Ali
Ali ibn Abi Talib was born around 600 CE, by tradition possibly inside the Ka'ba in Mecca, the holiest site of Islam. He was the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, raised in Muhammad's household from about the age of five. He became the fourth Rashidun caliph and, for Shia Muslims, the first Imam. Aged about eleven, he was among the first to accept Muhammad's teachings.
Few figures in early Islam are claimed by so many and read so differently. Sunni Muslims honor him as the last of the rightly guided caliphs. Shia Muslims venerate him as the rightful religious and political heir to Muhammad. Alawites go further and call him a manifestation of God. The same words spoken about him at a place called Ghadir Khumm are read by some as a transfer of authority and by others as a statement of friendship.
How did a man praised for honesty and courage end up assassinated at morning prayer in 661? Why is so much written about him, yet so much of it disputed? What follows examines the man behind the reverence, the wars that defined his rule, the way history itself struggles to pin him down, and the many faiths that still gather around his name.
When an assassination plot threatened Muhammad in 622, Ali stayed behind in Mecca as a decoy while Muhammad escaped to Yathrib, now called Medina. Tradition links this risk to a Quranic verse: "But there is also a kind of man who gives his life away to please God." Ali later left Mecca only after returning goods that had been entrusted to Muhammad there.
In Medina, Muhammad paired Muslims in fraternity pacts and chose Ali as his brother. Around 623 to 625, Muhammad gave his daughter Fatima to Ali in marriage. Ali was about twenty-two. Muhammad had earlier turned down proposals for Fatima from companions including Abu Bakr and Umar.
A Christian envoy from Najran in South Arabia arrived in Medina around 632 to negotiate peace and to debate the nature of Jesus. The episode is tied to verse 3:61 of the Quran, which calls for a mubahala, a mutual invoking of a curse. The delegation withdrew from the challenge, but Muhammad still appeared for it, bringing Ali, Fatima, and their two sons, Hasan and Husayn. Including these four as his witnesses likely raised their religious rank within the community.
Many of Muhammad's recorded sayings praise Ali. According to al-Tabari, Muhammad heard a divine voice at Uhud declaring there was no sword but Zulfiqar, Ali's sword, and no chivalrous youth but Ali.
On the return from the Hajj in 632, Muhammad halted a vast caravan of pilgrims at Ghadir Khumm and spoke after the congregational prayer. He stressed the importance of the Quran and his ahl al-bayt, his family. Taking Ali by the hand, he declared, "He whose mawla I am, Ali is his mawla." The canonical Sunni source Musnad Ibn Hanbal adds that he repeated this three or four more times, and that Umar congratulated Ali, saying he had become the mawla of every faithful man and woman.
The authenticity of the event is rarely contested. It ranks among the most extensively acknowledged reports in classical Islamic sources. The fight is over one word. Mawla is polysemous, and its reading splits along sectarian lines.
Shia sources interpret mawla as leader, master, and patron, treating the moment as Ali's investiture with Muhammad's religious and political authority. Sunni sources read it as love and support, or as a request that Ali execute Muhammad's will. Shias point to the announcement's extraordinary nature and cite Quranic evidence; Sunnis cast it as a simple response to earlier complaints about Ali. During his own caliphate, Ali asked Muslims to testify about what they had seen at Ghadir Khumm, presumably to defend his legitimacy.
Uthman was assassinated by Egyptian rebels in June 656, and Ali was elected caliph in Medina after some hesitation. His election was irregular and without a council, and the rebels' support left him exposed to accusations of complicity in the killing. He had limited backing among the powerful Quraysh, some of whom wanted the caliphate for themselves.
Aisha, Muhammad's widow, campaigned against Ali immediately, joined by Talha and Zubayr, who broke their oaths to him. They captured Basra in Iraq, and Ali raised an army from nearby Kufa. The two forces, each numbering perhaps ten thousand, met in December 656. Aisha rode an armored palanquin atop a red camel, giving the Battle of the Camel its name. Talha was killed by Marwan, and Zubayr deserted and was pursued and killed. Ali won, escorted Aisha back to Hejaz, and made Kufa his capital.
Mu'awiya, the governor of Syria whom Ali had removed, refused to step down and demanded vengeance for Uthman. In the summer of 657 the armies camped at Siffin, perhaps 100,000 Iraqis against 130,000 Syrians. Among Ali's dead was Ammar ibn Yasir. When Syrians raised pages of the Quran on their lances, Ali's own troops forced him to accept arbitration against his judgment. The agreement was signed on the 2nd of August 657.
Some of Ali's men rejected the arbitration and gathered at al-Nahrawan, becoming the Kharijites under the slogan, "No judgment but that of God." When they began executing civilians, Ali crushed them at the Battle of Nahrawan, with his army of about 14,000 defeating roughly 4,000. Afterward he could not raise enough support for a second Syria campaign, and he lost Egypt to Mu'awiya in 658.
Ali's rule was defined by strict justice. He dismissed nearly all of Uthman's governors as corrupt and distributed treasury funds equally among Muslims, following the practice of Muhammad. He withheld public funds even from his own relatives, while his enemy Mu'awiya freely handed out gifts. He instructed officials to collect taxes voluntarily, without harassment, and to prioritize the poor. A letter attributed to him tells a governor to value land development over taxation.
In war he forbade looting and paid his soldiers from tax revenues. He pardoned enemies in victory, barred the killing of the wounded and those who fled, and prevented the enslavement of women even when some protested. Before Siffin, holding the upper hand, he let his enemies reach drinking water rather than deny it. Both his ban on looting and his pardons were later enshrined in Islamic law.
Such idealism antagonized many. Critics called him politically naive and excessively rigorous; admirers called it righteousness and a refusal of expediency. His supporters cite verse 68:9 of the Quran, "They wish that thou might compromise and that they might compromise."
Historical portraits of Ali clash. Some Sunni sources describe him as bald, heavy-built, short-legged, with a long white beard and eye inflammation, and as rough and unsociable. Shia sources describe him as generous, gentle, and cheerful. His companion Sa'sa'a ibn Suhan said Ali was among them as one of them, of gentle disposition and intense humility, yet inspiring the awe a bound prisoner feels before one holding a sword over his head.
Ali was assassinated during morning prayer on the 28th of January 661 at the Great Mosque of Kufa, struck on the head by the Kharijite Ibn Muljam with a poison-coated sword. He died about two days later, aged sixty-two or sixty-three. Fearing his body would be exhumed and profaned, his burial place was kept secret. The shrine in Najaf, identified during the reign of Harun al-Rashid, grew into a major destination for Shia pilgrimage.
The Arabic word shi'a is short for "shi'a of Ali." His name enters the daily call to prayer, and Shia belief holds that he was the divinely designated successor to Muhammad, endowed with intercession on the Judgment Day and protected from sin. Some early Shias even attributed divinity to him before such views were rooted out. In Sunni Islam he stands below his three predecessors and above those who fought him, his high reverence credited largely to the traditionist Ibn Hanbal. Nearly all Sufi orders trace their lineage to Muhammad through Ali, the Naqshbandis being the exception, reaching Muhammad through Abu Bakr.
Beyond the mainstream the readings grow stranger. Ibadis hold that Ali forfeited the imamate when he accepted arbitration at Siffin, and they honor his Kharijite opponents instead. Alawites deify him as the last and supreme manifestation of God, with a testimony of faith translating as "there is no God but Ali." The Druze count him a minor prophet, like Plato and Socrates, while in Yarsanism he is an incarnation of God, superior even to Muhammad.
His legacy survives chiefly in words. Nahj al-balagha, the eleventh-century collection of sermons, letters, and sayings compiled by Sharif al-Radi, is celebrated as some of the most eloquent Arabic ever written, and its letter to al-Ashtar still serves as a model for Islamic governance.