When his father Ali was assassinated, Hassan was about 35. Ali’s supporters in Kufa quickly gave their allegiance to him as Caliph and Imam. “Imam,” the leader who stands in front, was the title Ali had taken when he felt “Caliph,” successor, had been corrupted.
Mu’awiya saw Hassan as the last obvious problem remaining before he could turn the Caliphate into a dynastic succession for his son, Yazid. He wrote to Hassan, offering him income from Iraq and a promise to be Mu’awiya’s successor if he would disavow the Caliphate now.
Hassan seems to have been more inclined to study and prayer than to war. He is on record refusing to carry out a whipping that Ali ordered (on someone who deserved it), and he may have disliked his father’s decisions to engage in warfare against Mu’awiya and the others. He had no inclination to war, and he also had few resources. Mu’awiya had been stockpiling cash and war materiel for several decades, but Ali had used Iraq’s tax revenue not only for his three short wars, but also for alms. Kufa did not have a cash reserve; Damascus did. Mu’awiya used his money to start buying loyalty from Arab tribes in Iraq, pulling them away from the cause of Ali.
Hassan decided that he would renounce his claim to the Caliphate. He stipulated that the next Caliph should be chosen by a shura, a conclave of elders. His supporters could live in safety and raise their children without persecution or war. The entire Muslim community could recover from so much war and try to rebuild. He didn’t have many other choices.
The problem for Mu’awiya is that Hassan was the witness to these promises he had made. Like the shura nonsense…don’t make him laugh, he had no intention of that. So an ex-Caliph Hassan was less of an urgent problem, but still a problem. Some years of peaceful study in Medina passed by.
Mu’awiya arranged for one of Hassan’s more recent wives to poison him. She may have done it on her own volition, on “spec” as it were. She had expected to be a Caliph’s wife, and instead she was stuck in Medina doing charity work. She hoped to become Mu’awiya’s daughter-in-law, so a wife of the next Caliph. Knowing Mu’awiya, he may have led her to believe in this hope. It was a vain hope; when she came to Damascus to claim her reward, he asked, “what, marry my son to a poisoner?” and passed her off to a court official.
So in 669, Hassan died from poison; he was around 45. He was survived by more than 20 children, his brother Husayn, and their two sisters. He asked to be buried next to his grandfather, but added that “if you fear evil,” just bury him in the regular Muslim cemetery. Both Marwan and A’isha objected to his being buried near the Prophet. A’isha reminded everyone that the hut was still her property, while Marwan declared that his cousin Uthman had more right, and yet he was buried with the Jews. So in the end, Hassan was interred in the cemetery with his mother. As to Uthman’s resting place, eventually the cemetery was enlarged so that the Jewish plot became included, which solved that problem.
There’s an interesting footnote to the story. In 2016, a small group based at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire decided to study clues in the old records to determine what poison was used on Hassan. Their conclusion, published in Medicine, Science and the Law, is calomel, a mineral form of mercury chloride. This was mined in now-Turkey, then-Byzantine/Roman heartland. A collection of Shi’a hadiths, the Bihar al-Anwar, recalled that Hassan’s drink had been tainted with “gold filings.” Calomel minerals would look golden, so perhaps this is the answer. Calomel has been used as medicine at times, but in enough quantity, it causes internal bleeding and other damage. Hassan was probably given a poisoned drink more than once, and one hadith says that the last drink was very large. It was a painful, gory death. But if this group is correct that the poison was calomel, it certainly points the finger at Mu’awiya, since a wife in Medina could not have obtained a mineral from Asia Minor.
- The Prophet’s Heir, by Hassan Abbas
- After the Prophet, by Lesley Hazelton.
- The Heirs of Muhammad, by Barnaby Rogerson