Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib

One of the first Muslims; the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, and the fourth of the Rightly Guided Caliphs (656-661). He is one of the Ten Promised Paradise; the Shia regard him as the first imam of the community after the Prophet. His full name is Abu'l-Hasan Ali b. Abi Talib al-Qurashi al-Hashimi. Besides the epithet Abu Turab, given him by the Prophet, he is known as al-Murtada and Asad Allah al-Ghalib; because he never worshipped idols as a child, he came to be mentioned with the prayer "karram Allahu wajhah".

He is reported to have been born in Mecca about twenty-two years before the Hijra (600 CE). His father was the Prophet's uncle Abu Talib, his mother Fatima bint Asad b. Hashim; he was Abu Talib's youngest son. When famine struck Mecca the Prophet took him into his care to ease his uncle's burden, and Ali grew up at his side from the age of five until the Hijra. He was among the first to believe in the Prophet; his age at the time is reported as nine, ten or eleven.

When the Prophet emigrated to Medina he left Ali in Mecca to delay the polytheists who were coming to kill him and to conceal his absence; Ali spent the night in the Prophet's bed. Then, having returned the deposits left with him to their owners, he left Mecca with the Prophet's daughter Fatima, his own mother Fatima and those with them, and caught up with the Prophet at Quba. In the brotherhood (mu'akhat) established in the fifth month after the Hijra the Prophet chose him as his own brother, and in the last month of the second year of the Hijra married him to his daughter Fatima. From this marriage were born Hasan, Husayn and the stillborn Muhsin, and Zaynab and Umm Kulthum. He took no other wife during Fatima's lifetime; after her death he married several times and had many children.

He took part in almost all the campaigns and expeditions, above all Badr, Uhud, the Trench and Khaybar, bore the Prophet's standard in them, and performed feats of valour that the sources recount in a hagiographic style. Though wounded at Uhud and Hunayn he protected the Prophet with all his strength; it is told that at Khaybar he used a heavy iron door as a shield and had a great share in the victory. He led the expedition against the Banu Sa'd at Fadak (6/628) and the campaign to Yemen (10/632); during the Tabuk campaign he remained in Medina as the Prophet's deputy. He served the Prophet as scribe and as a scribe of revelation, and it was he who wrote the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. In year 9 of the Hijra (631) he was charged with reciting the opening verses of Surat al-Tawba at the pilgrimage. When the Prophet died, the washing of his body and the related duties were performed, by his will, by Ali together with al-Abbas, his sons al-Fadl and Qutham, and Usama b. Zayd.

When Abu Bakr was chosen caliph, Ali did not pledge allegiance to him until Fatima's death six months later; assessments of this appear in the Multiple Views section. Under the first three caliphs he held no administrative office and took no part in the wars, preferring to stay in Medina and devote himself to the religious sciences — except that during Umar's journey to Palestine and Syria he remained in Medina as military governor. Because of his deep knowledge of the Qur'an and hadith, Abu Bakr and Umar consulted him especially on legal questions; the proposal to take the Hijra as the starting point of Islamic chronology also came from him. He was a member of the council to which Umar entrusted the choice of caliph. Under Uthman he criticised some of his measures but did not support the movements launched against him; he warned and counselled the rebels to desist, and when the caliph's house was besieged he posted his sons Hasan and Husayn at its door as guards. Despite all these precautions Uthman was martyred (35/656).

The Companions then gathered in the mosque to choose a new caliph; Ali first turned the offer made to him towards Talha and al-Zubayr, and accepted the pledge only when pressed. His caliphate fell in a period when the question of punishing Uthman's killers divided the community: there was no single identifiable killer and the rebels controlled the city; the caliph preferred to wait until things calmed. Mu'awiya, governor of Syria, refused allegiance and claimed Uthman's blood; A'isha, Talha and al-Zubayr likewise did not recognise him as caliph. The source states that the real reasons for these positions cannot be explained with the information available. In the battle known as the Battle of the Camel (36/656), fought before Basra against the army led by A'isha, many Muslims died, Talha and al-Zubayr among them; deeply grieved at the dead, the caliph saw to their funeral rites himself and sent A'isha back to Medina escorted by a party of women. Then the two sides met Mu'awiya at Siffin (37/657); the fighting stopped with the proposal to appeal to the arbitration of the Book of God. Ali appointed Abu Musa al-Ash'ari and Mu'awiya appointed Amr b. al-As as arbiters. Those who opposed recourse to arbitration broke away from him and came to be called the Kharijites, and they were fought at Nahrawan (38/658). The arbitration led the question of the caliphate into deadlock, and a dual authority arose, with part of the people recognising Ali as caliph and part Mu'awiya.

While preparing a new campaign against Mu'awiya he was wounded in Kufa at the dawn prayer with a poisoned dagger by the Kharijite Abd al-Rahman b. Muljam; he died of the wound two days later, on 19 or 21 Ramadan 40 (26 or 28 January 661), and was buried at Kufa (present-day Najaf).

Among the Companions he was a recognised authority in Qur'an, hadith and above all law. He was one of the few Companions who had memorised the whole Qur'an in the Prophet's lifetime; his student Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami said he had never seen anyone recite the Qur'an more beautifully. He served as judge in Yemen: when he hesitated as the Prophet was sending him to that office, the Prophet placed his hand on his chest and said God would inspire him with what is right. Umar said, "The soundest judge among us was Ali"; the first three caliphs never failed to seek his opinion on important matters. He had a scroll (sahifa), written in the Prophet's time and carried in the sheath of his sword, containing hadiths on such matters as the rules of blood-money and the boundaries of the Sanctuary of Medina; he insisted that apart from the Qur'an and this scroll he had received no special instruction from the Prophet. The hadiths he narrated number 586 in all. He is known for his eloquence and oratory, and his words of wisdom have been handed down in the sources.

Sunni and Shi'i sources agree almost unanimously that he held an exceptional rank in knowledge, piety, sincerity, self-sacrifice, compassion and courage, and that he was among those who best knew the Qur'an and the Sunna. The reports on his virtues are, as Ahmad b. Hanbal said, far more numerous than those on any other Companion, and the hadith scholars assessed their soundness one by one. Among those accepted as sound are: that during the siege of Khaybar, after the Prophet announced that the standard would go to a man who loved God and His Messenger, it was given to him; that when the Prophet left Ali as his deputy in Medina on setting out for Tabuk he said, "You are to me as Aaron was to Moses, except that there will be no prophet after me"; and the hadith that none but believers would love him. He is remembered as a believer so sensitive and God-fearing that after events such as the Camel, Siffin and Nahrawan he wept and prayed for the faith and guidance of his opponents.

His Circle of Influence — Many narrated from him: his sons Hasan, Husayn and Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya; Companions such as Abdullah b. Mas'ud, Abdullah b. Abbas, Abdullah b. Umar, Abu Hurayra, al-Bara' b. Azib and Abu Sa'id al-Khudri; and Successors such as Abu'l-Aswad al-Du'ali, al-Sha'bi, Abd al-Rahman b. Abi Layla and Zirr b. Hubaysh. Among those who learned Qur'anic recitation from him by direct presentation were Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, Abu'l-Aswad al-Du'ali and Abd al-Rahman b. Abi Layla. His reliable exegetical reports come by three chains; one of them is al-Zuhri's transmission through Ali b. Zayn al-Abidin from his father Husayn and from his father Ali. As an indispensable figure for the Sufi world, he holds a special meaning and importance in Islamic Sufi literature, and especially in Turkish culture. Since the earliest centuries the wish to collect the reports on his virtues has led many Sunni and Shi'i authors to write works, among them al-Nasa'i's Kitab al-Khasa'is and Ahmad b. Hanbal's Fada'il al-sahaba.

His Works — No work of his own is mentioned in reliable sources. The hadith scroll he wrote in the Prophet's time was analysed and published in Cairo by Rif'at Fawzi Abd al-Muttalib under the title Sahifat Ali b. Abi Talib (1406/1986). Some sermons and letters attributed to him were compiled by al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 406/1015) as Nahj al-balagha; there are also a diwan attributed to him and books said to be compiled from his words of wisdom (the attribution of these texts is discussed in the Multiple Views section). His legal opinions are collected in Muhammad Rawwas Qal'aji's Mawsu'at fiqh Ali b. Abi Talib (Damascus 1403/1983).

His Tomb and Complex — His grave is at Najaf, 10 km west of Kufa. Because it is the place of his martyrdom, the town is also called Mashhad; according to the widespread tradition it gained importance because he was buried there in secret, and began to grow into a settlement about a century and a half after the event. Dawud b. Ali of the Abbasid house (d. 133/750) had a cenotaph placed over the grave; the official recognition and proclamation of the grave's location and the state's restoration of the shrine fall in the reign of Harun al-Rashid (786-809). Abdullah b. Hamdan (d. 317/929), founder of the Hamdanids, built over the grave a shrine furnished with precious carpets and curtains; the Buyid ruler Adud al-Dawla (978-983) built a mausoleum there for himself and his sons. The shrine was burned in 443 (1051) but soon repaired; in 479 (1087) the Seljuk sultan Malikshah and his vizier Nizam al-Mulk visited the grave. Ibn Battuta describes the shrine and the town, noting that he entered Najaf by a gate called Bab al-Hadra. After the Ottomans took Iraq, Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent came to Najaf in 941 (1534-35) and gave the orders needed for the town's development. Najaf is counted the greatest of the Atabat; around the shrine a vast cemetery known as Wadi al-Salam has formed.