The assassination of 'Uthman and 'Ali's Caliphate

A dialog from the History of Islam list, February 1995

Hichem Djait's book La Grande Discorde - Religion et politique dans l'Islam des origines is an excellent book (Paris, Gallimard, 1989). As I am also very interested in the period, I talked about it with Pr. Mohammad Arkoun, two years ago, and he then told me that Djait's book was the only one on the subject. If something new has been published since then, I would be glad to know about it. Of course, diverse articles have been published in academic publications.

Tabari and Baladhuri give probably the most detailed accounts of the events of the time.

Christine Prat

The references are:

Martin Hinds,

The Murder of the Caliph Uthman, IJMES, 3, 1972 pp. 450-69.

Kufan Political Alignments and their Background in the mid-seventh century AD, IJMES, 2, 1971 pp 346-67.

plus especially (also by Hinds):

The Siffin Arbitration Agreement,JSS, 17, 1972 pp. 93-129.

(IJMES = International Journal of Middle East Studies)
(JSS = Journal of Semitic Studies)

I am not sure but perhaps there would be something of interest in the Encyclopedia of Islam (incidentally does anyone know which is the latest volume published of the EI2 - i.e. up to which letter? Our library goes up to the letter N).

Ihab

Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 07:58:21 -0700
From: Ihab Hamdi El-Sakkout <ihe@st-andrews.ac.uk>

Just from memory there is an excellent article by M. Hinds The Murder of the Caliph Uthman, he has also written other important articles regarding the early (post - conquest) Islamic period, notably Kufan political alignments and I will give you the details of these articles ASAP. I don't think you will find any books written in English on this topic specifically, although it will be covered by most books dealing with the history of the rise of Islam. If you can read Arabic well it is worth going back to the early sources, the most used of these - for various reasons - is Ta'rikh al-Tabari (in fact come to think of it, you can find al-Tabari's work in translation).

Ihab el-Sakkout