116 No god but God
the first Caliphate because of the reluctance of the Arabs to entrust
“young and untried men with great responsibility.” Henri Lammens
concurs, citing the Arabs’ abhorrence of hereditary leadership to sug-
gest that Ali could not legitimately have succeeded Muhammad. As a
result, most scholars agree with Montgomery Watt that Abu Bakr was
“the obvious [and only] choice for successor.”
But these are unsatisfying arguments. First of all, Ali may have
been young—he was thirty years old at Muhammad’s death—but he
was by no means “untried.” As the first male convert and one of
Islam’s greatest warriors, Ali was widely recognized for both his spiri-
tual maturity and his military prowess. In Medina, Ali acted as
Muhammad’s personal secretary and was his standard-bearer in a
number of important battles. He was regularly placed in charge of the
Ummah in Muhammad’s absence and, as Moojan Momen observes,
was the only individual free to come and go as he pleased in the
Prophet’s house. And no one in the community would have forgotten
that only Ali was allowed to assist the Prophet in cleansing the Ka‘ba
for God.
The proof of Ali’s qualifications, despite his age, rests in the fact
that it was not only the Banu Hashim who pushed for his succession as
Caliph. The Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law was supported by the
majority of the Ansar from both the Aws and the Khazraj; the Abd
Shams and the Abd Manaf, two powerful and influential clans of
Quraysh; and a significant number of prominent Companions.
Secondly, as Wilferd Madelung remarks in his indispensable
book The Succession to Muhammad, hereditary succession may have
been repugnant to the Bedouin Arabs, but it was hardly uncommon
among the aristocratic Quraysh. In fact, the Quraysh regularly chose
members of their own families to succeed them in positions of author-
ity because, as mentioned, it was a common belief that noble qualities
were passed through the blood from one generation to the next. The
Quran itself repeatedly affirms the importance of blood relations
(2:177, 215), and endows Muhammad’s family—the ahl al-bayt—with
an eminent position in the Ummah, somewhat akin to that enjoyed by
the families of the other prophets.
This is a vital point to bear in mind. Regardless of their opinions
regarding Ali’s qualifications, no Muslim could argue with the fact