then reconfirmed by Uthman. Having ruled Syria for almost twenty years, without interruption and almost since its conquest, Mu'awiya had a power base in Syria which made his removal difficult. Ali replaced Mu'awiya with Ibn Abbas, who feared the retaliation of Mu'awiya and asked Ali to postpone his appointment until his rule was firmly established, according to al-Baladhuri. Mu'awiya's revolt Removal of Mu'awiya There are some reports of early correspondence, and al-Baladhuri writes about a letter by Ali that asked Mu'awiya to report to him in Medina. Alternatively, Madelung suggests that Ali contacted Mu'awiya only after arriving in Kufa, following his victory in the Battle of the Camel. He might have waited this long perhaps to have the upper hand after his victory or perhaps because Mu'awiya was not a serious contender for the caliphate anyway, considering that he was a (those pardoned by Muhammad when Mecca fell to Muslims), the son of Abu Sufyan, who had led the confederates against Muslims, and Hind, who was responsible for mutilating the body of Muhammad's uncle Hamza. For his part, Mu'awiya had waited through the Battle of the Camel, and was perhaps emboldened by that challenge to the authority of Ali. Once in Kufa, Ali dispatched his first emissary, Jarir ibn Abd-Allah al-Bajali, a notable Yemenite and Uthman's governor of Hamadan, who volunteered to represent Ali because of his personal ties with the Umayyads. His was nevertheless deemed unfit for the task by some, including Malik al-Ashtar, who questioned his loyalty. Jarir carried with him a letter to Mu'awiya that demanded his pledge of allegiance to Ali and made it clear that he would be dismissed from his post afterward. The caliph argued in his letter that his election in Medina was binding on Mu'awiya in Syria because he was elected by the same people who had pledged to his predecessors, as reported in Waq'at Siffin, authored by the Shia Nasr ibn Muzahim (), one of the earliest historians of the civil war. The letter added that the election of the caliph was the right of the Muhajiran and the Ansar, thus explicitly excluding Mu'awiya, as a late convert (), from any , and from the caliphate itself. The letter also urged Mu'awiya to leave justice for Uthman to Ali, promising that he would deal with the issue in due course. By this time, Mu'awiya had already publicly charged Ali in the