or Comforter whose arrival Jesus had foretold in the
Gospels. Those against maintained that since the
Paraclete was said to have sons, and Muhammad had no
son, it could not possibly be he. Finally they decided to
send a delegation to Medina to resolve the matter
directly with Muhammad in the time-honored manner
of public debate. But Muhammad preempted the need for
debate. In a piece of consummate theatricality, he came
out to meet the delegation without his usual bevy of
counselors. Instead, only his blood family were with
him: Ali and Fatima, and their sons, Hasan and Hussein.
He didn’t say a word. Instead, slowly and deliberately,
in full view of all, he took hold of the hem of his cloak
and spread it high and wide so that it covered the heads
of his small family. They were the ones he sheltered
under his cloak, he was saying. They were the ones he
wrapped around himself. They were his nearest and
dearest, the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House of
Muhammad—or as the Shia would later call them, the
People of the Cloak.
It was a brilliantly calculated gesture. Arabian
Christian tradition had it that Adam had received a
vision of a brilliant light surrounded by four other lights
and had been told by God that these were his prophetic
descendants. Muhammad had certainly heard of this
tradition and knew that the moment the Najran
Christians saw him spread his cloak over the four
members of his family, they would be convinced that he