Shura of Six & the Selection of ʿUthman ﵁

The Question That Wanted No Heir

In the three full days between the attack of Abu Luʾluʾah and his death, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ had a question to answer that he had not had to answer before in his ten years of Khilafah: who would succeed him. He knew that Abu Bakr ﵁ had himself designated him, simply and plainly, on a day when no one doubted that ʿUmar ﵁ was the fitting man. But Abu Bakr ﵁ had one successor, whereas ʿUmar ﵁ had several, and he knew that he could not choose between six men each of whom was fit, and he knew equally that he could not leave it to the community to select one of six unknowns without guidance. He chose a third way.

What ʿUmar ﵁ instituted was a Shura, a council, with a fixed composition and a fixed procedure. No heir, no designation, no testament that bore a name, but in its place a procedure that would let the next Khalifah come forth from the community itself, from the six most merit-bearing men after himself. Suyuti ﵀ gives the concise record of that decision on pages one hundred thirty-nine and one hundred forty, and from those few lines the whole classical fiqh of the Shura has developed.

The Six Men

ʿUmar ﵁, wounded upon his mattress with the poison spreading through his veins, called his close ones and gave them the names of the men whom he held fit for the Khilafah. Six men, all of those who in the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ had been promised that they would enter the Garden, all present at Badr or at Uhud or at the Hudaybiyyah, all already advanced in years and tried in service.

The first was ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁, the son-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ, the possessor of the two lights, the man who through his wealth had provided the equipment of the army of Tabuk. The second was ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ, the father of Hasan and Husayn, the bearer of the sword Dhul-Fiqar. The third was Talha ibn ʿUbaydillah ﵁, the “living martyr,” who at Uhud had given his arm to protect the Prophet ﷺ. The fourth was az-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwam ﵁, the hawari of the Prophet ﷺ, the first to raise his sword on the Day of Badr. The fifth was ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁, the merchant who had applied his fortune down to his last small trade for the community. The sixth was Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁, the conqueror of Iraq, the founder of Kufa, the man whose duʿaʾ was answered.

Six men, and all belonged to the ten to whom the Garden was promised. ʿUmar ﵁ chose them because he knew that the Prophet ﷺ at his sickbed had been pleased with them, he chose them because he knew that none of them had ever spoken a word of doubt about another from this group, and he chose them because he knew that the community, from Egypt to Khorasan, knew their names and accepted their authority.

One name would not accept the Khilafah when it was offered to him: that of Saʿid ibn Zayd ﵁, the husband of ʿUmar’s sister and himself one of the ten to whom the Garden was promised. ʿUmar ﵁ held him fit, but he excluded him from the six because he was a relative and because ʿUmar ﵁ wished to raise not the slightest appearance that the Khilafah would be kept within the family of al-Khattab. He was willing to bar Saʿid ﵁ from the Shura to protect the purity of the procedure.

Nor did he include his son ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁. When the Sahabah ﵃ asked him why, he answered in a variant of Suyuti’s report: “It would be enough for the family of al-Khattab that one of us should give account on the Day of Judgement for the community of Muhammad ﷺ.” ʿAbdullah ﵁ was admitted as adviser and witness, but not as candidate, no vote for him, no vote upon him.

The Testament for the Community

Before ʿUmar ﵁ laid their procedure upon the six, he addressed them about the matter for which they were made responsible. He spoke not about himself and he spoke not about his successor, but about the community, the Ummah, and about who within that community had a right to special attention. Suyuti ﵀ transmits his words:

He named three groups. The Muhajirun, the Emigrants of the first hour, the men and women who had left their houses in Mecca to come with the Prophet ﷺ to Medina. The Ansar, the Helpers, the men and women of Medina who had taken the Muhajirun into their houses and had given the Prophet ﷺ his city. And the people of the provinces, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Yemenis, the inhabitants of the hundreds of cities and villages that in ten years had come under Islamic governance. Three circles of responsibility, in order of nearness to the source, but none of them left out.

Care for the Muhajirun, because they had been the first investment in the message, care for the Ansar, because they had been the hospitality of the message, and care for the provinces, because they had become the future and the revenue and the weight of the Ummah. To take nothing except what is abundant, and even that only with the contentment of those who render it: no oppression, no arbitrary tax, no extraction that would work to exhaustion. The Khalifah after him had to know that he was not the owner of what he administered, but the steward of what had been entrusted to him.

The Procedure

Only after he had directed this testament to his Khalifah-after-him did ʿUmar ﵁ pass to the procedure by which that Khalifah was to be found. He gave the six three days, no more and no less, three days to choose a Khalifah from among themselves, in mutual deliberation. He appointed Suhayb ar-Rumi ﵁ to lead the prayers of the Muslims during those three days, for the Khalifah had not yet been chosen and the community might not pray without leadership. He appointed additional safeguards to ensure that the procedure would not be disturbed by outsiders, and he had fifty men appointed to keep watch outside the place where the six met, with instructions that if the six were not in agreement after three days, drastic measures would follow.

The drastic measures, in Suyuti’s report and in the sources related to it, ran that the majority might overrule the minority, and that if the six split in two upon three against three, the deciding judgement would be that of the one on whose side ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁ placed himself. ʿAbdullah ﵁ thus received the role of breaker of a tie, but he was no candidate, and should that procedure too fail, then ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁, as the eldest and most respected of the six, might pass the final judgement.

With this procedure ʿUmar ﵁ covered all eventualities. If the six agreed among themselves within three days, the matter was resolved, if they became divided, there was a mechanism, if they stood equal, there was a breaker, and if even the breaker failed, there was a final decider. The Khilafah would not waver in a vacuum, and the community would after three days know who its new Khalifah was.

ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁ Takes the Lead

As soon as ʿUmar ﵁ had been buried on the Sunday morning, the six came together in a house in Medina. The discussions lasted longer than had been expected. Talha ibn ʿUbaydillah ﵁ was not present in Medina at that moment and would only return later, so that the other five began without him. ʿAli ﵁, ʿUthman ﵁, az-Zubayr ﵁, Saʿd ﵁ and ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ laid their thoughts side by side. What they discussed exactly is not told in detail by Suyuti ﵀, but it is certain that the deliberation threatened to come to an impasse, for each of them had the substantive weight and the moral worth to be Khalifah, and none was willing to give up his claim without discussion.

At a certain moment in the deliberation ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁ took the floor. He was the eldest of those present, the most respected merchant among them, the man whose level-headedness and sound sense had a proverbial standing within Quraysh. He put a proposal to the others, and Suyuti ﵀ transmits the course of it in a passage that has become, for the scholars of Islamic constitutional law, the central precedent for the delegation of the power of choice:

It was a bold proposal, but it had a substantive logic. ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ would take himself out of the race in advance, he would make no claim to the Khilafah for himself, and in exchange for that he would receive from the other four the power to choose one from among them. They knew that his judgement would be above suspicion because he asked nothing for himself, and they knew that he would choose no one out of personal preference. The four consented, and from that moment the Shura of Six was reduced to a delegation in which ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ had the final voice and the other five would bind themselves to his choice.

Three Full Days of Consultation

ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ took his charge seriously. For three full days he scarcely left Medina, he hardly slept, and he spoke with everyone to whose opinion he gave weight. He consulted the Muhajirun and the Ansar in their houses. He consulted the women and even the boys and the girls who played in the streets, for he wished to know whether the name to which the community would be entrusted found an echo in every layer of that community. He consulted the members of the Shura themselves, one by one, in private conversations in which he sounded out their willingness to be led under one another. He consulted the scholars, the qurra’ of the Qur’an, the jurists-to-be who attended lessons in the mosque of Medina.

What he filtered from the conversations in those three full days was that the community was divided between two names. Some of the Muhajirun and Ansar leaned toward ʿAli ﵁, whether on account of the closeness of his kinship with the Prophet ﷺ, or on account of his early precedence in Islam, or on account of his knowledge of the Qur’an. Others leaned toward ʿUthman ﵁, whether on account of his being a son-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ through two daughters, or on account of his prosperity, or on account of his gentleness and his caution in difficult matters. Neither name aroused resistance, both names aroused acceptance among different wings of the community, and ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ therefore had to choose not who was acceptable, but who was the most acceptable.

The Conversation with ʿAli ﵁

In the last hours of the third night ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ called ʿAli ﵁ apart. He spoke with him in a secluded space, with no other witness than Allah ﷻ. What he laid before him was no question of disposition but a covenant. Suyuti ﵀ sums it up in the same passage:

A simple yes, but with great consequences. ʿAli ﵁ bound himself to two possibilities: either to bear the Khilafah justly himself if he were designated, or to accept ʿUthman ﵁ as the one designated and obey him without reservation. He gave his unreserved consent to the procedure to which he had bound himself with the other four, he stood not above the judgement of ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁, but beneath it, willingly, in the same right as ʿUthman ﵁ would.

The Conversation with ʿUthman ﵁

Thereupon ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ called ʿUthman ﵁ apart, in the same space, with the same discretion. He put the same question to him in a mirrored formulation:

Two men, two conversations, two identical pledges. Both gave their consent to the procedure, both pledged obedience to whoever was designated, and ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ now held in his hands what he needed to make a designation without fear of unrest. Whomever he should choose, the other would be the first to give him bayʿah, and the community would see no discord.

The Bayʿah of ʿUthman ﵁

On the morning after the end of the third night, on the third day after the burial of ʿUmar ﵁, the Muhajirun and the Ansar came together in the Masjid an-Nabawi. Suhayb ar-Rumi ﵁ had led the Fajr prayer. The six members of the Shura took their places at the front, with the Muhajirun present behind them and the Ansar behind those. ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ rose, he praised Allah ﷻ, he called those present to faithfulness to His Book and to the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, and then he spoke the name for which he had consulted for three full days.

ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁: the son-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ, the possessor of the two lights, the man who had applied his wealth for the army of Tabuk. ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ stretched out his hand, and as the first of all those present he declared himself to ʿUthman ﵁ by giving his bayʿah. Immediately after that ʿAli ﵁ stretched out his hand and gave his bayʿah, faithful to the yes that he had given to ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ in the secluded space. Suyuti ﵀ sums it up in one concise sentence: “When he had obtained their consent, he gave his bayʿah to ʿUthman ﵁ and ʿAli ﵁ gave his bayʿah to him.”

Az-Zubayr ﵁, Saʿd ﵁, Talha ﵁, all followed. The Muhajirun gave their bayʿah, the Ansar gave their bayʿah, the other inhabitants of Medina gave their bayʿah. In a few hours the third Khalifah of Islam was acknowledged by the men and women of Medina, and couriers set out for Damascus, for Kufa, for Basra, for Fustat with the message that ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ had become Amir al-Muʾminin. In every garrison city the local bayʿah ceremonies followed within weeks, and no provincial governor called the choice into question.

Why ʿUthman ﵁

In the centuries that followed, scholars have wondered why ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ in the end chose ʿUthman ﵁ over ʿAli ﵁. Both men were of the highest calibre, both had received from the Prophet ﷺ himself the promise of the Garden, and both had a direct bond with the Prophet ﷺ through marriage or through blood. Suyuti ﵀ gives no direct answer and need not give one, for the community accepted the outcome without questions. But the traditions that have formed around the Shura suggest that ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ made a principled distinction on a question that he tailored to each of the two candidates.

He asked, so some sources report, whether in governing they would follow the Book of Allah ﷻ, the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, and the policy of the two preceding Khalifahs, Abu Bakr ﵁ and ʿUmar ﵁. ʿUthman ﵁ consented without reservation to all three, while ʿAli ﵁ consented to the first two without reservation, but as for the policy of the two preceding Khalifahs, reserved to himself the right to come to his own ijtihad in new circumstances. It was a principled difference, not a difference in respect, for ʿAli ﵁ acknowledged the authority of his predecessors and only refused to accept their precedents as binding apart from his own judicial judgement. But for ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁, who was seeking continuity in a time when the community was growing quickly and the uniformity of governance was crucial, the broader pledge of ʿUthman ﵁ weighed more heavily.

Whatever gave the decisive turn, the fact remains that the Shura of Six and the designation of ʿUthman ﵁ were accepted by almost all wings of the Muslim community. Only in later generations, and only in consequence of the events in the last years of ʿUthman’s khilafah, did some scholars come to a reappraisal of the procedure and of the outcome. At the moment of the bayʿah itself, in the twenty-third or twenty-fourth year of the Hijra, there was no open doubt and no open resistance.

What ʿUmar ﵁ Left Behind

With the bayʿah of ʿUthman ﵁ the transition from the second to the third Khalifah was complete. Ten years of ʿUmar’s governance were closed. The Arabs had fanned out from the Hijaz to the capitals of two former empires, the Roman Levant and Egypt stood under Islamic governance, and the empire of the Sasanians was divided into provinces under Muslim governors. The Hijri calendar had been instituted, the Diwan had been set up, the treasury had a fixed structure, and the community had learned to live under a Khalifah who slept in his woollen cloak upon the mats of the masjid and who himself weighed the stones when he distributed the allowances.

What ʿUmar ﵁ had left behind was not only a community that had tripled or fivefold increased in size. He had above all left behind an institutional culture in which the Khalifah was accountable to Allah ﷻ before the people, in which the ruler lived as a servant and not as a lord, in which the weaker had a right to the ear of the most exalted office-holder. That culture he had not invented, for he had taken it over from Abu Bakr ﵁ and he had taken it over from the Prophet ﷺ. But ʿUmar ﵁ had institutionally anchored it in the rules of the Diwan, in the care for the Muhajirun and the Ansar, in the demand of compensation to protected communities, in the procedure of the Shura itself.

For his successor the Khilafah would not be simple. The empire was now large, the revenues were overwhelming, the distances between Medina and the provinces were alluring. A Khalifah who, like ʿUmar ﵁, slept in a woollen cloak would be confronted, in a world that expanded so quickly, with other temptations than in the Hijaz. But for the moment, in the first days of the twenty-fourth year, ʿUthman ﵁ stood upon the minbar of Medina, with the testimony of the Muhajirun and the Ansar at his side, and spoke his first khutbah as Amir al-Muʾminin.

In the next article we return to the person of ʿUmar ﵁ himself. We follow him from his birth in Banu ʿAdi through his conversion, his years beside the Prophet ﷺ, his years beside Abu Bakr ﵁, his justice in judgements and his character in governance. The biographical sketch that Suyuti ﵀ gathers covers eighty pages and gives us the man behind the Khilafah who in this article designates his successor but who in truth had prepared that designation through his whole life.