The Saqifa Crisis: A Structural Analysis of the First Islamic Succession

This paper reconstructs the Saqifa crisis of 632 CE — the assembly at the Banu Sa'ida hall in which the first Islamic succession was determined in the hours following the Prophet Muhammad's death — as a structural political event rather than a theological dispute. Drawing on cross-confessional primary sources including Sahih al-Bukhari, Musnad Ahmad, Al-Imamah wa al-Siyasah, and the Bihar al-Anwar, the paper argues that the isolation of Ali ibn Abi Talib from the succession was not an accident of circumstance but the outcome of a coherent structural operation: the deliberate management of information, geography, loyalty networks, and symbolic capital in the critical 72-hour window following the Prophet's death. The paper identifies five mechanisms of structural isolation: geographic sequestration, network capture, symbolic substitution, the mawla argument as managed evasion, and the Fadak seizure as financial strangulation. It situates this analysis within the living tradition of the Barelvi Sufi orders of Punjab, where every major silsila traces its transmission directly through Imam Ali — making the Saqifa question not a historical footnote but a structurally present one.