The Rightly-Guided Caliphs (Rashidun)

Abu Bakr ﵁ became caliph on the afternoon of the day the Prophet ﷺ passed away, in Rabiʿ al-Awwal of the year 11 after the Hijrah. While Medina lay paralysed by grief, the Ansar gathered in the Saqifah of Banu Saʿidah to deliberate on the leadership. Abu Bakr ﵁ went to them with ʿUmar ﵁ and Abu ʿUbaydah ﵁, praised the Ansar and offered them the choice between his two companions, whereupon ʿUmar ﵁ himself seized the hand of Abu Bakr ﵁ and was the first to swear allegiance to him. The next morning the community confirmed that choice in the Masjid an-Nabawi, and in his first khutbah he spoke the words that would mark the office for all time: that he had been placed over them without being the best of them.

His caliphate lasted two years and three months, yet it decided whether the young community would survive at all. When tribes in Najd refused the zakat after the passing of the Prophet ﷺ, he held fast to the unity of prayer and alms, and so began the Ridda, the war against apostasy (11 AH). Khalid ibn al-Walid ﵁ defeated Musaylimah at al-Yamamah (11 AH / 632), a battle in which seventy reciters of the Quran fell. It was precisely that loss which moved ʿUmar ﵁ to press for the collection of the Quran, and Abu Bakr ﵁ charged Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁ with gathering the revelation into a single mushaf (12 AH / 633). In that same year he sent Khalid ﵁ to Iraq, and the year after he sent ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ to Syria, and with that the conquests beyond the peninsula began.

He died in Jumada al-Akhirah of 13 AH (634), sixty-three years old, the same age as the Prophet ﷺ, after naming ʿUmar ﵁ as his successor on his deathbed and having ʿUthman ﵁ read the testament out to the people. He was buried that night beside the Prophet ﷺ, with his head level with the shoulder of the Prophet ﷺ.

His legacy is the lesson that a community survives its first crisis through steadfastness rather than concession: the man who called himself the second of the two held the ummah together at the very moment it was most vulnerable.

ʿUmar ﵁ did not come to power through an assembly but through a designation. On the day of his death Abu Bakr ﵁ dictated his testament to ʿUthman ﵁ and named ʿUmar ﵁ as his successor; when it was read out to the people, no one objected, and the baiʿah was given in Medina that same day. In his first khutbah he described himself as tried by his community as they were tried by him, and he was the first to bear the title Amir al-Muʾminin, the Commander of the Faithful.

Under his rule the map of the world changed. In Rajab 15 AH (636) the Byzantine armies were defeated at Yarmuk, and in that same year Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁ led the Muslims at al-Qadisiyyah against the main Sassanid army, after which Madaʾin, the capital of the Persian kings, fell in 16 AH. In 17 AH (638) ʿUmar ﵁ travelled to Syria in person to receive Jerusalem from the patriarch Sophronius, and he set down the terms in the Umariyya pact. The Battle of Nahavand in 21 AH (642) broke Persian resistance once and for all, and for that reason it was named fath al-futuh, the opening of openings. In those same years Egypt fell to ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁.

His administration proved just as lasting. In 16 AH, on the advice of ʿAli ﵁, the Islamic calendar was instituted, counting from the Hijrah, and in 20 AH came the diwan, the register from which every Muslim received a stipend. Kufa and Basra were founded as garrison towns, the mosques of Mecca and Medina were enlarged, and the caliph himself walked through Medina at night in a patched woollen cloak to see how his subjects lived.

After his last Hajj, in Dhul-Hijjah 23 AH, he was stabbed during the dawn prayer by Abu Luʾluʾa, a Persian slave. In the days that remained to him he settled his succession with a council of six, and he asked ʿAʾishah ﵂ for permission to be buried beside his two companions. He died in 644, sixty-three years old, and was laid to rest beside the Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr ﵁.

His legacy is the state itself: the calendar, the register, the provincial towns, and the conviction that the most powerful man of his age must allow himself to be called to account by the least of his subjects.

ʿUthman ﵁ was chosen by the Shura of Six that ʿUmar ﵁ had appointed on his deathbed: ʿAli ﵁, ʿUthman ﵁, az-Zubayr ﵁, Talha ﵁, Saʿd ﵁ and ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁ were to name a caliph from among themselves within three days. ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ withdrew as a candidate, consulted the people of Medina for three days and nights, even in their own homes, and in Muharram 24 AH he gave the baiʿah to ʿUthman ﵁. By then he was already advanced in years, an early convert who had been married to two daughters of the Prophet ﷺ and was therefore known as Dhu'n-Nurayn, the possessor of the two lights.

His twelve years were the years of the greatest expansion and of the greatest prosperity. In 27 AH (647) Muʿawiya ﵁ sailed to Cyprus with the first Islamic fleet, while ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁ opened Ifriqiya at Sbeitla. In 34 AH (655) that same fleet defeated the Byzantine emperor at Dhat al-Sawari, the Battle of the Masts. His most lasting deed, however, was no conquest. Around 30 AH (650), when Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman ﵁ reported that soldiers on the frontiers were quarrelling over the text of the Quran, he had a single official mushaf copied, under the direction of Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁, from the sheets kept by Hafsah ﵂, and he sent copies to the great cities. Every Quran read today goes back to that text.

The last six years brought criticism. His preference for kinsmen from Banu Umayya in government and in the distribution of wealth fed discontent in Egypt, Kufa and Basra, and in 35 AH rebels marched on Medina. They surrounded his house and cut off his water, while al-Hasan ﵁ and al-Husayn ﵁, on the orders of their father ʿAli ﵁, guarded the door; ʿUthman ﵁ refused to draw the sword against Muslims. On 18 Dhul-Hijjah 35 AH (656) he was murdered in his house while reciting the Quran, and his wife Naʾila ﵂ lost her fingers as she tried to shield him.

His legacy lies in every hand that opens a mushaf, and in the bitter truth spoken by Hudhayfa ﵁ that with his death the first of the trials began.

ʿAli ﵁ received the baiʿah in the days after the murder of ʿUthman ﵁, at the end of Dhul-Hijjah 35 AH. The rebels who held Medina wanted to swear allegiance to him in his own house, but he refused: the baiʿah had to be given in the mosque, by the Muhajirun, the Ansar and the remaining senior Companions ﵃, and not under the weapons of those who had killed the third caliph. So the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ, the father of al-Hasan ﵁ and al-Husayn ﵁, became the fourth caliph of a community that for the first time was divided against itself.

His caliphate was, from beginning to end, a struggle for that unity. In the first weeks he replaced the governors whom ʿUthman ﵁ had appointed, which sharpened the tension with Muʿawiya ﵁ in Damascus. Talha ﵁, az-Zubayr ﵁ and the Mother of the Believers ʿAʾishah ﵂ set out for Basra and demanded retribution for the blood of ʿUthman ﵁; in Jumada al-Thani 36 AH (656) the armies met at the Battle of the Camel, where Talha ﵁ and az-Zubayr ﵁ fell and ʿAli ﵁ had ʿAʾishah ﵂ escorted back to Medina with honour. He moved the capital to Kufa (36 AH / 657) and in Safar 37 AH (657) faced the Syrian army of Muʿawiya ﵁ at Siffin on the Euphrates, until the Syrians raised pages of the Quran on their lances and called for arbitration. The arbitration at Adhruh brought no peace, and twelve thousand men who rejected it, the Khawarij, left his army. He defeated them at Nahrawan on 9 Safar 38 AH (658), but in that same year he lost Egypt to ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁.

On 17 Ramadan 40 AH the Khariji Ibn Muljam struck him with a poisoned sword during the dawn prayer in the mosque of Kufa. He died two days later, on 19 Ramadan (January 661), sixty-three years old, and was buried that night in Kufa at a place that was kept hidden. His son al-Hasan ﵁ held the caliphate for six more months and then ceded it to Muʿawiya ﵁.

His legacy is that of the caliph who never wished to buy the legitimacy of his office with the blood of Muslims, and whose sayings and letters are still read as a mirror for those who govern.