while I, although I was the youngest of them, the most
diseased in eyesight, the most corpulent in body and
thinnest in the legs, said ‘I, oh Prophet of God, will be
your helper in this matter.’ ”
Diseased eyes? Corpulent? Thin legs? Was Ali joking at
his own expense? His self-description bears no
resemblance to the virile yet tender warrior in the
brightly colored posters so popular among the Shia
faithful, who have little of the Sunni abhorrence of
visual representation. On sale in kiosks and from street
vendors throughout the Shia heartland, from Lebanon to
India, the posters show not an awkward teenager but a
handsome man in his forties. The jaw set ɹrm beneath
the neatly trimmed beard, the strong eyebrows, the dark
eyes raised upward—you might almost mistake his
portrait for the conventional image of Christ except that
it has more of a sense of physical vitality and strength.
There is the sword for one thing. Sometimes slung
over his back, sometimes laid across his lap, this sword
was destined to become more famed throughout the
Islamic world than King Arthur’s sword Excalibur ever
would be in Christendom. Like Excalibur, it came with
supernatural qualities, and it too had a name: Dhu’l
Fikar, the “Split One,” which is why it is shown with a
forked point, like a snake’s tongue. In fact it wasn’t the
sword that was split but the ɻesh it came in contact
with, so that the name more vividly translates as the
Cleaver or the Splitter.