Imam Ali the True Follower of the Heavenly Mentor

Ali was a ‘follower’ of the Prophet in the deepest sense of the term. He lived physically in the shadow of the Prophet and absorbed spiritually all that radiated from him. The intimacy of the relationship between them is summed up in the words of one of the Imam’s sermons: "When I was but a child he took me under his wing … I would follow him [the Prophet] as a baby camel follows the footsteps of its mother. Every day he would raise up for me a sign of his noble character, commanding me to follow it. He would go each year into seclusion at [the mountain of] Hira. I saw him and nobody else saw him. At that time no household was brought together for the religion of Islam, except [that comprising] the Messenger of God, Khadīja and myself as the third. I saw the light of the revelation and the message, and I smelt the fragrance of prophecy …" We can outline Ali's biography as follows: the early period of his life, from his birth (c. 599 ce) to the death of the Prophet (11/632), and also at the second period of his life, from the death of the Prophet to his own assumption of the caliphate (35/656). The third period, consisting of his brief caliphate, dominated by tragic civil wars and culminating with his assassination in 40/661, will not be dealt with here, as the issues raised in this part of his biography are fraught with historical and historiographical complexities, which is to introduce the spiritual ethos of this extraordinary figure in such a way as to demonstrate its universal relevance, both within Islam itself and also beyond the Islamic tradition. For this ethos transcends formal religious boundaries, just as it rises above the political issues upon which the outward aspect of the Shiʿi-Sunni divergence is based—such issues serving only to distract attention from the essential spiritual message of Ali (Source: Justice and Rememberance).