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The Struggle for Power II
The Meeting of the Ansar in Saqifa In A.D. 622, the Ansar invited Muhammad, the blessed
Messenger of God, into Medina, and they acknowledged him as their spiritual and temporal
leader. Other Muslims of Makkah, i.e., the Muhajireen, also migrated to Medina, and the
Ansar welcomed them with open arms. They shared their homes and their bread with them. On
numerous occasions, they deprived their own children of food which they gave to the hungry
Muhajireen. Muhammad made Medina the capital of Islam, and in
due course, the city began to acquire the characteristics of a state. As time went on, the
tiny city-state burgeoned into a well-organized government with its own sources of
revenue, its own treasury, army, system of justice and administrative and diplomatic
apparatus. It was inevitable that it would occur to the Ansars
(and other Muslims) that a day would come when Muhammad, the founder of the State of
Medina, would bid farewell to them and would leave this world. This possibility confronted
them with some new and rather uncomfortable questions such as: 1. What will the death of Muhammad Mustafa, mean to
the young State of Medina and to the Muslim umma? 2. Who would succeed Muhammad as the new head of the
State of Medina when he dies? 3. What will be the status of the Ansar after the
death of Muhammad? Would the new head of the State be just as fair and impartial as he is?
4. Would the Ansar still be masters in their own
home – Medina – after the death of Muhammad? The Ansar had heard the speech of the Apostle of God
at Ghadeer-Khumm appointing Ali as his successor, and they had given this arrangement
their whole-hearted support. But they had also sensed the under-current of hostility of
the Muhajireen toward Ali, and they were not sure if his succession would be peaceful or
if it would take place at all. It was very much obvious to them that there was massive
opposition, among the Muhajireen, to his succession, and that, among them he was a
minority of one. Once the Ansar grasped this fact, they decided to act for themselves. It
was for this reason that they assembled in Saqifa. One may condone the action of the Ansar even if one
may not commend it because the thought uppermost in their minds, following the death of
their master, Muhammad, was self-preservation. Though they ought to have deferred their
political rally until after the burial of the body of their master, at the moment it
appeared to them that they had to act immediately or else it would be too late. As noted before, the Ansar had given sanctuary to
Islam at a time when its situation was most forlorn. For the sake of Islam, they had made
all Arabs their enemies. For the sake of Islam, they had pitted themselves against all
Arabia. In every battle of Islam, they had acquitted themselves most honorably. Many of
their young men were killed in these battles. (In the battle of Uhud 75 Muslims were
killed; out of them four were Muhajireen, and the rest were all Ansars). They demonstrated
their devotion to Islam and their loyalty to the Prophet at every juncture. The Ansar knew that caliphate was Ali's right but
they also knew about the "resolution" of the "Arabs" to keep caliphate
out of the house of the Prophet. Their interpretation of this "resolution" was
that the Muhajireen would not let Ali reach the throne of caliphate. But if not Ali, then who else would be Muhammad's
successor? The only obvious answer to this question was: some other Muhajir. But any
Muhajir other than Ali was not acceptable to them – to the Ansar. They, therefore,
decided to put forward their own candidate for the leadership of the umma. After all it
was their support, they argued, and not the support of the Muhajireen, that had made Islam
viable. The anxiety of the Ansar is perfectly
understandable. To them, the prospect of the government of Medina falling into the hands
of the Umayyads, the traditional enemies of God and His Messenger, who had now become
Muslim, was extremely frightful. They (the Ansar) had killed many of them in the battles
of Islam. If the government of Medina which was consolidated with their (the Ansars')
support, was ever captured by the children of those pagans whom they (the Ansar) had
killed, how would they treat them (the Ansar), was the unspoken question in the heart of
every Ansari. Events proved that their fears were not generated by any
hallucination. The Umayyads had fought bitterly against Islam and
its Prophet. When the latter captured Makkah, they "accepted" Islam because
there was little else they could do then. As noted before, the Prophet never gave them any
positions of authority even though he gave them a generous share out of the spoils of the
battle of Hunayn. On his part, it was a gesture of reconciliation but it did not mitigate
their hostility to Islam. But Muhammad, the Messenger of God, had not been
dead long when Abu Bakr elevated these traditional enemies of Islam, and the dynastic foes
of its Prophet, to the highest ranks in the army. He made Yazid, the son of Abu Sufyan, a
general in his army. When Syria was conquered, Umar who had succeeded Abu Bakr as khalifa,
made him (Yazid) its first governor. Yazid died a few years later whereupon Umar made his
younger brother, Muawiya, the new governor of Syria. As if he had not done enough for the
Umayyads, Umar, on his deathbed, manipulated the situation in a manner that guaranteed the
succession of Uthman, another Umayyad. In the caliphate of Uthman, the members of his
clan, the Umayyads, were ruling every province in the empire and they were commanding
every division in the army. The Ansar also feared that if the Muhajireen seized
the government of Medina, then they (the Muhajireen) would belittle their (Ansars')
services to Islam, and would relegate them to play a minor, if any, role in Islam. Gifted with prescience as they were, the Ansar had
made a correct and a realistic assessment of the situation. Their assembly in Saqifa was
purely defensive in nature. It was prompted by the sheer instinct for survival. But
unfortunately, they were dogged by their own jealousies. Their jealousy caused their aims
to be miscarried. Their tribal components – the Aus and the Khazraj – were
suspicious of each other, and it was this suspicion that gave them away to the Muhajireen.
As already noted, the action of the Ansar in
gathering in Saqifa is open to question, but their instinct was sound. The subsequent
events amply proved that they were right and justified in questioning the intentions of
the Muhajireen toward them. Among the Muhajireen, the only protector of their interests
was Ali ibn Abi Talib. But when the Quraysh succeeded in blackballing him from power, they
also succeeded in downgrading the Ansar to a mere rank-and-file status. When Muhammad died, and Ali's succession was
precluded, the Ansar ceased to be the masters in their own home – Medina!
