Paimana

The contemporary understanding of post-Prophetic succession within many Twelver Shīʿī communities rests upon the conviction that leadership of the Muslim community belongs exclusively to individuals appointed by God through explicit Prophetic designation (naṣṣ).¹ For many believers, this proposition functions less as a historical conclusion than as a foundational theological premise, and consequently is seldom subjected to sustained historical re-examination.²

Yet a return to the earliest sources that preserve Imam ʿAlī’s own statements and political conduct presents a more complex picture. Among these sources, Nahj al-Balāghah occupies a particularly important place.³ Although compiled centuries after Imam ʿAlī’s lifetime, it remains one of the most widely read and influential collections within the Shīʿī intellectual tradition and continues to shape contemporary understandings of his political thought. A close reading of those passages that address questions of political authority reveals a conception of leadership that differs in significant respects from the later doctrinal framework through which they are often interpreted.

According to the prevailing Twelver doctrine, the appointment of the leader of the Muslim community after the Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ) belongs exclusively to Allah, and neither the wider Ummah nor its representatives possess the authority to determine that succession independently.⁴

My reading of Imam ʿAlī’s surviving political statements, however, suggests a different emphasis. In the earliest historical materials, his arguments for political legitimacy consistently appeal to principles of communal recognition, merit, consultation, and public legitimacy rather than to an explicit claim of divine appointment.

The historical circumstances surrounding Imam ʿAlī’s own caliphate make this observation especially significant. Following the assassination of the third caliph, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (d. 35/656), Imam ʿAlī’s authority was openly contested by political opponents, compelling him to defend the legitimacy of his rule. These disputes provided repeated opportunities to articulate the basis upon which he believed leadership ought to rest.⁵

What is particularly striking is that, in the surviving record of these exchanges, Imam ʿAlī does not publicly defend his authority by appealing to an explicit divine appointment or an unequivocal Prophetic designation. Instead, his arguments proceed along markedly different lines. From the perspective of later Twelver theology, this silence is historically noteworthy. Throughout the Qurʾān, individuals entrusted by God with divine authority consistently proclaim that authority when confronting those who deny or challenge it. Their divine commission forms an essential part of the proof (ḥujjah) they present to their audiences.⁶

Before examining Imam ʿAlī’s own political arguments, it is therefore useful to consider the Qurʾānic pattern regarding divine appointment itself.

Divine Appointments and Public Declarations in the Qurʾān

The observation made above invites a broader question. How does the Qurʾān portray individuals who have genuinely been entrusted with authority by God? More specifically, when prophets encounter opposition to their authority, do they conceal their divine commission, or do they openly proclaim it?

The Qurʾānic pattern is remarkably consistent. Those whom Allah appoints as His messengers publicly declare the source of their authority, even when addressing audiences that are openly hostile to them. Their claim to divine appointment is not presented as a secondary or incidental matter but as an integral component of the ḥujjah (proof) established against those to whom they are sent.

Prophet Mūsā (ʿalayhi al-salām) before Firʿawn

When Allah commissioned Prophet Mūsā (ʿalayhi al-salām) and sent him to Firʿawn, the Qurʾān records that his message began with an explicit declaration of his divine mission:

وَقَالَ مُوسَىٰ يَا فِرْعَوْنُ إِنِّي رَسُولٌ مِّن رَّبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ • حَقِيقٌ عَلَىٰ أَن لَّا أَقُولَ عَلَى اللَّهِ إِلَّا الْحَقَّ ۚ قَدْ جِئْتُكُم بِبَيِّنَةٍ مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ فَأَرْسِلْ مَعِيَ بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ

Wa qāla Mūsā yā Firʿawnu innī rasūlun min rabbi al-ʿālamīn. Ḥaqīqun ʿalā an lā aqūla ʿalā Allāhi illā al-ḥaqq. Qad jiʾtukum bibayyinatin min rabbikum fa-arsil maʿiya Banī Isrāʾīl.

“Mūsā said, ‘O Firʿawn, I am indeed a Messenger from the Lord of the worlds. It is incumbent upon me to say nothing concerning Allah except the truth. I have come to you with clear evidence from your Lord, so send the Children of Israel with me.’” (Qurʾān 7:104–105)

The significance of this declaration extends beyond the historical encounter itself. Mūsā’s authority is presented as deriving from God’s commission, and he announces that commission publicly despite addressing one of the most powerful and hostile rulers depicted in the Qurʾān. His willingness to proclaim his appointment does not depend upon the likelihood that Firʿawn will accept it.

Within the Qurʾānic narrative, this public declaration also serves a theological purpose. By openly identifying himself as God’s messenger, Mūsā establishes the basis upon which Firʿawn may either accept or reject his mission. The declaration itself becomes part of the completion of the divine proof (ḥujjah). Had Mūsā concealed the source of his authority, the narrative logic of the Qurʾān would be fundamentally altered, since Firʿawn could plausibly claim never to have been informed that Mūsā spoke on God’s behalf.

Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ) before the Quraysh

The same pattern appears in the Prophet Muḥammad’s own mission. The Qurʾān repeatedly instructs him to proclaim publicly the source of his authority, notwithstanding the hostility of the Makkan polytheists.

Allah says:

قُلْ يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنِّي رَسُولُ اللَّهِ إِلَيْكُمْ جَمِيعًا…

Qul yā ayyuhā al-nāsu innī rasūlu Allāhi ilaykum jamīʿā…

“Say: O mankind, I am indeed the Messenger of Allah to all of you…” (Qurʾān 7:158)

Here again, the Prophet’s divine commission is neither implicit nor concealed. Rather, it forms the very foundation upon which his call to faith is constructed. The Qurʾān consistently portrays prophetic authority as something to be declared openly, irrespective of whether one’s audience is willing to acknowledge it. Similar formulations recur throughout the Qurʾān in passages describing the missions of earlier prophets (for example, 26:107, 125, 143, 162, 178; 61:6).

Hārūn (ʿalayhi al-salām)

The same principle may also be observed in the account of Hārūn (ʿalayhi al-salām), whose relationship with Mūsā occupies an important place in later discussions concerning Imam ʿAlī through the ḥadīth of al-Manzilah.⁷

When Banū Isrāʾīl began worshipping the calf, Hārūn did not remain silent. The Qurʾān records him saying:

يَا قَوْمِ إِنَّمَا فُتِنتُم بِهِ وَإِنَّ رَبَّكُمُ الرَّحْمَٰنُ فَاتَّبِعُونِي وَأَطِيعُوا أَمْرِي

Yā qawmi innamā futintum bihi wa inna rabbakumu al-Raḥmān fa-ttabiʿūnī wa aṭīʿū amrī.

“O my people, you have only been tested by it. Indeed your Lord is the Most Merciful, so follow me and obey my command.” (Qurʾān 20:90)

The narrative later records that Hārūn’s attempt to fulfil this responsibility placed him in considerable personal danger (Qurʾān 7:150). Nevertheless, fear of rejection did not prevent him from asserting the authority entrusted to him or from calling the people back to obedience.

A Historical Question

Against this Qurʾānic background, a historical question naturally arises.

If Imam ʿAlī understood himself to possess an explicit divine appointment, publicly designated by the Prophet, one might reasonably expect the surviving record of his political disputes to contain appeals to that appointment comparable, at least in principle, to those made by the prophets whose missions are narrated in the Qurʾān.

This expectation becomes particularly relevant because Imam ʿAlī did repeatedly defend the legitimacy of his authority during periods of intense political conflict. The question, therefore, is not whether he argued for his leadership. The historical record demonstrates that he did. The question is the nature of the arguments he actually chose to employ.

The following sections examine those arguments directly.

Imam ʿAlī’s Understanding of Political Leadership

The most direct evidence for Imam ʿAlī’s conception of political legitimacy comes from the arguments he himself advanced when his authority was challenged. Rather than reconstructing his political thought through later theological formulations, it is methodologically preferable to begin with his own recorded statements in their historical context.

One of the most significant texts in this regard is the letter attributed to Imam ʿAlī and addressed to Muʿāwiyah (d. 60/680) after the former’s accession to the caliphate. The letter seeks to justify the legitimacy of Imam ʿAlī’s government and to persuade Muʿāwiyah to recognise his authority. Because the question under dispute was precisely the basis upon which political authority should be acknowledged, the arguments employed in this correspondence deserve careful attention.

Imam ʿAlī writes:

إِنَّمَا الشُّورَى لِلْمُهَاجِرِينَ وَالْأَنْصَارِ، فَإِنِ اجْتَمَعُوا عَلَى رَجُلٍ وَسَمَّوْهُ إِمَامًا كَانَ ذَلِكَ لِلَّهِ رِضًا…

“The right of consultation (shūrā) belongs to the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār. If they collectively agree upon a man and designate him as their Imām, then that is pleasing to Allah. Should anyone depart from their consensus through objection or innovation, they should first seek to return him to it. If he refuses, they are to fight him for following a path other than that of the believers, and Allah will leave him to that which he has chosen.”⁸

Whatever one’s broader theological commitments may be, the immediate significance of this passage is difficult to overlook.

In defending his own legitimacy against Muʿāwiyah, Imam ʿAlī does not appeal to an explicit Qurʾānic verse appointing him to office, nor does he invoke a clear Prophetic declaration as the legal basis of his claim. Instead, he grounds his argument in the legitimacy of a shūrā⁹ conducted by the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār¹⁰ and presents their collective decision as possessing divine approval.

Equally noteworthy is the positive manner in which shūrā itself is described. The passage does not merely acknowledge consultation as a political reality that happened to occur. Rather, it presents communal deliberation followed by consensus as the appropriate mechanism through which leadership is established. The statement that “Allah’s pleasure lies in that” attributes positive religious significance to the process itself.

For the purposes of the present study, this observation is of central importance. My concern here is not whether later theological traditions developed alternative understandings of this letter, but rather what the text itself appears to assert within its immediate literary and historical context.

The argument is straightforward. Imam ʿAlī is attempting to persuade an opponent to recognise the legitimacy of his rule. One would therefore expect him to advance what he regarded as the strongest available justification for that legitimacy. Yet the justification presented rests upon communal recognition through shūrā, not upon an explicit appeal to divine designation.

This raises an important historical question. If Imam ʿAlī regarded an explicit divine appointment as the decisive legal basis of political authority, why does this argument not appear here, where it would seem most directly relevant?

The question cannot be dismissed simply by observing that Muʿāwiyah may have rejected such a claim. Throughout the Qurʾān, prophets proclaim their divine commission irrespective of whether their audiences are willing to accept it. Their responsibility lies in communicating God’s appointment, not in calculating whether that appointment will prove rhetorically effective. If Imam ʿAlī understood his own authority in analogous terms, one might reasonably expect at least some explicit appeal to that appointment during a dispute whose central issue was political legitimacy itself.

This observation does not, by itself, resolve the broader theological debate concerning Imamate. Historical silence rarely constitutes conclusive proof. It does, however, require explanation. The surviving record consistently portrays Imam ʿAlī defending his authority through arguments grounded in communal legitimacy, merit, and political recognition. Any interpretation that places explicit divine designation at the centre of his political thought must therefore account for the absence of such appeals in precisely those moments when they would appear most relevant.

Before drawing broader conclusions, however, it is necessary to examine one of the principal responses advanced within later Imāmī scholarship to this letter.

Responding to the “Argument from the Opponent’s Premises”

A common response offered within later Twelver Imāmī scholarship is that Imam ʿAlī did not cite an explicit divine designation in his correspondence with Muʿāwiyah because he was arguing from premises already accepted by his opponent. According to this interpretation, the Imam temporarily adopted Muʿāwiyah’s own political assumptions in order to demonstrate that, even on those assumptions, Muʿāwiyah remained obligated to recognise his authority.

This mode of argumentation is well known within both Islamic dialectics and classical logic. Muslim scholars have long recognised the legitimacy of ilzām al-khaṣm bimā yaltazim bih (binding an opponent by principles that he himself accepts),¹¹ while Western philosophy describes a similar method under the heading of reductio ad absurdum. Under this reading, Imam ʿAlī’s discussion of shūrā would not necessarily represent his own constitutional theory but rather a strategic argument intended to expose an inconsistency in Muʿāwiyah’s position.

At first glance, this explanation possesses considerable rhetorical appeal. It allows later Imāmī theology to preserve its doctrine of explicit divine designation while simultaneously accounting for the language employed in the letter.

Nevertheless, I find this interpretation difficult to reconcile with the wording of the letter itself.

The central difficulty lies not in Imam ʿAlī’s reference to shūrā, but in the theological significance he attributes to it. He does not merely state that consultation happened to be the accepted political practice of the time, nor does he simply argue that Muʿāwiyah ought to respect the prevailing constitutional convention. Instead, he declares:

فَإِنِ اجْتَمَعُوا عَلَى رَجُلٍ وَسَمَّوْهُ إِمَامًا كَانَ ذَلِكَ لِلَّهِ رِضًا

“If they collectively agree upon a man and designate him as their Imām, then that is pleasing to Allah.”

This statement extends beyond procedural description. It attributes divine approval to the outcome of communal deliberation itself.

That distinction is significant.

Had Imam ʿAlī merely wished to bind Muʿāwiyah to his own political assumptions, one might expect him to argue that according to Muʿāwiyah’s own principles the consensus of the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār ought to be respected. Instead, the argument is framed in universal theological language. The legitimacy of the process is grounded not in Muʿāwiyah’s constitutional preferences but in Allah’s pleasure.

For that reason, I find it difficult to read this sentence as nothing more than a forensic debating technique. To do so would require distinguishing between the procedural element of the argument and its theological conclusion, even though the text itself presents them as inseparable.

This observation raises a further consideration.

If Imam ʿAlī believed that leadership after the Prophet depended exclusively upon an explicit divine designation, then attributing Allah’s pleasure to an electoral process would create an obvious tension. The issue is not simply whether shūrā functioned as an effective political argument against Muʿāwiyah. Rather, it is whether Imam ʿAlī could consistently ascribe divine approval to a process that, on this reading, would have possessed no independent legitimacy in the first place.

I do not believe the difficulty can be resolved merely by appealing to dialectical method. Argumentation from an opponent’s premises may explain why one adopts another person’s assumptions for the sake of discussion. It does not easily explain why one would explicitly attribute Allah’s approval to a constitutional principle one privately regarded as religiously invalid.

For this reason, I regard the letter as more naturally reflecting Imam ʿAlī’s own understanding of political legitimacy than as a purely rhetorical exercise directed at Muʿāwiyah.

This conclusion becomes even more compelling when the letter is read alongside the broader pattern of Imam ʿAlī’s political conduct. Throughout the surviving historical record, he consistently advances claims grounded in merit, consultation, communal recognition, and procedural legitimacy. Explicit appeals to a public doctrine of divine designation remain notably absent.

Whether one ultimately accepts or rejects this interpretation, the cumulative evidence deserves careful consideration before later doctrinal formulations are projected back onto Imam ʿAlī’s own political vocabulary.

Reading the Letter on Its Own Terms

The preceding discussion naturally raises the question of how Imam ʿAlī’s letter ought to be interpreted. One influential explanation within later Twelver Imāmī scholarship maintains that the Imam did not intend this letter to articulate his own constitutional theory. Rather, he was employing a recognised dialectical method by arguing from premises already accepted by Muʿāwiyah.¹²

This interpretation deserves careful consideration. It reflects a well-established form of argumentation in both Islamic intellectual tradition and classical logic. By temporarily accepting an opponent’s assumptions for the sake of discussion, a speaker may expose inconsistencies within the opponent’s own position without endorsing those assumptions personally.

If this explanation is correct, then Imam ʿAlī’s reference to shūrā should be understood primarily as a rhetorical strategy rather than as a statement of political principle.

The wording of the letter, however, presents a difficulty for this interpretation.

The argument does not end with the observation that the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār historically selected political leaders through consultation. Nor does Imam ʿAlī simply state that Muʿāwiyah ought to accept the prevailing constitutional convention of the Muslim community. Instead, he proceeds to make a theological claim concerning the legitimacy of that process itself:

فَإِنِ اجْتَمَعُوا عَلَى رَجُلٍ وَسَمَّوْهُ إِمَامًا كَانَ ذَلِكَ لِلَّهِ رِضًا

“If they collectively agree upon a man and designate him as their Imām, then that is pleasing to Allah.”

This sentence appears to do more than describe political custom. It attributes divine approval to the outcome of communal consultation. The force of the statement therefore lies not merely in its procedural content but in the theological evaluation attached to it.

That distinction is central to my reading of the passage.

If Imam ʿAlī were merely binding Muʿāwiyah to his own premises, one might expect the argument to remain at the level of political consistency: You accept consultation; therefore you should accept its outcome. Instead, the letter advances a broader proposition by connecting the consensus of the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār with Allah’s pleasure. The argument is presented as a positive account of political legitimacy rather than simply as an internal critique of Muʿāwiyah’s reasoning.

For that reason, I find it difficult to understand the statement as a purely forensic device. The theological affirmation embedded within the sentence appears to exceed what would ordinarily be required for a reductio ad absurdum.

This observation also bears upon the broader constitutional question addressed throughout this study. If leadership after the Prophet depended exclusively upon explicit divine designation, then attributing Allah’s pleasure to an electoral process would require further explanation. The issue is not whether consultation occurred historically, but whether consultation possessed independent religious legitimacy.

The interpretation advanced here does not claim that this letter, by itself, settles the question of the Imamate. Historical arguments rarely rest upon a single text. Rather, the letter assumes significance because it forms part of a wider pattern. Across the surviving record, Imam ʿAlī consistently justifies his political authority through appeals to merit, communal recognition, consultation, and public legitimacy. Explicit appeals to a publicly proclaimed divine designation remain comparatively absent from these political defences.

Whether one ultimately accepts this reading or prefers the later Imāmī interpretation, the wording of the letter itself warrants careful attention. At the very least, it suggests that Imam ʿAlī’s political vocabulary deserves to be examined on its own terms before being interpreted through doctrinal frameworks that developed in subsequent centuries.

Consistency in Imam ʿAlī’s Political Reasoning

A single text, however important, cannot by itself establish the contours of a historical figure’s political thought. The significance of Imam ʿAlī’s letter to Muʿāwiyah therefore depends upon whether its understanding of political legitimacy is echoed elsewhere in the surviving record of his public life.

When Imam ʿAlī’s speeches, letters, and reported statements are examined collectively, a striking degree of consistency emerges. The arguments through which he justifies his claim to leadership repeatedly appeal to his personal merit, his closeness to the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ), his precedence in Islam, and the support he received from the Muslim community. What remains comparatively absent is an explicit appeal to a publicly proclaimed divine designation as the legal basis of his political authority.

This observation is significant because the texts span different periods of Imam ʿAlī’s life and were delivered in different political circumstances. If the language of consultation and communal legitimacy appeared only once, one might plausibly attribute it to the particular demands of that moment. Instead, similar patterns recur across multiple settings, suggesting a broader and more consistent conception of political legitimacy.

One example appears during Imam ʿAlī’s exchanges with the representatives of Muʿāwiyah in the period preceding the Battle of Ṣiffīn. In addressing Shuraḥbīl ibn al-Simṭ, Imam ʿAlī begins by recounting the Prophet’s mission, his own service to Islam, and the circumstances surrounding the succession after the Prophet’s death. Throughout this address, his claim to leadership is grounded in his unique qualifications, his lifelong companionship with the Prophet, and his superior entitlement to govern.¹³

This pattern also appears in reports describing Imam ʿAlī’s reflections on the succession of Abū Bakr (d. 13/634) and ʿUmar (d. 23/644). In these accounts, he repeatedly states that he was “more worthy” (aḥaqq) of the caliphate while nevertheless choosing to avoid civil conflict for the preservation of the Muslim community.¹⁴ The language employed is revealing. His claim rests upon superior entitlement and merit, coupled with a conscious decision to prioritise communal unity over political confrontation.

The distinction is important. To say that one is “more worthy” of an office is not necessarily equivalent to claiming that the office can only be conferred through an explicit divine appointment. Merit and divine designation are conceptually distinct foundations of legitimacy. The former concerns comparative fitness to govern; the latter concerns an exclusive legal right established by revelation. The surviving political statements attributed to Imam ʿAlī consistently emphasise the former.

This does not imply that Imam ʿAlī regarded consultation as the sole criterion for leadership or that questions of moral excellence were secondary. On the contrary, his speeches repeatedly present virtue, knowledge, justice, and proximity to the Prophet as indispensable qualifications for governance. His conception of legitimate leadership therefore appears to combine personal excellence with communal recognition rather than treating these principles as mutually exclusive.

When these sources are read together, the letter to Muʿāwiyah no longer appears as an isolated or anomalous text. Rather, it forms part of a broader pattern in which Imam ʿAlī consistently explains his political entitlement through the language of merit, recognised excellence, and public legitimacy.

This cumulative pattern does not, by itself, determine every aspect of the later theological doctrine of the Imamate. It does, however, suggest that Imam ʿAlī’s own political vocabulary deserves to be understood within its historical setting before later doctrinal developments are used as the primary lens through which his statements are interpreted.

Merit, Consultation, and the Third Shūrā

The cumulative character of the evidence becomes more apparent when attention is turned to reports describing Imam ʿAlī’s interactions with the first two caliphs and his participation in the deliberations surrounding the third caliphate. These reports span different periods of his public life, yet they display a striking continuity in the language through which he articulates his political claims.

One report records Imam ʿAlī explaining to Abū Bakr the basis of his grievance following the Prophet’s death. The complaint is expressed in terms of exclusion from political consultation rather than the denial of an explicitly proclaimed divine appointment:

“We were not prevented from giving you bayʿah, O Abū Bakr, because we denied your virtue or envied the good that Allah had granted you. Rather, we believed that we possessed a right in this matter, yet you assumed it without consulting us.”¹⁵

The report continues by describing Imam ʿAlī’s appeal to his close kinship with the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) and to the special position of the Prophet’s family. Throughout the exchange, the argument centres upon entitlement, precedence, and exclusion from consultation. The surviving account does not record an appeal to an explicit public designation by the Prophet as the decisive legal basis of his claim.¹⁶

A similar pattern appears in reports concerning the period following the deaths of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. Reflecting upon those events, Imam ʿAlī is reported to have said:

“Thereafter the people elected Abū Bakr as their leader, and after him Abū Bakr appointed ʿUmar. Both governed the community with justice and conducted themselves well. We nevertheless felt aggrieved because they assumed authority without consulting us, even though we are the family of the Messenger and more deserving of this matter. Yet we chose to overlook that grievance.”¹⁷

Several features of this passage deserve attention.

First, Imam ʿAlī distinguishes between his conviction that he was more deserving of leadership and his assessment of the personal conduct of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. The report portrays political disagreement without reducing the legitimacy of the dispute to a single theological proposition.

Second, the grievance again concerns consultation and entitlement. The emphasis falls upon exclusion from the political process and upon his superior claim arising from his relationship to the Prophet and his own qualifications. The report, as transmitted, does not frame the dispute primarily in terms of a publicly announced divine designation.

The same vocabulary continues to appear in reports relating to the council convened after ʿUmar’s death. During those deliberations, Imam ʿAlī repeatedly argues that his lifelong service to Islam, his knowledge, his closeness to the Prophet, and his precedence among the believers render him the strongest candidate for leadership. The argument is comparative: he presents himself as the most qualified among those under consideration.¹⁸

This distinction is analytically important.

To claim that one person is the most deserving of office is not necessarily equivalent to claiming that only God may appoint the holder of that office. Merit-based arguments and arguments from explicit divine designation operate according to different principles. The former evaluates competing candidates; the latter establishes an exclusive legal right through revelation.

My purpose here is not to deny that later Imāmī theology developed the doctrine of naṣṣ in sophisticated ways.¹⁹ Rather, it is to observe that the political language attributed to Imam ʿAlī in these early reports consistently takes a different form. Across diverse historical settings, his arguments appeal to merit, justice, precedence, consultation, and communal recognition. Read cumulatively, these reports reinforce the broader pattern already observed rather than introducing a new constitutional vocabulary.

For that reason, I regard these texts as mutually corroborative. Each individual report may be interpreted in more than one way, but together they display a notable consistency in how Imam ʿAlī publicly explained his claim to political leadership.

The Qurʾānic Foundation of Shūrā

If the preceding analysis suggests that Imam ʿAlī repeatedly appealed to consultation and communal legitimacy when defending his political authority, an important question follows: does the Qurʾān itself recognise consultation as a legitimate principle of governance?

The Qurʾānic evidence indicates that it does.

The Arabic term shūrā refers to mutual consultation in matters requiring collective judgement. Rather than presenting consultation as merely a practical convenience, the Qurʾān describes it as a characteristic of the believing community itself.

Allah says:

وَأَمْرُهُمْ شُورَىٰ بَيْنَهُمْ

Wa amruhum shūrā baynahum.

“Their affairs are conducted through mutual consultation among them.” (Qurʾān 42:38)

The verse appears within a broader description of the moral qualities of believers. Consultation is therefore presented not simply as an administrative technique but as one of the defining characteristics of a righteous community.

The Qurʾān likewise commands the Prophet himself:

وَشَاوِرْهُمْ فِي الْأَمْرِ

Wa shāwirhum fī al-amr.

“Consult them in matters of public concern.” (Qurʾān 3:159)

The significance of this instruction has often been noted by Muslim scholars.²⁰ Although the Prophet received revelation, he was nevertheless commanded to consult the believers in matters for which no definitive revelation had prescribed a specific course of action. Consultation therefore complements revelation rather than competing with it.

This distinction is essential.

The Qurʾān does not suggest that consultation overrides explicit divine instruction. Rather, consultation governs those matters in which revelation establishes general principles without prescribing a single political procedure. Understood in this way, shūrā functions as a divinely endorsed mechanism for collective deliberation within the limits established by revelation.

Read alongside Imam ʿAlī’s political statements, these verses provide an intelligible theological context for his repeated appeals to consultation. If consultation is already recognised within the Qurʾān as a legitimate principle of communal governance, then Imam ʿAlī’s defence of his own caliphate through the language of shūrā becomes historically comprehensible without requiring that such appeals be understood as merely rhetorical.

Whether these verses should be understood as extending specifically to the selection of the head of state remains a matter of interpretive debate.²¹ The present argument does not depend upon resolving that debate conclusively. It is sufficient to observe that the Qurʾān accords consultation a positive normative status and that Imam ʿAlī himself repeatedly invokes that principle in defending the legitimacy of his own government.

Why Imam ʿAlī Objected to Saqīfah

A frequent objection to the foregoing argument maintains that Imam ʿAlī’s initial refusal to pledge allegiance to Abū Bakr demonstrates that he rejected shūrā as a legitimate basis for political authority. If consultation were genuinely the appropriate constitutional principle, it is argued, there would have been no reason for his early opposition.

The historical reports examined in this study suggest a more nuanced picture.

In the well-known narrations preserved in both Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Imam ʿAlī explains the basis of his grievance directly to Abū Bakr.²² His complaint is neither expressed as a rejection of consultation nor as an assertion that consultation was inherently incapable of establishing political legitimacy. Rather, he explains that he and the Prophet’s family believed they possessed a rightful claim in the matter and that they had been excluded from the deliberative process through which the decision had been reached.

This distinction deserves careful attention.

A criticism of how a consultative process was conducted is not necessarily a rejection of consultation as a constitutional principle. One may affirm the legitimacy of a process while maintaining that it was implemented incompletely or without adequate participation by those most directly concerned.

According to these reports, Imam ʿAlī’s grievance centred upon precisely this issue. The gathering at Saqīfah occurred immediately following the Prophet’s death, while members of Banū Hāshim remained occupied with his funeral preparations. From Imam ʿAlī’s perspective, the principal concern was that those with the closest relationship to the Prophet and a substantial stake in the future of the community had not participated in the deliberations.²³

This reading also helps explain a later development recorded in the same sources. After a period of disagreement, Imam ʿAlī ultimately pledged allegiance to Abū Bakr and continued to participate in the political life of the Muslim community.²⁴ Whatever theological conclusions one ultimately draws from this episode, the historical reports themselves portray a transition from protest to reconciliation rather than the continued assertion of an irrevocable constitutional claim grounded in a publicly proclaimed divine designation.

Viewed within the broader pattern established throughout this study, Imam ʿAlī’s response to Saqīfah appears consistent with his wider political vocabulary. His concerns repeatedly focus upon justice, merit, due process, consultation, and the integrity of communal decision-making. These themes recur with remarkable consistency across reports originating in different historical contexts.

Conclusion

The argument of this study has been cumulative rather than demonstrative. No single text among those examined settles the constitutional question of early Islam, and I have not claimed otherwise. What the texts display, read together, is a consistent political vocabulary: when Imam ʿAlī defends his authority, whether against Muʿāwiyah, before the electoral council, or in retrospect upon the first two caliphates, he argues from merit, precedence, kinship with the Prophet, and the legitimacy conferred by communal recognition through consultation. The vocabulary of explicit divine designation, so central to later Imāmī theology, is not the vocabulary in which these defences are conducted.

Two conclusions of different strength follow. The weaker is historical: any account of Imam ʿAlī’s political thought must explain this pattern rather than explain it away, and explanations that appeal to dialectical strategy must show why strategic speech should extend to attributing Allah’s pleasure to a process held privately to lack legitimacy. The stronger conclusion, that the later doctrine misdescribes his self-understanding, I have deliberately not pressed. Between the two lies the historiographical question this essay has tried to keep open: what the earliest recoverable stratum of a tradition may claim against the systematisations built upon it.

That question does not admit of a final answer from the material surveyed here. It does admit of a discipline: to read Imam ʿAlī’s recorded arguments first within their own occasions, and to treat the doctrinal syntheses of later centuries as developments requiring historical explanation, whatever theological weight one ultimately assigns them.

Notes

1. Naṣṣ: an explicit textual designation. In Imāmī uṣūl al-dīn the term denotes the express, public appointment of the Imam by the Prophet, or by the preceding Imam, understood as constituting an exclusive legal right to leadership. For the classical articulation and historical development of the doctrine, see below, n. 4.
2. Methodologically, this study begins with the earliest extant representations of Imam ʿAlī’s public political discourse before considering later theological syntheses. This reflects the historical principle that an actor’s own recorded arguments, while not immune from questions of transmission, constitute the primary evidence for reconstructing that actor’s political vocabulary; later doctrinal developments are therefore treated as interpretive traditions requiring historical explanation rather than as the starting point of the inquiry. The study confines itself to the Islamic literary tradition; the external source corpus lies beyond its scope, for which see Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1997). Dates are given hijrī/CE. Translations from the Arabic, including Qurʾānic passages, are the author’s own unless otherwise indicated.
3. Nahj al-Balāghah was compiled by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1015) as an anthology selected for its eloquence and transmitted without isnāds. Sermons and letters are cited here according to the numbering of the edition of Ṣubḥī al-Ṣāliḥ (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1387/1967); a critical edition with translation is now available in Tahera Qutbuddin, ed. and trans., Nahj al-Balāghah: The Wisdom and Eloquence of ʿAlī (Leiden: Brill, 2024). For the tracing of earlier witnesses to individual items, see ʿAbd al-Zahrāʾ al-Ḥusaynī al-Khaṭīb, Maṣādir Nahj al-Balāghah wa-Asānīduh, 4 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1405/1985); cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Nahdj al-Balāgha.” On the collection’s use as a historical source in this study, see further below, n. 8.
4. For the classical loci: al-Kulaynī (d. 329/941), al-Kāfī, ed. ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī, 8 vols (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyyah, 1388 AH), Kitāb al-Ḥujjah, especially the chapters on the necessity of the ḥujjah and on the naṣṣ upon the Imams; al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022), Awāʾil al-Maqālāt, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Anṣārī (Qum: al-Muʾtamar al-ʿĀlamī li-l-Shaykh al-Mufīd, 1413/1993). For the doctrine’s historical development: Etan Kohlberg, “From Imāmiyya to Ithnā-ʿAshariyya,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 39 (1976): 521–34, with his collected studies, In Praise of the Few: Studies in Shiʿi Thought and History, ed. Amin Ehteshami (Leiden: Brill, 2020); Hossein Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shiʿite Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993); Hassan Ansari, L’imamat et l’Occultation selon l’imamisme: Étude bibliographique et histoire des textes (Leiden: Brill, 2017). For a reconstruction of the early Imamate in which the Imam’s authority is primarily initiatic rather than political, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam, trans. David Streight (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). For general orientation, Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
5. The principal narrative source for the crisis of ʿUthmān’s caliphate and the first fitnah is al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, 10 vols (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1960–69), s.a. 34–36; English translation in The History of al-Ṭabarī, gen. ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, 40 vols (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985–2007). al-Ṭabarī’s method is compilatory: he sets parallel reports side by side under their isnāds with minimal editorial adjudication, preserving transmission lines of differing tendency, including extensive material from Abū Mikhnaf (d. 157/774) and Sayf ibn ʿUmar (d. c. 180/796). Reports are accordingly cited below by the year of events (s.a.) rather than by the pagination of any single printing. For modern assessment: Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muḥammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chap. 3; Sean W. Anthony, The Caliph and the Heretic: Ibn Sabaʾ and the Origins of Shīʿism (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
6. Ḥujjah: probative proof. In Imāmī usage the term comes also to designate the Imam himself as God’s ḥujjah over creation: see al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, Kitāb al-Ḥujjah (above, n. 4); cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Ḥudjdja.” The present essay uses the term in its argumentative sense.
7. al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870), al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, no. 4416; Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (d. 261/875), al-Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb Faḍāʾil al-Ṣaḥābah, no. 2404 (the report of Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ on the occasion of Tabūk). Ḥadīth are cited throughout by the standard continuous numeration: the Fatḥ al-Bārī numbering for al-Bukhārī and the ʿAbd al-Bāqī numbering for Muslim. The interpretive scope of the manzilah tradition, and in particular whether the Hārūn analogy entails a designation to succession, is itself the contested question in later polemic; it is accordingly treated here as material requiring interpretation rather than as independent proof.
8. Nahj al-Balāghah, Letter 6. Although the Nahj was compiled by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1015), variants of the correspondence exchanged between Imam ʿAlī and Muʿāwiyah before Ṣiffīn are preserved in earlier compilations, notably Naṣr ibn Muzāḥim al-Minqarī (d. 212/827), Waqʿat Ṣiffīn, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn, 2nd ed. (Cairo: al-Muʾassasah al-ʿArabiyyah al-Ḥadīthah, 1382/1962); the letter is discussed at length in Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd (d. 656/1258), Sharḥ Nahj al-Balāghah, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, 20 vols (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyyah, 1959–64), ad Letter 6; for its attested earlier witnesses see al-Khaṭīb, Maṣādir (above, n. 3), ad loc. Questions surrounding transmission and attribution remain the subject of scholarly discussion. The present essay is concerned primarily with the political vocabulary preserved in the received tradition rather than with establishing the authenticity of every individual recension.
9. Shūrā: mutual consultation in matters requiring collective judgement. For the Qurʾānic material see below, “The Qurʾānic Foundation of Shūrā” (Q 42:38; 3:159). For consultative selection in early Islamic political practice and its later theorisation, Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004); cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Shūrā.”
10. The Muhājirūn are those Companions who emigrated from Makkah to Madīnah; the Anṣār are the Madīnan Companions who received them. Their joint standing as the enfranchised body in early succession practice is presupposed by the letter’s argument. See Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.vv. “Muhādjirūn” and “al-Anṣār”; and, for the bayʿah of the two groups as the constitutive act of accession, Marsham (below, n. 16).
11. For dialectical method in the Islamic sciences generally, Josef van Ess, “The Logical Structure of Islamic Theology,” in Logic in Classical Islamic Culture, ed. G. E. von Grunebaum (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1970), 21–50. The dialectical reading of this letter belongs to a family of Imāmī responses developed classically in al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044), al-Shāfī fī al-Imāmah, ed. ʿAbd al-Zahrāʾ al-Ḥusaynī al-Khaṭīb, 4 vols (Tehran: Muʾassasat al-Ṣādiq, 1410/1990), in which Imam ʿAlī’s public silences and concessive arguments are explained by reference to circumstance and audience.
12. For the dialectical background and the principal classical discussions, see above, nn. 8 and 11.
13. For the negotiations preceding Ṣiffīn, including Muʿāwiyah’s delegation of Ḥabīb ibn Maslamah al-Fihrī and Shuraḥbīl ibn al-Simṭ and Imam ʿAlī’s reply to them, see al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, s.a. 36–37, with the parallel material in the Ṣiffīn corpus deriving from Naṣr ibn Muzāḥim, Waqʿat Ṣiffīn (above, n. 8). Outside the Nahj, the main early repositories for Imam ʿAlī’s speeches and correspondence are Waqʿat Ṣiffīn; the ʿAlī material in al-Balādhurī (d. c. 279/892), Ansāb al-Ashrāf, part of which is available in the edition of Wilferd Madelung, Bibliotheca Islamica 28b (Beirut: Orient-Institut; Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2003); and the annalistic material in al-Ṭabarī (above, n. 5). al-Balādhurī’s proximity to the earlier akhbār collections gives his ʿAlid material particular value; as with the tradition generally, however, transmission histories vary from report to report, and each item must be weighed singly.
14. Nahj al-Balāghah, Sermon 74 (73 in some numberings), delivered when the electors resolved upon the bayʿah of ʿUthmān: Imam ʿAlī states that he is the most entitled of people to it and that he will nevertheless yield so long as the affairs of the Muslims remain sound. For the reconstruction of Imam ʿAlī’s claim as one of superior entitlement grounded in kinship and precedence, see Madelung, Succession, introduction and chap. 1. The present study concurs with that reconstruction so far as the vocabulary of entitlement is concerned; it differs in stressing the consultative frame within which Imam ʿAlī situates that entitlement, and in declining to convert either element into a doctrine of explicit public designation.
15. al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-Maghāzī, nos. 4240–41; Muslim, al-Ṣaḥīḥ, Kitāb al-Jihād wa-l-Siyar, no. 1759 (the report of ʿĀʾishah, which likewise records that Imam ʿAlī’s bayʿah followed only after an interval of some months). On the use of the Ṣaḥīḥayn in a historical argument: the canonical collections were assembled in the third/ninth century under formal isnād criticism, and their reports are for the historian early attestations of contested memory rather than transcripts; their weight in this essay is accordingly evidential, not confessional. That a report preserving an ʿAlid grievance is transmitted within the Sunnī canonical corpus, where no doctrinal motive favours its preservation, bears upon its evidential weight, a consideration analogous to the criterion of dissimilarity in Biblical criticism. For the formation and standing of the two collections, Jonathan A. C. Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
16. Bayʿah: the pledge, contracted by hand-clasp, through which allegiance to a ruler was given. On its ritual and constitutional development in the first Muslim empire, Andrew Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009); cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Bayʿa.”
17. The report belongs to Imam ʿAlī’s reply to the delegation sent by Muʿāwiyah before Ṣiffīn (above, n. 13): al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, s.a. 36–37: thumma istakhlafa al-nāsu Abā Bakr wa-stakhlafa Abū Bakr ʿUmar, fa-aḥsanā al-sīrah wa-ʿadalā fī al-ummah, wa-qad wajadnā ʿalayhimā an tawallayā ʿalaynā wa-naḥnu āl Rasūl Allāh, fa-ghafarnā dhālika lahumā. A fuller recension, adding wa-aḥaqqu bi-l-amr (“and more entitled to the matter”), circulates in the Ṣiffīn corpus deriving from Naṣr ibn Muzāḥim and in its quotations in the Nahj commentaries; the translation above follows that fuller wording. Reports coupling acknowledgement of the first two caliphs’ conduct with the grievance of exclusion are collected and assessed in Madelung, Succession, chaps 1–2.
18. For the proceedings of the electoral council convened at ʿUmar’s death, al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, s.a. 23; with Madelung, Succession, chaps 2–3; cf. Nahj al-Balāghah, Sermon 74 (above, n. 14), delivered on that occasion.
19. See above, n. 4, and the literature cited there.
20. See the classical exegesis ad Q 3:159, e.g., al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān ʿan Taʾwīl Āy al-Qurʾān, ad loc., where the command to consult is discussed notwithstanding the Prophet’s access to revelation.
21. For the range of positions on whether the Qurʾānic commendation of consultation extends to the selection of the head of state, see Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought; Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy; and, for the classical Imāmī denial, the literature above, n. 4.
22. The narrations in question are those cited above, n. 15.
23. Evidence: the fullest early narrative complexes for Saqīfah are al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, s.a. 11, drawing principally on the akhbār of Abū Mikhnaf; together with the khuṭbah of ʿUmar reported by Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Ḥudūd, no. 6830, which preserves within the Sunnī canon both the irregularity of the first bayʿah and its subsequent justification. Interpretation: Madelung, Succession, chap. 1, reads the episode as the exclusion of the Hāshimites from a decision precipitated by the initiative of the Anṣār; Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998), cautions that the surviving accounts are shaped by later legitimising concerns on all sides. Position: the present study takes from these narratives no more than the shape of the grievance they consistently attribute to Imam ʿAlī: exclusion from deliberation, not denial of deliberation’s legitimacy. That restricted use is compatible with either critical assessment.
24. Above, n. 15; the interval and the eventual bayʿah are recorded within the same report. Cf. Madelung, Succession, chap. 1.

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