Khalid Takes the Euphrates River, 633

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Ruth

Simultaneous invasions began in 633, with armies heading west into Syria and north into Persia (modern Iraq). The western campaigns had little to note until after Khalid’s eastern army joined them, so we’ll start with Khalid. He was in northern Arabia with his army, having just conquered the last of the rebellions in eastern and northern lands. He left the city of Yamamah and headed north to join a former Ridda Wars rebel who was now raiding southern Iraq in the name of the Caliph Abu Bakr.

Hugh Kennedy, in Great Arab Conquests, describes how it took about three weeks’ riding across the northern Arabian desert from Medina to reach southern Iraq, where suddenly there is plentiful water. “In many places the border between the irrigated lands and the desert is clear and precise: you can virtually stand with one foot on either side of this environmental frontier.” Khalid’s army had a head start on the journey, and they had already been fighting against—and co-opting—-some of the Arab tribes who lived on the border of the irrigated lands. His core army from Yamamah may have been small, about 1000 men. But he added more fighters as he went, bringing border tribesmen with him.

The fortresses that ran up the south side of the Euphrates River from the Persian Gulf were small and lightly manned. Siege warfare depended on holding out until a larger force came to chase away the besiegers, and everyone knew that no larger army would be coming. So each conquest was a combination of force and negotiation. The “Persian” troops were mostly local Arabs who had become regulars for the regime. The locals were happy to see their Persian overlords displaced.

The first battle was named “The Battle of Chains” by the Muslims, because the Persian fighters were rumored to be chained together to prevent flight. It was fought at Uballa, a port on the Tigris River near the Persian Gulf. All of the four main battles with Persians are recorded in Muslim sources as having been fought against great numerical odds. They also began all of the battles with challenges to single combat, which was the Arab model of battle that we saw in the Battles of Badr and Uhud. Khalid challenged the commander to fight him, and he is recorded as always winning these duels.

Losing fighters fled each battle upriver, where they were collected into the next force to face the Muslims. Khalid’s men moved quickly, going up the Euphrates River within a few months. Their speed forced the Persians to move faster than they were set up to move, so they arrived at battles exhausted. The fourth battle of this type was probably the largest, and it resulted in vast casualties on both sides. It’s hard to know how much to tell about such battles; of course, each one cries out for attention with its particular story, but the next set of years are so chock full of battles that only the really unusual ones are worth telling. Be it noted: the locals and some imperial troops from Ctesiphon did try to stop them at times. But although they had the home advantage and sometimes greater numbers, they lost every encounter.

The last one, the Battle of Ullais, took out the largest army the Persians could manage at that time. Muslim records suggest as many as 70,000 fighters on the Persian side lost their lives, and one of their stories explains how Khalid beheaded a large number of them by a tributary of the Euphrates until it ran red. After that, there wasn’t any organized resistance.

The city of Hira, halfway up the river, was Khalid’s target. It was the capital of the Arab buffer state ruled by the Lakhmids, whose job it was to hold the frontier against the matching Roman Arab buffer state, ruled by the Ghassanids. The Muslim Arabs wanted to capture both capitals so that all of the Arabs would be under their rule.

Hira was a city on the model of Medina: it was a collection of fortified houses and palaces, without a wall around the city limits. Everything was made from mud brick, since it was not a region with much stone; buildings could go up to two stories and not much more. Clan chiefs lived in walled houses/palaces, and among these fortifications, there were also monasteries and churches, as well as ordinary village dwellings. Hira had a Nestorian bishop; the Lakhmids had generally converted to Christianity.

In Hira, the clans pulled inside their fortresses, while the small fry watched Khalid’s men moving freely through the unwalled spaces. The leaders cared most about their castles and churches, and they knew no army was coming to their relief. They negotiated with Khalid for an amount of tribute to pay in exchange for nothing being ruined. Hira collected taxes from other towns on the southern Euphrates, so tribute from Hira had the potential to add up. Khalid sent the first tribute from a Persian zone to Medina.

After Hira, Khalid went north to Anbar, where he again conquered. But instead of setting out to conquer more of Persia, Khalid received orders to head to Syria. The Lakhmid towns along the Euphrates were being easily held by Muslims, but the Ghassanid towns of Syria were causing more of a problem to the commanders who had been sent in that direction. So the Muslim invasion of Mesopotamia ended for now.

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Persia in 632

Posted on April 4, 2021 by Ruth

Rome vs. Persia: In the 610s, Persia was racking up victories, and in the 620s, Constantinople began reversing them. By 630, under pressure of war expenses, both empires had meddled in the other side’s revolutions, supporting either a rebel or the son of an overthrown ruler. It happened more than once, so that for being enemies, both at times were under obligations to the other. Heraclius had been Roman Emperor long enough now to seem pretty stable, but Persia was a mess.

The Persian king who received Muhammad’s letter was Khosrow II, and he bore the brunt of the Roman Emperor Heraclius’s victories. War had disrupted his economy and taxation, and of course had also made him spend a lot on fielding several armies. He came down with dysentery in the field, and named a successor. He passed over his oldest son and chose a younger one. This decision became one more vulnerability that Heraclius could exploit; the Romans probably assisted in some way when the oldest son overthrew his father and brother in a sudden coup. That’s the coup that they heard about in Yemen.

Khavad II executed his brother, of course. But he went further, chasing down all of his half-brothers and other male relatives, about twenty targeted family deaths. He made peace with Heraclius and agreed to give back the fragment of the True Cross that the Persians had removed from its basilica in Jerusalem. Heraclius restored the relic with pomp and devotion in 630. But Khavad II ruled for less than a year, then he died, leaving a son who was only seven. In a stable period, men can rule for a child, but in an unstable time that won’t happen. A man who has just killed all of his brothers can’t really expect the family to be loyal to his young child. A rebel general seized power.

On the eastern edge of the Persian lands, a new force was taking bites off their territory. This new force was an early wave of Turks, who would become a major issue in the Muslim Empire as well. A Turkish army seized Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, and killed everyone. When the Persians sent out an army, the Turks managed to trap and kill them, too. These losses were too heavy for a newly-crowned rebel general-king to sustain. He was assassinated, and the previous royal family was sought out.

But Khavad II had killed so many of his brothers that it was hard to find anyone to make into a king. Two of his sisters served as kings! By the time of Muhammad’s death in far-off Medina, both sisters had ruled and died, and the family then tried out five other relatives as kings. Yazdgerd III became king while Arabia was fighting out its Wars of Apostasy.

When a country falls into a situation like this, central government loses control. Taxes are not collected and transported reliably, so the capital is short of funds. Strongmen in various regions seize control, partly because someone has to be in charge to prevent chaos. By the time Yazdgerd III was calling himself king, there was not much Persia left to rule over. Turks were invading Georgia and Armenia, and most Persian cities had little connection to Ctesiphon. The Persian military had been devastated by its many losses and the major rebellion of its general. The great advantage of an empire is that it can field a very large army, supported by taxes, and able to move anywhere that it’s needed. Persia had lost most of this advantage by 633, when the Arabian civil war wound down.

Persia tended to be more decentralized than the Eastern Roman empire, too. Its nobles and king moved about among their country houses, rather than gathering in a large city like Constantinople. They had cities, but these were not built up quite the way they were to the west. The religion, too, tended to decentralization. Zoroastrian religion had fire temples, but the most important fire temples were not in central places, nor did they have large buildings. Hugh Kennedy suggests Zoroastrianism may have been an elite religion mostly followed by the aristocracy. If so, there were many peasants without any firm tie to a native religion.

Persia also had large Jewish and Nestorian Christian populations. Jews came to the region in the original Babylonian captivity, and then again after the destruction of Jerusalem. Nestorians had been fleeing eastward since the church council that outlawed their theology. It’s likely that both religions had found willing converts among the native Iraqis, the working poor who were left out of the fire religion. The Assyrian Christian Church was strong at that time. There were probably also many who practiced some sort of close-to-the-earth animism, which seems to be the natural religion of most of the world.

The Roman and Persian empires had in common a trait that left them vulnerable to Muslim conquest: the ruling class was alienated from the peasants, who often spoke another language. Persia’s society was highly stratified. The elite spoke Farsi, but the peasants of Iraq spoke Aramaic, as did the peasants of Syria. Their culture and religion were set up to offer the peasants and working class nothing. Islam, on the other hand, was set up as an egalitarian system that welcomed everyone. It offered everyone a way to participate by prayers and alms.

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The Early Muslim Army

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Ruth

Around the time of the Ridda (Apostasy) Wars, a lot of men began to realize that they weren’t about to disband and go home. After the fall of Mecca, some of them had tried out the idea. It’s possible that the first expedition to Syria that was sent out even as the Prophet was dying was a means to keep the need for armed men alive. Arabia is pacified? Yes but not really, what about the Arabs in the north? Don’t go home yet…keep that armor…

Arabian practice had been for all men in the clan or tribe to go out to war, but only some of them fought. That’s how you get a Battle of Uhud where 3000 men rode from Mecca, but only 22 died. We can see this pattern all through the early battle stories during Muhammad’s life: much of the battle was gained or lost by showing up, and by showing up in force. These early amateur armies had a tendency to run when the odds were too great.

But after six months of constant fighting, the men who were still in the ranks had become battle-tough fighters. Their commanders had gained experience, with tactical wisdom and a chain of command. It was clear to Abu Bakr, anyway, that when the last Ridda battle was fought, in early 633, it was time to move these forces onward and forward.

What were these forces like? There are not a lot of written records, but we know a little. They still fought in clan and tribal units, just as a matter of course. (Similarly, in the US Civil War, regiments consisted of men who all knew each other from back home.) They carried banners that showed insignia of their tribes, pre-dating Islam. As we know from the Muslim battles in Arabia, they had many good archers, and they used spears with steel points. But their primary weapon was a short, straight sword, not a curved scimitar as in later wars. Every man was expected to be proficient in sword use. Armor was chain-mail, and probably for most it only guarded the neck or other vital areas. It was expensive. The cheaper covering was just very tough leather, which could stop glancing blows but not a direct thrust.

One significant change that occurred during Muhammad’s time, and continued with the Caliphs, was that the ruler appointed a general commander over all of the tribes or city units. This commander was chosen for strategic experience, not clan hierarchy. Muhammad had set the army on its ear by appointing a teenager to lead, just before his death. He also appointed commanders without regard to how long they had been Muslims, so that recent enemies might now be leading into battle. These commanders organized the clan units into left and right wings, and advance and read guards. As long as they fought only other Arab clans, they didn’t need much innovation of military form. As soon as they began to face Roman or Persian armies, they had to counter that type of organization by copying it.

The Arabs traveled very light, since speed was their greatest friend. Attackers who can arrive a day before expected have a significant advantage. Each Arab warrior was expected to have his own camel and horse, following the Bedouin model. He could ride his camel or use it for provisions, while his horse was not ridden until they got close enough to need a lightning attack. His personal equipment was his set of weapons and armor, and some needles and linen thread. Large needles could fix saddle straps, while small needles could sew up a wound as well as fix sacks or tunics. Wealthy Muslims in Medina and other cities used their power to provide provisions for an expedition, and sometimes they provided personal equipment to a man who wanted to fight but could not afford these things.

But the army was not at first paid a regular salary. Once the Caliph’s treasury had provided for camels, horses, and food, the army would go forward and earn its own keep with loot. A city or tribe that lost could always expect to have its possessions taken wholesale. No exceptions, since that is how the army was paid. In the Muslim army, they paid a lot of attention to how the loot was distributed. Instead of every man grabbing for himself, they collected it all in a central place, and divided it fairly. Slaves were a major part of the payout, but in the coming conquests, herds of animals were not a large part (as they had been in the battles within Arabia). Armor and weapons were also assumed as part of the loot that would be handed out, so that victories kept the army’s equipment refreshed and increasing.

The armies of Abu Bakr would have units from the Bedouin tribes, as well as foot soldiers from South and East Arabia. Foot soldiers traveled slower, but they were the backbone of the army. Although later Arab armies were famous for riding into battle and fighting on horseback, it doesn’t seem like that’s what they did at this time. They rode to a battle quickly, perhaps rode into the battle, but fought on foot.

After the defeat of the settlement of Khaybar, the Muslim armies could use siege engines. These seem to have been the sort of catapult that is fired by having a team of men pull suddenly down on a rope, raising the arm to fling a rock. They were only useful in the case of assaulting a really fortified city.

With each region that was brought into the Caliphate, they got a fresh crop of engineers who knew how to use walls, water and wheels in war.

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The Ridda Wars of Apostasy, 632

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Ruth

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.

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Umar At Fatimah’s House

Posted on March 24, 2021 by Ruth

The first crisis of the post-Muhammad Islamic State came quickly. Ali and Fatimah had retired to their own house to complete their mourning for her father. But outside the house, Abu Bakr was seizing power as rapidly as he could. Nobody wanted to see the city fall into fitna, which means trouble or specifically the trouble of civil war. When Ubadah had recovered, he swore loyalty to Abu Bakr, and so did others. Then there were the outside tribes, and envoys from other cities. The best way to keep things on track was to have the news of Muhammad’s death arrive simultaneously with the news of Abu Bakr’s leadership, so that condolences and loyalty oaths could happen at once.

Ali didn’t come out of his house. Sunni sources pass over this period with as little said as possible. But Shi’ite sources say that days went by, perhaps weeks, and Ali, if asked, just sent word that he was still in mourning. While the small fry among Muslims may not have noticed, the leaders wondered if Ali was planning a challenge. Some tribal envoys may have hesitated to swear loyalty to Abu Bakr when it wasn’t clear what the Prophet’s son-in-law was going to do. Abu Bakr and the other leaders decided that it couldn’t go on, though we don’t know how much time had passed.

Umar went to the house of Ali and Fatimah, where the wooden door was closed and barred. His message was that it was time to swear loyalty, but as always, Umar found the most violent way to say it. When the house was silent to his knocking, he raised his voice and called to them: “If you don’t come out, I will burn down your house over your heads.” While Ali and his family were alone, Umar of course had men with him. Ali later said that if only he had had even 40 men at his back, he could have done something. But he just stayed quiet indoors, resisting passively.

Umar, waiting outside, may have set part of the house on fire, or set a fire near the house; accounts vary. He didn’t burn it down over their heads, which had been a foolish threat he couldn’t really carry out. But he lost his patience and he, or one of the larger, stronger men with him, decided to break down the door. You know what this looks like in old movies, where they get a running start and turn a shoulder to the door. That’s what he did. The door wasn’t that strong, and it gave way. What this looks like from the inside is that the door flies into the room with speed and force, carried by the momentum of a large man’s shoulder.

Fatimah was the unlucky person standing or crossing nearby, and she got hit by the door and man. She fell, of course. She was pregnant again, and the baby was injured in the fall. Umar wanted to make a grand entrance, but he didn’t have this in mind; he was dismayed to see that he had actually hurt her. He and his band left. A few weeks later, Fatimah went into labor but her baby boy was stillborn. She never really recovered from these stresses.

Fatimah had one more shock in store. She went to Abu Bakr and asked him to give her the share of the Khaybar date harvest that had belonged to her father, and thus should be hers. Most of the spoils he had received were clearly not his personal property, but apparently this was. Abu Bakr, though, told her that it was actually all property of the Islamic State. She was not going to have any inheritance at all.

Why did Abu Bakr do this? It was probably part of the ostracism that he was imposing on Ali’s family as long as Ali did not swear allegiance. Men stood away from Ali in the mosque. But there may have been years of other grudges leading up to it. As A’isha’s father, he cared about what she considered had been snubs that Fatimah gave her, and he must also have still resented Ali’s advice to Muhammad to divorce A’isha. He may also have been aware of carrying on Muhammad’s practice of disrupting the old sunnah and founding a new one. “In the new sunnah, all believers were equally Muhammad’s children! His widows were the mothers of all believers, so A’isha was Fatimah’s mother and any Bedouin tribesman was just as much his heir.” Did he think these things? I’m speculating, but it seems likely.

He also provided generous pensions for the widows, who were still officially known as the Mothers of the Believers. He may have rationalized that giving to widows is a sort of alms, whereas Fatimah was not a widow.

Fatimah died about three months after her father, making her the first one to follow him to Paradise, as he had predicted. Her bitterness and alienation were clear in her last instructions to Ali. She told him to bury her secretly, as he had buried Muhammad. Again, she did not want Abu Bakr to have the public honor of leading prayers over her shroud. We don’t know where Ali buried her, though it’s certainly inside the current mosque in Medina. They lived nearby, so if he buried her inside the house, the modern mosque is so large that it’s now inside. He may have dug a grave in the courtyard, but this seems harder to keep secret.

After Fatimah had died, Ali swore allegiance to Abu Bakr. His bitterness can only be imagined.

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Caliph Abu Bakr: the Day of Muhammad’s Death

Posted on March 24, 2021 by Ruth

Muhammad died around noon. We know the room was crowded with relatives, and either A’isha or Ali held him in his last hour before he stopped breathing. Many believers were standing or sitting in the mosque just outside the house, and quickly the word passed that the Prophet had died. It was unexpected for many who were not close to him, since he had come outside to the prayers just that morning, although he had needed help and kept silent. They may have assumed he was recovering.

The immediate task of laying out the body for burial belonged to his closest male relatives Abbas and Ali, and two cousins. They would wash him, rub him with herbs, and wrap the shroud, while they prayed over him. The others left the room; A’isha probably went to Hafsah’s room for a much-needed nap.

Abu Bakr and Umar went outside to the mosque, where they saw commotion: wailing and crying, tearing clothes. Umar went through an episode of shock and denial, crying out to everyone that the Prophet couldn’t be dead, and where was their faith? But Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s first convert outside his family and oldest friend, calmed both Umar and the crowd. “If you worshipped Muhammad, Muhammad is dead. For those who worshipped Allah, He is alive. Messengers have passed away before this. Why, if God’s messenger dies, should you turn back on your heels?”

There was another response to the news of the Prophet’s death among the leading men of Medina. Ubadah ibn al-Samit, the chief of the Khazraj tribe, called for a shura, a traditional conclave between the Khazraj and Aws tribes of Medina. By mid-afternoon, they were meeting in some undisclosed house to discuss post-Muhammad leadership. They viewed Muhammad’s Banu Hashim clan as Medinans, since one of the founders had grown up in Medina. But during the decade of sharing their oasis with a growing contingent from Mecca, they had never quite adopted those other men as Medinans.

And recently, it had grown worse, with the wholesale conversion of Mecca and sudden importation of some of its leading men as new-minted Muslims promoted into important positions. When those vast flocks of camels and sheep were seized from the Thabit tribe, Muhammad had gifted most of them to Meccans. Now the Medinans were very afraid that one of these bossy foreigners would take over and instead of being the core of a city-state, they would become a conquered people ruled from Mecca. It would be far better to move quickly and swear allegiance to one of their own, either Ali or a chief like Ubadah. Ubadah had been an early believer who fought in the Battle of Badr (very few Medinans could say this). He knew Muslim law every bit as much as the Meccans did (there are about 180 hadiths from Ubadah).

What would have happened had they quickly settled on either Ubadah or Ali? But they didn’t. As the hours passed, some of the Meccans heard about the meeting. By early evening, they had joined it in force. Now the room was crowded and probably split by halves, those already there moving away from the door as newcomers filled in the space. Sunni sources say little about the meeting, telling us only that there was some discussion. They quote the Prophet that when the Muslim community agrees, it cannot be in error. They cut to the outcome: everyone swore allegiance to Abu Bakr.

But Shi’ite sources say that the Meccans, led by Umar and Abu Bakr, escalated the “discussions” to loud arguments. Just as they loved poetry, they loved rhetoric and long speeches. One after one, and probably often two at once, they built towers of words in the air, lashing emotions into a storm. The meeting went on for more than 24 hours, lasting into the next evening; some men probably left and came back, while a few die-hards didn’t budge. Some Medinans suggested splitting the Muslim polity into two, with a Medinan ruler and a Meccan one. But the Meccans insisted that Muslims must remain under one rule as Muhammad wanted, and that the leader must be from Mecca, where it had all begun. Not just a veteran of Badr, but a convert from the earliest years.

One of the political problems that Muhammad had inadvertently created was that Islam was rigidly egalitarian, and yet it also expected and required authoritarian rule. There was not much of a governing structure, no layers of judges or governors to draw from. Muhammad himself had led prayers until he became sick. He had been everything, and nobody could take his place. Someone had to be elevated over the others, but the Quran was also insistent on the equality of all believers. Muhammad had tried to weaken and nullify the old clan aristocracies.

Why didn’t Muhammad set up a solution in advance? It seems most likely that he wasn’t sure what to do and waited for certainty, for a revelation, since most major decisions had been made that way. In that case, Allah had let him die before telling him what to do. There were two possibilities then. Either Allah wanted them to somehow settle it themselves and had kept some other solution from happening, or Allah had, in fact, already settled it by making Ali the personal and spiritual heir. Right there we have one of the major divisions in the world, essentially the same issue today but in very changed circumstances.

If the shurah had worked out a way to vote for the next leader, it would have been an early step toward democracy, fitting with the egalitarian ideals of the Quran. But it would also have been a step away from believing they were ruled directly by Allah’s decrees. So instead, the argument became about merit: who had the greatest right to be the leader? Whose merit earned him this role?

Muhammad had many companions who had been with him for years, but the Meccans had a top rank of three men: Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman. As the meeting wore itself out, Abu Bakr proposed that Umar should be the successor, and Umar proposed Uthman. Uthman was from the Umayyad clan of the Quraysh, the same one with Hind the liver-eater. Tempers flared on the Medinan side of the room now, since bringing in that family was the last thing they wanted.

Ubadah made a speech that accused the Meccans of collusion and partisan dealing. Someone shoved or grabbed Ubadah and fists flew. A small group of Meccans (probably led by Umar, the perpetual speaker of violent solutions) beat Ubadah unconscious. We have to remember that Ubadah and Abu Bakr had been in the same little cluster around Muhammad for ten years! These men had been friends who fought and traveled together. Muhammad’s funeral had not taken place, and already there was blood on the floor and a question of murder. (Ubadah did recover.)

In the shock that followed Ubadah’s body being removed, Umar suddenly knelt to Abu Bakr and swore allegiance to him. Uthman did the same. The other Meccans followed. And then one Medinan, then another. The meeting broke up and Abu Bakr had been chosen as Muhammad’s successor.

Where was Ali? He was still with the body, in A’isha’s room. Abbas and Ali must have been told about the meeting, but Ali in particular was very, very principled about doing what was right. He would mourn for the prescribed three days, no matter what. Abbas, a more pragmatic man, might have been persuaded to go, but Ali would not move. The little room, beginning to smell of decomposition, would have received the excited news of Abu Bakr’s elevation. Ali didn’t even want to talk about. But he and Abbas did one unusual thing.

Muhammad had said that prophets should be buried where they died, but we don’t know if he meant that in the literal sense that they applied it. His little son Ibrahim was buried in a new cemetery, with the daughters and wives who had already died. But Abbas and Ali began digging a hole in A’isha’s room. A’isha’s bed was a stone slab, not a very comfortable bed in my eyes, but apparently it was standard then. I suppose it would stay cool in the long hot summers. When the shallow grave was large enough for the Prophet’s body, they slid it in. After they replaced the dirt, they put the stone slab over the whole thing, now the cover to a grave. It was all done before the community outside knew it. In a society with big public funerals, they had only family present at a secret burial.

Why? One reason is certainly that Muhammad had said prophets should be buried where they died. But although they were still in grief and shock and could not think much about what the others had just done, they knew they could not face a public funeral. Who would lead prayers over the body? Who would lead the procession? Abu Bakr the successor, of course. Abbas and Ali would not be given the rights of close kin, but would be pushed aside, again. It would be the grand opening of Abu Bakr’s rule, with thousands seeing him in the Prophet’s place. And so Abbas and Ali did the one thing they could see to do: they denied Abu Bakr this honor.

A’isha did not sleep in her room again. The house became part of the mosque and the place of the Prophet’s grave. The widows were all given houses and apartments in the city, with pensions.

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The Prophet’s Death, 632

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Ruth

For about three months after returning from Mecca, Muhammad lived a normal life. He taught and led prayers, dealt with envoys from other parts of Arabia, and planned another military expedition to Syria. He may have begun to feel unwell but just pushed ahead, as people do. And then one day he came down with severe pain in his head. Still he led prayers and tried to act normal. He preached that there was a “servant” among God’s servants who had been offered everything in this life, or the things of God in the next, and that servant had chosen the things of God. His closest companions realized he was speaking of himself and predicting his death.

Muhammad lived on a schedule within his house; each wife had a room, and he went to each room in its turn. The first night he got sick, he was at Maymunah’s room; she was one of his most recent (and older) wives, a Qurayshi cousin. A’isha said that before he went to Maymunah’s room, he stopped to tell her he was very sick. For the first few days, he kept to his schedule, but as he grew feverish and in more pain, he began asking, “Where will I be tomorrow?” and they realized he was asking if it was A’isha’s turn yet. The wives decided to let the sick man be taken to A’isha’s room to stay.

The Syrian expedition lingered in Medina, instead of leaving. Muhammad had appointed Zaid’s son Usamah as commander, but Usamah was relatively young and at first the men didn’t want to follow him. Muhammad needed to make a personal appearance to address the problem, so he asked his wives to give him a special ritual washing before he went out. They had to bring seven buckets of water from seven wells. With this done, he appeared with assistance in the mosque (which was his courtyard, so quite nearby). With his direct affirmation of the appointment, the expedition set out. After this, Abu Bakr led the prayers.

Traditional Muslim narrative is that Muhammad’s illness was caused by a long-lasting effect from some poison fed to him by a Jewish woman at Khaybar. To me at least, this doesn’t make good sense because it had been about two years since then. His symptoms sound to me roughly like meningitis (severe headache and fever), so I wonder about amebic meningitis, caused by tainted water. It’s just speculation, of course. What we know is that he got sicker and sicker, for about ten days. Sound and light were painful.

His closest companions and immediate family came to sit with him. A sick room then, and certainly the sick room of an important leader, was not an isolated, quiet place. We know that Abu Bakr and Umar (whose daughters were his wives A’isha and Hafsah) and Uthman (who had married two of his daughters) were with him a lot; they were both friends and family. A team of scribes was in and out, and they included Mu’awiya, son of the powerful Abu Sufyan and Hind (the liver-eater). As we’ve seen with other famous men, “I was there at his sick bed” is a claim that many people want to make later. But to be sure, probably at least a hundred different people, kin and disciples, could make that claim.

Muhammad also had his blood kin, like Uncle Abbas and many cousins. Closest of all, Fatimah and Ali with their four children (two boys, two girls), also visited. A’isha tells that she would withdraw to give them privacy when they came. On one occasion, she saw from the doorway that Muhammad whispered something to Fatimah and she burst into tears. Then he whispered to her again, and she smiled. Later, A’isha asked Fatimah what that was about. Fatimah said that first he told her he was going to die of this illness, but then he told her that she would join him in Paradise next, so she smiled.

Near the end, Muhammad had mostly stopped speaking, but he struggled one day, sat up to drink some water, and asked for them to bring paper and pen (and, presumably, a scribe to use them). This particular story is not told by either Martin Lings or Mohiuddin’s fairly comprehensive book, so I’m indebted to Lesley Hazelton’s After the Prophet, which relates some Shi’ite stories. Hazelton tells that those around Muhammad stirred uneasily and began discussing what to do. Although they had always obeyed Muhammad without questions, now they hesitated. Maybe each thought another should go run the errand, while some argued that it was too taxing for the sick man at all. The way it worked out, they argued until the Prophet signaled that the noise was painful. He didn’t speak about it again.

The next day, when he died, he made a request to be specially washed and taken out to the mosque prayers. Abbas and Ali half carried him out, and then back in after prayers (led by Abu Bakr). A’isha says that Muhammad died while leaning on her, in her arms. Shi’ites report that Ali was the one holding the Prophet, his foster father, when he died. There’s no way for us to know which actually happened, and even at the time probably various hearsay versions passed quickly around the community.

It mattered so much because SO MANY people were closely related to the Prophet, and they needed to look for clues about who was preferred. For some, there was no open question: the successor was Ali, whether Muhammad died in his arms or not. Muhammad had climbed onto a dais of saddles three months before and said to everyone “If I am your guardian, then Ali is your guardian.” But Muhammad’s spiritual force of will had held the people together for 20 years, and with him gone, they were about to lapse into more typical human disunity and conflict faster than anyone imagined.

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Speech at the Deceptive Pond

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Ruth

Thousands had accompanied Muhammad to Mecca, and for the first day on the return trip, many or most of them were still there. Before the crowd broke up to go separate ways, Muhammad gave another short speech. They had stopped for the night around a very small oasis spring called Ghadir Khumm. This oasis had a pool, but its water was generally too salty to drink; its name meant “Deceiver Pond.” The place was significant because it was a visible intersection of three main roads leading to Egypt, Iraq, and back to Medina.

Muhammad had some men pile camel saddles up to form a platform, with palm branches reaching up to make a little shade on top. He sat on this dais. The Prophet’s short speech is not disputed in Islamic sources. He called Ali up to him, and he asked the crowd whether he (Muhammad) was not closer to the believers than they were themselves? This was a point made in the Quran, so they called back “Yes!” In that case, he said, “Anyone who has me as his mawla, has Ali as his mawla.”

What did “mawla” mean? There isn’t a straightforward answer. It was the word that referred to a client, like a newly converted person under the protection of a believer, or like tribes that paid deference or taxes to another tribe. But its root meaning also refers to closeness, and to having power over someone, so it can be used to mean the opposite: to be the guardian in a client relationship. It can also mean a helper. Sometimes a source quotes Muhammad using a related word, wali, which has a similar range: guardian, friend, helper.

Whether the Prophet meant chiefly “friend” or “boss,” in any case, he made the point that he and Ali were the same. If you listen to one, listen to the other. Why was he making this speech at this time? That’s where it gets contentious.

The Shi’a believe that it was part of Muhammad’s series of farewell speeches. He had told friends that Allah gave him a choice of long life or a sooner return to God, and he chose God. He made this pilgrimage so that he could leave clear instructions, and he made a plainly valedictory speech on the hilltop. Ali had joined the pilgrimage party after the main events were over, because he had been in Yemen. He took a party of several hundred men a few months earlier; they were to instruct the people in proper Muslim prayers and law, but if there were any tribes that needed to be conquered, they had weapons along too. So when the Prophet gave his hilltop speech, Ali was not with him yet.

In the Shi’ite narrative, this first stop at the tiny oasis was the last farewell to the crowd of believers and Muhammad wanted to make his successor clear. He stood on the dais and brought Ali up, and raising Ali’s arm, he said “If I am your master, then Ali is your master.” They all shouted “Yes!” in response.

But the Sunnis downplay the importance of the speech. As you’ll see in later parts of the story, the other Companions strenuously opposed Ali’s leadership. Even in their telling, Umar congratulated Ali on getting the nod of succession—-at this event. But later, Umar too opposed actually giving Ali any power. Perhaps in order to justify the way things worked out, they have a back story to explain Muhammad’s speech.

In the Sunni story, Ali came back from Yemen with 300 men who were wearing the same clothes they wore out from Medina. The clothes were dirty and sweaty. When they heard that Muhammad was in Mecca, they decided to ride back to join him, but as they grew closer to the city, they realized that everyone there would be very clean and in best clothes (or pilgrim garb?). Some of the booty/tribute they had in the camel train was a lot of freshly woven linen, which Ali intended to present to the Muslim treasury as a grand gift. But when Ali rode out faster to meet Muhammad first, the men left behind agreed to share out the clean linen for themselves. When Ali saw this, maybe the next day, he was angry and told them to take it off. They had to put on their sweaty clothes, and this made them angry. They grumbled at Ali for several days, and they complained to Muhammad.

In this narrative, Muhammad’s speech about Ali was a way of telling them to shut up. Would they complain if he told them to put on dirty clothes? No? Well then don’t complain if Ali says it. It’s the same message, but restricted to a situation right there at hand. If the context is about dirty laundry, there’s no reason to think it was a succession investiture.

Shi’ites celebrate the day when Ali was declared the successor as Eid al-Ghadir. It’s a very important feast, considered by some as the greatest feast of all. And yet the biography of Muhammad by Martin Lings, a Sunni scholar, detailed the dirty linen story while not even mentioning the way this speech might have been a succession ceremony. It shows outsiders how deep the divisions can run.

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The Last Hajj of Muhammad

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Ruth

Muhammad’s health appeared to be good for his age. We’re uncertain of all numbers, but he was somewhere in his early 60s, which in the 7th century could be very old and aged. In his case, the stories say that his hair was only a bit gray and he still worked and rode without tiring. There was every reason to think he would live another ten or twenty years, but he himself sensed that he would not.

When the time came for the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj, Muhammad decided to lead the expedition. It was the first time since Mecca’s pilgrimage was founded that it would be entirely Muslim, with no idolatry. All of Arabia was now monotheistic. So when the word of mouth got out that the Prophet himself was going, thousands of Bedouin and people in Arabian towns decided to go, too. They gathered around Medina so that they could accompany the Prophet on each step.

It was like one of his major war expeditions, reported to number as much as 30,000. The procession would have been even larger than we imagine, since Muhammad brought 100 camels to sacrifice, and many others probably did as well. They were all wearing the pilgrim’s style, which consisted of two pieces of cloth with no stitching, only held on by a belt or over the shoulder: in other words, a primitive covering.

The Prophet brought all of his wives, each in a howdah on a camel. Abu Bakr had recently married the widow of Jafar (who died leading the Syrian expedition), and she was pregnant. At the first day’s halt, she went into labor and gave birth to a son, who was named Muhammad. (It’s interesting that the name was not really very common up to this point.) Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr comes into later stories.

Muhammad’s actions on this last Hajj set the norms for what pilgrims do when they go to Mecca. He began by going around the Ka’aba seven times, then prayed at the “Station of Abraham,” a smaller stone that is now encased in a gold-plated metal housing. He went from the hill of Safa to the hill of Marwa seven times also. Every prayer that he spoke at one of these points was noted in their memory so they could do the same the following year. (In the modern Hajj ritual, there is an underground passage between Safa and Marwa so that people can pass back and forth without stopping surface traffic.) Muhammad entered the Ka’aba, but A’isha reports that when he visited her in the evening, he said he regretted doing so. Not everyone would be able to do it, in fact maybe at times in the future nobody could go in, and the commandment was really just to go around it.

His expedition stayed in tents outside the city, although many relatives and new converts begged him to be a guest. Muhammad seems to have been very conscious of everything he did as setting a precedent. Indeed, modern Hajjis stay in tents in the same valley. On the second day, he rode to the valley of Arafah, to a hill called the Mount of Mercy, where he prayed. This was significant because it was part of the ancient pilgrimage ritual, but his Quraysh tribe had given it up. He told them it was first done by Abraham, so it was back on the program. On the same day, he also sent out a crier on horseback to ride through all of the vast encampment and remind them all that it was the holy month and nobody should shed any blood. He must have been acutely aware that thousands of hot-tempered Bedouin were crowded into a small space.

Muhammad sat on his camel, on the hilltop, and preached a sermon to all who could hear it. Of course, it was not recorded, so we know what he said only by comparing the hadiths of it. Ibn Ishaq, an early biographer, reported that Muhammad did not shout the sermon himself. A certain amount of it was done in call-and-response method, so that the key phrases were shouted by the people themselves. A man with a loud voice stood next to him:

The man who used to repeat the Messenger of God’s words loudly to the people was when he was on ‘Arafah was Rabī‘ah b. Umayyah b. Khalaf. The Messenger of God would say to him. “Say: O people, the Messenger of God says, do you know what month this is?” and they would say, “The sacred month.” 

The sermon reminded them of basic Islamic principles and forbade blood feuds and money-lending at interest. This declaration specifically canceled (by name) money debts owed to his Uncle Abbas, and the blood-debt owed to his cousin (whose baby son was being fostered by a Bedouin tribe that got into a battle; the child was killed by cross-fire). It also discussed the rights of wives and property rights. He concluded by reminding the listeners to repeat his word to everyone who was not there, commenting wryly that maybe some who heard it second-hand would understand it better than the ones sitting here. Then Muhammad asked them, “O people, have I faithfully delivered my message?” They shouted back, “O God (Allahumma) yes!” He replied, pointing upward, “O God, bear witness!”

After prayers, the company rode out and spent the night near where, the next day, they would throw pebbles at the pillars representing Satan. After the dawn prayer, they carried out the stoning, then sacrificed the camels and shaved their heads. (At least in Sunni telling, a lock of the Prophet’s hair was saved by Khalid, one of the warriors from Mecca who was already a top general. A recent convert, he had commanded the forces against Muhammad at Uhud.) For the last stage, the pilgrims returned to Mecca and repeated the first steps: circumambulating the Ka’aba and going between the hills of Safa and Marwa.

So here, in the tenth year after the move to Medina (Hijrah), is when the Muslim Hajj took its final shape. The idea of pilgrimage to Mecca had been around for a long time. At first we outsiders may wonder why it took so long to formalize the requirements. But when they lived in Mecca, there was no “pilgrimage” to get there. And when they left Mecca, they were in a state of war until all but the last years. Muhammad could have done this the previous year, but instead he had sent Abu Bakr to lead a pilgrim group, and then he sent Ali to catch up with them and deliver in person the latest Quranic revelation. He may have felt it was too much to lead the pilgrimage on the heels of Mecca’s conquest, so he waited a little for things to settle down.

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Respite and Growth of the Islamic State

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Ruth

The Arabian tribes who were not already allied with or tributaries of Muhammad were impressed and maybe shocked at how large the army for Tabuk had been. Arabia had never been united. Its largest cities, like Saba, employed much smaller forces to dominate their local regions. Most towns and tribes had followed the strategy of using alliances to call up reserve forces at need. 30,000 men, many of them mounted, was a clear implied threat to Arabian towns that had not yet joined.

So for about a year, Muhammad stayed peacefully in Medina and received delegations from tribes and cities who now wanted some kind of alliance. Some of them converted to Islam, though the towns that were already majority Christian usually did not. Each one negotiated a settlement of some kind with Muhammad, providing for political peace.

An important settlement was with the town of Ta’if, where the Muslims had given up on a siege. The tribe ruling there wanted special provisions: submission, but without the usual prayer regimen, and 3 years’ grace period before the idol of al-Lat had to go down. Muhammad played hardball. The momentum was on his side, and Ta’if knew it; soon they would be politically isolated. Eventually they just surrendered the idol for destruction.

I suppose this is probably the period when a story told by A’isha fits in. One of these petty kings or chiefs must have suggested that his sister or daughter would make a fine addition to the Prophet’s household. When the bride arrived, A’isha was given the task of getting her ready. As she dressed the other girl, she gave her sage advice. Muhammad, she said, was really turned on by negativity. He liked it when a girl said no. If the girl wanted to give her new husband a really good time, she would not only say no, but she would say “I take refuge in Allah from you!” Well, this happened to be a divorce formula, but A’isha didn’t say this. The confused bride followed her sister wife’s friendly tips, but her new husband suddenly left the room and didn’t come back. The next morning, the girl learned that she was now divorced.

There are two other family notes for this period. Fatimah gave birth to her third child, a girl named Zaynab. But the little boy Ibrahim, child of the Coptic slave Maria, died. And still none of the other wives conceived. It’s a point of mystery to Muslim historians. In the end, they have to chalk it up to God’s will, though the Shi’ites find this easier. Their belief is that the prophetic office was passed only through Fatimah and her children. Sunnis believe that Muhammad had one other grandchild, the girl Umamah, daughter of oldest girl Zaynab, but Shi’ites do not believe Zaynab was genetically his child. In the Arabian system of foster children, adopted children, and step children, it’s easy to lose track. Muhammad had several step children from the two wives Umm Salamah and Umm Habibah, but they are certainly not counted. Shi’ites point out that Khadijah may have taken in some children who were later counted as Muhammad’s.

One of the delegations, from a Christian ruler in Yemen, prompted a special demonstration of the place of Ali’s and Fatimah’s family. The Christian ruler had a belief that a prophet of God must have descendants, but he had heard that Muhammad had none or few. When his delegation came, Muhammad met them with Ali, Fatimah (probably still pregnant), Hassan and Hussein. He spread his cloak out over their heads to show that this was his core family. Muhammad’s family was generally called the People of the House, or Ahl al-Bayt. But this subset, the four genetic relatives, became known as the People of the Cloak (Ahl al-Kisa). The demonstration of the cloak is an important sign for Shi’ites that the genetic kin of Muhammad were intended to be his successors, and not just politically, but in passing on a genetic prophetic ability.

As this period drew to a close, most of Arabia was under Muhammad’s rule in one way or another. In some cases, there was conversion and direct rule, while in others, there was an alliance with some kind of tribute. Some of the high inner desert, the Najd, had to be conquered militarily. While Muhammad stayed home, some of his generals went out on these expeditions. As Islam had matured, it had created a new Arab nationalism based on their shared language, the language of the poets and of the Quran. When Islam’s sovereignty had been extended to the three coasts, the only place to continue was north toward the Ghassanid and Lakhmid kingdoms, those Christian Arab buffer states for Rome and Persia.

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