perhaps violence had been building so long that by now
it was simply inevitable.
Abu Bakr was the ɹrst to strike, the son of the ɹrst
Caliph leading the assassins of the third. His dagger
slashed across the old man’s forehead, and that ɹrst
blood was the sign that released the others. As Othman
fell back, they piled in on him, knives striking again and
again. Blood splashed onto the walls, onto the carpet,
even onto the open pages of the Quran—an indelible
image of deɹlement that still haunts the Muslim faithful,
both Sunni and Shia. Yet still they attacked, even after
there was no breath left in Othman’s body.
Naila ɻung herself over her dead husband. She begged
the assassins not to desecrate his corpse, only to have her
blood mixed with his as yet another knife slashed down
and cut oʃ part of her right hand. Her dreadful wail of
pain and outrage bounced oʃ the blood-spattered walls
to pierce the consciences of the attackers; only then did
they stop.
Muhammad Abu Bakr had struck the ɹrst blow but
not the fatal one. There would never be any deɹnitive
answer as to exactly whose hand did that. But the
question that was to haunt Islam was not who held the
knife but who guided it. Who was behind it? Or rather,
who was not? One Umayyad later said that Othman was
killed by “a sword drawn by Aisha, sharpened by Talha,
and poisoned by Ali.” Others would say that it was