After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton

Author:Lesley Hazleton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Non-Fiction, Religion, Politics, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780385523936
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2009-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Talha and Zubayr were both dead by noon. Talha had taken command of the cavalry and fought valiantly. He might even have prevailed if he had not been shot in the back by an arrow—shot, that is, by someone on his own side. Word was that this someone was none other than Marwan, and indeed, he later admitted as much. Justifying himself with the most pious argument, he pointed out that since Talha had been one of Othman’s leading critics, encouraging the rebellion that led to assassination, his claim to be fighting in the name of revenge for Othman was hypocrisy. Thus Marwan, by his own account, had been merely the instrument of justice.

As always when it came to Marwan, there were those who suspected otherwise. Some said he had seized the opportunity to pick off a rival for the caliphate, since if Aisha’s side had won the day, Talha would have been declared Caliph, frustrating Marwan’s own ambitions. Others said that he had deliberately hung back until he could see which way the battle was going and had then targeted Talha in a misguided attempt to ingratiate himself with Ali. Yet others were convinced that he had acted under orders from a far more powerful rival for the caliphate, for no sooner was the battle lost than he rode across the desert to Damascus, to become a senior counselor in the court of Muawiya, the governor of Syria. One would need a mind as devious as Marwan’s to know where the truth lay.

Zubayr’s death was another act of treachery, though it would remain unclear exactly whose treachery it was. Word had it that no sooner had the battle begun than Zubayr left the field and started on the road back to Mecca. A clear matter of cowardice, some said, though given Zubayr’s record as a warrior, that was hard to believe. A matter of honor, said others, since Zubayr had been in dismay when the truce he had worked so hard to achieve had been so abruptly broken. He had given his word to Ali that his side would not start the fighting, yet now his word had been broken, and he had taken this all the harder since he had already gone back on his word to Ali after swearing allegiance to him, and regretted it. If he had not been a man of honor before, he would be one now, and die for it.

The Meccans would claim that Beduins, always unreliable in Meccan eyes, had chased after Zubayr and killed him as a deserter. But at whose orders? There were rumors of the hand of Marwan at work once again, making sure that both Talha and Zubayr were safely out of the way of his own ambitions, but there was never any proof. It would take Zubayr’s son many years to redeem his name.

With both Talha and Zubayr dead, Aisha’s battle was lost. All that was left for her to do was give the order to retreat.

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