Ali is the figure Sunnis and Shia both love and cannot agree about, and any honest page has to hold both. Sunnis venerate him as the fourth caliph, the lion of God, the most eloquent man after the Prophet, and read the Ghadir Khumm declaration as an affirmation of affection and standing. Shia read the same event as a formal designation and count everything after it as usurpation. His caliphate, when it finally came, was consumed by civil war against Aisha at the Battle of the Camel and against Mu'awiya at Siffin, and he was murdered in the mosque at Kufa in 661 by a Kharijite who thought he had compromised. The Nahj al-Balagha, the collection of his sermons and letters, is read devotionally by Shia and admired as Arabic prose well beyond them. Devotional portraiture of Ali is common in Iran and Iraq and would be considered scandalous in Riyadh or Cairo.