Appointment of Ali Rida as Crown Prince between politics and faith (201-203AH/817-819AD)

Abstract

Although the Abbasid call began under the slogan of ‘’The satisfaction from the family of Muhammad’’, against the Umayyad state, at the beginning of the second century AH, with the establishment of the Abbasid state, the bloody conflict intensified between the two prominent branches of the prophet's family, the Alawites and the Abbasids.

The Alawites led many rebellions against their cousins, but in the end, the Alawites and their followers lost the conflict and had many victims. At the beginning of the third century AH, the Caliph Al-Ma'mun (198-218 AH / 814-833 AD) took an unprecedented step which was opposite to the mainstream policy of the Abbasids, and he appointed (Ali bin Musa bin Jaafar bin Muhammad bin Ali bin Hussein bin Ali bin Abi Talib 203 AH / 819 AD) the Alawi as crown prince. This action led to the insurgency of the Abbasids of Baghdad, in addition to some of the Abbasid leaders, followers and supporters. Meanwhile, there are doubts that there were different reasons behind his decision due to the strangeness of what the Caliph did and the sudden death of Ali Radha after two years of appointing him a crown prince and the differences in political and sectarian perspectives.

This research is an attempt to analyse and understand the distinctive reasons of the Caliph Al-Ma'mun for the appointment of Ali Radha as a crown prince. It endures to explain and analyse the probability of the convenient and superficial analysis of the perspectives and explain the impact of political ideology and religion on the narrators. The study aims to reach a close commiseration of the political perspective of Caliph Al-Ma'mun and his intellectual framework، which was the reason for the appointment of Ali Radha as a crown prince.

This study is divided into three chapters. The first chapter describes the arrangements of the appointment of Ali Radha as a crown prince, the perspectives and analysis, and the reactions. The second chapter analyses the analysis and perspectives on the reasons for naming Ali Radha as a crown prince. The last chapter endures an understanding of the political perspective of Caliph Al-Ma'mun, which led to the appointment of Ali Radha as a crown prince.