3.  KHILAFA OF UTHMAN RA

 

He ruled for twelve years, with the first half perhaps as  good as Umar’s in objective terms and the second half becoming increasingly sorry.  

 

Uthman RA was as pious as Abu Bakr, Umar and Ali (R anhum) but not really made for leadership.  During his earlier years he benefited from the clockwork regularity of the state machinery and institutions created by great Umar RA but as Umar’s spiritual presence faded over time and Uthman RA succumbed to the clamor of his ambitious Umayyad clan members for official favors a dilemma came to wrench the body of Islamdom with increasingly ominous prospects. As the higher positions of the sprawling empire went more and more to Umayyads the vigor of imperial expansion and efficiency continued,  for Umayyads were a worldly people of genius like a dynastic clan of brilliant entrepreneurs and managers but their lack of enough piety undid a lot of real good they were doing for Islam.  Their treatment of newly conquered peoples were often arrogant and oppressive and their decisions were more based on tyrannical instinct than Islamic law and piety.  As a result the ever decreasing remnants of pious sahaba increasingly became critical of Uthman RA although they tended to tolerate him to the end on account of his past services to Islam and his high standing with the Prophet sws.  But to these later.

 

Uthman’s RA services to Islam during his tenure at the top can be grouped under three headings:  His collection and standardization of the Qur’an which achievement alone can put him among the greatest of Islam;  his successful continuation of the great conquests that Umar RA had began;  and third, his initiation of muslims into legitimate necessities of material civilization like better buildings and urban facilities and  a more prosperous lifestyle without apology.

 

As for the Qur’an he re-appointed the Prophet’s secretary Zaid b. Thabit RA to head a college of scribes to finalize the text of the Qur’an based on the single collected copy kept under lock at Hafsa’s (RA) home.  All and sundry were invited to come forward and apply the college with any bits of the Qur’an they kept or memorized so that the scribes could assess them as to their legitimacy for being part of the final text.  The project generally proceeded peacefully and with a lot of anonymity.  Any doubts and disputes arose due to mainly two reasons.  Firstly, the Qur’an was mainly in the Meccan dialect while other tribes had their more or less varying forms of Arabic and we understand that the Prophet sws allowed some to pronounce some words in the Qur’an in their own dialect so as to avoid misunderstanding by their fellow tribesmen or in rare instances use a synonym to a Qur’anic word in their own dialcet again for the same reason.  We see this vital necessity even in our time between the speakers of the same language.  In both the second world war and the Korean a lot of mistakes and even small disasters were caused by the dialectal differences between the British and American commands simply because a British word meant something more or less different in the  American and vice versa.  Now all NATO correspondence reflects the preferences of the American English and so does the modern computer language.

 

Uthman weeded out and basically banned non-Meccan linguistics simply because the tribalism of Arabs was being replaced by a national uniformity. But some reciters kept to their tribal preferences for a few decades more until they died out thanks to increasing literacy and national unification.

 

The second cause of differences was the status of the revealed verses. It seems that 6, 666 verses were revealed but only  6, 243* survived into the final text the ostensible reason being that the rest were cancelled in the lifetime of the Prophet sws, some with and some without a replacement.  An interesting one is about the penalty for adultery, namely stoning to death.  We find Umar RA complaining that people were remarking “We do not find this in the Qur’an”.  He retorts “We used to read a verse saying ‘married man and married woman, when they commit adultery stone them” (--).  Yet he does not seem keen to put them in the Qur’an which was with his daughter Hafsa RA.  He must have been unsure that he needed to perhaps. After all the editor-in-chief was Zaid b. Thabit RA whose authority was far superior to all else.

 

His second service was the continuation of the spectacular conquests.  His commanders added Causacian lands to Tiflis in the North,  and Afghanistan and Central Asia to the north east.  Anatolia was further penetrated  up to the Black sea.  All these by Umar and Uthman (RAnhuma) were far greater conquests than Alexander’s because they were vaster as well as proving permanent.  History records no greatest military success in and more beneficial results for the defeated after conquest than what Islam achieved, before or since.

 

On sea,  with  incredible speed and success Uthman’s generation built up a navy first time in arab history and terminated the centuries old domination of the Mediterranean by the Byzantine navy in the course capturing and colonizing Cyprus which later added Crete, Malta and  Sicily to the Islamic empire.

 

His third service was adding adequate civic improvements to the lands and monuments of Islam from urban improvements to mosques.  Thanks to the continuing conquests and funds flowing in from provinces far and wide muslims became rich and they had to show something for it. Although some sahaba accused Uthman RA of encouraging or indulging his subjects’ less pious interests,  living in a bit more comfort and plenty is natural as well as legitimate for man, muslim or not, when he prospers.  It is the same in Islam, provided the improvements are  funded by legitimate wealth which in the case of Islam must be purified by zakat.  The Prophet sws gave an indication of this when he said “Allah loves to see the signs of His favors on His servant” meaning, among other things, that a prosperous man must not be dressed as humbly as a beggar but must indicate his prosperity so that his poorer brethren get the message and can approach him for help.  For all his unrivalled humility the Prophet sws himself occasionally dressed handsomely explaining that he was supposed to impress his some foreign visitors in a way they could appreciate so that they show respect in both him and Islam and not put off unnecessarily. Even During his time some ansari (Medinese) sahaba lived in better homes depending on their  prosperity before Islam while many a muhajiri (emigrant) sahaba eventually become very rich and lived rich lives (e.g. Abdurrahman b. Awf RA) as a result of their entrepreneurial skills yet without losing piety.  Uthman RA was always rich and paid to Islam huge financial contributions during the Prophet’s sws rule when the need arose. In one case it is said that he contributed the whole lot of a 700 strong goods camel caravan although this may be an exaggerated number remembering that ancient historians loved certain cliché round (and especially sevens, seventies and forties) as well as exaggerated numbers about everything they reported.  But even 70 was large and generous enough. 

 

The fact is that Uthman RA was kind and generous to a fault and dutifully caring about all the needy and his kinsfolk in particular, sometimes to excess.   So as a result of his sense of allowing people to live openly according to their means without losing piety however he also allowed the community to enjoy better public facilities and accordingly twice enlarged the Mosque of the Prophet sws (Masjid an-nabawi, rebuilding it in stone and other strong and elaborate materials with appropriate decorations and adequate artificial lighting which at the time were hanging oil lamps.  Similar civil improvements began to appear all over the caliphal empire especially in view of the fact that they were mostly administered by Umayyad governors good insuch worldly considerations.  The least benefit such objective civil improvements gave was making the lands of Islam respectably urban and developed and therefore the non-muslims seeing Islam a too austere and pauperising civilization. 

 

This must have been  also Allah’s approval because He Almighty speaks of in positively approving terms of Solomon’s (AS) kingly glories which helped to persuade his visitor Bilqis the Queen of Sheba to embrace Islam.  Which should make us realize that Islam is not a religion of fixed and sacrosanct forms but variable tactics for the same end:  to promote Allah’s Cause.  In this context I remind again the Prophet’s sws dressing more ‘royally’ in order to impress some foreign visitors. So Uthman RA was basically right although some doings of some of his governors could be found to err this or that much in that direction.  Which again may mean that modern muslims must also be more careful and flexible in the forms of things they display so as not to put off if not antagonize non-muslims around them, especially when the latter is a majority as well as the host society and NOT think that they are bound to display the very same forms they think is invariably proper to and unconditionally required of them-  all without moving into haram of course except in life-threatening situations.

 

But this continuing success story was all the time being marred by jealousies aroused among ambitious people when things get heady and rewards come fast and thick.  The inproportionately high numbers Umayyads among of Uthman’s often not pious enough governors and other high office holders was causing dismay and resentment even among the more pious sahaba who began to increasingly criticize him in good faith but found him not responsive enough. True he many times removed and banished a lot of them but equally reinstated some once they appealed to their kindly ‘uncle’.  Because not all muslims were as forbearing as the great sahaba like Ali RA these less pious and less respectful souls began to coalesce into militant opposition parties basing themselves especially in and around the new military cantonments like Basra in Iran and Fustat in Egypt.  Eventually these converged on Medina and after a long siege penetrated Uthman’s quarters and martyred him. All along Uthman RA rejected appeals from his old companions like Ali RA to allow them fight the insurgents and went to his martyrdom apparently with pre-cognition and saintly resignation.  At one stage Ali RA put his two sons Hasan and Hussein (R anhuma) to wait at Uthman’s door with sword in hand which sight kept the not altogether too godless rebels in check.  They simply were blockhead fanatics formally  pious and charitable to a fault at one moment and most bloody eyed and wanton the next, which all schizoid idealists are.  

Onother factor which sealed Uthman’s  RA fate was the fact that while outlying provinces of Islam had  become the home of its vast regular armies Medina had remained the same part-time mujahid’s town where military service was voluntary as well as part time as back in the Prophet’s times.  So the likes of Ali RA had little in the way of organized and equipped military cadres to rely on. Uthman RA had lost a lot of his support in sahaba’s Medina and it would be foolhardy on the part of Ali RA and any who would care to attend his call to take on the throngs of full-time and fully-equipped armies that were in occupation of all streets in Medina.  He and all else remained indoors out of inability to do anything to persuade or beat off the extremely angry and assertive revolutionaries.  All of which helped one of the nephews of Uthman RA, namely the most brilliant and ambitious Muawia RA the long-standing governor of the richest province of the empire. 

 

Once the murderous desire of the rebels were satisfied they cooled down a bit and began to look for a replacement. Rebel or not muslims in Medina could see nobody else than Ali RA to inherit the mantle;  all reasonably eligible great sahaba had died out and only the younger Ali was still alive.  Accordingly all resorted to him to accept the khilafa but for the first time in his life Ali RA was cold and really unwilling.  He felt that the best of Islam as far as spiritual lights were concerned was over and only trouble and heartbreak remained for a pious ruler.  The times were now more promising for the likes of Muawia who could match the lack of scruples and need for both trickery and terror to impose a rule and so the events proved.  Ali was almost dragged into the khilafa and the troubles he feared showed  up at the same instant.   The two greatest surviving sahaba Talha and Zubair and also Aisha (R anhum) opposed his election and defied Ali’s authority.  However the these two men were forced to make obeisance to the new khalif by khalif’s helpers for they could not be allowed to split Islam.

 

UTHMAN’S CHARACTER AND MERITS

 

He was one of the earliest muslims brought on by Abu Bakr RA as many others.  He was extremely beautiful and handsome, shy, humble and reserved, very pious and very generously charitable. His sexual modesty was almost angelic.  He could not expose any part of his body except the feet and hands so that he caused the Prophet sws remark “Even angels are ashamed of Uthman”. With so many angelic qualities everybody could not help but love Uthman RA.  He belonged to the most prosperous and proudest clan of Quraish the Umayyad who were related to the Prophet’s more honoured clan the Hashimite by a fusion a few generations up.  None other from the Umayyad clan were among the converts except Uthman RA and Abu Sufyan’s daughter Umm Habiba RA both of whom had also emigrated to Ethiopia by the prophet’s advice in order to escape the severe persecution in Mecca. Most of the clan embraced Islam only after Islam’s fortunes became clear,  around the conquest of Mecca. 

 

The chief of the clan after the battle of Badr was Abu Sufyan b. Harb who with his adolescent sons Muawia and Yazid had embraced Islam at the conquest of Mecca and moved to Medina to be nearer the Prophet sws whom they now genuinely admired.  Abu Sufyan’s daughter Umm Habiba RA had become Prophet’s wife on her return from her refuge in Ethiopia a few years after the Hijra and she was so sincere in her Islam that she was hostile to both his father and brothers until they also submitted to it. 

Uthman RA was honoured by the Prophet sws with marrying his two daughters one after another when the first Zainab died and Ummu Kulthum was also given to him.  From both wives he produced grandchildren for the Prophet sws but none survived to produce theirs.  Because he was given two daughters by the Prophet sws Uthman was called ‘Dhun- nurain’,  one with two lights.

 

All his life he he unstintingly spend his wealth in the way of Allah for which the Prophet sws always praised and thanked him in superlative terms.

His losing favor with many sahaba towards the end of his khilafa was caused by his excessive kindness and pious prejudice for his clan which he unfortunately couldn’t help;  in other words he always meant well but his judgment erred too much on the kindness side. He paid the terrible price for his too much kindness with resignation and equanimity however.  All the same Allah knows best and for him we have only boundless love and respect as one of the closest and dearest disciples of our Prophet sws and  we cannot even begin to guess what secrets were kept between him and Allah the Most Sublime.  RadiAllahu anhu.  

           

4.  KHILAFA OF ALI (RA)

 

TROUBLED BACKGROUND AND WOEFUL BEGINNING

 

Tragically Ali RA found himself faced with an unmanageable mess of social and political turbulence.  On the one hand were the grieving and terrorized  Umayyad notables who fled Medina for their lives.  Their mortal enemies, the revolutionary hordes which had converged on Medina from the outlying military provinces of the empire were in anarchic and tumultuous control,   terrorizing and dictating to all and sundry.  But these, like all other ancient revolutionaries with no popular pedigree knew that they needed a puppet ruler to legitimise their rule and do their bidding as well.  Ali RA, given his impeccable pedigree which became even more compelling after the demise of so many great sahaba to date was the obvious choice.  Feeling the cynical mood and exploitative potential of the armed rebels Ali for the first time in his life was truly reluctant to rule.  But other sahaba were also helplessly of the same opinion: Ali and only Ali could and should take the risk!  So pressed and prodded on from two sides he resigned to the inevitable and accepted the bay’ah (pledges of allegiance) from the generality of muslims in Medina. 

 

Still, some old peers were reluctant to recognize his ascension to the Khilafa.  Most prominent among them were Talha and Zubair (RAA) and insult was added to injury when Aisha RA also declared her opposition-  all three, in addition to many more, accusing him of failing to help and rescue Uthman RA.  Ali RA in vain protested his innocence and good faith, variously explaining that the capital was effectively occupied by a horde of hotheads armed to the teeth while he and everybody else in Medina were caught unprepared and disorganized.  Unlike the outlying provinces Medina had no standing army. He had repeatedly visited Uthman RA and advised him on ways of saving the situation, including the removal of some of his more notorious Umayyad governors and other officials which Uthman had turned down, expecting all sahaba to obey him since they had pledged him allegiance once.  So Uthman RA had refused to help himself.  In desperation Ali RA had ordered his two illustrious sons Hasan and Hussein RAA to stand guard at Uthman’s gates which the two young lions did.   The rebels did not dare to cross the Prophet’s sws grandsons.  Instead they by-passed them with the help of Muhammad ibn. Abu Bakr who showed them how through secret alleys and from over roof tops to reach Uthman’s private quarters where he had taken refuge with his wife Naila.  The rebels duly descended on him from a hole they made on the roof and slaughtered him mercilessly.  So Ali HAD failed to save Uthman (RA) but in fact under the circumstances he couldn’t anyhow. 

 

But that was not all the woes of Ali RA.  They now asked him to identify, arrest and punish the culprits.  But how could the very rebels who held all the power and had wholely declared for Ali RA could be asked to help punish their own? Ali RA distinctly felt that the rebels had no particular love for him but theirs was a marriage of convenience. He had either to relinquish the only basically formal but perhaps gradually improvable rulership or altogether withdraw and let the rebels set up their own government and terrorize the people with their crude, rude, fanatical, arbitrary and murderous acts.  Already a lot of beatings and robberies were under way and some Umayyads had already been captured and disposed of.  But sahaba insisted that he persists because they felt that only Ali RA had the stature and eloquence to impress the rebels and hopefully harness their raw energy to improve and save the situation.  But the schism created by the likes of Talha and Zubair (each had their following of course) had to be healed first.  As a woman Aisha could be ignored, because women had not been asked to make bay’ah to khalifas before and as a ‘mother of believers’ she was untouchable.  Accordingly Talha and Zubair only had to be dealt with and the two were a bit manhandled to the presence of the new khalifa and had to pretended allegiance. 

 

THE FIRST VIOLENT SCISM- THE BATTLE OF THE CAMEL

 

But soon Talha and Zubair departed for Mecca where they  as well as the Umayyads had their tribal strongholds and soon Aisha herself reported there. The trio then raised an army of opposition to what they called ‘usurping Ali, the wronger of Uthman’-  all of which were music to the ears of Muawia the ambitious and brilliant Ummayyad governor of the most prosperous province of Syria.  He had appointed himself as the champion of Uthman’s cause and had declined to submit to Ali without saying he would never do it.  He asked for Uthman’s killers to be tried and executed before he could consider his next move. Now he was seeing his rivals out to destroy each other and allow him ascend the khilafa without moving a finger. So he bid his time awaiting the outcome which could only help him whichever way it went. 

 

The new rebel army virtually under Aisha and based at Mecca soon swelled up enormously with contributions from elsewhere and Ali was saved by an offer from Kufans in Iraq who sent news to him that they were prepared to join his side provided he moved his capital to Kufa.  Ali felt he had to accept the offer or face defeat and demise.  Accordingly he took to his horse to move out of Medina with his followers to join the Kufan faction.  Both his son Hasan and cousin Ibn Abbas tried in vain to dissuade him but Ali persisted.   This was not the first time he was opposed by his nearest kinsfolk.  Previously he had advised Ibn Abbas that he had appointed him as the new governor of Syria to replace Muawia and given him an edict to that effect.  Ibn Abbas had refused saying “O Ali, the first and only thing Muawia will do is to arrest and imprison me, given his splendid power in Damascus”.  On his departure for Kufa the two (Hasan and Ibn Abbas) ominously told him “If you abandon Medina you will never be able to come back”.  All the same Ali went his way perhaps feeling that whatever he did he was bound for great troubles and tribulations and better to take the obviously more reasonable option-  effective power to fight the hapless opposition. 

 

Eventually the two armies,  Ali’s and Aisha’s met and fought on Iraqi ground, Aisha was running the battle from her howda on a camel, hence the name the Battle of the Camel.  Given his superior generalship Ali won, both Talha and Zubair fell to common soldiery who hardly knew who the two were or cared.  On learning their fall Ali wept bitterly, regretted such a tragic end of his erstwhile close friends and hurried to save Aisha who was facing the same ignominy in the hands of other rustics who had hamstrung her camel and brought her howda toppling down. At the nick of time Ali arrived and saved her and respectfully and magnanimously comforting her as he would a mother loaded her on another camel and sent her under respectful escort to her home in Medina.  She then constantly mourned her wrong against Ali until the day she died, withdrawing from public life and living a reclusive life of worship and exemplary charity.

 

It is said that her opposition to Ali was motivated by her resentment against him in that when the notorious episode of ‘ifk’ (sexual slander against Aisha) was circulating Ali had advised the Prophet to divorce her instead of trying to discredit the impious suspicions.  All of which shows sahaba or not, saint or sinner all of us are fallible and at times even can make mistakes. Which again means that we better understand and forgive, especially when the person under fire has so much to be proud of.

 

RELATIONS WITH THE ELUSIVE MUAWIA

 

Established in Kufa and still holding Mecca and Medina Ali’s main problem was the untractable Muawia.  The two exchanged many letters, Ali trying to reason with Muawia to understand that he Ali was genuinely unable to save Uthman and also to avenge his blood because he himself, even when raised to rule, was not securely established but was more or less at the mercy of fickle and shallow force that the rebels were.  . In  other words the political realities that he found himself in was yet not favourable for a crackdown (he later identified and punished them).  All the same Muawia had to submit to the elected khalifa as a pious muslim that he should be Ali insisted. But Muawia kept Ali guessing by writing back non-committal and devious answers, never daring to cross Ali too much or make him despair of his (Muawia’s) submission.  He was obviously bidding his time while clandestinely intriguing to bolster his own and subvert Ali’s power base.  Incidentally, to understand the appalling to us behavior of sahaba like Talha and Zubair and to a lesser extent of Muawia we must realize that they did not hold Ali in the great awe we are taught to hold him but as his cousins and intimates from childhood saw him as their occasionally criticisable peer which lower esteem was made worse by ages old rivalries and jealousies plaguing all inter-clan and tribal relations. 

 

Muawia’s clan the Umayyads being especially steeped in jealous rivalry with Muhammad’s sws Hashimite it would be too optimistic to expect Abu Sufyan and his son Muawia, both late and reluctant comers to Islam to be entirely purified of their ossified clan prejudices. Being additionally ambitious Muawia, to provoke and keep burning the trumped up popular anger against Ali’s failures in protecting and then avenging Uthman’s life kept on display on the pulpit of the Damascus mosque the bloody shirt of Uthman and the fingers of wife Naila which were cut off when she was trying to keep the murderers’ swords away, displaying all the tricks of demagogic politics.  He hired a regular band of mourners and criers surrounding the these bloody relics as well as poets eulogizing Uthman and criticizing Ali all over Muawia’s domains-  for poets and orators in those times did what media is doing today:  forming public opinion. He also tried and often succeeded in buying off Ali’s actual or potential supporters thereby depleting his ranks of talent.  Among other star transfers he got from Ali was his most brilliant member of staff namely Ziyad b. Abihi, a master politician and general whom Muawia enticed by much higher pay and promise of including (legitimising) Ziyad’s descent via adultery from their common father Abu Sufyan. For it was genera knowledge that Abu Sufyan had a son from a prostitute before the advent of Islam, who was this genius Ziyad. His other even greater star recruit was no other than the tremendous genius Amr b. Ad, another late joiner (but still earlier than Muyawia) to Islam- after the Hudaibia truce.  Amr initially hesitated about with whom to cast his lot. 

 

He narrates  “I considered both Ali and Muawia as my future colleagues in state career.  I hesitated for a long time.  Eventually I decided as follows:  Ali is too great a person to have need of the likes of me-  all great surviving sahaba are on his side whom he must employ in preference to me.  Muawia is the better bet, he needs all the quality manpower against Ali and it is where I come in”.  Having been in correspondence with both parties from his headquarters in Egypt as its governor Amr had kept both parties guessing.  The side he joined would certainly shift the balance of power in its way in a big way, Egypt being a rich and populous land.  In the end Muawia won because unlike Ali he could not only give pious reasons for the join-up but also lots of lucrative promises. Amr, a born politician, then felt sure that Muawia, also being his next door in the equally prosperous and populous Syria made a better partner than distant and impoverished Ali who also lacked Muawiya’s knack for controlling his followers.  Ali was too accessible, too democratic and too reckless with his security while Muawia was guarded,  more despotic though not less charming thanks to his corrupting generosity and flattery and extremely security conscious. He ran a vast network of spies and informers and deployed police forces to impose his will all over his dominions- much like a Roman king.  In fact his appointer Umar, seeing how royally he conducted himself but also noting his success as a ruler had once remarked “This man is the Caesar of the Arabs”.  

 

So long Umar was alive Muawia had to behave himself for Umar couldn’t be fooled with by anybody.  He is known to have beaten Muawia, Amr and many other wordlier figures under his rule until they begged for mercy when he had caught them in acts he disapproved.  Had Aisha’s earlier militant opposition not diverted and blocked Ali he would have certainly and successfully dealt with Muawia who yet was not a match for Ali in the quality of his following (almost all of the surviving saintly greats of sahaba like Ammar, Huzaifa and Selman was with Ali) or generalship. But for His Wise Divine Good Reasons Allah willed otherwise.