the collar on you, and put you on the camel. Then we ’ll
carry you oʃ to the Mount of Smoke”—the main
garbage dump of Medina, smoldering with decomposing
trash—“and leave you there.”
And with that, to drive the message home, the crowd
began to ɻing pebbles at the pulpit, a hail of them
aiming hard and true, striking the aging Caliph and
knocking him unconscious.
For the Caliph to be stoned unconscious, and in the
mosque itself? This was surely full-scale rebellion, an
invitation to the harshest of reprisals, as Marwan had
urged. Yet even as he was recovering from the stoning,
Othman steadfastly refused to order the use of force.
Whatever his sins, he said, he was a devout Muslim, and
as such, he was determined that no Muslim blood be
shed at his order. Yet with equal determination, he
refused to resign. Perhaps he really did not grasp the
extent of what was happening, or perhaps he truly did
believe that he was the deputy not of Muhammad but of
God. He hadn’t the right to resign, he maintained. “I
cannot take oʃ the robes in which God has dressed me.”
And with this, he signed his death warrant.
The question was who would write that warrant, for it
did indeed exist. It took the form of what came to be
known as the Secret Letter, lying in wait to be discovered
just when it looked as though the crisis had been defused