Life at a glance
Ali said: "I used to follow him as a baby camel follows its mother." He never knew a day of idolatry, and he never knew a day away from the Prophet ﷺ until the Prophet ﷺ was gone.
The Quran and Ali
"Say: come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves." Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas narrates that when this verse came, the Prophet ﷺ called Ali, Fatimah, Hasan and Husayn and said: "O Allah, these are my family." Ali stands for "ourselves": the Quran makes him the self of the Prophet ﷺ.
"Allah only wishes to remove all impurity from you, O People of the House, and to purify you thoroughly." Aishah narrates the Hadith of the Cloak: the Prophet ﷺ gathered Ali, Fatimah, Hasan and Husayn beneath his cloak and recited this verse.
"Your protector is only Allah, His Messenger, and the believers who establish prayer and give zakat while bowing." Many commentators record that it came down when Ali gave his ring to a beggar while in ruku'. Khaza'in al-Irfan states this plainly.
"…and that a retaining ear may retain it." The Prophet ﷺ said to Ali: "I asked Allah to make it your ear." Ali said: "I never forgot anything after that."
"Say: I ask of you no reward except love of the near kin." Ibn Abbas: the Companions asked who these near kin were; the Prophet ﷺ said: "Ali, Fatimah and their two sons."
"When you consult the Messenger privately, give charity before your consultation." Ali: "There is a verse no one acted on before me and no one will after me." He gave a dinar, asked the Prophet ﷺ ten questions, and the verse was then lifted.
"They feed, for love of Him, the needy, the orphan and the captive." Narrated about Ali and Fatimah, who fasted three days for the recovery of Hasan and Husayn and gave away their only bread each evening.
"Among people is he who sells his own self seeking the pleasure of Allah." Recorded about the night of the Hijrah, when Ali slept in the Prophet's bed with death expected at dawn.
"Those who believe and do good: they are the best of creation." Jabir reports the Prophet ﷺ said to Ali when it was revealed: "That is you and your followers on the Day of Rising."
What the Prophet ﷺ said about him
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal said: "No Companion has had as many virtues narrated about him as Ali."
"I am the City of Knowledge and Ali is its Gate; whoever wants knowledge, let him come to the Gate." Al-Hakim declared it authentic; Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani examined its chains and ruled it sound. Tirmidhi (3723) has the wording "I am the House of Wisdom and Ali is its gate."
"You are to me as Harun was to Musa, except that there is no prophet after me." Said when he left Ali in charge of Madinah for Tabuk.
"Whoever I am his Mawla, Ali is his Mawla. O Allah, befriend whoever befriends him, and be an enemy to whoever is his enemy." Declared at Ghadir Khumm on the return from the Farewell Hajj. Umar said to him: "Congratulations, Ibn Abi Talib: you have become the Mawla of every believer."
"None loves you but a believer, and none hates you but a hypocrite." Ali: "By Him who split the seed and created the soul, the Unlettered Prophet ﷺ promised me this."
"Tomorrow I shall give the banner to a man who loves Allah and His Messenger and whom Allah and His Messenger love." Umar said: "I never wished for leadership except that day."
"Ali is from me and I am from Ali." Bukhari's wording: "You are from me and I am from you."
"Ali is from me and I am from him, and he is the wali of every believer after me."
"May Allah have mercy on Ali. O Allah, turn the truth with him wherever he turns."
"O Allah, guide his heart and make his tongue firm." Prayed when sending him to judge in Yemen. Ali said: "I never doubted in a judgment between two people afterwards."
"Ali is with the Quran and the Quran is with Ali; they will not part until they come to me at the Pool."
Finding Ali asleep in the mosque with dust on his back, the Prophet ﷺ wiped it off and said: "Get up, Abu Turab." Sahl ibn Sa'd said: "No name was dearer to Ali than that one."
The Prophet ﷺ described a Kharijite with a withered arm. After Nahrawan the body could not be found. Ali said: "By Allah, I have not lied nor was I lied to. Search the ditch." They found him, and Ali prostrated in thanks.
"The most wretched of people… is the one who will strike you here" (his head) "until this" (his beard) "is dyed from it." Ali repeated the prophecy often; it was fulfilled exactly.
The Companions on Ali
Umar ibn al-Khattab
"Ubayy is the best reciter among us, and Ali is the best judge among us" (Bukhari 4481). Also: "I seek refuge in Allah from a problem for which Abu al-Hasan is not present," and, after Ali corrected him on the insane woman and the pregnant woman: "Were it not for Ali, Umar would have perished" (al-Isti'ab; al-Bayhaqi). Umar married Ali's daughter Umm Kulthum.
Uthman ibn Affan
During the siege of Uthman's house, Ali sent Hasan and Husayn, the Prophet's grandsons, with swords to stand guard at the gate, and sent in water when the rebels cut it off. When Uthman was killed, Ali came in anguish, struck his two sons on the chest and said: "How was the Commander of the Faithful killed while you were at the door?" He said afterwards: "O Allah, I did not kill him and I did not approve of it," and named Uthman the most God-fearing of them and the most dutiful to family ties (al-Tabari; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah; al-Riyad al-Nadirah).
Abu Bakr al-Siddiq
On the day of the pledge, Ali and Abu Bakr met and Ali affirmed: "We know your honour and what Allah has given you; we were not angry with you." Abu Bakr answered: "By Him in whose hand is my soul, the family of the Messenger of Allah is dearer to me than my own family" (Bukhari 3712). Abu Bakr said: "Look at the family of the Messenger of Allah among you and guard them."
Abdullah ibn Abbas
"Ali was given nine-tenths of knowledge, and by Allah he shared with them in the tenth too." Also: "What I took of the tafsir of the Quran, I took from Ali." (al-Isti'ab; Hilyat al-Awliya)
Abdullah ibn Mas'ud
"The Quran was revealed in seven modes; each has an outward and an inward, and Ali has the outward and the inward of it." Also: "The best judge in Madinah is Ali." (Hilyat al-Awliya 1/65; al-Hakim)
Aishah, Mother of the Believers
"He is the most knowledgeable of those who remain about the Sunnah." (al-Isti'ab; al-Riyad al-Nadirah). She said it after the Battle of the Camel, above every difference.
Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, Ata and Hasan al-Basri
Sa'id: "None of the Companions used to say 'Ask me' except Ali." Ata: "I know of no one more knowledgeable than Ali." Hasan al-Basri: "Ali was the divinely learned scholar (rabbani) of this nation."
The Gate of Knowledge
What set Ali apart among the caliphs was the sheer range of his knowledge: the Quran, the law, the language, the earlier scriptures, the future, and the heart.
The Quran
"Ask me before you lose me. By Allah, there is no verse but I know whether it came down by night or by day, on a plain or a mountain" (Ibn Sa'd; Hilyat al-Awliya). The recitation of Hafs from Asim, read by most of the Muslim world, was taught to Asim by Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, who learned the whole Quran from Ali.
Judgment
The lion pit of Yemen (Musnad Ahmad 573): four men died pulling each other into a pit; Ali apportioned blood-money a quarter, a third, a half and full, and the Prophet ﷺ said: "Ali has judged rightly." The six-month pregnancy: he freed a woman by adding the verses "thirty months" (46:15) and "two full years" (2:233). The insane woman: "the pen is lifted from three" (Abu Dawud 4399). The loaves and the eight dirhams, the egg-white accusation, the three men claiming one child (Abu Dawud 2269): all recorded in Ibn al-Qayyim's al-Turuq al-Hukmiyyah.
Language
He is the founder of Arabic grammar. He gave Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali its first principle: "Speech is noun, verb and particle," and told him "follow this way" (unhu hadha al-nahw), from which the science takes its name.
Eloquence
Al-Jahiz ranked his speeches above all others. Scholars said his words were "below the speech of the Creator and above the speech of the created." His letter to Malik al-Ashtar on governing Egypt is still studied as a charter of just rule.
The earlier scriptures
"Were a cushion set for me, I would judge the people of the Torah by their Torah, the Gospel by their Gospel, the Psalms by their Psalms and the Furqan by their Furqan" (Ibn Asakir; al-Riyad al-Nadirah).
The future
The Prophet ﷺ told him he would fight the pledge-breakers, the unjust and the deviants (al-Hakim 3/139). Before Nahrawan he said: "Not ten of them will escape and not ten of you will be killed"; fewer than ten fled and nine of his men fell (Musnad Ahmad).
The heart
Nearly every spiritual order in Islam traces its chain through him: the Qadiri, Chishti, Suhrawardi, Shadhili and Rifa'i orders, as well as the line of Hasan al-Basri. His counsel to Kumayl: "Knowledge is better than wealth: knowledge guards you, you guard wealth. Wealth decreases with spending, knowledge increases."
The dot beneath the Ba
"All that is in the Quran is in the Fatihah; all that is in the Fatihah is in the Bismillah; all in the Bismillah is in the Ba; and all in the Ba is in the dot beneath the Ba." Quoted by al-Alusi (Ruh al-Ma'ani) and Isma'il Haqqi (Ruh al-Bayan); the spiritual tradition adds his words "and I am the dot beneath the Ba." Imam al-Ghazali records in the Ihya: "Had I wished, I could have loaded seventy camels with the commentary of the Fatihah."
The caliphate
Five years of trial, in which the Prophet's word that truth would turn with Ali was tested and proven.
The pledge
After Uthman's murder the Companions of Madinah came to him; he refused, then accepted when they insisted: "Then in the mosque, in public, for whoever is pleased." Talhah and Zubayr pledged, and the Emigrants and Helpers after them.
Justice
He removed the governors, distributed the treasury equally, walked the market with a whip to check weights, took his own case against a Jewish man before his own judge and lost, and said: "The weak among you is strong with me until I take his right for him."
The Camel
Aishah, Talhah and Zubayr demanded justice for Uthman's blood. Ali sought reconciliation; agitators started the fighting at night. Afterwards he sent Aishah back to Madinah with honour and an escort of forty women, prayed over the dead of both sides and said: "Both of them (Talhah and Zubayr) are in Paradise."
Siffin
Mu'awiyah withheld his pledge pending punishment of Uthman's killers. After months at Siffin the Quran was raised on lances and arbitration accepted. Ammar ibn Yasir was killed in Ali's army; the Prophet ﷺ had said "the rebellious party will kill Ammar" (Bukhari 2812). Ali said of his opponents: "They are our brothers who have transgressed against us."
Nahrawan
The Kharijites left his army, declared everyone unbelievers and killed the Companion Abdullah ibn Khabbab. Ali sent Ibn Abbas to debate them, brought back thousands, and fought the rest exactly as the Prophet ﷺ had foretold.
Martyrdom
Three Kharijites swore to kill Ali, Mu'awiyah and Amr. Ibn Muljam struck Ali at dawn in the mosque of Kufa on 19 Ramadan 40 AH. He forbade torture of his killer, asked his sons to fear Allah, and passed away on 21 Ramadan, aged 63, the age of the Prophet ﷺ. Hasan was pledged and, six months later, handed the caliphate to Mu'awiyah, fulfilling the Prophet's word that "this son of mine is a sayyid; Allah will reconcile two parties through him" (Bukhari 2704).
Character and sayings
His austerity
As caliph he ate barley bread from a bag he sealed himself so no one would add butter to it. His cloak was patched; asked why, he said: "The heart is humbled by it, and the believer follows it." He freed a thousand slaves from the earnings of his own hands.
His family
Wife: Fatimah al-Zahra, the Prophet's daughter; after her, Umamah, Umm al-Banin, Khawlah, Layla and others. Sons: Hasan, Husayn, Muhsin, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah, Abbas, Umar, Uthman, Abu Bakr and others. Daughters: Zaynab, Umm Kulthum (wife of Umar), Ruqayyah. He named three of his sons after his three predecessors.
Scholars through the ages
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal
"No Companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ has had as many virtues narrated with sound chains as Ali" (al-Hakim 3/107; Fath al-Bari 7/71). His Fada'il al-Sahabah devotes its longest section to Ali.
Imam al-Shafi'i
"If love of the family of Muhammad is called 'rejection', then let the two worlds witness that I am a rejecter." He also said of Ali: "His enemies hid his virtues from envy and his lovers hid them from fear, yet what lay between filled the east and the west."
Al-Nasa'i
Compiled Khasa'is Amir al-Mu'minin Ali, a whole book of what the Prophet ﷺ said about him, and was killed in Damascus for refusing to narrate virtues of Mu'awiyah that he did not know to be sound.
Al-Ghazali
Records in the Ihya Ali's saying about the seventy camels of Fatihah commentary, and in Ihya's book on the heart quotes him as the model of the scholar who acts on what he knows.
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
Examined every chain of "I am the City of Knowledge" and ruled it sound, rejecting the claim that it was fabricated. In Fath al-Bari he writes that Ali's virtues in Bukhari and Muslim alone are more than those of any other Companion save Abu Bakr.
Ibn Hajar al-Haytami
In al-Sawa'iq al-Muhriqah he devotes forty hadiths to Ali's virtues, then insists that these virtues and the caliphate of the three before him are both true and both loved.
Imam Ahmad Raza Khan
He calls him "Mawla Ali", "Sher-e-Khuda" and "Mushkil Kusha", and holds that he is the Mawla of every believer as the Prophet ﷺ declared at Ghadir, the Gate of the City of Knowledge, and the head of the Friends of Allah after the Prophets. His own spiritual chain, the Qadiri order, runs from Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani through the Imams of Ali's house to Ali himself.
In Fatawa Ridawiyyah he writes that hatred of Ali is hypocrisy by the Prophet's own words, that Ali was on the truth in every conflict of his caliphate as Tirmidhi's hadith declares, and that love of Ali and love of the three caliphs before him are one love, since Ali himself pledged to them, praised them and married into their families. In Kanz al-Iman the verses of Mubahalah, Purification and the Ring in Ruku' are noted in Khaza'in al-Irfan with their connection to him.
His verse from Hada'iq-e-Bakhshish describes the Companions as the stars and the Prophet's household as the ship: the Muslim nation reaches safety by holding to both.
Al-Dhahabi
"Amir al-Mu'minin, Abu al-Hasan, the Chosen, one of the Ten, the brother of the Prophet ﷺ in the bond of brotherhood, his son-in-law, the champion of Islam, the scholar of the Companions, the judge of the Muslim nation."
Sources for this page
Hadith collections
- Sahih al-Bukhari: 441, 2704, 2812, 3611, 3671, 3702, 3712, 4251, 4416, 4481
- Sahih Muslim: 78, 1066, 2404, 2406, 2409, 2424
- Jami' al-Tirmidhi: 3300, 3712–3723; Abu Dawud 2269, 3582, 4399; Ibn Majah 121, 2310; Musnad Ahmad 573; al-Nasa'i, Khasa'is Ali; al-Hakim vol. 3; al-Tabarani
Tafsir
- Al-Tabari, al-Wahidi, al-Razi, al-Zamakhshari, al-Khazin, al-Tha'labi, al-Suyuti (al-Durr al-Manthur), al-Alusi (Ruh al-Ma'ani), Isma'il Haqqi (Ruh al-Bayan)
- Kanz al-Iman with Khaza'in al-Irfan on 3:61, 5:55, 33:33
Biography and scholarship
- Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat; Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Isti'ab; Abu Nu'aym, Hilyat al-Awliya vol. 1; Ibn Asakir, Tarikh Dimashq; Muhibb al-Tabari, al-Riyad al-Nadirah
- Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Turuq al-Hukmiyyah; Ibn Hajar, al-Isabah & Fath al-Bari; Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, al-Sawa'iq al-Muhriqah; al-Dhahabi, Siyar; al-Ghazali, Ihya; Ibn Abd al-Barr, Jami' Bayan al-Ilm
- Ahmad Raza Khan, Fatawa Ridawiyyah; Hada'iq-e-Bakhshish; Kanz al-Iman