This form of succession is held by most Sunite doctors to be the authentic form intended by the Prophet, nor did the three following elections differ from it in any essential point.  It is only noticed that Abu Bekr designated Omar as the most fitting person to succeed him, and so in a measure directed the choice of the Ahl el agde.  The Caliph was in each instance elected by the elders at Medina, and the choice confirmed by its general acknowledgment elsewhere.

In the time of Ali, however, a new principle began to make its appearance, which foreshadowed a change in the nature of the Caliphate.  The election of Abu Bekr, as I have said, was determined by the predominant religious feeling of the day.  He was the holiest man in Islam, and his government was throughout strictly theocratic.  He not only administered the religious law, but was its interpreter and architect.  He sat every day in the mejlis, or open court of justice, and decided there questions of divinity as well as of jurisprudence.  He publicly led the prayer in the Mosque, expounded the Koran, and preached every Friday from the pulpit.  He combined in his person all the functions now divided between the Sheykh el Islam, the grand Mufti, and the executive authorities.  He was king and priest and magistrate, doctor of civil and religious law, and supreme referee on all matters whether of opinion or practice; he was, in a word, the Pope of Islam.  Nor did his three successors abate anything of Abu Bekr’s pretensions.  The only power they delegated was the command of the Mussulman armies, which were then overrunning the world, and the government of the provinces these had conquered.

Ali, however, when he at last succeeded to the Caliphate, found himself opposed by the very party whose candidate he had once been, and this party had gathered strength in the interval.  With the conquest of the world worldly ideas had filled the hearts of Mussulmans, and a strong reaction also had set in in favour of those specially national ideas of Arabia which religious fervour had hitherto held in check.  It was natural, indeed inevitable, that this should be the case, for many conquered nations had embraced the faith of Islam, and, as Mussulmans, had become the equals of their conquerors, so that what elements of pride existed in these found their gratification in ideas of race and birth rather than of religion, ideas which the conquered races could not share, and which were the special inheritance of Arabia.

The national party, then, had been reinforced, at the expense of the religious, among the Koreysh, who were still at the head of all the affairs of State.  Their leader was Mawiyeh Ibn Ommiyeh, a man of distinguished ability and of that charm of manner which high-born Arabs know so well how to use to their political ends.  He had for some years been Governor of Syria, and was more popular there than the pious Ali; and Syria, though not yet the nominal, was already the real seat of the Mussulman Government.  Mawiyeh therefore refused to accept Ali’s election at Medina as valid, and finding himself supported by a rival Ahl el agde at Damascus, made that appeal to the sword which Arabian usage sanctions as the ultimate right of all pretenders.