Narrative history at its most compelling, After the Prophet allows readers to grasp the power and depth of the Shia-Sunni split as never before.

Even as Muhammad lay dying, the battle over who would succeed him as the ruler of the Muslim people had begun. And as Lesley Hazleton shows in her gripping history After the Prophet , the battle has never ended. This is the foundation story of the Shia-Sunni split in Islam, a magnificent tale of power, intrigue, assassination, and passionate faith. Starting in Arabia in the year 632 and reaching its terrible breaking point fifty years later in Iraq, it still shapes modern headlines from Iran’s Islamic Revolution to the Iraq civil war.

The succession crisis set Muhammad’s son-in-law, the philosopher-warrior Ali, in opposition to the controversial Aisha, Muhammad’s favorite wife. She would defy all expectations by leading an army against Ali, urging on her warriors in the thick of battle. The ultimate breaking point came when soldiers of the first Sunni dynasty massacred seventy-two warriors led by Ali’s son, Hussein, at Karbala in Iraq, forging the Shia-Sunni split in blood. Hussein’s ordeal would quickly become the Passion story at the core of Shia Islam, and history would be transformed into sacred history.

Balancing past and present, Lesley Hazleton shows how this story is alive in Middle Eastern hearts and minds today, as though it had just happened. Even as she tells what happened in the seventh century, she never lets the reader lose sight of where those events have left us, and why they matter so much now as the struggle for dominance in the Muslim world plays out in the cities and mountains of Iraq and Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Placed squarely at the volatile intersection of religion and politics, history and current events, the vividly narrated After the Prophet is compulsive reading—and an emotional and political revelation for Western readers.

作者簡介

萊思麗‧海澤爾頓（Lesley Hazleton）

英國裔美國記者、作家，現居西雅圖。曾在1966至1979年間為《時代雜誌》駐耶路薩冷代表，也為《紐約時報》、《紐約時報書評》、《哈潑》、《新共和》等雜誌撰寫中東問題相關報導。其後專注於宗教、歷史問題的寫作，作品包括《第一位穆斯林：穆罕默德的故事》（The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad）、《瑪麗亞：一部有血有肉的傳記》（Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography）與《不可知論：一則靈性宣言》（Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto）。

海澤爾頓總在不同信仰之間徘徊，並堅持對宗教保持開放、懷疑的態度。她形容自己為「曾經想要成為拉比的猶太人，也曾唸過天主教學校、幻想成為修女，最終成為一個懷有濃厚宗教情懷的不可知論者，但不屬於任何組織性宗教。」

萊思麗．海澤爾頓曾在TED上進行兩場關於伊斯蘭與宗教問題的演說，累積了超過300萬讀者的點閱。

懷疑是信仰的必要部分（The Doubt Essential to Faith）www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazleton_the_doubt_essential_to_faith?language=zh-tw（中文）

如何閱讀《古蘭經》（On Reading the Koran）www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazelton_on_reading_the_koran

譯者簡介

夏莫

政治大學歷史學系世界史組碩士，譯作有《朕乃女人：武則天．中國史上唯一女帝的傳奇一生》。