Old Socio-Political Practices and New Age Rules

They had no system of dynastic rule, since they always needed the best man available as their chief. But the fitnah had shown the dangers of a disputed succession. It would be wrong to think of the Umayyads as "secular" rulers. Muawiyyah was a religious man and a devout Muslim, according to the prevailing notion of Islam. He was devoted to the sanctity of Jerusalem, the first Muslim qiblah and the home of so many of the great prophets of the past. He worked hard to maintain the unity of the ummah. His rule was based on the Quranic insistence that all Muslims were brothers and must not fight one another. He accorded the dhimmis religious freedom and personal rights on the basis of Quranic teaching. But the experience of the fitnah had convinced some Muslims, such as the Kharajites, that Islam should mean more than this, in both the public and the private domain.

There was, therefore, a potential conflict between the needs of the agrarian state and Islam, and this became tragically clear after Muawiyyah's death. He had already realized that he must depart from Arab traditions in order to secure the succession, and before he died he arranged the accession of his son, Yazid I(680-83). But there was an immediate outcry.

In Kufah, loyal Alids called for the rule of Ali's second son, Husain, who set out from Medina to Iraq with a small band of followers, together with their wives and children. In the meantime, the Kufans had been intimidated by the local Umayyad governor and withdrew their support. Husain refused to surrender, however, convinced that the sight of the Prophet's family on the march in quest for true Islamic values would remind the ummah of its prime duty.

On the plain of Kerbala, just outside Kufah, he and his followers were surrounded by the Umayyad troops and massacred. Husain was the last to die, holding his infant son in his arms. All Muslims lament this tragic death of the Prophet's grandson, but Husain's fate focused the attention of those who regarded themselves as the Shiah i-Ali even more intensely on the Prophet's descendants. Like the murder of Ali, the Kerbala tragedy became a symbol for Shii Muslims of the chronic injustice that seems to pervade human life; it also seemed to show the impossibility of integrating the religious imperative in the harsh world of politics, which seemed murderously antagonistic to it.

The Unity of Islamic Empire