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Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi

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Short article

Orientalists
and the Event of Ghadir Khumm

Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi

(Published in Ghadir, 1990)

I. Introduction

The 18th of Dhil-Hijjah 1410 AH is to be celebrated in the Shi'i world
as the 1,400th anniversary of the declaration of Ghadir Khum in which the
Prophet said the following about Imam Ali: 'Whomsoever's master (mawla)
I am, this Ali is also his master.' This event is of such a significance
to the Shi'as that no serious scholar of Islam can ignore it. The purpose
of this paper is to study how the event of Ghadir Khum was handled by the
orientalists. By 'orientalists' I mean the western scholarship of Islam
and also those easterners who received their entire Islamic training under
such scholars.

Before proceeding further, a brief narration of the event of Ghadir
Khum would not be out of place. This will be especially helpful to those
who are not familiar with Ghadir Khum. While returning from his last pilgrimage,
Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, received the following command of
Allah:

'O Messenger! Convey what had been revealed to you from
your Lord; if you do not do so, then
[it would be as if] you have
not conveyed His message
[at all]. Allah will protect you from the
people'
(5:67).

Therefore he stopped at Ghadir Khum on Dhil-Hijjah 18, 10 A.H. to convey
the message to the pilgrims before they dispersed. As it was very hot,
a dais shaded with branches was constructed for him. Then the Prophet gave
a long sermon. At one point, he asked his faithful followers whether he,
Muhammad, had more authority (awla) over the believers than they
had over themselves; the crowd cried out: 'Yes, it is so, O Apostle of
Allah!' Then he took Ali by the hand and declared:

'Whomever's master (mawla) I am, this Ali is also his
master' (Man kuntu mawlahu fa hadha Aliyun mawlahu).

Then the Prophet also announced his impending death and charged the believers
to remain attached to the Qur'an and Ahl al-Bayt. This summarizes the important
parts of the event of Ghadir Khum.

The main body of this paper is divided as follows: Part II is a brief
survey of the approach used by the orientalists in studying Shi'ism. Part
III deals with the approach used to study Ghadir Khum in particular. Part
IV is a critical review of what M A Shaban has written about the event
in his Islamic History AD 600-750. This will be followed by a conclusion.

II: Shi'ism and the Orientalists

When the Egyptian writer, Muhammad Qutb named his book Islam: the
Misunderstood Religion
, he was politely expressing the Muslim sentiment
about the way the orientalists have treated Islam and Muslims in general.
The word 'misunderstood' implies that at least a genuine attempt was made
to understand Islam. However, a more blunt criticism of orientalism, shared
by the majority of the Muslims, comes from Edward Said:

'The hardest thing to get most academic experts on Islam to
admit is that what they say and do as scholars is set in a profoundly,
and in some ways an offensively, political context. Everything about the
study of Islam in the contemporary west is saturated with political importance,
but hardly any writers on Islam, whether expert or general, admit the fact
in what they say. Objectivity is assumed to be inherent in learned discourse
about other societies, despite the long history of political, moral and
religious concern felt in all societies, western or Islamic, about the
alien, the strange and the different. In Europe, for example, the orientalists
have traditionally been affiliated directly with colonial offices.'
[1]

Instead of assuming that objectivity is inherent in learned discourses,
the western scholarship has to realize that pre-commitment to a political
or religious tradition, on a conscious or subconscious level, can lead
to biased judgement. As Marshall Hodgson writes:

'Bias comes especially in the questions he poses and in the
type of category he uses, where indeed, bias is especially hard to track
down because it is hard to suspect the very terms one uses, which seem
so innocently neutral...' [2]

The Muslim reaction to the image portrayed of them by the western scholarship
is beginning to get its due attention. In 1979 the highly respected orientalist
Albert Hourani said:

'The voices of those from the Middle East and North Africa
telling us that they do not recognize themselves in the image we have formed
of them are too numerous and insistent to be explained in terms of academic
rivalry or national pride.' [3]

This was about Islam and Muslims vis-a-vis the orientalists.

However, when we focus on the study of Shi'ism by the orientalists,
the word 'misunderstood' is not strong enough, rather it is an understatement.
Not only is Shi'ism misunderstood, it has been ignored, misrepresented
and studied mostly through the heresiographic literature of its opponents.
It seems as if the Shi'as had no scholars and literature of their own.
To borrow an expression from Marx: 'They cannot represent themselves, they
must be represented,' and that also by their adversaries !

The reason for this state of affairs lies in the paths through which
the western scholars entered the fields of Islamic studies. Hodgson, in
his excellent review of western scholarship, writes:

'First, there were those who studied the Ottoman empire, which
played so major a role in modern Europe. They came to it usually in the
first instance from the viewpoint of European diplomatic history. Such
scholars tended to see the whole of Islamdom from the political perspective
of Istanbul, the Ottoman capital. Second, there were those, normally British,
who entered Islamic studies in India so as to master Persian as good civil
servants, or at least they were inspired by Indian interests. For them,
the imperial transition of Delhi tended to be the culmination of Islamic
history. Third, there were the Semitists, often interested primarily in
Hebrew studies, who were lured into Arabic. For them, headquarters tended
to be Cairo, the most vital of Arabic-using cities in the nineteenth century,
though some turned to Syria or the Maghrib. They were commonly philogians
rather than historians, and they learned to see Islamic culture through
the eyes of the late Egyptian and Syrian Sunni writers most in vogue in
Cairo. Other paths - that of the Spaniards and some Frenchmen who focused
on the Muslims in Medieval Spain, that of the Russians who focused on the
northern Muslims - were generally less important.' [4]

It is quite obvious that none of these paths would have led western scholars
to the centres of Shi'i learning or literature. The majority of what they
studied about Shi'ism was channeled through non-Shi'i sources. Hodgson
says:

'All paths were at one in paying relatively little attention
to the central areas of the Fertile Crescent and Iran, with their tendency
towards Shi'ism; areas that tended to be most remote from western penetration.' [5]

And after the First World War, 'the Cairene path to Islamic studies became
the Islamicist's path par excellence, while other paths to Islamic studies
came to be looked on as of more local relevance.'
[6]

Therefore, whenever an orientalist studied Shi'ism through Uthmaniyyah,
Cairene or Indian paths, it was quite natural for him to be biased against
Shi'i Islam.

'The Muslim historians of doctrine [who are mostly Sunni] always
tried to show that all other schools of thought than their own were not
only false but, if possible, less than truly Muslim. Their works describe
innumerable "firqahs" in terms which readily misled modern scholars
into supposing they were referring to so many "heretical sects". [7]

And so we see that until very recently, western scholars easily described
Sunnism as 'orthodox Islam' and Shi'ism as a 'heretical sect.' After categorizing
Shi'ism as a heretical sect of Islam, it became 'innocently natural' for
western scholars to absorb the Sunni scepticism concerning the early Shi'i
literature. Even the concept of taqiyya was blown out of proportion
and it was assumed that every statement of a Shi'i scholar had a hidden
meaning. And, consequently, whenever an orientalist found time to study
Shi'ism, his precommitment to the Judeo-Christian tradition of the west
was compounded with the Sunni bias against Shi'ism. One of the best examples
of this compounded bias is found in the way the event of Ghadir Khum was
approached by the orientalists.

III. The Event of Ghadir Khum: From Oblivion to Recognition


The event of Ghadir Khum is a very good example to trace the Sunni bias
which found its way into the mental state of the orientalists. Those who
are well-versed with the polemic writings of Sunnis know that whenever
the Shi'as present a hadith or a historical evidence in support
of their view, a Sunni polemicist would respond in the following manner:

Firstly, he will outright deny the existence of any such hadith
or historical event. Secondly, when confronted with hard evidence from
his own sources, he will cast doubt on the reliability of the transmitters
of that hadith or event. Thirdly, when he is shown that all the
transmitters are reliable by Sunni standards, he will give an interpretation
to the hadith or the event which will be quite different from that
of the Shi'as.

These three levels form the classical response of the Sunni polemicists
in dealing with the arguments of the Shi'as. A quotation from Rosenthal's
translation of Ibn Khaldun's The Muqaddimah would suffice to prove
my point. (Ibn Khaldun is quoting the following part from Al-Milal wa
al-Nihal
, a heresiographic work of Ash-Shahristani.) According to Ibn
Khaldun, the Shi'as believe that:

'Ali is the one whom Muhammad appointed. The (Shi'a) transmit
texts (of traditions) in support of (this belief)...The authority of the
Sunnah and the transmitters of the religious law do not know these
texts (1). Most of them are suppositions, or (2) some of their transmitters
are suspect, or (3) their (true) interpretation is very different from
the wicked interpretation that (the Shi'a) give to them.' [8]

Interestingly, the event of Ghadir Khum has suffered the same fate at the
hands of the orientalists. With the limited time and sources available
to me at this moment, I was surprised to see that most works on Islam have
ignored the event of Ghadir Khum, indicating, by its very absence, that
the orientalists believed this event to be 'supposititions' and an invention
of the Shi'as. Margoliouth's Muhammad & the Rise of Islam (1905),
Brockelmann's History of the Islamic People ( 1939), Arnold and
Guillaume's The Legacy of Islam (1931), Guillaume's Islam
(1954), von Grunebaum's Classical Islam (1963), Arnold's The
Caliphate
(1965) and The Cambridge History of Islam (1970) have
completely ignored the event of Ghadir Khum. Why did these and many other
western scholars ignore the event of Ghadir Khum? Since western scholars
mostly relied on anti-Shi'i works, they naturally ignored the event of
Ghadir Khum. L. Veccia Vaglieri, one of the contributors to the second
edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (1953), writes:

'Most of the sources which form the basis of our [orientalists']
knowledge of the life of the Prophet (Ibn Hisham, Al-Tabari, Ibn Sa'd,
etc) pass in silence over Muhammad's stop at Ghadir Khum, or, if they mention
it, say nothing of his discourse (the writers evidently feared to attract
the hostility of the Sunnis, who were in power, by providing material for
the polemic of the Shi'as who used these words to support their thesis
of Ali's right to the caliphate). Consequently, the western biographers
of Muhammad, whose work is based on these sources, equally make no reference
to what happened at Ghadir Khum
.' [9]

Then we come to those few orientalists who mention the hadith or the event
of Ghadir Khum but express their scepticism about its authenticity - the
second stage in the classical response of the Sunni polemicists.

The first example of such scholars is Ignaz Goldziher, a highly respected
German orientalist of the nineteenth century. He discusses the hadith
of Ghadir Khum in his Muhammedanische Studien (1889-1890) translated in
English as Muslim Studies (1966-1971) under the chapter entitled 'The Hadith
in its Relation to the Conflicts of the Parties of Islam.' Coming to the
Shi'as, Goldziher writes:

'A stronger argument in their [Shi'a's] favour...was their
conviction that the Prophet had expressly designated and appointed Ali
as his successor before his death...Therefore the 'Alid adherents were
concerned with inventing and authorizing traditions which prove
Ali's installation by the direct order of the Prophet. The most widely-known
tradition (the authority of which is not denied even by orthodox authorities
though they deprive it of its intention by a different interpretation)
is the tradition of Khum, which came into being for this purpose
and is one of the firmest foundations of the theses of the 'Alid party."
[10]

One would expect such a renowned scholar to prove how the Shi'as 'were
concerned with inventing' traditions to support their theses, but nowhere
does Goldziher provide any evidence. After citing Al-Tirmidhi and Al-Nasa'i
in the footnote as the sources of hadith for Ghadir, he says: 'Al-Nasa'i
had, as is well- known, pro-'Alid inclinations, and also Al-Tirmidhi included
in his collection tendentious traditions favouring Ali, e.g., the tayr
tradition.' [11] This is again the
same old classical response of the Sunni polemicists - discredit the transmitters
as unreliable or adamantly accuse the Shi'as of inventing the traditions.

Another example is the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam
(1911-1938), which has a short entry under 'Ghadir Khum' by F Bhul, a Danish
orientalist who wrote a biography of the Prophet. Bhul writes:

'The place has become famous through a tradition which had
its origin among the Shi'as but is also found among the Sunnis, viz., the
Prophet on journey back from Hudaybiyya (according to others from the Farewell
Pilgrimage) here said of Ali: 'Whomsoever I am lord of, his lord is Ali
also!" [12]

Bhul makes sure to emphasize that the hadith and the event of Ghadir has
'its origins among the Shi'as'!

Another striking example of the orientalists' ignorance about Shi'ism
is A Dictionary of Islam (1965) by Thomas Hughes. Under the entry
of Ghadir, he writes:

'A festival of the Shi'as on the 18th of the month of Zu 'l-Hijjah,
when three images of dough filled with honey are made to represent Abu
Bakr, Umar and Usman, which are stuck with knives, and the honey is sipped
as typical of the blood of the usurping khalifahs. The festival
is named Ghadir, 'a pool,' and the festival commemorates, it is said,
Muhammad having declared Ali his successor at Ghadir Khum, a watering place
midway between Makkah and al-Madinah."
[13]

Coming from a Shi'i background of India, having studied in Iran for 10
years and lived among the Shi'a of Africa and North America, I have yet
to see, hear or read about the dough and honey ritual of Ghadir!! I was
more surprised to see that even Vaglieri, in the second edition of the
Encyclopaedia of Islam, has incorporated this rubbish into her fairly
excellent article on Ghadir Khum. She adds at the end: 'This feast also
holds an important role among the Nusayris.' It is quite possible that
the dough and honey ritual is observed by the Nusayris; it has nothing
to do with the Shi'as. But do all orientalists know the difference between
the Shi'as and the Nusayris? I very much doubt so.

A fourth example from the contemporary scholars who have treaded the
same path is Philip Hitti in his History of the Arabs (1964). After
mentioning that the Buyids established 'the rejoicing on that [day] of
the Prophet's alleged appointment of Ali as his successor at Ghadir
Khum,' he describes the location of Ghadir Khum in the footnote as 'a spring
between Makkah and al-Madinah where Shi'ite tradition asserts the Prophet
declared, "Whosoever I am lord of, his lord is Ali also". [14]
Although this scholar mentions the issue of Ghadir in a passing manner,
still he wants to leave his readers with the impression that the hadith
of Ghadir is a 'Shi'ite tradition.'

To these scholars who, consciously or unconsciously, have absorbed the
Sunni bias against Shi'ism and insist on the Shi'i origin or invention
of the hadith of Ghadir, I would just repeat what Vaglieri has said
in the Encyclopaedia of Islam about Ghadir Khum:

'It is, however, certain that Muhammad did speak in this place
and utter the famous sentence, for the account of this event has been preserved,
either in a concise form or in detail, not only by Al-Ya'kubi, whose sympathy
for the 'Alid cause is well-known, but also in the collection of traditions
which are considered as canonical, especially in the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal;
and the hadiths are so numerous and so well attested by the different isnads
that it does not seem possible to reject them." [15]

Vaglieri continues:

'Several of these hadith are cited in the bibliography,
but it does not include the hadith which, although reporting the
sentence, omit to name Ghadir Khum, or those which state that the sentence
was pronounced at al-Hudaybiyya. The complete documentation will be facilitated
when the Concordance of Wensinck has been completely published.
In order to have an idea of how numerous these hadiths are, it is enough
to glance at the pages in which Ibn Kathir has collected a great number
of them with their isnads.'

It is time the western scholarship made itself familiar with the Shi'i
literature of the early days as well as of the contemporary period. There
is no need to wait for Wensinck's Concordance. The Shi'i scholars
have produced great works on the issue of Ghadir Khum. Here I will just
mention two of those. The first is 'Abaqat al-Anwar written in Persian
by Allama Mir Hamid Husayn al-Musawi (d. 1304 AH) of India. Allama Mir
Hamid Husayn has devoted two bulky volumes (consisting of about 1,080 pages)
on the isnad, tawatur and meaning of the hadith of
Ghadir. The second is Al-Ghadir in 11 volumes in Arabic by Allama
Abdul Husayn al-Amini where he gives with full references the names of
110 sahaba of the Prophet and also 84 tabi'un (disciples
of the sahaba) who have narrated the hadith of Ghadir. He
has also chronologically given the names of the historians, traditionists,
exegetists and poets who have mentioned the hadith of Ghadir from
the first until the fourteenth Islamic century.

IV. Shaban & His New Interpretation

Among the latest work by the western scholarship on the history of Islam
is M A Shaban's Islamic History AD 600-750, subtitled 'A New Interpretation,'
in which the author claims not only to use newly discovered material but
also to reexamine and reinterpret material which has been known to us for
many decades. Shaban, a lecturer of Arabic at SOAS of the University of
London, is not prepared to even consider the event of Ghadir Khum. He writes:
'The famous Shi'ite tradition that he [the Prophet] designated Ali as his
successor at Ghadir Khum should not be taken seriously.' Shaban gives two
'new' reasons for not taking the event of Ghadir seriously:

'Such an event is inherently improbable considering the Arabs'
reluctance to entrust young untried men with great responsibility. Furthermore,
at no point do our sources show the Madinan community behaving as if they
had heard of this designation." [16]

Let us critically examine each of these reasons given by Shaban.

(1) The traditional reluctance of the Arabs to entrust young
men with great responsibility. First of all, had not the Prophet introduced
many things to which the Arabs were traditionally reluctant? Was not Islam
itself accepted by the Makkans very reluctantly? This 'traditional reluctance,'
instead of being an argument against the appointment of Ali, is actually
part of the argument used by the Shi'as. They agree that the Arabs were
reluctant to accept Imam Ali as the Prophet's successor not only because
of his young age but also because he had killed their leaders in the battles
of Islam. According to the Shi'as, Allah also mentions this reluctance
when after ordering the Prophet to proclaim Imam Ali as his successor ('O
Messenger! Convey what had been revealed to you...'), He reassured His
Messenger by saying that 'Allah will protect you from the people' (5:67).
The Prophet was commissioned to convey the message of Allah, no matter
whether the Arabs liked it or not.

Moreover, this 'traditional reluctance' was not an irrevocable custom
of the Arab society as Shaban wants us to believe. Jafry, in The Origin
and Early Development of Shi'a Islam
, says:

'Our sources do not fail to point out that, though the 'Senate'
(Nadwa) of pre-Islamic Makkah was generally a council of elders
only, the sons of the chieftain Qusayy were privileged to be exempted from
this age restriction and were admitted to the council despite their youth.
In later times, more liberal concessions seem to have been in vogue; Abu
Jahl was admitted despite his youth, and Hakim ibn Hazm was admitted when
he was only 15 or 20 years old.'

Then Jafry quotes Ibn 'Abd Rabbih:

'There was no monarchic king over the Arabs of Makkah in the
jahiliyyah. So whenever there was a war, they took a ballot among
chieftains and elected one as 'King,' were he a minor or a grown man. Thus
on the day of Fijar, it was the turn of Banu Hashim, and as a result of
the ballot Al-Abbas, who was then a mere child, was elected, and they seated
him on the shield." [17]

Thirdly, we have an example in the Prophet's own decisions during the last
days of his life when he entrusted the command of the army to Usama ibn
Zayd, a young man who was hardly 20 years of age. [18]
He was appointed over the elders of the Muhajirun and the Ansar,
and, indeed, many of the elders resented this decision of the Prophet.[19]
If the Prophet of Islam could appoint the young and untried Usama ibn Zayd
over the elders of the Muhajirun, then why should it be 'inherently
inprobable' to think that the Prophet had appointed Imam Ali as his successor?

(2) The traditional reluctance to entrust untried men with great
responsibility. Apart from the young age of Imam Ali, Shaban also refers
to the reluctance of the Arabs in entrusting 'untried men with great responsibility.'
This implies that Abu Bakr was selected by the Arabs because he had been
'tried with great responsibilities.' I doubt whether Shaban would be able
to substantiate the implication of his claim from Islamic history. One
will find more instances where Imam Ali was entrusted by the Prophet with
greater responsibilities than Abu Bakr. Imam Ali was left behind in Makkah
during the Prophet's migration to mislead the enemies and also to return
the properties of various people which were given in trust to the Prophet.
Imam Ali was tried with greater responsibilities during the early battles
of Islam in which he was always successful. When the declaration (bara'at)
against the pagan Arabs of Makkah was revealed, first Abu Bakr was entrusted
to convey it to the Makkans, but later on this great responsibility was
taken away from him and entrusted to Imam Ali. Imam Ali was entrusted with
the city and citizens of Medina while the Prophet had gone on the expedition
to Tabuk. Imam Ali was appointed the leader of the expedition to Yemen.
These are just a few examples which come to mind at random. Therefore,
on a comparative level, Ali ibn Abi Talib was a person who had been tried
and entrusted with greater responsibilities than Abu Bakr.

(3) The behaviour of the Medinan community about the declaration
of Ghadir. Firstly, if an event can be proved as true by the accepted academic
standards (of the Sunnis, of course), then the reaction of the people to
that event is immaterial.

Secondly, the same 'traditional reluctance' used by Shaban to discredit
the declaration of Ghadir can be used here against his scepticism towards
the event of Ghadir. This traditional reluctance, besides other factors
which are beyond the scope of this paper,[20]
can be used to explain the behaviour of the Medinan community.

Thirdly, although the Medinan community was silent during the events
which kept Imam Ali away from the khilafah, there were many among
them who had witnessed the declaration of Ghadir Khum. On quite a few occasions,
Imam Ali implored the sahaba of the Prophet to bear witness to the
declaration of Ghadir. Here I will just mention one instance which took
place in Kufa during the khilafah of Imam Ali, 24 years after the
Prophet's death.

Imam Ali heard that some people were doubting his claim of precedency
over the previous khulafah, therefore, he came to a gathering at
the mosque and implored the eyewitnesses of the event of Ghadir Khum to
verify the truth of the Prophet's declaration about his being the lord
and master of all the believers. Many sahaba of the Prophet stood
up and verified the claim of Imam Ali. We have the names of 24 of those
who testified on behalf of Imam Ali, although other sources like the Musnad
of Ibn Hanbal and Majma' az-Zawa'id of Hafiz al-Haythami put that
number at 30. Also bear in mind that this incident took place 25 years
after the event of Ghadir Khum, and during this period hundreds of eyewitnesses
had died naturally or in the battles fought during the first two khulafah's
rule. Add to this the fact that this incident took place in Kufa which
was far from the centre of the sahabas, Medina. This incident which
took place in Kufa in the year 35 A.H. has itself been narrated by four
sahaba and 14 tabi'un and has been recorded in most books
of history and tradition.[21]

In conclusion, the behaviour of the Medinan community after the death
of the Prophet does not automatically make the declaration of Ghadir Khum
improbable. I think this will suffice to make Shaban realize that his is
not a 'new' intepretation; rather it exemplifies, in my view, the first
stage of the classical response of the Sunni polemicists - an outright
denial of the existence of an event or a hadith which supports the
Shi'i views - which has been absorbed by the majority of the western scholars
of Islam.

V. Conclusion

In this brief survey, I have shown that the event of Ghadir Khum is
a historical fact which cannot be rejected, and that in studying Shi'ism,
the precommitment to the Judeo-Christian tradition of the orientalists
was compounded with the Sunni bias against Shi'ism. Consequently, the event
of Ghadir Khum was ignored by most western scholars and emerged from oblivion
only to be handled with scepticism and reinterpretation.

I hope this one example will convince at least some western scholars
to reexamine their methodology in studying Shi'ism, and instead of approaching
it largely through the works of heresiographers like Ash-Shahristani, Ibn
Hazm, Al-Maqrizi and Al-Baghdadi who present the Shi'as as a heretical
sect of Islam, they should turn to more objective works of both the Shi'as
as well as the Sunnis.

The Shi'as are tired, and rightfully so, of being portrayed as a heretical
sect that emerged because of the political and economic circumstances of
the early Islamic period. They demand to represent themselves instead of
being represented by their adversaries.

Notes:

[1] Edward W Said, Covering Islam,
New York: Pantheon Books 1981, p xvii.

[2] Marshall G S Hodgson, The
Venture of Islam
, Vol 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974,
p 27.

[3] Albert Hourani, 'Islamic History,
Middle Eastern History, Modern', in M H Kerr (ed), Islamic Studies:
A Tradition and Its Problems
, California: Undena Publications, 1979,
p 10.

[4] Hodgson, op. cit., pp.
39-40.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah,
tr. Franz Rosenthal, Vol 1, New York: Pantheon Books, 1958, p 403. In Arabic,
see Vol 1, Beirut: Maktabatul Madrasah, 1961, p 348.

[9] Encyclopaedia of Islam,
1953, see under 'Ghadir Khum'.

[10] I Goldziher, Muslim Studies,
tr. Barber and Stern, Vol 2, Chicago: Aldine Inc, 1971, pp. 112-113.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Encyclopaedia of Islam,
1911-1938, see under 'Ghadir Khum'.

[13] Thomas P Hughes, A Dictionary
of Islam
, New Jersey: Reference Book Publisbers, 1965, p. 138.

[14] Philip K Hitti, A History
of the Arabs
, London: Macmillan & Co, 1964, p 471.

[15] Encyclopaedia of Islam,
1953, see under 'Ghadir Khum'.

[16] M A Shaban, Islamic History
AD 600-750
, Cambridge: University Press, 1971, p 16.

[17] S H M Jafri, The Origin
and Early Development of Shi'a Islam
, London: Longman, 1979, p. 22

[18] M H Haykal, The Life of
Muhammad
, tr. Al-Faruqi (n.p., American Trust Publications, 1976, p
492.

[19] See the Tabaqat of
Ibn Sa'd and other major works on Seerah.

[20] For more details, see S S
A Rizvi, Imamate, Tehran: WOFIS, 1985, pp 120-121.

[21] For full references, see Al-Amini,
Al-Ghadir
, Vol 1, Tehran: Mu'assatul Muwahhidi, 1976, pp 166-186.

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