After Fatimah died, Ali finally chose to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr as the Successor, or Caliph. It must have been very bitter, but time had passed and it was the new reality. To disrupt the new status quo and assert his own right would have meant provoking fitna, the troubles of civil war, and Ali knew that Muhammad had considered dissension among believers as the greatest evil. So he began to lead a public life again, now as a top aide to the new Caliph.
Besides, fitna was already upon them. As the news of the Prophet’s death spread, a number of tribes and cities decided that their commitment to send tribute or taxes to the Prophet had been good for his lifetime only. It had been a personal commitment, to him. Some of them maintained belief in Allah but wanted to break away from the political alliance.
In other cases, it was genuine apostasy: there were some wannabe prophets claiming to be as great as Muhammad. Even before Muhammad’s death, one such prophet had sent him a letter from East Arabia, suggesting that since they were both God’s messengers, they should split the territory. There were similar threats in North Arabia and South Arabia from “prophets.” In some ways it looks like a last reflex toward not uniting as Arabs, or at least not uniting under the leadership of Medina or Mecca. The regions of South Arabia and East Arabia had their own cultural histories and expectations of leadership.
And so the rebellions began. It’s a very complicated situation with uncertain timelines. I like to have a sense of the time and place causation of things, but for these Wars of Apostasy (Ridda), it would take a great deal of study to get it in order and it’s not clear that it’s even possible. I can give you the gist of it.
In North Arabia, the expedition force to Syria found itself managing the first wave of desertions from the Muslim cause in Syria, conquering rebels and persuading others to return to the cause. Other tribes closer to Medina chose to advance on the city, thinking to overthrow Abu Bakr while his main army was away. They scrambled enough fighters to defend Medina while young Usamah brought back his forces. It took a number of battles to reduce these tribes to submission. It was probably around this time that Ali came out of his state of mourning and rejoined his companions in supporting the Islamic state.
In Yemen, the “prophet” Aswad al-Ansi had raised an army and attacked Sana’a. The Persian governor of Yemen was Shahr, the son of the governor who had led them to convert to Islam. He defended his capital but died in battle, and Aswad al-Ansi actually married his widow and declared himself king. Abu Bakr sent Abdullah Fairuz al-Dailami, a Persian who had come from Yemen to study with Muhammad. Fairuz’s forces disrupted the takeover of Yemen and killed the prophet. It still took a few months to quell other rebels.
In North Arabia, Tulayhah was a clan chief who had been defeated six years previously. Now he claimed to be a prophet like Muhammad, and he had a confederacy of clans in rebellion, ready to ride on Medina. Abu Bakr sent an army led by Ali and other top companions of Muhammad. (It’s worth mentioning the names of his two co-commanders, because they will have a prominent role in some later troubles. Talha and Zubayr were cousins of Muhammad, and they were on the short (10) list of people that the Prophet said would go to Paradise with absolute certainty.) By the end of October 632, northern and central Arabia had been reconquered. Chief/Prophet Tulayhah escaped to Syria.
In East Arabia, the prophet Musaylimah had already defeated two Muslim armies sent against him. So one of Muhammad’s top generals, Khalid ibn Walid, led an army into East Arabia to tackle it. In his ranks was the Abyssinian who had been rewarded for killing Muhammad’s cousin/uncle Hamza back at the Battle of Uhud. This man, a convert to Islam since Mecca’s surrender, is said to be the individual who killed Musaylimah in battle. Khalid’s army fought a number of battles around East Arabia, moving into central and South Arabia, where they defeated a woman who led her tribe into battle on a camel.
Although Musaylimah had been killed in battle, and his movement had been defeated, his religion had gained enough genuine converts that it stayed around in the area for a long time. He came from the Arabic Haneef (monotheist) tradition, and his people had become at least nominal Christians before adopting Islam. He taught that they should pray three times a day, not five, and fast at night, not in the day. He outlawed polygamy and cousin marriage, but permitted premarital sex. His teachings were a mix of Christian, Muslim, and Gnostic ideas called Sadakia. We don’t know that he had a wide following, but when a Mughal Emperor commissioned a research project to catalog all religions in the Middle East and South Asia, some of Musaylimah’s followers could still be interviewed for the book.
Another army led by Ikrimah went east into Oman. Ikrimah was a recent convert whose father had been Muhammad’s most hardened enemy in Mecca, but he had embraced Islam enthusiastically and served both Muhammad and Abu Bakr in extending Medina’s reach into other Arabian regions. Now he was chasing down the rebellion of the al-Azd tribe, some of those Yemenis who had moved north into Oman—and who are still the main population and rulers there. At the Battle of Dibba, he reconquered them.
The last rebellion was in the southern region of Hadramut, where the Kindah tribe led the revolt. By now it was early 633, and the forces of Ikrimah and Khalid were freed up to put down this rebellion. The Ridda Wars had lasted about six months, from late summer 632 to winter 633. The Arabian Peninsula remained united after this, and the reconquered regions of Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, and north/central Arabia sent armies to serve Caliph Abu Bakr. The war at home had ended, but the war of expansion had just begun. Ikrimah, Khalid, and many of Muhammad’s companions would spend the rest of their lives in the saddle.