Abu Bakr (c. 573-634)

Birth and family

Abu Bakr was born in Mecca around 573, into the Banu Taym clan, a branch of the Quraysh tribe specializing in trade and in arbitrating inter-tribal debts.^[15] His father, Abu Quhafa ‘Uthman ibn ‘Amir, would live long enough to see his son become caliph and himself converted to Islam after the capture of Mecca in 630; his mother, Umm al-Khayr Salma bint Sakhr, also belonged to the Banu Taym clan.^[16] His birth name, ‘Abd Allah (“servant of God”), has been almost entirely erased from Muslim memory behind his nickname, Abu Bakr — literally “the father of the young camel,” probably alluding to his reputed expertise in camels.^[17]

A literate tradesman, famed for his honesty

Before Islam, Abu Bakr traded in cloth in Mecca, amassing a considerable fortune which he would then place at the service of the first persecuted Muslim community.^[18] Unlike most of his fellow citizens, he could read and write — a rare skill in 6th-century Arabia — and built a reputation as an expert in tribal genealogy and dream interpretation, two bodies of knowledge that earned him an informal authority well beyond his mere wealth.^[19] Biographical tradition insists on his character as a hanif, that pre-Islamic Arab monotheism which refuses the cult of the Kaaba’s idols without attaching itself to Judaism or Christianity, and affirms that he “never worshipped an idol” in his whole life, even before his formal conversion.^[20] This reputation for proverbial honesty — already recognized in him before Islam by his Meccan peers — directly nourished, according to tradition, the immediate trust he placed in Muhammad’s preaching, whom he had known personally since childhood.^[21]

“The first of the free men to believe”

When Muhammad began his preaching around 610, the most widespread biographical tradition — reported notably by Ibn Ishaq through Ibn Hisham’s recension, then taken up by Ibn Kathir — presents Abu Bakr as the first free adult man to embrace Islam, immediately after the announcement made by Muhammad himself.^[22] This primacy, minutely disputed by the classical biographers between Abu Bakr, Ali (converted as a child) and Khadija (Muhammad’s first wife), nevertheless remains the version held by the overwhelming majority of Sunni tradition: Abu Bakr needed no outward proof; his conversion proceeded from an immediate recognition of the sincerity of his long-standing friend.^[23]

Once a Muslim, Abu Bakr at once became the first missionary of the new faith, putting his network of commercial relations and his moral authority to work to convert, within a few years, several of Muhammad’s closest companions: Othman ibn Affan, al-Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwam, Talha ibn ‘Ubayd Allah, Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas, Abu ‘Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah and ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf — six of the ten companions to whom Sunni tradition promises paradise in their lifetime.^[24] In 613, according to tradition, Abu Bakr delivered the first public address calling the Meccans to recognize Muhammad; young men of Quraysh then beat him senseless — an episode after which his own mother, distraught, is said to have converted in turn upon seeing him regain consciousness.^[25]

Freeing persecuted slaves

A large share of Abu Bakr’s commercial fortune was employed, from the earliest years, to buy back and free Muslim slaves particularly exposed to persecution by their Meccan masters, owing to their social condition without tribal protection. The best-attested case is that of Bilal ibn Rabah, the future first muezzin of Islam, whose freeing by Abu Bakr is confirmed by Sahih al-Bukhari; biographical tradition adds other redeemed slaves, whose names and number vary across accounts and are not established on the page of a verified primary source.^[26] This act, praised by tradition as the first concrete manifestation of nascent Islamic charity, earned Abu Bakr a special place in Muslim memory: that of the companion whose material generosity equalled his spiritual fidelity.

The title of as-Siddiq: the Night Journey

The nickname definitively attached to Abu Bakr — as-Siddiq, “the Truthful” or “the Attester of truth” — is linked, according to the most widespread tradition, to the episode of the Night Journey (al-Isra’ wa-l-Mi‘raj), around 620-621: Muhammad reported having been transported in one night from Mecca to Jerusalem and then raised through the heavens. Faced with the mocking scepticism of his Meccan adversaries, Abu Bakr, according to the traditional account, answered without hesitation: “If he said it, then it is true” — adding that he believed Muhammad in far greater things still, namely the revelation itself which comes to him from Heaven each day.^[27] It was following this answer that Muhammad is said to have given him the title of as-Siddiq, retained ever since by the whole Muslim tradition as the mark of unreserved faith.

Encyclopedic rigor requires noting that this precise account of the title’s origin, transmitted through late chains, belongs to the genre of edifying anecdotes proper to classical Muslim biographical literature, and that some scholars of Islam point out that a neighboring term, siddiq, more broadly designates in Qur’anic and early-Arabic vocabulary a man of exceptional uprightness and truthfulness — without our being able to establish with absolute philological certainty the exact moment at which the nickname became fixed upon Abu Bakr.^[28] What remains solidly attested, on the other hand, is the unanimity of later tradition — Sunni and, to a lesser extent, Shiite — in recognizing in him the man whose fidelity to Muhammad never faltered, from the first hour of the Meccan preaching until the Prophet’s death.

A nocturnal and secret departure

In 622, after more than a decade of mounting persecution against the small Muslim community of Mecca, Muhammad decided to emigrate to Yathrib (the future Medina), where tribes had invited him as arbiter. According to unanimously reported tradition, Abu Bakr was the only companion informed in advance of this departure and personally invited to accompany him — a privilege biographical tradition interprets as the most tangible proof of the absolute trust the Prophet placed in him.^[29] Fearing pursuit by Qurayshites determined to prevent Muhammad’s flight, the two men did not take the northern road to Medina directly, but headed south first, to Mount Thawr, where they took refuge for three days in a cramped cave before resuming, once the search had eased, the road to Medina.^[30]

“The second of the two”: the Qur’anic testimony

This cave episode is directly evoked by the Qur’an itself, in a verse tradition unanimously attaches to Abu Bakr and which constitutes one of the rare implicit Qur’anic mentions of a companion identifiable by context:

“[...] when those who disbelieved drove him forth, the second of two, when they two were in the cave, when he said unto his comrade: ‘Grieve not, for God is with us.’” — Qur’an, sura al-Tawba, 9:40, a verse Muslim tradition unanimously attaches to the episode of the cave of Thawr^[31]

Later tradition enriched the cave account with details meant to stress the divine protection granted to the two fugitives: a spider is said to have spun its web across the cave’s entrance and a dove to have nested there, thus diverting the attention of their pursuers who came to search the place.^[32] Encyclopedic rigor requires pointing out that these details of the dove and the spider’s web, very popular in Muslim piety, do not appear in the Qur’an itself and belong to a narrative embellishment attested only in later biographical sources — without calling into question the solidly attested fact of the two men’s stay in the cave before their arrival in Medina.^[33]

The journey to Medina

Once the hunt had eased, Abu Bakr and Muhammad left the cave of Thawr and made for Medina; according to the Hijra account transmitted by biographical tradition (Ibn Ishaq, in Ibn Hisham’s recension), they were guided by a Bedouin guide, ‘Abd Allah ibn Uraykit, hired for his expert knowledge of the desert tracks even though he was not yet a Muslim.^[34] Still according to that same traditional account, Abu Bakr’s children played an active part in the logistics of the flight: his son ‘Abd Allah reported each evening the news and rumors spread by the Qurayshites in Mecca, while his daughter Asma — nicknamed “she of the two belts” (dhat al-Nitaqayn) for having, so the story goes, torn her belt in two to tie up the travel provisions — brought them food each day.^[35] This family collaboration, recorded in detail by tradition, illustrates the scale of the whole of Abu Bakr’s household’s commitment to the nascent cause.

Aisha’s marriage

In 623, shortly after settling in Medina, the already-arranged marriage between Muhammad and Aisha, Abu Bakr’s daughter, was consummated, durably tightening the bonds between the two families.^[36] This kinship made Abu Bakr, alongside Omar — whose daughter Hafsa likewise married Muhammad in 625 —, one of the two closest fathers-in-law of the Prophet, a position that would weigh heavily in the succession debates after Muhammad’s death, developed in the article devoted to Aisha bint Abi Bakr.

Badr, Uhud and the great Medinan campaigns

Abu Bakr took part, according to tradition, in nearly all of Muhammad’s military campaigns after the Hijra. At the battle of Badr (624), the first great military victory of the Muslim community, he stood by the Prophet’s tent to ensure his protection rather than fighting directly on the front line.^[37] It was after this battle that the debate reported by Sahih Muslim took place over the fate of the Qurayshite prisoners: Abu Bakr pleaded for their release against ransom, while Omar argued for their execution; Muhammad sided with Abu Bakr, before a Qur’anic verse came down, according to tradition, as a rebuke addressed to that decision.^[38]

At the battle of Uhud (625), Abu Bakr fought and faced a painful episode: his own son ‘Abd al-Rahman, then still a non-Muslim fighting in the Qurayshite ranks, challenged him to single combat — a fight Muhammad personally interrupted to prevent religious fratricide.^[39] Abu Bakr then took part in the battle of the Trench (627), the siege of the Banu Qurayza (627), the treaty of Hudaybiyya (628), the capture of Khaybar (628) — where he failed to seize the fortress of al-Qamus, a victory Ali would finally win —, the conquest of Mecca (630) and the battles of Hunayn and the siege of Ta’if (630), where, during the initial panic of the Muslim troops at Hunayn, only nine companions, Abu Bakr among them, remained at Muhammad’s side.^[40]

Reading the table: Abu Bakr was present at all of Muhammad’s great Medinan campaigns, but his most decisive role remained political and financial rather than strictly military — a profile prefiguring the style of government he would adopt as caliph.^[41]

“Nothing is left to me but God and His messenger”

During the expedition of Tabuk in 630, the last great campaign of Muhammad’s lifetime, Abu Bakr donated the whole of his personal fortune to fund the war effort — an act tradition retains as the summit of his generosity and sets beside Omar’s more modest gift on the same occasion.^[42] Asked by Muhammad what he was keeping for his own family, Abu Bakr is said to have answered:

“There remains to them God and His messenger.” — Abu Bakr’s reported answer to Muhammad during the Tabuk expedition, 630^[43]

Leader of the 631 pilgrimage

In 631 (9 AH), Muhammad entrusted Abu Bakr with leading a group of some three hundred pilgrims for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca — one of the first official public offices ever entrusted to him. Shortly after the group’s departure, Muhammad sent Ali to proclaim publicly the first verses of sura al-Tawba, announcing that polytheists would henceforth no longer be admitted to the Kaaba and would have four months to convert or leave the sacred territory — an episode whose exact bearing on the relationship of authority between Abu Bakr and Ali at that precise date is discussed by some commentators, Sunni as well as Shiite.^[44]

Leading the prayer during the final illness

Toward the end of his life, as his illness worsened, Muhammad asked his wives’ permission to spend his last days in Aisha’s apartment.^[45] It was there that he designated Abu Bakr to replace him at the head of the communal prayer during the days he was too weak to officiate himself — a choice Sunni tradition would retrospectively read as an implicit pointer toward his succession to the caliphate, even though Muhammad, according to the overwhelming majority of sources, designated no explicit successor in his lifetime.^[46]

Muhammad died on June 8, 632. According to tradition, Omar, distraught, at first refused to believe in his death and threatened anyone who claimed the Prophet deceased. Abu Bakr, arriving from the neighboring home of his daughter Aisha, restored calm by recalling that Muhammad, like every man, was mortal, and quoted a Qur’anic verse already commented upon in the article devoted to Muhammad:

“Muhammad is but a messenger; other messengers have passed away before him. Will it be that, when he dies or is slain, you will turn back on your heels?” — Qur’an, sura Al ‘Imran, 3:144, verse quoted by Abu Bakr to calm the faithful at Muhammad’s death^[47]

The assembly of Saqifa

As soon as the Prophet’s death was announced, some of the Ansar (“the Helpers,” Medinan Muslims) gathered in the covered hall (saqifa) of the Banu Sa‘ida clan, without initially inviting the Muhajirun (“the Emigrants” come from Mecca), to designate a successor from their own ranks — the Medinan chief Sa‘d ibn ‘Ubada emerging as the natural candidate.^[48] Alerted, Abu Bakr, Omar and Abu ‘Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah rushed to the meeting place, while Ali and the Prophet’s close family stayed away, busy preparing Muhammad’s body for burial.^[49]

According to the account reported by Ibn Ishaq, Abu Bakr spoke to warn the assembly that “the Arabs will recognize no authority outside Muhammad’s tribe, Quraysh,” stressing the seniority of the Muhajirun’s conversion and their more direct kinship with the Prophet.^[50] He then proposed the assembly choose between Omar and Abu ‘Ubayda as successors — a move the scholar of Islam Wilferd Madelung interprets as a tactical maneuver presenting himself as an acceptable compromise candidate.^[51] A physical confrontation broke out, notably pitting Omar against Sa‘d ibn ‘Ubada; the Medinan companion al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir proposed, as an alternative, that Quraysh and the Ansar each choose their own chief — a proposal rejected.^[52] Omar ended by pledging the first oath of allegiance (bay‘a) to Abu Bakr, carrying the assembly along with him.^[53]

A legitimacy disputed from the outset

Encyclopedic rigor requires pointing out that Omar himself, in a famous sermon reported by tradition, would later call this election a falta — a hasty, improvised decision — while adding that “God averted its evil.”^[54] Wilferd Madelung, in his reference study on Muhammad’s succession, observes that only three Muhajirun were present at Saqifa, that most of the Prophet’s intimates were absent, and that a broader consultation of the whole community (shura) would likely have favored Ali, both through Ansar family ties and through the support of certain Qurayshite clans.^[55] This reading is not, however, shared by classical Sunni tradition, which retains Abu Bakr’s election as a founding, legitimate and providential act of the young Muslim community’s unity.

Once invested, Abu Bakr is said, according to tradition reported notably by al-Tabari, to have delivered an accession speech remembered for its formulation of political humility: he presents himself as invested with authority without being the best of the community, asks to be helped if he acts well and corrected if he acts badly, and claims obedience only insofar as he himself obeys God and His messenger.^[56]

Ali’s refusal to pledge allegiance at once

According to several sources — Sunni as well as Shiite —, Ali ibn Abi Talib and a group of intimates did not immediately pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr, gathering instead in the house of Fatima az-Zahra, Muhammad’s daughter and Ali’s wife. This episode, and the controversial question of whether Omar did or did not use force there, are treated in detail in the article devoted to Omar ibn al-Khattab and in the one on Fatima az-Zahra, since it is to Omar — and not directly to Abu Bakr — that tradition, Sunni as well as Shiite, attributes the active role in that confrontation.^[57] Ali ended, according to nearly all sources, by pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr, generally placed a few months after the election, at Fatima’s own death — without the sources agreeing on the degree of coercion or genuine reconciliation presiding over that belated act.^[58]

Fatima’s claim

Shortly after Muhammad’s death, Fatima az-Zahra, accompanied by her uncle al-‘Abbas, presented herself before Abu Bakr to claim her share of the inheritance of the property left by her father: notably the agricultural estate of Fadak, an oasis near Khaybar whose revenues reverted personally to Muhammad following a surrender without battle in 628, as well as her share of the revenues of Khaybar.^[59] Abu Bakr refused, invoking a saying he reported having heard directly from Muhammad’s own mouth:

“We, the prophets, leave no inheritance; what we leave behind is charity (sadaqa).” — Saying of Muhammad reported by Abu Bakr to justify refusing Fadak to Fatima, Sahih al-Bukhari, hadiths 6725-6726^[60]

According to that same hadith, reported in the reference Sunni canonical collection, Fatima, wounded by this refusal, thenceforth stopped speaking to Abu Bakr and died without having been reconciled with him, about six months after her father’s death.^[61] The table of the two traditional readings of this episode appears in the article dedicated to Fatima az-Zahra.

Two irreconcilable readings

Sunni tradition defends the legal and theological legitimacy of Abu Bakr’s decision: it rests on an authenticated saying of the Prophet himself, and Fadak, regarded as community property (fay’) rather than transmissible personal property, reverts by right to the public Treasury rather than to an individual heir.^[62] Shiite tradition, conversely, holds this refusal to be a deliberate denial of justice, aimed at materially and politically weakening the Prophet’s family for the benefit of the new caliphal power; it recalls in particular that the Qur’an itself mentions the inheritance of David by Solomon (Qur’an 27:16) and that promised to Zechariah (Qur’an 19:5-6), which in its view contradicts the idea of a general exclusion of prophets from inheritance law.^[63]

Contemporary academic scholars of Islam observe, without definitively settling the theological substance of the debate, that the Fadak episode crystallizes from the very first months of the caliphate a structural tension between nascent political authority and the patrimonial claims of the Prophet’s family — a tension whose echo runs through the entire later history of relations between Sunnism and Shiism.^[64] The Abbasid al-Ma’mun, a 9th-century caliph famed for his sympathies toward certain Shiite positions, would moreover temporarily restore the Fadak estate to Fatima’s descendants — an isolated act, without decisive doctrinal import, but revealing how persistently the dossier lived on in the Muslim political memory of the following centuries.^[65]

A general revolt at the Prophet’s death

Barely elected, Abu Bakr had to face the gravest crisis of his short caliphate: in the months following Muhammad’s death, several regions of Arabia rose against Medinan authority, refusing to go on paying the legal alms (zakat) or seceding outright from Islam.^[66] This crisis, known as the Ridda (“apostasy”) Wars, threatened to shatter within months the fragile unity Muhammad had painfully built during the last ten years of his life.

Faced with this revolt, Abu Bakr adopted a line of absolute firmness, including toward the tribes that still recognized Muhammad as prophet while refusing to pay the zakat to his successors — a position summed up by a saying that has remained famous:

“By God, if I were refused even a camel’s tether rope once given to the messenger of God, I would fight those who refuse it.” — Abu Bakr, reported answer to those who suggested tolerating the refusal of the zakat, reported by Sahih al-Bukhari^[67]

The main flashpoints of revolt

Several distinct movements made up this crisis, some led by claimants to a prophethood rival to Muhammad’s:

Reading the table: at least four distinct “false prophecy” movements declared themselves within months around Muhammad’s death — a sign, according to historians, of a religious and tribal challenge far broader than fiscal refusal alone, and of a structural fragility of the nascent Medinan authority.^[68]

The battle of Yamama and its consequences

The decisive confrontation took place in December 632 against Musaylima, chief of the Banu Hanifa tribe, whose army is said to have numbered several tens of thousands of fighters according to the Arab chroniclers — a figure modern historians judge probably exaggerated by tradition, without calling into question the real scale of the engagement.^[69] The general Khalid ibn al-Walid, sent by Abu Bakr, won a decisive victory there which ended the Banu Hanifa revolt, but at the cost of heavy losses among the Muslim fighters — including a significant number of reciters of the Qur’an (qurra’) who had memorized large portions of the sacred text, killed in battle without their memory having been fixed in writing.^[70]

Omar’s concern after Yamama

It was in the immediate aftermath of these losses that, according to the canonical account reported by Sahih al-Bukhari, the founding episode of the official writing-down of the Qur’an took shape. Omar, alarmed by the number of reciters fallen at Yamama, came to Abu Bakr to convince him to order the collection of the Qur’anic text, fearing that similar losses on other battlefields might wipe out whole swathes of the revelation.^[71] The future compiler, Zayd ibn Thabit, Muhammad’s former scribe, himself reports his initial reluctance:

“How could you do a thing the messenger of God did not do?” — Zayd ibn Thabit, initial objection reported to Abu Bakr and Omar, Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 4986^[72]

Abu Bakr and Omar insisted, judging the project necessary despite the absence of any direct prophetic precedent; Zayd finally accepted the charge and set about gathering the fragments of the Qur’anic text scattered across disparate supports — palm ribs, pieces of leather, stone tablets — and preserved in the memory of many companions still living.^[73]

A private manuscript, not yet official

Zayd ibn Thabit’s work resulted in a single manuscript copy (mushaf), kept by Abu Bakr himself until his death, then handed to Omar, then, at the latter’s death, entrusted to his daughter Hafsa bint Umar.^[74] This private manuscript, devoid at that stage of any binding official status for the whole community, would later serve as an essential reference base for the committee led by Zayd ibn Thabit under Othman’s authority, which would draw from it around 650 the official and unique recension of the Qur’an, developed in the article devoted to Othman ibn Affan.^[75] Abu Bakr’s decision thus constitutes, in the eyes of Muslim tradition as of contemporary scholars of Islam, the first link in a chain of textual fixation completed only some twenty years later.

Opening the Iraqi front

Once Arabia was pacified, Abu Bakr authorized from 633 the first incursions beyond the peninsula. In February 633, the tribal chief al-Muthanna ibn Haritha, whose tribe had already been raiding the southern frontier of the Sassanid Empire for some time, came to Medina to inform Abu Bakr of those territories’ vulnerability; the caliph then sent Khalid ibn al-Walid there, at the head of about a thousand men.^[76] Khalid won a first victory against the Sassanid garrison of Ubulla, then, seconded by al-Muthanna and his Banu Shayban tribe, seized al-Hira, regional capital of Lower Mesopotamia, at the end of May 633, after annihilating a fresh Sassanid army and its Christian Arab allies at the battle of Ullays.^[77]

The start of the Syrian front

Simultaneously, Abu Bakr ordered several columns sent toward the Byzantine frontier of Syria-Palestine, under generals such as ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan and Shurahbil ibn Hasana — preparing the ground for the great offensive which would lead, under Omar’s caliphate, to the decisive victory of the Yarmouk in 636.^[78] Abu Bakr would not, however, live long enough to see these conquests come to fruition: it fell to his successors, Omar first among them, to complete what his short caliphate had only begun.^[79] The historian Hugh Kennedy stresses that this strategic continuity between the first two caliphates — Abu Bakr opening the fronts, Omar exploiting them on a grand scale — largely explains the astonishing speed with which the nascent empire expanded in the following decade.^[80]

An unchanged way of life

Once caliph, Abu Bakr continued, according to tradition, to ply his cloth trade to meet his needs, at first refusing any public remuneration attached to his office.^[81] Faced with the protests of his intimates, who felt the burden of the caliphate now prevented him from earning his living normally, he finally accepted a modest allowance drawn from the public Treasury — just enough, according to tradition, to meet his family’s needs without excess luxury.^[82] At his death, Abu Bakr ordered, in a trait retained as emblematic by tradition, that the whole of that accumulated allowance be returned to the public Treasury, an act the biographers present as unique among all later caliphs.^[83]

Benevolence in the conduct of war

As he sent his armies north in 633-634, Abu Bakr gave them, according to tradition reported notably by al-Tabari, ethical instructions of conduct that have remained famous, forbidding the killing of women, children, old men and monks withdrawn in their monasteries, the destruction of fruit trees or dwellings, and the mutilation of the bodies of vanquished enemies.^[84] These instructions, handed down as a model of “just war” in classical Muslim legal literature, must not however obscure, as contemporary scholars of Islam remind us, the harsher reality of the Ridda Wars themselves, marked by a tribal repression of a severity which tradition itself documents without softening its harshness.^[85]

An illness and a dictated testament

In early summer 634, Abu Bakr, then about sixty years old, fell gravely ill — probably with a persistent fever, according to the classical sources, without our being able to identify with certainty the exact nature of his ailment.^[86] Sensing his end near, he summoned his principal advisers to deliberate on his succession and, after consultation, dictated to Othman ibn Affan, according to tradition reported notably by Ibn Sa’d and al-Tabari, a testament expressly naming Omar as the next caliph, with orders to listen to him and obey him.^[87]

This choice, unlike the improvised election of Saqifa two years earlier, followed a more deliberate procedure of direct designation (‘ahd) — a model of power transfer which Omar himself would refuse to imitate at his own death, preferring to institute an electoral college of six members, developed in the article devoted to Omar ibn al-Khattab.^[88]

Death and burial

Abu Bakr died on August 23, 634 (22 Jumada al-Akhira, year 13 of the Hijra), after a caliphate of just over two years.^[89] In accordance with a wish he is said to have expressed in his lifetime, he was buried in Aisha’s apartment, directly alongside Muhammad — a spot known today as the “Green Chamber” of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, where Omar would join him ten years later.^[90]

Sunni veneration

For Sunni tradition, Abu Bakr holds the first rank among all of Muhammad’s companions, immediately after the prophets themselves in the recognized order of spiritual dignity. A frequently quoted hadith, reported by several classical collections, attributes to Muhammad a saying that Abu Bakr’s faith, weighed in a balance against that of the whole community, would outweigh it — an image Sunni tradition retains as the strongest expression of his spiritual precedence over all other companions.^[91] First of the four “rightly guided” caliphs (al-khulafa’ al-rashidun), he is regarded as having saved, by his firmness during the Ridda Wars, the very existence of barely-born Islam — a judgment shared by many academic historians independently of any confession.^[92]

The Shiite critique

For Shiite tradition, on the other hand, Abu Bakr remains the founding figure of a usurped succession. Beyond the Saqifa episode and the refusal of Fadak already developed above, Twelver Shiism holds the first three caliphs to be usurpers of the right of Ali ibn Abi Talib, first imam of the Shiite line, designated according to that tradition by Muhammad himself during the episode of Ghadir Khumm, on the way back from the farewell pilgrimage in 632 — an episode whose interpretation, radically different between Sunnism and Shiism, goes beyond the scope of this article and belongs to the general Islam dossier.^[93] The Nahj al-Balagha, a collection of sermons attributed to Ali, preserves the trace of a lasting resentment toward the companions who, on that reading, broke the allegiance they owed his legitimate authority.^[94]

A figure reassessed by contemporary scholarship

Beyond the confessional divide, contemporary scholars of Islam largely agree on the objective historical importance of Abu Bakr’s brief caliphate, independently of the religious judgment passed on its legitimacy. W. Montgomery Watt, in his reference article in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, stresses that without Abu Bakr’s firmness during the Ridda Wars, Islam would very probably have disappeared as an organized religious movement only months after its founder’s death — a judgment echoed, from a strictly historical point of view, by a large part of modern academic historiography, including among authors otherwise highly critical of the legitimacy of his election.^[95]

A firmness prefiguring religious coercion

Abu Bakr’s trajectory illustrates, from the very first months of institutionalized Islam, a tension which Catholic tradition took centuries to resolve theologically in its own favor: that between unity imposed by force and freedom of conscience. The Ridda Wars were not only wars against “false prophets” rival to Muhammad; they were also, to a large extent, wars against tribes which, while sincerely believing in Muhammad’s mission during his lifetime, simply refused to go on paying a religious tax to his successors — a refusal Abu Bakr explicitly equated, in the saying quoted above about “the camel’s tether rope,” with a form of apostasy justifying combat.^[96] This identification of fiscal dissent with abandonment of the faith, consolidated into legal doctrine in classical Islam, clashes head-on with the teaching the Second Vatican Council would formulate thirteen centuries later on religious freedom:

“The human person has a right to religious freedom [...] so that in religious matters no one is to be forced to act against his conscience, nor prevented [...] from acting in accordance with his conscience, privately or publicly, alone or in association with others, within due limits.” — Second Vatican Council, declaration Dignitatis Humanae, § 2, December 7, 1965^[97]

The Catholic Church itself was not always faithful to this principle in the course of its history, and intellectual rigor requires recognizing this without evasion; but it explicitly recognized it as an error to be corrected, whereas the classical legal doctrine stemming from the Ridda Wars continues, in part of the contemporary Muslim world, to underpin a legal repression of apostasy which the Catechism condemns in the name of the dignity of the human person, made free in the image of God.^[98]

Natural virtues and the absence of supernatural foundation

On the strictly human plane, Catholic tradition has no reason to deny what is genuinely admirable in Abu Bakr as a person: his unfailing fidelity to a friend, his proverbial honesty recognized even by his Meccan adversaries, his material generosity toward the first persecuted Muslims, his deliberately austere way of life even in the exercise of supreme power, and the act, rare among political leaders of any age, of returning to the public Treasury the whole of his caliphal allowance.^[99] These qualities belong to what Catholic theology has always recognized as authentic natural virtues, accessible outside sacramental grace through the mere uprightness of human reason and will.

But recognizing these natural virtues in no way implies granting salvific value or prophetic authority to the religious mission they serve. Abu Bakr died professing faith in a message which explicitly denies the divine sonship of Christ, His redeeming death on the Cross and His resurrection — non-negotiable pillars of the Christian faith — and which founds, from its first caliph onward, a religious unity secured as much by conviction as by political and military constraint.^[100] Christ, conversely, refuses the sword Peter holds out to Him in the garden of Gethsemane and founds His Church through martyrdom rather than conquest — a difference of nature between the two foundations which the article devoted to Omar ibn al-Khattab likewise develops concerning the second caliph.

• Muhammad (c. 570-632) — the life of the prophet of Islam, whose closest friend and first convert Abu Bakr was.
• Aisha bint Abi Bakr (c. 614-678) — Abu Bakr’s daughter, wife of Muhammad and major source of hadiths.
• Omar ibn al-Khattab (c. 584-644) — the second caliph, designated by Abu Bakr as his successor.
• Othman ibn Affan (c. 576-656) — the third caliph, artisan of the official recension of the Qur’an from the manuscript compiled under Abu Bakr.
• Fatima az-Zahra (c. 605-632) — Muhammad’s daughter, whose dispute with Abu Bakr over the Fadak inheritance structures Shiite memory.
• Islam — the general doctrinal dossier on the Qur’an and the Catholic apologetic response.
• What does the Church say about Islam? — the contemporary magisterial position, from Vatican II to the Catechism.