A Reassessment of the Image of Sayyidna Uthman
The 3rd Khalifah al-Rashid
A Re-Assessment of the Image of image Sayyidna Utliman
Dr. Zakariyau Oseni
The Caliphate of
Uthman Ibn Affan (573656 C.E.) is said to be
controversial. As the third
Orthodox Caliph, he
inherited a fast expanding
Islamic empire which he
could not fully cope with,
owing to his old age,
softness, and the
problems created for him
by some ambitious
younger companions
including his fellow
Umayyads. Many views
have been expressed on
the "failure" of this Caliph
both by old Arab writers
and some modern authors
in the East and the West.
In this brief study,
an attempt is made at reexamining the major
factors which influenced
Uthman's life as Caliph,
especially the
opportunistic Marwan, his
kinsman and secretary. It
is doubtful whether
Uthman (Aal-lah's mercy
and blessings be on him)
or anybody else in similar
circumstances could have
performed better.
Secondly, some of the
Companions seemed to
have over-reacted to the
re-emergence of the
Umayyads who were submerged by the Noble
Prophet Muhammad
(PEACE BE ON HIM )
and his close disciples in
the early years of Islam.
But then, in making
Uthman the sacrificial
Iamb, the mutinous
soldiers who killed him
could not perceive that the
Umayyads would still
take over control in no
time. Eventually, the
Ummah paid dearly for it.
Nevertheless, in spite of
the problems which
confronted the Caliph, his
greatest achievement was
the standardisation of the
Our'an, a no mean feat of
inestimable value.
On the death of
Muhammad (PEACE BE
ON HIM ) in 632 C.E.,
Islam was firmly
established in Arabia.
Neighboring territories
like Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq,
Persia and Syria already
felt in varying degrees the
revolution in Arabia.
Sequel to the death of the
Prophet, his immediate
Companions put heads
together to elect a new
leader, a Khalifah
(successor) to execute the
ordinance of God as
revealed to the Prophet
from Allah. The first four
successors ot the Prophet
are known as the Rightly
Guided (Pious) Caliphs
(al-Khulafa' u 'rashi-dun).
They are also called the
Orthodox Caliphs. The
1
word "Orthodox" here
denotes 'sound, straight,
up-right, or genuine in
opinion', which is the
original meaning of the
word.' The Caliphs are
Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman
and Ali, They were
regarded as 'rightly
guided' because they
followed the examples of
the Prophet in their reigns
and were embodiments of
the ideals of Islam
notwithstanding some
minor lapses from which
mortals cannot totally
escape.
Of the Pious
Caliphs, the first was
elected, the second was
appointed by the first
before his death; the third
was elected by the Sfiuru
(an electoral college),
while the fourth was
appointed by mutinous
soldiers from Iraq and
Egypt after their
assassination of the third
Caliph. This study is
centred on Uthman ibn
Affan, a man who was
elected by an electoral
college whose members
were all eligible
candidates.
Umar died in 644
as a result of the wounds
he received from Abu
Lu'ah's poisonous dagger
in the morning as he was
about to lead the
A Reassessment of the Image of Sayyidna Uthman
obligatory Dawn prayers
(Salat al-Subh). The
assassin was a Persian
Christian slave in
Madinah.2 Before his
death a few hours later,
the Caliph appointed an
electoral college (alShura) made up of six
prominent Companions to
elect a new Caliph from
among themselves. The
six men were Uthman bin
Attan, Ali bin Abi TUib,
al-Zubayr bin al-Awwam,
Abd al-Rahman bin Awf,
Talha bin Ubaydillah, and
Sad bin Waqqas.3 The
Shura met and finally
elected Uthman, the
oldest of them as the new
Caliph, his keenest rival
being Ali.
Abu Bakr was
engaged in a war with
renegades (al-Murtaddun)
most of his reign (632-4).
The war metamorphosed
into the war of conquests
as a result of many
clashes with territories
close to Arabia. During
the reigns of Abu Bakr
and Umar., Syria, Iraq,
parts of Persia and Egypt
were conquered by the
Muslims. The conquest
showed that Arabian
power, hitherto bottled up
in the Peninsula, had burst
and one country after
another fell before the
gallant men who were
fired by zeal and power of
faith.4
In spite of the
sudden wealth of the new
empire, Umar maintained
a low profile throughout
his reign. On this, there
are countless anecdotes/
In any human society, one
would hardly expect that
type of self-restraint and
sacrifice to prevail for
ever. War lords became
exposed to the glittering
luxuries of life in the
conquered territories.
Rural ruggedness and
Arabian fortitude could
not he maintained strictly
for too long. So the stage
was set for problems.
Ulhman's rise to
power and the problems
which confronted him
should be seen in this
light. Human beings are
mortals and they
sometimes fall short of
expectation no matter
their level of attainment.
The only exception is that
special group called Anbiya' (Prophets) in the
Islamic context.
The observations
in this paper are an
attempt to re-interpret the
major facts about the third
Caliph's life. Perhaps, this
will help scholars of
Islamic history to see in
better light the man and
Caliph called Uthman
who has not been properly
appreciated by most
historians — both old and
modern.
Uthman ibn Affan
ibn Abi'l-As ibn
Umjjrtayyah was born
about the year 573 C.H. in
Makkah.'' His family
produced the leading
aristocrats who controlled
the Makkah economy and
politics at the time the
Prophet Muhammad grew
2
into manhood. Foreseeing
the political challenge
which the Prophet posed
to them, the Umayyad
family under the
leadership of Abi Sufyan
ibn Harb opposed the
Prophet until the
consequent of Makkah in
January 630 C. E. Uthman
was the most prominent
Umayyad win) embraced
Islam during its formative
years in Makkah. He-was
a devoted follower of the
Prophet. Rich and
generous, he played a
vital role together with
Abu Bakr in funding
many early projects in the
Muslim Community.
He married
Ruqayyah, the daughter of
the Prophet and both
husband and wife lived
happily and participated
in the first migration to
Ethiopia in 615 which
was occasioned by the
persecution of the
Muslims by the powerful
idolators of Makkah.7
When Ruqayyah died in
624, the Prophet gave
Uthman Ruqayyah's
younger sister, named
Umm Kulthum in marriage. He was therefore
surnamed Dhu 'n-Nurayn
(one who possesses two
lights).8
When Uthman
became Caliph in 644, he
was already over seventy
years old, far older than
the age at which the
Prophet and the first two
Calips passed away. The
Arab conquest in North
Africa continued
A Reassessment of the Image of Sayyidna Uthman
unabated. In the East,
Muslim forces were
gradually conquering the
lands of Persia.
Meanwhile Muawiyah,
the governor of Syria, had
built a navy with the
collaboration of experienced seafaring
Syrians lo counter the
menace posed by the
By'zantine sea-power
whose base in Cyprus was
too close to the Syrian
coast for comfort.
While the empire
continued to expand by
leaps and bounds, some
internal problems developed. The Caliph's
characteristic softness
which had been
aggravated by old age,
made his kinsmen, the
Urnayyads, want to lake
advantage of the situation.
His secretary was his wily
and unscrupulous cousin,
Marwan ibn al-Hakam.
Muawiyah had been the
governor of Syria for
more than one decade,
Abdullah ibn Abi Sarh,
the Caliph's notorious
foster-brother1* was made
governor ot Egypt in
derogation of Amr ibn alAs who conquered the
territory and who was
then made to "hold the
cow by its two horns
while another milks it.10
In Iraq there were
complaints against the
governor of kufah, Walid
ibn Uqbah, who was allegedly found drunk in the
mosque.11
As a result of the
undisguised prominence
of Banu Umayyah in
Uthman's administration,
there was discontent all
over the provinces.
Allegations of nepotism,
tribalism,
misappropriation of
public funds and
intolerable ir-religiosity
were levelled against the
Culiph and his Umayyad
kinsmen.12 It was evident
that the Umayyads had reasserted their leadership
of the Quraysh (and then,
of all Arabs and the conquered peoples) so soon
after the consolidation of
Islam, a faith which their
clan opposed vehemently
for a long time.
Right from the
beginning of
Muhammad's Prophetic
mission, people knew that
Uthman was a rich man.
When he was saddled
with the Caliphate, he did
not take any allowance for
his duties.13 As a result of
extensive conquests,
wealth poured into
Madinah, the Capital of
the Islamic state at the
time. The Caliph spent it
lavishly in building or
renovating mosques,
roads, guest houses,
bridges and many other
public utilities in the
empire. The prophet's
modest mosque in
Madinah was expanded.14
The greatest
achievement of Uthman
in the realm of Islam was
the redaction and
duplication of the Qur'an
which he carried out. An
official named Hudayfah
3
ibn Yaman (d. 36 A.H.)
toured the conquered
provinces and discovered
that there were some
dialectal differences in the
manner the Muslims in
those area were reading
the Qu'ran. He also
discovered that many
non-Arab Muslims made
serious mistakes in
reading the Qur'an. These
two problems gave him
much anxiety and when
he returned to Madinah he
gave a report of his
findings to the Caliph.
Consequently, the Caliph
Uthman set up a board
under the chairmanship of
Zayd ibn Thabit to redact
and make many copies of
the Qur'an available to the
people. That was about
the year 650.i5 The one
previously compiled
during the reign of Abu
Bakr which was now
under the custody of
Hafsah (Umar's daughter
and the Prophet's widow)
was used and further
verified with what people
learnt by heart, in the end,
a number of copies of the
standard Qur'an (known
from then on as the
Uthman Edition) were
sent to places like
Makkah, Fustat (Old
Cairo), Kufah, Basrah,
Damascus, etc.16
All the defective
private copies which had
dialectal colorations
different from the original
Quraysh dialect in which
the Qur'an was revealed,
were burnt or destroyed
A Reassessment of the Image of Sayyidna Uthman
with hot water.17 it should
be remarked at this
juncture that Arabic
writing was at that time
still primitive and the
diacritical points we have
today were supplied later
by al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf
through scholars like
Yahya bin Yamur and
Nasr bin Asim.18 By
Uthmaifs leal which
safeguarded the
uniformity, pur ity and
oneness of the Qur'anic
text as a scripture for all
times, Muslims of all ages
and climes will always
remember the Caliph.
This is in spite of the
gloomy pictures which
many partisan and
prejudiced writers painted
about him.
A number of
historical sources quote
with relish that Uthman,
ruled well in the first six
years and then misruled in
the remaining six years.
To me, this is too
simplistic and neat to be
wholly true as other
factors indicate.
One important
allegation against Uthman
was that he did not
consult the leading
Companions before taking
important decisions.20
Rather, he relied almost
solely on Marwan and
other kinsmen of his.
Perhaps, age was telling
on the Calliph, and
instead of bringing virile
younger Companions
such as AH, Abdullah ibn
Umar, Tulhah and alZubayr into the
administration, he
allowed Marwan certain
powers to run the
administration.21
Abu Dharr alGhifuri, a very pious
Companion was exiled to
the oasis of Rabadah
when the former began to
criticise Muawiyah's
policies in Syria
vigorously. Muawiyah
sent Abu Dharr to Madina
and complained that the
pious man was
formenting trouble in
Syria. The Caliph's
response was to banish
Abu Dharr. However,
rightly or wrongly, the act
angered many Muslim
leaders.22
Similarly, the
propaganda of one
Abdullah ibn Saba', a Jew
turned Muslim from
Yemen helped to fuel
discontent against
Uthman, his immodest
secretary, Marwan, and
some other dignitaries.
Abdullan was a staunch
loyalist of Ali ibn Abi
Talib. He addressed
people in Kufa, Basrah
and Syria. He then went
to Egypt, a more
congenial atmosphere to
sow the seed of discord.23
He stressed the view that
the ideal man to succeed
the Prophet was Ali and
branded the first three
Caliphs as usurpers. As
two of the first three were
already dead, Uthman
became the sole target.
Ali reprimanded
Ibn Saba on several
occasions, especially
4
when he went further to
put Messianic garbs on
Ali and claimed that he
(Ali) would come after his
death and rule the world
justly. Uthman seemed to
have overlooked the
propaganda of Ibn Saba
and did not check him.
Eventually there
was a serious reactionAbout five hundred
mutinous soldiers came
from Egypt and Iraq to
Madinah with a view to
lodging complaints
against their governors.
The Caliph promised to
look into their grievances
and advised them to go
buck to their respective
stations. After a few days,
they came back to
Madinah with a letter they
claimed to have intercepted from a courier
purported to have been
written by the Caliph
himself to Abdullah ibn
Abi Sarh, instructing him
to put the complainants to
death. The men were
furious and demanded an
explanation. AN and his
sons, Hasan and Husayn
intervened but the rebels
were adamant.24 Law and
order were fast breaking
down. After a siege
lasting some days, the
rebels pounced on the
octogenarian and slew
him in cold blood as he
was reading the Qur'an.
Hit; wife, Na'ilah, who
tried to defend him, had
her fingers severed off her
hand by the soldiers. The
leader of the gang was
Abu Bakr's son named
A Reassessment of the Image of Sayyidna Uthman
Muhammad, This incident
took place in 656 when
the Caliph was about
eighty-three years of
age.25
If the assassination
of Uthman was seen as an
apt reaction to the
ascendancy of the
Umayyad house, the
upholders of such a view
were mistaken as subsequent events proved.
The whole episode raised
a number of questions.
Does the fact that the
house of Banu Umayyad
opposed the Prophet
Muhammd for about two
decades before its
members finally
submitted to Islam
exclude them from
holding political offices?
Were all the Companions
not there when Abu
Sufyan, the former
opponent of Islam, fought
at Hunayn in 630 shortly
alter his conversion to
Islam and lost an eye in
the battle? Where were
the anti-Umayyad
elements when the
Prophet himself appointed
Muawiyah as one of his
secretaries who recorded
the Qur'anic revelation,
live?26 Did the Prophet
himself not marry Abu
Sufyan's daughter,
Ramlah (Umm
Habibah)?27 All that the
above questions point to
is the fact that the Prophet
(PEACE BE ON HIM )
operated at a higher level
than that of many of his
contemporaries, lie
forgave the key leaders of
Banu Umayyah and
forgot their past records
of atrocities against Islam.
He was happy at the
victory of Islam and the
dramatic change in the attitude of most Banu
Umayyah.
Nevertheless, it
seems some Companions
retained a cold and
suspicious attitude
towards them, a tendency
that does not really agree
with the spirit of Islam.28
It is interesting to note
that the Islamic spirit of
forgiveness, fraternity and
fellowship was cultivated
by many Companions too,
including the first two
Caliphs. For instance,
Umar appointed Yazid,
son of Abu Sufyan, as
governor of Syria after
Abu Ubayadah ibn
Jarrah's death. On Yazid's
death in 639, his brother,
Muawiyuh, was appointed
to succeed him by the
same Umar.29 It might be
argued, however, I hat
Umar did not do dial to
make die governorship of
Syria an Umayyad preserve. Rather merit was
his principal
consideration.
The systematic
rise of the Umayyads
during the Orthodox
Caliphate could not be
halted by the murder of an
aged Caliph. Though it
was obvious that
Umayyad personalities
were holding key posts
during the reign of
uthman and some of tlicm
perpetrated deeds that
5
were a discredit to the
Caliphate, there seems to
be one major factor which
motivated the assassination of Uthman, and
this can be explained as
follows.
There were many
eligible candidates for the
Caliphate after Umar's
death. For whatever
reasons, the Shura
(electoral college) chose
the soft, aged Uthman
who was probably expected to die within a
short time. As it turned
out, Uthman ruled for a
decade and became very
old and would not die.
With an increase in
internal problems occasioned by conquests,
ambition to hold high oft
ices and acquire material
wealth, and the opportunistic tendencies of
some Umayyad leaders,
the Caliph had to be
sacrificed. Worse still,
Uthman's innate softness,
as well as indecision in a
situation that demanded
youthful energy, firm
control, and
determination, did not
help matters.
The above
explains why many of the
Companions, even in
Madinah, did not see
anything good in
whatever the Caliph did
alter the first six years of
his Caliphate. His edition
of and standardization of
the Qui 'an by which there
exists today one uniform
copy of the scripture was
taken by some of his
A Reassessment of the Image of Sayyidna Uthman
detractors as a fault’s In
fact, Ali ibn Abi Talib had
to intervene to explain
with commendation this
great feat31
The same blind
.ambition made many
companions turn against
Ali at a time he needed
peace and harmony to
weld the Ummuh together.
If Uthman were 'the
problem' why was Ali
troubled so much'.'32
Uthman died in 656 but
the Umayyad house did
not go down as the events
in the following years
showed. The schism and
bad blood which the
unprecedented act of
regicide brought about
lingered on for many decades.33 The manner in
which al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf
later dealt with the
opponents of the
Umayyads is regarded as
more than a fair measure
of revenge against the
assassination of Uthman
ibn Affan.34
In sum, Uihman
was a veritable victim of
circumstances; his
problems included his
lineage, softness and old
age which his kinsmen
capitalised on to infuriate
a number of leading Companions and soldiers, as
well as the enormous
wealth which was realized
from the conquered
territories and for which
many
people strove. Ironically,
in spite of the problems
which the longest
reigning Orthodox Caliph
faced, and for which
many historians attacked
him, he goes down in history as the most
remembered Caliph in the
Muslim world. This
constant remembrance is
the result of the
standardization of the
Qur'anic text he curried
out. Every copy of the
original Arabic Qur'an
one opens today, be it in
Maiduguri in Nigeria,
Toronto in Canada,
Melbourne in Australia,
Tehran in Iran, or Lahore
in Pakistan, is bound to be
al-Mushaf al-Uthmuni.
What factor of
immortality.
Notes and References
1.
2.
3.
A.M. Macdonald
(ed.) Chambers'
Twentieth Century
Dictionary.
Revised Ed.
(Edinburgh.
W.'and R.
Chambers I.id-,
I9KI reprint), p.
M3I.
P.M. Holt. A.K S
Lamblon and B.
Lewis (eds), The
Cambridge
History of Islam, I.
(London
Cambridge
University Press.
1970), p. 67.
M.O.A. Abdul,
The Classical
Caliphate: Islamic
IriMttuiions.
(Lagos, Islamic
Publications
6
4.
5.
6.
7.
Bureau, 1973). p.
54.
See P.K.. Hilti,
History of the
Arabs, 10th Ed.
(London,
Macmillan.
1970), p. 142.
Ikiil., p. 176,
A Rahim, Islamic
History. (Lagos.
I.P.M. 19M), p.
85.
See Muliaininad
Rida. Muhammad
Rasul Allah. 4th
Ed. (Cairo,Dar
Ihya' al-Kitab alArahiyyah. 1961)
pp. 97-9K. See
also Z.I. Oseni.
"Muhammad the
Prophet's
Diplomatic
Contact with
Africa",Religion
Peace and Unity
in Nigeria, ed.
S,B. Mala &
Oseni, (Ibadan,
Nigeiian
Association to. the
Study of Religions, 1984. pp.
79-96.
8. T.P. Hughes,
Dictionary of
Islam
(L.ahore.The
Hook House,
I964). p. h55.
9. This fellow was
taken into
confidence by the
Noble Prophet.
A Reassessment of the Image of Sayyidna Uthman
7