The Rightly Guided Ones 125man was chosen as Caliph over Ali, the Banu Hashim had simply had
enough.
It was perfectly clear to many in the community that Uthman’s
Caliphate was a deliberate attempt to accommodate the old Quraysh
aristocracy, who were eager to regain their previous status as the élites
of Arab society. With Uthman’s selection, the House of Umayya was
once again in charge of the Hijaz, just as it had been before Muham-
mad conquered it in the name of Islam. The irony of pledging alle-
giance to the clan of Muhammad’s former enemies was not lost on
the ahl al-bayt. To make matters worse, rather than trying to heal the
ever-widening rift in the community, Uthman only exacerbated the
situation through his unabashed nepotism and inept leadership.
First, Uthman replaced nearly all of the existing amirs throughout
the Muslim lands with members of his immediate family, as though
signaling to everyone the preeminence of his clan. Then, he dipped
regularly into the public treasury to dole out huge sums of money to
his relatives. Finally, and most dramatically, he broke with tradition by
giving himself the hitherto unthinkable title Khalifat Allah: “Successor
to God,” a title that Abu Bakr had explicitly rejected. To his many ene-
mies, this decision was a sign of Uthman’s self-aggrandizement. The
Caliph, it seemed, was regarding himself not as the deputy of the Mes-
senger, but as the representative of God on earth.
Uthman’s actions made him a fiercely hated figure. Not only did
the Banu Hashim and the Ansar turn against the Caliph, so did some
of the Umayya’s rival clans—the Banu Zuhra, the Banu Makhzum,
and the Abd Shams—together with some of the most influential
Companions, including Aisha and even Abd al-Rahman, Uthman’s
brother-in-law and the man who, as arbiter in the shura, had been
instrumental in giving him the Caliphate in the first place. By the end
of his rule, Uthman had made so many reckless decisions that not
even his most significant accomplishment—the collection and canon-
ization of the Quran—could enable him to escape the ire of the Mus-
lim community.
In Muhammad’s lifetime, the Quran was never collected in a single vol-
ume; in fact, it was never collected at all. As each individual recitation