Read After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam for Free Online Page A

and in many ways stronger still in influence and respect than when he was alive.
    Muhammad seemed to recognize this the moment he heard those first words of unwavering commitment from his young cousin. “He put his arm around my neck,” Ali remembered, “and said ‘This is my brother, my trustee, and my successor among you, so listen to him and obey.’ And then everyone got up and began joking, saying to my father, ‘He has ordered you to listen to your son and obey him.’ ”
    It seems clear enough when told this way: not only the designation of Ali as Muhammad’s successor but also the first sign of what Islam would mean—the revolutionary upending of the traditional authority of father over son and by implication of the whole of the old established order. No one tribe would lord it over another any longer. No one clan would claim dominance within a tribe, and no one family within a clan. All would be equal in the eyes of the one God, all honored members of the new community of Islam.
    Yet from Ali’s own account, it was not taken seriously. In fact it is not even clear that it was intended seriously. Ali was still a mere stripling, barely strong enough to wield any sword, let alone Dhu’l Fikar, while Muhammad was a man without his own means, an orphan who had been raised in his uncle’s household and whose only claim to wealth was through his wife, Khadija. It made little sense for this seemingly ordinary man, whom his kinsmen had known all their lives, to suddenly declare himself the Messenger of God. The declaration itself must have seemed absurd to many of those who heard it, let alone the idea of appointing asuccessor. There was, after all, nothing to succeed to. At that moment in time, Islam had only three believers, Muhammad, Khadija, and Ali. How could any rational person imagine that it would develop into a great new faith, into a united Arabia and an empire in the making? Muhammad was a man who appeared to have nothing worth bequeathing.
    That was to change over the next two decades. As the equalizing message of Islam spread, as Muhammad’s authority grew, as tribe after tribe and town after town officially accepted the faith and paid tribute in the form of taxes, the new ummah, the community of Islam, grew not only powerful but wealthy. By the time Muhammad lay dying, nearly the whole of the Arabian Peninsula had allied itself with Islam and its unitary Arab identity, and over those years, time and again, Muhammad had made it clear how close he held Ali, the one man who had had faith in him when all others scoffed.
    “I am from Ali and Ali is from me; he is the guardian of every believer after me,” he said. Ali was to him “as Aaron was to Moses,” he declared. “None but a believer loves Ali, and none but an apostate hates him.” And most famously, especially for the mystical Sufis, for whom Ali would become the patron saint of knowledge and insight: “I am the City of Knowledge and Ali is its gateway.”
    Shia scholars still relate these sayings obsessively as proof of Muhammad’s intention that Ali succeed him, yet not one of these later declarations has the absolute clarity of that word “successor.” Not one of them clearly said, “This is the man whom I designate to lead you after I die.” Always implied, it was never quite stated, so that what seemed incontrovertible proof to some, remained highly ambiguous to others.
    One thing was not ambiguous, however. Nobody, Sunni or Shia, denies the extraordinary closeness between Muhammad and Ali. In fact the two men were so close that at the most dangerous point in the Prophet’s life, Ali served as Muhammad’s double.
    That had been when the Meccans had plotted to kill Muhammad on the eve of his flight to Medina. While the would-be assassins lay in wait outside his house for him to emerge at dawn—even in their murderous intent, they obeyed the traditional Arabian injunction barring any attack on a man within the confines of his own