Restatement of the History of Islam and Muslims [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

The Change of Capital from Medina to Kufa

IN RAJAB OF 36 A.H. (JANUARY 657) ALI decided to
transfer the headquarters of his government from Medina in Hijaz to Kufa in Iraq. When law
and order had been restored in Basra, he appointed Abdullah ibn Abbas as its new governor,
and then left for Kufa which became, thenceforth, the new capital of Islam.

On Rajab 12 of 36 A.H., Ali arrived at the gates of
Kufa. The nobles of the city came out to greet him and to congratulate him on his victory.
Entering the city, Ali first went into the Great Mosque, offered the prayer of
thanksgiving to God for victory, and then delivered a speech in which he thanked the
people of Kufa for their support, and commended them for their gallant performance in the
battle of Basra.

The nobles of Kufa requested Ali to stay at the
governor's palace but he did not agree. Instead, he chose an unpretentious house for his
residence.

Historians have tried to find out the reasons why
Ali changed the capital from Medina to Kufa. Professors Sayed Abdul Qadir and Muhammad
Shuja-ud-Din, write in their book, The History of Islam, (published in Lahore, Pakistan):

Seven months after taking charge of the government,
Ali made Kufa his new capital. Following were some of the reasons that prompted this
change:

1. The battle of Basra or the battle of the Camel
was fought and was won with the aid of the people of Kufa. Ali made Kufa his capital,
partly in recognition of this service by them.

2. Ali was anxious to save Medina from the havoc of
civil strife like the one which had ended in the murder of Uthman. He did not want Medina
to become the locale of political disturbances at any time, and he wanted to save the City
of the Prophet from destruction or desecration in the possible wars of the future.

3. Kufa had a more central position in the empire.
Administrative facility of the vast and sprawling territories dictated this change.

4. It was easier for Ali to watch the movements of
Muawiya from Kufa than from Medina." (The History of Islam)

Kh. Muhammad Latif Ansari of Pakistan, a
contemporary historian, has pointed out in his History of Islam, that just as Abu Jahl and
Abu Sufyan were responsible for the migration of Muhammad from Makkah to Medina, so was
the latter's son, Muawiya, responsible for Ali's migration from Medina to Kufa. He says
that civil wars had begun but theaters of war were too distant from Medina. Ali,
therefore, changed the capital for strategic reasons, and this supports his claim that it
was the rebellion of Muawiya, the governor of Syria, which was responsible for his (Ali's)
migration from Hijaz to Iraq.

Actually, there were both pragmatic and idealistic
reasons why Ali changed the capital. Some of them were as follows:

(1). When Ali ascended the throne of khilafat, the
important urban centers of the empire were Damascus in Syria, Makkah and Medina in Hijaz,
and Basra and Kufa in Iraq.

Damascus was held by Muawiya, and was, therefore,
the center of opposition to Ali. Of the other four cities, Makkah, at first, was in the
hands of the rebel leaders - Ayesha, Talha and Zubayr. In Makkah, they raised a volunteer
army of 3000 warriors. They left Makkah with their army for Basra, and occupied that city.
Many of those Makkans who did not go to Basra with the rebel army, gave it their material
support. Thus Ali could count Makkah out.

Medina had a record hardly any better. As noted
before, when Uthman was killed, Medina was at the mercy of the rebels. The Muhajireen and
the Ansar realized that there was no one in all Dar-ul-Islam who could save the city from
being plundered, the people from being massacred, and the government from breaking down,
except Ali. They, therefore, appealed to him to take charge of the government.

Ali told the Muhajireen and the Ansar that he would
accept their offer if they gave him a pledge to obey his orders both in peace and in war.
They gave him their pledge to obey him, and he accepted their offer.

But only a few days had passed when rebellion reared
its head in Makkah against the caliphal authority. Ali went into the Mosque, and called
upon the Muhajireen and the Ansar to rise in defense of the central government. Their only
response was silence. Ali reminded them of the pledge they had given to him to obey him
and they still did not respond. All his appeals and reminders seemed to fall on deaf ears.

It was only after many weeks of appeals and a great
effort that Ali could enlist the support of seven hundred volunteers in Medina. This was
all that Medina would do for him. He left Medina with these volunteers – never to
return.

Basra, the fourth city, had acknowledged Ali's
authority, and he had appointed Uthman ibn Hunaif Ansari its new governor. But before Ali
arrived in Iraq, the "triumvirate" of Ayesha, Talha and Zubayr had already
captured Basra. Uthman ibn Hunaif barely managed to escape from Basra with his life.

Now the "choice" of Ali was narrowed down
to one city – Kufa. Ali sent Imam Hasan and Ammar ibn Yasir to Kufa to bring
reinforcements for him. Kufa sent 12,000 warriors to Basra, and it were these warriors who
fought in the battle of the Camel, and defeated the "triumvirate" of Ayesha,
Talha and Zubayr.

Makkah, Medina and Basra had left Ali in no
illusions about what they would do in an emergency. But the citizens of Kufa had sent
reinforcements to him at a most critical moment in his career. He could clearly see that
if there was war with Muawiya, he had only the army of Kufa to depend upon. It was,
therefore, the logic of events that influenced Ali's decision to make Kufa the capital of
the empire.

The people of Medina, it appears, had only a tepid
interest in the events taking place around them. When Ali declared that he would transfer
the governmental headquarters to Kufa, no one among them protested against this decision.
They did not react to such a momentous change as if they couldn't care less if their city
was or was not the capital of Islam!

(2). Medina was the cradle of Islamic culture and
civilization. The truly Islamic mode of life could be seen at its best only in Medina. The
foreign wars and conquests had brought people of many different cultures in the dominion
of Islam. If Medina were also to remain the political and administrative capital of the
empire, as it was the spiritual capital, then the alien people, with their alien cultures
and un-Islamic background, would have come to live in it. They would have brought their
own mores, customs, manners, traditions and religious practices with them. By doing so,
they would have either dominated the pure Islamic culture or they would have diluted it.
At any rate, pristine Islam would have been exposed at all times to alien influences.

Joel Carmichael

Islam collided with the immense intellectual entity
of Christianity, heavy with the thought of Greece and Rome. Christian thinking included
not merely the whole of Hellenistic thought, but also the ideas current in Persia and
elsewhere throughout the ancient East. Thus an immense variety of traditions and ideas, a
central complex of ideas and institutions, all more or less predigested by Christianity,
was transplanted en masse to the new universe of Islam. (The Shaping of the Arabs, New
York, p.194, 1967)

But Ali shifted the political center of Islam away
from Medina, and thus saved the Islamic way of life in its very cradle. He saved Makkah
and Medina from the cultural hegemony of the Christians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans
and the Magians. He maintained the character of these two cities as it was in the time of
Muhammad, the Apostle of God, himself.

(3). In most cases, the capital of a nation also
becomes the capital of vice, sin, crimes and other evils. Babylon, ancient Rome and
Byzantium, the capitals of great empires, were also the fleshpots of their times. Men and
women of the conquered nations visit the great imperial cities, and they bring their vices
with them. Uncontrolled growth, over-crowding, and the facileness of sprawling
metropolitan centers breed evils of all kinds. Many modern capitals are not unworthy
runners-up to Babylon and ancient Rome.

Medina was the fountainhead of the teachings of
Qur’an, and it also had the mausoleum of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, in it.
Muhammad was the Interpreter of the Last Message of God to mankind, and his duty was to
invite mankind to live pure, noble and chaste lives. Islam was the builder of character,
par excellence, and there was no better example of chaste and sanctified life than the
life of its Bringer. If Medina had become like other imperial capitals of the past, then
Islam's invitation to the rest of mankind would have become a mockery. Ali saved the
sanctity of Medina, and the ethos of Islam's missionary program by separating the
spiritual (or religious) and the political centers of the empire.

Ali was truly prophetic in his vision. He saved
Medina from degenerating into a prototype of Damascus or Baghdad or Cordova. The panoply
of civilization rapidly developed in Syria, sustained and fed by the rapidly expanding
empire. The wealth of the conquered nations poured into Damascus (and later, into Baghdad
and other cities). With wealth, came its concomitant – luxury – and the ambition
of the ruling classes to cultivate and patronize the "fine arts." Greek and
Persian singing and dancing girls came into the metropolitan centers of the empire of the
Arabs in a steady stream.

Those readers who wish to see a vignette of the
heyday of the Umayyad and Abbasi empires, can do so in many books, among them the twenty
volumes of Kitab al-Aghani (The Book of Songs) by Abul-Faraj Isfahani, or in another book
called The Ring of the Dove by Imam ibn Hazm of Spain, both faithful mirrors of their
times.

A. J. Arberry

The empire continued to increase in wealth, as trade
went farther and farther afield; the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the grasping
few, who relished an affluence which would have amazed their Bedouin forebears. Gorgeous
palaces and lavishly - appointed mansions adorned the capital Baghdad and the provincial
centers, Bokhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Shiraz, Damascus, Aleppo, Jerusalem, Cairo, Tripoli,
Tunis, Fez, Palermo, Cordova. The dolce vita of the gilded aristocracy is brilliantly
portrayed, as it was lived in Andalusia on the eve of the Norman conquest of England, in
The Ring of the Dove, a highly sophisticated manual of courtly love composed by an eminent
theologian, Ibn Hazm. Slave boys and singing girls, amenities unknown to the ancient
Arabs, provided Muslim gentlemen with novel pleasures and the poets with a new vocabulary.
Wine was forbidden to the Faithful by the unambiguous prohibition of holy writ; but the
rulers of Islam indulged to the full, and their minstrels vied with one another to
celebrate the praises of the daughter of the grape. (Aspects of Islamic Civilization, p.
15, 1967)

It must not be assumed, however, that only the
distant cities such as Cordova and Baghdad were contaminated by the vices of luxury and
opulence. Makkah and Medina themselves were not immune to their allurements.

Ella Marmura

The love theme poetry found expression in two
different genres. One was gay, light-hearted and urbane, and this grew in the cities of
Mecca and Medina. Both were cities of affluence but shorn of political power. Many of the
young Muslim aristocrats excluded from public office, frittered away their wealth in the
pursuit of pleasure. Schools of singing had sprung up and a number of love lyrics were set
to music. The leader of this school of poetry was 'Umar ibn Abi Rabiah (d. 720), a Meccan
aristocrat. The second genre of ghazal flourished most among the Bedouin, portraying an
intensity of feeling and depicting all the anguish and despair of tragic love.
("Arabic Literature: a Living Heritage," published in the book, Introduction to
Islamic Civilization, edited by R. M. Savory, New York, 1976)

Philip K. Hitti

Mecca's surrender meant its acceptance of Islam. One
after the other the Quraish moved on to the new capital (Medina) to share in the promotion
of the new faith and to embark on new careers. The highest positions in the government and
the army were open to them. Many Quraishis took part in the campaigns that in the orthodox
period, particularly under Umar ibn al-Khattab, resulted in the conquests of the Fertile
Crescent, Persia and Egypt. Later some served as governors of provinces in the newly
acquired domain. Life in Mecca then developed along two opposite lines, one of revelry and
the other of piety.

In the wake of the conquests, booty, tribute, and
taxes found their way in abundance into the city; they became its new source of income.
This more than compensated for the loss of caravan trade. Pilgrimage, of course,
continued; in fact it increased. Once a center of commerce, Mecca now became a center of
pleasure. Its nouveaux riches brought along harem, dancers, and singers, male and female,
as well as new concepts of what constitute the good life. They lived in baronial style in
villas and surroundings the like of which Mecca had never seen before. (pp. 21-22).

At the same time, life in Medina, as in Mecca, was
developing along a different line, the line of worldliness. After all, the golden stream
from the provinces in the form of personal and land tax poured into Medina first. The
volume flooding the state treasury was overwhelming. In its bid for the patronage of the
new elite of pleasure-seekers, Medina had, over her rival to the south, the advantage of
higher altitude, richer water supply, and more extensive gardens. Retired government
officials, civil and military, brought along their slaves and concubines, their singers,
dancers and musicians, male and female - and created an atmosphere never seen before in
the Holy City. (p. 55) (Capital Cities of Arab Islam, 1973)

Such was Medina even after its status had been
"scaled down," and it had become a provincial town. But if it had remained the
political and the commercial capital of the empire of the Muslims, it would, without a
doubt, also have become their "entertainment" capital, attracting all the
Bohemian characters of the times, in quest of the pleasures of the senses.

(4). Al-Qur’an al-Majid, the Book of God, was
revealed in immaculate Arabic. Makkah and Medina were the cradles of Qur’anic Arabic.
People speaking alien languages and living in the capital of their conquerors, corrupt
their language (the language of the conquerors). If Medina had remained the imperial
capital, the Qur’anic Arabic would, inevitably, have been subjected to many alien
influences. The Qur’anic sciences and its exegesis, and its lexicon, did not exist in
any organized form in the first century of Hijra. But it was essential for the
understanding of Qur’an by the contemporary generation and by the generations to come
that the speech of Makkah and Medina should remain as it was in the time of the Prophet so
that the words of Arabic would not acquire meanings different from those which were
current in his time.

All living languages change, and words change their
meanings. Like any other living organism, words also are born and they also die. And like
any other living organism, they are also susceptible to alien and extraneous influences.
Its best example is the "pidginizing" of modern English. Arabic too would have
been "pidginized" but it was saved from this fate by Ali who changed the
direction of the traffic of the aliens away from Medina. He is, thus, the first and the
greatest benefactor of the Arabic language and of the Qur’anic sciences.

(5). The Umayyad rulers of Damascus lived in
imitation of the Byzantine and Persian emperors. They had surrounded themselves with all
the instruments of luxury and salacity which their power could procure for them. The
pristine simplicity and the egalitarianism of Islam had disappeared from Syria if they had
ever existed there in the first place. Ali, however, wished to present to the world the
real picture of Islam. He wished to present to the world the same picture of Islam that
Muhammad Mustafa had first presented to the Arabs in Makkah and Medina. But it was a
picture that the neighbors of Syria and most of the Syrians themselves had never seen. In
fact, in the years to come, their rulers were going to show to them the picture, not of
Islam, but of anti-Islam.

John Alden Williams

All of the Persian kings, from Ardashir son of Papak
to Yazdagird, separated themselves from their courtiers by a curtain.

I once asked (the great court musician) Ishaq ibn
Ibrahim al-Mawsili, Did the Umawi caliphs show themselves to their familiars and singers?'
He replied, ‘Muawiya and Marwan I, Abd al-Malik, Walid I, Sulayman, Hisham and Marwan
II, were separated from their familiars by a curtain, so that none of the courtiers saw
what the caliph was doing, if he was transported by the music, or shook his shoulders, or
danced, or threw off his clothing, so none but his special slaves saw him. As for the rest
of the Umawi caliphs, they were not ashamed to dance or throw off their garments and
expose their nakedness in the presence of their familiars and singers. But for that, none
of them was like Yazid ibn Abd al-Malik and Walid ibn Yazid for shamelessness and obscene
speech in the presence of their familiars, and taking off their clothes, not caring what
they did.' (p. 81). (Life at the Caliph's Court:' from the Book of the Crown (Kitab
al-Taj), Cairo, 1914, p.5. Anonymous: between 847-861 A.D." – Themes of Islamic
Civilization, Berkeley, 1971)

When Ali made Kufa his capital, friend and foe saw
with their own eyes the Islam of Muhammad, the Messenger of God. They saw that the real
sovereign of the Muslims worked with his own hands in the fields and gardens, and fed
himself and his family from the wages that he earned himself. They saw that he lived on
coarse barley bread but everyone else in his dominion was well-fed. They saw that though
his own shirt was covered with patches, his subjects were all well dressed. They also saw
that he had no marble palace but lived in a mud hut, and that there were no sentinels or
pickets at the door of his home, and that he was accessible to everyone at every hour of
the day or night.

(6). In the interests of the security of Makkah and
Medina, Ali wished to make them politically unimportant so that they would not attract
unwelcome attentions. The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth which Muhammad Mustafa had founded,
had ceased, after his death, to be "heavenly," and had become an ersatz Greek or
Persian government. Under the changed conditions, the dignity and the sacred character of
the twin cities of Makkah and Medina were always in peril. Foreseeing the times ahead, Ali
put both cities out of the orbit of political events. His younger son, Husain, also had
the same anxiety to protect the sanctity of the city of his grandfather. He too saw the
storm clouds massing at the horizon, and he too left Medina and Makkah, just in time, to
draw the attention of the government, away from them.

After the butchery of Kerbala in 680, it were the
holy cities of Islam – Medina and Makkah – which attracted the attention of
Yazid, the son of Muawiya. He sent his general, Muslim bin Aqaba, to Medina with a Syrian
army which massacred 10,000 citizens in cold blood. The dead included many companions of
the Prophet. Medina was abandoned to the pleasure of the army of occupation. The Great
Mosque of the Prophet was converted into a stable for the Syrian cavalry. Those few who
were not slaughtered, had to take the oath of allegiance to Yazid. Muslim bin Aqaba told
them that Yazid was the master of their lives, and could sell them into slavery, if he
wished to do so.

Alfred Guillaume

Between the period covered by the Sira and the
editing of the book itself loom the two tragedies of Karbala, when Husayn and his
followers were slain in 61 A.H., and the sack of Medina in 63 A.H. when some ten thousand
of the Ansar including no less than eighty of the Prophet's Companions were put to death.
(The Life of Muhammad, page xxvii, 1967)

Muslim bin Aqaba left Medina smoldering in ruins and
then marched on Makkah. But he died before reaching his destination, and the command of
his forces passed to another officer of Yazid, one Ibn Nameer.

In Makkah, Abdullah bin Zubayr had proclaimed
himself a khalifa. Ibn Nameer bombarded the city from the surrounding hills and burned the
Kaaba. But he had not captured the city yet when Yazid died in Damascus. Thereupon, ibn
Nameer raised the siege, and withdrew to Syria.

But all that Makkah and Abdullah bin Zubayr got, was
a reprieve. When Abdul Malik bin Marwan became khalifa, Makkah once again became a theater
of war. His general, Hajjaj bin Yusuf, laid siege to Makkah, bombarded it, and demolished
part of the Kaaba. Abdullah bin Zubayr held out for seven months. He was killed in the
precincts of the Kaaba, and the city surrendered to the conquerors.

Philip K. Hitti

In 683 a Syrian army was sent by Yazid against the
caliphal claimant Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr. The rebel sought sanctuary on the inviolable
soil of the sanctuary but was nevertheless attacked and the Kaaba caught fire. The Black
Stone was split in three pieces. The house of Allah, in the words of the great historian,
al-Tabari, "looked like the torn bosom of a mourning woman." (Capital Cities of
Islam, 1973)

Ali sought, by changing the capital, to save Medina
and Makkah from the fate which befell them notwithstanding his efforts to the contrary.
But then who else in the entire Muslim world shared his and his children's solicitude for
the reverence and safety of these two cities? When Husain ibn Ali sensed that danger was
approaching them, he immediately left, with all members of his family, for Iraq, where he
knew, he had a rendezvous with death. But Abdullah bin Zubayr had no hesitation in
inviting desecration and destruction upon them, and massacre upon their inhabitants.

The Muslim world has yet to acknowledge its debt of
gratitude to Ali for his vision, foresight and humanity. He protected the cradles of Islam
in his lifetime, and took steps for their protection after his death. There was no other
way in which he could have saved Hijaz from experiencing the dislocations, turbulence and
trauma caused by politics and war, except by transferring the capital from Medina to Kufa.

When Ali changed the capital of the empire, Muawiya
thought that he had, at last, caught Ali doing something that was open to question, and
wrote to him that he (Ali) had "abandoned" the city of the Prophet - an act so
"reprehensible" that it could not be condoned.

Only four years later, Muawiya himself became the
absolute ruler of the empire of the Muslims, and there was no one who could question him
on any of his actions. If he had so much love for the city of the Prophet as he affected
to show in his letter to Ali, he could have made it his capital. But he did not nor did
any of his successors, nor did any of the caliphs of the Abbasi dynasty.