The Caliph and the Imam Toby

Matthiesen
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THE CALIPH AND THE IMAM
 T HE C A LI P H
AND
T HE I MA M
THE MAKING OF SUNNISM AND SHIISM

TO B Y M ATT H I E S E N
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© Toby Matthiesen 2023
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 Acknowledgements

Any book that covers as big a ground as this one, tracing the
development of Sunnism and Shiism across centuries and regions,
accrues many debts. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to
the many people who shared their knowledge and experiences with
me during fieldwork. Then, I owe a debt to the many scholars who
have contributed to the different disciplines and subfields that I draw
on for this book, from religious and Islamic studies to Middle East
and South Asian Studies, history, anthropology, sociology, and
political science. The extensive notes and bibliography at the end of
the book acknowledge that large body of scholarship, and the aim of
the book is to bring sometimes disconnected literatures into closer
conversation with each other.
I furthermore thank the numerous people and institutions that
have supported me throughout the research and writing of this
book. At the Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College, and the
wider University of Oxford, where I held a five-year Senior Research
Fellowship and where the idea for this book first emerged, I thank
Walter Armbrust, Stephanie Cronin, Faisal Devji, Roger Goodman,
Louise Fawcett, Edmund Herzig, Homa Katouzian, Margaret
MacMillan, Adam Roberts, Philip Robins, Ahmad al-Shahi, Avi Shlaim,
Michael Willis, as well as Eugene Rogan, who encouraged me to
write about as big a topic as this. Amongst Oxford’s outstanding
community of younger scholars, I had stimulating and fun
conversations with Kathrin Bachleitner, Maziyar Ghiabi, Andrew
Hammond, Susann Kassem, Raphaël Lefèvre, Ceren Lord, Rory
McCarthy, Emanuel Schäublin, Manal Shehabi, and Anne Wolf. For
research support, I thank Caroline Davis and all the staff of the
Middle East Centre and St Antony’s College, Mastan Ebtehaj and
Maria Luisa Langella of the Middle East Centre Library, Debbie Usher
of the Middle East Centre Archive, Lydia Wright of the Oriental
Institute Library, and the staff at the Bodleian Library (as well as of
the British Library and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London).
My agent Felicity Bryan envisioned that this book would fill an
important gap in the literature. She sadly could no longer see it go
to print. It was George Lucas in New York who then pushed it
forward and was a reassuring presence throughout the writing
process. I am indebted to him and to my editor Tim Bent of Oxford
University Press US, who saw the potential of the book and whose
many comments improved it considerably. At Oxford University Press
UK, I thank Cathryn Steele, who took the lead in the final stages of
production, as well as Luciana O’Flaherty, the copyeditor Martin
Noble, the publicist Anna Gell, and the whole production and
marketing team. I am also grateful to Catherine Clarke, Michele
Topham, and everyone at Felicity Bryan Associates. My meticulous
research assistant Dominic Gerhartz helped especially with the
references and finalising the manuscript for production.
Matteo Legrenzi brought me to Ca’ Foscari University in Venice for
a Marie-Curie Global Fellowship. He has been a great supporter and
a true gentleman. At Ca’ Foscari, I thank Laura Burighel, Silvia
Zabeo, and the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage. This
project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie
Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 888063 on Sunni–Shii
Relations in the Middle East (SSRIME). At Stanford University, I
thank Lisa Blaydes and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies for
hosting me as a Visiting Fellow in 2022, and Larry Diamond, Farah
El-Sharif, Haidar Hadi, Matthew Lynch, and Hesham Sallam for their
collegiality and support. At the University of Bristol, I thank Martyn
Powell, Benedetta Lomi, David Leech, Jon Balserak, Rupert Gethin,
Gavin D’Costa, and Rita Langer for welcoming me so warmly.
 Over the years, several universities, institutes, and research
networks invited me to speak, work through my ideas, and receive
useful feedback: Aarhus University, Australian National University,
the Middle East Study Group at Birkbeck University (London), Doha
Institute for Graduate Studies, European University Institute in
Florence, German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg,
George Mason University, IREMAM Aix-en-Provence, Rice University
in Houston, University of Bern, American University Beirut, Oxford
Centre for Islamic Studies, UCLA, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme—
École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, Project on Middle East
Political Science (POMEPS) at George Washington University, and the
SEPAD Project at Lancaster University. At the Central European
University in Budapest, I profited from comments by Osman Dincer
and Harith Hasan al-Qarawee, and at Aligarh Muslim University in
India from comments by Professors Irfan Habib and Syed Ali
Nadeem Rezavi. I am grateful to Toby Dodge, Ali Ansari, Daniel
Neep, and the participants of a workshop for a Festschrift in honour
of Charles Tripp at the LSE.
Several colleagues have read parts of the manuscript related to
their area of expertise, and some have provided extensive feedback.
I thank Usaama al-Azami, Rahaf Aldoughli, Andrew Arsan,
Mohammad Ataie, Metin Atmaca, Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer,
Gabriele vom Bruck, Houchang Chehabi, Juan Cole, Stephanie
Cronin, Louise Finn, Denis Hermann, Helen Lackner, Charles Melville,
Eugene Rogan, Adrian Ruprecht, Christian Sahner, Cyrus Schayegh,
Rainer Schwinges, and Charles Tripp. The Fellows of the TOI:
Bringing in the Other Islamists—comparing Arab Shia and Sunni
Islamism(s) in a sectarianized Middle East project led by Morten
Valbjørn and Jeroen Gunning at Aarhus University provided feedback
on several draft chapters. I thank Morten, Jeroen, as well as
Courtney Freer, Fanar Haddad, Raphaël Lefèvre, Ben Robin D’Cruz,
and Younes Saramifar for their valuable comments. I further want to
acknowledge conversations with Rainer Brunner, Faisal Devji, Toby
Dodge, Richard Drayton, Werner Ende, Mark Farha, Nelida Fuccaro,
Simon Fuchs, Gregory Gause, Hamza al-Hasan, Samuel Helfont,
Fouad Ibrahim, Raihan Ismail, Abbas Kadhim, Shruti Kapila,
Laurence Louër, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, Ussama Makdisi, Renad
Mansour, Mary-Ann Middelkoop, David Motadel, Anees al-Qudayhi,
Reinhard Schulze, Guido Steinberg, Sami Zubaida, and Max Weiss.
Nassima Neggaz and Naysan Adlparvar kindly shared their
publications with me. For support over the years, I thank Ulrike
Freitag, Kai Hafez, Laleh Khalili, Marc Lynch, James Piscatori, Madawi
al-Rasheed, Morten Valbjørn, and Charles Tripp.
I am especially indebted to the many people that helped me
during fieldwork, opened their homes to me, and guided me along
the way. In Beirut, I thank Khaled Abdallah as well as Rabih
Dandachli, Bassel Salloukh, and Sa‘dun Hammada. In Lucknow, I
thank Ali Khan Mahmudabad and his father Suleiman, the Raja of
Mahmudabad. They hosted me during Muharram 2019, my last
research trip before Covid-19, and were so generous with their time,
knowledge, and hospitality. I am grateful to them and everyone in
Mahmudabad, Lucknow, Hyderabad, and elsewhere who helped me
navigate my way around India, especially Ovais Sultan Khan in Delhi
and Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi and Ruquaia Hussain at Aligarh
University. In Iraq, I thank Hayder al-Khoei and S. Salih al-Hakim
and the staff of the al-Kalima Centre for Dialogue and S. Jawad al-
Khoei of the Al-Khoei Institute, as well as Alaa al-Bahadli, and in
London Yousif al-Khoei and the Khoei Foundation. Many more people
helped me in Najaf and Karbala, especially the staff of the Abu Fadl
al-Abbas shrine. In Albania, I thank Hajji Dede Edmond Brahimaj
and Arben Sulejmani for introducing me to the history and culture of
the Bektashis. And I am indebted to the many people who helped
me during earlier language study and research trips, in the Gulf
especially to Abd al-Nabi al-Akri, Jasim Hussayn, Habib Al Jumaa,
Mahdi Salman, and Jafar al-Shayeb.
On a personal level, I thank Maria for more things than I can
possibly list here. Her love gave me the strength to weather the
pandemic and finish this book. That its publication coincides with the
birth of our first daughter is an indescribable joy. This book is
dedicated to them both. I thank Claudia Honegger for her
encouragement, and for kindling my interest in the longue durée.
And I thank Edna and José Anibal and everyone at the Sitio for being
such gracious hosts during the final stages of writing, and Robi and
Joana for welcoming me in the Bay Area.
So, this book would not have been possible without the support
of a great number of people. Yet, they are in no way responsible for
any mistakes or shortcomings others may find in this book, or for its
approach and conclusions.
 Contents

List of Plates
List of Maps
Note on Spelling and Transliterations

Prologue: From Karbala to Damascus

PART I. THE FORMATION OF SUNNISM AND SHIISM, 632–

1500

1. After the Prophet

2. Sunni Reassertion and the Crusades
3. Polemics and Confessional Ambiguity

PART II. THE SHAPING OF MUSLIM EMPIRES, 1500–1800

4. The Age of Confessionalisation

5. Muslim Dynasties on the Indian Subcontinent
6. Reform and Reinvention in the Eighteenth Century

PART III. EMPIRE AND THE STATE, 1800–1979

7. British India and Orientalism

8. Ottoman Reorganisation and European Intervention
9. The Mandates
10. The Muslim Response

PART IV. REVOLUTION AND RIVALRY, 1979–

11. The Religion of Martyrdom

12. Export and Containment of Revolution
13. Regime Change
14. The Arab Uprisings

Conclusion: Every Place is Karbala

Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
 List of Plates

1. Illustration from the Ta’rikh-i Alfi manuscript depicting the historical

destruction of the Tomb of Hussain at Karbala on the orders of Caliph al-
Mutawakkil, India, c. 1590–1595.
Source: British Museum.
2. Scholars in the Library of the ‘House of Wisdom’ in Baghdad, from Maqamat
al-Hariri by Yahya al-Wasiti, Baghdad, 1237.
Source: French National Library.
3. Hulagu Khan Destroys the Fort at Alamut, from Chinghiz-nama manuscript by
Basawan, 1596.
Source: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
4. Conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols 1258, from Jami‘ al-tawarikh by Rashid
Al-Din Hamadani, Tabriz, first quarter of fourteenth century.
Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
5. Conversion of Ghazan to Islam, from Jami‘ al-tawarikh by Rashid Al-Din
Hamadani, Tabriz, first quarter of fourteenth century.
Source: Le Royaume Armenien de Cilicie by Claude Mutafian.
6. The declaration of Shiism as the state religion of Iran by Shah Ismail—Safavid
dynasty, by unknown artist, Safavid Era.
Source: Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire by Andrew Newman.
7. Portrait of Shah Ismail I of Persia (1487–1524), by Cristofano dell’Altissimo,
sixteenth century.Source: Uffizi Gallery.
8. Battle of Chaldiran, by Agha (Mohammed) Sadeq, Isfahan, c. 1801.
Source: Chehel Sotoun palace, photograph by Stefan Auth.
9. Portrait of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent, by unknown Venetian
artist (possibly, Tiziano Vecellio), Venice, c. 1530s.
Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.
10. Part of the panoramic view of Istanbul: Kasimpasa shipyard is visible on the
right, by Melchior Lorck, Istanbul, 1559.
Source: The Gennadius Library—The American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
11. Suleimaniye Mosque, by Bruno Peroussse, Istanbul.
Source: Alamy.
12. Jannat al-Baqia before demolition, by unknown photographer, Medina, c.
1910s.
Source: Al-Nabi Museum.
13. Lucknow—Bara Imambara, by unknown photographer, Lucknow, c. 1920.
Source: Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection.
14. Imambara, Fort of Rampur, by unknown photographer, Uttar Pradesh, c. 1911.
Source: The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection.
15. Darul Uloom Deoband, by Jonathan O’Rourke, Uttar Pradesh, 2009.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
16. Postcard of entrance to Najaf shrine with clerics and officials, by Eldorado,
Baghdad, c. 1920–30.
Source: The British Museum.
17. View of the mosque of Imam Hussain, from Sketches between Persian Gulf
and Black Sea by Robert H. Clive, Karbala, 1852.
Source: The British Museum.
18. Dawlat Hall, by Kamal-ol-molk, Tehran, 1892.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
19. Faisal party at Versailles Conference. Left to right: Rustum Haidar, Nuri as-
Said, Prince Faisal (front), Captain Pisani (rear), T. E. Lawrence, Faisal’s slave
(name unknown), Captain Hassan Khadri, by an unknown photographer,
Versailles, 1919.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
20. Graffiti Wall with Ayatollah Khomeini and Ali Shariati, by unknown
photographer, 1981, Iran, University of Chicago Middle Eastern Posters
Collection.
21. Every Day is Ashura and Every Soil is Karbala, by an unknown artist, c. 1981.
Source: University of Chicago Middle Eastern Posters Collection.
22. Stamp issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran commemorating the uprising in
Iraq and its crackdown in 1991, ‘The Catastrophe of Iraq Ba‘thi Regime
Invasion of the Holy Shrines’, by Islamic Republic of Iran, c. 1991.
Source: Shutterstock.
 List of Maps

1. Map of wider Islamic world indicating Sunni and Shii populations

2. Map of Middle East, Central, and South Asia indicating Sunni and Shii
populations
3. Early Muslim conquests and caliphates, -750
4. Mamluks and Mongols (Ilkhanate), c. 1400 ad

5. Major Muslim empires (Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals and Shaybanid Uzbeks)

6. Muslim rule in India, 1500-1800
7. Expansion of British influence on the Indian subcontinent in the 18th and 19th
century
8. The post-Ottoman Middle East with British and French mandates, 1920s
 Note on Spelling and Transliterations

This book largely employs the transliteration guide of the

International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) without,
however, providing full transliteration. Transliteration has not been
employed for personal names, place names, and organisations
following accepted English spelling. Since the book discusses
different periods and regions in which Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu,
and other languages predominate, it was not always possible to
adopt the locally most prominent spelling. For the sake of
consistency and coherence, and to make the narrative easier for the
reader, Arabic spelling has been adopted for terms and names that
would otherwise have to be spelled several times in different ways
(like Ali al-Rida, or Imam Rida, instead of Reza). The same goes for
Ottoman names that have largely been rendered according to Arabic
transliteration. Prominent figures are spelled according to their most
prominent transliteration, or the system dominant in their country.
So: Mohammad Reza Shah, Saddam Hussein, etc.
Given the longue durée approach of the book, another difficulty
has been to remain true to geographical denominators as they were
used in the different time periods, without, however, confusing the
reader by employing several terms for the same geographical area.
This has led to a somewhat anachronistic use of terms like Iran,
Iraq, Syria, and the like, which should not indicate that these terms
had the same meaning in earlier centuries as they would after the
establishing of the relative nation states. They often did, however,
carry a certain meaning and roughly delineated similar geographical
areas, unlike other terms (the term Pakistan, for example, is
therefore not mentioned before the twentieth century). The
specialist reader who may see this as a problem is asked to forgive
any shortcomings resulting from it to facilitate readability and
accessibility for a general audience.
1. Map of wider Islamic world indicating Sunni and Shii populations
2. Map of Middle East, Central, and South Asia indicating Sunni and Shii
populations
 Prologue
From Karbala to Damascus

The midday sun struck the gilded dome built over the grave of
Hussain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, blinding anyone who
dared to look up at it. It was the spring of 2019. I was sitting inside
the shrine, located in the holy city of Karbala in Iraq, attending the
‘Spring Martyrdom’ Conference, intended to promote and celebrate
Hussain as a universal figure. I was among a few dozen guests and
hundreds of visitors, all gathered at a site which, over centuries, has
been both a place of fervent worship and heavy fighting. Here took
place the massacre of Hussain and his followers in the Battle of
Karbala in the year 61 of the Islamic calendar (680 ad) at the hands
of an army sent by the Umayyad Caliphate based in Damascus. The
shrine was often contested between competing powers espousing
Sunnism and Shiism. It was ransacked by Wahhabi zealots in 1802,
and bombarded by Saddam Hussein’s tanks during the short-lived
Shii uprising of 1991. (Plaques around the shrine commemorate the
latter event, indicating the bullet holes still visible in the marble
walls.) After the US-led invasion of 2003, it became a symbol of a
new-found Shii self-consciousness, and when the so-called Islamic
State (IS) declared a Caliphate in Northern Iraq and eastern Syria in
2014, it vowed to turn to rubble the ‘idolators’ and ‘tomb
worshippers’ holy sites at Najaf and Karbala. In response, tens of
thousands of Iraqi Shia, urged on by Iraq’s senior Shii cleric, took up
arms to defeat IS. (As I entered the shrine, some of these Shii
paramilitaries were still celebrating their victory in front of it.)
Karbala is thus to many the birthplace of the Sunni–Shia split, and
epitomises how Sunni and Shia have been at odds ever since.
 That morning in 2019, on the podium in front of Hussain’s grave,
Sunni and Shii dignitaries praised Hussain as a unifying figure. Given
the polarisation and violence of recent years, this was remarkable.
Hussain is of course an especially important figure for Shia, who see
him as an Imam, the rightful political and spiritual successor to the
Prophet Muhammad. Less known, however, is that Sunnis and Sufis
likewise hold Hussain in high regard and feel he was wronged.
Karbala and many other shrines associated with the Family of the
Prophet Muhammad constituted not only Shii sites of memory, but
similarly places where adherents of various confessions and faiths
could come together without focusing on differences. The
symposium offered the hope of celebrating this inclusive heritage of
Islam. And it served as a corrective to standard narratives of
perpetual Sunni–Shia strife.

The question of the nature of relations between Sunnism and Shiism

preoccupied me long before that conference in Karbala, and indeed
since I first started engaging with the Middle East and the wider
Islamic world in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq War of 2003.
Before the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
the terms ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shii’ were little used outside of specialist
literature.1 Yet within a few months of the invasion, Western media
and politicians invoked them to explain the conflict in Iraq, and much
of the region’s ills. The US Army was not being attacked by Iraqis
but rather by ‘insurgents’ in the ‘Sunni triangle’, or followers of a
‘firebrand Shii cleric’.2 Many argued that the two sides had resented
and fought each other for nearly 1,400 years. The description of Iraq
as sectarian served both to deflate blame from the American-led
administration, and in a circular logic, to legitimise reshaping Iraqi
politics along sectarian lines.3
Simplistic narratives of binary opposites, of Islam and the West,
of Sunni and Shii, made me wary. I decided to dig deeper and over
years of research, fieldwork and countless conversations with people
across the Islamic world realised that Sunnis and Shia indeed have
had a long and complicated relationship but that standard narratives
fall way short of explaining it. It took centuries for Sunnism and
Shiism to develop. Neither the coherence of the two nor the dividing
line between them were always clear, nor always conflict-prone.
My first stint learning Arabic abroad was years ago in Cairo,
where I visited many of the sites that were the legacy of the
tenth/eleventh century, which has been termed the ‘Shii Century’,
when the Shii Fatimids reigned from Cairo (and Shii powers reigned
in Iraq and the Gulf region). I came to realise that Sunni–Shia
relations played out across a much wider geographical area than
often assumed. While the Arab world is often associated with
Sunnism and Iran with Shiism, Shiism played a much larger role in
the history of the Arab world (and of the Eastern Mediterranean,
Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent) than commonly assumed
(as did Sunnism in Iran). The next speaker up on the podium, an
Egyptian poet, a graduate of al-Azhar University—perhaps the most
prominent seat of Sunni religious learning—who recited a verse
lamenting the martyrdom of Hussain and extolling how much
Egyptians honour Hussain, demonstrated this. Many Egyptians
believe that in 1153, the Fatimids had transferred the head of
Hussain to Cairo. There they interred it and would hold mourning
processions for his martyrdom and celebrations for his birthday.
They also founded al-Azhar University as a Shii institute of learning.
The Sunni rulers that deposed the Fatimids in 1171 restructured it as
a Sunni University, and in modern times it has facilitated Sunni–Shia
dialogue. Although their Sunni successors vowed to suppress the
Fatimids’ legacy, it lived on in the built environment, and in popular
culture. Egyptian Sufis still gather at the Hussain mosque in Cairo to
celebrate Hussain’s birthday, singing and dancing ecstatically.4
How intertwined the history of Shiism and Sunnism is was made
even more explicit by the next speaker up on the podium, Baba
Mundi, the leader of the Bektashi Sufi order with its headquarters in
Albania. Although some Sufis are staunchly Sunni, most trace their
spiritual lineage to the Prophet through Ali, his son in law, founding
figure of the Shia, and father of Hussain. Some Sufis, like the
Bektashis, are therefore considered pro-Shii (although they long
allied with Sunni rulers).
Baba Mundi was in Karbala to sing the praises of Hussain, and to
celebrate Karbala’s firm place in the minds and hearts of Sufis, and
those of Balkan Muslims more generally. A few months after the
Karbala conference, I joined him and tens of thousands of Bektashis
on a journey up Mount Tomor in Albania to visit a shrine set up for
Abbas Ibn Ali, a half-brother of Hussain, who had died fighting
alongside Hussain at Karbala and for whom another major shrine
exists in Karbala. The days-long festival exemplified that Karbala
could mean different things to different people at different times
(fire played an important role, for example, and alcohol flowed
freely).5 Many more shrines and rituals further afield link themselves
to Karbala and the Family of the Prophet in locally specific ways.
Other examples include the Ali shrine in Mazar-i-Sharif in
Afghanistan, ‘discovered’ several centuries after Ali’s death and
where many Central Asian Muslims, Sunnis and Shia, believe Ali is
buried (though most Shia outside Afghanistan believe he is buried in
Najaf, 80 kilometres from Karbala). Indian Shii dynasties built
replicas of the Imams’ shrines, and brought memorabilia associated
with them to their cities to serve as a focus of popular piety. The re-
enactment of the Imams’ suffering, and pilgrimage to these sites,
have made the cultural memory relevant in the present, and have
linked Shia, and many Sunnis, to Karbala in myriad ways.6 What I
grasped from these and other interactions with Sufis was that Sufism
was especially important as a counterpoint to simplistic accounts of
Sunni–Shia relations because Sufis often disregarded doctrinal or
legalistic dividing lines as defined by the clergy.7 And I realised how
important and emotionally compelling key sites of memory like
Karbala and Damascus were.
After the battle of Karbala, the remains of the Family of the
Prophet slain at Karbala and the wives and children that had been
spared in the battle were brought before Yazid, the Umayyad ruler,
in Damascus. So was the head of Hussain (it was, as noted, later
moved to Cairo, while his body was interred in Karbala). The
Umayyads, a family that was part of the old Meccan aristocracy and
had initially fought against the Prophet Muhammad but then
embraced the message of Islam, saw themselves as the rightful
rulers of Syria and the wider Muslim community and the successors
to the Prophet—in other words, as Caliphs. They stood in sharp
opposition to Ali, whom Shia see as the first successor to the
Prophet and their first spiritual and political leader, or Imam. It was
from Damascus that they organised the campaigns against Ali in the
mid-seventh century that became known as the First Muslim Civil
War. Unsurprisingly, Shia detest the Umayyads, though many Sunnis
also regret their quarrels with Ali and Hussain (although some Sunni
Revivalists of the modern period lionise them).
As an Arabic language student in the 2000s, I spent many a hot
afternoon in the quiet and cool courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in
Damascus, marvelling at the depictions of a lush paradise garden
around the courtyard, and the past glory of the Umayyad Caliphate.
Earlier European travellers and Orientalists, Westerners studying the
‘Orient’s’ cultures, religions, and societies, and whose crucial roles in
deepening Islam’s divides I will discuss throughout, too, long
admired it, and equated it with mainstream Islam. Nevertheless, the
longer I spent in Damascus, the more I noticed that Shii pilgrims,
from Iran, Lebanon, or the Gulf States, would also visit the Umayyad
Mosque and nearby shrines associated with the Family of the
Prophet, such as the Sayyida Zaynab shrine—located some six miles
to the southeast of Damascus—where Shia believe that Zaynab, a
granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad and daughter of Ali, is
buried. Zaynab, and other survivors of the Karbala massacre were
brought to Damascus and held captive by Yazid in the Umayyad
Mosque in Damascus, where Zaynab allegedly gave a speech
condemning her brother’s murder and held the first mourning
ceremony (Sunnis generally believe she is buried in the Sayyida
Zaynab mosque in Cairo). Like Hussain, Zaynab is central to Shiism,
yet is a notable descendant of the Prophet, and a powerful female
figure for Sunnis, too.8 In Damascus was thus commemorated the
greatness of the Umayyads alongside the founding story of Shii
suffering—the tragedy of Karbala and the ways in which the
Umayyads, who had taken over the mantle of the Prophet and
proclaimed themselves Caliphs, treated the Imams and their kin and
followers.
That Sunnism and Shiism, and indeed the pre-Islamic past (the
site of the Umayyad Mosque was previously a basilica dedicated to
John the Baptist), could be commemorated in the same space, and
in others dotted around this ancient city, was testament to a shared
heritage and lived reality of Islam and Middle Eastern religiosity
more broadly. At other times, however, these sites of memory were
appropriated by competing powers. They represented both what one
scholar termed an ‘architecture of coexistence’, and the emotionally
compelling and competing narratives of Sunnism and Shiism.9
Over the nearly two decades that I spent engaging with the
people of the Middle East and the wider Islamic world (including
while researching a PhD and earlier books on Sunni–Shia relations) I
encountered many examples of coexistence, ambiguity, and
polarisation. Shrines in the post-Ottoman world and on the Indian
subcontinent, and Muharram processions in India, attended by Shia
and Sunnis, are examples of the former.10 Mourning the death of
Hussain and his Companions in battle and atonement for not having
saved Hussain could assert Shii difference11 and Sunnis sometimes
criticised Shia for it.12 But these could likewise become inclusive
festivals at which Sunnis invoked Hussain.
Sunni Revivalists I engaged with in North India and Saudi Arabia,
on the other hand, strongly refuted Shiism (they called it a ‘deviant
sect’, or not part of Islam at all) and warned me against going to Shii
areas with wild rumours of Shii practices, and that it was not
possible to trust Shia because they might perform dissimulation
(taqiyya)—to which over the centuries Shia sometimes have been
forced to resort to for self-preservation. This was a common trope in
anti-Shii polemics even if it was much less frequently used than
these polemics made Sunnis (and many Orientalists) believe.13 Many
Shia I met held similar prejudices towards ‘Wahhabis’, a term some
applied widely to Sunnis. While they want Sunnis to accept them as
a valid branch of Islam, most Shia believe that they constitute a
chosen group of Muslims.14 On both sides, prejudices and conspiracy
theories exist.15
But these issues did not lead to conflict in and of themselves. As I
and some of my colleagues have long argued, sectarian identity is
most salient when political powers instrumentalise it.16 This was
evident in many of the countries that I visited during my research. In
Bahrain, Sunnis and Shia have long lived side by side, joining in
Muharram processions, and Leftist movements. Sunni–Shia tensions
stem from the island’s history as a province of Iran and then its
conquest by a Sunni ruling family in the eighteenth century and the
disenfranchisement of its Shii population; a pattern that entrenched
itself under British protection. After the Iranian revolution, the Shia’s
pent-up resentment intersected with the appeal of the revolution,
and Gulf rulers’ fear of a region-wide Shii rising. Many Lebanese
have long tried to transcend the limits of sectarian identity as
institutionalised under the French Mandate, a system symbolised by
the huge posters of political leaders and the flags of sect-based
militias and parties on streets across the country, but to little avail.
In Syria, the Baath party’s nationalist rhetoric positioned itself
against that colonial legacy, rendering sectarian identity officially a
taboo. The regime’s ubiquitous informants wanted to stamp out all
talk of difference, while relying on the support of non-Sunnis, who
dominated the highest echelons of the state, and the security
services that policed the country. In Iran, the Shii clerics in charge
officially embraced Islamic unity and its Sunni minority. But Shiism
and a sense of ethnic superiority were so pervasive, and so coupled
with the ambition to become a major power, that I understood why
its Sunni and Arab neighbours feared its revolution, and why Sunni
Iranians feel like second class citizens.
And in Iraq, a country in which centuries of Ottoman rule and
then the British had enshrined Sunni supremacy, competing cultural
memories, rooted in the many sites across the country associated
with the early split, like Karbala, were reconstituted after the US-led
intervention brought to power the first Shii-led government in a
millennium. When a civil war engulfed Iraq shortly afterwards, the
Americans and their allies as noted quickly blamed ‘ancient hatreds’,
rather than their own lack of post-invasion planning, while
simultaneously institutionalising ethno-sectarian divisions in ways
reminiscent of French and British imperial policies. The conference in
Karbala was an example of Shii empowerment, unthinkable pre-
2003, and while it reached out to Sunnis, it did so from a position of
strength.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, both historically and
contemporary, that it is the interaction of doctrinal tensions with
political ones that lead to conflict, many still see Sunnism and Shiism
as perpetually at loggerheads and invoke ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shii’ as catch-
all terms to explain division and bloodshed in Muslim societies. The
notion that ‘ancient hatreds’ divided Sunni and Shii and that the two
were polar opposites throughout Islamic history, persists, not least in
public debate and amongst decision-makers (and amongst scholars
working on especially polarised periods or places, and who are
unaware of contrasting examples). Some argue that doctrinal
debates a millennium ago explain violence today. Others solely focus
on the impact of the modern state and the interventions of regional
and global powers, or see sectarian conflict as purely a product of
material struggles, often refusing to take history seriously and make
connections with previous periods, or to engage with doctrinal
debates.17 It is against these simplistic notions that reduce Sunni–
Shia relations to conflict and doctrinal tensions, or that argue that
history and doctrinal debates don’t matter, that I chose to write The
Caliph and the Imam. It is not a history of everything that happened
between Sunnis and Shia since the Prophet Muhammad’s death in
632, and in some chapters the narrative emphasises certain regions
more than others. (The early period, though covered in some detail,
is given less weight than developments after 1500.) Nonetheless, it
is the first history of Sunni–Shia relations from the seventh until the
early twenty-first century based on extensive fieldwork and a
thorough synthesis of existing scholarship from different disciplines
in major research languages.18
 Its approach is twofold. It firstly shows that it is vital to
understand how Sunnism and Shiism developed chronologically and
doctrinally, and how earlier periods shaped later ones. History
matters, and only by understanding the early and middle periods can
we understand how later ones constituted themselves with reference
to them. And secondly, it highlights that only a global perspective
that studies connections across the Nile to Oxus region, the land
mass from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian
subcontinent, from the Arabic- and Turkic-speaking worlds to the
Eastern parts of the Persianate one, and linking that to European
and American Empire, can do justice to the subject.19 For it is across
this temporal and geographical reach that Sunnism and Shiism
constituted each other, something that studies focusing solely on
one period or region, like the Middle East, miss.20 It takes intra-
Islamic debates and contestations seriously all the while placing
them in their social, political, and historical contexts. This is not
meant to exoticise and essentialise Islam. Rather, the book traces
how developments in the Islamic world interacted with wider ones
such as: the Crusades and the Mongol conquests, early modern
state formation, the discovery of the sea route to Asia, the
beginnings of Empire and capitalism, the print revolution, the
emergence of the modern state and colonialism, independence, and
eventually, the attempt to remould societies through foreign
intervention in an age of American hegemony.
Because the first few centuries of Islam are foundational, and
were invoked in later periods, and because many Muslims draw
inspiration and guidance from it, Part I starts with the Formation of
Sunnism and Shiism. The different ways in which Sunnis and Shia
saw and remembered the early period shaped distinct confessional
cultures, even if in lived reality, much was shared.21 Political support
and patronage was key in the development and spread of Islam’s
main branches. But early Muslim rulers seldom embarked on a
wholescale eradication or conversion of others (and even if they
would have wanted to, their grip over society and territory was too
weak).
 From about 1500 onwards, however, the centrality of religious
identity for legitimisation and state formation led to mass
conversions and a stronger interest in people’s beliefs, as I will show
in Part II, The Shaping of Muslim Empires. Although Shiism
originated amongst Arabs, and was over centuries not primarily
associated with Iran, from the early modern period onwards, Sunni–
Shia relations became intertwined with Iran’s position in the Islamic
world. And connections between the Middle East, Central Asia, and
the Indian subcontinent, increasingly a major arena of Muslim
intellectual life, intensified.
As I will show in Part III, the arrival of European Empires and the
modern state proved transformative and led to more Western
interest in Islam. Orientalists focused on textual doctrinal debates
and conflicts in the first centuries of Islam. By translating polemics
and law texts, they entrenched divisions that hitherto played little
role in people’s lives, especially on the Indian subcontinent, where
Britain ruled over large Sunni and Shii populations. (They argued, for
example, that Sunnis were not supposed to attend Muharram and
the colonial state eventually organised separate Muharram
processions for Sunnis and Shia.) Sunni and Shii became legal
categories that were reinforced in interactions with the state. Since
they largely engaged with Sunnism, Orientalists based their view of
Shiism on what Sunnis said.22 The Sunni version of history, of
Caliphs and Sultans, of the schools of jurisprudence and of great
scholars, was written down in official histories and recited in the
Great Mosques. Despite much diversity within Sunnism, its historical
narrative became the establishment’s view. Shii views and books,
with their opposed assessment of the early period, were
marginalised and kept out of Sunni collections or destroyed. Sunni
books referred rarely to Shiism, and if they did it was in a negative
way.
The few Shii informants and communal leaders that cooperated
with Empire did not manage to break that master frame, although
they played a role in institutionalising Shiism alongside Sunnism. The
first Orientalist conference on Shiism was only held in 1968.23
Orientalists often saw Sunnism as equivalent to the Church and
Shiism as a ‘sect’.24 But these comparisons raised more questions
than they provided answers, and uncritically employing terms and
concepts from the study of Christianity (and Judaism), made little
sense. Equating Islam with Sunnism missed the complexity of Islam
and marginalised Shiism (and left Sunnism undefined).25 The terms
ta’ifa (sect), or ta’ifiyya/sectarianism, often used in this context, are
derogatory and misleading.26 In contrast, I refer to Sunnism and
Shiism as the two main branches of Islam, each made up of several
madhahib, schools of jurisprudence. For Sunnism and Shiism
constitute competing claims over the correct interpretation of Islam
and both see themselves as at the centre of Islam, not at its
margins.27
Religious identity thus became associated with specific countries
and with the institutions of the modern state. After the 1979
revolution in Iran, it became also tied to international relations, as I
show in Part IV, Revolution and Rivalry. The Shii symbolism of the
revolution was obvious (it gained pace during Muharram and a Shii
cleric became its figurehead).28 And yet its ambition was pan-Islamic
and Sunni Islamists were initially thrilled by it. Generally, however,
Iran’s revolution and the reaction to it exacerbated the Sunni–Shia
divide in hitherto unimaginable ways and connected it directly to
regional and global politics, especially to the American quest to
isolate revolutionary Iran and remake the Middle East.
Invoking the Sunni–Shia divide uncritically has done great harm.
By misunderstanding the history of Sunni–Shia relations and the
legacy of rulers using religion for political ends, many have
contributed to the very tensions that have been tearing apart the
Middle East and Muslims in general. It is against that
misunderstanding that I wrote The Caliph and the Imam.
So, what really is the relationship between Sunnism and Shiism,
and how did the two come into being? That is where we must start.
 PART I

The Formation of Sunnism and

Shiism, 632–1500

The split between what became Sunnism and Shiism, and the
groups that straddled their boundaries, started with a dispute over
who should lead the community of Muslims after the death of the
Prophet Muhammad, and whether that person had to be one of his
descendants or not. Sunnis accept Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali
as the four ‘rightly-guided’ Caliphs (the so-called Rashidun Caliphs),
the successors of the Prophet Muhammad, and Shia believe that Ali
was the successor chosen by the Prophet, and that his and Fatima’s
descendants are the legitimate leaders, or Imams, of the Muslim
community. Sunnis derive their name from Sunna, Arabic for
tradition, which in an Islamic context refers to the summary of all
the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, which should
provide a model for Muslims to follow. The People of the Tradition
and the Community, Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jamaa, thus denotes Sunnis,
while Shia derive their name from the Arabic Shiat Ali, the Party of
Ali. Sunnis embraced the Caliphate and Shia the Imamate as the
ideal type of political leadership.
It took centuries before the terms ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shii’ came to
delineate cohesive religious communities. During the beginnings of
Islam these categories did not exist, nor were the terms widely
used. They only developed gradually over time, as many other
branches and movements were repressed or died out, and two
major consensuses coalesced around ‘Sunnism’ and ‘Shiism’. Even
later, people subsumed under these categories did not necessarily
have more in common than some core historical narrative and
agreement on popular practice (and a dislike of the relative other
branch of Islam). The early period is crucial because the conduct
and sayings of the Prophet, and for the Sunnis his Companions and
for the Shia the Imams, are meant to guide Muslims. A
disagreement about what that guidance precisely was, how it should
be interpreted, and who is a trustworthy narrator of those early
events, led to the development of different schools of jurisprudence.
Sunnis developed four legal schools that can on specific questions be
further apart than they are from the Shia, while the three main Shii
legal schools likewise have major disagreements, not least on which
Imam to follow. But on a most basic level, Shia wanted Ali and his
descendants to succeed the Prophet Muhammad as Imams, while
Sunnis thought authority should lie with the Caliphs.
Based in Damascus, the Umayyads were the first of the Sunni
Caliphate dynasties and ruled from 661 to 750. The Umayyads were
strong rivals of Ali and his offspring, who Shia consider the
legitimate rulers of the Muslim community. The Umayyads were
defeated by the Abbasids in the mid-eighth century, who established
a new Caliphate based in Baghdad in 750. The political power of the
Abbasids varied over time and in the later period waned. The
Abbasids’ relationship with the Alids and early Shiism was
complicated and ranged from suppression to accommodation. In the
tenth century, the ‘Shii Century’, they even ruled nominally on behalf
of a Shii political dynasty. Simultaneously, the Fatimids established
the only Shii Caliphate ever to exist in Cairo. That over the first few
centuries of Islam not only Sunni but also Shii dynasties ruled,
allowed for the patronising of scholars of both branches of Islam,
and the further codification of Sunni and Shii schools of law, and
positioned Shiism as Sunnism’s main challenger.
 Sunni–Shia relations were profoundly affected by the Crusades.
As part of the Muslim counter-mobilisation, Shii rulers were
supplanted by Sunni ones. Still, state power was often weak, and
Muslim rulers accepted populations of different belief if they paid
taxes and accepted the ruler’s authority. Missionaries travelled far to
convert people, but entire populations were generally not converted
by force in short time frames. Confessional ambiguity was
widespread, even though scholars tried to more clearly delineate the
boundaries between the schools, and bring in rulers on their side.
This intensified when the Mongols conquered large parts of Eurasia
in the thirteenth century, and put the last Abbasid Caliph to death.
In the Middle East, their advance was only checked by the Mamluks
of Egypt, who styled themselves as protectors of Sunnism and
successors of the Abbasids. In the context of new ruling dynasties
converting to Islam and legitimising their rule Islamically, Sunni and
Shii clerics wrote books of political theory that were also a refutation
of the relative other branch, shaping Sunnism and Shiism and their
stance towards each other.
This early and middle period of Islam needs to be well-
understood not just because it is when the split happened and when
Sunnism and Shiism became codified, but because in later periods,
from the early modern Empires to Muslim revivalist movements,
many sought to legitimise themselves by referring to it. They are
thus especially relevant not just because this is where the original
split happened, and where Sunnism and Shiism gradually formed
themselves in conversation and competition with each other, but
because later conflicts crystallised around competing visions of the
past.
 1
After the Prophet

According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad was born in Mecca around

570 into the Banu Hashim, a subsection of the tribe of Quraysh.
Since he was an orphan, he grew up in the household of his paternal
uncle, Abu Talib, a chief of the Banu Hashim. In his mid-twenties, he
married an older, wealthy woman, Khadija, with whom he had
several children, of whom the daughters Zaynab, Umm Kulthum,
Ruqqaya, and Fatima survived, leaving him without a male heir.
Around the age of forty, Muhammad received his first revelations,
which kept occurring until his death.1 He then pronounced himself
openly as the Prophet of God and started to convince people around
him to join his cause.
Khadija was the first to believe in the Prophet’s vision, but there
is some disagreement as to who the first male Muslim was, a debate
that is of relevance to our story. In the first biography of the
Prophet’s life by Ibn Ishaq (died around 767) and edited by Ibn
Hisham (died around 833), Ali, the son of his uncle and former
protector Abu Talib, is the first male Muslim, after whom came a
liberated slave of the Prophet, Zayd bin Haritha, and then Abu Bakr.
Given that Ali and Abu Bakr became rivals over Muhammad’s
succession and foundational figures for Sunnism and Shiism, this is
crucial. According to the same biography, Ali was only ten years old
when he became a Muslim. When Abu Talib had fallen into debt,
Muhammad in turn agreed to take Ali into his own family and raise
him. Ali married his daughter, Fatima, hence becoming his son-in-law
as well as being his cousin.2
The bonds between Ali and the Prophet were thus strong. While
the earliest sources cite Ali as the first male Muslim, other sources
claim that Abu Bakr had become a Muslim before Ali. The historian
al-Tabari (839–923), who offers competing narratives in his
monumental History of Prophets and Kings, simply states that ‘there
is a difference of opinion among the early scholars’.3
More partisan Sunni authors tried to resolve this dilemma by
saying that although Ali was indeed the first male convert, he was
also young and the first child to accept Islam, with Zayd bin Haritha
the first freedman and Abu Bakr the first free adult male to accept
Islam. According to this logic, it counted more if one accepted Islam
as an adult male than as a child (or a former slave or a woman).4
It’s critical to make one thing clear: the sources for the early
period of Islam, both for the period of Muhammad’s life and the
immediate aftermath, when the decisive splits happened, are
contested. They were mainly compiled from the eighth and ninth
centuries onwards, so in hindsight and often from confessional or
dynastic viewpoints. There is a tendency in Western academic
scholarship to be critical of the classical accounts of early Islamic
history and of the Muslim sources for it.5
Muslim scholars working within the Islamic tradition do not
necessarily share that scepticism of the sources, at least not those
from within their school (though Sunnis and Shia disagree about
which sources are trustworthy on the early period). Nonetheless,
everyone acknowledges that the early history is key, not just
because it is where the original split happened, but because Muslims
are supposed to structure their life according to the precedents set
by the Prophet and his Companions (for Sunnis), and the Prophet
and the Imams (for Shia). The following account is based on those
sources, even if they reflect the divisions over legitimate authority in
the Islamic community. They say little about social and cultural
history, the subaltern classes and illiterate masses, and women (with
the notable exception of women of the Prophet’s household), and
since they were often written by religious scholars, probably
emphasise doctrinal difference more than ordinary Muslims would
have done.6 But anyone who wants to write about the earliest period
of Islam needs to use them and recent scholarship has attempted to
be source-critical while still trying to utilise them.7
The debate about the first male Muslim after the Prophet is such
a case where the sources would have been written down in the
eighth century, when the rival factions, some of whom would later
be called ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shii’, were coming into being and codifying
their version of the early history of Islam. As these groups disagreed
over whether Abu Bakr or Ali should succeed the Prophet, the
question of who the first male Muslim was became crucial.8
Apart from precedence in Islam, the excellence of the contenders
was a factor. Sunni writers lauded Abu Bakr for his knowledge,
wisdom, and unique qualifications that in the eyes of his supporters
made him a sound choice for the succession. They claimed that Abu
Bakr’s actions were exceptionally worthy because of his advanced
age, and that his knowledge was therefore greater, and he was thus
a better choice as Caliph.9 Proponents of Ali, on the other hand,
would emphasise his spiritual knowledge and his youthfulness.10
In general, even though a small group of people adopted Islam
and became committed Muslims, the people of Mecca and the elders
of the Prophet’s own tribe of Quraysh were initially not receptive to
the call to Islam. Muhammad was protected by his uncle, Abu Talib,
and by his marriage to Khadija, but when both died in 619 his
situation became precarious.11 Muhammad and his earliest
supporters then left to a town that would later be called Medina, in
what came to be known as the hijra, the emigration and marks the
start of the Muslim (hijri) calendar. In Medina, Muhammad was more
successful in establishing himself as a political and spiritual leader.
After fierce battles with the Meccans, the Muslims took Mecca in
630, and much of Mecca and the Quraysh accepted Islam. The
Prophet’s days in Mecca were numbered, though, and as Islamic
historiography tells us he would die in Medina in 632.
 After the Prophet Muhammad’s death, a dispute over his
succession erupted. Most Muslims argued that the Prophet’s
successor should be elected by the community’s elite based on
merit. They would later become the Sunnis. Others—who would
become known as the Shia—believed that Muhammad had
designated his cousin and son-in-law Ali as his successor, and that
henceforth Ali’s offspring should lead. This, in essence, is the origin
of the Sunni–Shia split.
Muhammad’s sons all predeceased him, and upon his death his
closest male relative was Ali. A group of Muslims favoured Ali, and
while Ali is recognised by all Muslims as having been an important
Companion of the Prophet, he was not immediately chosen as his
successor. Instead, other Companions of the Prophet became his
successors (in Arabic khalifa, from which the anglicised term ‘Caliph’
is derived): Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman. They ruled the Muslim
community during the first period of conquests, when Islam spread
from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa, the Levant, Iraq and
Iran, and beyond.
For the Shii view that Ali should have naturally succeeded the
Prophet, speaks the general importance of dynastic succession in the
cultural context of the time.12 The supporters of Abu Bakr and his
successors thought that the Caliph should come from the Quraysh,
the tribe of the Prophet, but not necessarily from the branch that the
Prophet hailed from, the Banu Hashim, and that henceforth the
Quraysh, especially those from Mecca, despite having previously
fought the Prophet, would hold a special and powerful position
amongst Muslims.13
As outlined above, Abu Bakr had been one of the first to adopt
Islam, was one of the most prominent Muslims in the early Meccan
period, and accompanied the Prophet from Mecca to Medina. The
Prophet had also married Abu Bakr’s daughter Aisha, binding the
two families together. Most Sunnis believe that Abu Bakr was elected
at a meeting at Saqifa, while others thought that he was designated
by the Prophet himself.14
 As Caliph, Abu Bakr (11–13/632–634) fought the so-called ridda
wars (or Wars of Apostasy) against dissident tribes that refused to
pay tribute and allegiance to the Muslims after Muhammad’s death
(and by winning them, Abu Bakr established his and the Quraysh’s
authority). Under his reign, Islam spread. But because he was from
the old aristocracy, his election alienated others.15 The later Shia
saw in him a usurper who took power with the help of several
Companions, including his successor, Umar bin al-Khattab.16
According to Sunni tradition, the Prophet’s property was not
supposed to be inherited but spent as charity (there is a saying of
the Prophet narrated by Aisha to that effect). The Shia, on the other
hand, maintain that the Prophet not only designated Ali as his
successor but also left his personal property to him and Fatima, and
their offspring. The Shia hold it against Abu Bakr that he refused
Fatima the oasis of Fadak as inheritance after the death of her
father, which they say had belonged to the Prophet and been
promised to her.17 Abu Bakr sought to follow the precedents set by
the Prophet, but when it came to the Prophet’s family, that aim met
with a problem. During the Prophet’s lifetime they held a special
place in the community, and there were Quranic verses referring to
that special position. In Abu Bakr’s time, however, the political
expediency of a Caliphate led by the Prophet’s Companions, and the
need to maintain the privileged status of the Prophet’s family, started
to clash.18 To avoid confusion, and possibly to prevent Ali or another
challenger from taking over the Caliphate, Abu Bakr chose Umar as
his own successor before his death.19
Umar had also been close to the Prophet, who had married
Umar’s daughter, Hafsa. Under Umar’s Caliphate (13–23/634–644),
the Muslims conquered Iraq, the first Iranian provinces, and Egypt,
solidifying the new polity and sustaining the Arab tribes that had
become the military backbone of the Islamic state. These were
dangerous times and Umar was assassinated in 644 in the mosque
of Medina.20 He had made some concessions to the Banu Hashim,
and gave Ali several of Muhammad’s estates to administer, while
withholding the Fadak oasis mentioned above. He also regularly
consulted with Ali.21
Unlike Abu Bakr, Umar did not appoint his successor, and after
Umar’s death, a consultative assembly (shura) of six convened to
choose the next Caliph (though Umar had apparently chosen the
members of the shura). They were Abd al-Rahman bin Awf, Sa‘d bin
Abi Waqqas, Uthman, Ali, and Zubayr (with the sixth, Talha,
returning to Medina only after the election had been completed). Ali
was a member of the council and a candidate, but lacked support,
and the leaders of the Quraysh backed Uthman. The council chose
Uthman, who would rule for twelve years until his assassination in
656.22 Despite being side-lined, Ali pledged allegiance to Uthman.
Shii authors intensely contest the succession from Umar to Uthman,
while Sunnis defend it.23
As a wealthy member of the Meccan aristocracy, Uthman was an
important early Muslim, and as a sign of his trust the Prophet had
first married his daughter Ruqayya to him, and after she had died
also another of his daughters, Umm Kulthum.24 During the reigns of
Umar and Uthman, tensions within the Islamic community rose to
the surface, between the Arab tribes that had driven the expansion
of Islam, the descendants of the first Muslims that had supported
Muhammad in Mecca and Medina, and the old aristocracy of Mecca
that came under the leadership of the Banu Umayya branch of the
Quraysh. The Umayyads had initially fought against the Prophet
Muhammad and the early Muslims. They then embraced Islam, and
took over the leadership of the community, symbolised by figures
such as Abu Sufyan and his sons Yazid and Muawiya, who
spearheaded the military conquest of Syria and would rule there
henceforth.
Under the Umayyad Uthman, they managed to expand their
power at the expense of the early supporters of Muhammad. A few
years into his reign, members of his family controlled all major
governorships. Opposition to him and this practice emerged in places
such as Egypt and Iraq. In Kufa, on the banks of the Euphrates and
100 miles south of Baghdad, where an encampment for the
conquering Arab troops had been set up, the opposition to Uthman’s
policy of distributing property to his appointees, and to the policy of
his governor, developed into support for his rival, Ali, and turned
Kufa into a bastion of proto-Shii pro-Alid sentiment.25 Endeavours to
reach a peaceful agreement failed. While Ali had previously pledged
allegiance to Uthman, opposition to the Caliph now rallied around
Ali.
Because of their kinship ties, Ali tried to mediate between
Uthman and the opposition. But he was unsuccessful because
Uthman relied on the advice of his Umayyad kin.26 The opposition,
backed by tribal forces and early Companions, as well as Aisha and
Ali, laid siege to his palace in Medina, and after Uthman refused to
accede to their demands, killed him in June 656.27 With Uthman’s
violent death, tensions between the different forces broke out into
the open.28
Now, the circles that had opposed Uthman and the
Quraysh/Umayyads pushed through the election of Ali and, in 656,
to the joy of his supporters, Ali became Caliph. He was not elected
by a shura of the earliest Companions or backed by the Quraysh, the
formal procedure for succession as laid down by Abu Bakr. Instead,
Ali declared that he was the legitimate successor to the Prophet and
gained public recognition for this. While the exact wording of his first
sermon as Caliph is difficult to determine, Shii historiography claims
he rebuked the Muslims for having previously turned away from him
and the Family of the Prophet, the Ahl al-Bayt, and argued that true
religious guidance could only be found through them. This alienated
his enemies, but further bound his followers to him. The irregularity
of his election paved the way for more infighting.29
Ali probably had no hand in the murder of Uthman, yet some of
those who may have been responsible became Ali’s supporters, and
he had to rely on them to secure his rule.30 The supporters of
Uthman claimed that he was the legitimate ruler, and that a new
Caliph should be elected in a free election. While most Muslims,
including what would later be called Sunnis, eventually accepted the
Caliphate of Ali as one of the four Rashidun Caliphates, staunch
Uthman supporters refused to recognise Ali.31 In a clear break with
the reign of Uthman, Ali replaced most governors, thereby
undermining the Umayyads, who had held key governorships.32
Ali moved the capital of the Caliphate to Kufa (in present-day
Iraq) from the Arabian Peninsula, to which it was never to return.
The centre of gravity of Islamic history thus shifted, Kufa remained a
centre of pro-Alid sentiment.33 But Ali faced numerous rebellions and
the years following Uthman’s murder saw the first civil war (fitna) in
Islam.34 A key challenge to his reign was a rebellion by members of
the Quraysh, especially Talha and Zubayr, who claimed the
Caliphate, and who were supported by Aisha, the Prophet’s wife and
daughter of Abu Bakr. Mecca, where prominent Qurayshis went from
Medina, now became their base. Talha, Zubayr, and Aisha had been
key in the opposition to Uthman, but now that they moved against
Ali claimed to avenge Uthman’s death.35 Although these Quraysh
had first reluctantly pledged allegiance to Ali, they then broke their
oath and rebelled against him. In 656, they fought a losing battle
against Ali’s forces, in which many challengers, including Talha and
Zubayr, were killed. Aisha had been present at the battle, sitting on a
camel and pushing the soldiers on (hence it became known as the
‘Battle of the Camel’). After her defeat, she was escorted to
Medina.36 It was the first time a Muslim army faced a Muslim army.
It was not going to be the last. Ali ordered that the opponents
captured in the battle should not be killed or enslaved, as non-
Muslim opponents would have been.37
Opposition did not subside, however. Ali had won that round of
fighting, but the governor of Syria, Muawiya bin Abi Sufyan, a
relative of the assassinated Uthman, emerged as Ali’s most
formidable challenger. Muawiya demanded that Ali hand over the
murderers of Uthman, claiming blood vengeance, and perhaps even
saw Ali as complicit in the murder.38 After an arbitration attempt had
failed, the armies of Muawiya and Ali clashed at the Battle of Siffin
south of Raqqa on the river Euphrates in the summer of 657.
Sensing the victory of Ali’s Iraqi troops in what was a bloody and
prolonged engagement (some chronicles speak of tens of thousands
of troops on both sides), one legend goes, some of Muawiya’s troops
attached religious texts, perhaps copies of the Quran, to their lances,
raising them into the air.39 This had a strong impact on many of Ali’s
troops, who forced him to stop the fighting and seek arbitration with
the enemy. Arbitration was supposed to be carried out by a delegate
from each side at a future date to settle the dispute peacefully, and
the two armies separated and went home. Ali agreed to mediate.
But some of Ali’s soldiers soon concluded that they had sinned in
pushing Ali to agree to arbitration, and now argued that appointing
men as arbitrators was sinful because authority should only rest with
God or his designated representative—in this case, Ali—and they
petitioned Ali to resume the fight against Muawiya. When Ali
refused, they seceded from him and subsequently became known as
those who went out (kharaja min) from the community, as Kharijis,
creating, in effect, the third major branch of Islam besides Sunnism
and Shiism.40
The arbitration process did not lead to an agreement and
tensions with Muawiya resumed. Ali’s participation in the arbitration,
moreover, damaged his reputation.41 With the rise of the Kharijis, he
was now facing opposition from two sides. And while he fought a
war against the Kharijis and killed many of them, it was ultimately a
Khariji who would kill him in 661. After their forceful appearance and
crucial role in the first civil war, the Kharijis would play a more
limited role. One group of those who rejected Ali’s agreement to
negotiate with Muawiya later became known as Ibadis, named after
the founder of their school of jurisprudence, Abdullah Ibn Ibad. Part
of the general movement that rejected Ali’s arbitration, Ibadis in
later periods and to this day object to being labelled as ‘Kharijis’,
largely because of the negative connotation the term has. They
managed to attain political control in parts of North Africa and
Oman, where the Ibadis developed a separate legal school and
established an independent political tradition based on a rotating
leadership amongst leading families, but would be marginalised
elsewhere.42 Overall, the historiography of the first fitna became
highly contentious as later Islamic collective identity defined itself in
relation to it (with the alleged heresy of the Kharijis being one of the
few things on which Sunna and Shia could agree).43
After Ali’s death—by a poisoned sword and while praying in the
Great Mosque at Kufa—the legend goes that his body was buried in
secret by his family and closest associates in Najaf, for fear that his
Umayyad or Khariji enemies could exhume and desecrate it. The
tomb in Najaf was only ‘rediscovered’ two centuries later, and then
soon became a popular pilgrimage location, especially for Shia.
Given Ali’s role in the civil war, and as a critic of the three
preceding Caliphs and the founding figure of the Shia, it took Sunnis
a while to accord Ali similar status to his caliphal predecessors. In
fact, in the first centuries of Islam, there were anti-Ali sentiments
across what would become Sunnism, although these anti-Ali
positions gradually faded out of mainstream Sunnism, once the
notion of the four Rashidun Caliphs was firmly established. Shia
called those that actively opposed Ali and the subsequent Shii
Imams Nasibis (pl. Nawasib).44
As the shrine of Ali grew in importance, attracting more visitors
and scholars, and eventually turning Najaf into a major centre of
Shiism, Sunni authors also cast doubt on the location of Ali’s shrine
to undermine Shiism more generally. Some even claimed that the
tomb contains the remains of a viciously anti-Shii figure and that
Shia are visiting a figure they despise.45 Several other places,
including a shrine in Afghanistan (Mazar-i-Sharif/Balkh), were put
forward as burial sites of Ali.46 Another Sunni theory holds that he
was interred in the governor’s palace in Kufa, or that he was
transported to Medina and buried near his wife Fatima’s grave.47
Some took a middle ground. In a book on Ali’s life and death, for
example, the Sunni scholar Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 894) included many
Shii sources, perhaps in part because without them a book on Ali
would not have been complete.48 And Shii authors defended the
authenticity of the Ali shrine in Najaf.49
 The so-called party of Ali, the Shia, would mourn the death of Ali
and consider his and Fatima’s sons and descendants, the Ahl al-Bayt,
the legitimate leaders of the Muslim community. Shia think that
divine knowledge was handed down via Muhammad to Ali and then
to his offspring, the Alids, an anglicised version of the Arabic term
Alawi, especially to those men they revere as Imams.50 Shia would
disagree amongst themselves about the precise number and lineage
of those Imams. But they agree that most of them were persecuted
and even killed on the orders of Sunni Caliphs, and they also think
that the Prophet and the Imams are infallible.51
Sunnis would by and large pledge allegiance to the Umayyad
Caliphs based in Damascus, who claimed to be the official
successors to the Rashidun Caliphs. Some Sunni authors argued that
the order of succession meant that Abu Bakr was the worthiest, and
Ali the least (of the four Rashidun Caliphs), as Ali had been criticised
especially in Umayyad historiography. But eventually, the belief in
the justness of the Rashidun Caliphs, including Ali, became central to
Sunnism.52 If it is with Ali that the original split takes shape, he is
also a unifying figure. For Ali pledged, however reluctantly,
allegiance to the first three Caliphs accepted by Sunnis, and
refrained from criticising Abu Bakr and Umar (while criticising
Uthman primarily during the latter part of his reign, when Sunnis are
also critical of him).53 That symbolism of Ali can be seen in the
appropriation by of Ali’s sword, the Dhu l-Faqar. The origin of the
sword is disputed. According to the biographical literature, it
belonged to a Meccan who was killed in a fight against the Muslims
at the Battle of Badr in 624. Thereafter, it is believed to have been
one of the swords of the Prophet, who gave it to Ali during the
Battle of Uhud of the same year.54 Shia see this as yet another sign
that the Prophet had designated Ali as his heir, and Sunnis also
believe that the sword then belonged to Ali. Upon his death, it was
handed over to his sons Hasan and Hussain, but after Hussain’s
death at Karbala in 680 there are conflicting stories. Subsequent
Sunni and Shii rulers sought to gain possession of the sword, which
they hoped would imbue them with legitimacy.55
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 SHUHBA, BATHS AND ROMAN PAVEMENT
Our guide took us straight to the house of the sheikh, who advanced
to meet us with profuse expressions of welcome. Dismounting in the
street, we followed him at his invitation. With difficulty we made our
way dry-shod over a huge pool of rain-water which had collected in
front of the arched doorway, through which we entered a wide
courtyard. To the left stood a rickety erection, in the construction of
which some of the finest materials from the old buildings had been
employed. A broad stairway of large lava blocks led up to it. A roof of
branches and brushwood rested upon gracefully hewn marble pillars,
which were tied together at the top by a rude architrave. These in
turn were supported upon beautiful capitals, turned upside down,
and on carved blocks of stone. The back wall was of the usual mud-
built character, and the pavement was rough in the extreme. A diwân
round three sides doubtless provided sitting accommodation for the
sheikh and his friends in fine weather. Nothing could better mark the
low level of the present inhabitants than their pride in such a bit of ill-
fitting, incongruous patchwork as this, in proximity to the magnificent
remains of a past civilisation.
A strange, rambling old house it was into which we entered by a
narrow winding passage from the left corner of the courtyard. First
we found ourselves in a series of great gloomy apartments
communicating with each other in a line east and west; then, turning
to the right, we scrambled through a doorway, the broken threshold
of which was some feet above the level of the floor; and, pushing
forward, we entered a second courtyard, much smaller than the first,
with rooms all round, on one side two stories high. Some remains of
ancient ornamentation were still visible on the walls, and the
pavement of the yard was evidently from of old. Here were our
quarters for the night, the gentlemen having two little rooms, one of
which served as dining-room, on one side, and the ladies a larger
room on the other. The stair leading up to the gentlemen’s
apartments had been failing for centuries, and now was nigh unto
falling; but, observing great caution, we all escaped without accident.
Our host for this night formed a contrast in every respect to the
dignified and magnanimous chief of Damet el-ʿAliâ. A short, thick-set
man, with stubbly white beard, very red nose, and puffy cheeks, he
bustled about with the air of a man who does a very great favour
indeed. With evident pride he displayed his rooms, and fished for
compliments, suggesting that they were beautiful and clean, mithl
lokanda—“like a hotel.” Ideas of cleanliness differ, but we avoided
controversy by gently turning the conversation to the subject of our
entertainment This we were allowed to provide for ourselves, even to
the coffee, of which he seemed glad to drink a share. He was one of
the less noble sort; and, his people taking their cue doubtless from
their chief, our servants found it difficult to secure all necessaries at
reasonable prices. But as the night closed darkly around us, and the
mountains were alternately lit up by sheets of blinding lightning and
filled with loud rolling thunder, while the rain fell in torrents, and the
wind whistled eerily among the ruins, we were thankful, even with all
its drawbacks, to be under such substantial shelter. If, for reasons
which need not be specified, we slept but little, we could all the more
realise our good fortune, in that, on these high, open uplands, we
were not exposed to the full fury of the tempest.
The morning broke clear and beautiful, and we were out betimes to
make a rapid survey of the old remains. A few paces north of the
chief’s house we struck the main street running east and west. It
seems just possible, from the remains of bases here and there, that
this may once have been a pillared street like that at Jerash, so
striking even in its desolation; or that at Gadara, where the columns
lie prone and broken along the whole length. Following this street
eastward, it sinks rapidly, and passes under a long archway, which
might almost be called a tunnel, strongly built of dressed basalt. This
doubtless formed the substruction of some important public building.
A blacksmith has his workshop in one of the deep cellars in the side
of the archway, and his blazing fire sends cheerful gleams through
the gloom. Beyond this archway eastward lie all the ruins possessing
special interest for the visitor. To the south of the road stands the
great amphitheatre. Carefully built of massive stones, the walls and
tiers of seats are still almost entire. It is the best preserved of all
such structures to be seen east of the Jordan, and it appears to have
been one of the largest. Several poor Druze families were in
possession of the lower parts of the building when we visited it, and
very comfortable houses they made—superior certainly to any of the
modern erections around.
We visited in succession a great sunk octagonal building, as to the
use of which we could make no satisfactory guess; the ruins of
several temples, one of which must have been of no ordinary
splendour; and the remains of the tetrapylon which once graced the
crossing of the two main streets. Now only three of the original four
massive bases are to be seen, and the arches have entirely
disappeared. We scrambled over rickety walls and scattered stones,
and crawled into noisome crypts in search of sculpture and
inscription. We saw enough to persuade us that a rich harvest may
be gathered here by the patient explorer. Of the ancient baths which
stood in the south-eastern quarter not far from this crossing, very
large portions are still in a good state of preservation, and form,
perhaps, the most interesting part of all the ruins.
The material employed in their construction, like that of all the
buildings in the city, is basalt, and in parts the appearance is very
fine; but no adequate idea of their original splendour can now be
formed. The rows of gaping holes in the walls tell of the lining of
marble with which they were once adorned. The destruction of this
was doubtless dictated by the desire to possess the iron fastenings
by which the marble slabs were held in position, and the lead by
which these were fixed into the walls—a temptation which the
cupidity of the Arabs would make it extremely difficult for them to
resist The water channels are skilfully built into the walls, and from
the points at which they project we may guess where the baths were
placed; but the floors are now entirely heaped over with ruins. The
walls are still over thirty feet in height, and of great strength. Most
interesting of all, in connection with the baths, is the old aqueduct, by
which the water was conducted across the low valley to the eastward
from the hills beyond. Several of the substantial arches are still
standing, and the line can be traced away towards the eastern
uplands. Eleven or twelve miles was the water brought to minister to
the comfort of the splendid, luxury-loving Roman.
These and other similarly great structures we owe to the ancients’
ignorance of the principles of hydrostatics. Only when we gaze upon
such vast undertakings, where the channel was raised by artificial
means, so that the water might flow along a regularly inclined plane,
do we fully realise what an immense saving of labour the discovery
of these simple principles has proved to the modern world.
The ancients appear to have spent their strength in the erection of
public buildings. The houses of the common people seem to have
had nothing special about them. Built of the ordinary black basaltic
stone which abounds in the neighbourhood, they have long since
gone to ruin, probably in the shocks of earthquakes. West of the
town stand two beautifully formed conical hills. Some of our party
who ascended them found them to be extinct volcanoes—one
having a circular, cup-like crater in the top. Seen from a distance,
these hills bear a striking resemblance to heaps of grain on a great
threshing-floor. This resemblance has not escaped the sharp eyes of
the imaginative Arabs, who call them “the grain-heaps of Pharaoh.”
Local tradition associates them with the name of a notable oppressor
of the people, the builder of the Qanâtîr Firʿaun (“the arches of
Pharaoh”), the great aqueduct which stretches from the
neighbourhood of Nowa past Derʿat to Gadara. Having exhausted
the people with taxes for the completion of this work, he finally
seized all the grain in the land and stored it here, ready for his own
purposes. He sent a gigantic camel to fetch it, and just as the
unwieldy animal drew near, the wrath of God was kindled against
Pharaoh, and a bolt from the clouds blasted grain and camel
together, leaving two blackened heaps as monuments of the
impotence of all earthly tyrants before the King of heaven.
This town is believed by many to represent the ancient Philippopolis.
True it is that “Philip the Arabian,” a native of this region, having
been elected emperor by the army in Syria about the middle of the
third century—244-249 a.d.—founded a city in his native country,
and adorned it in Roman fashion. But so little is known with certainty
on the subject, that almost any considerable site in Haurân may
claim the honour, if honour it be. The modern name of Shuhba is
said to be derived from the noble Moslem family of Shehâb, who in
the early years of the Mohammedan era came northward from
Arabia Felix, and in their wanderings, before settling in Mount
Lebanon, made this city a temporary home. Relatives of the prophet
of Arabia, they received distinguished honour, and assumed a
leading part in the affairs of the Lebanon. The name of Emîr Beshîr
Shehâb was well known in Europe in the earlier half of the
nineteenth century. This prince of all the Lebanon fell in the year
1840; and the family, already shorn of much of its glory, went finally
down amid the bloody revolutions of 1860.
There is a prevailing belief among the uninstructed in all parts of the
country that the Franj—the name given to all Westerns—are literally
loaded with gold. To this belief we owed a somewhat unpleasant
experience. The avaricious old sheikh took counsel with a faithless
one among our attendants, who evidently wished to smooth the road
for his own return by satisfying the cupidity of the natives at our
expense. He advised the sheikh to demand a most outrageous sum
for our entertainment, in which demand the said faithless one should
support him. The arrangement was at once agreed upon. Meantime
a second attendant, who bore no love to the former, having
overheard the plot, revealed the whole. We decided the amount and
manner of payment, taking care that there should be no reasonable
ground of complaint. Finding himself detected, the sheikh’s
accomplice ignobly forsook him. When the money was put into his
hand, with expressions of thanks for shelter afforded, the old man
could not conceal his surprise, and it was some time ere he
recovered sufficiently to hint that the sum was small. Just before we
started, a few piastres extra were added, to save what little of dignity
he possessed. He, as well as we, wished everything done in secret,
knowing well that a report of his mean conduct spreading among his
brother sheikhs in Jebel ed-Druze would prove fatal to his reputation,
especially as Englîze were in the question. This was the only display
of meanness or stinginess we met with east of Jordan; and for even
this our own servant was chiefly to blame.
 CHAPTER V
Ride to Kanawât (Kenath)—Impressive situation and
remains—Place-names in Palestine—Israelites and Arabs
—Education—A charming ride through mountain glades—
Suweida.
We left the city by the southern, the only double gate the city
boasted, as it is still the best preserved. Here also the city wall is
seen in something like its original proportions. Our way led straight
southwards from the gate, along a track lined on either side with
fallen and broken columns, which showed that the splendour of the
old city had been by no means confined within the walls. A large pool
had formed in the hollow to the right during winter, and, replenished
by the previous night’s rain, afforded refreshment to the horses ere
they faced the steep hill before them. By a zigzag path we soon
ascended to a considerable height, finding far more various
vegetation than we had thought possible.
Riding thus along the western slopes of the mountain, a wonderful
panorama spread out before us: Shuhba, which we had just left,
black and desolate-looking on its blasted hill; the whole extent of
Haurân, el-Lejâʾ, Jaulân, and Gilead; Jebel esh-Sheikh, throwing
high his gleaming shoulders in the north-west; while once again we
could see the Safed hills and the uplands of Lower Galilee, with
Tabor’s rounded cone distinctly visible above his fellows. We could
almost trace all our wanderings from the point where we entered the
Haurân, through the scorched fields of el-Lejâʾ, on to the mountain
over which we were passing. And here it was impossible to avoid
noting once more the dark spots over the far-stretching plains,
marking the positions of ancient towns now waste and ruined. To the
traveller in this country, almost fabulously rich in agricultural wealth,
the phrase “a land of ruins” ever and anon returns like the refrain of
some sad song. A lower road from Shuhba leads by way of Suleim
and ʿAtyl, each with ruins of interest—the former of a temple,
subsequently a Christian church; and the latter of two temples. But it
was much longer, and we feared the hollows would be heavy from
the rain; and wishing to have as much time as possible in Kanawât,
we took the way across the mountain. The immediate surroundings
were dull, but descending a little, and turning a spur of the hill, a
scene of surpassing beauty met our eyes. The valley below opened
into a fair plain, embosomed among the mountains, where teams of
oxen, guided by peasant Druzes, in their white turbans and
tricoloured coats, drew furrows in the soft soil with wooden ploughs,
contrasting picturesquely with the brown and green of the
surrounding slopes. The southern edge of the plain is washed by a
little stream; beyond it the rising ground was covered with glancing
foliage, over which rose the tops of tall columns. Eastward the valley
narrowed, and the stream dashing down a precipice many feet high,
formed a delightful waterfall, on either side of which were gathered
the ruins of Kanawât. The mountains, grey in the changing light,
formed a pleasing background. Just as we swept round in full view, a
light shower drifted down the valley. The sun, striking through the
rain on glistening foliage, white waterfall, and stately ruins on the
brow of the hill, transformed the whole into a vision of fairyland. It
seemed as if the stream of time were suddenly turned back, and the
broken, hoary city on the height smiled again in the beauty and
splendour of her youth. So complete was the illusion, that the
passage of warriors long dead, with the kingly form of Herod in their
midst, hotly pursued by the wild Arabians, would have seemed so
natural as hardly to excite surprise.
We crossed the plain, waded the stream, and climbed the slope
towards the city. Leaving the ruins of a fine temple crowning a leafy
knoll, to the right, we pushed on through thickets of ground oak and
thorn, a strong prickly network of brambles covering all the
undergrowth. The lower part of the town presents nothing distinctive.
It is only partially inhabited by a colony of Druzes. Many of the empty
houses are quite perfect, stone doors and windows in position, and
swinging as easily as they did to the hands of their old possessors.
Going as far as we dared along the edge of the cliff, over which this
part of the town seems to impend, we obtained a fine view of the
gorge into which the waterfall descends, and also of the picturesque
old mill by which the water-power is utilised for the benefit of the
inhabitants. Turning cautiously, we retraced our steps, and entered
the street leading to the sheikh’s house. As he was absent we could
not pay him our respects. An easy ascent leads to the upper town,
where, in open spaces, all the great buildings were gathered. We
crossed the broken remains of a fine old aqueduct, just above the
waterfall, beside the ruins of a gigantic wall; and climbing over
shapeless heaps of stones, many of them beautifully cut and carved,
we entered the largest of all the structures that tell of glories long
waxed dim. It is variously called by the natives es-Seraiah—“the
Palace,” and Makâm Ayyûb—“the place of Job.” Thus, on either side
of the great plain, on which in the far past, as tradition hath it, his
flocks browsed and his husbandmen gathered the golden harvests, a
spot is consecrated to the patriarch’s memory.
 KANAWÂT, RUINS OF TEMPLE
The Seraiah is a group of massive buildings, adorned with
colonnades and artistic sculptures. Around a doorway still almost
entire, opening on a wide paved space, are beautifully carved
bunches of grapes, leaves, and flowers. On the lintel of a door
leading from one part to another, a cross is cut in the stone,
indicating the presence of Christians at some period, while one of
the halls has evidently been used as a church. These apartments
are of spacious dimensions, the smallest of the three measuring
eighty feet by seventy. Most likely they were originally dedicated to
heathen gods. What information as to the ancient city and its noble
buildings may be buried under the great piles of debris no one can
say; but few places, I should think, on either side of Jordan would
better repay the excavator’s toil.
Our cloth was spread on the stump of a fallen column, in the
innermost shrine. Sitting around on huge blocks, finding shelter from
the sun, we enjoyed our mid-day meal. Troops of kindly Druzes
gathered about, ready to bring leban, cheese, milk, bread, or
whatever viands were at their command. The horses, having been
refreshed from the brook, seemed to appreciate the cool shade of
the middle chamber, haltered to the stately columns.
The remains of Kanawât might well engage attention for as many
days as we had hours to spend. On the opposite bank of the deep
valley is a small theatre almost wholly cut out of the solid rock, about
sixty feet in diameter, with a cistern in the centre of the area. A
Greek inscription intimates that it was built by Marcus Lysias,
probably a wealthy Roman officer, for the delectation of the
inhabitants of Canatha. A little higher up stands a temple of modest
proportions, and still further eastward a large tower, resting on
massive substructions, evidently of high antiquity. This is
approached by steps hewn in the rock. Close by is a lofty round
tower, probably sepulchral. Just visible over the oak thickets above
us on our way to Suweida, we saw several similar towers. If we
cannot fix their date, it is clear at least that they belong to a time in
the far past. Of the great reservoirs, whose arched roofs have in
many places been broken through, we could make no minute
inspection. They lie between the Seraiah and the remains of a noble
temple, of which the thick side walls are standing, while in front a few
columns of splendid proportions rise from a huge confused mass of
great stones. It was perilous climbing, many of the blocks being
ready to fall; but the view from the top justified the risk and toil. The
commanding situation of the ancient city is seen to advantage. On a
gentle slope of the mountain, overlooking at no great distance the
wide plain, then as populous as it is desolate to-day, with plentiful
natural supplies of water, rich soil, and thick embowering forests, it
was just such a spot as the splendour-loving Herod might well select
for lavish adornment. Traces of a hippodrome are found close to this
temple, and several of the gardens cultivated by Druzes are
surrounded partly by old walls and partly by new walls of old
materials. The grouping together of so many noble buildings, within
so small space, the graceful shafts of beautiful columns rising in
clusters here and there, reminded one of Athens; but the dark stones
lacked the dazzling effect of the white marbles on the Acropolis.
The name Kanawât probably points to that the city bore ere it fell into
the hands of the conquering Israelites, when it was called Nobah—a
name of which there is now no trace. Before the days of Christ the
old name had reasserted itself, and Josephus calls it Canatha—a
very slight change from the ancient Kenath. The identity of Kanawât
with Canatha is certain. It is interesting to observe, all over Palestine,
this reappearance of ancient names, and the practical obliteration of
those imposed by temporary rulers. The present Beisân is clearly a
modification of the old Bethshean, Scythopolis being forgotten.
Banias is simply the Arabic form of the Greek Panias, the Arabs
having no b; Cæsarea-Philippi is known only to strangers. Beitîn is
evidently another case, representing the ancient Bethaven; while
Bethel is locally unknown. It would be interesting further to inquire
how the characters of the trans-Jordanic tribes affected the
nomenclature of the land. They were essentially a pastoral people.
This tended to cut them off from the other tribes. They never took
kindly to the agricultural life prevalent on the west of Jordan. Their
nomadic habits would leave the captured cities more or less open for
the return of their inhabitants from the fastnesses to which they had
been driven; and of course they would bring the old names with
them. Thus Nobah and Bashanhavoth-Jair are names to be found
only in the Bible records.
The remarkable facial likeness to the Jews found among the people
east of the Jordan leads one to wonder if there is not a closer
relationship than that of cousinship between the two races—if, in
short, the eastern tribes did not in the end mingle freely with their
nomadic neighbours, and thus become gradually alienated in
sympathy from the people and religion of Israel, as they were
already separated from them by the mighty gorge of Jordan. It was
this very calamity the prophetic foresight of their fathers sought to
obviate, when they erected the gigantic altar of witness “in the
forefront of the land of Canaan, in the region about Jordan, on the
side that pertaineth to the children of Israel.” It should be an altar of
witness to succeeding generations of the unity of the people, lest the
children of the tribes westward should be tempted at any time to say,
“What have ye to do with the Lord, the God of Israel? For the Lord
hath made a border between us and you.” The real danger lay in
another direction. Thus there was a certain fitness in the fact that
these eastward tribes were the first to bear the brunt of the great
invasions from the north by which Israel was scourged.
 KANAWÂT, SCULPTURED DOORWAY IN TEMPLE
A Druze villager who attached himself to our company proved a
pleasant and chatty companion. Bright eyes looked out from under
his spotless turban; black whiskers and shining white teeth combined
with a frank, open countenance to prepossess us in his favour. He
said he had been teacher in a school which the Englîze had
supported for some time in the village. By way of corroboration he
aired a few words of English picked up from his superior. Very
strangely they sounded from his lips, without any connection, and
seemingly so out of place amid these surroundings. His
acquaintance with English was like that of a Syrian gentleman friend
of mine, who occasionally in company announces that he knows
English. “What,” he will ask, “is English for Narghîleh?” And without
waiting for reply, exclaims, “Hubble-Bubble!” laughing heartily at his
own joke.
The school had been summarily closed by the authority of the
Government, to the sorrow of the villagers, who were beginning to
appreciate the advantage of a rudimentary education. There is a
great field for missionary enterprise—medical by preference—in all
this region. The missionary’s efforts would find assistance in the
generous instincts of the people themselves. They are yet
uncorrupted by the unhappy influences associated with the passage
of the great travelling public. These are often, unfortunately, all of
civilisation known to the untutored inhabitants; and the barriers thus
raised against the missionary and his work can be fully appreciated
only by those who have had them to face.
Our cheery companion waited until we were all mounted, then led
the way, by many tortuous windings, through the old town, to an
opening which had once been a gate, on the road to Suweida. Few
traces are left of the ancient Roman road, and soon we were on a
track of the usual kind, very soft in parts, from the recent rains. We
passed between fruitful vineyards and cultivated patches, where the
white turbans of the vine-dressers moved to and fro among the
green with pleasing effect. Our ride that afternoon along the hillsides,
through oak and thorn thickets, the green interspaces sprinkled with
flowers, openings in the foliage affording glimpses of the wonderful
plains of Bashan, was the most agreeable by far of all we enjoyed in
Haurân. The freshness of the leaf, the music of the birds, and above
all, the cool breeze that met us, almost persuaded us that the Orient
was but a dream, and that we were traversing an upland in Bonnie
Scotland.
Through a break in the forest we descried our tents, pitched on the
green sward, and ready for our reception, beside a curious-looking
block of masonry. Then sweeping round into the open, we obtained
our first view of Suweida, lying darkly on the farther bank of a little
ravine, by which it was separated from our camping-ground. The
roofs were alive with men straining their eyes in our direction. Our
advent clearly caused no small stir in that remote town. Arriving at
our tents, we found a large company assembled to survey us. They
watched all our movements with an amused curiosity, like that of
children in a menagerie. We were in time to witness the sunset, and
in the calm cool air were tempted to watch how long he took to
disappear, from the instant when his under rim touched the horizon.
We looked earnestly, and seemed relieved when at last he vanished.
Our observers, I am sure, entertained a shrewd suspicion that some
remnants of sun-worship still lingered among these curious
westerns. Little thought they how our hearts followed the departing
beams to the land where, in the slant rays of the longer evening,
dear ones sat musing, drawing vague pictures of regions famed in
sacred story, and praying the Father of all, the light of whose eye
fades not from earth like the passing day, to guard the wanderers
from peril.
 CHAPTER VI
Healing the sick—A strange monument—Telegraph and post
in Haurân—Cruel kindness—The Ruins of Suweida—
Turkish methods of rule—ʿIry—Sheyûkh ed-Druze—
Jephthah’s burial—Enterprise of Ismaʾîl el-ʿAtrash.
Here, as at every point touched in our journey, we had ample
evidence of the prevalence of sickness and suffering, and of the
crying necessity for competent medical aid. The weak and diseased
are a prey to every travelling quack, and they bore in their bodies
only too convincing proof of their simple-hearted confidence in men
who professed to be able to relieve them. Ruined eyes and maimed
limbs told only too plainly what havoc unscrupulous men work
among these trustful people. The quack hopes to pass but once in
any given way, and cares but little for the results of his operations if
only he make present gain. The name of the good doctor wrought
like magic. Almost before we could realise it the camp was
surrounded by patients; a motley gathering they were—Moslem,
Druze, and Christian; men, women, and children, of all ages, clad in
richly varied costumes; they came forward, one by one, to tell of their
sufferings, and receive what help was possible. Not unpleasantly the
time passed, examining antique coins, making cautious purchases,
and engaging the more intelligent in conversation about their town
and district, until the cheerful voice of the dinner-bell summoned us
within.
With the morning we were able to see the strange tower under
whose shadow we had slept. It is reputed one of the oldest
monuments in the country. According to inscriptions, Greek on one
side and Palmyrene on another, it was built by one Odainatus to the
memory of his wife Chamrate. The building is over thirty feet square,
and rests on a base, to which a couple of steps lead up. Between the
Doric pilasters that adorn the sides, the monument is ornamented,
as became the tomb of a soldier’s wife, with emblems, in relief, of
military accoutrements. The top of the monument is now a heap of
confused blocks, while many great stones, rolled down, lie in utter
disorder to the south-west. The name Debusîyeh, by which it is
known among the natives—“the pin-shaped”—shows that it was,
probably at no remote period, finished off in a pyramid. The evil that
has befallen it may be due to some thought that buried treasure
might be found there. In these circumstances no structure would be
safe from the destroying hands of the Arabs. It has been thought that
the monument dates from not later than the first century of our era,
and that therefore this Odainatus was not the warrior husband of the
famous Zenobia, ruler of Palmyra. The Odainatus known to history
was in these parts; and there is nothing impossible in the supposition
that the glories of the campaign may have been dimmed for the
chivalrous soldier by the death of his sweet companion, ere the star
of Zenobia arose in the heaven of his love. This would bring the date
down past the middle of the third century. The conjecture is so far
supported by the presence of the inscription in Palmyrene. Withal it
is the most interesting of all the remains of the past now to be seen
in Suweida and its neighbourhood.
Descending the steep bank, we crossed by an ancient bridge the
little stream that flows in the bottom of the ravine. With the advance
of summer this stream soon vanishes, and the town becomes
entirely dependent for water supply on reservoir and cistern. At the
gate of the town we found a little guide who conducted us to the
post-office. The quarters occupied as imperial post and telegraph
office would horrify the humblest of our Western officials. We
scrambled over several dunghills and broken walls, and but for the
telegraph wires it would have been impossible to distinguish the
“office” from a number of rude cattle-shelters around. The maʾmûr,
or official in charge, was all politeness and courtesy. Learning that a
mail was about to be despatched to the north, we set about writing
pencil-notes to our friends, while the maʾmûr, business being slack,
engaged in a conversation by telegraph with his brother operator in
Damascus, securing for us information on several points of
importance. The amount of telegraphing thus done for the friends of
the maʾmûrîn in Syria would not be readily credited in the West. A
message is sent to bring one to the office, when, if nothing special is
on hand, he may hold a long conversation on any subject with his
friend or man of business at a distance. These maʾmûrîn in Syria are
almost all Christians, Moslems possessing the requisite
qualifications in linguistic attainments and intelligence being seldom
available. This speaks volumes for the system of education
inaugurated and carried on chiefly by the missionaries, of which as
yet few Moslems have taken advantage. The position of clerk in very
many of the various Government departments is also occupied by
Christians. Moslems in the country are, however, slowly awakening
to realise the advantages of education, and are seeking in greater
numbers than ever to avail themselves of opportunities hitherto
despised.
The Druze sheikh of the town, who was also kaim makâm, or
lieutenant-governor of the district, we found in his own house near
the top of the quarter at present inhabited. He was in sore distress
over the apparently hopeless illness of his son, a lad of some twenty
summers, who sat suffering among his friends. The room was
crowded in every part by relatives and friends, who had come from
far and near to show their sympathy in the hour of trial. Anything
more completely opposed to all humane and civilised ideas of the
conditions that ought to prevail in a sick-room it is impossible to
imagine. The air was foul with many breaths, and laden with the
fumes of tobacco, in which all seemed to indulge, conversation being
carried on in manner and tone suggestive of the public market; the
dying youth, meanwhile, utterly wearied of the noise and confusion,
with difficulty attracted attention to have his few wants supplied. It
must not be thought that this conduct was the result of exceptional
thoughtlessness on the part of the sheikh’s sympathisers. It was all
done in obedience to custom, whose requirements are far more
stringent than those of written law in this country. The man whose
sick-room is not crowded with hosts of sympathising friends is held in
but little respect. To refrain from mingling with the crowd and adding
a quota to the hubbub is to prove lack of all interest in the case. So
firmly is the custom rooted, that the energetic efforts of enlightened
medical men in many parts have as yet produced almost no
appreciable result. We long for quiet in our time of trial, and true
friends jealously guard against intrusion upon our grief. Here trial
and sorrow must alike be borne practically in presence of the public.
When death enters a household the place is literally taken
possession of by so-called sympathising friends; and their well-
meant endeavours to divert the thoughts of the mourners from their
loss must nearly always have the effect of deepening the woe they
are intended to alleviate.
The sheikh’s house, less squalid perhaps than most in the town, was
built around a paved courtyard, entered from the street by an
imposing doorway. One large room had also a door opening upon
the street, approached by a flight of steps. Here we were entertained
with coffee. As a Government official who had received instructions
from his superiors to receive the travellers with all courtesy, the
sheikh bore himself with no little dignity; and only the haste of our
departure prevented his making a larger display of hospitality. The
diwân of the sheikh stands on the opposite side of the street a little
lower down, on the site of an ancient temple. Many of the columns
which once surrounded the latter are standing still, but serve only to
cast a dreary air of departed glory over the place. A few paces
farther down, the street is spanned by a triumphal arch, of Roman
workmanship. This street is paved throughout. We visited, in rapid
succession, the remains of a church, of a mosque, and of a building
called by the natives el-Mehkemeh—“the court of justice.” All of
these are in a completely ruinous condition. Suweida offers a rich
field for inscription-seekers. Only he who would make thorough work
must be prepared for risks and unpleasantnesses,—in hanging, for
example, over the top of a rickety doorway to read an inscription
placed upside down, or in creeping into holes and cellars where
one’s attention is almost entirely absorbed in the important but well-
nigh impossible process of breathing. Here are also the remains of a
nymphaeum and aqueduct dating from the time of Trajan. Two large
reservoirs afford the chief supply of water, there being no fountains
in or near the town. These are built round with solid masonry, and
the water is reached by means of stone stairs. When the summer is
well advanced, it must require a stout heart and no little usage to
enable one to conquer a natural repugnance to the unwholesome
liquid collected in these reservoirs. I imagine that the memory of the
oldest man does not carry him back to the time when they were last