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Lecture

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
The Death of Muhammad and the Problem of Succession: The ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs’ and the Birth of Shi’a

Tuesday 23.12.2025

How to watch

This lecture starts on 23 December at 5:00pm (UK).

Summary

In 632 CE, Muhammad died and left the young Muslim community with a problem: Who would replace him? Different factions debated the issue and the results shaped the fate of Islam this day.

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

An image of Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches Chinese History, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and sometimes Jewish history, at New York University. He is author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009); co-editor of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Culture, and Politics (Brandeis, 2013); The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (Columbia University Press, 2017); and Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History (Hawaii University Press, 2023).