He was sheltering assassins, and that made him as guilty
as the assassins themselves. It might as well have been
his hand that wielded the knife, said some, and none as
pointedly as the ever-wily Marwan, who had fled Medina
for a hero’s welcome in Mecca as he showed oʃ his ɻesh
wound from the battle for Othman’s palace. “If you, Ali,
did not strike the murdered man openly,” he declared,
“you surely struck him in secret.”
The poets, quick as ever to seize the spirit of the
moment, took up the call. “Your kinsmen, Ali, killed
Othman with no halal claim to his blood,” said one—no
right under Islamic law. “That makes you, their leader,
Ali, the one to pay,” he continued, “and pay you surely
will.”
By the time Ali’s letter demanding Mecca’s allegiance
arrived and was read out loud in the mosque, feeling
against him ran so high that the demand could barely be
heard for the catcalls. The whole crowd burst into
frenzied roars of approval as one young Umayyad seized
the letter, stuʃed it in his mouth, chewed it to a pulp,
and spat it out in disgust.
Aisha’s vendetta was now that of all Mecca, but
passion would convert into action only when her
brothers-in-law Talha and Zubayr ɻed Medina to join
her. Both had been among the six who had sat in closed
caucus after Omar’s death, and both had voted against
Ali. Both, like Ali, had become vocal critics of Othman’s