Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

by Tamim Ansary

For most Muslims, the Hijra meant losing everything they owned. They knew nothing about farming, the main occupation in Medina, so the move impoverished them. But not Othman. Although he emigrated with the others, he never quite severed his ties to business associates back home, and with those associates looking after his properties and business interests, Othman continued to prosper, even in Medina. There was never any suggestion that he came by his wealth dishonestly: quite the opposite. Some people simply have the golden touch, and Othman was such a man. Nor was he a miser. He spent lavishly for the public good; for example, he expanded the mosque in Medina for Mohammed, and when the Muslims needed water, he bought a valuable well from one of the Jewish tribes and donated it to the public.

He missed the battle of Badr because his wife was sick. At the battle of Uhud, when a rumor spread that Mohammed had been killed, Othman was among the Muslims who abandoned hope and left the field. Othman redeemed himself at the Battle of the Moat, but shortly after that battle, his son died, and Othman seemed to feel that God was still punishing him. To earn forgiveness, he made a practice of buying slaves and liberating one each Friday.

One great project Othman saw to fruition during the first half of his khalifate was the preparation of a definitive edition of the Qur’an. He set scholars to work combing out redundancies among the copies that existed, resolving discrepancies, and evaluating passages whose authenticity was subject to doubt.

When Amr ibn al-A’as, the governor of Egypt, failed to send in enough money, Othman dismissed him and appointed his own foster brother Abdullah to the post. Abdullah succeeded in getting a great deal more money out of the province—in fact, doubling the revenue from Egypt—proving that Othman had made a wise business decision, but Amr ibn al-A’as grumbled that his successor was getting more milk out of the she-camel only by starving the camel’s young.

Othman upheld Omar’s prohibitions against confiscating land in conquered territories, but he lifted Omar’s restrictions on Muslims buying land there, for Othman believed in economic freedom. In fact, he let eminent Muslims borrow money out of the public treasury to finance such purchases. Soon, Muslim elites, including most of the Prophet Mohammed’s companions, were amassing fortunes and acquiring immense estates throughout the new Islamic empire. Othman’s “economic reforms” tended to profit his own clan, the Umayyads, above all because they were best situated to take out loans from the treasury. This khalifa also appointed his relatives and “favorites” to many powerful political posts throughout the empire, simply because they were the people he knew best and trusted most. As a result, the Umayyads ended up acquiring disproportionate clout, both economically and politically.

One of Othman’s great favorites was his cousin Mu’awiya. Omar had appointed Mu’awiya governor of Damascus and its surroundings. Othman kept adding bits to his cousin’s territory, until Mu’awiya governed everything from the headwaters of the Euphrates River down the Mediterranean coast to Egypt.

Mu’awiya was the son of Abu Sufyan, the Meccan tribal aristocrat who led the attack on Islam in two of those three iconic battles between Mecca and Medina. Mu’awiya’s mother, Hind, followed her husband to those battles, and at Uhud, after the Muslims fled, she reputedly ate the liver of Mohammed’s fallen uncle Hamzah in an act of triumphalist gloating.

No doubt Omar appointed Mu’awiya governor of Damascus because he got things done, but perhaps Omar should have paused to consider why Mohammed had kept the man so close: once ensconced in Damascus, Mu’awiya put his brilliance to work assembling a standing army loyal to himself.

Toward the end of Othman’s twelve-year reign, grumbling began to sound throughout the empire. In Egypt, his foster brother was squeezing people so hard for money that riots broke out. Egyptian notables wrote to the khalifa, begging him to recall the governor. Hearing nothing back, they sent a delegation to petition him in person. As it happened, at this very time, groups of disgruntled citizens were converging on the city from the north as well.

Finally, Othman gave in and met with the Egyptian delegation. He promised to replace his foster brother and told the Egyptians to go home and let the governor know a new man would soon be coming to replace him.

The Egyptians started back, feeling pretty good, but along the way they caught up with a slave of Othman’s. Something about the man aroused their suspicions. They searched him and found a letter on his person, seemingly signed by the khalifa and addressed to the governor of Egypt, which told Governor Abdullah to arrest the delegation of malcontents as soon as they showed up at his court and to execute them as soon as it seemed politic! The delegation returned to Medina in a fury. Othman came dithering out of the palace to meet them on the steps: Back so soon? What was wrong? They showed him the letter and Othman expressed shock. He swore he had never written such a thing, never heard of it until this moment. In fact, his troublemaking cousin Marwan, a relative and ally of the governor of Damascus, might have penned the letter and forged the khalifa’s signature to it. Poor Othman, nearly eighty at this time, might well have been easy to manipulate. In any case, the peaceful petitioners turned into an angry mob. First, they demanded that the khalifa deliver Mu’awiya’s brother to them. The khalifa refused. Then they demanded that Othman step down and let some better man take over. Othman indignantly refused this too. His obligation was to God, he said, and quitting his office at the behest of a mob would be an affront to God! He then retired to his private chambers, where he lit a little lamp and settled in a corner to do what he always did in times of turmoil and doubt: humb...

For four days the mob rampaged through the city. The citizens of Medina cowered in their houses, waiting for the violence to die down. Even when the uproar faded, the leaders of the mob said they would not quit town until a new khalifa was appointed, someone they could trust. Now, at last, all thoughts turned to the one candidate who had been passed over time after time, the man some had always called the Prophet’s only legitimate successor: Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali.

The members of the Umayyad clan, Othman’s close relatives, had fled to Damascus, where their kinsman Mu’awiya had quietly been assembling his military force. Mu’awiya began touring his province with a professional storyteller. At each stop, the storyteller aroused the crowd with a dramatic account of the murder in Medina. At the climactic moment, Mu’awiya himself would burst onstage, waving a bloody shirt, the very shirt in which (he claimed) the khalifa had been murdered. It was masterful political theater. Mu’awiya would then call upon the new khalifa to arrest and punish Othman’s murderers or step down. But how could Ali arrest the assassins? No one knew exactly who in that mob had dealt the actual blows. In any real sense, the whole mob was “the assassin.” To meet Mu’awiya’s demands, Ali would have had to arrest and punish the whole mob. This would never have been practical, but in the circumstances, it was utterly impossible: the mob still ruled the streets of Medina. Ali simply did not have the power to do as Mu’awiya demanded, and the governor knew it.

He decided he would start by attacking the corruption rotting the empire. Win or lose, it was his only hope: by reversing Othman’s policies and restoring rectitude, he might still pull the community back onto the Path, thereby acquiring the credibility and stature he needed to do all the other things that needed doing. But a whole new class of nouveau riche had sprung out of the compost of the Muslim conquests, and this elite was not interested in Ali’s idea of purity or his reforms. To them, Ali looked like a revolutionary threat, and Mu’awiya looked like the guardian of their wealth and safety, the new status quo.

Ali fired all the governors Othman had appointed and sent out new men to replace them, but none of the fired governors agreed to step down, except the one in Yemen, and he fled with all the money in the treasury, leaving a bankrupt province for Ali’s appointee to take over.

Meanwhile, trouble cropped up in another quarter. The Prophet’s youngest wife Ayesha happened to be in Mecca when Othman was assassinated. When Mu’awiya began his ruckus, Ayesha threw in with him, in part because there had always been bad blood between her and Ali. She announced her alignment with a fiery speech in Mecca. “O ye people! Rebels . . . have murdered the innocent Othman. . . . They violated the sanctity of the city of the Holy Prophet in the sacred month of hajj. They plundered and looted the citizens of Medina. By God, a single finger of Othman was more precious than the lives of all the assassins. The mischief has not been crushed, and the...

Capitalizing on the passion she aroused, she assembled an army, convened a war council, and mapped out a campaign. The ousted governor of Yemen pledged all his stolen treasure to her cause. Flush with funds, Ayesha led her troops north and stormed Basra, a key city ...

Poor honest Ali admitted that he bore some responsibility for the crime because when Othman was pleading for protection, Ali had withheld his sword arm.

But Muslims were confused, because Ayesha was calling for jihad too, against Ali.

Curiously, Ayesha’s cohorts included two men, Talha and Zubayd, companions of the Prophet, who may have been part of the mob that attacked Othman’s palace that day. If not themselves assassins, they were certainly associated with the assassins—

When he reached Basra, he sent a trusted comrade into the city to negotiate with Ayesha. Remarkably, the spokesman’s arguments got through to the fierce young woman. First, she admitted that she didn’t really think Ali had anything to do with Othman’s murder. What she blamed him for was failing to arrest the criminals responsible. Then, she agreed that the criminals were part of a mob, and that the mob, which was still in charge, drew its strength from chaos. Next, she admitted that by fighting Ali, she was promoting chaos and so, yes, in a sense she herself was helping the assassins escape justice. By the end of the day, she had agreed to lay down her weapons, disband her army, and join forces with Ali.

The interaction reflected credit on both leaders: on Ali for seeking negotiation before battle, on Ayesha for the intellectual honesty that enabled her, even in the heat of anger, even while surrounded by the smell of war and the threat of death, to listen to Ali’s case and admit the validity of points that eroded her position—just because they were true. In this, there was heroism.

There was just one problem that no one took into account: both armies contained members of the very mob that had killed Othman and would be brought to book if Ali and Ayesha made common cause. These men obviously could not afford to give peace a chance. Early the next morning, a gang of them crept out of Ali’s camp and launched a surprise attack on Ayesha’s sleeping forces. By the time Ali woke up, Ayesha’s men were striking back. Both Ali and Ayesha thought the other had double-crossed them, and thus began the Battle of the Camel, so-called because Ayesha rode a camel right into the battlefield and directed her troops from its back; the battle ended only when her camel was cut down and she was captured.

After the Battle of the Camel, Ayesha retired to Medina, and spent the rest of her life recording the sayings of the Prophet and writing commentaries on them. She ended her days as one of the most respected early scholars of Islam.

Ali never went back to Medina. He made the city of Kufa, in modern-day Iraq, his seat of government to reward the people of that city for supporting him,

By this time, Mu’awiya had formally refused allegiance to Ali and declared that the khalifate belonged to him. Both sides led armies into the field. In the year 36 AH, (657 CE), Ali confronted Mu’awiya at the battle of Siffin.

The standoff ended with a four-day outburst of violence in which some sources reckon that sixty-five thousand people died. The slaughter led to calls that both armies pull back and let the two leaders settle the dispute with hand-to-hand combat. Ali, who was fifty-eight years old but still a fearsome physical specimen, eagerly accepted the challenge. Mu’awiya, who was about the same age as Ali, but dissipated and fat, said no.

Ali’s troops renewed the attack, this time felling Mu’awiya’s soldiers like weeds, but Mu’awiya devised a stratagem to give them pause: he had his soldiers attach pages of the Qur’an to their lance tips and march behind recitation experts who chanted Qur’anic verses and exhorted Ali to negotiate in the name of peace among Muslims. Ali’s troops quailed at the prospect of defiling the Qur’an and Ali agreed to negotiations.

Instead, when the representatives of the two leaders met, they agreed that the two men were equals, and that each should remain in charge of his own territories, Mu’awiya ruling Syria and Egypt, Ali ruling everything else.

Now he was . . . negotiating? With Mu’awiya, the utter embodiment of anti-Muslim materialism? What kind of God-gifted avatar of Allah-guided truth was he? Compromising with the enemy disappointed a faction of Ali’s most committed followers, and these younger, more radical of his partisans split away. They came to be known as Kharijites, “ones who departed.” This splinter group reformulated the ideals of Ali’s followers into a revolutionary new doctrine: blood and genealogy meant nothing, they said. Even a slave had the right to lead the community. The only qualification was character. No one was born to leadership, and mere election could not transform someone into the khalifa. Whoever exhibited the greatest authentic devotion to Muslim values simply was the khalifa, no election needed. He was, however, accountable to the people. If he ever fell a hair short of complete moral excellence, he forfeited his right to high office and someone else became khalifa.

They only knew that Ali had squandered his entitlement and needed to step down; and since he didn’t step down, one young Kharijite took matters into his own hands. In the year 40 AH, this hothead assassinated Ali.

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. Ali’s death ended the first era of Islamic history. Muslim historians came to call the first four post-Mohammed leaders the Rightly Guided Khalifas.

Yes there was bloodshed and heartache, but the turmoil didn’t stem from petty people vying for power, money, or ego gratification. The four khalifas and Mohammed’s close companions who formed the core of the Umma in this period were honestly striving to make the revelations work. Each of them had a handle on some essential aspect of the project, but no one of them was big enough to grasp the whole of it, as Mohammed had done.

Toward the end of his life, however, he convened a council of Arab tribal leaders to discuss who his successor would be, a meeting that had the outward form of a shura, a consultative committee like the one Omar established. The chieftains thought their opinions were sincerely being solicited and began discussing the merits of this and that candidate. Suddenly one of the khalifa’s henchmen jumped to his feet and glowered around the circle. “Right now,” he scowled, “this is the commander of the faithful.” He pointed to Mu’awiya. “After he dies, it’s this one.” He pointed to Yazid, the emperor’s eldest son. “And if any of you object, it’s this one!” He pulled out his sword.”1

Hassan had passed away by this time, but his brother Hussein was still alive, and just to be on the safe side, the emperor decided to have this man assassinated on his next pilgrimage to Mecca.

Hussein was now in his forties.

Even so, in the year 60 AH (680 by the common calendar), Hussein announced that he was going to challenge Yazid and left Medina with a force of seventy-two people.

When Yazid heard that the Prophet’s younger grandson was on the move, he sent an army to swat him down.

If you glance at weather reports for that part of the world on any summer day, you’ll see temperatures ranging upward of 115 degrees. On just such a sweltering day, the emperor’s army trapped Hussein’s little band within smelling distance of the Euphrates River but cut off from the water.

The women, children, and old folks, meanwhile, all died of thirst. When the last of the party was gone, the victorious general swooped in, cut off Hussein’s head, and shipped it to the emperor with a gloating note.

Yazid no doubt believed he had solved his problem: surely Ali’s descendents would never make trouble again. He was quite wrong, however. By crushing Hussein at Karbala, this emperor lit a spark. The passionate embrace of Ali’s cause now became a prairie fire called Shi’ism.

Ali’s partisans saw in him something that they did not see in other claimants to the khalifate: a God-given spiritual quality that made him more than an ordinary mortal, a quality they had seen in Mohammed as well.

But when Shi’i say “imam,” they mean something considerably more elevated. To Shi’i there is always one imam in the world, and there is never more than one. They proceed from the premise that Mohammed had some palpable mystical substance vested in him by Allah, some energy, some light, which they call the baraka of Mohammed. When the Prophet died, that light passed into Ali, at which moment Ali became the first imam. When Ali died, that same light passed into his son Hassan, who became the second Imam. Later, the spark passed into Hassan’s younger brother Hussein, who became the third imam. When Hussein was martyred at Karbala, the whole “imam” idea flowered into a rich theological concept that addressed a religious craving left unnourished by the mainstream doctrines of that time.

The mainstream doctrine, as articulated by Abu Bakr and Omar, said that Mohammed was strictly a messenger delivering a set of instructions about how to live. The message was the great and only thing. Beyond delivering the Qur’an, Mohammed’s religious significance was only his sunna, the example he set by his way of life, an example others could follow if they wanted to live in God’s favor. People who accepted this doctrine eventually came to be known as Sunnis, and they comprise nine-tenths of the Muslim community today. The Shi’i, by contrast, felt that they couldn’t make themselves worthy of heaven simply by their own efforts. To them, instructions were not enough. They wanted to believe that direct guidance from God was still coming into the world, through some chosen person who could bathe other believers in a soul-saving grace, some living figure who would keep the world warm and pure. They adopted the term imam for this reassuring figure. His presence in the world ensured the continuing possibility of miracle.

To this day, Shi’i around the world commemorate the anniversary of Hussein’s death with a day of cathartic mourning. They gather in “lamentation houses” to recount the story of the martyrdom, a religious narrative that casts Hussein in the role of a redemptive figure on an apocalyptic scale. By his martyrdom, Hussein has gained a place next to God and earned the privilege of interceding for sinners. Those who embrace him and believe in him will be saved and go to heaven, no matter what transgressions may foul their record. Hussein gave Shi’i this back door to the miracle they had hoped for all along. Believing in Hussein could not get you gold or high office or luck in love, but it could get you into heaven: that was the miracle.

Consider the mixture of stick and carrot in this warning to the people of Basra, issued by Mu’awiya’s adopted brother Ziyad, whom he had appointed governor of Basra: “You allow kinship to prevail and put religion second; you excuse and hide your transgressors and tear down the orders which Islam has sanctified for your protection. Take care not to creep about in the night. I will kill every man found on the streets after dark. Take care not to appeal to your kin; I will cut off the tongue of every man who raises that call. . . . I rule with the omnipotence of God and maintain you with God’s wealth. I demand obedience from you and you can demand uprightness from me . . . I will not fail in three things: I will at all times be there for every man to speak to me. I will always pay your pensions punctually and I will not send you into the field for too long a time or too far away. Do not be carried away by your hatred and anger against me; it would go ill with you. I see many heads rolling. Let each man see that his own head stays upon his shoulders!”

waqf could not be shut down by its founder. Once born, it owned itself and had a sovereign status. Think of it as a Muslim version of a nonprofit corporation set up for charitable purposes. Under Muslim law, the waqfs could not be taxed. They collected money from donors and distributed it to the poor, built and ran mosques, operated schools, hospitals, and orphanages, and generally provided the burgeoning upper classes with a means for expressing their religious and charitable urges

If you acquired a reputation for religious scholarship, you might hope to gain a position with a waqf, which gave you status if not riches, and you didn’t have to hail from a famous family to become a famous religious scholar. You just had to have brains and a willingness to practice piety and study hard.

What’s more, the Umayyads soon declared Arabic the official language of government, replacing Persian in the east and Greek in the west and various local languages everywhere else. So Umayyad times saw an Arabization and Islamification of the Muslim realm.

Some no doubt converted to evade the poll tax on non-Muslims, but this probably wasn’t the whole story, because after conversion people were liable for the charity tax incumbent on Muslims but not on non-Muslims.