Episode 10: Othman in the public eye

The quasi-political system devised by the Arabs to manage the community’s affairs was hastily put together and it mixed tribal norms and islamic ethics haphazardly. The pitfalls of the caliphate were numerous, and Omar’s many changes during his reign were aimed at addressing some of them. Othman’s reign was not marked with any such prophylactic foresight; his rule instead strained the authority of the caliph, one of the many undefined pitfalls of the caliphate as a political system. The tension between the tribal and islamic cultural forces acting on the Arabs begins to flare, and once invisible cracks within the Umma slide into view.

Glossary

• Othman bin Affan: the third caliph’s sheen begins to wear off in this episode, though you may have noticed that whatever opposition there was to the man at this point was still relatively small-scale. Talking about controversial figures like Othman is complicated massively by all the cacophony from the many narrations about them; it’s difficult to get to a point where it feels like every story has gotten its fair share of attention, and its even harder to decide which ones to discard and why. There are many wondrous and terrible stories about Othman which I found to have no place in a balanced appraisal of his reign. A last important thing to keep in mind is that there is a floor to how bad the sources say things got under Othman: nobody charges him with killing or enslaving any muslims; even his fiercest critics stop at “he had so-and-so beaten up.”
• Al Hakam and his sons: as a man of some prominence within Quraysh, Othman’s uncle Al Hakam ibn abi al ‘As ibn Umayya opposed Islam from day one. The bit about him being pardoned by the prophet and then exiled again may not be true, it is likely that later generations trying to rehabilitate his image said the prophet had indeed pardoned him, but that story mixed in with the rest of the negative commentary after that effort was no longer sustained. In any case, he is nowhere near as important as his sons will be going forward, especially the ambitious, capable, and much-faulted Marwan.
• Walid bin Uqba: the wine-loving governor of Kufa whom the caliph had to remove. Othman’s half-brother from his mom’s side had some amazing poetry skills, and he used them to boast about his clan and roast all the others. As the Umayyad clan poet, he still meant something special to his clan and his words could have an influence upon them. He was one of the many Meccans pardoned by the Mohammad upon his victorious return to the city, going on to become a tax collector after joining Islam. The people were dismayed at his becoming governor probably more due to his father than his mother: Walid’s father was not just a staunch opponent of Islam like Hakam, but he used to publicly abuse the prophet any chance he got. It doesn’t stop at rude interruptions or spits in the face, there’s even a Carrie-like narration where he waits for the prophet’s prostration during prayer before dumping blood, guts, and feces on him, so much that he couldn’t raise himself until his family came to remove it. We rushed through the prophet’s life, but he had to endure some terrible suffering from Quraysh, much of it life-threatening. In this episode I say that the prophet insisted Walid’s father Uqba be executed after the battle at Badr, but you may remember that I also said that the second caliph Omar was upset that all those captured were ransomed back to Quraysh after Badr, so who knows if Uqba was made an exception of or if he was one of those who died in battle. 
• Sa’id ibn il ‘As: the Umayyad chosen to replace Walid as governor of Kufa. He was son-in-law to Othman twice over, and had many other wives tying him to all sorts of tribal nobility, including Marwan’s daughter. His lineage was only part of his prestige, the rest he earned through his eloquence and he comes off as highly educated or cultured in narrations about him.
• Abu Dharr il Ghifari: early muslim and rabble rouser of Syria who used his stature as a close companion of the prophet to publicly denounce the Umayyad governor Mu’awiya’s excess daily. He will not have much of an impact on things going forward.
• Mohammad ibn abi Bakr: the son of the first caliph and step son of Hashemite leader Ali bin abi Talib was stationed in the Egyptian canton of Fustat, and his belief in his step-father’s right to lead the Umma made him a natural rallying point for any opposition to Othman’s deeply unpopular governor of Egypt, Abdallah bin abi Sarh. 
• Ammar bin Yasser: we’ve already mentioned this early muslim and fierce Hashemite loyalist a few times so far, and it is a testament to how influential he was on the events which transpired during his life. His speech against Othman’s nepotism is only one of many instances of open dissent expressed in Medina during this period. While there aren’t many public expressions of dissatisfaction in the capital like Ammar’s, there are many narrations with other people sharing personal disappointments about the way things were going; in those stories shock and dismay are far more commonly reported than public criticism or open hostility.