ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁

On the Threshold of the Breach

In the previous article we followed ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ in his encirclement, tracing the three ways out that al-Mughirah ibn Shuʿbah ﵁ proposed to him and his threefold refusal of them. We followed his appeal to the veterans of Badr from the upper floor, the ten stored-up virtues he held before 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 the Companions ﵃ who gathered at the door. We followed the three waterskins that ʿAli ﵁ had delivered through the wounds of his mawlas, and the arrows that rained upon the door until al-Hasan ﵁ was drenched in blood and Marwan ﵁ had been struck inside the house by an arrow. And we ended on the threshold of the moment when Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr proposed to two men that they climb over the wall of a neighbouring house in order to reach the Khalifah 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 prove to be the last hour of the Khalifah. We follow Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr into the house, we follow the beard of the Khalifah in the grip of a hand that afterwards let it go, and we follow the two men who carried out the blow whose execution Muhammad had prepared. We follow Naʾila bint al-Furafisa ﵂ with her fingers severed in her attempt to turn away the sword, we follow the blood of the third Khalifah falling upon his Mushaf at the very moment he was reciting verse 137 of Surah al-Baqara, and we follow the body that lay three nights unburied before a handful of men could carry it in the darkness, between the prayer of Maghrib and the prayer of ʿIsha, to Hash Kawkab in al-Baqiʿ.

In the second part of this article we follow who the man resting in that grave was. We follow his lineage, his early conversion, his two marriages to daughters of the Messenger ﷺ, the modesty before which even the angels ﵇ were bashful, his generosity in equipping 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 of freeing 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 to be told as one continuous movement. The man who dies in the first part is the same man who is called to life in the second.

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

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The Decision of Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, as was already noted in the previous article, took two men by the hand 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 itself would be drawn. 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 saw before him was to bypass the guard and enter the house from the other side, by way of the wall that the house shared with that of a neighbour from the Ansar.

Muhammad and his two men climbed, Suyuti ﵀ writes, over the wall from within 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 roofs, watching what was happening at the gate or defending against possible arrows. There was no one with the Khalifah except his wife Naʾila ﵂.

“If Your Father Could See You”

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr instructed his two men: “Stay where you are, for his wife is with him, until I enter first. When I have seized him, come in and strike him until you have killed him.” He entered first so as not to throw Naʾila ﵂ into immediate panic, and so that the Khalifah would suffer the first shock of an unwanted entry before the two men followed.

He went in and seized ʿUthman ﵁ by his beard. The Khalifah, though stripped 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:

One sentence. No cry, no appeal to the crowd, no plea for his own life, only a reminder of an absent father. Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ﵁ had been the most beloved Companion of the Messenger ﷺ, a man whose friendship with ʿUthman ﵁ dated from the earliest days of Islam, a man who had himself called ʿUthman ﵁ to the faith. Had Abu Bakr ﵁ now been able to see his son Muhammad in this deed, the pain of that sight would have been unbearable to him.

The words struck Muhammad through his father. Suyuti ﵀ transmits it in his own words: “His hand went slack, and he restrained himself.” He let go of the Khalifah’s beard and took a step back. What ʿUthman ﵁ had asked of him merely by naming his father was the acknowledgment that he stood within the lineage of Abu Bakr ﵁ and that his presence here was a violation of that lineage. 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 orders. When they were inside and saw that Muhammad was withdrawing, they carried out what he had left undone. Suyuti ﵀ notes briefly: “The two men came in and struck him until they had killed him.” No further dialogue, no resistance from the Khalifah, who in his posture of patience would not break the covenant with the Prophet ﷺ. The two men fled outside by way of 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 struck 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 can do in the grip of fitna.

Naʾila ﵂ Tries to Turn Away the Sword

In the silence that followed in the house, Naʾila bint al-Furafisa ﵂ was the only witness. Suyuti ﵀ notes in the same passage that the Khalifah was with his wife at the moment of the blow, and that her efforts to protect him had reached 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 severed in the blow the assassin struck. She cried out as her husband’s body fell, but her cry was not heard in the house because of the commotion up on the roofs.

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

The Blood on the Mushaf

What Suyuti ﵀ includes in his passages about the final moments of the Khalifah confirms what is also preserved in the broader tradition: that ʿUthman ﵁ in his last moments was reading the Mushaf in his lap and that his blood fell upon its pages. On the authority of many transmitters, Suyuti ﵀ had written earlier that ʿUthman ﵁ had memorised the entire Qur’an in the time of the Prophet ﷺ, and that he had personally directed the compilation of the single Mushaf for the Ummah. That this same Mushaf lay in his lap when the sword struck him is preserved by the transmitters who worked within Suyuti’s broader circles. ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn Mahdi ﵀ had, after all, said that of his two qualities which neither Abu Bakr ﵁ nor ʿUmar ﵁ possessed, 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 Left Unburied and the Grave in Hash Kawkab

What happened in the hours and days after the blow has been set down by Suyuti ﵀ in brief sentences. ʿUthman ﵁ was killed, according to various narrations, 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, and 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 what took place in the house of the Khalifah. Her absence at that moment meant that her voice, the voice of the Mother of the Believers, which in the build-up of the fitna had spoken so sharply, could not be heard in the twilight of the killing itself.

He was, according to various narrations, 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 Khalifah 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 prayer of Maghrib and the prayer of ʿIsha, in Hash Kawkab in al-Baqiʿ, the burial ground of Medina. He was the first to be buried in Hash Kawkab. For the hours between the killing and this burial, the body had not been placed in the earth at once, owing to the state of the community. Only in the twilight, at the moment least conspicuous, could a small group of men carry him quietly to that part of the burial ground 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 to do so 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 whose midst ʿUthman ﵁ had been chosen, fulfilled the final duty to the Khalifah who had been his friend in the years of the Prophet ﷺ.

The Words of ʿAli ﵁ on His Absence

In the aftermath of the killing, ʿAli ﵁ came back to the house and spoke with Naʾila ﵂. He asked her who had killed ʿUthman ﵁. She said that she did not know; two men she did not recognise had entered, 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 was the Amir al-Muʾminin killed, while the two of you were standing at the door?” He raised his hand, struck al-Hasan ﵁, thrust at the chest of al-Husayn ﵁, reviled Muhammad ibn Talha ﵁ and ʿAbdullah ibn az-Zubayr ﵁, and went off in fury to his house.

What ʿAli ﵁ would later say about his own innocence in the matter has been preserved by Suyuti ﵀ in reiteration on page one hundred and seventy-seven. Al-Hasan ﵀ transmits that ʿUthman ﵁ was killed while ʿAli ﵁ was on a piece of land he owned, and that when the news reached him he said: “O Allah ﷻ, I did not approve of it and I did not incite it.” 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 from any share 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 incite it, I forbade it but they disobeyed me.”

The Prophecy Fulfilled

What Suyuti ﵀ had transmitted in his earlier passages about ʿUthman ﵁ proves in this moment to be fulfilled. At-Tirmidhi ﵀ had transmitted on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar ﵁ that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had mentioned a fitna and had said of it: “This one will be killed unjustly in it,” pointing to 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 bashful before him.’” What had preceded these prophetic sayings had now come fully true 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 final warning: “Do not kill him! For by Allah ﷻ, every man of you who kills him will meet Allah with no 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 never again return it to its sheath. No prophet was ever killed without seventy thousand being killed for his sake, nor a Khalifah 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 by the killing of ʿUthman ﵁ that will not be closed until the Day of Resurrection. The Khilafah 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 on the horizon was never seen, until al-Husayn ﵁ was killed.”

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

Then he held back 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 have you seen Allah ﷻ pour out upon them

Enmity and hatred after harmony with one another!

And how have you seen the good return from the people

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

In a single stanza his stance is fixed. He held back 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 Khalifah 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 Khalifah 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 set the Mushaf out of his lap, how he had Naʾila ﵂ at his side and how her fingers were severed in the attempt to turn away the sword. But who was the man whose life was sealed 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 wealth that came into his hand, how did he make the mosques of Mecca and Medina larger 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 Khilafah, and pp. 178–180 in the closing after his martyrdom. In that material we meet him as his Companions ﵃ knew him: modest without weakness, generous without extravagance, devoted 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 narrations 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, belonging to 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 while 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 this 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 while 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 this explanation in his own way: “No one has ever been joined 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 for this reason alone, because no man 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 gleam 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 entire Qur’an. Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ said: “None of the Khaliefen memorised the entire 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 narrations from him are transmitted 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 seen no one of the Companions ﵃ of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ who, when he narrated a hadith, narrated it more completely and more excellently than ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁, unless he were a man who stood 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 Bashful

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 about himself when ʿUthman ﵁ entered, and said:

Abu Yaʿla ﵀ transmitted from Ibn ʿUmar ﵁ that the Prophet ﷺ said: “The angels ﵇ are bashful before ʿUthman ﵁, as they are bashful 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 take off his clothes to pour water over himself, then modesty would keep him from straightening his back upright.”

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

The Resemblance to Ibrahim ﵇

What was preserved of his appearance testifies that he was one of the most attractive men of his generation. Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ transmitted along 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 curly hair that greyed towards the forehead, with the finest front teeth of the 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 his.” Musa ibn Talha ﵁ said: “ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ was the fairest of the people.” Usama ibn Zayd ﵁ relates that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent him to the house of ʿUthman ﵁ with a bowl of meat, and he went in, and there sat Ruqayya ﵂. “I began to look one moment at the face of Ruqayya ﵂ and the next at the face of ʿUthman ﵁. When I returned, 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 resemblance 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 upon the Muslims from the minbar to finance the equipping of the army. ʿUthman ﵁ stood up and did what no other before him had done to that measure.

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 will be responsible for a hundred camels with their saddle-cloths and their saddles, in the way of Allah ﷻ.’ Then he urged the people further, and ʿUthman ﵁ said: ‘Messenger of Allah ﷺ, I will be responsible for two hundred camels with their saddle-cloths and their saddles, in the way of Allah ﷻ.’ Then he urged the people further, and ʿUthman ﵁ said: ‘Messenger of Allah ﷺ, I will be responsible for three hundred camels with their saddle-cloths and their saddles, in the way of Allah ﷻ.’ Then the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came down (from the minbar) and said: ‘Nothing will be against ʿUthman ﵁, whatever he does after this day.’”

In another narration 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, saying: “Nothing that ʿUthman ﵁ does after this day will harm him,” twice. Anas ibn Malik ﵁ transmitted that aspect of the same event, and both at-Tirmidhi ﵀ and al-Hakim ﵀ included the narration.

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 severe shortage of water; most of the wells in the city were brackish, and the only fresh-water 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 had the well of Rumah dug, that is, bought it and made it available for the Muslims, would have the Garden. ʿUthman ﵁ bought it from his own means and placed it as a waqf at the disposal of the Ummah. His appeal to the deed during his siege, from the upper floor of his house, was the invocation of a promise 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 Khilafah, ʿUthman ﵁ enlarged and expanded the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, and bought plots of land for the expansion. It was the first structural enlargement 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, expanded it, and rebuilt it with carved stone. He made its pillars of stone and its roof of teakwood. He made its length one hundred and sixty cubits and its breadth one hundred and fifty cubits.

It was he who first, says al-ʿAskari ﵀, perfumed the mosque of Medina, it was he who first ordered the first call to the Jumuʿa prayer, and it was he who first provided the muʾadhdhins.

The Nightly Wudu

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

A Khalifah of millions of subjects, with servants in his household who served him at every hour of the day, refused to wake one of them in the night for his wuduʾ. What he pursued in public as justice towards the community, he lived in secret as justice towards his own servants. The night was for them to rest in. 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 created and (whose creation) He completed.” A profession of tawhid in the hand that sealed the official documents of the Ummah.

The Weekly Freeing of a Slave

Among the ten virtues that ʿUthman ﵁ recounted 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 one afterwards. A weekly manumission, carried out over decades, is a habit of generosity that has no equal in the history of the Khilafah. It was a personal wealth spent without public announcement upon a personal virtue that he had reserved for his Lord ﷻ.

In the same enumeration he stated 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 which he had upheld across 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: “Would you leave the religion of your forefathers for an invented religion? By Allah ﷻ, I will not let you go 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 let him go.

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 on ʿUthman ﵁. Suyuti ﵀ still recalls that ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ had said on page one hundred and sixty-four, after consulting the people: “Now then! ʿAli, I have searched among the people and I do not see them reckoning anyone equal to ʿUthman ﵁. So make no way against yourself.” He took the hand of ʿUthman ﵁ and said: “We swear allegiance to you according to the Sunnah of Allah ﷻ, the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, and the Sunnah of the two Khaliefen after him.” ʿAbd ar-Rahman ﵁ swore allegiance to him, and the Muhajirun ﵃ and the Ansar ﵃ swore allegiance to him.

Ibn Masʿud ﵁ said, when allegiance was sworn to ʿUthman ﵁: “We have entrusted the command to the best of those remaining, and we have not been negligent.”

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 Khalifah who inquired for his khutba after the prices and the sick of his community. He was not a monarch standing above them, he was 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 Khaliefen Before Him Did Not Know

ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn Mahdi ﵀ transmitted through Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀: “There were two qualities that ʿUthman ﵁ had which 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 Khaliefen 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 did not raise his hands and did not let arms 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 leading editor and with Suhayl ibn ʿAmr ﵁, ʿAbdullah ibn az-Zubayr ﵁, and ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn al-Harith ﵁ as his collaborators, gathered 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 ﵀ concludes his chapter with the list of the notables who died in the days of ʿUthman’s Khilafah: 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 ﵃. Beyond the Companions ﵃ there were Hutayʾa the poet and Abu Dhuʾayb the poet of the tribe of Hudhayl.

Closing

We have now followed the third Khalifah 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 permitted 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 in al-Baqiʿ, where he was the first to be laid to rest in that part of the burial ground and where his name is named above others to this very day.

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 of 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.