In a culture where it takes days to get anywhere and weeks to exchange messages, nothing happens fast unless it’s done with a knife. So once the battle had been set aside, with an agreement to find a negotiated path, the action was over. In my mind, they’d do it right there—but no. Ali’s army was to return to Iraq, and the summit between two Quranic judges would happen in another place chosen for being halfway between the cities.
As Ali’s army made the long march home, they began to rethink their choices. Right here, on the march, in their grumbling, we see the first rise of ISIS—or Al Qaeda. In spirit, it began here.
The Qurra, those privileged reciters who knew the entire Quran, were legalists to the core. Ali was not, probably because he had been there as the doctrine developed and saw the human choices that were being made by his stepfather. The Qurra probably included some men of the new generation, born in the territories. They had a healthy self-respect and had never met Muhammad, so they didn’t have any deep feeling toward Ali as the oldest men had.
As they walked back, they grumbled that it had all turned out wrong. They weren’t to blame for laying down arms and insisting on taking Mu’awiya’s deal, Ali was to blame for letting them. Mu’awiya was also to blame for being a corrupt pig. The more they thought about it, the more it seemed that nobody in power deserved respect. Only Allah could judge at all! “Judgment belongs to Allah alone” was their slogan. Any believer could make an assessment of Allah’s judgment that was more valid than a Caliph or someone in the Ahl al-Bayt (Muhammad’s small group of descendants). In fact, they themselves could make the best determination.
Oddly, the leader was named Abdullah ibn Wahb. That’s odd because in the 18th century, the Wahhabi sect arose following another man, Abd al-Wahhab. It’s not the same name but if you know the later name, the early one gives you a double-take. The one back then was nicknamed The Scarred One; it could have been from battle scars, but it also could have been from that now-famous bruise on the forehead from so much prostration. I feel like we know him already.
At the mosque, ibn Wahb heckled Ali. He accused him of being just as corrupt as Mu’awiya, since he made an agreement with Mu’awiya. When Ali reminded them that they had pushed for it, ibn Wahb had a ready answer: Yes, that had happened, and they had sinned in doing so, but now they had repented. Was Ali going to repent by breaking his deal with Mu’awiya? If he didn’t, they would declare him a traitor to Islam.
Ali had to be staggered by this turn of events. All his life, he had kept his word. Having been forced to give his word now, he felt bound by it. Why couldn’t they see that Muhammad would have considered it worse to break an oath than to deal with the unrighteous? The Prophet had made an agreement with the idolaters of Medina as well as with the believers. How could these men have twisted things so badly, when they knew the Quran so well?
Abdullah ibn Wahb declared that Kufa was in a state of ignorance, just like Mecca before Islam. Jahaliyah! Ignoring again that Muhammad had lived alongside the Meccans until they tried to kill him, ibn Wahb announced that all who followed him would now leave Kufa to set up a more righteous Islamic state. Three thousand (?) men followed him out of Kufa and northward to nearby the site of present-day Baghdad. They declared a new Islamic State in Iraq.
The name of this group in English is the Kharijites, after Arabic khawarij “those who go forth” to do Allah’s will, from a verse in the Quran chapter called “Repentance.” Having repented their sin, they went out to create a perfect ideological state where all sin would be instantly corrected or deemed apostasy worthy of death. Lesley Hazelton suggests in After the Prophet that we translate it as “Rejectionists,” and I like this idea.
One of their main points was Quranic fundamentalism, which makes sense since so many of them had been Qurra. The hadiths had not yet been written of course; but the stories were already circulating simply as memories of people like Ali. Those who knew Muhammad knew what he had said that was not part of the Quranic revelation, so they believed this could guide them as to priorities and interpretation. The Rejectionists didn’t see how anyone could know better than they did. They had the literal words of the Quran.
The Rejectionists also pioneered takfir, the idea that any Muslim who sinned and did not repent was placed outside the community as a complete unbeliever. This had not been one of Muhammad’s ideas, although we now widely identify it as a core Muslim belief. It is only a principle for those in the tradition of the Rejectionists, like the Wahhabis. This includes Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. Once a Muslim has been declared an unbeliever, he may have the death penalty imposed. The Rejectionists began this practice, too.
There is a documented incident that must have been replicated many times without documentation. The son of one of Muhammad’s Companions had come to Iraq as a colonist. He was farming in their northern area, having married (a local?), and was expecting a first child. Some of the Rejectionists decided to pick on him. His father had been among those who warned Ali against civil war, so they posed a question.
I don’t really understand the implications of the question. As Hazelton gives it, “Didn’t your father say the Prophet told him, ‘There will be a fitna in which the heart of a man will die as does his body, and if you are alive then, be not the slayer but the slain’?” I suppose the point was that he should deny it, since it seemed to condemn the Rejectionists. (And it wasn’t a literal Quran quotation, it was just a memory.) He told them that yes, his father had said this. Then he added, “Ali knows more of Allah than you do.”
The really interesting thing is not that they killed him and his wife, because of course they did. It’s that as they were setting up to execute them, they had two small mishaps. One of them accidentally killed a cow by recklessly swinging his sword, and another ate a date in the market. The Rejectionists’ reaction was to stop everything until these two sins had been rectified. The village was turned out to locate the owners of these commodities, and they were duly paid. No thieves here! Then they disemboweled the woman, stabbed the fetus, and beheaded the man. A righteous day’s work.
They are so recognizable as today’s Salafi terrorists. The term “Salafi” to include Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS, Al Qaeda and anyone else refers to their insistence on living without adaptation to the modern world. They follow only the ancestors—salaf—by which they mean the first three generations of Islam. It seems pretty obvious that they really only mean the Rejectionists of Iraq.
Ali heard of the killing. He sent word demanding that the murderers be turned over to him for justice. Ibn Wahb coolly replied that they were all responsible, and they all considered him, too, to be “halal” (legally available) for the killing. It was a declaration of war.
And so, the Battle of Nahrawand was Ali’s third challenge. He couldn’t hesitate this time, he had to put down the rebellion. Even so, Shi’ite history remembers that he spoke to the Rejectionists first, trying to sway some to cross back to his side. When battle came, his forces wiped out the Rejectionists, reducing them to a handful of about 300 survivors. The Rejectionists are said to have been fanatical to the end, crying out “Prepare for Paradise!” as they died. But their movement didn’t end there; the survivors kept it alive, though no longer a military threat. Some Rejectionists continued to live in that area for many generations.
- After the Prophet, by Lesley Hazelton.
- The Heirs of Muhammad, by Barnaby Rogerson
- The Prophet’s Heir, by Hassan Abbas