ABU BAKR. — The first successor of Muḥammad as head of the Muslim community, and thus the first of the series of caliphs (see CALIPH), and in particular of the first four, known in Islam by the title of rāshidūn ("rightly guided" or "orthodox"). Contemporary with, or perhaps a few years younger than, Muḥammad, he belonged to a less prominent family of the Meccan Quraysh. He formed a friendship with the future Prophet, it seems, even before the latter began his mission. Of Muḥammad’s message, Abu Bakr was one of the very first adherents (according to a somewhat unreliable tradition, even the first), and during the painful initial period of the preaching in Mecca and the hostility soon shown by his fellow citizens toward the Prophet, the faith and moral support of Abu Bakr were among the most steadfast aids on which Muḥammad could rely. His character, at once gentle and firm, his loyalty and fidelity—which became proverbial and earned him the epithet al-Ṣiddīq ("the truthful")—enabled him to endure without faltering the most difficult trials to which the followers of the new faith were subjected at that time. At the height of this crisis, the hijrah (see HIJRAH) or Muḥammad’s departure from Mecca for Medina, Abu Bakr was always at his side, accompanying him on the perilous journey and sharing the refuge in the cave to escape the pursuers. From then on, he was also known as the "Companion of the Cave," and the Qur’ān itself, in a celebrated passage, alludes to him as the companion of the historic migration.
In Medina, in the organization of the young Muslim community, Abu Bakr, though without holding any special official position, was constantly among the most faithful and intimate "Companions" (Ṣaḥābah) of the Prophet, with whom he also became related when the latter married his daughter ʿĀʾishah, who was to become his favorite wife. He was with Muḥammad on all the great days of early Islam, at Badr, at Uḥud, and in the War of the Trench.
Abu Bakr’s caliphate, which he assumed in June 632, lasted little more than two years, but proved decisive for the consolidation of the embryonic Muslim state, the suppression of centrifugal forces, and the beginning of the great conquests beyond Arabia. With inflexible firmness, the new head of the Islamic community crushed the secession of various Arab tribes that had recently converted. After overcoming this movement of apostasy (riddah), expeditions were launched both against the Byzantine Empire and against the Sassanian Persia. In both these enterprises, decisive victories were to be won by the Arabs under the second caliph ʿUmar, but Abu Bakr himself lived to see the first successes, such as the conquest of al-Ḥīrah in Babylonia (633) and the victory of ʿAjnādīn in Palestine (July 634). Shortly after this last triumph, on 23 August of the same year, he died, designating as his successor that ʿUmar to whom he himself owed much of his election, and under whom Arab Islam was to rise to world power.
Apart from the Shīʿites, who regarded him as the first usurper of the legitimate rights of succession of ʿAlī (see ʿALĪ), in all orthodox Islam the first caliph is revered as a man of extraordinary piety, probity, and wisdom, countless sayings and anecdotes tending to highlight these virtues. Even allowing for a certain process of idealization, he remains one of the most elevated figures of early Islam, uniting profound religiosity with notable practical qualities of statesmanship. To him is also due the first collection of Qur’ānic revelations, which he promoted during his caliphate but which remained for personal and private use, later to be superseded by the canonical collection under ʿUthmān.
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