As the governor of the garrison city of Kufa in central
Iraq, Walid did not even bother to disguise his
aristocratic disdain for the residents under his control.
With a kind of Arabian snobbery that would surface
again and again, he contemptuously dismissed the
native Iraqis as “provincial riʃraʃ.” Unjust
imprisonment? Expropriation of lands? Embezzlement
from the public treasury? Such complaints against him,
Walid declared, were worth “no more than a goat’s fart
in the desert plains of Edom.”
One particular goat’s fart, however, would reach all
the way to Medina when Walid appeared in the Kufa
mosque ɻagrantly drunk and, in front of the assembled
worshipers, vomited over the side of the pulpit. The
Kufans sent a delegation to Medina to demand that he be
recalled and publicly ɻogged, but Othman refused them
point-blank. Worse, he threatened to punish them for
daring to make such a demand, and when they then
appealed to the leading Mother of the Faithful for
support, he was heard to sneer in disdain: “Can the
rebels and scoundrels of Iraq ɹnd no other refuge than
the home of Aisha?”
The gauntlet was thrown: a challenge not just to “the
rebels and scoundrels of Iraq” but to Aisha herself. As
word spread of Othman’s sneer, many thought it a
foolish thing to have done. Perhaps Aisha had been right
in calling Othman a dotard. Perhaps he really was losing
his grip, or at least his judgment. Certainly it seemed