The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate Book

Early Islamic history is interesting because the reader is struck by how immensely human the figures are (though later history writing tends to gloss over the "flaws" of human frailty and recast the stories in a hagiographic light, which makes them more boring. Nevertheless I have a fondness for Umar's most quotable quotes). Madelung takes it even further by giving the traditional narrative history a thorough and critical read and gave a forceful conclusion of what he considers to be the truth to the question of Muhammad's succession and the characters' motivations in the drama that still haunts us today. In brief, he concludes that Abu Bakr and Umar worked out some kind of conspiracy to keep Ali out of the leadership, which were partly motivated by personal grudges as well as by differing visions for the Muslim community. At such a nascent stage, the fragile alliance between tribes could have easily fractured at the death of its prophet, and action needed to be taken quickly. Unfortunately, while the politicking have succeeded in ensuring the religion's survival, it may have come at a cost to what its founder had intended. Madelung puts forth a convincing argument that Ali should have been the rightful heir to Muhammad, following similar parallels in prophetic history. However I'm not certain if the fact that this was not exactly a father-son succession may have any effect.

Madelung writes in a forceful, narrative style in attempting to pierce together and validating/rejecting various accounts. However it is clear his mind was made up by the time of writing the work. As a reader I found it convincing and worth a read but does not make the issue a closed case. He took on a lot of assumptions about personal motivations of men and women who cannot speak to us now, and who lived in a time and setting we cannot know directly. Unfortunately as historians, erudite and thorough guesswork is the best we can do. In that, Madelung was successful.