designed only to provoke.
“What is the matter with you that you assemble as
though for plunder?” he yelled. “May your faces be
disɹgured! You have come wanting to wrest our
property from our hands. Be oʃ from us! By God, if that
is what you want, you will not praise the outcome. Go
back where you belong, for we shall not be deprived of
what is ours.”
It was a measure of Ali’s success in urging restraint
that Marwan was driven oʃ by curses instead of arrows,
but such restraint could not last, and Ali knew it. He
managed to warn Othman. Marwan was making it
impossible for him to act eʃectively as a mediator, he
said, and he could take no responsibility for what might
happen if Othman did not put his foot down and rein in
his cousin. But the Caliph would hear nothing of it, not
even when his favorite wife, Naila, seconded Ali, trying
to make her husband see the danger of Marwan’s advice.
Was it loyalty to family, or was he really in his dotage?
Nobody knew, and by now it hardly mattered.
Three days later, when Othman next appeared in the
pulpit of the mosque for Friday prayers, he was greeted
by jeers and catcalls. One respected elder had even
brought along props for emphasis. “Look,” he shouted at
Othman, “we’ve brought you a decrepit she-camel, along
with a striped wool cloak and an iron collar. Get down
from the pulpit so that we can wrap you in the cloak, put