The Battle of the Camel (Jamal)

After the murder of ʿUthman ﵁ in Dhu al-Hijja 35 AH, Medina was in shock. Aisha ﵂ was returning from the hajj to Mecca and heard the news on the way. There in Mecca she joined Talha ﵁ and Zubayr ﵁, two of the ten who had been promised Paradise. Three voices, three figures of authority from the first generation of Islam, demanded one thing: that the murderers of ʿUthman ﵁ be called to account.

ʿAli ﵁ had accepted the bayʿah in Medina, with hesitation. He knew that the murderers were among his own supporters, and that an immediate hunt for them would plunge the caliphate into civil war before it was established. He asked for time. Mecca accepted no delay. In Jumada al-Akhira 36 AH a coalition of roughly three thousand men set out, with Aisha ﵂ in her armored howdah on a great red camel that would later give the battle its name.

The coalition chose Basra as its objective. Basra had a large Quraysh population, sympathy for the cause of ʿUthman ﵁, and a governor (ʿUthman ibn Hunayf ﵁) appointed by ʿAli ﵁ but without a sizable garrison. On the way, at the watering place of al-Hawʾab, Aisha ﵂ heard dogs barking. She cried out that the Prophet ﷺ had warned her of this place. Men from the coalition hurried forward with witnesses who swore that this was not al-Hawʾab. She rode on.

Basra was occupied after skirmishes with ʿUthman ibn Hunayf ﵁. ʿAli ﵁ gathered his followers in Medina and marched via Rabadha and al-Kufa, where Ammar ﵁ and Hasan ﵁ brought thousands under the banner. At the end of Jumada he came within striking distance of Basra. The two armies camped within sight of each other.

The armies faced each other on the plain west of Basra, separated by only a few hundred meters of date palms and canal. ʿAli ﵁ sent al-Qaʿqaʿ ibn ʿAmr ﵁, a veteran of Qadisiyyah, to the coalition camp with the message that the Muslims had not forgotten the blood of ʿUthman ﵁, but that the caliphate first had to stabilize before action could be taken against the murderers.

Aisha ﵂ received al-Qaʿqaʿ ﵁ in her tent. Talha ﵁ and Zubayr ﵁ were present. Al-Qaʿqaʿ ﵁ spoke plainly. The question was not whether the murderers would be punished, but when. A direct battle between two Muslim armies would usher in the first fitnah among the Companions themselves, a calamity of which the Prophet ﷺ had warned repeatedly. Zubayr ﵁ remembered. Talha ﵁ listened. Aisha ﵂ consented.

Over the next three days truces were exchanged. ʿAli ﵁ drew his forward lines back slightly; the coalition did the same. Messengers rode back and forth. By the evening of the third day a formula had been agreed: a temporary peace, the coalition’s return to Mecca, and joint prosecution of the murderers once the bayʿah was universally accepted. Both camps slept peacefully that night. In the far corners of both camps other men kept watch, and they did not sleep.

Tabari describes the night after the peace agreement with exceptional precision. In the camp of ʿAli ﵁ was a group of men who, in the years leading up to the murder of ʿUthman ﵁, had stoked the rebellion in Egypt and Kufa. They knew that a peaceful settlement would mean their own prosecution. Tabari calls them the Sabaʾiyyah, the followers of ʿAbdullah ibn Sabaʾ, though the exact composition of this group is disputed among historians. What is certain is that at some point in the second half of the night a handful of men from one camp attacked the other.

At dawn the coalition awoke under arrow and sword attacks from the direction of ʿAli ﵁'s camp. Aisha ﵂'s men, convinced they had been betrayed and that the truce had been a ruse, seized their weapons. In the other camp exactly the same thing happened. The provocateurs from ʿAli ﵁'s camp had fled back to their own side and were shouting there that the coalition had broken the truce. Within half an hour both main armies stood in battle order, ʿAli ﵁ in the center on the southern side, the coalition in a wide half-circle around Aisha ﵂'s camel on the northern side.

ʿAli ﵁ realized at once what had happened. He rode along the lines calling to his men that they must not attack first. But arrows were already flying across the truce line. A Kufa veteran beside him fell with an arrow in the throat. Another screamed that al-Qaʿqaʿ ﵁ had been killed (which was untrue; he was still alive hours later). Before ʿAli ﵁ could restore order, his left flank had entered the fight. The Battle of the Camel had begun, not by command but by provocation.

By midday every attempt at withdrawal had become impossible. The center of the coalition crystallized around the red camel of Aisha ﵂. Her howdah was armored with leather and woven iron; arrows that reached her lodged in the outer wall. The coalition warriors surrounded the camel in concentric rings, men who one by one seized the camel’s rein and swore not to let go. Tabari names many of them; some were Quraysh nobles whose fathers had fallen on the Meccan side at Badr.

ʿAli ﵁ knew that as long as the camel stood upright, the coalition army would not fall apart. The camel was their banner, their anchor, their symbol. He sent successive waves of attack against the center. Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ led the first cavalry charge from the southwest; Ammar ibn Yasir ﵁, advanced in years but still heard and feared, led an attack of qurra from Kufa on the northeast. Both were thrown back by the circle.

The fighting around the camel became the most gruesome of the day. Tabari relates that seventy men seized the rein one after another and fell one after another, each with his hand still on the rope. The ground turned red with the blood of Quraysh nobles on both sides; many tribal poets would later lament cousins who had cut down their cousins. Aisha ﵂ in her armored howdah called out over the battle that the men must not yield; her voice carried far in the dry air.

It became clear to ʿAli ﵁ that the circle would not be broken by wave attacks. He gave the order to prepare a different plan. First, however, the coalition’s leadership itself had to fall. The search for Talha ﵁ and Zubayr ﵁ in the chaos began.

Before the general battle broke out, ʿAli ﵁ had met Zubayr ﵁ in person on horseback. They had stood alone between the two lines. ʿAli ﵁ had reminded Zubayr ﵁ of a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ in which the Prophet ﷺ had foretold that Zubayr ﵁ would fight against ʿAli ﵁, and would be in the wrong. Zubayr ﵁ remembered. He turned his horse, rode back to the coalition line, and announced his withdrawal.

Zubayr ﵁ rode off the battlefield alone, heading north, toward Wadi al-Sibaʿ. There, at rest, he was tracked down and killed by a man named ʿAmr ibn Jurmuz, who came to ʿAli ﵁ with Zubayr ﵁'s sword hoping for a reward. ʿAli ﵁ looked at the sword and said that this sword, which had so many times driven distress from the face of the Prophet ﷺ, did not belong in the hand of an assassin. He gave ʿAmr ibn Jurmuz no reward, and some traditions relate that he foretold him the Fire.

Talha ﵁ fell differently. In the chaos around the camel he was struck in the thigh by an arrow. The arrow was not necessarily fatal; Talha ﵁ could be carried off to a nearby ruin. But the arrow had been shot by Marwan ibn al-Hakam, who rode within the coalition itself and who held Talha ﵁ responsible for not having defended ʿUthman ﵁ strongly enough. Marwan declared openly that he had taken his revenge that day. Talha ﵁ died of blood loss toward evening.

By mid-afternoon the coalition line was in tatters. The right wing under Talha ﵁ had broken after his death; the left wing under Zubayr ﵁ had dissolved after his departure. Only the circle around the camel held, in growing isolation, enclosed by ʿAli ﵁'s men on every side. The order came, and some relate that ʿAli ﵁ gave it himself, others that Malik al-Ashtar ﵁ gave it on his own authority. The camel itself had to be killed.

A rider from Bani Dabba — Tabari records his name as Bujayr — worked his way under the circle and severed the camel’s hamstrings with a single sword stroke. The camel sank onto its hindquarters with a deep groan. The howdah tilted but remained atop the animal. The circle disintegrated within seconds; now that the banner had literally come down, there was no anchor left.

ʿAli ﵁ rode to the howdah at once. He gave the order that no one was to touch Aisha ﵂ on pain of death. Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ﵁, brother of Aisha ﵂, was with him. Together they opened the howdah. Aisha ﵂ was unharmed; an arrow had passed through the outer wall and grazed her arm, nothing more. Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ﵁ reached his hand inside. Aisha ﵂ did not recognize the hand and grasped at it; when she heard her brother’s voice, she let go.

ʿAli ﵁ had a women’s tent set up around the howdah and appointed a guard of forty men to protect Aisha ﵂. The next day he sent her back under a respectful escort, led by her brother Muhammad ﵁ and accompanied by several women, to Mecca and from there to Medina. He himself walked with the procession to the edge of the city. No reproach, no punishment, no dishonor.

In the evening a janazah was performed over the battlefield for the fallen of both sides together. Tabari relates that ʿAli ﵁ wept personally over Talha ﵁ and Zubayr ﵁ and said: “By Allah, I hoped that I would be with them among those of whom He says: And We have removed from their hearts every rancor, brothers upon thrones facing one another.”