Ghadīr Chumm

Depiction of the designation of Ali at Ghadir Chumm in an Ilyhanid manuscript from 1308/9 a. Z. Ali holds the Dhū l-faqār sword in his hand.

Ghadīr Chumm ( Arabic ﻏﺪﻳﺮ ﺧﻢ, DMG Ġadīr Ḫumm ) is the name of an uninhabited place halfway between Mecca and Medina , where there was a pond or swamp (Arabic ghadīr ) at the time of the Prophet Mohammed . The place, which is 200 km north of Mecca in Wadi Rabigh, is important because, according to Islamic tradition, Mohammed took his cousin MohammedAlī ibn Abī Tālib by the hand and proclaimed: "Everyone whose master I am also has ʿAlī for master" ( man kuntu maulā-hu fa-ʿAlī maulā-hu ).

The Shiites regard these words as designation of ʿAlī as the successor of the Prophet. Muhammad's saying is also passed down in the Sunni hadith collections, but is not interpreted by the Sunnis as a designation.

The day on which Muhammad uttered this pronouncement is generally dated to the 18th Dhu l-hijjah of the year 10 after the Hijra (March 16, 632). For this reason, later Shiite dynasties - Buyids and Fatimids - made the 18th Dhu l-Hiddscha a feast day. The day of Ghadir Chumm is still considered one of the highest Shiite festivals.

The Hadith of Ghadir Chumm exists in numerous variants, some of which are heavily embellished. According to a variant handed down about the Shiite imams , which the Eastern Iranian scholar Abū l- Maʿālī cites in his Kitāb Bayān al-adyān , written in 1092, Mohammed made the great importance of the prophetic family for the salvation of the people clear in his speech at Ghadir Chumm with the following picture : God created numerous trees, Mohammed and Ali were from one tree, he himself forms the root, Ali the trunk, his sons Hasan and Husain the fruit, the Shiites the branches and leaves. Everyone who grasps these branches will be redeemed; whoever does not do this perish.

literature

Laura Veccia Vaglieri : Art. "Ghadīr Khumm" in Encyclopaedia of Islam . Second edition. Vol. II., Pp. 993f.
John L. Esposito: Article “Ghadir Khumm”. In: The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. Oxford University Press , accessed December 27, 2009 .

Individual evidence

↑ References at Wensinck: Concordance de la tradition musulmane . Vol. VII, 334a.
↑ See Heinz Halm: The Schia . Darmstadt 1988. p. 10f.
↑ See Abū l-Maʿālī Muhammad al-Husaini al-ʿAlawi: Kitāb-i Bayān al-Adyān dar šarḥ-i adyān wa-maḏāhib-i ǧāhilī wa-islāmī . Ed. A. Iqbāl. Tehran 1312hš. P. 24.

22,825 39,075Coordinates: 22 ° 49 ′ 30 ″ N , 39 ° 4 ′ 30 ″ E

[1] References at Wensinck: Concordance de la tradition musulmane . Vol. VII, 334a.

[2] See Heinz Halm: The Schia . Darmstadt 1988. p. 10f.

[3] See Abū l-Maʿālī Muhammad al-Husaini al-ʿAlawi: Kitāb-i Bayān al-Adyān dar šarḥ-i adyān wa-maḏāhib-i ǧāhilī wa-islāmī . Ed. A. Iqbāl. Tehran 1312hš. P. 24.