A.H. 11
hath wrested. Leave not off to fight in the ways of the Lord; whosoever leaveth off, him verily shall the Lord abase. Obey me as I obey the Lord and his Prophet; wherein I disobey, obey me not. Now rise to your prayer, and God have mercy upon you!" The assembly stood up for prayer, and Abu Bekr, for the first time as Caliph, filled the place of Moḥammad.[1]
ʿAlī delays doing homage.The supreme power thus passed, without let or hindrance, into the hands of Abu Bekr. Saʿd ibn ʿObāda, chagrined at being superseded, held aloof. ʿAlī is also said to have refrained from doing homage till after the death of Fāṭima his wife. The ʿAlid party pretend that he looked to the Caliphate himself. But there is nothing in his previous life, or in the attitude of the Prophet towards him, that warrants any such surmise. He had indeed a grievance, but of quite a different kind. The day after her father's death, Fāṭima preferred a claim to his share in the crown lands of Kheibar. Abu Bekr disallowed the claim; holding that the revenues were destined, as Mohammad had himself desired, for purposes of State. Fāṭima took the denial so much to heart that she held altogether aloof from the Caliph during the short remainder of her life. And hence it was only after her death that ʿAlī recognised with any cordiality the title of Abu Bekr to the Caliphate.[2]Fāṭima mother of Al-Ḥasan and Al-Ḥosein. Fāṭima was the last surviving child of Moḥammad. His other three daughters, two of whom had in succession married ʿOthmān, were already some time dead. Khadīja had borne him two sons, but both died in infancy at Mecca. A third, the only other son the Prophet ever had, was born at Medīna by the slave-girl Mary, and died sixteen months old. No
- ↑ Presidency at public prayer was ever in Islām the sign of chief command, whether in civil or in military life.
- ↑ Tradition regarding ʿAlī is coloured and distorted by the canvass of a political faction which in the end assumed the divine right of succession as vested in ʿAlī and his descendants. There is not a shadow of proof that ʿAlī himself ever made any claim of the kind, or that any such claim was made by others for him during the Caliphates of Abu Bekr and ʿOmar. It was not till the election of a successor on the death of ʿOmar that he became a candidate, and even then his claim was grounded on being one of the chief Companions rather than on any supposed right in virtue of his relationship to Moḥammad by marriage with his daughter.
