seals. One of these compartments was a secret one,
however, and inside it they found a letter stamped with
Othman’s personal seal and addressed to his brother-in-
law, the governor of Egypt he had just pledged to replace.
All the leaders of the returning rebels were to be
arrested instantly, the letter instructed. First their hair
and beards were to be torn out—a calculatedly
emasculating form of punishment when so much male
pride was vested in long hair and ample beards—and
then they were to be given one hundred lashes each. If
any still survived, they were to be thrown in prison.
What more was needed? With the written evidence of
double-dealing in their hands, the rebels turned around.
Three days later they were back in Medina, and this time
they didn’t merely camp on the outskirts. In no mood to
negotiate, they surrounded the palace and placed it
under siege.
The seal on the letter was clearly Othman’s. Indeed, he
acknowledged as much when faced with it. But the letter
itself? He swore he’d had absolutely no knowledge of it.
Nobody knew for certain if this was the truth or merely
plausible deniability. Some were convinced he was lying,
while some saw the hand of Marwan at work, even
claiming that the letter was in his handwriting. Others
argued that it made no diʃerence whose handwriting it
was; the Caliph’s seal was on the letter, they said, and if
his seal could be used without his knowledge, he had no