Caliph Ali, fabulous he, Ali ibn Abi Talib!
Strength of ten regular men, take it from me.
Intro
I love the smell of flame wars in the morning.
Merry January, everybody, now gather round as I tell you about the rise of Islam.
Long, long ago in the year 632 Arabia was unified and everyone was into this hip new
religion.
And then their prophet died.
All right, no need for alarm, just follow standard Salic protocol, look to his oldest
son… none of them made it to adulthood.
“Right,” said the Medinans, “We’ll just do our own thing”
One of Muhammad’s close companions and also father-in-law Abu
One of Muhammad’s close companions and also father-in-law Abu (Bakr)
heard about this and
stormed into Medina like “Oh no you don’t, I didn’t spend eight years fighting just
so you can break up Arabia.
Un roi, une loi, une foi! Hey that has a nice ring to it"
“I vote Abu Bakr gets to be in charge of Arabia!”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean -” “All in favor?”
“Aye”
And so Abu Bakr became in charge of Arabia.
Except by trying to do this to the Muslim world, he ended up doing this.
You see Ali handsome is he would have loved to be at this meeting, since he stood a good
chance of being Muhammad’s successor.
He wasn’t his son, but he was his cousin and his son-in-law (don’t think about it),
plus he was the first Muslim man and had fought in just about every battle for Islam, not
to mention Muhammad made a big speech before he died telling everyone how they should consider
Ali their Mawla just like they did Muhammad himself.
The meaning of Mawla is… debated, but at the very least he was telling everyone Ali
is a cool dude, if not proclaiming him his successor outright.
Unfortunately, while Abu Bakr was handling the Medina problem, which to be fair had to
be dealt with promptly, Ali was busy preparing his prophet’s body for a funeral, and by
the time he was done it was a little too late to challenge the election.
Abu Bakr, understandably worried about leaving a potential rival to his own devices, came
to visit Ali, and Ali said “Hey, man, it’s totally cool.
You did what you had to do, the last thing I would want is to create a schism within
the Muslim faith.”
Granted there were various amounts of coercion involved depending on the source, but the
incredible thing about the situation is that Abu Bakr let him go and Ali didn’t try anything
devious to take power, he just kept compiling the Quran, which, like...
Who does that?
Abu Bakr had a pretty quick reign, declared there was only one correct version of Islam
and apostasy was equivalent to treason in order to prevent tribes from leaving the caliphate
(which would never come back to bite the Middle East) and then declared his successor would
be… some guy named Umar.
And Ali said “That’s fine, I’m not gonna cause any strife, best of luck to you”.
He ended up being a close advisor of Umar, and once he was close enough to the caliph…
he continued doing his job without duplicity.
And things continued going smoothly, Umar conquered nearly the entire Sassanid Empire
by expanding the concept of jihad and making it okay to war against the non-Muslim world,
which would never come back to bite the Middle East!
But after doing all that conquering he was surprisingly tolerant, it’s almost like
he was using religious doctrine to justify political and military interests.
But ah!
What’s this?
Umar has been murdered!
By a random Sassanid slave, no conspiracy here.
Umar doesn’t have a successor picked out but he did create a committee to handle it
before he died.
It comes down to two people: A wealthy merchant named Uthman, who had served under Muhammad
but wasn’t like his son-in-law or best friend or anything, and Ali.
The committee tells Ali “Look, the caliphate’s yours, just follow the Quran, Muhammad’s
example, and keep in line with the precedent of all two caliphs”.
And Ali looks up and says “I will follow the ways of the Quran and the prophet, but
I am my own man, compelled by my own sense of dignity to -”
“Okay, Uthman, it’s all yours”.
“That’s it!
I’m going to wait patiently until you all feel ready to recognize me!”
Well, Uthman’s reign started out strong - lots of economic advancement, lots of construction,
a new navy to pick on the Byzantines with - but then nepotism started to catch up with
him.
A delegation of Egyptians come knocking at his door saying they want a new governor,
Uthman says he’ll deal with it, the Egyptians go home, until they intercept a messenger
carrying a letter telling the governor to kill them all, then they storm back and Uthman
tells them “Whoah, that is not mine!”
And it wasn’t.
It was written by… his cousin who was allied with the governor!
But then someone shoots one of the delegation leaders, Uthman won’t resign, and all Jahannam
broke loose.
Uthman’s beaten to death, the crowd wants a new caliph and Ali patient is he rises to
the occasion.
Just in time to fight a civil war.
Ali sets out to get back at Uthman’s killers, but he wasn’t sure exactly who they were
and didn’t want to go about killing people all willy-nilly.
One of Muhammad’s wives thought “That’s not good enough!” and raised an army to
take matters into her own hands.
Seeing someone else’s army in his own territory,, Ali brings his own army to meet with her and
when their forces converge they have a nice chat and decide it’s for the best not to
go to war.
But it’s not all peaceful negotiations and anitclimaxes!
The Egyptian delegation had infiltrated both their armies and started setting fire to each
other’s camps until a battle broke out.
Muhammad’s wife was captured, but they talked it out and she was given a pension to live
in Medina and not cause any trouble.
But meanwhile there’s another threat to the Caliphate to the West!
Ali wanted to nab Uthman’s killers, but he also realized they were mad for a reason
so he tried to fire all the governors who were part of Uthman’s family, the Umayyads.
Except the Umayyads didn’t feel like getting fired so they rallied behind the Syrian governor
Muawiyah, who had a few tricks up his sleeve, namely having his army slowly encroach upon
Ali’s with the Quran attached to their spears so they wouldn’t get attacked.
So reclaiming the West turned out to be a bust, but meanwhile there’s another threat
to the Caliphate in Nahrawan!
A group of soldiers had defected from Ali’s army after he tried to negotiate with Muawiyah,
so they made their own version of Islam where sinners were non-believers and a la Abu Bakr,
apostasy is treason and a la Umar they declared war against the non-true-Muslim world, i.e.
the world.
It was basically an early form of [Insert relevant terrorist group here], right down
to the suicide attacks.
Ali retook the town, but the rebels had the last laugh.
They wanted to take out Ali and Muawiyah at the same time, but while Muawiyah made it
out alive, Ali misfortunately did not.
And thus his sons were left to deal with radical terrorists on top of a civil war, embroiled
in a conflict that would forever change the Middle East, a conflict that would tear asunder
the Muslim faith, a conflict that I ain’t got time for, Google it.
Well that took longer than expected but Boy wasn’t that fun I don’t know about you
but I had a great time ha ha ha ha ha don’t make me regret this.
Oh, and if you could share this video whenever you hear someone arguing about this stuff,
that’d be great, I’m hoping to retire soon.
Have a nice year!