The Martyrdom of Hz Ali

 

The Fourth Rightly Guided Caliph

On January 26, 661 (21st Ramadan), Ali was martyred at the Great Mosque of Kufa in Kufa, Iraq, by Ibn Muljam, an Egyptian Kharijite. Ibn Muljam was a paternal Himyar, but relationship between maternal kinship, he was counted among some of the Murad and closely associated with the Banii Jabala of Kindah. He'd come to Kufa with the intention of killing Ali in retaliation for the Kharijite leaders' massacre at al-Nahrawan. He died as of his injury issues two days later on 19 or 21 Ramadan in January 661, Ibn Muljam attacked him on the head with a poison-coated sword. After Umar and Uthman, he was the third successive caliph to be assassinated.

After Uthman's murder in 656, Ali became caliph. Different factions, including the governor of the Levant, Muawiyah I, opposed him. Within the early Islamic state, a civil war referred as the First Fitna emerged, resulting in the deposing of the Rashidun caliphs and the formation of the Umayyad dynasty. It began with the assassination of the caliph Uthman ibn Affan in 656 and continued during Ali's four-year reign. Following the Battle of Siffin (657), Ali agreed to mediation with Muawiyah I, but some members of his army, later became known as Kharijites, revolted against him ("those who leave"). They killed some of Ali's supporters, but at the Battle of Nahrawan in July 658, Ali's forces crushed them.