The Rightly Guided Ones 135down their weapons, Ali accepted Mu‘awiyah’s surrender and called
for a Hakam to settle the dispute between them.
This was a fatal decision. The arbitration that followed the Battle
of Siffin declared Uthman’s murder to have been unjust and worthy of
retribution: a decision that, at least on the surface, seemed to justify
Mu‘awiyah’s rebellion. However, far more ominous was the fact that
the Kharijites considered Ali’s decision to submit to arbitration rather
than mete out God’s justice upon the rebels to be a grave sin worthy of
expulsion from the holy community. Crying “No judgment but
God’s,” the Kharijites angrily abandoned Ali on the battlefield before
the arbitration had even begun.
Ali barely had time to absorb the impact of the arbitration. After
Siffin, he was reluctantly forced to send his army to deal with the
Kharijites who had seceded from his party. No sooner had he subdued
the Kharijites (in what was less a battle than a massacre) than he had to
turn his attention back toward Mu‘awiyah, who during the lengthy
arbitration process had managed to reassemble his forces, capture
Egypt, and, in 660 C.E., proclaim himself Caliph in Jerusalem. With
his armies scattered and his supporters divided along ideological lines,
Ali mustered what forces he had left and, the following year, prepared
a final campaign against Mu‘awiyah and the Syrian rebels.
The morning before the campaign was to begin, Ali entered the
mosque in Kufa to pray. There he was met by Abd al-Rahman ibn ’Amr
ibn Muljam, a Kharijite, who pushed his way through the crowded
mosque, shouting “Judgment belongs to God, Ali, not to you.”
Drawing a poisoned sword, Ibn Muljam struck Ali on the head. It
was a superficial wound, but the poison did its work. Two days later,
Ali died, and with him the dream of the Banu Hashim to unite the
holy community of God under the single banner of the Prophet’s
family.
In a sermon delivered a few years before his assassination, Ali
remarked that “a virtuous man is recognized by the good that is said
about him and the praises which God has destined him to receive
from others.” These were prescient words, for Ali may have died, but
he was not forgotten. For millions of Shi‘ah throughout the world, Ali