The Martyrdom and Biographical Sketch of ʿUthman ﵁

On the threshold of the breaking-in

In the preceding article we followed ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ in his encirclement. We followed the three ways out that al-Mughirah ibn Shuʿbah ﵁ proposed to him and his threefold refusal of them, and we followed his appeal to the veterans of Badr from the upper storey, his ten stored-up virtues with his Lord ﷻ, and the covenant that the Prophet ﷺ had personally made with him. We followed ʿAli ﵁ who stationed his sons al-Hasan ﵁ and al-Husayn ﵁ with their swords at the door, az-Zubayr ﵁ who sent his son ʿAbdullah ﵁, Talha ﵁ who sent his son Muhammad ibn Talha ﵁, and the other sons of Companions ﵃ who gathered at the door. We followed the three water-skins that ʿAli ﵁ had delivered through the wounds of his mawlas, and we followed the arrows that rained upon the door until al-Hasan ﵁ was drenched in blood and Marwan ﵁ was struck within the house by an arrow. And we ended at the threshold of the moment in which Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr proposed to two men to climb over the wall of a neighbouring house to reach the Caliph without the guard at the door noticing.

In this article we follow two things. In the first part we follow what happened over that wall, in what would be the last hour of the Caliph: we follow Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr into the house, we follow the beard of the Caliph in the grip of a hand that then released it, we follow the two men who carried out the blow whose execution Muhammad had prepared. We follow Naʾila bint al-Furafisa ﵂ with her fingers cut off in her attempt to turn aside the sword, we follow the blood of the third Caliph that falls upon his Mushaf at the moment he recites verse 137 of Surah al-Baqara, and we follow the body that lay unburied for three nights before a handful of men could carry it in the darkness between the salah of Maghrib and the salah of ʿIsha to Hash Kawkab on al-Baqiʿ.

In the second part of this article we follow who the man was who rests in that grave. We follow his lineage, his early conversion, his two marriages to daughters of the Messenger ﷺ, his modesty before which even the angels ﵇ were in awe, his generosity in the equipping of the Army of Hardship, his purchase of the well of Rumah, his enlargement of the Masjid an-Nabawi and the Masjid al-Haram, his nightly habits of wudu and the freeing of slaves, and his uniting of the Ummah upon a single Mushaf. Two parts in one article, because the Composer has decided that the martyrdom and the biography are told as one continuous movement: the man who dies in the first part is the same man who is brought to life in the second.

Part 1 — The martyrdom (Dhul-Hijjah 35 AH)

The decision of Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, as was already noted in the preceding article, took the hand of two men and addressed them at the side of the house. His words are transmitted by Suyuti ﵀ on page one hundred and seventy-two:

His reasoning was sober and cunning. The guard at the door, made up of the sons of the most authoritative Companions ﵃, could no longer be removed by force without provoking a conflict into which Banu Hashim and the prophetic family themselves would be drawn, and if al-Hasan ﵁ were more seriously wounded, the reaction would be so heavy that the whole scheme of the Egyptians would collapse. The solution Muhammad envisioned was to bypass the guard and break into the house from the other side, by way of the wall the house shared with that of a neighbour from the Ansar.

Muhammad and his two men climbed, Suyuti ﵀ writes, over the wall from the house of an Ansari ﵁, and entered the house of ʿUthman ﵁ without any of those who were with him noticing. Everyone who was in his house was at that moment up on the rooftops, awaiting what was happening at the gate or defending against possible arrows, and there was no one with the Caliph except his wife Naʾila ﵂.

“If your father could see you”

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr instructed his two men: “Stay standing, for his wife is with him, until I enter first. When I have seized him, then come in and strike him until you have killed him.” He entered first so as not to throw Naʾila ﵂ into immediate panic and to let the Caliph undergo the first shock of an unwanted entry before the two men should follow.

He went in and seized ʿUthman ﵁ by his beard. The Caliph, though deprived of his defence and overpowered in his own house by a man from the household of Abu Bakr ﵁, addressed him with the words that Suyuti ﵀ has preserved:

A single sentence. No cry, no appeal to the crowd, no plea for his own life, but a reminder of an absent father. Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ﵁ was the most beloved Companion of the Messenger ﷺ, a man whose friendship with ʿUthman ﵁ dated from the first days of Islam, a man who had himself called ʿUthman ﵁ to conversion. If Abu Bakr ﵁ could now have seen his son Muhammad in this deed, the pain of that sight would have been unbearable to him.

The words struck Muhammad in his father. Suyuti ﵀ transmits it in his own words: “His hand went slack, and he held himself back.” He released the beard of the Caliph and stepped back. What ʿUthman ﵁ had asked of him by merely naming his father was the acknowledgment that he stood in the lineage of Abu Bakr ﵁ and that his presence here was a violation of that line. Muhammad, by what he would himself later confirm, did not carry out the blow at that moment; he recoiled, he turned in his heart to Allah ﷻ in repentance, and he left the place.

The two assassins carry out the blow

But the two men he had left standing before him had their charge. When they were inside and saw that Muhammad was withdrawing, they carried out what he had left undone. Suyuti ﵀ records briefly: “The two men came in and struck him until they had killed him.” No further dialogue, no resistance from the Caliph, who in his posture of patience did not wish to break the covenant with the Prophet ﷺ. The two men fled out by the same wall over which they had climbed in.

Suyuti ﵀ transmits, through Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ on the authority of Kinana, the mawla of Safiyya ﵂, that the man who carried out the blow was an Egyptian, blue-eyed, with a ruddy complexion, and known by the name Himar. A man whose name has remained in history as a warning against what a person in the grip of fitna can do.

Naʾila ﵂ tries to turn aside the sword

In the silence that followed in the house thereupon, Naʾila bint al-Furafisa ﵂ was the only witness. Suyuti ﵀ records in the same passage that the Caliph was with his wife at the moment of the blow, and that her efforts to protect him had gone as far as into her own body. She had tried to hold back the sword, and her hand had come between the sword and her husband, and the fingers of that hand were cut off in the blow that the assassin carried out. She cried out when the body of her husband fell, but her cry was not heard in the house because of the commotion up on the rooftops.

Then she went to the people up on the roof and she said: “The Amir al-Muʾminin has been killed!” The people came in and they found him slaughtered. The news reached ʿAli ﵁, Talha ﵁, az-Zubayr ﵁, Saʿd ﵁ and whoever of the Companions ﵃ was present in Medina. They went out, and their senses, Suyuti ﵀ writes, had left them from the report that had reached them, until they entered upon ʿUthman ﵁ and found him killed, and they repeated again and again: “Indeed, to Allah ﷻ we belong, and indeed, to Him we return.”

The blood on the Mushaf

What Suyuti ﵀ includes in his passages on the last moments of the Caliph confirms what has also been preserved in the broader transmission: that ʿUthman ﵁ in his last moments was reading the Mushaf in his lap and that his blood fell upon the pages. On the authority of many transmitters Suyuti ﵀ had written earlier that ʿUthman ﵁ had memorised the whole Qur’an in the time of the Prophet ﷺ, and that he had personally led the compilation of the one Mushaf for the Ummah. That the same Mushaf lay in his lap when the sword struck him has been preserved by the transmitters who worked in Suyuti’s broader circles. For ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn Mahdi ﵀ had after all said that of his two qualities that neither Abu Bakr ﵁ nor ʿUmar ﵁ had, the second was: “his uniting of the people upon a single Mushaf.” It was the Mushaf of his own work upon which his blood fell.

The body unburied and the grave in Hash Kawkab

What happened in the hours and days after the blow Suyuti ﵀ has indicated in short sentences. ʿUthman ﵁ was killed, according to various transmissions, on a Wednesday or on a Friday, in the middle of the Days of Tashriq, the days after the ʿId al-Adha of the thirty-fifth year. Some say on the eighteenth of Dhul-Hijjah, others six days before the end of Dhul-Hijjah, others on a Monday. The Days of Tashriq were the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth of Dhul-Hijjah, and in those days ʿAʾishah ﵂ was on the Hajj, far from Medina, far from the events in the house of the Caliph, so that her absence at that moment meant that her voice, the voice of the Mother of the Believers, who in the build-up of the fitna had spoken so sharply, could not be heard in the twilight of the murder itself.

He was, according to various transmissions, eighty-two years old on the day he was killed; others say eighty-one, eighty-four, eighty-six, eighty-eight or eighty-nine, and some have said ninety. The Caliph who had begun his youth in the sixth year after the Year of the Elephant closed his life in his seventh decade.

He was buried on the night before Saturday, between the salah of Maghrib and the salah of ʿIsha, in Hash Kawkab on al-Baqiʿ, the cemetery of Medina. He was the first to be buried in Hash Kawkab. The body, for the hours between the murder and this burial, had not been put into the earth immediately because of the state of the community; only in the twilight, at the moment that was least conspicuous, could a small group of men carry him in silence to that part of the cemetery where he could be laid to rest.

Qatadah ﵀ transmits that az-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwam ﵁ performed the funeral prayer over him and buried him, because he had pledged that at the request of ʿUthman ﵁ himself. Az-Zubayr ﵁, one of the ten to whom the Garden was promised, a member of the Shura of Six from among whom ʿUthman ﵁ had been chosen, fulfilled the last duty to the Caliph who had been his friend in the years of the Prophet ﷺ.

The words of ʿAli ﵁ about his absence

In the daze of what followed the murder, ʿAli ﵁ came back to the house and spoke with Naʾila ﵂. He asked her who had killed ʿUthman ﵁, and she said that she did not know; two men whom she did not recognise had come in, and with them had been Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr. ʿAli ﵁ called for Muhammad and asked him about what the wife of ʿUthman ﵁ had said. Muhammad answered:

Naʾila ﵂ confirmed what he had said, but added that he had indeed brought the two men in. ʿAli ﵁ then turned to his own sons and gave them the rebuke that Suyuti ﵀ has preserved: “How has the Amir al-Muʾminin been killed, while you two stood at the door?” He raised his hand, struck al-Hasan ﵁, struck the chest of al-Husayn ﵁, reviled Muhammad ibn Talha ﵁ and ʿAbdullah ibn az-Zubayr ﵁, and went furious to his house.

What ʿAli ﵁ would later say about his own innocence in the matter Suyuti ﵀ has preserved in repetition on page one hundred and seventy-seven. Al-Hasan ﵀ transmits that ʿUthman ﵁ was killed while ʿAli ﵁ was in a plot of land that he owned, and that, when the report reached him, he said: “O Allah ﷻ, I did not approve of it and I did not stir it up.” Qais ibn ʿAbbad ﵀ transmits that he heard ʿAli ﵁ say on the day of the Battle of the Camel: “O Allah ﷻ, I am free before You of taking part in the shedding of the blood of ʿUthman ﵁.” And Abu Khaldah al-Hanafi ﵀ transmits: “I heard ʿAli ﵁ say: Banu Umayya claim that I killed ʿUthman ﵁. No, by Allah ﷻ besides Whom there is no god! I did not kill him, I did not stir it up, I forbade it but they disobeyed me.”

The foretelling fulfilled

What had been transmitted by Suyuti ﵀ in his earlier passages about ʿUthman ﵁ proves fulfilled in this moment. At-Tirmidhi ﵀ had transmitted on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar ﵁ that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had mentioned a fitna and had said about it: “This one will be killed unjustly in it,” meaning ʿUthman ﵁. Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁ had transmitted that the Prophet ﷺ had said: “ʿUthman passed by me while one of the angels ﵇ was with me, and he said: ‘A martyr who will be killed by his own people. We are in awe for him.’” What had preceded these prophetic statements had now come fully to pass through the blow in his house.

Hudhayfa ﵁ had foretold: “The first of the trials is the killing of ʿUthman ﵁, and the last of the trials is the appearance of the Dajjal.” ʿAbdullah ibn Salam ﵁ had addressed the besiegers before the blow with a last warning: “Do not kill him! For by Allah ﷻ, every man of you who kills him will meet Allah without a hand. The sword of Allah ﷻ will remain in its sheath, but by Allah ﷻ, if you kill him, Allah ﷻ will draw it and He will never again put it back in its sheath. No prophet was ever killed without seventy thousand being killed for his sake, nor a Caliph without thirty-five thousand being killed for his sake, before they were reunited.”

Samura ﵁ transmitted a keystone for the whole scene: “Islam was in a strongly fortified citadel, and they made a breach in Islam with the killing of ʿUthman ﵁ that will not be closed until the Day of Resurrection. The Caliphate was among the people of Medina, and they drove it away from themselves, and it never returned to them.” Muhammad ibn Sirin ﵀ transmitted: “The dappled horses (of the angels ﵇) never stayed away from the battles and the armies, until ʿUthman ﵁ was killed. There was no disagreement over the new moons, until ʿUthman ﵁ was killed. This red colour that is on the horizon was never seen, until al-Husayn ﵁ was killed.”

In the elegy that Kaʿb ibn Malik ﵁ composed about him and that ash-Shaʿbi ﵀ has transmitted, the verdict of his contemporaries rings out:

Then he withheld his hands and closed his door,

And he knew for certain that Allah ﷻ is not forgetful.

He said to the people of the house: "Do not kill them!

May Allah ﷻ forgive every man who does not fight."

How did you see Allah ﷻ pour out upon them

Enmity and hatred after harmony with one another!

And how did you see good return from the people

After him, as the driving winds turn back the clouds!

In a single stanza his posture is fixed. He withheld his hands, he closed his door, he knew for certain that Allah ﷻ was not forgetful, and he commanded his household not to kill. That was the posture with which the third Caliph of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ departed from this world.

Part 2 — Biographical sketch ﵁

Dhu’n-Nurayn — the possessor of the two lights

We have now followed the Caliph in his death, and we have followed him in his siege. We have seen how he would not take up arms, how he would not lay the Mushaf from his lap, how he had Naʾila ﵂ at his side and how her fingers were cut off in the attempt to turn aside the sword. But who was the man whose life was closed in this grave? Where was he born, how did he come to know Islam, how did he marry two daughters of the Messenger ﷺ, how did he spend the prosperity that came into his hand, how did he make the mosques of Mecca and Medina greater than they had ever been, and which habits of his nights were preserved by his servants as testimonies of his piety?

What Suyuti ﵀ gathers about him spans roughly pp. 157–164 in the early chapters of his Caliphate, and pp. 178–180 in the conclusion after his martyrdom. In that material we encounter him as his Companions ﵃ knew him: modest without weakness, generous without wastefulness, attached to the Messenger ﷺ without self-exaltation, and with a nightly piety that even his closest servants had not noticed until one of them let it slip in a remark to him.

He was ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ibn Abi’l-ʿAs ibn Umayya ibn ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manaf ibn Qusayy ibn Kilab ibn Murra ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy ibn Ghalib al-Qurashi al-Amawi, born in Mecca, later dwelling in Medina, with the kunya Abu ʿAmr, and in other transmissions Abu ʿAbdullah and Abu Layla. He was born in the sixth year after the Year of the Elephant, which falls roughly six years after the birth of the Messenger ﷺ, and he accepted Islam very early, being among the men whom Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ﵁ had called in his first summons to Islam. He emigrated on both hijras: the first to Abyssinia, and the second to Medina.

His mother was Arwa bint Kurayz ibn Rabiʿa ibn Habib ibn ʿAbd Shams. Her mother was Umm Hakim al-Baydaʾ bint ʿAbd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim, a twin sister of the father of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Through this the mother of ʿUthman ﵁ was the daughter of a paternal aunt of the Prophet ﷺ, and he himself was in close blood relation to the Prophet ﷺ. That nearness in lineage was not only genealogical but also personal: it explained the naturalness with which the Prophet ﷺ gave him first his daughter Ruqayya ﵂ and later his daughter Umm Kulthum ﵂ in marriage.

He married Ruqayya bint Rasul Allah ﷺ before the prophethood. She died with him during the nights of the Battle of Badr in the second year of the Hijra. He had been kept from Badr because she fell ill, with the permission of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and the Prophet ﷺ assigned him a share of the spoils and rewarded him, so that for that reason he is counted among the people of Badr. A messenger brought the good news of the victory of the Muslims at Badr on the same day that they buried Ruqayya ﵂ in Medina. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then married him to her sister Umm Kulthum ﵂, who later died with him, in the ninth year of the Hijra.

The scholars say, Suyuti ﵀ writes: “We know of no one who married two daughters of a prophet except him, and for that reason he is known as Dhu’n-Nurayn, the Possessor of the Two Lights.” Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ had given that explanation in his own way: “No one has ever been united with two daughters of a prophet since Allah ﷻ created Adam ﵇, and no one will be until the Hour arises, except ʿUthman ﵁, and for that reason he was called the Possessor of the Two Lights.” Abu Nuʿaym ﵀ transmitted from al-Hasan al-Basri ﵀: “ʿUthman ﵁ was called the Possessor of the Two Lights only for this reason, that no person is known to have closed his door over two daughters of a prophet other than him.”

Khaythamah ﵀ transmitted in his Fadaʾil as-Sahaba, and Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ in his Tarikh Dimashq, that ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ was asked about ʿUthman ﵁, and he said:

Al-Malini ﵀ transmitted from Sahl ibn Saʿd ﵁ a third explanation: “It is said of ʿUthman ﵁ ‘the Possessor of the Two Lights’ because he will move from one abode in Paradise to another and two flashes of lightning will light up for him, and it is for that reason that this is said of him.”

One of the ten to whom the Garden was promised

He was one of the first forerunners, the Sabiqun al-Awwalun, one of the first Muhajirun, one of the ten for whom it was testified that they were destined for the Garden, and one of the six with whom the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was pleased at his death. He was one of the Companions ﵃ who had memorised the whole Qur’an. Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ said: “None of the Caliphs memorised the whole Qur’an except him and al-Maʾmun.”

Ibn Saʿd ﵀ transmits that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ appointed him as his deputy over Medina during the military expeditions to Dhat ar-Riqaʿ and Ghatafan. One hundred and forty-six transmissions from him have been related from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. A great number of Companions ﵃ and tabiʿin transmitted from him, among them Zayd ibn Khalid al-Juhani ﵁, Ibn az-Zubayr ﵁, as-Saʾib ibn Yazid ﵁, Anas ibn Malik ﵁, Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁, Abu Hurayra ﵁, Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ and Ibn ʿUmar ﵁.

ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn Hatib ﵁ said, according to Ibn Saʿd ﵀: “I have not seen any of the Companions ﵃ of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ who, when he related a hadith, related it more completely and more excellently than ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁, unless he was a man who was in awe of the hadith.” Muhammad ibn Sirin ﵀ transmitted that ʿUthman ﵁ was the most knowledgeable of them in the rites of the Hajj, and after him Ibn ʿUmar ﵁.

The modesty before which the angels ﵇ were in awe

What Suyuti ﵀ gathers about his modesty belongs to the most tender passages about him in the whole work. The two Shaykhs, that is al-Bukhari ﵀ and Muslim ﵀, transmit on the authority of ʿAʾishah ﵂ that the Prophet ﷺ drew his garments around himself when ʿUthman ﵁ came in, and said:

Abu Yaʿla ﵀ transmitted from Ibn ʿUmar ﵁ that the Prophet ﷺ said: “The angels ﵇ are modest before ʿUthman ﵁, as they are modest before Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ.” Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ transmitted from al-Hasan al-Basri ﵀ that in his presence the modesty of ʿUthman ﵁ was mentioned, and he said: “If he were in the middle of the house, with the door locked, and he were to remove his clothes to pour water over himself, then modesty would prevent him from straightening his back upright.”

A modesty kept in seclusion, a modesty acknowledged in the presence of angels ﵇ by the Prophet ﷺ himself. It was not a cultural courtesy or a social manner, but a fundamental disposition of the heart that was maintained in private as it was in public.

The likeness to Ibrahim ﵇

What was preserved of his appearance testifies that he was one of the most attractive men of his generation. Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ transmitted by various routes that ʿUthman ﵁ was of medium stature, neither short nor tall, with a fair face, a light complexion with a reddish tinge, with traces of smallpox on his face, with a full beard, with large limbs and broad shoulders, with curling hair that greyed toward the forehead, with the finest front teeth of people, and he dyed his hair with yellow.

ʿAbdullah ibn Hazm al-Mazini ﵁ said: “I saw ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁, and I have never seen a man or a woman with a fairer face than him.” Musa ibn Talha ﵁ said: “ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ was the fairest of people.” Usama ibn Zayd ﵁ relates that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent him to the house of ʿUthman ﵁ with a dish of meat, and he went in, and there sat Ruqayya ﵂. “I began to look one time at the face of Ruqayya ﵂ and another time at the face of ʿUthman ﵁. When I came back, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ questioned me and asked: ‘Did you go in to them?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘Have you ever seen a pair fairer than they?’ I said: ‘No, Messenger of Allah ﷺ.’”

Ibn ʿAdi ﵀ transmitted from ʿAʾishah ﵂ that the Prophet ﷺ, when he gave his daughter Umm Kulthum ﵂ in marriage, said to her:

Ibn ʿAdi ﵀ and Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ transmitted from Ibn ʿUmar ﵁ that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “We find in ʿUthman ﵁ a likeness to our father Ibrahim ﵇.”

The Army of Hardship

What his wealth meant in the equipping of the Ummah appears nowhere more clearly than in the Army of Hardship, the jaysh al-ʿusra, the army that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ led to Tabuk in the ninth year of the Hijra. In the heat of summer, in a time of hunger and drought, the Prophet ﷺ called from the minbar upon the Muslims to finance the equipping of the army, and ʿUthman ﵁ rose and did what no other before him had done to that degree.

At-Tirmidhi ﵀ transmitted from ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn Khabbab ﵁: “I witnessed the Prophet ﷺ urging the people to support the Army of Hardship, and then ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ said: ‘Messenger of Allah ﷺ, I shall be responsible for one hundred camels with their saddle-blankets and their saddles, on the way of Allah ﷻ.’ Then he urged the people further, and ʿUthman ﵁ said: ‘Messenger of Allah ﷺ, I shall be responsible for two hundred camels with their saddle-blankets and their saddles, on the way of Allah ﷻ.’ Then he urged the people further, and ʿUthman ﵁ said: ‘Messenger of Allah ﷺ, I shall be responsible for three hundred camels with their saddle-blankets and their saddles, on the way of Allah ﷻ.’ Then the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came down (from the minbar) and said: ‘There will be nothing more against ʿUthman ﵁, whatever he does after this day.’”

In another transmission ʿUthman ﵁ came to the Prophet ﷺ with a thousand dinars when he was equipping the Army of Hardship, and poured them into his lap. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ began to turn them over, while he said: “Nothing that ʿUthman ﵁ does after this day will harm him,” twice. Anas ibn Malik ﵁ transmitted that aspect of the same event, and at-Tirmidhi ﵀ and al-Hakim ﵀ both included the transmission.

Abu Hurayra ﵁ transmitted that the Prophet ﷺ said: “ʿUthman ﵁ bought the Garden from me twice: when he had the well of Rumah dug, and when he equipped the Army of Hardship.”

The well of Rumah

What Abu Hurayra ﵁ mentioned was the second of his great benefactions to the Ummah in its early years. In the first years of the Hijra Medina had a serious shortage of water; most of the wells in the city were brackish, and the only freshwater well available for general use was the well of Rumah, which was then in the hands of a Jew who rented it out at high prices. The Prophet ﷺ had announced that whoever should have the well of Rumah dug, that is should buy it and make it available to the Muslims, for him would be the Garden. ʿUthman ﵁ bought it from his own means and made it available as waqf to the Ummah, and his appeal to the deed in his siege, from the upper storey of his house, was the invocation of a promise that he had himself received from the Messenger ﷺ and that was still vivid in the memory of his contemporaries.

The enlargement of the Masjid an-Nabawi and the Masjid al-Haram

In the twenty-sixth year of the Hijra, the second full year of his Caliphate, ʿUthman ﵁ enlarged and extended the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, and bought plots of land for the extension. It was the first structural extension of the sanctuary since the time of ʿUmar ﵁, and it followed the gradual increase of pilgrims from the growing provinces. In the twenty-ninth year of the Hijra he added to the mosque of Medina, extended it, and rebuilt it with carved stone; he made its pillars of stone and its roof of teakwood, and he made its length one hundred and sixty cubits and its breadth one hundred and fifty cubits.

It was he who was the first, al-ʿAskari ﵀ says, to perfume the mosque of Medina, it was he who was the first to command the first call to the prayer of the Jumuʿa, and it was he who was the first to provide the muʾadhdhins.

The nightly wudu

As for his daily piety, a particular was preserved by his closest servants that could be known only by them. ʿAbdullah ar-Rumi transmitted:

A Caliph of millions of subjects, with servants in his household who served him in every hour of the day, refused to wake one of them in the night for his wuduʾ. What he pursued in public as justice toward the community he lived in private as justice toward his own servants: the night was for them to rest in, and he would himself, in the silence, scoop his water from the pot for his salah al-layl.

ʿAmr ibn ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ transmitted that the engraving on the signet ring of ʿUthman ﵁ read: “I trust in the One who has created and has perfected (His creation).” A profession of tawhid in the hand that sealed the official documents of the Ummah.

The weekly freeing of a slave

In the ten virtues that ʿUthman ﵁ enumerated to Abu Thawr al-Fahmi ﵁ during his siege, he mentioned that no Jumuʿa had passed him by since he accepted Islam without his freeing a slave, unless he was in debt at that moment, in which case he freed him afterward. A weekly freeing, carried on over tens of years, is a habit of generosity that has no parallel in the history of the Caliphate; it was personal money spent without public announcement on a personal virtue that he had reserved for his Lord ﷻ.

In the same enumeration he indicated that he had never committed adultery, neither in the Jahiliyya nor in Islam, and that he had never stolen, neither in the Jahiliyya nor in Islam. Two virtues that in the morality of the Jahiliyya counted as exceptions, and that he had maintained over a life of nearly ninety years.

His early conversion and the harshness of his uncle

Ibn Ishaq ﵀ transmitted that he was the first to accept Islam after Abu Bakr ﵁, ʿAli ﵁ and Zayd ibn Haritha ﵁. Ibn Saʿd ﵀ transmitted from Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn al-Harith at-Taymi ﵀ what happened in his earliest days: when ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ became a Muslim, his paternal uncle al-Hakam ibn Abi’l-ʿAs ibn Umayya seized him, bound him with ropes, and said: “Will you leave the religion of your fathers for an invented religion? By Allah ﷻ, I will not release you until you give up what you are involved in.” ʿUthman ﵁ said: “By Allah ﷻ, I will not give it up and I will not leave it.” When al-Hakam saw his steadfastness in his deen, he released him.

Abu Yaʿla ﵀ transmitted from Anas ﵁ that the first to emigrate with his family to the Abyssinians was ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁. The Prophet ﷺ said: “May Allah ﷻ accompany the two of them. ʿUthman ﵁ is the first to emigrate with his family for the sake of Allah ﷻ since Lut ﵇.”

The bayʿah and the election

In an earlier article we followed the bayʿah of ʿUthman ﵁ in detail, how ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁ had led the Shura of Six and how the choice had finally fallen upon ʿUthman ﵁. Suyuti ﵀ further recalls that ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ had said on page one hundred and sixty-four, after consulting the people: “Well then! ʿAli, I have searched among the people and I see them holding no one equal to ʿUthman ﵁. So do not make a way against yourself.” He took the hand of ʿUthman ﵁ and said: “We pledge allegiance to you according to the Sunnah of Allah ﷻ, the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ and the Sunnah of the two Caliphs after him.” ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ pledged allegiance to him and the Muhajirun ﵃ and the Ansar ﵃ pledged allegiance to him.

Ibn Masʿud ﵁ said, when allegiance was pledged to ʿUthman ﵁: “We have charged with the command the best of those remaining and we have not been remiss.”

His manner of preaching from the minbar

Musa ibn Talha ﵁ transmitted through Ibn Saʿd ﵀: “I saw ʿUthman ﵁ go out on the day of Jumuʿa, and upon him were two yellow garments. He used to sit on the minbar, then the muʾadhdhins would call to the prayer while he spoke, and he asked the people about their prices and their sick.”

A Caliph who, before his khutba, asked after the prices and the sick of his community. He was not a sovereign who stood above them, but a shepherd who knew what happened in their streets and who built his Friday sermon upon the reality of their lives.

The man whose piety the two Caliphs before him did not know

ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn Mahdi ﵀ transmitted through Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀: “There were two qualities that ʿUthman ﵁ had that neither Abu Bakr ﵁ nor ʿUmar ﵁ had: his self-restraint until he was killed, and his uniting of the people upon a single Mushaf.”

Two qualities that in the history of the first three Caliphs were attributed to ʿUthman ﵁ alone. The first was his self-restraint in his siege, the fact that despite all the provocations of the crowd he raised not his hands and let not the weapons be drawn. The second was his uniting of the Ummah upon a single Mushaf, a work that neither Abu Bakr ﵁, who in his days had carried out only the first collection, nor ʿUmar ﵁, in whose days the various dialects existed side by side, had completed. It was ʿUthman ﵁ who, with Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁ as his lead editor and with Suhayl ibn ʿAmr ﵁, ʿAbdullah ibn az-Zubayr ﵁ and ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn al-Harith ﵁ as his collaborators, collected the text in the Qurashi dialect, burned the divergent copies, and sent a single transcript to each province. It was the Mushaf of his work upon which his blood fell on the day of his death.

The notables who died in his days

Suyuti ﵀ closes his chapter with the list of the notables who died in the days of ʿUthman’s Caliphate: Suraqa ibn Malik ibn Jushum ﵁, Jabbar ibn Sakhr ﵁, Hatib ibn Abi Baltaʿa ﵁, ʿIyad ibn Zuhayr ﵁, Abu Usayd as-Saʿidi ﵁, Aws ibn as-Samit ﵁, al-Harith ibn Nawfal ﵁, ʿAbdullah ibn Hudhafa ﵁, Zayd ibn Kharija ﵁ who spoke after his death, Labid the poet ﵁, al-Musayyab the father of Saʿid ﵁, Muʿadh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Jamuh ﵁, Maʿbad ibn al-ʿAbbas ﵁, Muʿayqib ibn Abi Fatima ad-Dawsi ﵁, Abu Lubaba ibn ʿAbd al-Mundhir ﵁, Nuʿaym ibn Masʿud al-Ashjaʿi ﵁ and others of the Companions ﵃. Besides the Companions ﵃ there were Hutayʾa the poet and Abu Dhuʾayb the poet of the tribe of Hudhayl.

Conclusion

We have now followed the third Caliph of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in his siege and in his martyrdom, in his lineage and in his early conversion, in his modesty before the angels ﵇ and his beauty before the people, in his wealth for the Army of Hardship and in his purchase of the well of Rumah, in his enlargement of the two sacred mosques and in his rebuilding of the mosque of Medina with carved stone, in his weekly freeing of a slave and in his nightly wuduʾ that no servant was allowed to touch, in his uniting of the Ummah upon a single Mushaf and in his self-restraint until his death. We have left him in his grave in Hash Kawkab on al-Baqiʿ, where he was the first to be laid in that part of the cemetery and where his name is to this day named above others.

He was the man whose life had begun with two daughters of the Messenger ﷺ and whose death was sealed with the Mushaf of his own work upon his lap. He was the Possessor of the Two Lights, and he was the man about whose death Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman ﵁ had foretold: “The first of the trials is the killing of ʿUthman ﵁, and the last of the trials is the appearance of the Dajjal.” With his death began, in the words of Samura ﵁, the breach in Islam that would not be closed until the Day of Resurrection, and with his death began the true fitna that would take on its full weight in the years of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁.

May Allah ﷻ be pleased with ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁, and may He accept his martyrdom between the blood that fell upon his Mushaf and the Garden that was promised to him twice by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.