Saqifah of Banu Saʿidah and the first baiʿah

The Afternoon the World Fell Still

It was Monday, the twelfth of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in the eleventh year of the Hijra. The sun stood high over Medina, a sun such as it had stood over Medina every day in the twenty-three years since Jibril ﵇ had first pronounced the name of Allah ﷻ in the Cave of Hira. But this afternoon was no afternoon like the others, for in the chamber of ʿAʾishah ﵂, in the heart of the Masjid an-Nabawi, the Prophet ﷺ lay upon his last resting bed, with a light fever, a head that grew heavier and a breathing that grew scarcer. And then, in the middle of the day, the moment that no soul in Medina had ever held possible: he departed.

The message rolled through the streets of the city like water streaming off a sloping roof. A man on his way to the market stopped still, a woman filling a jug let it fall, and a child carrying a date in his hand carried it still, forgetting that he held it. ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁, who stood in the mosque, drew his sword and swore that whoever claimed the Prophet ﷺ had died would lose his head. He spoke in the shock of a heart that could not bear the thought. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ has not died. He has gone to his Lord as Mūsa ﵇ went, and he will return, and he will strike off the hands of whoever has said that he is dead.

Then Abu Bakr ﵁ arrived. He had ridden to the mosque from his house in as-Sunh, swiftly and without a word. He entered his daughter’s dwelling, lifted the cloth from the face of the Prophet ﷺ, bent down, kissed his forehead and spoke words that the whole ummah would not forget in four centuries. You have died and you will not die again. The death that Allah ﷻ has written for you, you have undergone. Then he drew the cloth back over the face, went outside, and turned his care to ʿUmar ﵁. He addressed him, he called the people together, and he recited the four verses upon which he relied: Muḥammad is but a Messenger. Before him there have been messengers. So if he dies or is killed, will you turn back on your heels? The people heard the words of Allah ﷻ as though they had never heard them before. ʿUmar ﵁ lowered his sword. The city conceded the truth.

But while the tears in the mosque were not yet dry, while the washing of the noble body had not yet begun, while the first spade had not yet entered the earth, two hundred paces away, in a roofed courtyard in the quarter of Banu Saʿidah, the first political deliberation of an ummah without its Prophet ﷺ was already taking place.

The Gathering in the Saqifah

The Ansar, the helpers of Medina, gathered beneath the thatched roof that the Banu Saʿidah used as a covered meeting place. Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁, their chief, lay ill in their midst, wrapped in his cloak. He was the man around whom his tribe gathered when a decision had to be made. He spoke in a muffled voice, and his son Qays ﵁ repeated his words for those who could not hear them. The substance was clear. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ had been theirs in his years of struggle and triumph, for Medina had taken him in when Mecca drove him out, and Medina had given the blood that had held Badr and Uhud and the Trench. If now a leader had to come, then it was reasonable that he come from Medina.

The news of the gathering reached the mosque where Abu Bakr ﵁ and ʿUmar ﵁ stood by the deathbed. ʿUmar ﵁ sent a messenger to Abu Bakr ﵁: the Ansar are assembled in the Saqifah of Banu Saʿidah, and they are deliberating over the command. Come. Abu Bakr ﵁ came at once, and ʿUmar ﵁ accompanied him. On the way he met Abu ʿUbaydah ibn al-Jarrah ﵁, the man the Prophet ﷺ had once called Amīn al-ummah, the Trustworthy One of this community. The three of them walked through the alleys, the stones warm beneath their feet, the heart heavy with two weights at once: a Prophet still unburied, and a community that threatened to be left without a head before the sun had set.

ʿUmar ﵁ himself later relates what stirred in his breast along the way. He had prepared a speech, he had arranged the words, sharpened the arguments and rehearsed the rhetorical turns. When they entered the Saqifah, he wished to begin, but Abu Bakr ﵁ laid his hand upon his arm. Be still, ʿUmar. And Abu Bakr ﵁ spoke.

The Address of Abu Bakr ﵁ to the Ansar

He began as he always began: with praise for Allah ﷻ and blessing upon the Prophet ﷺ. Then he did something no soul in the hall had expected of him, for he praised the Ansar, and he praised them in such terms that the eldest among them bowed their heads. He named their nuṣrah, their helping. He named their iḥsān, their excellence. He named the houses they had opened, the tables they had set, the swords they had raised. He let them know that in his heart there lived not a spark of contempt for what they were.

And then, in the breath after the praise, he set the blade. Now as for that good which you have mentioned of yourselves: you are worthy of it. But the Arabs will not acknowledge this command except in this tribe of Quraysh. He spoke it without triumph, without arrogance, as though he were imparting an unpleasant truth to people who did not wish to hear it. He knew whom he had before him: men who had drawn their swords for the Messenger ﷺ. He knew too how the Arabian jazīrah was put together, for Mecca was not merely a city and Quraysh was not merely a tribe. The Sacred Mosque was with them, the house of Ibrahim ﵇ was with them, and the pilgrimages had passed through their hands for centuries. The Arab tribes, from Yemen to ash-Sham, from Bahrain to Najd, had over the past years learned to accept the lead of the Islamic command from Quraysh, and a command that tomorrow came out of Medina without a Meccan root would the day after no longer be acknowledged in the deserts around Yamamah, in the oases of Hadramawt, in the villages of Yemen.

He went on. We are the emirs and you are the viziers. The commanders from Quraysh, the counsellors from the Ansar. Not one hand alone, but two hands that support each other. He raised his arm and pointed to the two men who accompanied him. I am content for you with one of these two men. Swear allegiance to whichever of them you wish. He pointed to ʿUmar ﵁, and he pointed to Abu ʿUbaydah ﵁. He did not name himself. He did not place his own name in the scale. He offered two men and contented himself with whomever the hall would choose.

The Voices of the Ansar

When Abu Bakr ﵁ fell silent, a speaker from the Ansar stood up. Suyuti ﵀ preserves his words without always naming him, but the import is clear and the pain beneath it as well.

The hall held still. The man had uttered something that lived in every heart of the Ansar but that until that moment had not been spoken. We are more than you. We built the mosque while you crept beneath the sand. We won Badr with our spears. We held Uhud with our breasts. And now you come, at your ease, and you say: we are the emirs and you are the viziers? It was a cry of the heart, no reasoning, but it stood in the air, and it had to be answered.

Another from the Ansar took the floor and made a proposal that in its simplicity sounded almost logical.

Two emirs. One from Medina, one from Mecca. Two flags, not one. Two orders of authority, each competent over its own domain. The proposal drew sounds of agreement from various corners of the hall. It was, on its surface, a reasonable compromise. To one who had not thought through the nature of command in Islam, it seemed just.

But Abu Bakr ﵁ knew what he was hearing. Two emirs are no emir. Two hands upon one sword break the sword. Two heads upon one body kill the body. The ummah the Prophet ﷺ had formed was one community, in the service of people, raised up out of the people, for the people. What threatened here was the first crack, before the first week of his body without the Prophet ﷺ had come to an end. He raised his voice, not loud, but firm.

He repeated, he deepened. The Arabs will not accept this command except within Quraysh, not because Quraysh is worth more to Allah ﷻ, not because Mecca is more beloved by heaven, but because the structure of the Arab reality has formed it so. He referred to the Prophet ﷺ himself, to his words about the imams from Quraysh, to the binding of the command to the tribe out of which the revelation had risen. He spoke without diminishing the Ansar, without denying the courage of their forefathers. He spoke as a man who weighed the future of the ummah in his palm, and who knew that one broken vessel would let all the water run out.

The Interjection of Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁

Then, in the midst of the clamour, a young man stood up who had not yet the age to be heard in the council of the elders. But he was Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁, and he was no ordinary young man. He was the pupil who had recorded the revelations for the Prophet ﷺ. He had learned the Arabic script before the Hebrew and the Syriac on the command of the Messenger ﷺ, so that the books of the People of the Book would be no secret to him. He was an Ansari, born in Medina, raised beneath the palms of Yathrib. But what he spoke was no taking of his tribe’s side.

He spoke briefly and he spoke with the clarity of a man who lives out of a text. When he sat down, something in the hall had changed. A younger Ansari had supported the position of Abu Bakr ﵁, not out of self-denial, but out of faithfulness to the Messenger ﷺ. The question was no longer whether the khalīfah should come from Mecca or from Medina. The question had become: which of the Muhajirun.

ʿUmar ﵁ Stretches Out His Hand

It is at this point that Suyuti ﵀ sets ʿUmar ﵁ in motion. The hall had grown soft, and the voices of division had not entirely fallen silent, but they had lost their certainty. ʿUmar ﵁ stood up. He did not look at the Ansar, he looked at Abu Bakr ﵁. And he spoke the word the community needed in order to step out of its indecision.

Abu Bakr ﵁ hesitated. ʿUmar ﵁ did not hesitate. He seized his hand and gave him the baiʿah. First Abu ʿUbaydah ﵁, then the voices that stood nearest, and then Bashir ibn Saʿd ﵁, one of the Ansar himself, who stepped out ahead of his own tribe and as the first Ansari swore allegiance to Abu Bakr ﵁. When Bashir ﵁ laid his hand upon that of Abu Bakr ﵁, the hesitation in the hall broke. The Aws pressed forward ahead of the Khazraj. The Khazraj pressed forward ahead of the Aws. The Muhajirun gave in turn. Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁ remained lying beneath his cloak, ill, not to be stirred. But the hall had made its decision.

ʿUmar ﵁ later, upon the minbar of the Messenger ﷺ in Medina, described this whole scene anew. He did it with an honesty that rarely appears in the history of states. He said: Let no one deceive himself by saying, “The baiʿah to Abu Bakr ﵁ was a sudden affair, a hasty affair.” It was so. But Allah ﷻ has protected us from the evil of it. He acknowledged that the Saqifah was not an orderly election, not a long process of consultation, not a formal shūrā such as later under ʿUmar ﵁ himself, when the six names would be convened. It was a swift decision in an acute moment. And at the same time: it was the right decision. The barakah of Allah ﷻ rested upon the outcome, not because of the elegance of the process, but because of the quality of the man who rose out of the process.

The Seclusion at Fatimah’s ﵂ House

Not everyone was at the Saqifah. ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ was not in the hall, for he had remained with the body of the Messenger ﷺ, occupied with what had to be done: the washing, the shrouding, the preparing of the burial. At his side stood az-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwam ﵁, cousin of the Prophet ﷺ through ʿAli’s ﵁ line. When the news of the baiʿah to Abu Bakr ﵁ reached them, they withdrew, with some of their kin, into the house of Fatimah bint Muhammad ﵂. They were not in revolt, they were in mourning, for their Prophet ﷺ had just departed from them, their wife and the mother of their children was his daughter, and the world had moved on too swiftly for their breath.

Suyuti ﵀ keeps himself brief here. No confrontation is described by him in detail, no violence, no rupture. What he does hold fast is what happened a few days later. ʿAli ﵁ and az-Zubayr ﵁ came to Abu Bakr ﵁. They knew what they had missed in the Saqifah. They knew too that the ummah needed a head, and that the hand of Abu Bakr ﵁ had been raised by all those present in the hall. They stepped up to him, and they spoke words that by their very simplicity give the lie to every later distortion of this event.

They called him by the title he would bear from that day on. Khalīfah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Not amīr al-muʾminīn; that title ʿUmar ﵁ would later take for himself. Khalīfah. Successor, not in prophethood, but in the leadership of the community the Prophet ﷺ had founded. ʿAli ﵁ gave him his hand. Az-Zubayr ﵁ gave him his hand. The ummah was one.

Why Quraysh, Why Banu Taym

It is well to slow down here for a moment. The question of the Saqifah is not a question from a distant past that the twentieth-century Muslim may pass by with indifference. It is a question about the nature of Islamic authority.

The reasoning of Abu Bakr ﵁ rested upon a twofold insight. The first insight: the ummah needs one head, not two. Two emirs are no emir. The unity of the command is a Sharʿi necessity, not a political whim. The second insight: the unity of the command is best served in the Arab reality by an anchoring in Quraysh, because Quraysh is the only point at which all the Arab tribes, from Yemen to ash-Sham, accept one address. This is no claim of racial superiority, it is a claim of political workability. The Messenger ﷺ himself was from Quraysh, the revelation had come to Quraysh before it went elsewhere, and the command would come from Quraysh, not because Quraysh is better, but because the Arabs round about had grown in such a way that only Quraysh could hold them together.

And within Quraysh, why Abu Bakr ﵁? Here the man from Banu Taym came into view.

Abu Bakr ﵁ was in fact named ʿAbdullah ibn Abi Quhafah ʿUthman, and his line ran back through Banu Taym ibn Murrah ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy. Murrah ibn Kaʿb was the common ancestor who bound him to the Prophet ﷺ. Between Banu Taym and Banu Hashim, the tribe of the Prophet ﷺ, stood Banu Makhzum, Banu Zuhrah, Banu ʿAdiy. Banu Taym was not a great tribe within Quraysh. It was no Banu Umayyah, with its enormous wealth. It was no Banu Hashim, with its prophetic charge. It was a middling branch of Quraysh, famed for its integrity, its generosity, and its precision in affairs. Abu Bakr’s ﵁ father Abu Quhafah ﵁ was still living, in Mecca, blind with age, and he would, ironically, outlive his son by six months.

What Abu Bakr ﵁ brought into the baiʿah was not the power of his tribe. He had no army behind him, no treasure, no network of allies that could set him upon the throne. What he brought into the baiʿah was what he had gathered in thirteen years of Mecca and ten years of Medina: the unconditional trust of the Messenger ﷺ. When the Prophet ﷺ sat in the cave alone with him, and the enemy stood upon the threshold, the Prophet ﷺ did not say “do not fear for yourself”. He said: “Do not grieve. Allah ﷻ is with us.” Abu Bakr ﵁ was the second of two. The Qur’an itself had given him this title in verse 9:40. He who was the second of two in the cave could also be the first of one in the Saqifah.

The ṣāḥib in this verse, the companion in the cave, was none other than Abu Bakr ﵁. The Qur’an itself had not pronounced his name, but the whole Arab world knew who the second of two was. He who refused obedience to this man refused obedience to a man who had been immortalised in the revelation, and he who gave obedience to this man gave it to a companion whose nearness to the Prophet ﷺ stood in a verse that would be recited until the Day of Judgement.

Suyuti ﵀ points out, moreover, that the Prophet ﷺ in his last illness had appointed Abu Bakr ﵁ to lead the prayer. When the fever kept him in bed, and the voice was no longer strong enough to address the mosque, he had Abu Bakr ﵁ summoned to lead the community in the ṣalāt. ʿAʾishah ﵂, his own daughter, had wished to shield him from that burden with the argument that her father was a tender-hearted man who could not address the people without his tears overcoming him. The Prophet ﷺ rejected her request. Command Abu Bakr ﵁ to lead the people in prayer, he repeated three times. Truly you are the women of Yusuf ﵇, a remark on how women sometimes wished to set their own preference above the command of the Messenger ﷺ. The hall accepted his decision. Abu Bakr ﵁ had led seventeen prayers in the Masjid an-Nabawi while the Prophet ﷺ still breathed. Who would now deny him the leadership the Prophet ﷺ had himself granted him?

The Quiet of the First Evening

The sun sank over Medina. In the mosque ʿAli ﵁ prepared the body for the washing, and ʿAbbas ﵁ stood with him, while the women of the house held themselves in silent mourning at their side. Outside, in the Saqifah, it was already still. The Ansar had raised their hands. The Muhajirun had raised their hands. Abu Bakr ﵁ was their khalīfah.

He did not return at once to his house in as-Sunh. He stayed in the mosque, close to the deceased, close to the washing, close to the place where the burial would take place. He was sixty-six years old. His beard was not white but had turned light brown through the henna and the katam. His body was slight, his shoulders narrow, his belly drawn in by years of fasting. He did not speak much that evening, and he did not eat much. He knew that the next morning the public baiʿah would be taken in the mosque itself, before all eyes, and that from that morning on the burden would rest upon his shoulders that no one before him had borne in this way. Not prophethood, for that could not be passed on. But the shepherding of the ummah the Prophet ﷺ had left behind.

ʿUmar ﵁ stood beside him. Abu ʿUbaydah ﵁ stood beside him. ʿUthman ﵁ came in, silent as he was wont to be silent. ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁, Talhah ﵁, Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁: the men the Prophet ﷺ in his living years had kept about him as his nearest counsel now ranged themselves around his successor. Abu Bakr ﵁ looked at them, and his eyes filled. He said not a word. He needed to say no word. The community had found its head again, on the same day that it had lost its Prophet ﷺ.

The Public Confirmation in the Mosque

The next morning, Tuesday the thirteenth of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, Abu Bakr ﵁ went to the Masjid an-Nabawi, and ʿUmar ﵁ went before him. The mosque was full. The inhabitants of Medina, men and women, old and young, Muhajirun and Ansar, had gathered beneath the thatched roof that the Prophet ﷺ years earlier had helped to build with his own hands. The body of the Messenger ﷺ still lay within, in the chamber of ʿAʾishah ﵂, wrapped in three white Yemeni cloths. The burial would not take place until that evening, in the place where he had died, in the same chamber where he had passed away. But before he was laid in the earth, the ummah had also to confirm its new head in public.

ʿUmar ﵁ stood upon the minbar ahead of Abu Bakr ﵁. He spoke first, to prepare the community, to take back his own words of the first moment of shock, and to invite the people to what would follow. He spoke with the voice of a man who knew that yesterday he had nearly gone too far, and who today wished to give the right direction to the feelings he had stirred yesterday. Allah ﷻ has given your affair into the hands of the best among you, the companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, the second of two when they were both in the cave. Stand up, give him your allegiance.

Then Abu Bakr ﵁ stepped forward. He did not sit upon the topmost step, where the Prophet ﷺ was wont to sit. He sat one step lower. The Prophet ﷺ had had three steps; Abu Bakr ﵁ sat upon the second, and he would remain seated there throughout his khilafah. ʿUmar ﵁ would keep the same posture, and only decades later would a later khalifah, without the same reticence, sit upon the topmost step. It was a posture of reverence: the man who has left me still sits above me, even though he is no longer among us.

Men and women came forward one by one, laid their hand upon his, and swore allegiance. ʿAli ﵁ came, and az-Zubayr ﵁, and the men of the ten to whom Paradise was promised. The Ansar of the Aws and the Khazraj came. The freed slaves came. Bilal ﵁, the voice of the call to prayer, came. The hands were raised, the voices were given, the sun climbed over the walls of the mosque and brought its light upon an ummah that had lost its Prophet ﷺ and had found its khalifah, on one and the same day.

The Voice of Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁

One voice in the city remained still. Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁, the chief of the Khazraj, still lay in his house with the fever that had kept him beneath his cloak in the Saqifah. He did not give the baiʿah. He did not refuse it loudly, and he raised no rival party, but he did not stretch out his hand. He was one of the great ones of the Ansar, one of the men the Prophet ﷺ had received in his house, a host whose generosity was proverbial in the oases of Yathrib. And he had been the candidate for whom his own tribe had been convened in the Saqifah. It was not easy for him that the command had fallen to another.

Abu Bakr ﵁ did not trouble him. He sent no men to force him before the minbar. He said simply: leave him. A community that has just found its leader need not break the last dissenting voice; it need only let him be. Saʿd ﵁ later departed for ash-Sham, and there he would die. Suyuti ﵀ keeps the matter brief in this section, but the detail is telling: the first khalifah of Islam compelled no baiʿah. He who did not stretch out his hand kept his hand. He who did not give his word kept his word. The command rested upon willingness, not upon fear.

The Judgement of History

Centuries later people would, with the luxury of distance and the lack of responsibility, ask questions that were not asked in the Saqifah. Why was ʿAli ﵁ not chosen at once? Why was the baiʿah not postponed until after the burial? Why had this to be settled on this day?

The answer of the oldest sources, and Suyuti ﵀ is among the oldest who sum up the whole dossier, is clear. It could not wait. The Arab tribes that had only recently accepted the Messenger ﷺ were on the point of falling away. Musaylimah was busy in al-Yamamah with his false claim. Tulayhah was busy in Banu Asad with his. The Roman frontier had sounds of unrest. The army of Usama ibn Zayd ﵁ stood drawn up north of Medina ready to march out. An ummah without a head on that Tuesday morning would be an ummah that before the end of the month might have fallen apart. Abu Bakr ﵁ and ʿUmar ﵁ knew this. They knew too that the burial of the Prophet ﷺ could wait until his successor was appointed. The Messenger ﷺ himself had taught them that the salah over a deceased could be performed at any moment; the unity of his ummah could not be saved at any moment.

Therefore the baiʿah was taken that afternoon, in a thatched hall, swiftly, without formal ceremony. Therefore ʿUmar ﵁ later accounted for its swiftness before the minbar. Therefore the next morning the public baiʿah followed in the Masjid an-Nabawi, before the eyes of every inhabitant of Medina. The roughness of the process was caught up in the clarity of the result. One khalīfah. One command. One ummah.

And the man who rose out of the Saqifah as the first khalifah of Islam was the man of whom the Prophet ﷺ in his last illness had said that he should lead the people in prayer. He was the man of whom ʿAʾishah ﵂ relates that the Prophet ﷺ had repeatedly wished to write him down as successor, but had not then done so because he knew that Allah ﷻ and the believers would want no other. He was the man upon whose lap the Prophet ﷺ had slept in the Cave of Thawr when the spider-webs kept them hidden. He was the man who had spent his own wealth to buy the freedom of Bilal ﵁, and Suhayb ﵁, and ʿAmir ibn Fuhayrah ﵁, and dozens of others who groaned under the tyranny of Mecca. He was as-Siddiq, the Truthful, a title not devised by a human being but brought by Jibril ﵇ to the Prophet ﷺ after the Night of al-Isra’.

And now he was the khalifah. The Saqifah was over. The ummah had found its leader, on the day that it lost its Prophet ﷺ. The next morning he would ascend the minbar and pronounce the words that would fix the whole nature of Islamic authority forever: I have been set in authority over you and I am not the best of you. But those words belong to the story of a new day.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (tr. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 51–55, 57.