In any event, it is well known to the elite and the general public alike—to Sunnis and adherents of innovation—that, in Alī’s time, the fighting involving Muāwiya and those with him occurred only because they had not pledged allegiance to Alī, not because they had pledged allegiance to Abū Bakr, Umar, and Uthmān.

As for the war between Talha and al-Zubayr on one side and Alī on the other, each side fought in self-defense, believing that it was repelling an attack by the other. Alī had no intention of fighting them, nor did they intend to fight him. Rather, before Alī’s arrival, they had been seeking Uthmān’s killers. The killers, however, had members of their tribes who defended them, so they could not get hold of them. When Alī arrived and they explained their objective to him (1), he informed them that this was also his own view, but that he could not act until affairs had been brought into order. When some of the killers learned of this, they launched an attack [against] one of the two armies (2). The others then assumed that they had initiated the fighting. Thus, the fighting broke out at the instigation of the people of sedition, not by the intention of the first and foremost. Thereafter, fighting over political rule arose.

What occurred therefore did not call the caliphates of the three into question. It resembled the conflict that arose between Ibn al-Zubayr and Yazīd, and then between Ibn al-Zubayr and Marwān and his son. All of these men agreed on loyalty to Uthmān and on fighting those who had fought him—to say nothing of their loyalty to Abū Bakr and Umar.

Likewise, the conflict that arose between Yazīd and the people of Medina—the conflict of al-Harra—involved only some of Medina’s inhabitants, the Umayyad authorities, and Yazīd’s supporters. It had absolutely nothing to do with Abū Bakr or Umar. Rather, all members of both factions in Medina and Syria agreed in recognizing the authority of Abū Bakr and Umar.