did its work, as it always does.
The ɹrst fatality was one of the most venerable of
Muhammad’s early companions. He had limped up to
the front of the siege line and there, balancing on
crutches, called on Othman to come out onto his balcony
and announce his abdication. One of Marwan’s aides
came out instead. He hurled a large stone at the white-
haired elder, hit him in the head, and killed him on the
spot. “I, by God, ignited the ɹghting between the
people,” he boasted later. Nobody would ever know if he
acted on his own initiative or at Marwan’s orders.
They were to call it the Day of the Palace, though the
melee lasted barely more than an hour. The defenders
were vastly outnumbered, and once both Marwan and
Ali’s son Hasan had been injured, the others ɻed. A small
group of rebels led by Muhammad Abu Bakr made their
way upstairs and into the Caliph’s private chambers.
There they found just two people: Othman and the
Syrian-born Naila, his favorite wife.
The elderly Caliph, undefended, was seated on the
ɻoor, reading a parchment manuscript of the Quran—
the authorized version he had devoted years to
compiling. Even as the group closed in on him, he kept
calmly reading, as though the Holy Book could protect
him from mere mortals. Perhaps this was what so
infuriated the young Abu Bakr: Othman’s assumption of
invulnerability even as he was plainly so vulnerable. Or