First Administration and the Replacement of Governors

The day after the bayʿah, ʿAli ﵁ spent in a working circle whose decisions immediately laid bare the dividing lines. He replaced the governors of ʿUthman ﵁, yet one of them, in a province on the Mediterranean, would refuse to accept the instruction.

The office of the khalifah

When ʿAli ﵁ took up his work after the Friday bayʿah, he did so in the manner he had chosen from his youth in the domestic simplicity of Medina. He did not move into the palace that ʿUthman ﵁ had had built in his final years, for he preferred his modest house near the Baqiʿ as his residence. He held his working circle by the minbar of the mosque of the Messenger ﷺ, and he let anyone who had no excuse appear before him without an intermediary secretary. He resumed the custom of ʿUmar ﵁ of walking the markets in person, and he received the petitions of all who came without distinction of rank. In his first month he wore the same robe he had worn the year before.

What had been known in the time of ʿUmar ﵁ to those who had encountered him in person still held true: he had been a judge of peace in questions that others were unable to resolve. When ʿUmar ﵁ sought his counsel in difficult matters of inheritance or criminal law, there had more than once been a ruling from him that resolved the problem in a formula no one had thought of before. One of those rulings is preserved by Suyuti ﵀ from the work of Ibn Mansur ﵀: the account of the two men who shared eight loaves with a third, and who afterwards disputed over the division of the eight dirhams that the third had left behind. ʿAli ﵁ calculated that the owner of five loaves was owed seven dirhams and the owner of three loaves one dirham, for each of the three eaters had eaten an equal share, and the giver of five had in the final reckoning ceded seven thirds to his companion, while the giver of three had contributed only one third. Whoever heard this ruling recognised in it the clarity of the jurist and the patient explanation that ʿAli ﵁ gave to everyone who wished to understand it.

The counsel he did not accept

Two men came to him in the first days after the bayʿah with advice. The first was al-Mughirah ibn Shuʿbah ﵁, a man whom ʿAli ﵁ knew from the time of ʿUmar ﵁ and whose political subtlety was not underestimated within the community. He spoke with ʿAli ﵁ in the evening after the bayʿah, and he gave a counsel that in its caution had a Roman cast to it.

ʿAli ﵁ listened, yet he did not choose to follow the advice. For him the situation was not that of a new khalifah who had to stabilise his power by leaving his predecessor’s governors temporarily in office, but that of a man who had just accepted an office in which the criterion of the Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ stood at the centre, and within that criterion it was not fitting to confirm, for political convenience, governors whose appointment he was unwilling to take upon himself on other grounds. He wanted a clean administration, a governor in every province whom he himself had appointed and to whom he himself had given instructions.

The second adviser was Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁, his younger cousin, a man of sharp political insight who in the coming years would come to play a central role. He too advised him to leave Muʿawiya ﵁ in office for a time.

ʿAli ﵁ shook his head, and he spoke a sentence that explained the whole principle of his approach:

The letters go out

In the week after the bayʿah, ʿAli ﵁ wrote his letters to the provinces. He replaced ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAmir ﵁ in Basra with ʿUthman ibn Hunayf ﵁, one of the senior Ansar who had served in the administration of ʿUmar ﵁ as a tried surveyor of the Sawad. He replaced Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁ in Kufa, not because he was displeased with him, but because he wished to set out a different administrative line in that same post; he left Abu Musa ﵁ in office, however, until his successor should arrive, and that successor was ʿUmarah ibn Shihab ﵁. In Egypt he replaced the son of Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁, and he appointed Qays ibn Saʿd ibn ʿUbada ﵁, one of the sons of the leader of the Ansar of Medina, a man whose political prudence and feel for local dynamics made him eminently suited to the Nile delta. He appointed governors in Yemen, in Bahrain, and in Mecca. To each new governor he wrote a personal letter with instructions about the bait al-mal, about the treatment of the dhimmi, about the warning that he should favour no kinsman of his own Banu Hashim, and about the duty to devote the first request of his day to Allah ﷻ.

Upon the letter to Muʿawiya ﵁ in Damascus he wrote his instruction of dismissal, with the notice that another governor, Sahl ibn Hunayf ﵁ (the brother of the governor he was sending to Basra), would come to Sham to take over his duties. It was this letter, and the reply that never came to it, that would determine the course of the entire khilafat of ʿAli ﵁.

The silence from Damascus

The courier rode the desert road to Sham in a journey of about two weeks. He delivered the letter to Muʿawiya ﵁ in Damascus and waited for the reply. The courier waited a day, and then another day, and then a further week. Muʿawiya ﵁ read the letter, folded it, and gave no answer. He asked the courier to wait in his palace and had meals brought to him, yet he gave him no letter to take back. What Muʿawiya ﵁ did in the meantime was to mobilise Sham. He spoke with his tribal chiefs, with his military commanders, and with the senior men of Sham who had been loyal to ʿUthman ﵁. He showed them the bloodstained mushaf of ʿUthman ﵁ that his kinswoman Naʾila ﵂ had sent from the house in Medina, and he showed them the severed fingers of Naʾila ﵂, which she had lost when she sought to shield her husband with her body. He posed one question, a single question, in every audience hall and in every mosque where he spoke: who will avenge the murder of the third khalifah?

Only after three months, by the estimate of those who later recorded it, did the answer to the letter of ʿAli ﵁ arrive. Muʿawiya ﵁ sent a Qurayshi named Qabisah ibn Jabir to Medina with a sealed letter and the instruction to say nothing himself. When ʿAli ﵁ opened the letter, he found it empty, bearing only the heading: From Muʿawiya ibn Abi Sufyan ﵁ to ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁. He asked the courier what this meant, and the courier answered as his master had instructed him:

In this single sentence was uttered the situation that fitted into no letter. Muʿawiya ﵁ had not rejected the bayʿah to ʿAli ﵁ by a written declaration; he had rejected it through silence, through the orchestration of mourning, through the physical presence of the bloodstained shirt upon the minbar of his capital. He did not expressly claim the khilafat for himself, but he demanded, in silence and with eloquent symbols, that the murderers of ʿUthman ﵁ be handed over to him before he would so much as consider the bayʿah to ʿAli ﵁.

The governors who did accept

In the other quarters of the caliphate the matter proceeded more calmly. In Basra ʿUthman ibn Hunayf ﵁ received his appointment and occupied the administrative building without resistance. In Kufa Abu Musa ﵁ handed over his office to ʿUmarah ﵁ without a raised voice. In Egypt Qays ibn Saʿd ﵁ arrived at the governor’s residence in Fustat with a handful of attendants, spoke with the notables of the old Egyptian administration, and within a week brought the province into an accepting community under his rule. He governed Egypt, in the testimony that later narrators have preserved, with the same calm and the same sensitivity with which his father Saʿd ibn ʿUbadah ﵁ had led the Khazraj in the time of the Messenger ﷺ.

Yemen came to ʿAli ﵁ through the hand of ʿUbaydullah ibn ʿAbbas ﵁, the brother of Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁. Bahrain came through another appointment. Mecca accepted the appointment of ʿAli ﵁ through his cousin Qutham ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁. When all the letters had gone out and all the confirmations had returned, the balance in Medina stood at four provinces that lay under ʿAli ﵁ without friction, and one single province in which sat a governor who had ignored his appointment and begun his own mobilisation. Four out of five would, under calm circumstances, have been an acceptable ratio, but under the circumstances in which the murder of ʿUthman ﵁ still lay fresh in every heart, the one exception was enough to throw the whole balance out of true.

The bait al-mal and the second decision

In his first weeks ʿAli ﵁ took a second decision that caused more stir in the streets of Medina than his appointment of governors. He resumed the custom of Abu Bakr ﵁ and ʿUmar ﵁ of distributing the revenues of the bait al-mal in equal portions among those enrolled, without distinction of precedence or clan kinship. Under ʿUthman ﵁ the distribution had been less strict; some Sahabah ﵃ of the older generation had received larger stipends from the bait al-mal, and some kinsmen of Banu Umayyah had accepted estates that made them great landholders. ʿAli ﵁ wished to return from this custom to the stricter line of the first two khalifahs. He spoke in the mosque after the bayʿah:

This intention of restoration was loudly cheered in the streets of Medina, while it was heard in silence by those who had accepted estates or larger stipends under ʿUthman ﵁. In the first month of his office it cost ʿAli ﵁ a number of his potential allies from Banu Umayyah, who saw in this measure an undermining of their standing, yet it won him the loyalty of the Ansar in Medina and of the early Muhajirun who had always held that ʿUthman ﵁ had been too generous in these matters.

The situation at the end of the first month

When the first month of his khilafat had passed, ʿAli ﵁ stood with an administration that functioned in four of the five great provinces, with a fifth province in which the governor did not accept the appointment, and with a domestic policy of strict fiscal justice that was cheered in Medina and seen in Damascus as proof that ʿAli ﵁ was not prepared to strike a political deal. He had raised no army, he had announced no campaign, and he had issued no punishment against the murderers of ʿUthman ﵁ who still moved freely within his own circle. He governed, in his own words, as a man passing through a valley by night, with the Quran in his right hand and the Sunnah in his left.

The question was how long Medina could endure this state of affairs before an external event would force it into motion. The answer to that question would come from Mecca, not from Damascus, and from the hand of two men whose hands he had held in his own in the mosque. But this too belongs to a later article.

The letter to Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ on the governor’s office

In these first weeks ʿAli ﵁ wrote a lengthy letter to his cousin Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁, whom he had appointed in Basra. The letter, of which a portion is preserved in later sources and which in its formal tone reflects the instruction he had given to each of his governors, opened with the praise of Allah ﷻ and with the tashahhud, and then passed into a series of admonitions that in their brevity set out the whole principle of his administration. He admonished Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ not to appoint his officials on the grounds of clan kinship but on the grounds of proven competence and integrity. He admonished him not to interrupt the fiscal flows from the province to the bait al-mal for the sake of his own table and his own household. He admonished him to treat the dhimmi according to the provisions of the treaty concluded in the time of ʿUmar ﵁, without adding to it or subtracting from it in his own conscience. He admonished him to punish severely whoever used dishonest weights in the markets, for in dishonest weights, so he wrote, lies the corruption of an entire community.

The conversation with Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁

In the week before he appointed a replacement governor in Kufa, ʿAli ﵁ received Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁ in his working circle in Medina. Abu Musa ﵁ had come from Kufa to Medina to lay before him his views on the administrative questions that were alive in the city. The conversation was friendly in tone, yet in substance ʿAli ﵁ took a line that Abu Musa ﵁ in his caution could not follow. ʿAli ﵁ wished for a governor in Kufa who could carry out, in unison, the mobilisation of the garrison should it be required in the coming months. Abu Musa ﵁ was a man of peace and of consultation; he had rendered good service in Kufa in the years of ʿUmar ﵁ and ʿUthman ﵁, but he was not the man for a military mobilisation. ʿAli ﵁ decided, after the conversation, to leave him in office for the transitional period and to send a replacement only at a later stage. The choice would show its consequences in the mobilisation for the Battle of the Camel, for Abu Musa ﵁ would not carry out the call to mobilise in Kufa, and it would fall to ʿAmmar ﵁ and Hasan ﵁ to set the troops in motion after all.

The appointment of Qutham ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁ in Mecca

In these weeks ʿAli ﵁ received letters from the notables of Mecca, who confirmed their bayʿah to him and asked him for a governor who would be accepted within the Hijazi aristocracy. He chose Qutham ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁, one of his Hashimi cousins, a man who had been raised in honour in Mecca and whose political prudence would arouse no resistance in the city. Qutham ﵁ accepted the appointment and occupied the governor’s building in Mecca in the week before the end of the year 35. He held a sovereign administration in Mecca that in its functioning took the management of the hajj for the year 36 into its hands, and under his presidency the hajj of that year was carried out, despite the political tensions in Medina and Mecca, in calm and in full ritual order.

The visits to the markets

In his first weeks in Medina ʿAli ﵁ resumed the custom of ʿUmar ﵁ of visiting the markets in person and questioning the traders about their weights, their measures, and their commercial conduct. He walked through the markets in simple clothing and spoke with the traders as an ordinary customer. He asked the price of a product, and when the price seemed to him higher than was usual, he asked the reason for the discrepancy. He asked to see a weight, and when the weight seemed to him out of balance, he asked for its calibration value. In a number of cases he asked the trader to identify himself at the place of the transaction and to repeat the transaction before his eyes. Whoever was caught in dishonest trade was not punished by him in person but referred to the qadi of Medina, with a note of what the khalifah had observed for himself.

The visits to the markets were not unusual in Medina under the first three khalifahs, but under ʿAli ﵁ they took on a particular emphasis that was noted in later sources. He went not only to the markets in the central districts of the city, but also to the smaller markets in the outlying quarters where the poorer people traded. He spoke with the slaves who had been sent by their masters to buy certain products, and he asked them whether their masters treated them justly in the manner in which they had been sent out. He spoke with the widows who ran their own trade in the market, and he asked them whether they received in the community the protection due to them according to the provisions of the Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ. He spoke with the dhimmi traders, and he asked them whether they received in the community the treatment that had been promised to them in the treaty of ʿUmar ﵁. These rounds in the markets gave him a direct picture of the state of the community that informed his policy decisions in the first months of his office.

The new governors and their instructions

To each of the new governors he appointed in these weeks, ʿAli ﵁ gave a personal instruction. To Qays ibn Saʿd ﵁ in Egypt he gave the instruction to treat the Coptic community according to the provisions of the treaty of ʿUmar ﵁, to permit no additions to the jizyah rates, and to consult the senior men of the old Egyptian administration in his working circle for every decision of weight. To ʿUthman ibn Hunayf ﵁ in Basra he gave the instruction to keep the fiscal flows from the Sawad in a strict order, and to permit no appointment of his own kinsmen or fellow tribesmen that might bind him into a familial line. To ʿUmarah ﵁ in Kufa he gave the instruction to keep the garrison in a state of readiness, and to permit no generosity from the bait al-mal that would undermine the fiscal order. Every instruction ended with the same formal formula: that the governor carry out his work in the awareness that the Day of Resurrection will question him for every act.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 183–184 (replacements of governors), p. 198 (the eight-loaves ruling via Ibn Mansur), p. 184 (first khutbah and bait al-mal policy). The letter-and-silence episode with Muʿawiya ﵁ is preserved in summary by Suyuti ﵀ on pp. 184–185.