Did he take it for granted that the electors would
choose Ali? Surely that was so, yet two of the men he
named were brothers-in-law of Aisha: her cousin
Zubayr, as well as Talha, the man who had rashly
declared his intention to marry her. And a third was
Othman, the Umayyad aristocrat whom Abu Bakr had
proposed as the leader of the shura after Muhammad’s
death. These were not people likely to agree to Ali as
Caliph.
The moment Omar was buried—the third and ɹnal
grave to be dug under Aisha’s old sleeping platform—the
six electors gathered in a room oʃ the main part of the
mosque. Omar had placed them in a terrible bind. If so
much had not been at stake, it could almost be described
as a ɹendishly intricate game of strategy: six men
trapped in a locked room, as it were, unable to leave
until they cooperated even as cooperation was the last
thing they were ready for. Each of the six wanted the
leadership for himself, yet all six had to agree on which
of them would get it. None wanted to be seen as wanting
it too much, yet none was ready to concede.
By the third morning they had narrowed the choice to
the two sons-in-law of the Prophet, Ali and Othman. To
many outside that room, it seemed obvious which of the
two should be Caliph. On the one hand was Ali, now in
his mid-forties, the famed philosopher-warrior who had
been the first man to accept Islam and who had served as
deputy to both Muhammad and Omar. On the other was