rule, but that did not mean they wanted Ali to take his
place. Talha and Zubayr were ambitious men; each
wanted the caliphate for himself, and that was what
united them.
So what if they had publicly sworn allegiance to Ali
just a few weeks before ɻeeing to Mecca? They now
swore that they had been forced into it by the rebels.
They had done it at swordpoint, they claimed. Had
pledged allegiance “with a withered hand”—no ɹrm
grasp of palm against palm and forearm against
forearm, but a halfhearted clasp that belied the words of
the oath even as it was proclaimed. It had been clear for
all to see. “No good will come of this,” people had
muttered, and when it was done, Talha had been heard
to say: “All we’ll get from this is a dog poking its nose in
the ground, sniffing dung.”
But neither Talha nor Zubayr had the backing to
claim the caliphate on his own. Both needed the support
of their sister-in-law, especially now that she had the
whole of Mecca behind her. With her help, they aimed to
force Ali to cede the caliphate. Which of them would
then claim it was an open question, best left for later; in
the meantime, they would work in concert. With Aisha’s
presence and inɻuence as the leading Mother of the
Faithful, they would muster an army against Ali and
confront him—not in Medina, where Ali was too
powerful, but eight hundred miles away, in Iraq, where
Zubayr had supporters in the southern garrison city of