prestige before the Muslims, all the leaders of the Umayyad dynasty, even if not they themselves, in any event due to their encouragement and recommendations, their followers and supporters, worked with all their strength to preserve and disseminate the truths of Islam and belief and the Qur’anic decrees. Thus, they produced thousands of punctilious interpreters of the Law, and authorities on Hadith, and saints and purified scholars. Had they not been faced by the strong religiosity, sainthood, and virtuousness of ‘Ali and of the Prophet’s Family, it is possible that the Umayyads would from the very beginning have gone completely astray, as happened at the end of their rule, and as did the ‘Abbasids.

It might also be asked : “Why did the Islamic Caliphate not remain in the Prophet’s Family, since they were the most deserving and fitted for it?”

T h e A n s w e r : Worldly rule is deceptive, and the Prophet’s Family had been appointed to preserve the decrees of the Qur’an and the truths of Islam. Not to be deceived by power, the one who was to hold it and the Caliphate had to be as sinless as a prophet, or as purehearted and unworldly as the Four-Rightly Guided Caliphs, ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and the Mahdi of the ‘Abbasids. In fact, the Caliphate of the Fatimid dynasty which was founded in the name of the Prophet’s Family in Egypt, and the rule of the Almohads in Africa, and the Safavid dynasty in Iran showed that worldly rule was not suitable for the Prophet’s Family, for it caused them to neglect their primary duty, the protection of religion