The Silent Qur’an and the Speaking Qur’an: Scriptural Sources of Islam Between History and Fervor

Violence and Scripture in the Book of Sulaym Ibn Qays

The Book of Sulaym the son of Qays—Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays—also known as the Book of the Saqīfa (Kitāb al-Saqīfa), contains, at least in its earliest stratum, the oldest depiction of the Shi’ite perception of the violent events that marked the death and the succession of the Prophet.¹ Extremely popular from the Middle Ages up to our own day—the large number of manuscripts and its countless printings appear to indicate this—the work has at the same time been both the reflection and the instigator of the most basic theological and political concepts of Shi’ism. Setting aside its contents, despite their capital importance, its considerable antiquity, partly authentic and partly presumed, since it is made up of several layers from different periods, has counted for much.

Early Shi’ite literature is still not sufficiently well known. By that I designate those writings prior to the great corpus of Shi’ite Hadith elaborated for the most part between the beginning of the third and the start of the fourth centuries AH (roughly 850 to 950 CE), the corpus formed by the compilations of the great traditionists such as al-Sayyārī, al-Ḥibarī, al-Barqī, al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī, Furāt al-Kūfī, al-ʿAyyāshī, al-Kulaynī, and a few others.² Put another way, our knowledge of the sources on which these authors drew is still quite incomplete. Up until now, a few rare scholars have embarked on a critical examination of this immense and unexplored field of research: Etan Kohlberg, in his fundamental article on the “four hundred original writings” (al-uṣūl al-arbaʿu mi’a) drew the attention of the Western scholarly world to these older works, most of which are lost and have been attributed, at least in the case of most of them, to the immediate disciples of historical imams.³ Moreover, in his work on Ibn Ṭāwūs, henceforth indispensable for any study of classical Shi’ism, Kohlberg presents and studies a large number of writings, many of which are quite early.⁴ Then there is Hossein Modarressi, whose recent, and magisterial, book provides a first finely documented overview of Shi’ite writings deemed to have been written during the first three centuries after the Hijra.⁵ This same scholar had earlier examined the question in his bibliographical work on the textual tradition in Shi’ite jurisprudence.⁶ Lastly, Hassan Ansari has devoted several articles in Persian, as rich in suggestions for further research as they are pertinent, to the very oldest Shi’ite literature; articles that have appeared in Iranian publications—unfortunately, little known to Western scholars—or on the Internet.⁷ These pioneering studies afford scholars numerous areas of investigation into the earliest written sources of Shi’ism. In just the same way, the present study also endeavors to make a modest contribution with some brief bibliographical and historical notes, together with translated and annotated excerpts from a major work of nascent Shi’ism which has, however, remained almost totally unknown.

The Work and Its Putative Author

According to Shi’ite tradition, the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays, also called Aṣl Sulaym b. Qays,⁸ or even Kitāb al-saqīfa,⁹ is the work of Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī, the disciple of the first imam, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, and accordingly one of the very first Shi’ite, if not Islamic, writings. In the main it is devoted to a Shi’ite perception of the events which marked the death and succession of the Prophet Muḥammad, and specifically the “conspiracy” cunningly stirred up by certain of the Prophet’s companions, particularly ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, in order to seize power by installing Abū Bakr on the caliphal throne and shunting ʿAlī aside from what belonged to him by divine right, by the will of God and His Messenger. This conspiracy thus initiates the corruption and violence of the new religion for most of its faithful.

These contents, to which we shall return when we translate several representative passages, together with the presumed antiquity of the work, accord it a particular significance in the Shi’ite view. A hadith ascribed to the sixth imam of the Twelvers, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, illustrates this prestige: “He among our partisans [literally: our Shīʿites] and those who love us who does not have the Book of Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī, is tantamount to one who has no share in our cause and who knows nothing of the basis of our doctrines [literally: “our foundations”]. This book forms the alphabet of Shi’ism and is one of the supreme secrets of the descendants of Muḥammad.”¹⁰ Certain early sources record a tradition going back to the fourth imam, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, who supposedly said, after hearing a disciple recite the Book of Sulaym to him, “Everything that Sulaym says is truthful, may God have mercy on him. All of this forms a part of our teaching (i.e., we imams) and we recognize it.”¹¹

What can be known about Sulaym and the book that bears his name? The entries on him in Shi’ite prosopographical and bibliographical works, alongside certain critical studies, are numerous indeed.¹² Sulaym b. Qays Abū Ṣādiq¹³ al-Hilālī al-ʿĀmirī al-Kūfī was one of the Followers (tābiʿūn, i.e., the generation which followed that of the Prophet’s companions—ṣaḥāba). A contemporary of ʿAlī (d. 40/660), and one of his most ardent initiates, he also over the course of his long life came to know the four succeeding imams, al-Ḥasan (d. 49/669), al-Ḥusayn (d. 61/680), ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. ca. 92/711), and the infant Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. ca. 115/732). According to traditional accounts, in early youth he began composing a written record of the events and dramatic conflicts that followed the Prophet’s death and marked the history of the first caliphs, basing himself on accounts collected close to ʿAlī and several of his chief supporters and disciples, such as Salmān al-Fārisī, Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, or al-Miqdād b. Aswad, as well as yet other protagonists of these events.

After the assassination of ʿAlī and the institution of the violent anti-Alid policy of repression of the first Umayyads, Sulaym was sought by the cruel anti-Alid governor of Iraq, al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 95/714), who wanted to put him to death. He escaped from Iraq and took refuge in southern Iran, in the small village of Nobandagān (pronounced Nawbandajān in Arabic), in the province of Fārs (a village of this name still exists in this province between the cities of Dārāb and Fasā),¹⁴ bringing his precious book along with him—the written testimony of what he deemed the greatest betrayal of the Prophet and his family, as related directly by certain of the protagonists themselves. Aged and harassed, quite rightly believing that death was near and fearing the complete loss of his manuscript, he discovered a trustworthy beneficiary in the person of the adolescent “Fīrūz” Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh (d. ca. 138/755–56).¹⁵ Shortly afterward, Sulaym died and was buried at Nobandagān, around the year 76/695–96 according to most accounts, while al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf still held sway in Iraq, as the sources emphasize.

Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh in turn took the book that Sulaym had entrusted to him to several large cities, notably Baṣra, Mecca, and Medina, so as to verify its contents with scholars and experts, religious authorities, and those witnesses to events who were still living. In the last-named city he had the book read to the fourth imam, who, after hearing it all, pronounced the solemn declaration we have already mentioned. In 138/755–56 Abān in his turn entrusted the text, which by now had been certified as correct, to the Shi’ite traditionist ʿUmar b. Udhayna (d. ca. 169/785), a renowned disciple of both the sixth and seventh imams. Still in keeping with the traditional account, it was thanks to this personage that the Book of Sulaym came to be widely diffused through seven great Hadith experts in the Iraqi towns of Baṣra and Kūfa who received and then circulated it everywhere.

A Book with Multiple Strata

Notwithstanding the rich prosopographical tradition relating to our personage, Sulaym’s existence and therefore the authenticity of the attribution of his book were quickly cast into doubt, even among Shi’ites, as it appears. The first to deny Sulaym’s historical existence seems to have been the Imami savant Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Wāsiṭī (d. 411/1020).¹⁶ The information is taken up again by two authors in the seventh/thirteenth century, the Imami Ibn Dāwūd al-Ḥillī (b. 647/1249, d. after 707/1307) in his prosopographical work (where his skepticism remains utterly ambiguous) and the Muʿtazilite Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd (d. 656/1258) in his commentary on the Nahj al-balāgha.¹⁷ Among critical scholars, Modarressi also holds that Sulaym b. Qays never actually existed and was nothing more than a pen name adopted by a group of violently anti-Umayyad supporters of ʿAlī from the town of Kūfa.¹⁸ It is difficult to accept this assertion, which radically rejects a rich bibliographical and prosopographical tradition; moreover, even if the attribution is problematic, the putative author must have really existed and been respected by the Alids, otherwise what legitimacy could a writing ascribed to a fictitious person have possessed? True, many elements in the reports about Sulaym b. Qays could be coded accounts bearing a hidden symbolic meaning: Sulaym (who would have actually existed) might have served as a “cipher” to designate the Alids of Kūfa at the end of the Umayyad period. The figures of Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh and of ʿUmar b. Udhayna, both “clients” (mawālī, i.e., manumitted slaves) of the Banū ʿAbd al-Qays, could symbolize the role of “clients,” especially those of Iranian origin, in the reception and transmission of the work. In such a context, Sulaym’s flight to Iran and his taking refuge in a place called Nobandagān in particular seem to take on a singular import. The Persian toponym Nobandagān can have two meanings: either “the place of the new dam,” probably the true meaning of the toponym (the word can be broken down as follows: now/new + band/dam + the suffix indicating regional location agān), or “new servants,” perhaps the meaning that the account of the transmission of the Book of Sulaym seeks to evoke, with the sense of “new converts to Islam” (composed of now/new + banda/servant or adorer—the Persian equivalent of the Arabic ʿabd—plus the plural ending for terms ending with the vowel a, i.e., gān). In this way our text and the doctrines that it conveyed, under threat in Iraq, would have found a warm welcome in southern Iran among new Iranian converts and would have been brought by the latter and secretly diffused in Iraq and then elsewhere. Even “the seven experts” who spread the copy of ʿUmar b. Udhayna abroad could be metaphors for the Seven Climes, in other words, “the whole world.”¹⁹

Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī would also have deemed the work to be a forgery by Abān b. Abī ʿAyyāsh.²⁰ His exact contemporary, the renowned Imami theologian al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022), in his evocatively entitled book The Rectification of Belief, declares that some of the data in the Book of Sulaym became corrupted and should not be considered authentic.²¹ The contemporary Imami religious scholar Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shaʿrānī (d. 1393/1973) also believes that the Book of Sulaym is a forgery—an apocryphal work, to be sure—even though edited for a laudable purpose, to wit, the denunciation of the violence and injustice visited upon the Prophet’s family.²²

In the opposing camp, defenders of the historical existence of Sulaym and of the authenticity of his book are numerous, especially, as must needs be, among Imami Shi’ites. Rather than going back over the many bibliographical and prosopographical sources, which have already been mentioned, here we deem it sufficient to emphasise certain facts: from the third/ninth century onward, Sulaym is frequently cited by Shi’ite authors and particularly by the compilers of traditions.²³ A non-Shi’ite scholar as well-informed and erudite as Ibn al-Nadīm presents the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays, in the fourth/tenth century, as the very first Shi’ite book (awwalu kitābin ẓahara li’l-shīʿa).²⁴ By the Imamis the work was reckoned one of the “Four Hundred Original Works.”²⁵ Authors as early and as prestigious as al-Masʿūdī, al-Najāshī, al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, or even al-Nuʿmānī, from the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, have stated that they had the Book of Sulaym in their possession.²⁶ A single or several of the many manuscripts of the work have reached modern authors such as al-Sayyid Hāshim al-Baḥrānī (d. 1107/1695–96 or 1109/1697–98) or Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (1110/1699) by way of such medieval authors as Ibn Shahrāshūb or Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Ṭāwūs in the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries.²⁷ The systematic doubts cast by Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī, almost invariably taken seriously by other Shi’ite authors, will be refuted from the eighth/fourteenth century onward, by al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325) and later authors up to the twentieth century when the great Imami encyclopedist Āghā Bozorg al-Ṭihrānī (d. 1389/1969) went so far as to question the authenticity of the Kitāb al-rijāl/al-ḍuʿafā’ of Ibn al-Ghaḍā’irī—and to do so in a well-documented way—as it in fact contains a good number of elements contrary to Shi’ite beliefs. In fact, Āghā Bozorg presents this book as a work edited by an opponent of Shi’ites and ascribed to a Shi’ite scholar in order to undermine their credibility in general and Sulaym and his book in particular.²⁸

Even so, the pseudographical character of the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays is obvious. The presence in its midst of data at times originating several centuries later than the period of its presumed author—and especially the many passages on the Abbasid Revolution or even the number twelve of the Imams—permits the historian no doubt in this regard. Even so, it is undeniable that successive redactions, extending until after the period of the historical imams at the beginning of the fourth/tenth century, developed around a very early primitive kernel. Modarressi believes that this original kernel is the oldest Shi’ite writing that has come down to us, and the arguments he puts forward, based on a meticulous intertextual study, seem apt indeed:²⁹ to begin with, the work alludes in numerous passages to the unjust rulers who govern the community after the Prophet’s death, the number of which is restricted to twelve: the first three caliphs, Muʿāwiya and his son Yazīd, the seven descendants of al-Ḥakam b. Abī al-ʿĀṣ, namely, the Umayyad caliphs Marwān I, ʿAbd al-Malik, Walīd I, Sulaymān, ʿUmar II, Yazīd II and finally, Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik.³⁰ Only the first five of the imams are named explicitly, and the text insists on the fact that the imamate is carried forward in the name of Muḥammad al-Bāqir.³¹ Amongst the descendants of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, eight are presented as being “the Lords of Paradise:” the Prophet Muḥammad, ʿAlī, Jaʿfar, and Ḥamza (the brother and the uncle of ʿAlī, respectively), al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn, Fāṭima, and finally, the Mahdi, the savior at the end of time.³² This tally is obviously anterior to the belief, probably dating from the beginnings of the Abbasid dynasty, according to which the Imams of ʿAlī’s line are far superior to such personages as Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib and Ḥamza b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, who are included in this list. Lastly, the text expresses a hope for the fall of the Umayyads that would come about through a descendant of Fāṭima generally and of al-Ḥusayn specifically—a hope in an eschatological form current among the proto-Shi’ite Alids of Kūfa whose circumstances are at times given detailed description.³³ Hossein Modarressi emphasizes that all these elements provide proof of the fact that the original text of the Book of Sulaym was written by proto-Shi’ites of Kūfa, followers of al-Ḥusayn, during the final years of the reign of the Umayyad Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (reg. from 105 to 125/724–743).³⁴ These arguments, corroborated by the statement of Ibn al-Nadīm that we know already, according to which the Book of Sulaym is the first Shi’ite work, appear definitely to indicate that the primitive kernel, which occurs in diluted form in the present Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays, represents the oldest Shi’ite book which has come down to us. It is interesting to note that the authors of the later additions did not deem it necessary to suppress this primitive kernel despite the fact that its drift sometimes contradicts these later additions.

The existence of portions added to an earlier text in accord with the needs of each epoch is stressed in equal measure by Patricia Crone in the study that she devoted to a fragment of the Book of Sulaym, providing a letter supposedly from the Caliph Muʿāwiya to Ziyād b. Abīhi, his violently anti-Alid governor of Iraq.³⁵ According to her, this text, emerging from milieus belonging to a Hāshimite Shi’ism with Rāfiḍite tendencies,³⁶ but not necessarily Ḥusaynid, must have come into being right after the victory of the Abbasid Revolution but prior to the anti-Alid swerve of the new masters of empire, perhaps just before the revolt of Muḥammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya in 145/762, and in any case, not after 164/780, by which time the last great representatives of Hāshimite Shi’ism had died.³⁷ These successive additions, at times in contradiction with other elements provided by the text, seem to indicate at any event that the text, in the form in which it has come down to us, has not been subjected to suppression of material and that it contains to a high degree of probability and in the great majority of manuscripts, the whole of the original kernel.³⁸ Moreover, while it is easy to recognize certain additions, thanks to obvious anachronisms, conversely, it is difficult if not impossible to reconstruct the whole of the original text of the Book of Sulaym, fragmented and dispersed as it appears to be throughout the entirety of the extant text.

A Work of Enduring Popularity

Before moving on to the contents of the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays, something should be said about its editions and its manuscripts, the majority of which bear witness to the importance and popularity of this work among Shi’ites. Our book has been published five times in Najaf (Iraq), once in Tehran, and three times in Qumm; the best, and the most recent, edition is that prepared by M. B. Anṣārī Zanjānī Khū’īnī.³⁹ A translation into Urdu exists, made by M. M. S. Rasūlavī Multānī in 1375/1956 and published in Pakistan in 1391/1971. There are two translations into Persian: first, that done by I. Anṣārī in 1400/1979, then completed in 1416/1996, printed in several hundreds of thousand copies over some fifteen years, at Tehran, Qumm, and Mashhad. Then, that of M. B. Kamara’ī, published in Tehran in 1412/1991. The totality of the print runs of these editions exceeds several million copies.

With regard to the manuscripts of the Book of Sulaym, the rather cursory and confused elucidations of Āghā Bozorg al-Ṭihrānī ⁴⁰ have been methodically, and helpfully, supplemented by the latest editor of the text, Shaykh Muḥammad Bāqir Anṣārī, in a hundred or so pages.⁴¹ According to the bio-bibliographical notices devoted to Sulaym, together with the manuscript tradition of his book, seven renowned traditionists of the twelfth/eighth century from the cities of Baṣra and Kūfa received the work from ʿUmar b. Udhayna and put it into circulation; these were Ibn Abū ʿUmayr, Ḥammād b. ʿĪsā, ʿUthmān b. ʿĪsā, Maʿmar b. Rāshid al-Baṣrī, Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar al-Yamānī, Hammām b. Nāfiʿ al-Ṣanʿānī, and ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī. It is due to these scholars that the six categories of manuscript of The Book of Sulaym were circulated:

a) The copies coming from al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (d. 465/1072), the isnād (or chain of transmitters) of which go back to Ibn Abī ʿUmayr. Six copies of this type are presented by the sources; of these three have survived. They contain forty-eight hadiths and were widely diffused from the fifth/eleventh century onward in the Shi’ite cities of Najaf, Karbalā’, and Ḥilla.

b) The copies coming from Muḥammad b. Ṣubayḥ b. Rajā’ (fourth/tenth century), the chain of transmitters of which goes back to Ibn Abī ʿUmayr; copies distributed first in Yemen, then in Syria, especially in Damascus. Twenty-two copies of this have been identified, twelve of which still survive. They contain forty-one of the forty-eight hadiths of the preceding category, though presented in a different order.

c) The copies deriving from Abū Muḥammad al-Rummānī after 609/1212–13. The beginning and the end are missing and, as a result, their chain of transmitters remains unknown. Six out of the fifteen manuscripts identified by the sources have survived. They diverge from the first two categories; specifically, twenty-two of their hadiths are found nowhere else. They are divided into two distinct parts, numbering thirty-two and seven traditions, respectively.

d) The copies deriving from the version of Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar al-Yamānī, transmitted by al-Ḥasan b. Abī Yaʿqūb al-Dīnawarī (second–third/eighth–ninth centuries). Of the nine manuscripts identified by the sources, only a single one has apparently come down to us. It contains forty traditions presented in the same order as in category b.

e) A series of ten manuscripts presented by various sources but that have not been located and the characteristics of which remain unknown to us.

f) An old copy, which seems to have belonged to Shaykh Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūrī of the city of Khorramshahr (in Iranian Khuzistan); in Kufic script, written on gazelle skin, and dating seemingly from the second/eighth century; lost in 1981 in the bombardment of the city during the Iran-Iraq War.

As one of the titles under which it is known indicates, the Book of Sulaym b. Qays is chiefly devoted to the events of the Saqīfa (see the introduction) and its most deleterious consequences for the nascent Muslim community, from the Shi’ite point of view. Indeed, it was on the porch (saqīfa) of the clan of Banū Sāʿida that the meeting took place in which the shunting aside of ʿAlī from the succession to the Prophet and the election of Abū Bakr were decided. According to Shi’ites, this fundamental betrayal of Muḥammad’s most cherished intention signals the beginning of the corruption of official, majority Islam. Whence the Shi’ite adage, “Saqīfa heralds Karbalā,’” that is, if the official ruling power could massacre the grandson of the Prophet and all of his family at Karbalā’, a few decades after the Prophet’s death, it was because of the anti-Alid coup d’état that occurred at Saqīfa.

In short, the Book of Sulaym is the account of a conspiracy, hatched long before the Prophet’s death, and aiming to remove the latter and the closest members of his family, to alter the very nature of his religion in order to take hold of power and wrest Muslims away. The protagonists of this diabolical conspiracy were ʿUmar, Abū Bakr, and Abū ʿUbayda b. Al-Jarrāḥ, their accomplice.⁴² The language of the book is simple and direct; the traditions that make it up report the events and the statements of the protagonists taken on the spot. The work contains almost no speculative elaboration of a theological stripe—nevertheless, it does include some doctrinal portions, probably added later, of a cosmological, anthropological, and imamological type—and so appears to reflect the beliefs of the Alid population of Iraq during the very first centuries after the Hijra.

To gain some sense of the work’s contents, particularly with regard to the problematic issues that concern us, I shall translate several long extracts, which, in my view, set the scene for the episodes of violence that followed the Prophet’s death and that are articulated in the scriptural sources. These excerpts will be followed by the table of contents of the work.

The first chapter (the chapters are called hadith, “tradition,” “account,” “teaching”) is dedicated to the transmission of our book. The second is devoted to the death of Muḥammad and his dire predictions of the tragic destiny of his family and descendants.⁴³ The excerpts translated come from chapters 3, 4, 10, and 11, which explicitly broach questions linked to the power struggles over the Prophet’s succession and their relationship with the elaboration of both the Qur’an and the Hadith.

Fragments from the Book of Sulaym b. Qays

CHAPTER 3 (EXCERPTS)⁴⁴

This chapter is devoted to the occurrences at Saqīfa from the report of the Companion al-Barā’ b. ʿĀzib during the time when ʿAlī and the other members of the Prophet’s family were occupied with his funeral. The account emphasizes the various initiatives and ruses of ʿAlī’s adversaries, with Abū Bakr and ʿUmar in the forefront, to seize power while at the same time attempting to neutralize any resistance. In the process, they try to divide the Prophet’s family by tempting al-ʿAbbās, one of the most respected members of the Banū Hāshim (see the figures in the front matter of this volume), with power. The importance of this chapter, like the chapter following it, lies especially in the fact that they in some ways set the scene that will serve as a backdrop for the entirety of the work.

[p. 571] Sulaym says: I heard al-Barā’ b. ʿĀzib⁴⁵ say: “I feel intense affection for the Banū Hāshim [the direct lineage of the Prophet, his immediate family]. This was so as much during the lifetime of the Messenger of God [Muḥammad] as after his death. When the Messenger was at the point of death, he asked ʿAlī to allow no one other than himself to wash his body. In fact, no one is permitted to see the private parts of the Prophet without going blind. ʿAlī replied to him: ‘Messenger of God! Who then will assist me in washing you?’ The Prophet stated: ‘Gabriel and other angels.’ ʿAlī then washed the lifeless body of the Messenger. Al-Faḍl b. al-ʿAbbās [another cousin of Muḥammad] poured the water,⁴⁶ and the angels shifted the position of the body in accord with ʿAlī’s needs…”

Al-Barā’ b. ʿĀzib goes on to say: “When the Messenger died, I feared that [the men of] Quraysh [p. 572] would join forces to seize the power that reverted by right to the Banū Hāshim.⁴⁷ Then, when people swore oaths of allegiance to Abū Bakr, I was dumbstruck like a father who has just lost his child, a feeling added on to my grief over the death of the Messenger. I began to move about, watching the influential men [of Quraysh] while the Banū Hāshim were busy with the funeral rites. Moreover, I was informed of the claims of Saʿd b. ʿUbāda and his ignorant followers,⁴⁸ but I never joined up with them. Later I came to know that they did not achieve their objective in the end.

I went back and forth between them [the supporters of Saʿd? The Banū Hāshim?] and the mosque, all the while seeking out the notable men of Quraysh. Then I realized that Abū Bakr and ʿUmar were missing. Shortly afterward, I saw them along with Abū ʿUbayda [b. al-Jarrāḥ],⁴⁹ in company with the people of the Saqīfa and wearing Yemeni garments.⁵⁰ They caught hold of everyone who passed by them and, if it was an acquaintance, they placed his hand in Abū Bakr’s hand [i.e., they made him swear an oath of allegiance to him], whether he wished to or not! This scene, on top of the misfortune that had stricken the Messenger, drove me crazy. I went back to the mosque quickly; then I repaired to the abode of the Banū Hāshim who were keeping the house closed to everyone unknown to their family. I knocked loudly on the door and cried out, ‘O People of the Family [of the Prophet].’⁵¹ Al-Faḍl b. al-ʿAbbās came to the door, and I told him that the people had sworn an oath in favor of Abū Bakr. He replied, ‘You have covered yourself in shame until the end of time. You have disobeyed my orders.’ I [p. 573] kept silent, concealing from him the agony that tormented me.

When night fell, inside the mosque I remembered the Messenger reciting the Qur’an. I rose up and went out, heading to the porch of the clan of the Banū Bayāḍa where several people were conversing quietly among themselves. They fell silent when I drew near to them. I moved away when they recognized me and called after me. I went up to them and saw Miqdād, Abū Dharr, Salmān, ʿAmmār b. Yāsir, ʿUbāda b. al-Ṣāmit, Ḥudhayfa b. al-Yamān, and al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām.⁵² At this moment Ḥudhayfa said: ‘By God! They will do as I told you. By God, I do not lie to you nor has anyone lied to me!’ Some sought to recoup the matter [of the succession to the Prophet] by organizing a consultative meeting between the Emigrés and the Helpers. Ḥudhayfa then suggested to us: ‘Let us go to see Ubayy b. Kaʿb for he knows what I know.’⁵³

We went to Ubayy and knocked on his door. He came up behind the door and, without opening it, he said: ‘Who is it?’ Al-Miqdād replied to him. Ubayy then said:

—Why are you there?

—Open the door to us. The matter on which we have come is too important to be discussed through the door.

—No! I won’t open the door because I know the reason for your coming. I will not open my house to you because you are there to discuss the oath [regarding the caliphate].

—Indeed, yes!

—Is Ḥudhayfa with you?

—Yes.

—What he says is just. For myself I will not open my door until this matter is concluded. What will happen later [p. 574] will be yet worse. I take refuge with God.⁵⁴

[…] The whole matter came to the ears of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. They sought out [their accomplices] Abū ʿUbayda b. al-Jarrāḥ and al-Mughīra b. Shuʿba and asked for their advice.⁵⁵ Al-Mughīra said: ‘I think that you must meet with al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib [the Prophet’s uncle, one of the eldest and most respected members of the clan of Banū Hāshim] and tempt him by promising him, both him and his descendants, a share in power. In this way you will be easy in your mind with regard to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib since if al-ʿAbbās comes over to your side, that will be a compelling argument in people’s eyes and the problem of ʿAlī [now isolated] will be solved.’”

Barā’ went on to say: “On the second night after the death of the Messenger of God, the four accomplices went to the house of al-ʿAbbās. After praising God’s greatness, Abū Bakr said: ‘God sent Muḥammad for you [Muslims in general? His family in particular?] as a prophet (nabī) and for believers as a divine helpmate (walī) responsible for their affairs.⁵⁶ In this way He privileged believers by choosing Muḥammad among them. Then He called him to Him and left people free to choose what is best for them, in unity, not in separation. And so the people have chosen me as its leader and responsible authority, and I have accepted. With God’s help, I fear no weakness, no hesitation, no anguish. Even so, I have been informed that I have an opponent who denounces me and goes against the will of the people [i.e., ʿAlī]. He relies on your authority [you, the Prophet’s Family], and you have become the guarantee of his safety and respectability. Now, you must either realign yourselves with the will of the people or dissuade him from going back on his decision. We have come to you to propose to you, to both you and your descendants, a part in this matter [the caliphate], for you are the uncle of the Messenger of God. We grant you this favor despite the fact that the people, aware of your rank and the rank of your companion [ʿAlī], want no part of you [p. 575].’

Then ʿUmar stepped up: ‘Now then, you, the Banū Hāshim, have only to keep quiet and stay where you are.⁵⁷ The Messenger of God belonged just as much to you as to us. We aren’t here because we have need of you but because we don’t wish there to be any reproach or dissension from what the Muslims have unanimously decided and that matters turn for the worse between the people and yourselves. So consider what is in your interest and that of the people…‘

Al-ʿAbbās then spoke [addressing Abū Bakr]: ‘As you have said, God chose Muḥammad as His prophet and as the divine helpmate who is responsible for the believers. If you seize power in the Messenger’s name, be aware that you usurp our rights and if you do so in the name of the believers, then we too are a part of them, and yet no one has asked for our opinion for we have not been consulted in any way. We do not want you to hold power. Already before now we were accounted believers and kept our distance with respect to you.⁵⁸ As for what you say regarding a share of power for me and my descendants, if this power belongs to you personally, then keep it for yourself, as we have no need of it, but if it is a question of the rights of the believers, then it is not for you to decide on their behalf without asking for their opinion. Lastly, if it belongs to us, we have no wish to share it with you. And you, ʿUmar, when you say that the Messenger belonged as much to us as to you, know that he was a tree of whom we are the branches, whereas you, you were merely sitting in his shade. And when you threaten us by saying that things will turn to the worse among the people, know that what you are now doing is in fact the main cause for that…‘[p. 576]. Then al-ʿAbbās recited one of his poems:

I never imagined that this matter would be deflected from the Banū Hāshim while Abū al-Ḥasan was in their midst [i.e., ʿAlī]!⁵⁹

Is it not he [ʿAlī] who first practiced Muslim prayer? Is he not the wisest of men concerning the vestiges of the past and the good teachings of the present?

Is it not he who is the closest Companion of the Prophet? He whom the angel Gabriel assisted during the funeral rites of the latter?

Is it not he who possesses the finest qualities among men and what he possesses other men do not have?

Who is it that has turned you away from him? Tell us so that we may recognize him, but know that your oath signals the onset of catastrophe.’”

CHAPTER 4 (EXCERPTS)

This chapter is the account of the events of the Saqīfa in the words of the Companion Salmān the Persian.⁶⁰ It includes the account of the conspiracy of Abū Bakr and his accomplices; the resistance of ʿAlī, his isolation amidst the Muslims as well as his elaboration of a complete recension of the Qur’an; the attack and the burning down of the house of ʿAlī and Fāṭima by ʿUmar and his strongmen, the martyrdom of Fāṭima and the arrest of ʿAlī and his sons; ʿAlī’s forced acceptance of the caliphate of his enemy.

[p. 577] Sulaym says: “I heard Salmān the Persian⁶¹ say: ‘After the Prophet’s death, when people did what they did, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and Abū ʿUbayda b. al-Jarrāḥ led them to the Helpers [who had their own candidate, Saʿd b. ʿUbāda] and set up ʿAlī’s argument against them,⁶² saying, “O group of Helpers! Those from Quraysh have a greater right than you in this matter since the Messenger of God came from them and the Emigrés are superior to you since God has mentioned them in his Book ahead of you and has deemed them to have priority.” The Messenger himself said, “The leaders belong to the [tribe of] Quraysh.”’

Salmān continued, “I went to ʿAlī while he was engaged in washing the lifeless body of the Messenger…[when he finished the funeral rites; p. 578]. He bade me enter the room along with Abū Dharr, al-Miqdād [two of ʿAlī’s loyal supporters], Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn. ʿAlī placed himself before us, and we all prayed behind him [over the dead man]. ʿĀ’isha was in the house as well, but knew nothing of all this since God had veiled her gaze.⁶³

[p. 580]…When night had fallen, ʿAlī set Fāṭima on a donkey, took [their two sons] al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn by the hand and went knocking on the doors of all those who had fought at Badr⁶⁴ as well as the Emigrés and the Helpers, reminding them of his rights [as proclaimed by the Prophet] and summoning them to come to his aid. Only forty-four men accepted. ʿAlī ordered them to go out at dawn [p. 581] armed and with their heads shaved, in order to swear the oath of fidelity to him and, if need be, to face death [in battle against ʿAlī’s enemies].

At dawn, only four persons came to the meeting-place…Abū Dharr, al-Miqdād, al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām, and myself [i.e., Salmān].

[This episode repeated itself three nights in a row and every morning ʿAlī found himself with the same four men.] When ʿAlī saw the duplicity and cowardice of people, he returned home and busied himself with compiling the Qur’an.⁶⁵ He did not emerge from his house until he had collected and arranged it since prior to that time, the Qur’an, scattered about, had been written only on separate leaves, on bits of wood and skin, on fragments of papyrus.

When ʿAlī had collected the whole Qur’an and made a copy of it himself, both the text (tanzīl) and its exegesis (ta’wīl),⁶⁶ Abū Bakr sent someone to him and demanded an oath of loyalty from him. ʿAlī sent the messenger back with the following message: ‘I am busy and I have promised not to leave my house except for prayer and to do this until I have compiled the totality of the Qur’an.’ They [i.e. Abū Bakr and his accomplices] left him in peace for several days.

After he had finished his work, ʿAlī wrapped the whole Qur’an in a cloth which he sealed. Then he went to join the people who had gathered around Abū Bakr in the mosque of the Messenger of God and in his most powerful voice, he thundered, ‘People! Since the Messenger’s death I have been occupied solely with his funeral and with collecting the entirety of the Qur’an. The entire Book is now gathered together in this piece of cloth. Not a single verse revealed by God [p. 582] to His Messenger is missing from it. Not a single verse of the Qur’an is missing from what I have assembled. Indeed, the Messenger had me recite every verse revealed and then he taught me its exegesis.⁶⁷ I am bringing this to you now so that tomorrow you will not look for some pretext by declaring ‘We know nothing of that’ and so that on the Day of Resurrection you cannot claim that I have not summoned you to support me, that I have not reminded you of my rights and that I have not brought you the entirety of the Book of God.’⁶⁸

ʿUmar answered him, ‘What we have of the Qur’an suffices us.⁶⁹ We have no need of what you are proposing to us.’

ʿAlī then returned home [p. 583]. ʿUmar said to Abū Bakr, ‘Send somebody to ʿAlī to compel him to give his oath or else we won’t achieve our objective [i.e., the unanimous fealty of the entire community], while if he does come over to our side we will be wholly at ease in our minds.’ Abū Bakr sent somebody to ʿAlī with the following message: ‘Respond affirmatively to the caliph of the Messenger of God (khalīfat rasūl Allāh).’ ʿAlī replied, ‘Glory be to God! Are you already ascribing lies to the Messenger? Abū Bakr and all of those who surround him know very well that God and His Messenger have designated as caliph no one other than myself!’ Abū Bakr shot back, ‘Respond affirmatively to the commander of the believers (amīr al-mu’minīn)…’ ʿAlī sent him the following reply: ‘Glory be to God! And yet, the matter is not so old as to be forgotten so soon! Abū Bakr knows perfectly well that this title has been reserved exclusively for me. They were seven when the Messenger ordered them to greet me as “Commander of the Believers.” Among the seven, he and his comrade ʿUmar asked then whether [in the matter of this title] it was a question of a right coming from God and His Messenger? And the Prophet answered them, “Yes. It is an undeniable right on the part of God and His Messenger. ʿAlī is the Commander of the Believers, the chief among Muslims, the standard-bearer of the best amongst you…” After receiving this reply, Abū Bakr and his accomplices left ʿAlī in peace that day.’

…[ʿAlī no longer left his house, p. 584]…ʿUmar said to Abū Bakr, ‘What prevents you from sending an envoy to ʿAlī to force him to follow you? Everyone else has sworn allegiance and on his side he has only four people with him.’ Abū Bakr was the gentler of the two, calmer and more far-sighted, ʿUmar the more aggressive, wrathful, violent…and he said, ‘Let’s send Qunfudh [my strongman] to ʿAlī’s house. He is an aggressive, wrathful, and violent man,⁷⁰ a freedman from the clan of ʿAdī b. Kaʿb [the clan of ʿUmar himself].’

Abū Bakr then sent Qunfudh, together with other men, to the home of ʿAlī, but he would not let them in…[Upon their return,] ʿUmar gave the order, ‘Return to the home of ʿAlī and if he does not let you in, force the door.’ They went back to ʿAlī’s house and asked to enter. Fāṭima stopped them, ‘I forbid you to enter my house.’ The cursed Qunfudh remained on the spot and sent other men to inform ʿUmar of the situation…[p. 585]. The latter was furious and cried out, ‘What are the women doing in there!’ He then told his men to gather some firewood. He collected some himself, and they went to put the sticks all around the house of ʿAlī, Fāṭima, and their two sons. ʿUmar then shouted, addressing the couple, ‘I swear by God that you must come out and give your oath to the caliph of the Messenger of God or else I will set fire to your house and burn you up with it.’ Fāṭima intervened at this point, ‘ʿUmar! What do we have to do with you?’

ʿUmar: ‘Open the door or we will burn down your house.’

Fāṭima: ‘ʿUmar! Have you no fear of God in so entering this house of mine [the Prophet’s daughter]?’

ʿUmar did not want to go back. He asked for wood, set fire to the door, which he then forced open, and he entered the house.⁷¹ Fāṭima rose up before him and lamented, crying out, ‘O my father, O Messenger of God!’ ʿUmar brandished his sword in its scabbard and struck her violently on her sides. Fāṭima cried out again invoking her father. ʿUmar struck her on the arm with his whip. She sobbed in pain, ‘Messenger of God! See how Abū Bakr and ʿUmar are mistreating your children!’⁷² [p. 586] At this moment ʿAlī sprang up, grabbed ʿUmar by the collar, flung him to the ground, and began hitting him violently in the face and neck, actually seeking to kill him. But then he recalled the last words which the Prophet had uttered secretly to him and said, ‘By Him who ennobled Muḥammad by prophecy, O son of Ṣahhāk [the mother of ʿUmar], were it not for the destiny which God has foreseen [for this community] and were it not for the oath which the Messenger made me swear, I would not have left you alive and you know it all too well!’ ʿUmar asked for assistance. His men entered. ʿAlī rushed for his sword…Qunfudh and his men attacked him and threw him to the ground; they immobilized him, bound him, and drew a cord around his throat. Fāṭima barred the door [to keep them from leading her husband away]. The cursed Qunfudh struck her a violent blow of his whip such that she bore the mark of it until her dying day [which occurred not long after]. May God damn Qunfudh and him who prescribed his behavior…[p. 588] Indeed, ʿUmar had ordered him to strike Fāṭima if she intervened to defend ʿAlī. This is why Qunfudh [after striking her] violently forced Fāṭima through the door of her house so that she suffered a broken rib and lost the child she was carrying in her womb.⁷³ From that day on, she could not leave her bed and died a martyr…” Salmān said, “When Abū Bakr and his entourage were made aware of these happenings, they all began to sob [with remorse], except for [three persons] Khālid b. al-Walīd, al-Mughīra b. Shuʿba,⁷⁴ and ʿUmar who said, ‘Women should not meddle in our affairs.’ Abū Bakr ordered that ʿAlī, shackled and brought there by force, be freed.⁷⁵ The latter then said to him, ‘How quickly you have usurped the place of the Messenger! By what right and in the name of what dignity do you summon people to follow you? Did you not once give an oath of allegiance to me, as God and His Messenger commanded?’ ʿUmar broke in, ‘Obey the caliph and stop your nonsense.’ ʿAlī: ‘And if I do not, what will you do?’ ʿUmar: ‘We will put you to death like a wretch [the rest of the chapter relates how ʿAlī, fearing for the life of his two sons, the Prophet’s only male descendants, decides resignedly to give his oath in favor of the caliphate of Abū Bakr].’”

CHAPTER 10 (EXCERPTS)

This chapter deals with numerous subjects. Our interest lies in the parts devoted to the problems connected with the authenticity and the transmission of the Hadith, as well as the relationship between these questions, the political events and the acts of violence committed against the members of the Prophet’s household (ahl al-bayt), and the Alids, their supporters.

[p. 620] Sulaym says, “I asked ʿAlī: ‘…people transmit many sayings concerning the interpretation of the Qur’an and the Hadith which are contrary [p. 621] to what I have heard from you. You claim that these sayings are false. Do people knowingly attribute falsehoods to the Messenger and interpret the Qur’an in accord with their [subjective] opinions?” ʿAlī then turned to me and said, “Sulaym! Pay attention to the reply. What people have in their hands contains the real and the illusory, the true and the false, what abrogates and what is abrogated, the particular and the general, the clear and the ambiguous, what has been kept in a just fashion, and in an unjust. Even during his lifetime, people ascribed false sayings to the Messenger, such that he declared, ‘People! The false statements ascribed to me and those making up hadiths in my name have multiplied. May he who knowingly attributes false statements to me burn in hellfire.’ And these people kept on doing this even more after the death of the Messenger.

Know that no more than four types of person transmit Hadith: first, the hypocrite who pretends to be a believer and to practice Islam but at the same time has no scruple whatsoever [p. 622] in knowingly ascribing false statements to the Messenger. Even if those who hear these know that he is a liar and a hypocrite, even if they do not approve of him, they say to themselves, ‘Even so, it is a matter of a Companion of the Messenger, someone who has seen him and heard him in person. Hence, in any case he can’t lie and ascribe false statements to his master…’ Nevertheless, after Muḥammad’s death these persons tried to cozy up to the fomenters of confusion and to those who lead the way to hell [i.e., Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and their accomplices who seized power after the Prophet] and this because of their mendacity, their lies, and their double-dealing [i.e., by fabricating hadiths to justify the acts of the leaders]. And so these leaders gave them many responsibilities, forced them upon people, and, in return, obtained more and more power thanks to them…⁷⁶

Second, the individual who has heard something from the Messenger but has not retained it as he should adds something to it of his own, and unintentionally so. Thus he keeps a hadith, he transmits it, and he puts it into practice, all the while declaring that he had it from Muḥammad. If Muslims, or he himself, realize that there are invented elements in what he is reporting, they reject it.

[p. 623] Third, the individual who has heard an order from the Messenger, but does not know that the latter revisited his decision at a later date [this involves the concepts of what abrogates and what is abrogated] or, indeed, conversely, he has heard a prohibition announced by the Messenger that has been annulled by him later. This individual retains what has been abrogated since he does not know the abrogating factor. If he or Muslims know that he is reporting an abrogated hadith, they steer clear of this hadith.

Lastly, the individual who does not ascribe false statements either to God or to His Messenger, since he detests falsehood, fears God, and reveres the Messenger. He learns what he has heard perfectly by heart and is not vulnerable to tricks of memory. Thus, he transmits the hadith as he ought to, retaining what abrogates and rejecting what has been abrogated.

Sulaym! The orders and prohibitions of the Prophet [i.e. the Hadith] are just like the Qur’an: they contain what abrogates and what has been abrogated, the general and the particular, the clear and the ambiguous. The Messenger’s statements had two aspects: one for the elite and another for the common folk, just like the Qur’an. Not all the people who heard the Word of God and the statements of the Messenger understood them, even when they asked for them to be explained…”

[p. 630] Abān [a disciple and the transmitter of the Book of Sulaym] says, “I heard the Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir say: ‘…[p. 632] Since the Messenger of God died, we the people belonging to the Prophet’s Family have not ceased being humiliated, exiled, stripped of our rights, massacred. We fear for our own lives and for the lives of those who love us. By contrast, the liars because of their concoctions have found important positions next to their chiefs, their judges, their governors. They relate lying stories to our enemies about their past leaders [notably, the first three caliphs] and they ascribe to us positions that we have never held in order to destroy our good reputation and at the same time to sidle up to the men in power by means of duplicity and falsehood. [p. 633] This situation reached its apogee in Muʿāwiya’s day and after the death of [the Imam] al-Ḥasan [ʿAlī’s eldest son] when Shi’ites were massacred everywhere. They had their arms and legs hacked off or they were crucified on the mere suspicion of showing us affection and being attached to our cause. The tribulations continued even more violently in the time of Ibn Ziyād [the Umayyad governor of Iraq] and the murder of [Imam] al-Ḥusayn [ʿAlī’s younger son]. Then came al-Ḥajjāj [another governor of Iraq], who killed Shi’ites on a massive scale under any pretext whatever. He favored those accused of Manichaeism and of Mazdaism over those who were denounced as being al-Ḥusayn’s Shi’ites.⁷⁷

Hence [in this context] you can encounter an individual enjoying fine repute—and he can in fact be pious and sincere—who relates astonishing accounts of the virtues of past leaders, none of which has ever really existed. And this individual passes on this sort of report, basing himself solely on the fact that they have been recounted by many persons who are not suspected of either falsehood or impiety. These very persons relate monstrous things about ʿAlī, al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn, but God knows that all of that is falsehood and mendacity.”⁷⁸

CHAPTER 11 (EXCERPTS)

This long chapter, like the preceding one, deals with many varied subjects. The translated excerpts concern ʿAlī’s recension of the Qur’an, presented as absolutely complete, while that elaborated by the first caliphs is presented as containing numerous lacunae with regard to the original revelations as well as to the relationship of those problematic aspects with political events. The scene is set at the very outset of ʿAlī’s caliphate (see the historical references at the beginning of this volume).

[p. 656] “Ṭalḥa [a Companion of the Prophet and a future opponent of ʿAlī in the Battle of the Camel] asked ʿAlī: ‘I want to question you on a precise point. Once I saw you come out of your house carrying a sealed cloth. At that time you said, “People! It is I who have been engaged in washing, shrouding, and burying the body of the Messenger of God. I then was engaged in gathering together the Book of God and here it is, done without a single word omitted” [see chapter 4]. Now I have not seen this Qur’an that you copied and collected with your own hands. I was a witness that ʿUmar, when he became caliph, sent a messenger to you and asked you to deliver this Qur’an to him, but you did not wish to do so. ʿUmar then asked everyone [to collect the Qur’an]. He accepted all the verses for which there were two recorders and he rejected those which had been reported by a single witness alone. He said—and I myself was present—“After the battle of Yamāma certain men were killed and they were the only ones who knew certain parts of the Qur’an. With their death these parts have been forever destroyed.” On another occasion when ʿUmar’s scribes were putting the Qur’an in written form, a sheep came up and swallowed one page. The part which was there was lost forever; on that day ʿUthmān [the third caliph] made a copy of the Qur’an [p. 657] I heard ʿUmar as well as his companions who put the Qur’an in written form at the time of ʿUthmān say: “The Sura al-Aḥzāb [the thirty-third sura of the Qur’an] had the same number of verses as Sura al-Baqara [the second sura], that the Sura al-Nūr [the twenty-fourth] comprised 160 verses, and the Sura al-Ḥujurāt [the forty-ninth] 90 verses.”⁷⁹ So then, what prevents you from showing them your own recension [which you claim is complete]?’⁸⁰

Ṭalḥa went on: ‘I myself am a witness that ʿUthmān recovered the texts that ʿUmar had prepared, and he asked the copyists to reunite these texts [in a single volume]. He compelled people to read only this one version by tearing up and burning the versions of Ubayy b. Kaʿb and Ibn Masʿūd.⁸¹ What do you say to all that?’

ʿAlī replied: ‘O Ṭalḥa! In fact, each of the verses revealed by God to Muḥammad is in my recension, dictated by the Messenger of God and copied by myself along with its interpretation…as well as all that this community requires until the Day of Resurrection…

[p. 658] What’s more, when he was suffering from the malady that carried him off, the Messenger secretly taught me the keys to a thousand chapters of knowledge, each of which permits access to thousands of others.⁸² If this community had followed and obeyed me when God called His Prophet to Him, I would have showered earthly and heavenly benefits upon it until the Day of Resurrection. Were you not present, Ṭalḥa, when the Messenger was on his deathbed and asked for a page on which to write his last will so that his community might not fall into confusion and dissension? At that time your comrade [ʿUmar] stopped him from doing it by saying, “[Let it go]. The Prophet of God is delirious!” This angered the Messenger and he let it go.’⁸³

Ṭalḥa: ‘Certainly, I witnessed that.’

ʿAlī: ‘After you left, the Messenger of God said to me what he wished to write and his intention of taking all the people as his witness, but the angel Gabriel had proclaimed to him [after ʿUmar’s intervention] that God had decided that the destiny of this community would be marked by dissension and division…’

[p. 659] Ṭalḥa: ‘So be it, ʿAlī! But you have not answered my question: why do you not show your copy of the Qur’an?’

ʿAlī: ‘O Ṭalḥa, my not answering this question is by my choice.’⁸⁴

Ṭalḥa: ‘Then tell me what you think about the version elaborated by ʿUmar and ʿUthmān? Is it the Qur’an or does it contain things other than the Qur’an?’

ʿAlī: ‘This version contains only the Qur’an. If you truly put it into practice, you are saved from the fires of hell and you will go the garden of paradise, for [even] this [incomplete] version contains the proof of our legitimacy [we, the Prophet’s Family], the disclosure of our right, and the necessity of obedience with respect to us.’⁸⁵

Ṭalḥa: ‘Then if it contains nothing but the Qur’an, that is enough for me! But, ʿAlī, to whom are you going to impart, after you are gone, your version of the Qur’an that contains [in accord with what you say] the entirety of the knowledge of hermeneutics as well as of that which is licit and that which is not licit?’

ʿAlī: ‘To those to whom the Messenger has commanded me to transmit. First of all, my heir and the one who is truly responsible for the people [i.e., their legitimate leader], my son al-Ḥasan, who in turn will transmit it to my other son al-Ḥusayn. Then this Qur’an will be transmitted [p. 660] through the line of al-Ḥusayn, to his descendants one after the other…They are with the Qur’an and the Qur’an is with them… ’”

Let us leave off further citations at this point. What provisional conclusions can be drawn? The Book of Sulaym b. Qays is without a doubt one of the oldest documents that has come down to us in which historical problems as significant as the following are posed explicitly: the power struggles and the violence marking the succession to Muḥammad, the turbulent history and the problematical elaboration of the Qur’anic text and the body of hadiths, the connivance between the circles of power and the religious scholars, the articulation of the civil conflicts, and the constitution of the scriptural sources. These questions have been studied in a more or less detailed fashion from Wellhausen and Goldziher to Kister and Rubin along with Beck, Juynboll, Gilliot, Donner, and others (see the bibliography), scholars who have almost exclusively based their work on Sunni sources while finding themselves constrained to launch many complex methodologies because the trustworthiness of these sources is problematic. Now the critical examination of the Shi’ite sources, offering the viewpoint of the “defeated by history,” provides insights, as useful as they are unpublished, on the complex of problems that concerns us, and they may help to refine what knowledge we possess of them. It is manifestly clear that the Shi’ites and their sources, just like the writings of their opponents, have not been sheltered from the hazards of a conflicted history: ideological inventions, tendentious fabrications of accounts, twisting of facts—points, among others, all to be considered in the course of our work. Nevertheless, two important facts appear to prompt us to take the Shi’ite sources more seriously, avoiding the ostracism that has been generally reserved for them until now: first, the at times striking convergences among the historical data that they contain, especially the oldest sources, and the results to which modern critical studies have led by other means. Then too, the fact that one finds echoes, often precise echoes, of the information in Shi’ite sources, notwithstanding that they are “non-orthodox,” in Sunni literature, and this despite the disapproval overshadowing this literature throughout the Umayyad and Abbasid periods.

To conclude this chapter, it seems to me useful to provide a summary of the Book of Sulaym as a way of offering the reader a more comprehensive idea of its contents.

Table of Contents of the Book of Sulaym B. Qays

This table of contents is merely indicative. In fact, the work contains many more subjects, and sometimes quite profusely so. The table is arranged in conformity with the aforementioned edition of M. B. al-Anṣārī.

Introduction concerning the transmission of the work.

Tradition 1: the last words of the Prophet before his death/Fāṭima’s suffering/the divine election of Muḥammad’s descendants/the twelve imams/the virtues of ʿAlī and the people in the prophetic abode/the Prophet’s predictions about the injustice done to ʿAlī.

Tradition 2: the particular garden of ʿAlī in paradise/ʿAlī’s solitude after the Prophet’s death/ʿAlī’s plan and the divine testing suffered by the community.

Tradition 3: the events of Saqīfa as reported by the companion al-Barā’ b. ʿĀzib: the washing of the Prophet’s body/the conspiracy of the allies of Saqīfa/the Banū Hāshim and the happenings of Saqīfa/the nighttime conspiracy to tempt al-ʿAbbās and his reaction/the poems of al-ʿAbbās about the usurpation of the caliphate by ʿAlī’s enemies.

Tradition 4: the events of Saqīfa as reported by Salmān the Persian: Abū Bakr’s oath/the ruses of the Qurayshites/Satan’s role/ʿAlī’s ultimatum/ʿAlī seeks in vain the support of the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār/the compilation of the Qur’an and ʿAlī’s summons to respect the sacred Book/the martyrdom of Fāṭima: ʿUmar sets fire to the house of Fāṭima, who is pregnant, and wounds her seriously/ʿAlī’s intervention/the order to attack Fāṭima/ʿAlī’s forced oath/the death of Fāṭima from her wounds as well as of the child she was carrying/the dialogue of ʿAlī and Abū Bakr/Abū Bakr fabricates statements that he ascribes to the Prophet/the cursed Leaf containing the declarations of the conspirators/the intervention of al-Miqdād b. Aswad, Salmān, and Abū Dharr/the interventions of Umm Ayman and Burayda al-Aslamī/oaths of allegiance to Abū Bakr extracted under threat of death/the similarity of the Muslims and the Israelites.

Tradition 5: a dialogue between Satan and ʿUmar.

Tradition 6: ʿAlī’s virtues/the Prophet’s predictions about ʿAlī/al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s hypocritical attitude toward ʿAlī.

Tradition 7: the splitting of the community into seventy-three sects/the sect of salvation and its imams/the differences between faith (īmān) and submission (islām)/ʿAlī’s prayer over Sulaym.

Tradition 8: the definition of faith/the pillars of the faith.

Tradition 9: the definition of submission.

Tradition 10: the reason for the disparities between the accounts of ʿAlī’s supporters and those of their adversaries/categories of transmitters of traditions/all knowledge is found with the Prophet, ‘Alī, and their descendants/confirmation of the truthfulness of Sulaym’s accounts by the imams/the treachery of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and most of the community/the battles of Jamal (the Camel), Ṣiffīn, and Nahrawān/the repression and massacre of the Alids/fabrication, falsification, and censorship of Hadith.

Tradition 11: ʿAlī’s ultimatum and his arguments during ʿUthmān’s reign: account of the creation of Muḥammad and of ʿAlī/the lights of the People of the Prophet’s family/the virtues of ʿAlī/innumerable allusions in the Qur’an to ʿAlī/the account of Ghadīr Khumm/prophetic traditions in praise of ʿAlī/Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, usurpers, and forgers of traditions along with a refutation of them/the obligatory nature of the walāya⁸⁶ of the imams/compilation of the Qur’an/ʿAlī’s codex/the codex of ʿUmar/the codex of ʿUthmān/twelve guides in perplexity.

Tradition 12: one of ʿAlī’s last sermons on the happenings at Saqīfa and their implications.

Tradition 13: the public treasury under ʿUmar’s caliphate/injustices and unmerited privileges.

Tradition 14: the reprehensible innovations of the two first caliphs/the violent ransacking of Fadak, Fāṭima’s inheritance/the plan to assassinate ʿAlī/offenses and disrespect of the two first caliphs toward the Prophet.

Tradition 15: the sermon of ʿAlī before the Battle of Ṣiffīn on the first three caliphs.

Tradition 16: the predictions of Jesus with regard to the Prophet and the imams and their usurping adversaries.

Tradition 17: ʿAlī’s sermon on the community’s trials and his predictions on the coming to power of the Umayyads and their tyranny.

Tradition 18: ʿAlī’s sermon on the illusory nature of life, the thirst for power, and the force of the passions/ʿAlī’s sermon on the blameworthy innovations of the first three caliphs.

Tradition 19: Abū Dharr and other loyal followers of ʿAlī/how the community was deceived by the ruses of the first two caliphs.

Tradition 20: true faithful and true traitors/Abū Dharr, Ḥudhayfa b. al-Yamān, and ʿAmmār b. Yāsir.

Tradition 21: several accounts of the Prophet’s love for his grandsons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn.

Tradition 22: the sermon of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ against ʿAlī and his response/the Prophet had cursed Muʿāwiya and ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ/the old hostility of Muʿāwiya toward ʿAlī/Muʿāwiya’s exploitation of the assassination of ʿUthmān against ʿAlī.

Tradition 23: Muʿāwiya’s secret letter to his governor Ziyād Ibn Abīhī on ʿUmar’s policy against ʿAlī and his followers among the Iranian mawālī (manumitted slaves).

Tradition 24: ʿĀ’isha’s disdain of ʿAlī and the Prophet’s reaction to her.

Tradition 25: letters exchanged by ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya before and during the Battle of Ṣiffīn.

Tradition 26: the arguments of Qays b. Saʿd b. ʿUbāda against Muʿāwiya’s attitude toward ʿAlī/statements by Ibn ʿAbbās against Muʿāwiya regarding the assassinations of ʿUmar and ʿUthmān and the interpretation of the Qur’an/violent suppression of the Alids by Muʿāwiya and his campaign to rehabilitate the first three caliphs/sermons of Imam al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī against Muʿāwiya and his policies along with a eulogy of ʿAlī.

Tradition 27: Ibn ʿAbbās’s account of the Prophet’s death and ʿUmar’s scheme preventing Muḥammad from putting his will into writing.

Tradition 28: on the Battle of the Camel.

Tradition 29: ʿAlī speaks to Ṭalḥa and al-Zubayr/a refutation of the tradition about the “ten persons promised salvation” (al-ʿasharat al-mubashshara).

Tradition 30: the thousand chapters of ʿAlī’s initiatory knowledge.

Tradition 31: ʿAlī is in possession of a complete knowledge of the Qur’an and its interpretation.

Tradition 32: ʿAlī’s dialogue with the Jewish scholar on the division of the community into seventy-three sects.

Tradition 33: Ibn ʿAbbās bears witness that ʿAlī possessed the revealed book containing the names of all the blessed who are saved and the wretches among the Muslims who have strayed.

Tradition 34: account of the last day of the Battle of Ṣiffīn (yawm al-harīr)/exchange of letters between Muʿāwiya and ʿAlī.

Tradition 35: other moments during the Battle of Ṣiffīn/the courage of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya.