Life at a glance
Wealthy, handsome, mild, generous and so modest that he bathed with his clothes on. He never drank wine or worshipped an idol before Islam, and he never missed a night of Quran after it.
The Quran and Uthman
Two verses the commentators tie to him by name, and the pledge Allah was pleased with, made on his account.
"Is one who is devoutly obedient in the hours of the night, prostrating and standing, fearing the Hereafter and hoping for the mercy of his Lord…? Say: are those who know equal to those who do not know?" Ibn Umar said: "This was revealed about Uthman ibn Affan." He was famous for reciting the whole Quran in a single night of prayer; his wife Na'ilah said at his death: "You have killed a man who used to bring the whole Quran to life in one rak'ah."
"Those who pledge allegiance to you pledge allegiance only to Allah; the Hand of Allah is over their hands." The Pledge of Ridwan was taken because Uthman was reported killed in Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ struck his own right hand upon his left and said: "This is the hand of Uthman" and "This is for Uthman." Ibn Umar said to the men of Kufa: "The Messenger of Allah's hand for Uthman was better than Uthman's own hand for himself."
"Not equal among you are those who spent before the Conquest and fought; they are greater in rank…" The commentators say Uthman is at the front of this verse: no Companion spent as much before the Conquest of Makkah as he did.
The verse describes the believers who came weeping because the Prophet ﷺ had no mounts for them for Tabuk. It was Uthman who provided the mounts: the commentators record that the Prophet ﷺ raised his hands and said: "O Allah, be pleased with Uthman, for I am pleased with him."
"Allah will suffice you against them, and He is the Hearing, the Knowing." His blood fell upon these words as he was killed with the Quran open before him. The very Mushaf, stained, was preserved in Madinah for generations.
"…with those Allah has blessed: the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous." On Mount Uhud the Prophet ﷺ named the first three categories standing on it: "a Prophet, a Siddiq, and two martyrs." Uthman was one of the two.
What the Prophet ﷺ said about him
The Prophet ﷺ was reclining with his thigh uncovered when Abu Bakr and then Umar came in, and he stayed as he was. When Uthman asked permission, he sat up and covered himself. Aishah asked why. He said: "Should I not be shy of a man of whom the angels are shy?"
Abu Musa was the doorkeeper at the well. For Abu Bakr and Umar the Prophet ﷺ said "give him glad tidings of Paradise"; for Uthman: "Admit him and give him glad tidings of Paradise, with a trial that will befall him." Uthman said: "O Allah, patience," and "Allah is the one whose help is sought."
"O Uthman, it may be that Allah will clothe you in a shirt. If they want you to take it off, do not take it off for them." Narrated by Aishah. Thirty years later, when the rebels demanded he abdicate, he replied: "I will not take off a shirt Allah has clothed me in."
During the siege Uthman called to the crowd: "Do you know the Prophet ﷺ said: 'Whoever digs the well of Rumah will have Paradise', and I dug it? And that he said: 'Whoever equips the Army of Hardship will have Paradise', and I equipped it?" They confirmed it.
Uthman poured a thousand dinars into the Prophet's lap for Tabuk. The Prophet ﷺ turned them over with his hand and said twice: "Nothing Uthman does after today will harm him."
"Be still, Uhud; upon you are a Prophet, a Siddiq and two martyrs." The Prophet ﷺ announced his martyrdom, and Umar's, decades before it happened.
"Every prophet has a close companion in Paradise, and my companion there is Uthman ibn Affan."
"You have the reward of a man who was present at Badr, and his share." Said when Uthman stayed in Madinah to nurse the Prophet's daughter Ruqayyah. Ibn Umar used this hadith to answer those who tried to belittle Uthman for missing Badr.
"Had I a third daughter, I would have married her to Uthman." Said after the death of Umm Kulthum. The Prophet ﷺ gave him two of his daughters; no other man was so honoured.
"Uthman is a man of modesty; I feared that if I sent him he would be too shy and return." Even his shyness was noted by the Prophet ﷺ as a mark of his character. In another report: "The most truly modest of my nation is Uthman" (Tirmidhi 3790, Ibn Majah 154).
Al-Nu'man ibn Bashir reports from Aishah that the Prophet ﷺ told Uthman he would be asked to remove a shirt Allah had clothed him with, and Uthman answered: "By Allah, I will not remove it." Aishah said: "They forgot it, so I reminded them."
The Companions on Uthman
Ali ibn Abi Talib
"Uthman was the most dutiful of us to family ties and the most God-fearing of us toward the Lord" (Ibn Asakir; al-Riyad al-Nadirah). Ali sent his sons Hasan and Husayn with swords to guard Uthman's door during the siege, sent water when the rebels cut it off, and when he was killed said: "O Allah, I did not kill him, and I did not approve." Ali also named Uthman third after Abu Bakr and Umar (Bukhari 3671 in its longer wording) and was first to pledge to him.
The two beloved sons at the gate. Historians record that when news reached Ali that Uthman had been killed, he came at once to the house in anguish, struck Hasan and struck Husayn on the chest, and rebuked them and the other Companions' sons standing there: "How was the Commander of the Faithful killed while you were at the door?" He then went out and found the killers had entered over the wall from a neighbouring house. That Ali placed the two grandsons of the Prophet ﷺ, the dearest people on earth to him, as Uthman's bodyguard, and then held them to account for his death, shows more clearly than any speech what Uthman meant to him.
Ibn Umar
"In the time of the Prophet ﷺ we held no one equal to Abu Bakr, then Umar, then Uthman; then we left the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ without ranking them" (Bukhari 3697). When a man of Egypt tried to belittle Uthman for missing Badr, missing the Pledge of Ridwan and fleeing at Uhud, Ibn Umar answered each point with the Prophet's own words and said: "Take these with you now."
Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf
Charged with the choice, he went through Madinah for three days, asking even the women behind their curtains and the children going to school, and found them inclining to Uthman. He took his hand in the mosque and said: "I pledge to you on the Sunnah of Allah and His Messenger and the two caliphs after him."
Zayd ibn Thabit
The scribe of the Prophet ﷺ who wrote the Mushaf for Abu Bakr and again for Uthman: "I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say: 'Uthman passed by me while an angel was with me, and the angel said: A martyr whom his people will kill; we are shy of him.'" (Musnad Ahmad; Ibn Asakir)
Hasan ibn Ali and the Companions
Hasan ibn Ali, Abdullah ibn Umar, Abdullah ibn Zubayr and Abu Hurayrah stood at his door in arms; he told them: "I hold whoever has a right over me to obedience: put down your weapons; I do not want a drop of blood spilled for me." Abu Hurayrah said: "By Allah, the killing of Uthman is a calamity for all who come after." Hudhayfah: "The first of the trials was the killing of Uthman."
Aishah and Umm Salamah
Aishah: "They killed him after they had wrung him out as a garment is wrung, and he was innocent." Umm Salamah: "By Allah, he was killed wrongfully, and the Prophet ﷺ was pleased with him."
Twelve years, one Book
The Islamic Empire grew larger under Uthman than under any caliph before him; but his greatest deed fits in the hand: the Mushaf.
The unified Quran
Hudhayfah returned from Armenia alarmed that Muslims in Syria and Iraq were disputing over readings. Uthman borrowed the sheets from Hafsah, appointed Zayd ibn Thabit with Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, Sa'id ibn al-As and Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Harith, ordered them to write in the dialect of Quraysh, sent a copy with a reciter to Makkah, Kufa, Basra, Damascus, and later Yemen and Bahrain, and had all other sheets burned. Every printed Quran on earth descends from these copies. Ali said: "Do not say anything about Uthman except good, for by Allah he did what he did with the Mushafs only after consulting all of us" (Ibn Abi Dawud, al-Masahif). (Bukhari 4987)
The first navy
Umar had refused to let Muslims sail. Uthman permitted Mu'awiyah to build a fleet; Cyprus was opened in 28 AH, and in 34 AH the Battle of the Masts destroyed the Byzantine fleet, the largest naval battle of its age. Umm Haram bint Milhan, whom the Prophet ﷺ had promised she would be among the first to sail in the way of Allah, was buried in Cyprus.
Expansion
Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Caucasus in the east; Khorasan and the borders of Sind; Tripoli, Tunisia and the whole of North Africa under Abdullah ibn Sa'd; the Persian empire finally extinguished with the death of Yazdegerd III in 31 AH.
The two mosques
He enlarged the Prophet's mosque in 29 AH with carved stone pillars and a teak roof, and enlarged the Sacred Mosque in Makkah. He was the first to add the first call to prayer on Friday, needed because the city had grown (Bukhari 912).
Public works and charity
Raised the stipends of the Diwan by a quarter, ordered the governors to feed the people in Ramadan, dug wells and built rest-houses on the roads, established a police force (shurtah) and granted land to cultivators. He took no salary from the treasury; he fed the people from his own wealth and ate vinegar and oil at home.
The rebellion
In his later years, agitators led by Abdullah ibn Saba spread complaints about the governors, most of whom he had inherited or appointed on merit. Bands from Egypt, Kufa and Basra came to Madinah in 35 AH. He answered every complaint, promised reforms and dismissed governors; they returned with a forged letter and besieged his house.
The last day
He saw the Prophet ﷺ in a dream with Abu Bakr and Umar: "Break your fast with us tonight." He fasted, freed his slaves, put on his trousers so his body would be covered, and sat with the Quran. Al-Ghafiqi struck him with an iron bar; Na'ilah threw herself over him and lost her fingers to a sword. He was 82. He had ruled twelve years without shedding blood in his own cause.
His words in the siege
Character and sayings
Generosity and modesty were his two wings. He fed the people on the finest food and ate oil and vinegar at home; he slept in the mosque on a straw mat with the marks on his side.
His weeping at graves
He wept so much at a grave that his beard became wet. Asked why he wept at graves and not when the Fire was mentioned, he said: "The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said the grave is the first station of the Hereafter; whoever is saved there, what follows is easier; whoever is not, what follows is harder" (Tirmidhi 2308).
His family
Wives: Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthum, daughters of the Prophet ﷺ; later Fakhitah, Umm Amr, Fatimah bint al-Walid, Umm al-Banin, Ramlah and Na'ilah. Sons: Abdullah (from Ruqayyah, died in childhood, buried by the Prophet ﷺ), Amr, Aban (the historian), Umar, Khalid, Sa'id, al-Walid; and daughters.
Scholars through the ages
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal
"The Companions were unanimous on the pledge to Uthman; anyone who belittles him has belittled the consensus of the Companions."
Al-Hasan al-Basri
He lived through the caliphate as a young man in Madinah: "I saw Uthman sleeping in the mosque with his cloak under his head, and the people sitting around him as if he were one of them. In his time a man would fear no one but Allah." And: "The years of Uthman were the years of plenty; the caller would call: come to your stipends, come to your provisions."
Al-Dhahabi
"Amir al-Mu'minin, Dhu'n-Nurayn, the martyr, one of the Ten, one of the six of the Shura, one of the first to believe, the husband of two daughters of the Prophet ﷺ, the unifier of the Book. His virtues are many, and he was killed wronged."
Ibn Kathir
In al-Bidayah: "The correct view is that Uthman's rank is after Umar and before Ali; that is the view of the majority of the Muslim nation and of the Companions who lived in Madinah, as Ibn Umar reported."
Al-Suyuti
In Tarikh al-Khulafa he collects the prophecies of Uthman's martyrdom and writes: "No one after him did what he did for the Book of Allah; every reciter and every listener owes him a debt."
Imam Ahmad Raza Khan
He calls him "Uthman-e-Ghani", the Generous, and in Fatawa Ridawiyyah treats the consensus of the Companions upon his caliphate as decisive, citing Ali's own pledge to him and his sending of Hasan and Husayn to guard him. He describes Uthman's modesty as the modesty the Prophet ﷺ himself praised, and his martyrdom as a martyrdom foretold by the Prophet ﷺ, so that whoever speaks against him speaks against a prophecy.
His note in Khaza'in al-Irfan on verse 39:9 records Ibn Umar's statement that it was revealed about Uthman, and on 48:10 records the Prophet's hand pledging on Uthman's behalf.
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
"The Mushaf of Uthman is the greatest of the deeds by which the Muslim nation has been protected; its blessing is on every tongue that recites."
Sources for this page
Hadith collections
- Sahih al-Bukhari: 912, 2778, 3130, 3675, 3695–3699, 4987, 5027
- Sahih Muslim: 2401–2403
- Jami' al-Tirmidhi: 2158, 2308, 3698–3708, 3790; Ibn Majah 109, 112, 154; Abu Dawud 4502; Nasa'i 4019; Musnad Ahmad; al-Hakim vol. 3
Tafsir
- Ibn Abi Hatim and al-Suyuti (al-Durr al-Manthur) on 39:9
- Al-Tabari and al-Baghawi on 9:92, 48:10, 57:10
- Kanz al-Iman with Khaza'in al-Irfan on 39:9 and 48:10
Biography and scholarship
- Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat vol. 3; al-Tabari, Tarikh; Ibn Asakir, Tarikh Dimashq (biography of Uthman); Ibn Abi Dawud, Kitab al-Masahif
- Al-Suyuti, Tarikh al-Khulafa; al-Dhahabi, Siyar; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah; Muhibb al-Tabari, al-Riyad al-Nadirah; Abu Nu'aym, Hilyat al-Awliya vol. 1
- Ahmad Raza Khan, Fatawa Ridawiyyah