Ali Is Assassinated and Muawiya Founds the Umayyad Caliphate
A Kharijite assassin ends the Rashidun era and Damascus becomes the new capital
Quick facts
- Caliph killed
- Ali ibn Abi Talib, 661 CE
- Assassin
- A Kharijite, in revenge for Nahrawan
- Successor
- Muawiya I, founder of the Umayyad Caliphate
- New capital
- Damascus
What happened
After defeating the Kharijites in battle at Nahrawan in 659 CE, Caliph Ali continued to hold Arabia and the eastern provinces from his capital at Kufa while Muawiya controlled Syria and Egypt. In 661 CE a Kharijite assassin killed Ali in Kufa in revenge for the crackdown at Nahrawan. Ali's elder son Hasan briefly held his father's position but abdicated in Muawiya's favor in exchange for a pension, and Muawiya took the title of caliph unopposed, moving the seat of government from Medina to his existing power base at Damascus and founding the Umayyad Caliphate.
Why it matters
Ali's death closed the period Sunni tradition calls the Rashidun, or rightly guided, caliphate and replaced an elective, Arabia-centered leadership with a hereditary dynasty ruling from Damascus. For Shia Muslims, Ali's death and the passing of leadership to the Umayyads rather than to his family marks the central injustice their tradition traces from this point forward.
How we know
The assassination, Hasan's abdication, and Muawiya's assumption of the caliphate are described consistently across the early Islamic historical sources summarized by the World History Encyclopedia.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Umayyad Dynasty · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Battle of Karbala · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineThe Rise of Islam30 events · From a trading town in the Arabian desert to a caliphate stretching from Iberia to Central Asia in under a centuryView all →