But even at this moment, when grief had overpowered us all, the Messenger remained true to his faith.

“No,” he said loudly, his voice echoing through the streets of Medina. “The sun and the moon are signs of God. They are eclipsed for no man.”

And with that Muhammad reminded us that he was no more than a man himself and that his own son was no more special than the hundreds of children who died every day in the cruelty of the desert, whose families were forced to grieve alone, without the loving support of an entire nation.

My husband turned away, his face looking very tired and old. I reached over and took his hand, and he held mine tightly, his eyes brimming with gratitude. And then we walked back inside and began the preparations for the funeral.

43

The next several months were a flurry of diplomatic activity as the Messenger dispatched envoys throughout Arabia. With the fall of Mecca, the ancient pagan cult had breathed its last, and it was time to bring the remaining tribes under the governance of Medina. A nation had finally been forged, and the Prophet was busy making plans for its survival. I did not understand the urgency in his daily letters to the varying provinces of the peninsula that now swore allegiance to him, perhaps because I did not want to face the truth. My husband was over sixty years old and had lived a hundred lifetimes in one. But he was not immortal, and as the weight of his age grew upon him, he was making plans for the survival of the Ummah once he was no longer there to guide it.

With the death of Ibrahim, talk had begun among the people of Arabia about the successor to the Prophet now that he had lost his direct heir. Many names were whispered, most prominently that of my father, Abu Bakr, who was an elder statesman and held the respect of the entire community. My father always angrily dismissed such speculation and yet it persisted. A few voices suggested that young Ali, who was now just over thirty years old, would be a natural choice, as the closest living male relative to the Prophet and the father of his grandsons. But there was a natural dislike among the independent-minded Arabs for monarchy, and the idea that the leadership of the community should be based on the right of bloodlines left a sour taste in the mouths of the tribes.

It was significant that of the few Companions who spoke in favor of Ali, the most prominent was Salman, the Persian hero who had devised the strategy of the trench that had saved Medina from invasion. The Persians were an ancient people who were proud of their long lineage of philosopher-kings and looked upon the Arab custom of choosing tribal leaders by an assembly known as a shura as a crass system that could be manipulated by the powerful to oppress the weak. For the Persians, the qualities of leadership, the instincts for justice and honor, were sacred traits that were passed along by blood and upbringing and should not be bartered away for the mercurial passions of the mob. It was a passionate and proud stance, but one that was utterly alien to the freethinking Arabs, who were only now becoming accustomed to being ruled by a single man.

My husband was certainly aware of the talk, but he made no effort to end it or to clarify his own preferences in the matter of succession. In the years that followed, I have often looked back and wondered why he was so circumspect. In all other areas of life, he was a clear and commanding guide, one whose words were carefully chosen to limit the possibility of misinterpretation or confusion. Yet when it came to the matter of succession to the leadership of the Ummah, he was stubbornly silent, and much of the chaos that was to emerge would arise from our best efforts to understand his ambiguous pronouncements on this subject.

It is my belief that my husband did not announce his intentions clearly because his heart was torn, even as the Ummah itself would one day be torn apart. The death of Ibrahim had taken away his last hope for a son to carry his lineage, which would now pass through his daughter Fatima and her sons, Hasan and Husayn. Ali was indeed the closest of his living male relatives and had been in many ways both a brother and a son to him. The Messenger spent a great deal of time talking in private with him, and none except Fatima would be permitted to join them in those moments. What was said between them was always a mystery, and there were rumors that my husband was passing along divine secrets that were too weighty for the common Muslims, even for pious men like my father or Umar, to hear.

This speculation added to Ali’s reputation for otherworldliness, and many of the Muslims became increasingly uncomfortable around the strange young man. No one would deny that he was a mighty warrior and an eloquent speaker, but it was this peculiar sense that he was not like the rest of us that estranged him from the hearts of many. And it is for that reason that I have difficulty imagining that my husband expected the Muslims to follow Ali unquestioningly, as his supporters would claim with increasing vehemence in later years. Muhammad was a statesman above all, one who understood the nature and character of the people he had been destined to lead. It was his diplomatic wisdom that had caused him to agree to a truce with Mecca, even though the Muslims were in open revolt at the idea. My husband had seen further than the rest of us and had known that Islam would grow rapidly in peacetime and that Mecca would one day fall without bloodshed. And it was that same visionary thinking that had caused him to pardon his worst enemies and offer the leaders of Quraysh prominent roles in the new state. Even though many Muslims resented the lords of Mecca, the chieftains retained the broad respect of the Arab tribes and their support would bring unity to the nation

My husband, who saw so much, must have seen that his beloved Ali was a polarizing figure, one who brought about intense reactions of both love and hate. My own antipathy to him was visceral, and I knew I was not alone. Muhammad must have known that Ali would never be able to unify the Arabs, and it was the unity of the Ummah that was his primary concern in all the years that I knew him. Others, like my father and Umar, had the respect of the entire nation and could easily hold the community together when Muhammad was gone. And yet my husband did not openly proclaim in their favor either.

As I look back in my own twilight years, dear Abdallah, I believe that my husband’s heart and his mind were divided on the matter. In his heart, perhaps he would have preferred Ali and his grandsons to be the leaders of the community. And yet his intellect saw that the Muslims would probably not support his family’s claim to power, and everything that the Messenger had worked for would shatter upon his death. That truth, the vast chasm between his preferences and those of his own people, was so painful that I believe he intentionally left the matter unresolved in those final days of his life. Perhaps he was hoping that God would give him a Revelation that would clarify the issue of succession, which would absolve him of having to make a choice that could lead to discord and civil war. But when the day of the last Revelation came, the matter remained unsettled.

Those final verses came down upon him during his participation in what would later be called the Farewell Pilgrimage. My husband led tens of thousands of believers to Mecca to perform the rites of Abraham, during which he established forever the rituals according to the laws of Islam. Gone were the old superstitions of the desert, including the pagan custom of circumambulating the Holy Kaaba naked. In their place were the simple acts of piety that reminded us of our connection to our father Abraham.

Along with the ritual encircling of the temple, the Muslims retained the practice of running seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa. This rite, whose meaning had long been forgotten by the Arabs, commemorated our mother Hagar and her desperate search for water. She had sought to save her dying son Ishmael, and at her moment of despair in the arid valley, God had caused the well of Zamzam to miraculously appear at Ishmael’s foot. As my husband explained the meaning of the ritual to the masses of pilgrims, many of whom were recent converts, I remembered how I had told Abu Sufyan the same story when I was a little girl almost fifteen years before. Abu Sufyan, who had then been the proud king of the idol worshipers, the same man who now stood humbly dressed in a pilgrim’s loincloth near the Prophet, a follower instead of an enemy.