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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

10. The Medieval Assassination With a Legacy That Lasts to This Day

Shiite depiction of the Caliph Ali. Haraji

The death of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was followed by a bitter succession dispute. On the one hand, were those who believed that leadership of the Islamic community should be confined to Muhammad’s family and bloodline. On the other, were those who thought that leadership should be open to whomever the Muslim community chose.

The former were a minority, and they coalesced around Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali. They became known as the Shiites, or faction, of Ali. The latter, the majority, became known as the Sunnis. The factions’ dispute, while heated, could well have ended within a generation or two after the participants shuffled off the mortal coil. However, an assassination worsened the dispute, and led to a lasting and at times violent division that rifts Islam to this day.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.