Birth of the Khalifate
11-24 AH
632-644 CE
D
EVOTED MUSLIMS SEE the whole of Mohammed's life as a religious
metaphor illuminating the meaning of existence, but the religious
event does not end with the Prophet's death. It continues through the
terms of his first four successors, remembered as the Rashidun, "the rightly
guided ones": Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali. The entire drama, from
the revelation in the cave through the Hijra to the death of the Prophet's
fourth successor almost forty years later, forms the core religious allegory
oflslam, analogous to the last supper, the crucifixion, and the resurrection
ofJesus Christ in Christianity.
Islam emerged well within literate times. People were writing journals,
diaries, letters, bureaucratic documents, and other works. For this period a
rich documentary record exists. It seems, then, as if the origins of Islam
should lie squarely within the realm of journalism rather than legend. And
yet, what we know about the life and times of these first four successors de-
rives largely from a history written decades later by the writer Ibn Ishaq,
who died in 151 AH (768 CE).
Ibn Ishaq came from a long line of traditionists, the archivists of oral
culture: men and women whose job it was to gather, remember, and retell
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