on Ibn ʿAffān.” He then asked, “And who will come after him?” The bishop replied, “A fissure”—Hammād ibn Salamah used to say: “rust”—“in a piece of iron.” ʿUmar exclaimed, “Woe to him, woe to him!” The bishop said, “Steady, O Commander of the Believers; he is a righteous man, but his caliphate will witness much bloodshed.

Hammād ibn Zayd said, “If I were to claim that ʿAlī is superior to ʿUthmān, I would be accusing the Companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ of betrayal.”

Ibn Abī al-Zinād reported, from his father, from ʿAmr ibn ʿUthmān, that the inscription on ʿUthmān’s signet ring read: “I have believed in the One who created and proportioned.”

When ʿUthmān was given the caliphate, Ibn Masʿūd said, “Leadership has been entrusted to the best of those who remain, and we have not been negligent.”

Mubārak ibn Faḍālah narrated that al-Ḥasan said: “I saw ʿUthmān asleep in the mosque with his cloak folded under his head. A man would come and sit beside him, and another would do the same, as though he were one of them. I also heard him, during a sermon, order that dogs be put down and pigeons slaughtered.”