man, whom his kinsmen had known all their lives, to
suddenly declare himself the Messenger of God. The
declaration itself must have seemed absurd to many of
those who heard it, let alone the idea of appointing a
successor. There was, after all, nothing to succeed to. At
that moment in time, Islam had only three believers,
Muhammad, Khadija, and Ali. How could any rational
person imagine that it would develop into a great new
faith, into a united Arabia and an empire in the
making? Muhammad was a man who appeared to have
nothing worth bequeathing.
That was to change over the next two decades. As the
equalizing message of Islam spread, as Muhammad’s
authority grew, as tribe after tribe and town after town
oɽcially accepted the faith and paid tribute in the form
of taxes, the new ummah, the community of Islam, grew
not only powerful but wealthy. By the time Muhammad
lay dying, nearly the whole of the Arabian Peninsula
had allied itself with Islam and its unitary Arab identity,
and over those years, time and again, Muhammad had
made it clear how close he held Ali, the one man who
had had faith in him when all others scoffed.
“I am from Ali and Ali is from me; he is the guardian
of every believer after me,” he said. Ali was to him “as
Aaron was to Moses,” he declared. “None but a believer
loves Ali, and none but an apostate hates him.” And
most famously, especially for the mystical Suɹs, for
whom Ali would become the patron saint of knowledge