174 No god but God
Yet few as they may have been, the Shi‘atu Ali were still an influ-
ential faction, particularly among the Iranians of the former Sasanian
Empire, who saw in the ahl al-bayt an alternative to the ethnic Arab
domination of the Umayyads, as well as among the populations of
Mecca and Medina, where the memory of the Prophet was still fresh
in the minds of those who, regardless of their political affiliation,
could not help recognizing the grooves and shadows of Muhammad’s
features etched into the faces of his grandsons. So when Hasan offered
to come to terms with Mu‘awiyah, proposing what amounted to a
temporary cease-fire, Mu‘awiyah was quick to accept.
Avoiding what would have been yet another civil war between the
factions of the Banu Hashim and those of the Banu Umayya, the two
men signed a treaty that handed the mantle of leadership to
Mu‘awiyah with the understanding that after his death the Caliphate
would, at the very least, be decided by the consensus of the Muslim
community, if not explicitly returned to Muhammad’s family. The
agreement benefited both men. It gave Hasan the opportunity to
regroup the Shi‘atu Ali without fear of annihilation at the hands of the
Syrian army, and it offered Mu‘awiyah the legitimacy he had been
seeking since he first began pursuing the Caliphate.
With the capital of the Muslim community now firmly established
in Damascus, Mu‘awiyah launched a series of reforms meant to
strengthen and centralize his authority as Caliph. He used the over-
whelming might of his standing Syrian army to unite the troops scat-
tered in garrison towns throughout the Muslim lands. He then forcibly
resettled in distant villages those nomadic tribesmen who had never
before considered themselves to be a part of the Ummah, thereby
extending the grasp of his empire. He maintained his link to even the
most remote Muslim provinces by reassigning his kinsmen—many of
whom had been removed from their posts by Ali—as amirs, though he
kept a tight leash on them to avoid the corruption and disorder that
was so prevalent during his cousin Uthman’s rule. Mu‘awiyah’s amirs
secured their positions by diligently collecting taxes to send to Da-
mascus, which the Caliph used to build a magnificent capital the likes
of which had never before been imagined by any Arab tribe.
Although Mu‘awiyah adopted Uthman’s religiously oriented title,
Khalifat Allah, and poured money into the institutions of the religious