At the same time not more than a few days were left in the...

At the same time not more than a few days were left in the glorious life of the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him and his family for he died seventy days after the event of Ghadir Khumm. All that he had achieved in the course of twenty three years since the beginning of revelation all that man needed for his guidance and felicity was now at the disposal of mankind.

Only one particular matter remained the proclamation of which would complete his prophetic mission and bring his task to complete fruition. It was in addition probable that while fulfilling the instructions he had received the Prophet would be attacked or harmed by evil wishers and in order to reinforce his determination God informed him that He would protect him and guard him against being harmed.

( 28 ) The content of those instructions must have been particularly sensitive in order for their fulfilment to have been coterminous with the entirety of the Prophet's mission and for the failure to proclaim them to have damaged and diminish prophethood itself.

Moreover the Arab mentality prevailing at the time tended to regard the aged persons of each tribe as best suited for positions of leadership and not to consider younger persons as qualified; this feature hardly constituted a favorable climate for the proclamation of God's command. The spirit of the Prophet was also troubled and surely pained by certain bitter memories. He had not yet forgotten the negative attitude of certain narrow minded people to the appointment of Usamah and 'Attab b.

Usayb as commanders for when he appointed the former as commander of the army and the latter as commander of Makkah some of the raised their voices in protest. All of these constituted factors that made the declaration of 'Ali b. Abi Ta lib peace be upon him someone as young as thirty three years of age a formidable and even intimidating task for the Prophet.

In addition many of those who had now joined the ranks of the Muslims and entered the circle of the Prophet's had earlier fought against 'Ali peace be upon him which further increased the delicacy of the situation; their hearts were troubled by the memory of those events and fanned the flames of hatred within them.