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Appendix 2. Deathbed Scenes and Inheritance Disputes: A Literary Approach The death of Muhămmad confronted the Muslim community with a crisis. Who would succeed the Prophet as the leader of the Muslim community, by what right, and what office would this person hold? The succession crisis created tensions that led to the division of the Muslim community into Sunnis, Shiis, and Kharijis. The respective claims to leadership put forward by members of these three groups are preserved in reports compiled by Muslim historians. The claims advanced in these reports are tendentious, and Western scholars have questioned the reliability and usefulness of the sources for the purposes of historical investigation. Beginning with Lammens and Caetani and continuing down to the present, the prevailing view has been that reports about the succession crisis—especially those supporting the Shii position—are late fabrications that were put into circulation in an effort to buttress the contention that Alı̄ had been the rightful successor of the Prophet.1 Two important witnesses to the succession crisis were the Prophet’s wife Āisha and his cousin Ibn Abbās. Madelung recently has argued that statements attributed to these two Companions reflect sharply defined personal positions and political attitudes which, taken as a whole, are internally consistent . Thus, if the attribution of one or another assertion to Āisha or Ibn Abbās could be verified—he does not say how—then the report in question should be accepted as authentic until such time as the opposite can be proven. The historian is careful to add, however, that even an authentic report may not be reliable because Āisha and Ibn Abbās would not have hesitated to manipulate the “facts” if and when such an action had served their interests, e.g., by buttressing their own positions or discrediting their adversaries.2 Madelung seems to think that it is possible to reconstruct history as it really happened.3 If so, then reports preserved in Islamic sources open a window on the innermost thoughts of the Muslims who participated in the succession crisis. Although Madelung surely has gone too far,4 it nevertheless remains the case that some of the reports relating to the succession crisis were put into circulation long before the lead-up to the Abbasid revolution and they may preserve arguments and positions that had emerged by the end of the first century a.h. In what follows, I apply to these reports the same method that I applied to the reports about Zayd in Chapter 7. That is to say, rather than 244 Appendix 2 treating these narratives as records of an historical event, I treat them as literary compositions that were formulated after the fact. By analyzing selected narratives from a literary perspective, I seek to expose themes and tendencies that lie hidden beneath the smooth linguistic surface of the narratives. I shall examine two episodes: (1) Muhămmad on his deathbed; and (2) the inheritance disputes that are said to have followed his death. The Prophet on His Deathbed A deathbed scene is a natural setting in which to situate issues relating to inheritance and succession. It is on his deathbed that a man often makes provisions for the transmission of property from one generation to the next, and it is on his deathbed that the leader of a political or religious community nominates a successor, if he has not done so already. Narrative reports about what Muhămmad said (or did not say) on his deathbed may be compared to the deathbed scenes of biblical figures such as Jacob (Gen. 49) or David (I Kings 1), on the one hand, and to the deathbed scenes of the first caliphs, on the other. Let us examine three narratives. H˘asan—Shaybān—Layth—T˘āūs—Ibn Abbās: When Muhămmad was on the point of death (lammā hŭdira rasūl allāh), he said: “Bring me a shoulder blade (katif ) and I shall dictate for you a document (kitāb) on it so that no two men will disagree after me.” Subsequently, Ibn Abbās continued, “The people approached shouting loudly, and a woman said, ‘Beware the testament (ahd) of the Messenger of God.’”5 In this narrative, a statement attributed to the Prophet on his deathbed is reported on the authority of Ibn Abbās (d. 68/688). The isnād indicates that sometime before he died, Ibn Abbās transmitted the Prophet...

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