7 Muhammad 7

imam (or religious leader). Majoritarian religious doctrine
precluded the appearance of another prophet.
After his death Muhammad’s remains were interred in
his mosque. It was not long before caliphs began to expand
the site and add new, more permanent architectural fea-
tures. The mosque-tomb in Medina was to become the
second most sacred site for Muslims, and pilgrimage there,
while not a duty like the hajj, is considered a highly lauda-
tory undertaking.
Muhammad’s prophetic calling is a belief that Muslims
are required to acknowledge in the shahāda (creed), and it
constitutes one of the principal subjects of theological
discourse. He is considered an exemplary holy man whose
words and deeds are remembered in the Hadith, which
form the basis of the sunna, one of the roots of Islamic law
(fiqh) and customary Muslim practice. Indeed, jurists
regarded him as the foremost lawgiver, and philosophers
saw in him the fulfillment of the ideal of Plato’s philosopher-
king. For Sufis, Muhammad was the ascetic and preeminent
visionary and the ancestral founder of their myriad orders.
More recently he has been seen by some as the first unifier
of the Arab peoples and the model for armed resistance
against Western imperialism.

‘ali ̄
(b. c. 600, Mecca—d. January 661, Kūfa, Iraq)

T

he cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, ‘Alī was the
fourth caliph (successor to Muhammad), reigning
from 656 to 661. The question of his right to the caliphate
resulted in the split in Islam into Sunni and Shi‘ite branches.
He is revered by the Shi‘ites as the first imam, the true
successor to the Prophet.
‘Alī (in full, ‘Alī ibn Abī T·ālib) was the son of Abū T·ālib,
chief of a clan of the Quraysh. When his father became