Ali’s partisans immediately looked to his son Hassan as his successor, but Mu’awiya swept this challenge aside by offering Hassan a sum of money to renounce all claim to the khalifate. Mohammed’s older grandson, heartbroken and war-weary at this point, stepped aside. He had no stomach for continuing the fight, and under the circumstances now prevailing, claiming the khalifate could only constitute a power grab, and what good was that? And so the Umayyad dynasty began.
