Buildup of the Fitna & the First Uprising (33–34 AH)

The turning point after six quiet years

In the preceding articles we followed the Caliphate of ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ from his bayʿah in Muharram of the twenty-fourth year through his enlargements of the two sacred mosques, the voyage to Cyprus, the openings of Sbeitla and Ifriqiya, and the swelling of the empire as far as Khurasan, Sijistan and Armenia. For six years prosperity poured into the treasury while the community moved outward, and for six years, as Suyuti ﵀ writes on the authority of az-Zuhri ﵀, he ruled without anyone criticising him in anything, six years of peace and growth that until then had been unknown in the history of Islam.

But in the thirty-third year of the Hijra the tone of that history began to change. The prosperity that in the first half of his Caliphate had been received as a favour was felt in the second half to be unequally distributed; the governors who in the first half had been praised as capable conquerors were rejected in the second half as the Caliph’s kin; and the grievances that in the first half had been removed through consultation crystallised in the second half into delegations that came knocking at the gates of Medina with a formal complaint.

In this article we follow the build-up of that fitna as Suyuti ﵀ gathers it in his work. We follow az-Zuhri’s ﵀ verdict on the two halves of the Caliphate of ʿUthman ﵁, and we follow the interrogation that Suyuti ﵀ transmits through Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀, in which the sharpest summary of the events of the thirty-fifth year is given. We follow the grievances of the tribes Banu Hudhayl and Banu Zuhrah and Banu Ghifar and Banu Makhzum, who saw their men ﵃ humiliated, and we follow the seven hundred Egyptians who descended upon Medina and occupied the masjid. We follow the address in which Talha ibn ʿUbaydullah ﵁ called the Caliph sharply to account, and we follow the letter with which ʿAʾishah ﵂ urged him to set things right; we follow the intervention of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ and the settlement he secured for the Egyptians. And finally we follow the decision by which the rebels left Medina once more with Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr as their new governor, a decision from which, not four days later, they would return with an accusation that would split the history of Islam forever.

Az-Zuhri ﵀ on the two halves

Az-Zuhri ﵀, the first great collector of hadith in the generation after the tabiʿun, left behind a summary of the administration of ʿUthman ﵁ that Suyuti ﵀ takes up in one of the sharpest passages of his entire work. It stands on page one hundred and sixty-eight, and it is, in the mouth of a man who never knew the Caliph himself but whose informants had lived through his days, an unbiased reckoning of the two halves:

In a single paragraph the whole problem of the second half of the Caliphate is laid out. On the one hand the Caliph’s decision: he understood the khums as a legitimate means by which he could support his family, and he appealed to the Qur’anic obligation to maintain the ties of blood. On the other hand the community’s reception: they did not accept his interpretation, for they saw that his two predecessors Abu Bakr ﵁ and ʿUmar ﵁ in the same position had taken the opposite decision, and that they had renounced their share of the khums precisely so as not to set a precedent on which their successors could rely. ʿUthman ﵁ chose the other interpretation, and that choice, however justifiable within the revelation, was not accepted in the community.

Az-Zuhri ﵀ adds no condemnation to his verdict. He writes about the matter as if it were a disagreement between two scholars, not as if it were an injustice. What the Caliph did lay within the framework of ijtihad, the ruler’s own juridical judgment, and what the community felt was not rebellion but a rejection of his ijtihad. Between those two positions lay the tension that in the final six years would build to the point at which it admitted of no verbal solution.

The interrogation by Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀

Through another chain Suyuti ﵀ relates a conversation that az-Zuhri ﵀ had in a later encounter with Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀, one of the most authoritative scholars of Medina in the second half of the first century. Az-Zuhri ﵀ asked him without circumlocution how ʿUthman’s death had come about, why the community had become so divided, and how the Companions ﵃ of the Prophet ﷺ had failed to protect him. The answer of Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ has, through its clarity and its balance, become an anchor for all the later scholars who have occupied themselves with these events:

Three composite judgments in a single sentence. The first judgment concerns the deed itself: it was zulm, injustice. The second judgment concerns the perpetrators: they were in the wrong. The third judgment concerns the onlookers, the Companions ﵃ who had left the matter aside in the expectation that ʿUthman ﵁ would himself choose its resolution: they were not complicit. Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ thereby drew the dividing line between those who committed the misdeed and those who had passively let it happen.

To az-Zuhri’s ﵀ question of how all this had come to pass, Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ continued with the account that Suyuti ﵀ includes in the same passage: “When ʿUthman ﵁ was appointed, a group of the Companions ﵃ was discontented with his appointment, for ʿUthman ﵁ had the habit of loving his own people. He governed the people for twelve years. He appointed men from Banu Umayyah who had kept no company with the Prophet ﷺ. His governors brought forth matters that the Companions ﵃ of the Prophet ﷺ rejected. ʿUthman ﵁ asked the people to treat the governors with goodwill and he did not wish to dismiss them.” That was, he added, in the year thirty-five, and in the last six years the Caliph had given effect to his preference for the clan of his father without wishing to let anyone else share with them.

The governors and their failings

What the governors had done need not be set out again here. In a preceding article we treated the individual appointments: the replacement of Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁ by al-Walid ibn ʿUqbah ﵁ in Kufa, with the notorious incident of the drunkenness in which al-Walid ﵁ had led the dawn prayer with four rakaʿat and afterward asked whether he should add still more. We treated the replacement of al-Walid ﵁ by Saʿid ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, and we treated the appointment of Marwan ibn al-Hakam ﵁ as secretary and the granting of the khums of Ifriqiya to him. We treated the appointment of ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ibn Abi Sarh ﵁ over Egypt, the same ʿAbdullah ﵁ who had led the Ifriqiya campaign and who now sat in Fustat.

What happened in the thirty-third and thirty-fourth years was that the sum of these appointments became unbearable for the provinces, not through the deeds of any single governor but through the pattern that the tribes began to recognise. Who held Kufa: Saʿid ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, an Umayyad. Who held Basra: ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAmir ﵁, a cousin of the Caliph on his mother’s side. Who held Egypt: ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁, a milk-brother of the Caliph. Who held Sham: Muʿawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan ﵁, also an Umayyad. Who sat beside the Caliph in Medina as his secretary: Marwan ibn al-Hakam ﵁, a cousin of the Caliph who had been banished from Medina by ʿUmar ﵁ and who had been recalled by ʿUthman ﵁. The community saw the pattern, and the pattern became, for them, the case.

The grievances of the tribes

On page one hundred and sixty-eight Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ names four tribal confederations in which the rancour had taken its sharpest form, because in each of them a prominent Companion ﵁ had been brought into difficulty by ʿUthman ﵁.

The first was Banu Hudhayl, together with Banu Zuhrah. Within them festered the pain over ʿAbdullah ibn Masʿud ﵁, one of the first to accept Islam, a scholar whose knowledge of the Qur’an had been praised by the Prophet ﷺ himself, a Companion who had been sent to Kufa to teach there. ʿUthman ﵁ had treated him harshly in a dispute over the unity of the Qur’anic text and had withheld his pension, and for the tribe of Ibn Masʿud ﵁ that was an insult that was removed by no formal reconciliation.

The second was Banu Ghifar, together with the allies who had gathered around Abu Dharr al-Ghifari ﵁. Abu Dharr ﵁ was the most outspoken critic of the wealth of the governors and in particular of Muʿawiyah ﵁, in whose court in Damascus he had looked with revulsion upon the brand-new riches. ʿUthman ﵁, at the request of Muʿawiyah ﵁, had recalled him from Sham to Medina and had thereafter banished him to small and poor Rabadhah, where he had died in solitude, and for Banu Ghifar his banishment was a humiliation that they could not forgive on behalf of their tribe.

The third was Banu Makhzum, the tribe of ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁. ʿAmmar ﵁ had been one of the first prospective martyrs of Mecca, a man whose father and mother had died under the torture of the Quraysh, a Companion whom the Prophet ﷺ had personally consoled. ʿUthman ﵁ had had him struck in an altercation, and the blows had been so heavy that ʿAmmar ﵁ had for a time lost consciousness; Banu Makhzum, who regarded ʿAmmar ﵁ as their son even though he was a mawla, seethed with anger.

Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ sums up the three grievances in a single line: “Banu Hudhayl and Banu Zuhrah had in their hearts what they had because of the state of Ibn Masʿud ﵁. Banu Ghifar and their allies and whoever was angry on account of Abu Dharr ﵁ had in their hearts what they had. Banu Makhzum were furious with ʿUthman ﵁ because of the condition of ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁.” Three tribal confederations, three wounds, and the rancour grew in silence until it took the form of a political movement.

The seven hundred Egyptians

Among the provinces Egypt was the most unstable. The governor ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁ had governed the community there with success in his first years, but his manner of rule was hard and his treasury administration was strict. The Egyptians who descended upon Medina to complain about him at first found a sympathetic ear with the Caliph, and ʿUthman ﵁ wrote a letter to ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁ in which he threatened him with sanctions. But ʿAbdullah ﵁ refused to accept the instruction; he struck one of the Egyptian complainants who had returned from Medina, and the blow was so hard that the man died.

Seven hundred men thereupon set out from Egypt. They took the road to Medina not as pilgrims but as a delegation, and on arrival they moved in not as guests but as occupiers. They lodged in the Masjid an-Nabawi, upon the mats and behind the pillars, by night and by day, awaiting the outcome of their complaint. At the times of the salah, when the community of Medina assembled, they used the waiting periods to address the Companions ﵃ about what ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁ had done. It became, in modern terms, a strike-and-occupation in the heart of the sacred city of the Prophet ﷺ.

Talha ﵁ speaks sternly to the Caliph

In those days Talha ibn ʿUbaydullah ﵁, one of the ten to whom the Prophet ﷺ had promised Paradise, a member of the Shura of Six that had designated ʿUthman ﵁ as Caliph, climbed onto the minbar in the Masjid an-Nabawi and addressed ʿUthman ﵁ in very sharp terms. What he said exactly Suyuti ﵀ does not give us verbatim, but he records that it was an address that knew no softening and that no one concealed from the Caliph. That a man of Talha’s ﵁ rank should publicly address the Caliph with severity and without disguise was, for the community, a signal that the cause of the Egyptians was carried not by a few rebellious provincials but was shared by the very summit of the Companions ﵃ themselves.

Just afterward a letter came from ʿAʾishah ﵂, the Mother of the Believers, who laid the matter before the Caliph in still sharper terms. She was at that moment in Medina, and her message to ʿUthman ﵁ is transmitted by Suyuti ﵀ as follows:

Not as a request, but as a demand. The Mother of the Believers spoke on behalf of the Companions ﵃ because she knew that her voice in Medina could not be turned aside, and her voice would indeed not be turned aside. For ʿUthman ﵁ she was a venerable widow of the Prophet ﷺ; for the community she was the voice of the prophetic heritage that watched over the Caliph. When ʿAʾishah ﵂ spoke out, the Caliph could no longer keep the matter beneath the table.

The intervention of ʿAli ﵁

Amid the disputes ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ became the mediator. He came to ʿUthman ﵁ and addressed him in a language that combined both the juridical principle and the practical way out. Suyuti ﵀ gives his words on page one hundred and sixty-nine:

What ʿAli ﵁ proposed was the procedure that Islam provides in matters of blood-retaliation. The Egyptians claimed that their tribesman had been killed by the governor, and the matter therefore had to be brought before a judge. But the judge could not be the Caliph himself, for the governor was his appointee, and the judge could not be the governor either, for he was the accused. The obvious solution was to dismiss the governor, appoint an impartial judge, and let the matter proceed by the ordinary procedure: if the evidence stood against the governor, retaliation had to be carried out, and if it did not stand, the complainant had to be satisfied.

ʿUthman ﵁ listened to ʿAli ﵁ and cautiously agreed with him. He turned to the Egyptians with the pronouncement that Suyuti ﵀ transmits: “Choose from among yourselves a man whom I shall appoint over you in his place.” An open mandate: the Egyptians might themselves voice their preference, and the Caliph would ratify their choice.

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr designated

The Egyptians designated Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr. His father was Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ﵁, the first Caliph, and his mother was Asma’ bint ʿUmays ﵂, one of the first muhajirat. He was, in other words, a man of pure early-Islamic lineage, a man whose name was accepted in every circle of Companions ﵃, a man whose political independence gave the Egyptians a guarantee against a repetition of the errors of his predecessor. He was moreover in close relation to ʿAli ﵁, who after the death of Abu Bakr ﵁ had married Asma’ bint ʿUmays ﵂ and who had raised Muhammad in his household.

ʿUthman ﵁ wrote the letter of appointment, sealed it with his signet ring and handed it to Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr. A number of Muhajirun ﵃ and Ansar ﵃ decided to travel along to investigate on the spot the matter of the dispute between the Egyptians and Ibn Abi Sarh ﵁. To all appearances the Caliph had dismantled the fitna: he had given the Egyptians a judge, granted them their choice, appointed a new governor, and sent along a delegation of Companions ﵃ to oversee the procedure on the spot. Whoever had left Medina at that moment would have supposed that the worst had been averted.

The encounter with the black slave

Three days’ journey south of Medina the delegation, on its way to Egypt, came upon a black slave on a camel. He was striking the animal with the urgency of someone either pursuing another or being pursued by another. The Companions ﵃ of Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr called out to him and asked what his business was. The course of the conversation that follows has been preserved in detail by Suyuti ﵀, because it was in this passage that the history of the Caliphate tilted once more:

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr was informed of the matter, had the slave seized and brought before him, and asked him who he was. The slave answered now: “I am the slave of the Amir al-Muʾminin,” and now again: “I am the slave of Marwan ﵁,” until one man recognised him: he was the slave of ʿUthman ﵁. Muhammad asked him to whom he had been sent, and the answer was: to the governor of Egypt; with what, with a message; did you have a letter on you, no. He was searched, but they found no letter. He had a flask with him, a dry flask in which something moved, and they shook it to bring out what was inside, but it would not come out. They broke the flask, and within it lay a letter, and the letter was from ʿUthman ﵁ to ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁.

The content of the letter

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr gathered the Muhajirun ﵃, the Ansar ﵃ and the others who were in the delegation, and he opened the letter in their presence. Suyuti ﵀ gives the content word for word:

An instruction to murder, not only Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr but everyone in the delegation; an instruction to annul the official letter of appointment that ʿUthman ﵁ himself had sealed not ten days before; an instruction to detain the governor whom the Egyptians had precisely wished to be rid of; and an instruction to imprison everyone who would attempt to travel to Medina to make a report of the whole matter. For the Egyptians this meant that the Caliph who had heard them and who had permitted their reconciliation had set his signature beneath an opposing letter: two texts with the same seal, an open appointment and a secret command to murder.

Suyuti ﵀ adds what happened to the delegation when they read the letter: “When they read the letter, they were afraid. Then they gathered themselves resolutely and returned to Medina. Muhammad sealed the letter with the signet rings of the group that was with him, and then entrusted it to a man who was among them. Then they went to Medina.” The secret of the letter had to be kept until the moment when, in the masjid of the Caliph, they could unfold it before his face.

Back to Medina

On their arrival in Medina they gathered Talha ﵁, az-Zubayr ﵁, ʿAli ﵁, Saʿd ﵁ and whoever of the Companions ﵃ of the Prophet ﷺ was present in the city. Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr broke the seals of the letter in their presence and told them the story of the slave, and he read the letter aloud to them. And not one of the inhabitants of Medina remained who was not furious with ʿUthman ﵁.

What had been smouldering in the silence of the tribal grievances now caught fire. Whoever was already angry on account of Ibn Masʿud ﵁, of Abu Dharr ﵁, of ʿAmmar ﵁, found in the letter the confirmation that the Caliph had no longer merely wronged them through his governors but had personally set down in writing an order to murder seven of their settlement-fellows. The Companions ﵃ of the Prophet ﷺ rose and withdrew into their houses, and not one of them was calm enough to read the letter coldly.

ʿUthman ﵁ interrogated

When ʿAli ﵁ saw this development, he summoned Talha ﵁, az-Zubayr ﵁, Saʿd ﵁, ʿAmmar ﵁ and a group of Companions ﵃ each of whom was a veteran of Badr. Together they entered upon ʿUthman ﵁, with the letter, the slave and the camel as evidence. The interrogation that ʿAli ﵁ led Suyuti ﵀ gives us word for word:

Once again a double oath. Once again a denial that was believed by everyone who knew ʿUthman ﵁, because ʿUthman ﵁ was not a man who would lie with the oath in his name. But at the same time a matter whose facts could not be denied: the slave was his, the camel was his, the seal was his. Who then had written the letter?

Marwan ﵁ recognised in the handwriting

As for the handwriting, those present recognised that it was Marwan ibn al-Hakam’s ﵁. Marwan ﵁ was the Caliph’s secretary, he had access to his signet ring, he resided in his house, and above all he had a political interest in maintaining the administration that the Egyptians had opposed, for Ibn Abi Sarh ﵁ was his ally and the fall of Ibn Abi Sarh ﵁ would weaken the position of the Umayyads in every province.

The Companions ﵃ left the house of ʿUthman ﵁ in anger and in doubt about his case. They knew that ʿUthman ﵁ would not have sworn a false oath, but they said, as Suyuti ﵀ transmits: “ʿUthman ﵁ will never be free of guilt in our hearts unless he hands Marwan ﵁ over to us for interrogation, so that we may know the matter of the letter and how he could command the killing of a Companion ﵁ of the Prophet ﷺ without right. If ʿUthman ﵁ wrote it himself, then we shall remove him from office. If Marwan ﵁ wrote it in the name of ʿUthman ﵁, then we shall have to consider gravely what we shall do with Marwan ﵁.”

The refusal to hand Marwan ﵁ over

Here the Caliph came to the limit of what he was willing to give. To hand Marwan ﵁ over meant that he would deliver his own secretary, a man whom he had received and armed in his house, into the hands of a rebellious crowd, and it meant that, if it were proven that Marwan ﵁ had indeed written the letter, he would let a member of his own household be executed by the community, for the penalty for the murder of a Companion ﵁ of the Prophet ﷺ was known.

ʿUthman ﵁ refused to hand Marwan ﵁ over. He feared, Suyuti ﵀ writes, that Marwan ﵁ would be killed by the crowd without due process. He refused to deliver a kinsman into the hands of men whose anger he feared, and that was, in his eyes, no injustice but protection of a relative who had not yet been tried. For the community, however, that refusal was the proof that the Caliph was not willing to subject his family to the procedure that he would indeed have followed for others.

The siege begins

The Egyptians, and with them the Kufans and the Basrans who in those same days had arrived in Medina to lodge their own governor-complaints, kept to their houses no longer. They surrounded the house of ʿUthman ﵁, they posted watches at every door, and they prevented anyone from going in or out. Suyuti ﵀ sums up the transition in a single short sentence that stands in his work as a turning point: “The people besieged ʿUthman ﵁ in the year thirty-five, and Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr incited Banu Taym and others against him.” With that sentence the history of Suyuti ﵀ leaves the phase of political discord and enters the phase of the siege.

What will be followed in the next article is that siege in its detail: how the water was cut off, how ʿAli ﵁ stationed his sons al-Hasan ﵁ and al-Husayn ﵁ at the door with their swords, how arrows were loosed, how al-Hasan ﵁ was drenched in blood at his door, how ʿUthman ﵁ addressed the crowd from the upper storey and reminded them of his virtues in the first years of Islam, how the Egyptian ringleaders decided that they would press their cause no longer through the siege but through breaking into the house, and how a dagger-thrust in the masjid could not have struck the second Caliph, while an assassination in the house would now strike the third Caliph.

For this very article we pause at the turning point itself. The Caliph who for six years had ruled without any criticism fell, in the last six years, into a spiral of complaint and embitterment in which every attempt at reconciliation ran into a new accusation. The community that had once praised the Caliph as gentler than his predecessor ʿUmar ﵁ now experienced him as too gentle toward his own family. It was not one misstep that produced the fitna, but the gradual accumulation of administrative decisions that ʿUthman ﵁ deemed just within his ijtihad and that the community experienced as unlawful beyond its expectations.

Az-Zuhri ﵀, who pronounced the whole verdict with the distance of a later scholar, closed his summary with the acknowledgment that this was ʿUthman’s ijtihad. But ijtihad-and-acknowledgment were not enough in the thirty-fifth year to send the Egyptians home again. What the Caliph still had to give to this community, and what they still wished to take from him, would in the following days be driven to the siege of his house, and for him personally, and for the Ummah as a whole, what had been built up in this article would come to its climax in the next.