from powerful tribes, and they had arrived as individuals or in small groups – but as a reward for their commitment to the Muslim cause, they had acquired wealth and status. This wealth was based partly on their entitlement to the highest salaries but also their control over the ṣawāfī, the state lands of the Sasanian kings, now ownerless and exploited by these earlycomers for their own benefit. The loose financial administration of ‘Umar’s reign did not impinge significantly on this comfortable arrangement, and there is no evidence that any of the revenues of this vastly rich area found their way to Medina. Under ‘Uthmān, this status began to be challenged from two directions. The first was from Medina. ‘Uthmān’s reign saw the appointment of a succession of Qurashī governors to Kūfa, culminating in Sa‘īd b. al-‘Āṣ, who were profoundly unsympathetic to the efforts of these people to maintain their privileged position. On instructions from the caliph, he began to demand that surplus revenue from the province be sent to Medina and to claim that the ṣawāfī belonged to the government, which could exploit them directly or give them to its supporters. The treasurer of the Sawād, ‘Abd Allāh b. Mas‘ūd, an earlycomer, resigned in protest at this appropriation of the revenues by the caliph but the policy went ahead nonetheless. The caliph added insult to injury by his brutal treatment of those who protested – Ibn Mas‘ūd, for example, was beaten up in the mosque at Medina despite his status as a respected companion of the Prophet.
The threat from Medina was reinforced by one from much nearer home. Immigration from the Arabian Peninsula into the settlements at Kūfa and Baṣra continued for some years after the initial foundation of the towns. Many of the later arrivals and their tribal leaders resented the privileged position the earlycomers had acquired and began to put pressure on the governors to abolish the distinctions. Tribal leaders were given key governorates in the newly conquered lands east of the Zagros, including the Ridda leader al-Ash‘ath b. Qays in Āzarbayjān, and the latecomers looked to them for leadership. ‘Uthmān also decided to allow al-Ash‘ath, among others, to exchange lands in distant south Arabia for territories in the Sawād. As a result, the earlycomers began to organize in opposition to government policy. They took the name of qurrā’, which probably means ‘Qur’ān readers’, drew attention to their Islamic status and found a leader and spokesman in the person of Mālik al-Ashtar. The crisis came to a head in 34/655, when the qurrā’, about 3,000-strong, refused to allow the governor, Sa‘īd b. al-‘Āṣ, to return to the province after he had been conferring with ‘Uthmān in Medina and chose instead Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī. Abū Mūsā had been one of the administrators the Prophet himself had sent to Yemen twenty-five years previously, who had played an important part in the conquest and settlement of Iraq. His Islamic credentials were impeccable and while not himself a member of the qurrā’, he was sympathetic to their plight. Having replaced the hated governor, the militants, led by Mālik, then marched to confront the caliph in his capital.
The other province where discontent led to rebellion was Egypt. Here, the sources are not so abundant, but as far as we can tell, the problems seem to have been similar. Egypt had been settled by two waves of colonists, those who had formed part of the original, small expeditionary force under ‘Amr in 19/640 and larger numbers of later arrivals. As in Kūfa, many of the first wave of colonists arrived in small splinter groups and had little status in the old tribal system but did lay claim to Islamic status. In ‘Umar’s reign, the governorate of Egypt was held by the conqueror ‘Amr. It seems that he looked after the interests of his original followers, but it is not at all clear that he forwarded any of the revenues of Egypt to Medina. ‘Uthmān deposed ‘Amr almost immediately after his accession, and his new man, Ibn Abī Sarḥ, was determined to reduce the privileges of the early arrivals and secure the surplus for Medina. Once again, there were local tribal leaders who were prepared to cooperate with the caliph, notably the south Arabian Mu‘āwiya b. Ḥudayj al-Kindī, whose family were to be prominent in Egypt for the next two centuries and who played a role very similar to that of al-Ash‘ath in Kūfa. As in Kūfa, then, there was a small but determined minority who felt their position under attack from the policies of the government. It was these “Egyptians”, probably no more than 400–600, who began the violence. They marched to Medina, where they presented their grievances; ‘Uthmān persuaded them to go home with fair words but sent a message to Ibn Abī Sarh. ordering that they be harshly treated. Inevitably, the message was discovered and, full of righteous indignation, they returned to Medina, accusing the caliph of betraying the Qur’ān and Sunna, of despising those who had been among the Prophet’s companions and those with sābiqa in favour of his own family, and of tyrannical government. It was in this highly charged atmosphere that the violent siege of ‘Uthmān’s house began.
The old man could count on little support in Medina itself. Many of the Islamic élite there had become increasingly critical of his policies, alienated by his methods and reliance not on the Quraysh as a whole but on the Umayyad clan. Before his death in 32/652–653, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. ‘Awf, a prominent companion of the Prophet and one of the shūrā who had chosen ‘Uthmān, began to attack him. Ṭalḥa b. ‘Ubayd Allāh and al-Zubayr b. al-‘Awwām, both important Qurashīs, were hostile, while others, like Sa‘d b. Abī Waqqāṣ, the conqueror of Iraq, and ‘Umar’s son ‘Abd Allāh remained neutral. Nor were the Anṣār any more helpful. ‘Uthmān had come to rely increasingly on the talents of two of his Umayyad cousins, the brothers al-Ḥārith and Marwān b. al-Ḥakam, the latter subsequently to be caliph himself, and when he appointed Ḥārith to take charge of the market, the Anṣār felt that they had lost control, not just in the empire as a whole, but even in their own town. Such frustrations and bitterness meant that few in Medina were prepared to take any action to help the caliph in his time of need. ‘Uthmān was killed because he was determined to assert the control of the traditional Quraysh élite over the Islamic state, even if this meant trampling on the rights and privileges of many early Muslims. He saw the need for central control, he saw that the Umayyad clan had the experience and ability to undertake it but he failed to make allowances for the interests of others who had different but equally strong claims to enjoy the fruits of the conquests.
In the aftermath of ‘Uthmān’s death, ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib was acknowledged as caliph in Medina without significant opposition, but the inheritance was poisoned by the memory of his predecessor’s death, although he himself had taken no part in ‘Uthmān’s murder. From the moment of his accession, ‘Alī had to face opposition from within the Muslim community from many different areas and shades of opinion. He had no honeymoon period, no breathing space in which to establish himself, and the problems came thick and fast.
The first challenge to ‘Alī’s authority came from within the Quraysh itself. His close identification with the Anṣār and his reluctance to accept the nomination of Abū Bakr had alienated him from many of the Quraysh, who now felt that they had to challenge him to preserve the position their tribe had won. The movement centred around al-Zubayr b. al-‘Awwām, Ṭalḥa b. ‘Ubayd Allāh and the Prophet’s widow ‘Ā’isha. Al-Zubayr was a Muslim of unimpeachable standing; he had been among those who took refuge in Ethiopia before the Hijra and he and ‘Alī had been sent out as scouts before the battle of Badr. Now, a quarter of a century after the Prophet’s death, there were few men left alive who had been so closely involved in the origins of Islam. In addition, he had married a daughter of Abū Bakr, which gave him a close kinship with ‘Ā’isha, herself a daughter of the first caliph. Ṭalḥa was also an early Qurashī convert, although not as prominent as al-Zubayr. Both had been members of the shūrā which had chosen ‘Uthmān. While they had not supported ‘Uthmān’s policies of concentrating power in the hands of the Umayyad clan, they did not wish to see power pass from the Quraysh as a whole and were determined to take action. They left the Ḥijāz to seek support in Baṣra, perhaps hoping that the Thaqīf interest which was prominent there would rally to their old allies in the Quraysh. ‘Alī was compelled to follow them to Iraq; to have remained in Medina would have been courting the same fate as ‘Uthmān, and he sought support in Kūfa. Al-Zubayr and his party seem to have misjudged the situation badly; they attracted only a modest following from Baṣra, while ‘Alī was able to attract much larger numbers of Kūfans to his cause. The two armies met near Baṣra in a confrontation known to tradition as the Battle of the Camel, Jumādā II 36/December 656. The battle was easily won by ‘Alī’s more numerous army, al-Zubayr and Ṭalḥa were killed and ‘Ā’isha forced into retirement. But for the first time there had been civil war among the Muslims, the gate of fitna, a strife, had been opened and, like Pandora’s box, once opened it was impossible to close.
In order to defend his position against al-Zubayr and Ṭalḥa, ‘Alī had sought support in Kūfa, whose people had no wish to see a Qurashī regime of the sort that al-Zubayr had stood for. He now set to work to remove ‘Uthmān’s appointees from positions of power to reward his supporters for their services.
His authority was accepted in Baṣra and his governor of Egypt, who was Qays, son of that Sa‘d b. ‘Ubāda who had emerged as the leader of the Anṣār in the last year of the Prophet’s life, was able to establish himself. In Syria, however, the story was different. The governor, Mu‘āwiya, was a member of the Umayyad clan and unlike ‘Uthmān’s other governors, who had been removed without great difficulty, he had a strong local power base in the country he had ruled without interruption almost since the conquest. He had built up a military following among the Arab population to defend the country against the real possibility of Byzantine attack, and he was not a man to be dismissed with ease or to stand by and see ‘Uthmān’s work undone. Furthermore, he had a moral claim against the murderers of the caliph; as the nearest surviving relative of the dead man, he had a right, even a duty, to seek vengeance for the wrong done to his clan. Historians have tended to treat this claim as a feeble pretext for his actions, but this does not perhaps do justice to Mu‘āwiya’s position – not to have taken revenge would have proclaimed the impotence of the Umayyad clan for all to see, and when ‘Uthmān’s widow sent him the dead man’s bloodstained shirt, he could not afford not to take action. The heart of the problem was that in Kūfa, ‘Alī was dependent for support on men who had been closely implicated in ‘Uthmān’s death, especially Mālik al-Ashtar, who, although he had not personally attacked the old man, had led the Kūfan delegation to Medina. Mu‘āwiya absolutely refused to acknowledge ‘Alī as caliph until he had punished his predecessor’s murderers.
‘Alī’s move from Medina to Iraq had been forced upon him by the need to oppose al-Zubayr. Medina was not a place from which to conduct a military campaign; not only was it remote from the main centres of Arab population in Iraq and Syria, it was also dependent on grain shipments from Egypt, which made it particularly vulnerable. So ‘Alī moved to Kūfa and became embroiled in its tortuous politics. As far as we know, he had never visited Iraq before, nor had the Iraqis particularly looked to him for leadership in ‘Uthmān’s reign. He may have reached an understanding with Mālik al-Ashtar at the time of ‘Uthmān’s death, but Mālik was representative of only a small part of Kūfan opinion. From the beginning of his stay in the city, ‘Alī was forced to try to assemble a coalition strong enough to coerce Mu‘āwiya into accepting his authority. The problem was to persuade the Kūfans that it was in their interests to march on Syria.
Kūfan politics had become polarized between the early Islamic élite of the qurrā’ and the tribal leaders (ashrāf) supported by their followers, many of them late, and therefore underprivileged, convert to Islam. ‘Alī’s policy was a bold attempt to cut across these problems by stressing the importance of the equality of believers and the importance of the religious role of the caliph or imām (spiritual leader); the ruler was not to be a tyrannical tax gatherer and guardian of existing vested interests but a charismatic figure who would inspire and guide the believers in the formation of a truly Islamic community. This concern for Islamic government and for the problems of underprivileged Muslims was to be the hallmark of the appeal of ‘Alī and his descendants throughout the early Islamic period. The immediate response was varied. ‘Alī was joined by about 10,000 men, many of them early settlers who looked to him to right the injustices which had been done to them. ‘Alī was probably helped in establishing his control in that the most prominent tribal leaders, al-Ash‘ath b. Qays and Jarīr b. ‘Abd Allāh, were serving in Iran at that time and did not return to Kūfa until after he had been generally acknowledged. Mālik al-Ashtar was the most determined and militant of ‘Alī’s followers and probably persuaded many of the qurrā to throw in their lot with him. He was also vigorously opposed to Mu‘āwiya, who had expelled him from Syria a few years previously as a troublemaker.
In the year 37 (spring and summer 657), ‘Alī led his forces, now swollen by the arrival of al-Ash‘ath b. Qays and other tribal leaders, up the Euphrates, where they came into confrontation with Mu‘āwiya’s Syrian followers at Ṣiffīn, near Raqqa. There was a marked reluctance to do battle, and for three months the armies confronted each other with little more than occasional skirmishes. It was not at this stage a struggle for the caliphate, since Mu‘āwiya had made no claims to this office; he wanted the punishment of the murderers of ‘Uthmān and the acceptance of his right to continue as the governor of Syria. ‘Alī for his part wanted his opponent to acknowledge his authority by taking the bay‘a or oath of allegiance, while he was quite unable to punish all those implicated in the murder of ‘Uthmān, since these included Mālik al-Ashtar, now his right-hand man in Kūfa, and others of his supporters. There also developed a strong regional aspect to the conflict. The Arabic sources often describe it as a conflict between the ahl (‘people’, but in this case the Arab fighters) of Iraq and the ahl of Syria, and tribes were often divided, with members of the Syrian branch fighting their Iraqi fellow-tribesmen. In Ṣafar 37/July–August 657, a real battle developed but was rapidly brought to a halt when the Syrians held up leaves from the Qur’ān and appealed for arbitration. Despite al-Ashtar’s determination to continue to fight, there was a strong feeling on the Iraqi side against shedding Muslim blood and the battle was halted. There were many reasons for the Iraqis to offer peace, despite what seems to have been a military advantage. Al-Ash‘ath b. Qays warned that the enemies of Islam would take advantage of the dispute; Mu‘āwiya had not as yet secured a truce with the Byzantines, while al-Ash‘ath, having been until recently in Iran himself, knew that the country was far from pacified. He also had no wish to see ‘Alī’s power increased, since the caliph relied so heavily on the qurrā and the rivalry was given a personal edge when ‘Alī patronized a rival leader, Ḥujr b. ‘Adī, within al-Ash‘ath’s own tribe of Kinda. If the tribal leaders were reluctant to go all the way with ‘Alī, so were many of the qurrā’; after all, the Syrians were simply fighting for the sort of political and financial autonomy that the Iraqis had struggled for during the reign of ‘Uthmān, and they too might have wanted a compromise which left the caliph with very restricted powers of interference.
In this way, ‘Alī was obliged to agree to arbitration, not about who should be caliph, but rather over the issues which divided him and Mu‘āwiya. However, the arbitration agreement, of which the text survives, did not acknowledge his title of amīr al-mu’minīn, simply giving his personal name, as it gave Mu‘āwiya’s. Two arbitrators were then named; Mu‘āwiya chose ‘Amr, the conqueror of Egypt, who was his chief adviser at this time, while the Iraqis chose Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī. This was another blow to ‘Alī’s position, since Abū Mūsā was not especially attached to his cause but was rather the spokesman for Kūfan and other Iraqi interests. And so it was agreed that the arbitrators should meet in a year’s time, probably on neutral ground at Adhruh. on the borders between Syria and the Ḥijāz.
The arbitration agreement fatally weakened Alī’s position. He had been forced to deal with Mu‘āwiya on equal terms and abandoned his unchallenged right to lead the community. With this advantage gone, many began to have doubts about his leadership, and the hastily assembled coalition began to disintegrate. Tribal leaders listened with interest to Mu‘āwiya, who offered to guarantee their status in return for support, which many of them secretly gave him.
At the other side of the political spectrum, ‘Alī was rejected by some elements of the qurrā’, who felt that he had forfeited his rights to their support by agreeing to the arbitration. On his return to Iraq, they split off from his army and went to Nahrawān in the heart of the Sawād. ‘Alī was able to persuade some of them to return, and the rest were attacked and defeated, but the survivors fled to continue the struggle elsewhere. Probably because they had gone out (Arabic kharaja) from ‘Alī’s army, they were known as Khawārij (sing. Khārijī) and their influence on Islamic thought and politics was out of all proportion to their small numbers. In the beginning, they objected to ‘Alī because he had agreed to arbitration, while they held that God was the only true arbitrator and that ‘Alī and those who thought like him were not just wrong, they were unbelievers and not true Muslims; hence, the Khawārij should have no dealings with them. In the next half-century, the Khawārij established a whole series of little Islamic republics in the area of the Gulf, from which they terrorized the surrounding unbelievers. These groups rejected the urban life of Kūfa and returned to the bedouin ways they had so recently left, in the areas of eastern and northeastern Arabia, from which most of them had originally come. The movement must be seen as a fierce protest by small groups who believed that they were the only true Muslims in a world where Islam had become too easy and had become exploited by vested interests who had no understanding of true religion. They were opposed, as all the qurrā were, to the traditional tribal leaders but also to the Quraysh, whose claims to leadership they totally rejected. When a group chose a leader for themselves, they might call him amīr al-mu’minīn, but his powers were limited and descent was no qualification for office. Thus, their ideas reflect the rejection of traditional tribal society and, at the same time, the urban life the Ḥijāzī élite had forced on the Muslims by settling them in Kūfa and Baṣra and paying them pensions. They sought a third way of establishing Islamic society: pious, egalitarian, nomad and independent. Not all Khawārij, however, were violent, nor did all embrace the desert life. In Umayyad times, Baṣra became a centre of Khārijī thought and debate, as well as of missionary activity in ‘Umān and north Africa. But in the Jazīra, the old tradition of Khārijī brigandage lingered on until the fourth/tenth century.
The secession of the Khawārij and the coolness of the tribal leaders meant that ‘Alī’s strength melted away slowly but steadily. Exactly what happened at the arbitration is not clear, since there are many different accounts. It is certain, however, that by the time the arbitrators met, the question of who was to be caliph was a very open one. Mu‘āwiya, while not claiming the office for himself, suggested the appointment of a shūrā, and compromise candidates like ‘Umar’s son ‘Abd Allāh tried but failed to win general approval. The meeting broke up without agreement but its deliberations were becoming irrelevant. Egypt was the next bone of contention; ‘Alī attempted to secure this rich prize more firmly for himself by despatching Mālik al-Ashtar as the governor, but he was forestalled. There can be no doubt that ‘Amr had supported Mu‘āwiya’s cause in exchange for the governorate of Egypt, the land he had conquered but been deprived of by both ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī. In the year after Ṣiffīn, he returned in triumph and remained in control until his death five years later.
The loss of Egypt to ‘Alī’s cause was accompanied by a more serious disintegration of his authority in Kūfa, and his coalition, divided by its own internal contradictions and demoralized by the apparent irresolution of its leader, soon dissolved; only the Anṣār and some elements of the qurrā’, who like Mālik al-Ashtar had remained loyal, continued to support his case. Meanwhile, after the arbitration, Mu‘āwiya openly asserted his claims to the caliphate and reached agreement with many of the tribal leaders. The end came with unexpected swiftness in 40/661 when ‘Alī was assassinated in the mosque of Kūfa, not by one of his rival’s agents, but by a member of the Khawārij. His son al-Ḥasan was soon persuaded to abandon any claim to the succession, and Mu‘āwiya, aided and supported by the ashrāf of Iraq, was able to occupy the country without serious resistance. It was not just a victory of Mu‘āwiya over ‘Alī but it was also a victory of the Quraysh and their Syrian followers over the Iraqis and, within Iraq itself, of the ashrāf over the qurrā’, but the conflicts were by no means over and in different forms they were to plague the Umayyad regime for the next century, and bring about its eventual downfall.
The death of ‘Alī brings to an end the era of the Rāshidūn, the four “orthodox” caliphs of Islamic tradition, sometimes also known as the “patriarchal” caliphs. It had been a period of very great achievement. The vast Muslim conquests were by no means complete, northeastern Iran and Sind in the east and northern Africa and Spain in the west were not occupied until the Umayyad period, but a huge area was already under Muslim government; one vast empire had been destroyed, another severely weakened. But Muslim rule was not imposed by brute force alone: the armies were fairly small, and in areas like Egypt, the Jazīra and the Iranian plateau, the number of Muslim settlers was insignificant compared with the local population; and yet only in Iran there is an indication of widespread popular resistance. The Muslims may have had serious differences among themselves, but the local populations were either unwilling or unable to take advantage of this. Another remarkable achievement was the maintenance of the unity of the Muslim community in the face of regionalist tendencies. Despite their differences, almost all Muslims believed that they should be governed by a single caliph, and despite the vast geographical dispersal, they kept a common religion and a common culture.
Not everything had been easy or smooth, however, and problems had developed which divided the community both at this time and in the centuries to come. Essentially, they were those which had already been apparent after the Prophet’s death, and the questions the community had faced at that time – who should be caliph and what powers he was to have and who should constitute the élite of the Islamic state – were no nearer a generally acceptable answer twenty-five years, four caliphs and one civil war later. It was resolution of these questions which was to take all the power and skill of the Umayyad caliphs and their servants.