The Battle of Siffin

On the plain along the right bank of the Euphrates, between Raqqa and Damascus, in Safar of the year 37 two armies of Muslims met each other in a battle that in its preparations and its skirmishes would last hundreds of days, and that in a single week of actual fighting would yield more dead than any battle of Islam until then. The battle ended not in a military victory but in the raising of mushaf-leaves upon spearpoints, and in an arbitration that would cut the community forever along new lines.

The arrival at the Euphrates

The army of Kufa under ʿAli ﵁ numbered, according to the estimates preserved in later sources, about ninety thousand men, and it consisted of the regular garrison of Kufa, of volunteers from Basra whom ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ had mobilised, of contingents from Yemen under ʿUbaydullah ibn ʿAbbas ﵁, of smaller troops from Mecca and Medina, and of the Hijazi aristocracy that dwelt in Kufa. The army of Sham under Muʿawiya ﵁ was of comparable size, and it consisted of the tribal coalitions of Qudaʿa and Kalb that formed the backbone of the Shami army, of Yemenis who had settled in Sham since the conquests of Khalid ibn al-Walid ﵁, of kinsmen of Banu Umayyah who had emigrated from Medina to Sham, and of the urban population of Damascus and Hims, which through the bayʿah to Muʿawiya ﵁ had raised its governor to its rising khalifah.

The two armies arrayed themselves on opposite sides of the plain. The river Euphrates ran to the east of the camp of Sham and to the west of the camp of Iraq, and in the first week Muʿawiya ﵁ posted guards at the access to the water and denied the camp of ʿAli ﵁ that access. The men of Iraq soon thirsted, for it was Safar, and in Safar the desert temperatures could already rise high by day. ʿAli ﵁ sent a delegation to Muʿawiya ﵁ to demand access to the water, but Muʿawiya ﵁ refused, and ʿAli ﵁ let his men know that they would have to take the water by force. A charge of the Iraqi cavalry drove the Shami guards from the riverbank, and the water was restored. ʿAli ﵁, in a gesture recorded in later sources as proof of his conduct, declared access to the water free for both camps, for he refused to allow his men to deal with Sham as Sham had wished to deal with them.

The months of skirmishing

Once the water was restored, a long period of negotiations and small skirmishes began that stretched from Safar deep into Rabi ath-Thani. Each week the two armies sent delegations to one another: on the Iraqi side ʿAli ﵁ sought to bring Muʿawiya ﵁ to a peaceful bayʿah, while on the Shami side Muʿawiya ﵁ sought to move ʿAli ﵁ to surrender the murderers of ʿUthman ﵁, and neither commander yielded. Between the delegations there were small skirmishes between patrols, brief clashes in a valley, and a duel here and there between champions who contended for the honour of their side. The total losses in these months of skirmishing ran into the hundreds, a regrettable figure for a state of affairs still conducted as an armed stalemate.

In these months there also occurred the duel-phase in which some of the most famous names of the two armies were set against one another. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, who in his younger years had been a formidable swordsman, came in one of these duels to stand against an Iraqi warrior, and he was thrown from the saddle; in a famous episode often recounted in later sources, he saved himself by loosening his garments, a gesture that in the culture of the sword-duel was regarded as a deadly humiliation for whoever allowed it to be visited upon him, so that the Iraqi warrior turned away in embarrassment. The anecdote was long retold in Kufa as an explanation of why the Shami cavalry no longer sent ʿAmr ﵁ into duels.

The week of the real fighting

Towards the end of Safar of the year 37 the patience in both camps was exhausted, a final negotiation failed, the banners were planted, and the line of battle was set in its formal final array. On the first day of Safar, which in the reckoning of the second chronological cycle is recorded as the first day of the actual battle, the command for general assault went out, and a week of real fighting followed.

The fighting was intense. In the central column of the Iraqi army Hashim al-Mirqal ﵁ bore the standard of Kufa, and he fell on the second day beneath a downward sword-stroke that struck him in the neck, after which the standard was taken up by his nephew, who shortly afterwards also fell. ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁, at his ninety years still in the front lines, fell on the third day of the actual fighting, slain, according to the report preserved in every source, by a Shami sword-stroke while in hand-to-hand combat he dealt his last blows against whoever of Sham assailed him. His death was of particular theological weight in the community, because the Messenger ﷺ, during the building of the mosque in Medina, had uttered a word about him that is widely preserved in later sources:

Whoever heard this hadith and then learned that Ammar ﵁ had fallen on the side of ʿAli ﵁ against the men of Sham could not possibly evade, in his own conscience, that the Messenger ﷺ had here designated the Shami party as the rebellious group. The news of his death and the accompanying hadith spread through both armies within a day, and in the camp of Muʿawiya ﵁ confusion arose. Some of his men held that they must reconsider their position, while others, and among them ʿAmr ﵁, received the news with a rhetorical inversion: it was not the Shamis who had slain Ammar ﵁, but whoever had brought him into the battle, and that was ʿAli ﵁. This inversion held Sham together, but it left a wound that in later generations would be invoked as proof that the Shami party knew, in its own conscience, against whom it fought.

The night of despair

On the fourth night of the actual fighting, what is designated in later sources as the Laylat al-Harir (the night of howling), the battle reached its climax. The Iraqi cavalry under Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ had forced the central Shami position to give way, the right flank of Sham was withdrawn, and the left flank of Sham was in poor condition. Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ sent a courier to ʿAli ﵁ with word that if he had only a few hours more, he could reach Damascus without having to await the following morning. On the Shami side the entire staff was in council, and Muʿawiya ﵁ openly considered a withdrawal to Damascus to organise a new line of defence from there; he asked ʿAmr ﵁ for counsel, and ʿAmr ﵁ answered with a proposal that would tip the battle, and in its wake the whole community:

Muʿawiya ﵁ accepted the proposal. Before the dawn of the fifth day, in the Shami camp every written copy of a Mushaf-fragment that had been carried in a tent or in a saddlebag was impaled upon a spearpoint, and before the sun rose, the Shami line stood with hundreds of spears upon which leaves of the Book of Allah ﷻ fluttered.

The raising of the Mushaf-leaves

When the Iraqi lines renewed their assault in the morning, they saw before them the leaves of the Mushaf, and a cry went up in the Shami camp: the Book of Allah ﷻ between us and you! A number of Iraqi warriors, especially those who were among the reciters of Kufa and who had memorised the Quran in their youth, let their weapons fall, while others hesitated. Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ cried that this was a ruse, that the Mushaf-leaves upon the spearpoints were a political trick to wrest away the victory they held in their hands, yet a great part of the Iraqi ranks turned their faces from the battlefield all the same. There arose in the camp of ʿAli ﵁ a division that in a quarter of an hour tore apart what had been built up over months: on the one side stood the men who wished to continue the battle because they recognised in the Mushaf-leaves a military sword of Sham, and on the other side stood the men who read the Mushaf-leaves literally as a religious call and who would not raise a weapon against the Book of Allah ﷻ.

The delegation of the second group came to ʿAli ﵁ in his tent and demanded that he cease the fighting and that he enter into arbitration according to the Book of Allah ﷻ. ʿAli ﵁ tried to convince them that this was a ruse, and he spoke words preserved in later sources:

The pressure was so great, and in that pressure so much sincere confusion was mingled with agitation by those in the camp who nursed plans of their own, that ʿAli ﵁ at last recalled Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ from the battlefield. Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ returned with great reluctance, and he told the delegation that in one hour he could reach Damascus. He was jeered, and he returned to his cavalry and gave the command for withdrawal.

With this withdrawal the battle of Siffin ended. What had begun as a battle ended as a negotiation, and what could have been a military decision was deferred to an arbitration that in the months that followed would lead only to new ruptures.

The truce and the two arbiters

A truce was proclaimed upon the battlefield. Both parties bound themselves to the appointing of an arbiter, and the two arbiters would meet in a place of assembly to decide, in arbitration, the matter of the fitnah according to the Book of Allah ﷻ. Muʿawiya ﵁ appointed as his arbiter ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, the architect of the Mushaf-ruse. ʿAli ﵁ wished to appoint Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ or ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAbbas ﵁, but his own followers, and in particular the Yemeni contingents in his army, refused. They demanded Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁, the man who in Kufa had not carried out the call to mobilisation, because they saw in his neutrality a guarantee against partiality. ʿAli ﵁ pointed out that Abu Musa ﵁ had no experience in political negotiations, and that in an arbitration against ʿAmr ﵁ he would be at a disadvantage, but the pressure of the Yemenis was too great, and Abu Musa ﵁ was appointed.

The document of the truce was read out and sealed in both camps. It stipulated that the two arbiters would meet, after some months, in a neutral place, presumably Dumat al-Jandal, to reach a ruling in arbitration according to the Book of Allah ﷻ and, in the absence of an express directive in the Book, according to the guiding Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Until that arbitration both parties would lay down their weapons and remain in their respective provinces.

When the document was read out in the Iraqi camp, in one corner of the army a protest broke out that in form and in tone was something other than the division of a few hours before. A number of men from Tamim and from other tribes cried out that no arbitration was lawful where the Book of Allah ﷻ had already given the ruling, and they raised the slogan: la hukma illa li-Llah, judgement belongs to Allah ﷻ alone. With this slogan a group of men, by the estimates between twelve thousand and sixteen thousand, walked away from the camp of ʿAli ﵁ and set up their own camp in a village called Harura, a day’s journey from Kufa. With them the first party of the Khawarij was born.

What the battle of Siffin had pronounced

Siffin had been the greatest battle in the history of Islam until then, with counts of the dead set in later sources at seventy thousand to a hundred thousand. Among the dead were Ammar ibn Yasir ﵁ from the side of Iraq and Ubaydullah ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ from the side of Sham, and among the Iraqi dead were moreover Hashim al-Mirqal ﵁ and countless other senior Kufans whose names were still named as martyrs in the traditions of the city families in later generations.

For ʿAli ﵁ the battle, despite his approaching military victory, had in its outcome yielded a political defeat. He had had to recall his best cavalry commander at the very moment that this man held in his hands what months of negotiations had failed to achieve, he had seen the Mushaf-ruse unfold before his own eyes without any means of protecting his own men against it, he had appointed an arbiter who was not his choice against an arbiter who in political subtlety was the most cunning man of the community, and he had seen his own army split into two parts, of which a considerable portion was now arming itself for war against him in Harura.

For the community Siffin was the battle after which no return to the old unity would be possible. Sham was not militarily defeated, but had escaped a real defeat through the Mushaf-ruse, and would in the years that followed strengthen its grip on its province and even wrest Egypt from the appointment of ʿAli ﵁. Iraq was split within itself between those who accepted the arbitration as an emergency measure and those who rejected it as a crime against the Book of Allah ﷻ. What in Medina under the first three khalifahs had been a united community was now a triangle of Iraq, Sham and Khawarij, and from that triangle no unambiguous return to the old unity would come.

The fighting of the first day

On the first day of the actual fighting, after the months of negotiations and the week of skirmishing, the two armies stood against one another in full battle array. The Iraqi army held the central column, above it the standard of Hashim al-Mirqal ﵁; on the right flank stood the Kufan cavalry under Malik al-Ashtar ﵁, and on the left flank stood the Basran contingent under al-Ahnaf ibn Qays ﵁. The Shami army likewise held a central column, above it the standard of Banu Umayyah under ʿUbaydullah ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁, who in his departure from Medina after the murder of his father at the hands of ʿUmar ﵁'s killer, and in his joining with Muʿawiya ﵁, had in his own conscience joined his own vengeance against those who had slain ʿUthman ﵁ to that of Muʿawiya ﵁. On the right flank stood the Shami cavalry under ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, and on the left flank stood a formation of Yemeni and Quda’i tribes under a commander whose name is variously given in the traditions.

The fighting began with the customary arrow-volleys, followed by the deployment of spears, and then passed into hand-to-hand combat. ʿUbaydullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁ fell on the first day in a melee against an Iraqi warrior from Tamim, and his death was of particular significance, because he was the son of the second khalifah and because his joining with the Shami side had been regarded in Medina as a great political injury to ʿAli ﵁'s position. With his death the Shami side lost its most symbolic warrior.

The duels of the second and third day

In the days that followed, individual duels also took place between the coordinated assaults. ʿAli ﵁ himself entered into none of these duels; he kept to the overseeing of the battle array from the central hill where his banner was planted. But his senior warriors, and in particular Malik al-Ashtar ﵁, entered repeatedly into duels against Shami champions, and Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ slew, according to what is preserved in later sources, in three separate duels three Shami commanders of middling rank. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ entered into a duel against an Iraqi warrior, and in the closing phase of that duel he lost his footing upon the ground; he saved himself by loosening his garments, a gesture that in Arab culture was regarded as a deadly humiliation for whoever allowed it to be visited upon him, so that the Iraqi warrior turned away in embarrassment. The anecdote was long retold in Kufa as an explanation of why the Shami cavalry no longer sent ʿAmr ﵁ into duels.

The handling of ʿAmmar ﵁'s death in Sham

When the news of Ammar ﵁'s death became known in Sham and it pricked the conscience of those who heard of the Messenger ﷺ’s hadith concerning the rebellious party, there was genuine confusion in the Shami camp. A number of men, among them leaders of middling rank, came to Muʿawiya ﵁ with the announcement that they no longer wished to fight in the battle, and Muʿawiya ﵁ summoned ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁. ʿAmr ﵁ proposed a rhetorical inversion that is widely preserved in the traditions. He declared, in an address he gave in the Shami mosque in the camp, that the hadith of the Messenger ﷺ concerning the rebellious party was of value, but that its interpretation contained no automatic equation of the Shami side with that party. It was not whoever stood against Ammar ﵁ in battle array who was the attacking party, but the one in whose army Ammar ﵁ had been placed in battle array; whoever had brought Ammar ﵁ into the battle was ʿAli ﵁, and so he was, in this rhetorical bending, the man who bore the true responsibility for the blood of Ammar ﵁.

The rhetorical inversion was strained in its logic, but it held the Shami camp together. Whoever already doubted his position in his own conscience found in it a way out that enabled him to remain in the battle array, while whoever had no doubt in his own conscience embraced it without question. The wound that the hadith had left behind, however, was not so easily overcome in later generations, and would be cited by the writers of the first centuries as a lasting reproach upon the Shami side.

The struggle for the well in detail

The struggle over access to the water at the beginning of the presence at Siffin deserves a fuller description than it received in the main text. When the Iraqi army arrived at Siffin, it found the Shami troops already in position, with a defensive line that guarded access to the Euphrates within a sealed zone. Muʿawiya ﵁ had had the water-posts occupied in the conviction that the thirst of the Iraqi army would place him in a negotiating position in which he could dictate terms without having to give battle. ʿAli ﵁ sent Sahbah ibn Ribʿi ﵁ with a delegation to the Shami lines with the demand for free access to the water for both camps, but Muʿawiya ﵁ refused. ʿAli ﵁ then sent Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ with the cavalry of Kufa to the water-posts with the instruction to drive off the Shami occupation, and a brief skirmish of a few hours returned access to the water to the Iraqi side. It was the first military confrontation between the two armies at Siffin, and it took place before a formal battle line had been formed.

After the recapture of the water-posts ʿAli ﵁, in a gesture widely preserved in later sources, gave the command that access to the water be free for both camps, for he refused to allow his men to deal with Sham as Sham had wished to deal with them. The gesture was noticed in the Shami lines and brought about, in a number of the senior Shami Sahabah ﵃, an unease that in the months of skirmishing led to a number of individual defectors to the Iraqi side. It was a delicacy in the conduct of war of which the Messenger ﷺ had repeatedly set the example in his battles, and ʿAli ﵁ maintained this delicacy in every phase of the campaign.

The evening after the last day of the battle

On the evening after the acceptance of the truce upon the battlefield of Siffin, ʿAli ﵁ sat in his tent with a handful of his closest companions. Among them were al-Hasan ﵁, al-Husayn ﵁, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah ﵁ (his younger son by another mother), Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ and Malik al-Ashtar ﵁. The mood in the tent was heavy. Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ was still in agitation over the recall from the battlefield, which in his own conscience he regarded as the gravest political error of the caliphate, while Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ tried to lighten the mood with juridical analysis and pointed to the possibilities that still lay open in the arbitration according to the Book of Allah ﷻ. Hasan ﵁ sat in silence and spoke little, while Husayn ﵁ spoke a number of sharp words against those who had devised the Mushaf-ruse and whom he, in his own conscience, regarded as the true source of all that had come to pass in the foregoing hours.

ʿAli ﵁ listened to every speaker and gave no immediate answer to their concerns. Only in the last hours of the night, when the tent emptied and he was alone with his eldest son, did he speak in a fragment that is preserved in later sources. He said to Hasan ﵁ that in his own conscience he had not felt himself in a position to withstand the pressure of his own men to consent to the truce without bringing about an internal division that in its consequences would have been worse than the acceptance of the arbitration. He said to Hasan ﵁ that in this phase of the caliphate he had learned that the commander cannot compel his own army to an action that in its mass arouses resistance, and that the wisdom of the commander sometimes lies in going along with what he, in his own ijtihad, does not hold to be best, so that in a later phase he may yet have room to act. He said to Hasan ﵁ that he hoped his son would not have to learn this lesson in later phases of his own office through his own painful experience.

It is a fragment that was preserved in later sources as proof of the political wisdom of ʿAli ﵁ in a moment in which most commanders cling to a mistaken military action out of vanity of honour. ʿAli ﵁ chose the acknowledgement of a political defeat, with the hope that in a later phase he might soften its consequences. The later phase did not come.

The symbolic significance of the Mushaf-ruse

The raising of the Mushaf-leaves upon the spearpoints of the Shami army was, in its symbolic significance, one of the most controversial acts in the history of Islam. In the juridical works of later centuries it was analysed by scholars of all four of the Sunni madhhabs, and most scholars came to a similar conclusion: that the act was in its form a religious call which in its operation was a political ruse. The scholars of Sham, insofar as they can be identified in later generations as successors of what had been formulated under Muʿawiya ﵁ as a juridical line, advanced the counter-argument that the act had in its essence been a sincere call to the Book of Allah ﷻ, and that the outcome in its arbitration had confirmed the juridical validity of the call. The Sunni mainstream never accepted this counter-argument. In the works of Ibn Taymiyyah ﵀ and his successors the Mushaf-ruse was described as one of the most manipulative acts in the history of Islam, and it was cited in its consequences for the community as a lasting lesson for the future: that a religious call does not always contain a sincere religious purpose, and that the commander in his ijtihad must discern the true nature of the call before he allows himself to be swept along by it.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), p. 189 (arrival at the Euphrates and the dispute over water), p. 189 (death of Ammar ﵁ and the tradition concerning the rebellious party), pp. 189–190 (raising of the Mushaf-leaves and the truce), p. 190 (recall of Malik al-Ashtar ﵁), p. 190 (appointment of Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁ as arbiter), p. 190 (the splitting-off of the Khawarij to Harura).