- Karen Armstrong
the third caliph by six of the Prophet's companions. He was a
weaker character than his predecessors, but for the first six
years of his reign the umma h continued to prosper. Uthman
governed well and the Muslims conquered new territory.
They seized Cyprus from the Byzantines, thus finally ejecting
them from the eastern Mediterranean, and in North Africa
the armies reached Tripoli in what is now Libya. In the East,
the Muslim troops took much of Armenia, penetrated the
Caucasus and established Muslim rule as far as the River
Oxus in Iran, Herat in Afghanistan, and Sind in the Indian
subcontinent.
But, despite these victories, the soldiers were becoming dis-
contented. They had undergone a massive change. In just over
a decade they had exchanged a harsh nomadic existence for the
very different lifestyle of the professional army. They spent the
summer fighting and winter far from home in the garrison
towns. The distances were now so vast that the campaigns were
more exhausting, and they were taking less plunder than be-
fore. Uthman still refused to allow the commanders and the
richest Meccan families to establish private estates in such
countries as what is now Iraq, and this made him unpopular, es-
pecially in Kufah and Fustat. Uthman also alienated the Mus-
lims of Medina by giving the most prestigious posts to
members of his own Umayyad family. They accused him of
nepotism, even though many of the Umayyad officials were
men of great ability. Uthman had, for example, appointed
Muawiyyah, the son of Muhammad's old enemy Abu Sufyan,
governor of Syria. He was a good Muslim, and a skilled admin-
istrator, known for his steadiness of character and his measured
assessment of circumstances. But it seemed wrong to the Mus-
lims of Medina, who still boasted of being the ansar(helpers) of
the Prophet, that they should be passed over in favour of Abu
Sufyan's offspring. The Quran-reciters, who knew the scripture
by heart and had become the chief religious authorities, were