Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Uthman ibn Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib led the early Muslim community in succession between 632 and 661 CE. Sunni tradition honors them collectively as the Rashidun, or Rightly Guided Caliphs. Shia Muslims understand the succession differently and regard Ali as the first imam and Muhammad’s rightful successor. The four reigns are often studied as one period, but each succession came about in different circumstances. Their history can be followed through accounts of those decisions and through objects that survived from the seventh century. The Met on the Rashidun and Ali’s place in Sunni and Shia tradition · Encyclopaedia Iranica’s chronology
Abu Bakr, 632–634: a disputed succession
Muhammad’s death in 632 left the community with an immediate question about leadership. In a speech preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari, Umar looks back on a meeting in Medina at the Saqifa of Banu Sa‘ida. The account records competing proposals, including one for each group at the meeting to have its own leader. Umar says he pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr amid the disagreement, and others followed. The speech is a later recollection preserved in a hadith collection. It shows that even this account, in which Abu Bakr’s leadership prevails, remembers a contested decision. Sahih al-Bukhari 6830
Abu Bakr’s short reign included campaigns in Arabia commonly called the Ridda Wars. Another report in al-Bukhari remembers Umar questioning whether certain groups should be fought and Abu Bakr defending the collection of zakat, the required contribution, as an obligation alongside prayer. The exchange gives a specific example of the issues at stake. The new leadership had to decide which obligations it would enforce after Muhammad’s death. Sahih al-Bukhari 1399–1400
Umar, 634–644: governing expanding territories
In one transmitted account, Umar cites Abu Bakr’s appointment of a successor as a precedent when asked how he would arrange his own succession. By the time Umar faced that question, armies under his government had taken territory from both the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, including parts of Syria, Egypt and Iraq. The new authorities needed supplies and had to deal with officials already working in those territories. A papyrus from Egypt dated 643 records the receipt of 65 sheep for the Arab army in Greek and Arabic. A receipt of this kind shows how conquest was followed by routine transactions that had to be recorded and understood locally. Sahih al-Bukhari 7218 · Chronology of the conquests · Austrian National Library on the papyrus
Umar was assassinated in 644. In northwestern Arabia, a rock inscription signed by a man named Zuhayr associates the death of an Umar, identified by its editors with the caliph, with the year 24 of the Islamic era. The inscription is an early dated witness from outside the later narrative collections. Its few words show that a ruler’s death could also serve as a reference point for dating a personal inscription. Ali ibn Ibrahim Ghabban and Robert Hoyland’s published abstract · Nomination dossier with the inscription’s text
Uthman, 644–656: scripture and disputes over rule
A report in al-Bukhari describes a group of six men named by the wounded Umar to settle the question of succession. In the account, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf takes pledges from the final two candidates and gives his allegiance to Uthman. Islamic tradition credits Uthman with promulgating a standard written form of the Qur’an’s consonantal text, known as the rasm. In a study of the dating question, Nicolai Sinai argues that a date around 650 or earlier remains the most plausible starting point for the standard text. The traditional account assigns responsibility to a ruler. The historical argument asks when the form of the text took shape. Sahih al-Bukhari 3700 · Nicolai Sinai on the dating of the standard rasm
Meanwhile, disputes in the provinces concerned how the resources of the growing state were distributed. In Kufa, groups disagreed about stipends and whether surplus revenue should go to Medina. Some opponents from Kufa took part in the events that led to Uthman’s killing in Medina in 656. A dispute about who would govern then became inseparable from demands to punish those responsible for his death. Encyclopaedia Iranica on Kufa’s role
Ali, 656–661: civil war and the shift to Umayyad rule
Ali became caliph after Uthman’s death and based his government in Kufa. Among his opponents was Mu‘awiya, the governor of Syria. Their armies met at Siffin in 657, where the battle failed to settle the conflict. Some former supporters of Ali broke with him, and a member of the movement later known as the Kharijites killed him in Kufa in 661. Ali’s son Hasan relinquished his claim to rule after reaching an agreement with Mu‘awiya, who established Umayyad rule. The new dynasty emerged from the struggle over the succession and the division of power between different centers. Chronology of Siffin, Ali’s death and the transition of 661 · Encyclopaedia Iranica on Ali’s support and opposition in Kufa
Conclusion
The four early caliphs faced different problems of leadership. Abu Bakr came to power amid disagreement after Muhammad’s death. Umar governed an expanding state, Uthman’s reign saw the standardization associated with the Qur’an’s written text, and Ali governed during civil war. The title Rightly Guided conveys the place these caliphs hold in Sunni memory. Accounts of their successions, the Egyptian receipt and Zuhayr’s inscription help explain how authority took shape and how people recorded it in their own time.
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