The public baiʿah and the first khutbah of Abu Bakr ﵁

A Minbar, a Day After the Stillness

The morning after the Saqifah broke over Medina as though the city itself were breathing out a long-held breath. The sun had only just risen above the palms when people gathered in silence before the Masjid an-Nabawi. The body of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ still lay within, in the chamber of ʿAʾishah ﵂, wrapped in three white cloths, awaiting the burial that would follow that same night. Outside, in the open space of the mosque, the community of Islam was assembled: men and women, the free and the freed, Muhajirun and Ansar. They had come for what rarely occurs in the history of any people: the public confirmation of a successor on the day after the founder has departed.

ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ was the first to ascend the minbar. He knew what he had nearly brought about yesterday with his sword and his refusal to accept what his eyes had seen. He knew too that this morning he had something to set right. He stood before the community and spoke without circumlocution. He acknowledged that the evening before he had spoken in his shock out of a hope instead of a faith, and he declared that Allah ﷻ had let His Messenger ﷺ depart as He had let His other messengers depart, and that the faith of the community hung not upon a mortal body but upon a living truth. And then he turned and pointed to the man who stood beside him.

With those words he referred to the verse in Surah at-Tawbah, verse forty, whose substance every child in Medina knew: the second of two when they were both in the cave. The community now had the words it awaited. The Saqifah had taken place swiftly, in a thatched hall, before a handful of men. This was different, for this was the mosque in which the Prophet ﷺ had for years led the prayer, this was the hall in which the revelation had descended, and this morning before the eyes of everyone the hand would be given, and the voice pronounced.

The Minbar Ascended, One Step Lower

When ʿUmar ﵁ had left his place, Abu Bakr ﵁ went up onto the minbar. He did not sit upon the topmost step, for there the Prophet ﷺ had sat, and that place remained empty out of reverence for the one who would ascend it no more. Abu Bakr ﵁ sat upon the second step. It was no legal rule, no transmitted ordinance; it was the gesture of a man who would not of his own accord sit at the height of his predecessor. He would remain upon that second step throughout his khilafah, and ʿUmar ﵁ would after him sit upon the third. The distance between the minbar of the Prophet ﷺ and the minbar of those who succeeded him was no architectural distance. It was an inner distance, and it was made visible in their bodies by these two men for the whole community.

Abu Bakr ﵁ looked across the hall. He saw the Muhajirun of the first day, the men with whom he had stood in Mecca under the lash of Quraysh. He saw the Ansar who had received them, who had opened their houses, who had shed their blood at Badr. He saw the tribal chiefs of the desert who over the past years had settled in Medina, he saw the freed slaves with their eyes fixed upon his face, he saw Bilal ﵁ standing in a corner with his heavy breathing, and he did not see ʿAʾishah ﵂ and the other mothers of the believers directly, for they were within their chambers, but he felt their presence through the walls. He praised Allah ﷻ. He sent blessing upon the Prophet ﷺ. And then he spoke the words that are, in the whole history of Islamic authority, the first declaration of the nature of that authority.

The Words Themselves

It is an announcement in four sentences, and each sentence carries a shift in the structure of authority. I have been set in authority over you: there is an authority, and it has been handed over, not seized. I am not the best of you: the authority is no acknowledgement of superiority, it is a service. When I act rightly, help me: obedience is no blind following, it is active support of a just command. When I act wrongly, set me straight: criticism is no undermining but an obligation of the community toward its leader. Truthfulness is a trust, lying a betrayal: the transaction between ruler and ruled rests upon the word, not upon the sword.

A man who has just accepted the command of a community opens his term of office with the acknowledgement that he is not infallible, that he may receive correction, that his authority is conditional upon his justice. No king on earth spoke so. No emperor of Byzantium or Persia gave his subjects the right to set him straight. No malik of Yemen gave his council the competence to act against him. But the first khalifah of the Muslims, on the first day of his office, gave his community that competence from his own mouth, in four sentences, upon the minbar of his Prophet ﷺ.

The Weak and the Strong

He let the silence come after the first declaration. He knew that a speech that lasts too long is forgotten; a speech that is too short does not take hold. He gave his community four sentences to take in. Then he went on.

What he sums up here in two sentences is the whole juridical reversal that Islam brought about in the Arab reality. In the jahiliyyah it was otherwise. The strong took what he wanted, because he was strong. The weak lost what he had, because he was weak. The blood of the eminent was dearly paid for, the blood of the humble was scarcely contested. It was an order of power, not of right.

Abu Bakr ﵁ turned the scale over. In his office the weak would be strengthened by his office, no longer in the position of prey but in the position of holder of a right that the khalifah himself would claim for him. And the strong would be weakened by his office, no longer in the position of exploiter but in the position of one who renders account over what he owes to others. This is no rhetorical reversal, this is a declaration of constitutional law. The bait al-mal would under his rule not be steered by the great hands, but by the hand of the khalifah himself, who took from the possessing and gave to the needy, without distinction of tribe, descent or relation.

In the years that would follow, Abu Bakr ﵁ would put this sentence into practice in ways that astonished his contemporaries and served his successors as an example. He would milk goats for widows so that no official would commit this neglect without being reprimanded, he would stand up for a humble Ansari in the mosque because a right had to be given back, and he would set his own stipend from the bait al-mal at half a sheep a day, not because he could take no more, but because he wished to take no more. The sentence upon the minbar was not rhetorical; it was a rule of life, and he would hold to it throughout his khilafah.

The Conditional Obedience

Then came the third declaration, and it is perhaps the most revolutionary of the three. No doctrine of rulership in the history of the ancient world had formulated authority’s own reversal so clearly.

Here lies the juridical soul of the Islamic state. The authority of the khalifah is not absolute, it is derived. It is derived from a higher authority, and when it goes against that higher authority, it lapses. The community is not bound to the person of Abu Bakr ﵁; it is bound to Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ, and Abu Bakr ﵁ is so as well, as the first among them.

This sentence carries two consequences. The first is that the community has a right, and in some cases a duty, to correct the khalifah when he strays from the path. The second is that the khalifah himself, by accepting this formulation, places himself under the judgement of Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ. He is no lawgiver; he is an executor of the law. He carries out laws that are set down in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. It is not his command that the community follows; it is the command of Allah ﷻ, through him.

In the centuries that followed, Muslims have reached back to these three sentences whenever a ruler wished to place himself above the Law. Imam Malik ﵀, Imam Ahmad ﵀, ash-Shafiʿi ﵀ and al-Awzaʿi ﵀ have all cited the first khutbah of Abu Bakr ﵁ as a foundational norm. A ruler who says: I am the law, is no ruler in the Islamic sense. A ruler who says: Obey me as long as I obey Allah ﷻ, is in the line of the first khalifah.

The Silent Promise

Suyuti ﵀ records that after these three declarations the community fell still, not out of confusion, but out of recognition. What it had just heard was no speech. It was a constitution, in four paragraphs, without a single section, without a single clause, without a single reference to precedent or example. Four sentences upon the minbar. And they would endure the centuries.

Abu Bakr ﵁ closed his address with a prayer. He asked Allah ﷻ for help, for he knew what awaited him. The tribes of Banu Asad were stirring in the north, Musaylimah in al-Yamamah was already having himself called rasūl, and the army of Usama ﵁ stood north of Medina awaiting a command that only a khalifah could give. The Book that the Messenger ﷺ had left behind was not yet gathered between two covers. The deserts were brewing their storms. And above all this Abu Bakr ﵁ had his wives and children, his father who would outlive him, a health of his own that was not strong, and an office of which he knew that it would not release him until his death.

He stepped down from the minbar. The men came to him one by one, laid their hand upon his, and gave the baiʿah publicly as well, before the eyes of whoever wished to see it. ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ came, and az-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwam ﵁, and they gave him their hand with the words with which they had already confirmed him in private the evening before. There is no blame upon you, Khalīfah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁ did not come out of his house, and Abu Bakr ﵁ left him in peace. The baiʿah that was given was given freely; the baiʿah that was not given was not compelled. This was the Islamic order, from the first morning of its existence without the Prophet ﷺ.

The Bearing of the Community

It was no small matter for the people who stood in the mosque to listen to these words. They had, most of them, known the Prophet ﷺ personally. They had heard the revelation from his mouth, upon this very minbar, in the same space, sometimes on the same day of the week. Their loss was fresh, their grief was raw, and their readiness to see someone else sit in that place cost them something they could not name. And yet they listened, not out of politeness, not out of habit, but because in every sentence Abu Bakr ﵁ uttered they recognised something they had learned in the twenty-three years that their Messenger ﷺ had lived among them.

The sahabah had seen how the Prophet ﷺ mended his own sandals. They had seen how he fetched water for his wives, how he ate bread with the freed slaves, how in an assembly he never sat in a higher place than his companions. I am not the best of you, said Abu Bakr ﵁, and they heard the echo of a man who had said I am only a servant; speak of me as you would speak of a servant. The weak is strong with me, said Abu Bakr ﵁, and they heard the echo of a Prophet ﷺ who had stood up for a Jewish funeral because a soul has departed. Obey me as long as I obey Allah ﷻ, said Abu Bakr ﵁, and they heard the echo of a Messenger ﷺ who had continually placed his own authority beneath that of the revelation.

The Saqifah had occupied the minds; the minbar of today set the hearts at rest, not because a charismatic man had told them what they wished to hear, but because a withdrawn man had told them what they ought to hear. They gave him the baiʿah, and they gave it to him in tears, and they gave it to him in faith.

What the First Khutbah Does Not Say

It is equally telling what Abu Bakr ﵁ did not say in his first address. He promised no conquests, he promised no wealth, he promised no lightening of the burdens of the Quraysh or an extension of privileges for the Ansar. He did not speak of his own merits in the Hijra, at Badr, at Uhud, at Hudaybiyyah or Tabuk. He did not name his own title as-Siddiq, he did not point to the fact that he had been the second of two in the cave; ʿUmar ﵁ had just done that, but Abu Bakr ﵁ did not do it himself. He did not praise himself, he did not legitimise himself, he appealed to no personal meritocratic claim whatsoever.

This silence is the other half of his message. A khalifah who binds his office not to himself but to the cause has no need to make his own name great. A servant of the community has no need of his curriculum vitae; he has need of his work. And a man who upon the minbar says I am not the best of you closes with that sentence all the doors to every form of self-glorification.

In the years that would follow, Abu Bakr ﵁ would keep this bearing. ʿAʾishah ﵂, his daughter, relates that he said to her in private that he had never sought his office and regarded it at every morning of his khilafah as a burden, not as an honour. He wished, he said, that he had been a simple slave of a good master, so that he would have to render account for one life and not for a hundred thousand. Such utterances ring false in the mouth of most holders of power. In his mouth they rang true, because his life confirmed them.

The Juridical Legacy

For the Muslims who would come in the centuries after him, the first khutbah of Abu Bakr ﵁ became a touchstone. When a later ruler pretended that he stood above the Law, the first sentence of Abu Bakr ﵁ was held up to him: I am not the best of you. When a later ruler pretended that his command was inviolable, the third sentence was held up to him: Obey me as long as I obey Allah ﷻ. When a later ruler pretended that the weak had no right against the strong, the second sentence was held up to him: The weak among you is strong with me.

It is for this reason that the scholars of later times, from al-Mawardi ﵀ in his al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah to Ibn Taymiyyah ﵀ in his as-Siyasah ash-Sharʿiyyah, treat this khutbah as a constitutional text. Not legal text in the sense that it gives articles requiring elaboration, but legal text in the sense that it gives principles that carry the whole elaboration. The justice is no ornament of the khilafah; it is its essence. The obedience is no submission to a person; it is support of the Law through a person. The weak is no troublesome marginal figure; he is the touchstone by which the justice of the authority is read.

Suyuti ﵀ later cites, in his long biographical treatment, a hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ says that his community will be led by rightly-guided khalifahs. Four men, in the most current narration: Abu Bakr ﵁, ʿUmar ﵁, ʿUthman ﵁, ʿAli ﵁. On this Tuesday morning in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the eleventh year, upon the minbar of the Prophet ﷺ, in a mosque where the body of the deceased still lay within, the first of those four began his office. He began it with four sentences that would definitively fix the whole nature of Islamic authority. And the community stood up, gave him the baiʿah, and Islam stepped without its Prophet ﷺ into the new day.

In the evening of that same day the body of the Messenger ﷺ was laid in the earth, in the chamber where he had died. Abu Bakr ﵁ stood in the mosque, shortly after, and would the next morning perform his first act of governance: to push through the command of which all Medina spoke and over which some of his nearest had serious misgivings. The army of Usama ibn Zayd ﵁ had to march out, as the Prophet ﷺ had commanded, and no setback might undo the command. But that belongs to the story of the next morning, and to the story of a khalifah who with his first practical decision showed what his three first declarative sentences truly meant.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (tr. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 54, 57–58.