The Rightly Guided Ones 131The Battle of the Camel, as it came to be known, was Islam’s first
experience of civil war, or fitnah (there would be many more over the
next century and a half ). In some ways, this conflict was the inevitable
result, not just of the continuing antagonism between the factions of
Ali and Aisha, but of a steadily evolving debate within the community
over the role of the Caliph and the nature of the Ummah. Too often,
this debate has been portrayed as strictly polarized between those who
considered the Caliphate to be a purely secular position and those
who believed it should encompass both the temporal and religious
authority of the Prophet. But this simple dichotomy masks the diver-
sity of religio-political views that existed in seventh- and eighth-
century Arabia with regard to the nature and function of the Caliphate.
The astonishingly rapid expansion of Islam into what had to this
point been considered the impregnable domains of the Byzantine and
Sasanian empires was, for most Muslims, proof of God’s divine favor.
At the same time, the encounter with foreign peoples and govern-
ments was forcing these Muslims to reexamine the ideals that gov-
erned the political structure of the community. And while everyone
agreed that the Ummah could remain united only under the authority
of a single leader, there was still no consensus as to who that leader
should be and almost no agreement as to how that leader should lead.
On the one hand, there were those Muslims, like Aisha and her
faction, who, while recognizing the importance of building a commu-
nity dedicated to the commandments of God, were nonetheless com-
mitted to maintaining the secular character of the Caliphate. This
faction was referred to as the Shi‘atu Uthman, though one should
remember that Aisha in no way considered herself as advancing the
cause of Uthman, whom she considered to have blighted the
Caliphate established by her father and his protégé, Umar.
On the other hand, there was the Banu Umayya, who, in light of
Uthman’s lengthy reign as Caliph, had fallen under the impression
that the Caliphate was now the hereditary property of their clan. It
was for this reason that, upon Uthman’s death, his closest kin,
Mu‘awiyah, the amir of Damascus and the scion of Umayya, decided
to disregard the events taking place in Medina and instead begin plans
to take over the Caliphate himself. In some ways, the Shi‘atu
Mu‘awiyah, as this faction was called, represented the traditional ideal