Early Development of Islam After Muhummad

The Four "Rightly Guided" Caliphs

In the years immediately following the death of Muhammad in 632, the Muslim community confronted a question that had not been explicitly settled during his lifetime: who could exercise authority once prophetic leadership had come to an end. The Arabic term that came to designate this role, khalīfa, is short for khalīfat rasūl Allāh, “successor to the Messenger of God”. From the outset, however, this succession was understood not as a continuation of prophecy, but as the assumption of responsibility for leading the community in worship, law, and collective defence.

The first four holders of this office later came to be known as the "Rightly Guided" Caliphs (Abu Bakr, 632 - 634 A.D.; 'Umar 634 - 644 A.D.; Uthman 644 - 656 A.D.; Ali (656 - 661 A.D.), a retrospective title distinguishing them from the dynastic rulers who followed. The first, Abu Bakr, was chosen through a pledge of allegiance offered by leading members of the community shortly after Muhammad’s death. Abu Bakr was closely associated with the Prophet: a long-standing companion, father of ʿĀʾishah, one of Muhammad’s wives, and the only person said to have accompanied him during the Hijrah from Mecca to Medina. His short caliphate was dominated by efforts to reassert Muslim authority across Arabia in the so-called Ridda wars, conflicts that clarified that allegiance was owed not merely to the person of Muhammad, but to the community and its recognised leader.

Abu Bakr nominated Umar ibn al-Khattab as his successor, establishing a precedent for designation rather than hereditary inheritance. Umar’s reign saw dramatic territorial expansion, including the capture of Jerusalem in 638 and the incorporation of Syria, parts of Egypt, and Mesopotamia into Muslim rule. Later tradition emphasises both his administrative rigour and his restraint: non-Muslim populations were generally not compelled to convert, though converts were exempt from certain taxes. Umar’s assassination in 644 by a non-Arab captive brought this period of consolidation to an abrupt close and once again raised the question of legitimate succession.

Unlike Abu Bakr, Umar did not nominate a single successor, but entrusted the choice to a small council. Their deliberations resulted in the selection of Uthman ibn Affan, a member of the influential Umayyad clan and the husband of two of Muhammad’s daughters. Uthman’s caliphate is closely associated with the standardisation of the Qurʾānic text, an effort intended to preserve unity as Islam spread beyond Arabia. At the same time, his reliance on relatives for key administrative posts provoked accusations of nepotism, particularly in the provincial garrison towns. Discontent culminated in his siege and murder in Medina in 656, an act that deeply shocked the community and shattered any lingering assumption that internal violence could be avoided.

In the aftermath of Uthman’s death, Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin and the husband of his daughter Fāṭimah, was acknowledged as caliph. Ali was renowned for his personal piety and bravery, but his rule was immediately contested. Some demanded that those responsible for Uthman’s death be punished before Ali’s authority could be recognised. These tensions erupted into open conflict at the Battle of the Camel near Basra in 656, followed by a prolonged confrontation with Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the Umayyad governor of Syria, at Ṣiffīn. When Muʿāwiyah’s forces raised Qurʾānic pages on their spears, Ali agreed to arbitration, a decision that alienated some of his own supporters, who withdrew and became known as the Khārijites.

Sunni Shiite Split

Ali was assassinated in 661 by a member of this dissident group. His death marked the end of the period later idealised as that of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, a span of roughly thirty years during which Muslim rule had expanded across much of the known world. Power passed to Muʿāwiyah, who established the Umayyad dynasty and transferred the political centre of Islam from Medina to Damascus. In a decisive departure from earlier practice, Muʿāwiyah nominated his son Yazīd as successor, entrenching dynastic rule.

These developments did not immediately produce distinct religious sects, but they fixed the lines along which later divisions would harden. Supporters of Ali’s family, known as the Shīʿat ʿAlī, the “party of Ali”, regarded leadership as properly belonging to the Prophet’s descendants. The killing of Ali’s son Husayn ibn Ali at Karbalāʾ in 680 became a defining symbol of this conviction and is often treated as the moment at which the Muslim community divided into Sunni and Shia traditions.

Those later called Sunnis tended to affirm the legitimacy of the first four caliphs and to understand leadership as a matter of communal recognition and continuity. Shia traditions, by contrast, developed a doctrine of the imamate, according to which legitimate authority resided in a line of divinely guided leaders descended from Ali. Over time, this doctrine acquired more elaborate theological claims, including the belief, held by Twelver Shia, in a line of twelve Imams culminating in the occultation of the twelfth in the tenth century.

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