Review and Analysis of the Book " Alfitnah"

The book Alfitnah Jadaliyyah fi al-Din wa Alsyasah fi islam Almobakker by Tunisian thinker and historian Dr. Hisham Djait is among the globally acknowledged works that was translated into Arabic in December 1991 and published by Dar-altalieh Publications in Beirut. The book which is divided into five chapters gives an account of the important historical events occurring during the thirty years after the time of the Prophet (pbuh) and analyzes those incidents with an emphasis on the events which happened during the last years of Othman’s and Ali’s caliphate. Religious unity, building an Islamic state and jihad, conquests and Islamic Empire, the battles of Jamal, Siffin and Nehruvan are the basic issues discussed in the book. The term fitnah is used to refer to the five-year period of the Caliphate of Rashedun; a historical setting that, according to the author of the book, that was a combination of internal strife and religious conflict that ultimately resulted in sectarianism and break in the Ummah of the Prophet (pbuh). Despite the importance of this period, and regarding the fact that till now no serious historical study is done concerning it, the author of the book has tried carefully, deeply and obsessively to produce a historical account of this time. In the present article, while giving a formal introduction on the book, the researcher has evaluated and criticised the given book.