The Last Years and Governance

In the two years still granted to him, ʿAli ﵁ held his office in Kufa, exercised judgement in the Masjid al-Aʿzam, dictated directives on Arabic grammar, and spoke words of wisdom that were preserved by his companions for the generations that would follow.

The administration of justice in the Masjid al-Aʿzam

After the loss of Egypt and the failure of a renewed campaign against Sham, ʿAli ﵁ resumed in Kufa a life that in his own feeling befitted him more than that of the battlefield commander. He returned to his office in the Masjid al-Aʿzam and received whoever came to him in matters of justice, in the fiqh-questions alive in the community, and in the juridical puzzles that the qadi Shurayh ﵀ laid before him whenever a case came to his desk that he did not wish to decide without further consultation.

In these years a number of his most famous rulings were recorded in Kufa. A man came to him with the question of the fate of one who was a hermaphrodite in his sexual constitution, a question on which Muʿawiya ﵁ had consulted him in his own conscience in a letter from Damascus, for even his political opponent acknowledged that in the juridical acuity of ʿAli ﵁ no other man in the community was his equal. ʿAli ﵁ answered, according to what Suyuti ﵀ preserves through Said ibn Mansur ﵀, that a hermaphrodite would inherit according to the manner in which he urinated. It was a solution in its empirical simplicity that would endure as juridical precedent in later generations.

Another case, long preserved in Kufa, was the case of a man brought before him under suspicion of theft, with two witnesses who had testified against him. ʿAli ﵁ took, in place of the customary procedure, an unusual measure: he raised an implement in his hand and uttered a warning to whoever was brought in as a false witness, with the warning that he himself, should a false witness be found, would be punished with this implement. He then sent men out to seek the two witnesses for further questioning, but the two witnesses were no longer to be found, and he set the accused free. It was an application of the punishment of false witnesses that was taken up in later generations as an example of the preventive right of the qadi.

The directive to Abu al-Aswad

One of the most remarkable accounts preserved in later sources about these years in Kufa concerns the directive of ʿAli ﵁ to Abu al-Aswad ad-Duʾali to compose a work on Arabic grammar. Abu al-Aswad ﵀ came to him in a conversation preserved by Suyuti ﵀ through a chain of transmitters. He found ʿAli ﵁ in his office with his eyes lowered, in deep thought, and he asked what the Amir al-Muʾminin was pondering. ʿAli ﵁ answered that he had heard errors in this city in the use of Arabic, and that he intended to have a work composed on the principles of Arabic. He gave Abu al-Aswad ﵀ a page upon which a first division stood:

He gave Abu al-Aswad ﵀ the task of elaborating this division, of working out the threefold division of substantive, pronoun and what is neither substantive nor pronoun, and of cataloguing the particles of nasb. Abu al-Aswad ﵀ set to work and after some time brought his first manuscript back to him. ʿAli ﵁ went through it and pointed to an omission: the particle lakinna was missing from the list of particles of nasb, and he had it included. Thus there was laid in Kufa, under the hand of Abu al-Aswad ﵀ and at the express urging of the khalifah, the first systematic division of Arabic grammar, which in the centuries thereafter would be elaborated in the works of Sibawayh and the generations of grammarians of Basra and Kufa.

The seal-ring and the bait al-mal

A further memory widely preserved in later sources concerns the seal-ring of ʿAli ﵁ and the manner in which he managed the bait al-mal. The seal-ring was of silver, and its engraving was, according to what Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ transmits, Mubarakun maa qadara Allah. In another tradition that ʿAmr ibn ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ preserves, the engraving was al-Mulk lillah, sovereignty belongs to Allah ﷻ. The variant probably indicates that he had worn different seal-rings over the course of his life.

He managed the bait al-mal of Kufa with a severity in which he surpassed the practice of ʿUmar ﵁. He used, according to what the tradition of Mujammiʿ ﵀ preserves, to sweep out the bait al-mal with his own hand after every distribution, and then to perform a prayer in the hope that the prayer would testify for him that he had retained no wealth for himself beyond what was due to the community. He accepted no appointment for his own kinsmen of Banu Hashim that would have placed them in a fiscally advantageous position, and he let his own sons Hasan ﵁ and Husayn ﵁, and his cousin Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁, dwell in simple houses and refused to accept estates for them out of the provincial revenues.

The exhortations in the mosque

In his khutbahs in Kufa ʿAli ﵁ delivered in the years 38 and 39 a number of exhortations preserved in detail in later sources. He spoke about the nature of governance and about the duty of the commander not to lose, in his own conscience, the awareness of the reckoning before Allah ﷻ, and he spoke about the warnings he had received from the Messenger ﷺ in his youth concerning the fitnah that would arise in the community.

In one of these khutbahs he spoke an exhortation that has been repeated in every generation since:

In another khutbah he spoke a word that would become a fixed quotation in the spiritual literature of the generations thereafter:

The conversations with al-Hasan ﵁

In his own household he spent many hours with his eldest son Hasan ﵁, who in these years was in his twenties, and with his younger son Husayn ﵁. He spoke with them about the matters of governance, about fiqh, and about the history of the first khalifahs, and he spoke with them also about his own intention to hand on the caliphate in good order in a future conjuncture. He gave in these conversations directives of which later transmitters recorded some and which in their brevity stand as his testament to his sons. One of those directives, which Suyuti ﵀ preserves through ʿUqbah ibn Abi as-Sahbaʾ ﵀, bore the form of a foursome and then a second foursome:

The community that would not march

In the political life of Kufa, ʿAli ﵁ remained in these two years with a community that was not willing to march once more to Sham. He held military reviews, he spoke in the mosque, and he sent letters to the tribal chiefs; he sent ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ as administrator to Basra and instructed him to prepare a mobilisation in that city for a possible campaign; and he received in his office delegations from Yemen who confirmed to him their loyalty and who consulted him on their fiscal and administrative questions.

But the campaign against Sham, in its breadth and in its military significance, never came about. Muʿawiya ﵁ in Damascus consolidated his position, ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ in Fustat governed Egypt with the sensitivity for which he was known, letters from Sham reached Kufa with ever greater confidence in their tone, and attacks of Shami cavalry on the frontiers of Iraq began in a pattern that came to resemble a protracted war between two states.

In his innermost conscience ʿAli ﵁ knew that the fitnah would no longer be healed within his office. He held to his office as a man holds to a roof in a storm, and he waited for a change that in a better conjuncture would enable him to resume the campaign. The change did not come from the direction in which he awaited it: it came from the camp of the Khawarij, in an assassination plotted in an Egyptian city and to be carried out in the mosque of Kufa.

The meeting with the sage of the Arabs

In the first months in Kufa there came to ʿAli ﵁ a man designated in later sources as one of the sages of the Arabs. He was an elderly figure, according to what is preserved in later sources through al-Madaʾini ﵀, and he spoke with ʿAli ﵁ in a conversation that in its brevity summed up a whole philosophy of the caliphate under the Rashidun.

The word was long preserved in Kufa. Whoever heard it recognised in it the acknowledgement of what was already silently perceived in the community: that ʿAli ﵁ sought no advantage in his office and built up no privilege, and that the office brought to its bearer in this phase of history more burden than honour. The sage, according to what is preserved in later sources, departed after his utterance without laying any further petition before the khalifah; he had come only to speak this word.

The calm in the nights

In these years ʿAli ﵁ developed a habit of night-prayer widely preserved in later sources. He spent the second half of the night in long salah, and he recited from memory long passages of the Quran, in a voice that in the mosque of Kufa, when on the summer nights it stood with the doors open, was audible far into the street. Whoever knew the habit of his night-prayer, and whoever in Kufa dwelt in the houses around the mosque, heard his voice as a fixed component of the nightly stillness of the city.

After the fajr-prayer he used to remain seated in the mosque until the sun had risen, and then to continue in dhikr until about the time of the duha-prayer. This pattern, which he had learned in the years of Medina under the Messenger ﷺ, he maintained undiminished in his office in Kufa. Whoever met him in these morning hours spoke of a calm and an equilibrium that stood in no contrast with the political unrest that prevailed in his office.

The appearance of Khariji attacks in Kufa

In the last months of his caliphate small attacks by isolated Kharijis upon couriers and upon small garrisons began to appear in Kufa itself. The vengeance of the remaining Khawarij for the battle of Nahrawan was carried forward in these attacks, and they gave ʿAli ﵁ occasion for heightened security measures around his own house and the mosque. He forbade, in an unusual measure, that he pray in the mosque without escort for a number of weeks, but his natural aversion to palace life and his preference for simple dealings with the community led him to abandon this measure again after a few weeks. He returned to the habit of walking alone, without escort, to the mosque for the fajr-prayer, and it was this habit that in Ramadan of the year 40, in the mosque of Kufa, would make possible the assassination by Ibn Muljam.

The reception of delegations from distant provinces

In these years in Kufa ʿAli ﵁ received in his office delegations from provinces that had been conquered in the years under the first three khalifahs and that had remained under his appointment in his office. From Bahrain came a delegation of the Banu ʿAbd al-Qays with fiscal questions, from Yemen came a delegation of the Hamdan tribe with disputes over inheritance among their tribesmen, and from Khurasan, which in the years under ʿUthman ﵁ had grown into the far reaches of the caliphate and which under ʿAli ﵁ had been confirmed under ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAamir ﵁ as governor, came a delegation with administrative requests concerning the manner of collection of the kharaj. To each delegation he gave personal audience. He spoke in each audience with the senior man of the delegation first about the state of the prayer and of the mosque in their province, and only thereafter about the fiscal or juridical matter for which they had come. It was a protocol of reception that he had learned in the years under ʿUmar ﵁ in Medina, and he maintained it undiminished in Kufa.

The dealings with Marwan in the tradition

In the tradition of Suyuti ﵀ concerning the years in Kufa, mention is made in a number of places of Marwan ibn al-Hakam, who in these years was not in Kufa but moved in Medina and in Sham. Marwan was the man who in the Battle of the Camel had loosed the arrow upon Talha ﵁, and he was in the years thereafter a figure who in the transitional period between the first fitnah and the Umayyad age would take a place of his own. The dealings of ʿAli ﵁ with Marwan in these years were those of a man who saw no ally in his own conscience but who in his office had no legal ground for a direct action against one who had withdrawn beyond his physical reach. He sent no couriers to Marwan and he asked for no extradition. Marwan moved in Medina and in Sham without ʿAli ﵁'s office directing him, and in the years under Muʿawiya ﵁ he would play, in his own political career as governor of Medina and in his later position as caliphal candidate, a role widely described in later sources, and one not further elaborated in this summary because it belongs to another age.

The dealings with the ordinary believer

In these years in Kufa ʿAli ﵁ maintained dealings with the ordinary believer that were widely preserved in later sources. He used after the fajr-prayer to remain seated in the mosque upon the mat where he had prayed, and there he received whoever came to him with a question. The questions were diverse: from fiqh-questions on inheritance law and marriage law to fiscal questions on the zakat and the jizyah, from personal disputes between neighbours to general questions on the interpretation of a Quran-verse. He answered each question in a tone that in its sensitivity and in its juridical clarity had no equal among any official of the caliphate. Whoever later wished to judge in his own conscience any of his answers could find them again in the works of those who collected the traditions. The fragments of his answers in the mosque of Kufa would in the centuries thereafter be taken up in the fiqh-works of all four of the madhhabs, and they would contribute to the juridical heritage on which the community in later generations could draw.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), p. 194 (juridical rulings concerning the hermaphrodite and the punishment of false witnesses), pp. 198–199 (the question of the hermaphrodite and the case of the false witnesses), pp. 199–200 (the directive to Abu al-Aswad ad-Duʾali and the first division of Arabic grammar), p. 199 (seal-rings and the sweeping-out of the bait al-mal), p. 200 (the exhortation concerning the bee), p. 201 (at-tawfiq as the best leader), p. 207 (the foursome-and-foursome directive to Hasan ﵁).