A Short History on Caliphs
Claimants thus asserted the ambitious claim to supreme religious and temporal authority over the entire ''Community of the Faithful'' (''Umma''). The main division in Islam, between the majority sunni and minority sh-ı'a traditions, is rooted in a dispute over the proper succession to the early caliphate. The first four caliphs were all related to Muhammad and chosen by the ''Companions'' of the Prophet, and on their legitimacy there was such general agreement that they are known as the ''Ra¯shidan'' or ''Rightly-Guided Ones.'' Alternately known as the ''Orthodox Caliphs,'' they ruled in succession from 632 to 661 C.E.
Abu Bakr was the first (573-634, r.632-634), the direct successor to Muhammad by virtue of election by the ''Companions of the Prophet.'' He was succeeded by Umar (c.581-644, r.634-644), with majority though not unanimous support among the Companions. Umar was the first to claim the title ''Commander of the Faithful.'' He was assassinated by a Christian slave. Uthman (or Usman, c.574-656, r.644-656) was the third caliph, and the first from one of the aristocratic families of Mecca. During his reign most of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt were conquered by the Arabs. He was murdered by fellow Muslims, Egyptian converts but mutineers, a fact which severely troubled the intensely devout Umma. Uthman was succeeded by Ali (c.598-661, r.656-
661), made caliph by the mutineers who killed the third caliph. Ali was acceptable because he was cousin to Muhammad and son-in-law by virtue of his marriage to Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. Thus was set in play a deep and lasting division between those who accepted an elective caliphate (sunnis), and those who insisted that only members directly descended from the Prophet's family could rule Muslims (shı¯'a). Ali, too, was assassinated (661) by Muslim Arab rebels against his claimed authority. His successor was Mu'awiya, head of the Meccan clan of Umayya, who founded the Umayyad Caliphate (661-
750). He and his clan successors were accepted by sunnis as legitimate, but were rejected by the shı¯'a minority who viewed only familial descendants or relatives of Ali as rightful successors to the Prophet. Shı¯'a claimants thus became known as ''Alid'' candidates, for their insistence on sole descent through Ali. They cleaved to this view despite Ali's own son, Hassan, renouncing his familial claim and recognizing the legitimacy of Mu'awiya and the Umayyads. The Umayyads ruled most of the Islamic world from Damascus. Their conservative reign saw the consolidation of the early Arab conquests despite internal upheavals and civil wars with Kharijites and the shı¯'a. Some of these events are commemorated still in bloody annual rituals of self-flagellation in shı¯'a communities, 1,300 years after they took place. At first, Umayyad policies of discrimination against non-Arabs and half-Arabs worked. Over time, however, non-Arab Muslims called for a return to the original message of a single Umma, all equal before God irrespective of tribe or race. The Umayyads were overthrown and succeeded by a shı¯'a dynasty, the Abbasids, which asserted descent from Muhammad's uncle. The Abbasids moved the caliphate to Baghdad and reigned-more in the imperial Iranian than the tribal Arab style-over the ''Abbasid Caliphate'' (750-1258). In response to the majority faith of the populations they ruled, the Abbasids slowly became less overtly shı¯'a and leaned more toward the orthodox sunni Islam of their subjects. Drawing on pre-Islamic Iranian example, the Abbasids also established the first standing army in the Islamic world, thereby lessening their reliance on Arab tribal levies and opening the military to promotion of the numerous non-Arabs who had converted to Islam. The Abbasids were not recognized in Spain, however, where a branch of the Umayyads survived and ruled from 756 to 800, while a successor and even more localized ''caliphate'' governed al-Andalus from Co´rdoba to 1008. Nor after a time were the Abbasids accepted in Egypt (868) or in the Maghreb, where a rival shı¯'a dynasty rooted in a Berber resurrection, the Fatamids, claimed the caliphate based on direct (''alid'') descent from Fatima. The Berber Fatamids thereby partly reversed the Arab conquest of North Africa, in ethnic and religious if not in cultural or linguistic terms. The Fatamids ruled in Egypt, 909-1171, and sometimes controlled Syria, too. This allowed the desert Bedouin between them to raid the frontiers of the rival caliphates. Long before the Fatamids lost control in Egypt in 1171, to Sala¯h-al-Dı¯n and his Ayyubid successors, they had already lost most of the Maghreb to rival Berber dynasts: the Almohad Caliphate, based in Marrakesh. And they lost Jerusalem (1099) and most of Palestine and Syria to the Crusaders.
