Martyrdom of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib

At dawn on 19 Ramaḍān 40 AH, as he called the people of Kūfah to prayer, ʿAlī was struck on the head by the poisoned sword of the Khārijite ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muljam — one prong of a three-man plot against ʿAlī, Muʿāwiyah and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, of which only this blade found its mark. He died two days later, on 21 Ramaḍān, aged around sixty-three.

His instructions from the deathbed are preserved: feed the assassin from his own food, and if he dies, a single retaliatory stroke — "do not mutilate." With him closed the thirty years the tradition counts as the rightly-guided caliphate; the community's centre moved to Damascus, and the age of kingship began.

The 19th–21st Ramaḍān chronology is carried across the main compilations.