The Rightly Guided Caliphs

Overview

Recall questions on Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, the expansion under them, and the conflicts that led to division.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Who were the four caliphs Sunni Muslims call rightly guided, and why the title?

   Model answer

   Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Uthman ibn Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib, ruling in succession from 632 to 661. Sunni Muslims treat this period as the closest approach there has been to government under revelation, since the four had known the Prophet directly and none founded a dynasty. The title also marks the period off from the hereditary rule that followed.

2. 2

   What did Abu Bakr's short caliphate accomplish?

   Model answer

   He held the community together when tribes across Arabia repudiated their allegiance after the Prophet's death, fighting the campaigns that restored unity and preventing Islam from dissolving back into tribal politics. He is also credited with ordering the first gathering of the Qur'anic material after many who had memorised it were killed in battle. His significance is simply that Islam survived its founder's death.

3. 3

   Why is Umar's reign regarded as decisive?

   Model answer

   In a decade the armies took Syria, Egypt, Iraq and the Persian heartlands. Umar built the administration that made this durable: a register of stipends, garrison cities such as Kufa, Basra and Fustat, tax arrangements that largely left existing bureaucracies and religious communities in place, and the dating of the calendar from the migration. He was killed by a captive in 644.

4. 4

   What is Uthman remembered for, and why did his rule end in revolt?

   Model answer

   For issuing the standard written Qur'an that Muslims have used ever since, and for extending the conquests by sea. Opposition grew over his appointment of relatives to lucrative governorships and over how conquest revenue was distributed, and rebels from the garrison cities killed him in 656. His death opened the first civil war and remains the point at which the early community's unity broke.

5. 5

   How do Shi'a Muslims regard these four?

   Model answer

   They hold that Ali should have led from the start, so the first three held an office that was not rightfully theirs. Attitudes range from restrained acknowledgement that they governed capably to open criticism, and how far such criticism should be voiced has itself divided Shi'a scholars, some of whom have discouraged public denigration in the interest of Muslim unity. Ali is deeply revered in both traditions.

6. 6

   Why were the conquests so rapid, and what changed socially as a result?

   Model answer

   Byzantium and Persia had exhausted each other in a long war and been struck by plague; provincial populations were disaffected with imperial religious policy; the Arab forces were mobile and highly motivated; and the conquerors generally left local administration, languages and religious communities in place in return for tax. Then a pastoral and trading society acquired the revenues of two empires. Garrison towns became cities, settlers drew stipends from tribute, and non-Arab converts found themselves attached to Arab tribes as clients and treated as inferiors, a grievance with long consequences.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.