Forbearance and magnanimity of Aly.

In the character of Aly there are many things to commend. Mild and beneficent, he treated the rebel city of Bussorah, when prostrate at his feet (as Mahomet had done the ungrateful city of his birth) with a generous forbearance. Towards the theocratic fanatics, who wearied his patience by incessant intrigue and insensate rebellion, he showed no vindictiveness. Excepting Muâvia (the man of all others whom he ought not to have estranged) he carried his policy of conciliation to a dangerous extreme. Procrastination and compromise, his failings.In compromise indeed, and in procrastination, lay the failure of his Caliphate. With greater vigour, spirit, and determination, he might have maintained the integrity of the empire and averted the schism which for a time threatened the existence of Islam, and is felt in its debilitating influences to the present day.

Aly wise in counsel.

Aly was wise in counsel, and many an adage and sapient proverb has been attributed to him. But, like Solomon, his wisdom was more for others than for himself. His career cannot be characterised otherwise than as a failure. On the election of Abu Bekr, influenced probably by Fâtima, who claimed and was denied a share in her father’s property, Aly retired for a time into private life. Thereafter we find him taking part in the counsels of Abu Bekr and his successors, and even performing the functions of chief judicial officer. But he never asserted the leading position, which, as the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, might have been expected of him; nor is there aught (excepting party-coloured and distorted tradition) to show that this was due to any other cause than his own easy and inactive temperament. The blot upon his escutcheon.There is one indelible blot on the escutcheon of Aly—the flagrant breach of duty he was guilty of towards his sovereign ruler. He had sworn allegiance to Othmân, and by him he was bound to have stood in his last extremity. Instead, he held ignobly aloof, while the Caliph fell a victim to red-handed treason. Nor can the plea avail that he was himself in the hands of the insurgents. Had there been a loyal will to help, there would have been a ready way. In point of fact, his attitude gave colour to the charge even of collusion.[567] And herein Aly must be held accountable not only for a grave dereliction of duty, but for a fatal error, which shook the stability of the Caliphate itself, as he was not long in finding to his cost.

Divine Imâmate, a late fiction.

There is no trace whatever, in the history of those times, of the extravagant claims made in later days for Aly and his family. Clearly none of these were regarded during their lifetime with any respect or veneration beyond that which was due to their relationship with the Prophet.[568] On the contrary, we find that even in their own capital and provinces, there prevailed towards them an utter want of enthusiasm and loyalty, amounting at times to positive disaffection. The fiction of the Divine Imâmship was a reaction from the tragedy at Kerbala (to be told below) and the cruel fate of the Prophet’s descendants. And the superstition, fostered by Alyite and Abbasside faction, soon formed a powerful lever which was skilfully and unscrupulously used in the busy canvass to overthrow the Omeyyad dynasty.

CHAPTER XLVI.
HASAN SUCCEEDS ALY.—ABDICATES IN FAVOUR OF MUAVIA.
A.H. XL., XLI. A.D. 661.

Hasan succeeds his father Aly. Ramadhân, A.H. XL. Jan. A.D. 661.

When they had committed Aly, we know not where, to his last home, the people, following the example of Cays ibn Sád, whose influence at the Court of Baghdad continued undiminished, did homage, as it were by common consent, to Hasan, the departed Caliph’s eldest son. But Hasan was a poor-spirited creature, more intent on varying the charms of his ever-changing harem than on the business of public life, and altogether unworthy of his descent as the grandson of the Prophet.[569]

But, attacked by Muâvia, and mobbed by his own troops,