right to his position. Eventually, it was even rumored
that it was Ali who had arranged for the letter to be
planted and discovered in order to bring about Othman’s
downfall—and said too that this rumor had itself been
planted by Marwan. There was room enough in the story
to support any number of conspiracy theories. Only one
thing was certain: the secret letter was the end of
Othman.
The rebels were not intent on murder—not at ɹrst, at
least, since they chose to besiege the palace, not to storm
it. Though a few did call for outright jihad against the
Caliph, even they could never have had any intention of
beginning the long succession of assassinations that
would blight the coming centuries of Islamic history and
continue to blight it today. There was still horror at the
idea of Muslim killing Muslim, let alone the Caliph.
What they wanted was the very thing Othman refused
to give them: his abdication, immediately. There was no
longer any room for negotiation. Ali had tried his best,
but as the guarantor of the agreement betrayed by the
secret letter, he had been double-crossed as badly as the
rebels themselves. He could see the potential for violence
—he even posted his sons Hasan and Hussein, now
grown men in their twenties, to stand guard at the
palace—but he surely knew that with Othman so
stubbornly entrenched, there was no more he could do to