The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad (33 page)

The more he was surrounded by people, the more Muhammad seemed aware of his isolation. “God made him love solitude,” Aisha would say, trying to explain why he preferred the company of the dead to that of his wives. But even in the dead of night, real solitude was the one thing that was impossible. Though he begged people not to follow him to the graveyard, they did, and even though they kept their distance, he was aware of them hidden in the darkness, standing vigil over him as he stood vigil over others. They did it doubtless out of care and love, but the burden of so much concern for his welfare merely added to the toll on him. They depended on him, he may have feared, for more than he had left to give. But however great his weariness, there was one more thing he knew he had still to do: one final return to Mecca, for the hajj.

ike anyone of sixty-three, an age the body makes known in ways a younger person never imagines, Muhammad certainly knew he would not live forever. When he set out on what his followers called the Pilgrimage of Fulfillment, he seemed to sense that

in short order, it would be known as the Final Pilgrimage. “I do not know whether I shall ever meet you again in this place after this year,” he would tell the crowd that thronged the Kaaba precinct that March of 632.

The two-week journey from Medina had been an arduous trek, and the five days of the hajj itself would be still more tiring, especially with all eyes on him. But that was precisely why he knew he had to complete it, despite the physical toll. This was the only full hajj he would ever make as the first Muslim, and as such it would establish the Islamic rites of pilgrimage. Every word, every pause, every gesture, would be etched definitively into the collective memory, and the ancient tradition of the hajj renewed. Instead of rejecting the preIslamic rituals, Muhammad now officially incorporated them. The sites of prayer, the circling of the Kaaba, the sacrifices, the head- shaving—all these and more were purified and rededicated to God by his example, in the final demonstration of his vision of unity. By absorbing the old into the new, the “traditions of the fathers” into the nascent religious tradition of Islam, he was uniting past and present, and thus establishing the pattern for the future.

He addressed the assembled pilgrims several times over these five days, and on many points the collective memory of his words would be in agreement. There was to be no revenge for any bloodshed in the preIslamic days of jahiliya. In this new era, “know that every believer is a believer’s brother, and all believers are brethren.” Nobody was to be forced to convert, and Christians and Jews especially were to be respected: “If they embrace islam of their own accord, they are among the faithful with the same privileges and obligations, but if they hold fast to their tradition, they are not to be seduced from it.” And perhaps most cogently, in the one sentence most often quoted from these days, Muhammad talked about himself in the past tense: “I have left you one thing with which, if you hold fast to it, you will never go astray: the Quran, the book of God.”

To many devout Muslims, this sentence says all that needs to be said. But there are other versions of it, and here is where the collective memory divides. According to these versions, Muhammad said, “I have left you two things,” not one. The first of these was still the Quran, but the second would remain in dispute. Either he said “the Quran and the example of his prophet”—the sunna, literally the “custom” of the prophet. Or he said “the Quran and the people of the prophet’s house”—the ahl al-bayt, his blood descendants through his son-in-law Ali and his grandsons Hassan and Hussein.

Both ibn-Ishaq and al-Tabari quote people who were there and who swear they heard one version or the other with their own ears. But as with first-hand testimony today, what they heard may have reflected what they were prepared to hear as much as what was actually said. It would soon be argued that the alternate versions of this one sentence came to essentially the same thing, since the ahl al-bayt personified the sunna just as Muhammad himself had done. But it would also be argued that since he had been “the seal of the

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prophets”—that is, the last and final one—his example was unique for all time. It was an argument that would develop into two closely related but very different guidelines for the future structure of Islam, and it would only be deepened by divergent interpretations of another statement Muhammad made just a week later.

The hajj completed, the pilgrims returning to Medina had stopped for the night at the spring-fed watering hole known as Ghadir Khumm, the Pool of Khumm. There they were met by Ali, newly returned from a mission to Yemen, where he had quelled the last remaining resistance to Muhammad. Taxes and tribute had been paid and celebration was in the air, so Muhammad ordered a makeshift desert pulpit made out of camel saddles placed on top of stacked palm branches and, after evening prayers, called on Ali to come up and stand alongside him. Raising his son-in-law’s hand high in his own, he honored him with a special benediction. “He of whom I am the master, of him Ali is also the master,” he declared. “God be the friend of he who is his friend, and the enemy of he who is his enemy.”

To the shiat Ali, the “followers of Ali” who would soon shorten their name simply to Shia, what this meant was clear: Muhammad had designated his closest kinsman to be his khalifa, his caliph or successor. Ali’s bloodline would thus be the line of succession, through his sons Hassan and Hussein. But to those who would eventually call themselves Sunni, naming themselves for the sunna or practice of Muhammad, this was far from clear. If such was the prophet’s intention, why had he not simply said so? The benediction at Ghadir Khumm was certainly a spontaneous demonstration of affection for Ali, and nobody doubted either his closeness to Muhammad or his worthiness. But the idea of a bloodline succession, they’d argue, went against the principles of Islam, by which all were equal before God.

Besides, they’d say, the word translated as “master,” mawla, like so many words in seventh-century Arabic, had a wide range of related meanings. It could mean leader, or patron, or friend, or confidant, but which one depends on context, and context is infinitely debatable. Moreover the second part of Muhammad’s declaration was no more specific. “God be the friend of he who is his friend, the enemy of he who is his enemy” (a formula much degraded in later political parlance into the misguidedly simplistic “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”) was the standard phrasing of the time for alliance or friendship. Under the circumstances, it clearly singled Ali out for honor, but whether it designated him Muhammad’s successor was to remain, like so much else, a matter of belief rather than definitive record. None of which, perhaps, would have mattered so intensely if Muhammad had not had only two months left to live.

he illness began just a few weeks after his return to Medina. At first it seemed to be another of those migraine-like attacks, and everyone expected it to pass after a day or two, maybe three at the most. Except it didn’t. It came and went, but each time it returned, it seemed worse. And then a fever developed, and with it the headaches intensified, stabbing down the back of Muhammad’s neck in paralyzing spasms. At his insistence, his wives took him to Aisha’s room, and there he lay on the raised stone sleeping ledge while they took turns nursing him.

It was the end of May, and the heat of the early desert summer made the small room stifling even for someone in full health. But Muhammad’s was rapidly deteriorating as a blinding sensitivity to noise and light developed along with the fever and the terrible head pain. The light could be dealt with by hanging a rug over the doorway, but quiet was not to be had. Aisha’s room was now a sickroom, and in the Middle East, then as now, a sickroom was a gathering place. Relatives, companions, aides, supporters—all those claiming closeness to

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the center of power— came in a continual stream, day and night, with concerns, advice, questions. Even sick, Muhammad could not ignore them. Too much depended on him.

The wives wrapped his head in cloths soaked in cold water, hoping to draw out the fever and ease the pain. But if there was any relief, it was only temporary. As his condition worsened, the women must have realized that this was neither a passing fever nor another migraine but a disease that had been known throughout the Middle East since the start of recorded history.

“Headache roams over the desert, billowing like the wind,” reads an ancient Sumerian incantation. “Flashing like lightning, it is loosed above and below. / Bright as a heavenly star, it comes like the dew. / It stands hostile against the wayfarer, scorching him like the day. / This man it has struck and feeds on him, / Like a dread windstorm, bound in death.” This was no mere headache but a fatal disease, and indeed the symptoms and the duration of Muhammad’s final illness—ten days—are classic for bacterial meningitis.

There’s no knowing exactly how he contracted it. Some of his followers would suspect it was the result of his night vigils in the graveyard, which he’d resumed on returning from Mecca. They’d remember him talking to the dead, saying “Peace upon you, oh people of the graves!” and promising to join them: “God has called another of his servants to him, and soon he will obey the call.” Certainly his exhaustion, exacerbated by the stress of government, had made him more vulnerable to infection. So perhaps had the head injury he’d suffered at the Battle of Uhud, since bacteria can enter the skull through a hairline fracture, inflaming the protective membranes of the brain and spinal cord known as the meninges. Even today meningitis is often fatal; in the seventh century, long before antibiotics, it was almost universally so.

Yet despite Muhammad’s clear indication during the hajj that he did not expect to live much longer, despite that night-time promise to join the dead, despite even the clearly worsening symptoms, it would not be until the tenth and final day of his illness that anyone seemed able to openly acknowledge that he was dying.

utside the sickroom, the courtyard of the mosque was packed. Unwilling to go home even to sleep, people had camped out there, all wanting to be where news of Muhammad’s progress would be heard first. It was as though it was inconceivable that he could die. Right now, with nearly all of Arabia united under his leadership? At the dawn of what felt like a new age? How could the prophet of God possibly die just when the future seemed so full of promise?

Of course their presence in the courtyard testified to the fact that on some level, they knew what was happening. Yet even as they knew it, they refused to believe it, as though denial could change reality and Muhammad was not as mortal as they were. So they waited, and the sound of their prayers and concern built to an unrelenting hum of anxiety that permeated the air of Aisha’s small room.

As the days passed and Muhammad did not emerge, even that steady murmur of anxiety grew hushed. The whole of Medina was subdued, face to face with the inconceivable. And hovering on everyone’s mind but on nobody’s lips—unvoiced, because that would be to acknowledge what was happening—was one paramount question: Who would assume the leadership? Ali, the cousin and son-in-law he had honored at Ghadir Khumm? Abu-Bakr, the companion with whom he had fled Mecca and who inspired both affection and respect? The stern warrior Omar whose voice, honed to terseness on the battlefield, compelled obedience? Who could claim the authority? Or rather, who could exert it? Now of all times it seemed essential that Muhammad make his will known and clearly anoint a successor. Yet he did not.

Why not? And what did he really intend? These are the questions that were to haunt Islam through the centuries. Everyone would claim to know what Muhammad had been thinking, to have insight into how he saw the future of Islam. Yet in the lack of a clear and unequivocal designation of a successor, nobody could prove it beyond any shadow of doubt. Over the course of those ten days of his illness, all of the men who were to be the first five caliphs of Islam would be in and out of his sickroom: two fathers-in-law, abu-Bakr and Omar; two sons-in-law, Ali and Uthman; and a brother-in-law, Muawiya. But how that would happen, and in what order, was to remain the stuff of discord.

Sunni scholars were to argue that Muhammad had such faith in the good will and integrity of his aides and companions that he could not bear to decide among them, and trusted to God to ensure that they come to the right decision. “My community”—the umma—“will never agree in error,” they’d say he declared. That seemed a definitive endorsement of consensus, but it was to have the opposite effect. It would be taken to mean that those who disagreed with the majority were “in error,” their dissent proof that they were not truly part of the umma. Shia scholars, on the other hand, would argue that Muhammad had already made his choice of Ali as his successor, and that he would have done so again as he lay in that small room against the wall of the mosque compound, had his will not been thwarted.

ivisiveness was the one thing Muhammad had most feared, and now it was the one thing he was helpless to prevent as his sickness gave new life to the resentments and jealousies that had accumulated around him. As the fever ate at him, he began to float in and out of sweat-soaked consciousness, aware of the arguments going on but unable to stop them.

Al-Tabari relates a disturbing exchange that took place on the ninth day of his illness, when Muhammad mustered the strength to call for Ali, who was praying in the mosque. But nobody fetched him. Aisha lobbied instead for her father: “Wouldn’t you rather see abuBakr?” she insisted. Her co-wife Hafsa countered by suggesting her own father: “Wouldn’t you rather see Omar?” Overwhelmed by their persistence, Muhammad waved assent. Both abu-Bakr and Omar were called for, and Ali was not.

Cajoling a sick man into doing what they wanted may seem unbecoming, even heartless, but then, who could blame these young women for pushing their own agendas and promoting the interests of their fathers over those of Ali? They faced a daunting future as lifelong widows, and they knew it. Every person in that crowded sickroom was anxious to safeguard the community, yet each wanted also to safeguard his or her own position. As is the way in politics, everyone was convinced that the collective interest and their personal interest were one and the same, and this could be sensed in what al-Tabari calls “the episode of pen and paper.”