134 No god but God
up together as brothers in the same household, and Ali rarely left
Muhammad’s side either as a child or as an adult. So it would have
been understandable if Ali believed his relationship with Muhammad
gave him both the religious and political qualities necessary to lead
God’s divine community on the path marked out by the Prophet. But
this does not mean Ali considered himself to be divinely appointed to
continue Muhammad’s prophetic function, as his followers would
eventually claim, nor does it mean he believed that the Caliphate
should necessarily be a religious position.
Considering the cunning political maneuvering taking place
around him, Ali’s attempts to reshape the Caliphate into a position of
religious piety, if not religious authority, seem doomed from the start.
Nevertheless, Ali was committed to uniting the Ummah under the
banner of the ahl al-bayt and in accordance with Muhammad’s egali-
tarian principles. Therefore, after his forces quickly overwhelmed
Aisha’s army at the Battle of the Camel—during which Talha and
Zubayr were killed and Aisha seriously wounded by an arrow—rather
than punish the rebels as Abu Bakr had done after the Riddah Wars,
Ali rebuked, then pardoned Aisha and her entourage, allowing them
to return to Mecca unmolested.
With Mecca and Medina finally subdued, Ali transferred his
Caliphate to Kufa in order to turn his attention to Mu‘awiyah, who, as
the son of Abu Sufyan and the cousin of Uthman, had appealed to the
old tribal sentiments of his Qurayshi kinsmen in order to raise an
army against Ali in retribution for Uthman’s murder. In 657 C.E., Ali
and his Kufan army met Mu‘awiyah and his Syrian army at a place
called Siffin. After a long and bloody battle, Ali’s forces were on the
verge of victory when, sensing defeat, Mu‘awiyah ordered his army to
raise copies of the Quran on their spears: a message signaling his
desire to surrender for arbitration.
Most of Ali’s army, and especially the Kharijite faction who had, to
this point, remained loyal to him, pleaded with Ali to ignore the ges-
ture and continue the battle until the rebels had been punished for
their insubordination. But, though Ali sensed treachery on Mu‘awiyah’s
part, he refused to ignore God’s command that “if [the enemy] desists,
then you must also cease hostilities” (2:193). Ordering his army to lay