The Formation of Islam Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800

Muhammad's unexpected death in 632 threw his community into confusion, and the difficulty it had in simply surviving speaks volumes about the absence at this stage of a fully formed religious identity, or at least of the failure of that identity to claim the unremitting allegiance of many of those who had joined it. A number of points of tension surfaced, but probably no set of issues proved so contentious to Muslim posterity, or so critical in subsequent definitions of what it meant to be a Muslim, than that surrounding the question of leadership after the Prophet's death. Consequently this terrain is particularly dangerous for the historian. According to the standard Sunni account, Muhammad's friend and father-in-law Abu Bakr prevented the Medinese Muslims setting themselves up as a separate community from Muhammad's close circle of Meccan companions, and then was named through acclamation as the first caliph, or successor, of the Prophet. Shicis, however, have a different recollection, and stress a story according to which Muhammad, sometime prior to his death, identified his cousin cAli as his presumptive heir. Of course both the Sunni and Shici recollections in fact reflect the fully formed expectations of the later sectarian groups and political parties.

It is virtually certain that Muhammad had not made arrangements for the organization and leadership of his community before his death.