In 656, Caliph Uthman, the third caliph to rule after the death of the Prophet, was assassinated at his home in Medina (now Saudi Arabia) by besieging Muslim rebels from Mesopotamia.
The first section begins with Arab conquests following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 and takes us to the year 1000, by which time Arab caliphs held sway over an empire stretching from Afghanistan to Spain.
They regard the denial of Ali's alleged right to succeed the prophet on his death, his subsequent murder, and the martyrdom of his son Hussein at Karbala (in present-day Iraq) later as seminal events.