Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/106

 'Ali had two wives, (i) al-Hanafiya, by whom he had a son Muhammad, and (ii) Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, by whom he had two sons, Hasan and Husayn. All the 'Alid party believed that 'Ali should have succeeded the Prophet by divine right and regarded the first three Khalifs as usurpers. Already under the third Khalif Uthman the dissatisfied mawla element had begun to look to 'Ali as their champion, and he in the true spirit of early Islam supported their claim to the rights of brotherhood as fellow Muslims. This partisanship received its extreme expression in the preaching of the Jewish convert 'Abdu b. Saba, who declared the divine right of 'Ali to the Khalifate as early as A.H. 32. 'Ali himself apparently did not take so pronounced a view, but certainly regarded himself as in some degree injured by his exclusion. In 35 'Ali was appointed Khalif and Ibn Saba then declared that he was not only Khalif by divine right, but that a divine spirit had passed from the Prophet to him, so that he was raised to a supernatural level. This theory 'Ali himself repudiated. When he was assassinated in 40 'Abdu declared that his martyred soul had passed to heaven and would in due course descend to earth again: his spirit was in the clouds, his voice was heard in the thunder, the lightning was his rod.

The Umayyad party led by Mu'awiya never submitted to 'Ali, although they did not question the legitimacy of his appointment. At his death Mu'awiya became the fifth Khalif, but had to face the