The Pledge of Allegiance to ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁

Five days after the martyrdom of ʿUthman ﵁, Medina once again stood without a khalifah. On the evening that ʿAli ﵁ stretched out his hand in the mosque of the Messenger ﷺ, he received the bayʿah of those who remained, and entered an office he had refused more than once.

The city without a head

ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ had fallen to the ground in his house, with the Quran open on his lap and the blood of the third khalifah on the open pages of the mushaf he himself had spread among the community. The siege that had enclosed his house for days, the men from Egypt and Basra and Kufa who had bound the administrative grievances of their provinces together into an armed protest, the silence of a large part of the Medinan Sahabah ﵃ who had not intervened, and the final break-in during which the old man was killed, had left the capital in a condition it had not known since the mutual homage of Saqifa. There was no undisputed successor. There was no Shura that ʿUthman ﵁ had appointed before his death. There were, however, men with weapons in the streets who called themselves rebels, and there were men of standing in the mosque who carried no weapon and did not know which way to turn.

In this silence of five days between the blow that killed the third khalifah and the bayʿah that would appoint the fourth, there was one man whose name was on every tongue: ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁. He was the cousin of the Messenger ﷺ, raised in his house, married to his daughter Fatima az-Zahra ﵂, the father of Hasan ﵁ and Husayn ﵁ whom the Prophet ﷺ had designated as the two masters of the youth of the people of Paradise. He had been, after Khadija ﵂, the first human being to accept the message. He was the man who had lain in the bed of the Prophet ﷺ on the night of the hijra, wrapped in his green cloak, while the watchers of Quraysh stood outside in a half circle waiting for the morning light. He was the bearer of the standard at Khaybar. He was one of the six members of the Shura whom ʿUmar ﵁ had appointed on his deathbed. He was, in the count of those still living of the ten to whom the Messenger ﷺ had promised Paradise, one of the remaining.

The insistence of the people

The rebels who had set up their quarters in the streets of Medina had already decided for themselves who the fourth khalifah must be. For them, ʿAli ﵁ was the only Sahabi ﵁ of the old stature whose hand they wished to receive, because into their grievances against ʿUthman ﵁ they had also folded the hope of a rectifying turn, and they believed that ʿAli ﵁ would carry out this turn. They came to him at his house, together with the senior Muhajirun and the senior Ansar who were still in the city, and they asked him to give his hand. He refused.

What ʿAli ﵁ expressed in this refusal was no false modesty and no hesitation to carry the burden. It was the clarity of a man who knew what tensions the office carried within it at this moment. ʿUthman ﵁ had not been removed by a lawful procedure; he had been murdered. Whoever accepted the bayʿah after this murder accepted an office that had fallen open through blood. Whoever accepted the bayʿah after this murder would inevitably be confronted with the demand for blood retribution from Banu Umayyah and from those to whom ʿUthman ﵁ belonged as family and as khalifah. ʿAli ﵁ knew that the first question put to him, on the day after the bayʿah, would not be about Quran and Sunnah, but about the punishment of the murderers of ʿUthman ﵁. He knew that in the present condition of Medina he could not carry out that punishment, because he had no army and the murderers themselves were among the men who were now trying to force the bayʿah upon him.

The mosque, not the street

In a further report that Suyuti ﵀ preserves via Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀, the men pressed further, and ʿAli ﵁ set a condition:

With this one word he moved the appointment from the street to the minbar, from the ambition of a militia band to the unanimity of a community. He refused to accept the bayʿah in his own house, because the hand that would touch his hand would in that case be carried by the weapons of those who had killed ʿUthman ﵁. He insisted that the community in its entirety, with the remaining senior Sahabah ﵃, with the Muhajirun and the Ansar who had served ʿUthman ﵁, with those of Banu Umayyah who had not yet departed, would attend the ceremony. On that condition, and on that condition alone, was he willing to stretch out his hand.

On the fifth day after the murder, a Friday in Dhul-Hijjah of the year thirty-five after the hijra, the bayʿah came about. The mosque was full. Talhah ibn ʿUbaydillah ﵁ came forward and laid his hand on that of ʿAli ﵁. Some among those present remarked that Talhah ﵁ had a wounded hand, from the battle of Uhud where his hand had closed around the Messenger ﷺ like a shield, and they said, according to what Suyuti ﵀ reports via a chain of narrators:

Az-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwam ﵁ followed, and after him the remaining Sahabah ﵃ who were present in the mosque. Outside the mosque, the Muhajirun and the Ansar who were still alive, and the young men who had grown up in the Medina of the second generation, gave their bayʿah. Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁ kept himself apart. ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁ kept himself apart. A handful of men did not come forward and stayed at home, and ʿAli ﵁ left them undisturbed, for he valued voluntariness in this act.

What the bayʿah expressed

The formula with which ʿAli ﵁ accepted the bayʿah was sober. He promised what each of his three predecessors had promised: the Quran as law, the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ as example, governance to the best ability of the one who carried it. He promised no miracles and no upheaval. He gave no list of persons he would dismiss or appoint. He promised no immediate punishment for the murderers of ʿUthman ﵁, for he knew that he could not carry out that punishment as long as the army at his disposal consisted to a considerable degree of those very murderers.

What he did express, in the first khutbah he delivered after his bayʿah and which Suyuti ﵀ preserves in a short summary, was a reminder. He spoke of himself as one of those who had stood by the Prophet ﷺ from beginning to end, and he spoke of his own precedence in Islam with the sobriety of a man who knew that this precedence had never before led him to the office. He had given the bayʿah to Abu Bakr ﵁ at Saqifa. He had given the bayʿah to ʿUmar ﵁ at the death of Abu Bakr ﵁. He had given the bayʿah to ʿUthman ﵁ at the pronouncement of the Shura. He had served ʿUthman ﵁ in his time of peace with counsel, with ijtihad, with legal assistance whenever ʿUthman ﵁ asked for it, and even in the final year he had sent two of his own sons, Hasan ﵁ and Husayn ﵁, with the sword to the house of ʿUthman ﵁ to keep watch at the door for as long as that lay in human hands. He had had no hand in the murder. And he said in his speech of acceptance, according to the summary in the report that also finds echo in later sources, that he would go into this office as a man goes through a valley in the night, with the Quran in his right hand and the Sunnah in his left.

The absent

It is important, at this starting point of the khilafah of ʿAli ﵁, to establish who was missing. ʿAʾisha bint Abi Bakr ﵂, the Mother of the Believers, was on the hajj. She received the reports in Mecca, first of the murder of ʿUthman ﵁ and then of the bayʿah to ʿAli ﵁. Muʿawiya ibn Abi Sufyan ﵁, the governor of Sham, was in Damascus. He received the news via couriers, and he let three days pass before he gave an answer. Marwan ibn al-Hakam had been in Medina during the siege and had now, in the chaos, fled. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ was in Palestine, on his estate, and awaited events. Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁ and ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁ were in Medina but gave no bayʿah. They had no hostile intentions, but they did not wish to commit themselves until the matter of the murderers of ʿUthman ﵁ had been settled.

These absent men would shape the story of the khilafah of ʿAli ﵁ in the months to come. The question was not whether the bayʿah in Medina was valid; it was valid, for the senior Sahabah ﵃ of the city had given it, and the city of the Prophet ﷺ had from of old been the city where the bayʿah was formed. The question was whether the absent would follow that bayʿah, or whether they would set against it their own bayʿah, their own conditions, or their own demand for blood retribution for ʿUthman ﵁.

The heart of ʿAli ﵁ on the first day

Suyuti ﵀ preserves, in a fragment later transmitted by Sulaym ibn ʿIsa the Quran reciter of Kufa, the personal word of ʿAli ﵁ about this condition. When his son Hasan ﵁ asked him on the evening of the bayʿah how he felt, he answered in the words of a man who held the first three khalifahs in his memory and now weighed the burden of his own office in the palm of his hand:

What he expressed here in his own circle was what he had kept silent in the mosque: that he accepted this office out of a sense of responsibility, not out of hunger for it. He knew that he had no unified army. He knew that the provinces had their own governors under ʿUthman ﵁, and that some of them would not yield without a struggle to his appointment of replacements. He knew that in Sham sat a man who was his kinsman and would become his enemy. He knew that in Mecca was a woman who had not been fond of him in the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ and who could now become a base for opposition. He knew that the senior Sahabah ﵃ Talhah ﵁ and Zubayr ﵁, who had given him bayʿah in the mosque, would in the coming weeks ask for the punishment of those who had killed ʿUthman ﵁, and that on that point he could not satisfy them immediately.

With this burden in the palm of his hand, and with the Quran and the Sunnah in his memory, he began his work. For the community, the bayʿah was a fact. For him personally, the bayʿah was the beginning of a journey which, in his own words, no man would wish to undertake.

The tension in the House of Banu Hashim

The domestic setting in which ʿAli ﵁ received the bayʿah carried within itself the weight of a history longer than his own life. He had grown up in the house of his uncle Abu Talib, who had taken him into his care in his early youth when his father was in financial straits. He had, in the Meccan years of the Messenger ﷺ, found shelter in the house of his cousin, and in that house he had grown up in a closeness to the revelation that no other of the younger generation of the Sahabah ﵃ had enjoyed. He had heard the first whispers of the first four Meccan surahs from the mouth of the Prophet ﷺ. He had slept on the carpet beside Khadijah ﵂ in the years when the message was passed on in silence. He had performed the first rituals of the salah at the side of Khadijah ﵂ and the Prophet ﷺ, in a depth of domestic seclusion that in Mecca was regarded as suspect by whoever came to know of it.

This domestic closeness to the House of the Prophet ﷺ was no title he had claimed for himself; it was acknowledged as fact in every generation of Sahabah ﵃. ʿUmar ﵁ had expressly included ʿAli ﵁ in his Shura, not as a concession but as the necessary presence of the one who had lived closest to the Prophet ﷺ. ʿUthman ﵁ had consulted him in his legal questions, in the knowledge that the juridical depth of ʿAli ﵁ knew no equal in his generation. Whoever had grown up amid the affairs of governance in Medina knew him as a man whose voice was sought in every question of doubt, even though he held no formal office during the first three caliphates.

In this domestic closeness lay, for whoever had an eye for it, the paradox of his acceptance of the bayʿah. He was the man who had lived closest to the Prophet ﷺ. He was the man who had had no hand in the course of the murder of ʿUthman ﵁. He was, in his juridical skill and in his military valour, without equal in his generation. And yet he was the man whose caliphate, in its very first week, already found itself in a condition that none of his three predecessors had had to bear.

The silence of the first night

In the night after the bayʿah, ʿAli ﵁ stayed in his house near the Baqiʿ. He received in a short audience those of the senior Sahabah ﵃ who were still in the city and wished to confirm the bayʿah to him personally. He kept it brief, because his work began the next morning and because he wanted his nights to remain reserved for the salah. Before he put on his sleeping garment, he spoke, according to a report preserved in later sources, a short admonition to those of his household who were near him, that the office he had accepted that day must not make him a man of lavish tables and soft couches, and that none of his household might seek precedence through his office for what deserved no precedence in the community. He went to bed that night in the same cloak he had worn in the mosque, on the same mattress he had used the week before. In the years that followed, those who had been in his household would testify with great unanimity of this first evening that in the house of the Amir al-Muʾminin nothing changed except the weight of the cares he carried within him.

The legal status of the bayʿah in later fiqh

In the centuries after the bayʿah of Dhul-Hijjah 35, the legal status of the appointment of ʿAli ﵁ would be examined by fiqh scholars of all four Sunni madhhabs. The question that occupied them in particular was whether a bayʿah given under the pressure of a military situation in which the capital was occupied by rebels possessed the same legal validity as a bayʿah pronounced in a calm conjuncture. The scholars of Iraq, and in particular Abu Hanifah ﵀ and his students, came to the conclusion that the bayʿah to ʿAli ﵁ was in its essence valid, because it had been given in the mosque of the Messenger ﷺ by those of the senior Sahabah ﵃ present in Medina, and because ʿAli ﵁ himself had refused to accept the bayʿah in a private chamber or under the direct threat of weapons. The scholars of Medina, and in particular Malik ibn Anas ﵀, came to the same conclusion by a somewhat different line of reasoning, in which the continuity of the caliphate in the office of the senior Sahabi ﵁ who satisfied every procedural norm weighed more heavily than the way the external circumstances had unfolded.

The scholars of Sham, by contrast, insofar as they can be identified in later generations as successors of what had been formulated as a juridical line under Muʿawiya ﵁, advanced the counter-argument that the presence of rebels in the city at the time of the bayʿah had placed it in a state of duress that gave it insufficient basis for recognition throughout the whole of the caliphate. This reasoning was never accepted in the Sunni mainstream, and in the works of as-Shafiʿi ﵀, Ahmad ibn Hanbal ﵀ and the scholars who followed them it was expressly refuted. The Suyuti ﵀ on whom we rely in this summary places himself in this question fully behind the recognition of the bayʿah of ʿAli ﵁ as lawful, and he cites in his appendix the work of Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi ﵀ in which the same position is defended.

The symbolic power of Medina as source of the bayʿah

In the history of the first three caliphates, Medina was the city where every bayʿah found its origin. Saqifa, the covered gallery of Banu Saʿidah in which the first bayʿah to Abu Bakr ﵁ had come about, was in Medina. The public bayʿah to ʿUmar ﵁ after the designation at Abu Bakr ﵁'s sickbed was in the mosque of Medina. The public bayʿah to ʿUthman ﵁ after the pronouncement of the Shura was in the mosque of Medina. It was therefore no wonder that ʿAli ﵁ insisted that his own bayʿah likewise be given in this mosque, and that he rejected the insistence of the rebels that he accept a private bayʿah in his own house. The symbolic power of Medina as source of the bayʿah was, in this phase of the caliphate, a final anchor, and he did not let go of this anchor for the political convenience of a swift appointment. It is a choice that in later sources was widely praised as proof of his fine sensitivity to the procedural integrity of the caliphate.

The position of the caliphate in the Quran

On the place of the caliphate in the Quran, ʿAli ﵁ would deliver several khutbahs during his office. In one of them he pointed to the words of Allah ﷻ:

He pointed out to his listeners that obedience in the Quran was pronounced in three beats: to Allah ﷻ, to the Messenger ﷺ, and to the commanders appointed by the community. He declared that obedience to the commanders was not unlimited; it was bound to the condition that the commanders themselves stood in obedience to Allah ﷻ and to the Messenger ﷺ. Whoever of them failed in this obedience had no right to obedience in an act that was itself in conflict with the law. This was, according to what was preserved in later sources, the principle of his own acceptance of the bayʿah, and it would also be the principle by which he would measure his office in every decision he would take in the years that followed.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd edition 1995), pp. 181–183 (report of Ibn Saʿd on the bayʿah), pp. 195–196 (ʿAli ﵁'s own statement on the threefold passing-by of the office).