Martyrdom and Legacy

In Ramadan of the year 40, ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ stepped out of his house for the fajr prayer in the Masjid al-Aʿzam of Kufa. At the door of the mosque stood a man with a poisoned sword, and the blow that struck him at the crown of his forehead brought him to Allah ﷻ two days later. With his death the age of the rightly guided caliphs came to an end.

The council in Mecca

In the summer of the year 39, in Mecca, in the shadow of the Kaʿba, a council took place among three men who regarded themselves as the remaining adherents of the Khariji cause. They were ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn Muljam al-Muradi, an Egyptian who in Egypt had belonged to the Khawarij of Nahrawan and who had survived the battle by escaping the field at the last moment; al-Burak ibn ʿAbdillah at-Tamimi, an Iraqi Khariji; and ʿAmr ibn Bakr at-Tamimi, a third man of the same tribe. In their own conscience they had concluded that the fitnah of the community could not be healed so long as the three leaders of the age were alive: ʿAli ﵁ in Kufa, Muʿawiya ﵁ in Damascus, and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ in Fustat. They resolved upon a threefold assassination, on the same night in the same month, and they divided the attacks among themselves: Ibn Muljam took upon himself the attack on ʿAli ﵁, al-Burak took upon himself Muʿawiya ﵁, and ʿAmr ibn Bakr took upon himself ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁. They chose the seventeenth night of Ramadan in the year 40 as their common date, and they parted from one another and travelled to their respective destinations.

Qatam in Kufa

Having arrived in Kufa, Ibn Muljam found lodging with kinsmen of his tribe. In the mosques of the city he crossed paths with a woman who drew his attention; she was called Qatam, and she was of the Khariji circle. Her father and her brother had both fallen at Nahrawan, in the battle in which ʿAli ﵁ had defeated them, and she bore the loss of her family with a settled rancour that had become her single spring of action. Ibn Muljam, in a deed broadly preserved in later sources, made it known that he desired her for his wife. She set her conditions, and she demanded a bride-gift fixed, in one account, at three thousand dirhams, a male slave and a female slave, and, as the final part of the mahr, the head of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib. Suyuti ﵀ preserves the report that as-Suddi takes from Ibn al-Mustadrak, which in later generations was repeated as a proverb, and he then cites the verses of al-Farazdaq that were composed about this marriage condition:

I have not seen a bride-gift sent by a generous man, Like the bride-gift of Qatam, of men (slaves) and beasts:

Three thousand, a male slave, a serving-maid, And the striking-down of ʿAli ﵁ with the piercing sword.

There is no bride-gift dearer than ʿAli ﵁, however precious it was, And no assassination but that it is less than the assassination by Ibn Muljam.

(Surah-verse attestation not applicable; this is poetry of al-Farazdaq as cited by Suyuti ﵀.)

The night of the assassination

Under the bayʿah to Qatam, Ibn Muljam agreed to her condition, and he waited for the seventeenth night of Ramadan. For the attack he chose a poisoned sword, for which he had travelled to the east of Kufa. In the hours before the fajr prayer he stationed himself at the door of the Masjid al-Aʿzam, in the company of two other Kharijis who were complicit in his attack, and he waited for the coming of the Amir al-Muʾminin.

ʿAli ﵁ came out of his house, and he walked, as was his custom, without escort to the mosque. He called out, according to what is preserved in later sources, with the summons to prayer:

At the door stood Ibn Muljam. He stepped before him, raised the sword, and struck him at the crown of his forehead, and the blow penetrated to the brain. People came running from every side toward the attack, and Ibn Muljam was seized and bound.

The two days

ʿAli ﵁ lived on until the Jumuʿah prayer and until the Saturday, and he died in the night before the Sunday. Al-Hasan ﵁, al-Husayn ﵁ and ʿAbdullah ibn Jaʿfar ﵁ washed his body, and al-Hasan ﵁ led the prayer over him. He was buried in the night in the House of the Emirate in Kufa. Later the limbs of Ibn Muljam were severed, and he was placed in a reed basket and burned in a fire.

Between the blow and his death lay two days in which, from his sickbed, he still spoke a few words to his sons. According to the report that Suyuti ﵀ preserves, he gave instruction not to mutilate Ibn Muljam so long as he himself lived, to bring him before the court, and, should he die, to punish only him and not his kin. He spoke a word to his younger brother in the report that Ibn Saʿd ﵀ preserves, in which he expressed the hope that, should his suspicion about the identity of the one who had handed him the poisoned draught prove mistaken, no innocent person be killed in retaliation for him. He also spoke words from which his serenity was apparent, and he spoke conditionally of the reunion with the Messenger ﷺ in a form that in the spiritual literature of the generations after him was preserved with reverence.

When he died he was, according to the count most often upheld in later sources, sixty-three years old, while other counts give sixty-four, sixty-five, fifty-seven or fifty-eight years.

The attacks in Damascus and Fustat

On the same night in Ramadan of the year 40, al-Burak carried out his attack in Damascus on Muʿawiya ﵁. He struck him in the mosque, but he caught him in the hip and the wound was not fatal, so that Muʿawiya ﵁ recovered; al-Burak was seized and put to death. In Fustat it went otherwise. ʿAmr ibn Bakr had gone to the mosque for the fajr prayer, and he waited for ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁. But ʿAmr ﵁ had, that morning, according to what is preserved in later sources, a fever, and he had sent word that he would not lead the prayer, so that in his place Kharijah ibn Hudhayfah ﵁, a senior figure in the Egyptian administration, led the prayer. ʿAmr ibn Bakr struck in the conviction that he was striking ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, and killed Kharijah ﵁. When, after the blow, he understood that he had struck the wrong man, he uttered a word that is preserved in later sources:

ʿAmr ibn Bakr was seized and put to death, and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ remained in office as governor of Egypt.

Thus the threefold assassination ended in one confirmed death, one rescued leader and one innocent victim, and of the three leaders of the age only ʿAli ﵁ had fallen.

The grave in Kufa

ʿAli ﵁ was buried in the night from Saturday to Sunday in the House of the Emirate in Kufa, and the grave was kept hidden so that the Khawarij would not exhume it. In later sources various reports are preserved about the place of his true grave. Some transmitters held to the place in Kufa, while others related that his body was carried, in a nocturnal journey by his son Hasan ﵁, to Medina, to be buried in al-Baqiʿ beside Fatima ﵂. A third report, represented by some Iraqi sources, mentions that the camel which bore his body bolted into the desert, and that his resting place remained unknown somewhere in the desert between Iraq and Hijaz. In the centuries afterward a place in Najaf, at some distance from Kufa, would be identified as the grave of ʿAli ﵁ and would grow into an important place of pilgrimage.

The questions he left behind

With the death of ʿAli ﵁ the community faced a number of questions which his successors in the generations after him would have to answer, and the most pressing was the question of who would succeed him. In Kufa the notables of the city at once gave the bayʿah to his eldest son Hasan ﵁, and Hasan ﵁ held the bayʿah for six months, a period in which he conducted negotiations with Muʿawiya ﵁ over a settlement that would at last bring the bloody fitnah to an end. In Rabi al-Awwal of the year 41, according to what Suyuti ﵀ preserves, he ceded his claim to the caliphate to Muʿawiya ﵁ on the condition that no man from Medina, Hijaz or Iraq be punished for his involvement in what had taken place under his father. With this cession the first fitnah was formally closed, and what in later sources is called the Umayyad period began. The prophetic saying that the Messenger ﷺ had pronounced in his lifetime about Hasan ﵁, that through him Allah ﷻ would bring two groups of Muslims to peace, was fulfilled in this cession.

The verdict of Suyuti ﵀

In his summary of the caliphate of ʿAli ﵁, Suyuti ﵀ closes with a concluding verdict. He establishes that ʿAli ﵁ had met all the conditions of the imamate: in his early conversion, in his direct kinship with the Messenger ﷺ as cousin and as son-in-law, in his nearness to the Messenger ﷺ throughout the whole of his prophethood, in his juristic competence which was acknowledged by every generation of the companions, and in his military competence which in the battles of Badr, Uhud, Khaybar and afterward was beyond dispute. He cites Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi, who in his work of fiqh establishes that in the disputes between ʿAli ﵁ and Muʿawiya ﵁, ʿAli ﵁ was in the right and correct in his ijtihad, and that Muʿawiya ﵁ erred in his ijtihad and was excusable in it. He closes the summary with the admonition that the Sahabah ﵃ on both sides of the caliphate of ʿAli ﵁ must be held in high regard, and that in none of them may the judgment of the source be settled without the best interpretation of their conduct.

The words the generations preserved

In the centuries after his death the words of ʿAli ﵁ were preserved in every generation. His juristic rulings were cited as precedent in the works of the qadis of Iraq, his admonitions were taken up as a source in the works of zuhd and tasawwuf, and his poetry, which according to what ash-Shaʿbi ﵀ preserves in a fragment of Suyuti ﵀ surpassed in its skill that of Abu Bakr ﵁, ʿUmar ﵁ and ʿUthman ﵁, was included in the anthologies of Arabic verse. A number of his terse sayings were later recorded in the work that would become known under the title Nahj al-Balaghah, a collection whose initial core goes back to authentic transmissions.

In the preserved fragment of a long saying that Suyuti ﵀ preserves through Said ibn Mansur ﵀, he spoke five principles for whoever seeks spiritual guidance:

The place of his caliphate in history

The caliphate of ʿAli ﵁ lasted nearly five years, from Dhul-Hijjah 35 to Ramadan 40. It was, according to the counts of those who recorded it in later sources, the most tumultuous of the four caliphates of the Rashidun period. It saw three battles among Muslims: the Battle of the Camel, the Battle of Siffin and the Battle of Nahrawan. It saw the ruse of the Mushaf, the arbitration of Dumat al-Jandal, the loss of Egypt to Sham, and the poisoning of Malik al-Ashtar ﵁. It ended in the mosque of Kufa with the sword-stroke of a man who, in his attack, believed he was carrying a Khariji bride-gift toward a marriage.

With the end of the caliphate of ʿAli ﵁ ended what in later sources was called the Khilafat ar-Rashidun. What came afterward was, in the words of a hadith that the Messenger ﷺ had uttered in his lifetime and that Hasan ﵁ fulfilled in his cession, mulk: kingship. The Umayyad state under Muʿawiya ﵁ was no longer a caliphate in the manner in which Abu Bakr ﵁, ʿUmar ﵁, ʿUthman ﵁ and ʿAli ﵁ had filled the office. It was a state with dynastic features, with a capital in Damascus, with a fiscal and military infrastructure that drew as much from the Byzantine tradition as from the Medinan. The city of the Messenger ﷺ would never again be the capital of the caliphate, and the Hijaz would gradually become a religious heartland without political form.

But within the community the memory of the four rightly guided caliphs would be preserved as the norm against which every later government would be measured. Their rule, in its nearness to the Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ, in its simplicity of life, in its strictness in fiscal justice, in its direct dealing with the community, would remain the point of reference for every later scholar, every later reformer, every later call to return to the origin. And among the four, ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁, in his juristic depth, in his military courage, in his eloquence, in his nearness to the House of the Messenger ﷺ, would occupy a place of his own that won him new readers and new admirers in every generation.

In the words of Abu al-Aswad ad-Duʾali ﵀, who spoke in his lament over ʿAli ﵁ that Suyuti ﵀ preserves:

It is as though, when the people lost ʿAli ﵁, They were ostriches, wandering lost in a land for years.

(Poetry of Abu al-Aswad ad-Duʾali ﵀ as preserved by Suyuti ﵀.)

The conversation of ʿAli ﵁ with al-Hasan ﵁ at the sickbed

In the two days between the blow and his death, ʿAli ﵁ received Hasan ﵁ at his sickbed and addressed him in an admonition of which a number of fragments are preserved in later sources. He gave him instructions on how he should deal in the coming months with the bayʿah of Kufa, on the position toward Muʿawiya ﵁, and on the protection of the blood of the Muslims. He spoke in a tone in which he addressed his son not as his successor in a dynastic sense, but as a man who, in his own ijtihad, must judge the condition of the community.

This fragment of his admonition Hasan ﵁ would, in his own conscience, take as his guide in his cession of the caliphate to Muʿawiya ﵁ in the year 41. Whoever analysed the cession of Hasan ﵁ in later sources saw in his deed the direct fulfilment of the counsel that his father had given him at his sickbed.

The manner in which Suyuti ﵀ places the assassination within the Sunnah

In his summary, after the report of the assassination, Suyuti ﵀ cites a hadith that he deems fitting for the way in which the community should preserve this event. The hadith comes from his general fragment about the manner in which the Messenger ﷺ spoke about the Sahabah ﵃:

With this hadith Suyuti ﵀ places the assassination of ʿAli ﵁ within the broader context of the high regard with which the community should speak of the Sahabah ﵃. He adds that Ibn Saʿd ﵀, on whose summary he relies for a considerable part of the events of Ali’s caliphate, gave in his record of these events no extensive interpretations but preserved the facts in their sober succession. Suyuti ﵀ holds this soberness of Ibn Saʿd ﵀ in this sensitive matter to be more in keeping with the counsel of the Messenger ﷺ than a more extensive treatise would be.

The continuation under Hasan ﵁

In the six months after the death of ʿAli ﵁, Hasan ﵁ held the caliphate in Kufa. The bayʿah to him was given immediately after the washing and the prayer over his father by the seniors of Kufa, and he received it in the mosque in a short ceremony. He spoke in a short khutbah in which he thanked the community of Kufa for their loyalty to his father and invited them to remain in the same loyalty to him in the coming months. He was, in his nature and in his tone, a man who resembled his mother Fatima ﵂ more than his father: he was gentler in dealing, more careful in decision, and more inclined to peace than to strife.

In the first weeks after his bayʿah he opened correspondence with Muʿawiya ﵁ in Damascus. He proposed that, in an assembly of senior Sahabah ﵃ from both camps, they reach a settlement that would at last bring the fitnah to an end. Muʿawiya ﵁ responded with the demand that, in this settlement, he be recognised as caliph, with the guarantee that after his death the caliphate would return to Hasan ﵁. Hasan ﵁ consulted with his younger brother Husayn ﵁ and with the council of Kufa. Husayn ﵁ was against the surrender, for he held that with the mobilisation of the Iraqi army Sham could still be subdued. But the council of Kufa was not of one voice, and the tribal chiefs, in their weariness, were no longer willing to undertake a long campaign. Hasan ﵁ resolved upon the cession, and in Rabi al-Awwal of the year 41 he formally stepped down in Kufa, and the bayʿah to Muʿawiya ﵁ was given to him by the Iraqi seniors in a ceremony. With this deed, in fulfilment of the prophetic saying that the Messenger ﷺ had pronounced about Hasan ﵁, peace was made between two groups of the Muslims.

The verdict of the generations

In the centuries afterward, the caliphate of ʿAli ﵁ would be written about in various directions. The Sunni tradition, in its rendering by Suyuti ﵀ and those who preceded him, preserved the Qur’anic verses of reverence for the Sahabah and placed ʿAli ﵁ in a row of four rightly guided caliphs without distinction of precedence except in the chronological order of their office. The Shi’a tradition, in its rendering by those who gathered around the descendants of the House of the Prophet ﷺ, gave to ʿAli ﵁ a first place in the chronological reckoning and built around him a political and spiritual doctrine that placed the first three caliphs in a second rank. The Khariji tradition, in its rendering by those who developed out of the secession at Harura, continued in its own conscience to regard ʿAli ﵁ as an unbeliever on the ground of his acceptance of the arbitration.

What remained beyond dispute in these three traditions, however, was the juristic depth, the eloquence, the military courage and the personal piety of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁. No scholar of any tradition in the history of Islam would venture to contest him in these four qualities. In his fragments of wisdom preserved in later sources, in his juristic rulings cited in every madhhab, in his poetry included in every anthology of Arabic verse, and in his nightly prayer which became an example in every generation of Sufis and followers of zuhd, he lived on in a manner in which the bayʿah of Kufa in Dhul-Hijjah of the year 35 was never effaced.

The position of Husayn ﵁ after his brother’s cession

After the cession of Hasan ﵁ to Muʿawiya ﵁ in the year 41, Husayn ibn ʿAli ﵁ returned with his brother to Medina. In his own conscience he had been against the cession, but he accepted the decision of his elder brother as the head of the House of ʿAli ﵁ after the death of their father. In Medina he lived the twenty years that followed in a restraint in which he did not speak out against the Umayyad government so long as Muʿawiya ﵁ lived. In his house he received the seniors of what remained of the Hashimi circle in Medina, and he kept a circle around himself of those of the younger generation who wished to preserve the learning of his father in their conscience. He awaited events. In the year 60, after the death of Muʿawiya ﵁ and the accession of Yazid ﵁ ibn Muʿawiya to the Umayyad caliphate, there came the situation in which, in his own conscience, he held that he could no longer remain in silence. What would take place at Karbala belongs to another article in another epoch, and that article will find its place in the history of the Umayyad period. But the roots of what took place at Karbala lie in the years of his father’s caliphate, in the cession of his brother, and in the twenty years of waiting in Medina that followed upon that cession.

The stipend of Hasan ﵁

After his cession, Hasan ﵁ lived in Medina on a stipend of a hundred thousand dirhams a year, granted to him by Muʿawiya ﵁. In a certain year this stipend was withheld from him. He used to have, in his sleep, a vision in which the Messenger ﷺ came to him and counselled him to a supplication that is broadly preserved in later sources. He used the supplication, and within a week the stipend came with a supplement of one million five hundred thousand dirhams. It is a fragment preserved in later sources as proof of prayer as a means in place of direct petition to the ruler. Hasan ﵁ died in Medina in the year 49, or, in another count, in the year 50 or 51, presumably by poisoning at the hand of his wife Jaʿdah bint al-Ashʿath ibn Qays, who according to one report was moved to this deed by Yazid ibn Muʿawiya, though Suyuti ﵀ himself notes that the report is here taken up without his usual care in isnad and that the matter lies in an unknown domain of history. He was buried in al-Baqiʿ, beside his mother Fatima ﵂.

The later rulings in fiqh on the first fitnah

In the centuries after the first fitnah, the juristic community of the Sunni tradition would develop a number of settled positions on how the events of Ali’s caliphate were to be appraised, and the scholars of all four madhhabs arrived at a number of shared conclusions. First, that ʿAli ﵁ had been lawful in his office and that his bayʿah in Medina had possessed its full juristic validity. Second, that the Sahabah ﵃ on both sides of the fitnah were to be held in high regard, and that in none of them might the judgment of the source be settled without the best interpretation of their conduct. Third, that the battles of the Camel, Siffin and Nahrawan were inter-Muslim fitnah struggles in which the ordinary rulings of jihad against unbelieving opponents did not apply. Fourth, that the cession of Hasan ﵁ to Muʿawiya ﵁ in the year 41 had been a politically acceptable outcome which had spared the blood of the Muslims and which had found its fulfilment in the prophetic saying about Hasan ﵁ as mediator between two parties of the Muslims.

The close of the Rashidun period

With the cession of Hasan ﵁ in Rabi al-Awwal 41, the Rashidun period was formally brought to an end. Over a total span of about thirty years, four caliphs had continued the caliphate of the Messenger ﷺ in a form that, in its very distinction from what came afterward, would in later generations be regarded as the purest form of Islamic government. Abu Bakr ﵁ had held the community together in the first two years after the death of the Messenger ﷺ through the wars against those who refused the zakat, and through the dispatch of the first expeditions against the Byzantines. ʿUmar ﵁ had in ten years expanded the community into a world power that comprised Iraq, Sham, Egypt and Iran, and he had worked out the administrative system, in its diwan form, that for centuries afterward would form the basis of Islamic government. ʿUthman ﵁ had in twelve years held the community together in its vast extent, and in his compilation of the Mushaf he had performed a deed from which every generation of Muslims to this day would derive its Qur’anic text. ʿAli ﵁ had, in four years and nine months, held the caliphate in its office in a state of fitnah, and through his refusal to resort, in this state, to dynastic political acts, he had preserved the principle of the bayʿah as a consensus appointment in its purity.

Of the four, ʿAli ﵁ had ruled in the most difficult circumstances. He was the only one of the four to take office in a time of fitnah, and he was the only one of the four to die in a time of fitnah. But his office was in its essence at one with that of the three predecessors, for in his bayʿah, in his juristic rulings, in his military commands, in his fiscal policy, and in his dealing with the community, he had continued the pattern of Abu Bakr ﵁, ʿUmar ﵁ and ʿUthman ﵁. In the words of Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi ﵀, whom Suyuti ﵀ cites in his appendix: he was, after ʿUthman ﵁, the man with the greatest right to the caliphate, on account of his noble rank and his lofty virtues. From this appraisal the community in the centuries afterward refrained from any dissent.

The saying that found an echo in every generation

Among the transmissions of his sayings that were preserved by the juristic and the spiritual community in the centuries after his death, there was a saying that found an echo in every generation and that in its terseness summed up the entire pattern of his caliphate. He spoke it, according to what is preserved in later sources, in one of his khutbahs in the mosque of Kufa, in answer to a question from a man who had visited him and had praised him in a manner in which the praise had gone beyond what, in his own conscience, he accepted of himself. He turned to the man and spoke:

In this single sentence was contained the self-knowledge of a leader who sought no advantage for himself in his office, and who in his office had not lost the awareness of his own shortcomings, despite the high regard in which the community held him. It was a saying that in the spiritual literature of the generations afterward was included in every collection of wisdom, and it belongs among the fragments of wisdom to which ʿAli ﵁ owes his enduring name, in the centuries after his death, in the juristic and spiritual community.

The mention of those who died in his time

Suyuti ﵀ closes his summary of the caliphate of ʿAli ﵁ with a list of senior Sahabah ﵃ who died in his time, whether by natural death, or by wounds in one of the battles, or by political violence. The list counts, among others: Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman ﵁, who at the beginning of the office of ʿAli ﵁ died in Mada’in after a long life as a companion of the Messenger ﷺ in the revelation and as a military commander in the conquests under ʿUmar ﵁; az-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwam ﵁, fallen at the hand of Ibn Jurmuz after his departure from the field of the Camel; Talhah ibn ʿUbaydillah ﵁, fallen by an arrow of Marwan on that same field; Zayd ibn Suhan ﵁; Salman al-Farisi ﵁, the Persian of Madaʾin who in the years of ʿUmar ﵁ had risen to the rank of a veteran; Hind ibn Abi Halah ﵁; Uways al-Qarani ﵁, who met his death at the Battle of Siffin in the Iraqi ranks; Khabbab ibn al-Aratt ﵁; ʿAmmar ibn al-Yasir ﵁, fallen at Siffin as confirmation of the hadith of the Messenger ﷺ about the rebellious group; Sahl ibn Hunayf ﵁; Suhayb ar-Rumi ﵁; Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr as-Siddiq ﵁, fallen in Egypt at the hand of Ibn Hudayj; Tamim ad-Dari ﵁; Khawwat ibn Jubayr ﵁; Shurahbil ibn as-Samt ﵁; Abu Maysurah al-Badri ﵁; Safwan ibn ʿAssal ﵁; ʿAmr ibn ʿAnbasah ﵁; Hisham ibn Hakim ﵁; Abu Rafiʿ ﵁, the freedman of the Messenger ﷺ; and others.

The list, in its length, is an indication of the magnitude of what the community had lost in these five years. Senior Sahabah ﵃ of the oldest stamp, men whose memory of the Messenger ﷺ in the first person was still to be seen in their voice and in their gesture, were lost in these years one by one. With each loss the generation of direct nearness to the Messenger ﷺ grew thinner, and the community drew closer to the moment in which the second generation would have access only through transmission to what the first generation had learned in direct contact with the Messenger ﷺ.

The end of the age

With the death of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ in Ramadan 40 and the cession of Hasan ﵁ in Rabi al-Awwal 41, there closed the age in which the community had been led by those who had lived in direct nearness to the Messenger ﷺ. What came afterward was, however described in later generations, another age. The leaders no longer came from the direct inner circle of the Sahabah ﵃, but from the second generation, and in later centuries from still further generations. The capital moved from Kufa to Damascus, and later to Baghdad, to Córdoba, to Cairo, to Istanbul, and the form of government changed from a consensus appointment among the seniors of Medina to dynastic successions within ruling families. But in every generation the memory of the four rightly guided caliphs would be preserved, and in every generation a scholar or a reformer would return to their example as a source for what in his own time had to be realised anew.

ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ was, in the chronological reckoning of the four, the last. In the juristic rank of his ijtihad, in the depth of his spiritual legacy, and in the eloquence of his words which were included in every anthology of the Arabic language, he was in no generation contested. With his death the Khilafat ar-Rashidun ended, and with his memory it endured.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 192–193 (the council of the three Kharijis in Mecca, the marriage of Ibn Muljam with Qatam, the condition of the bride-gift, the assassination in the mosque of Kufa), p. 193 (Hasan ﵁, Husayn ﵁ and ʿAbdullah ibn Jaʿfar ﵁ as washers of the body; al-Hasan ﵁ as imam of the prayer; the burning of Ibn Muljam), pp. 193–194 (the various reports about the place of the grave; the age at death), pp. 194–195 (the saying of ʿAli ﵁ on his sickbed and his request that no innocent be punished in retaliation for him), pp. 207–208 (the elegy of Abu al-Aswad ad-Duʾali ﵀), p. 206 (the five-principles saying through Said ibn Mansur ﵀), pp. 228–229 (the verdict of Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi ﵀ on the disputes between ʿAli ﵁ and Muʿawiya ﵁); for the cession of Hasan ﵁ to Muʿawiya ﵁ in the year 41 see pp. 214–215.