with his sword. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz said: I heard Ibn Abī ʿAwn recount that Kinānah ibn Bishr struck ʿUthmān’s forehead with an iron bar; then Sūdān al-Murādī dealt him a blow that killed him. While a trace of life still remained, ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥamq leapt upon him and stabbed him nine times, declaring, “Three are for Allah, and six are for what I myself hold against him.”

Al-Mughīrah reported: They kept him under siege for twenty-two days; then they set the door ablaze, and everyone in the house came out.

Sulaymān al-Taymī narrated from Abū Naḍrah, from Abū Saʿīd, the freedman of Abū Usayd: ʿUthmān opened the door and placed the Qur’an in front of him. A man entered and said, “Between you and me stands the Book of Allah,” then he left him and went out. Another man entered, saying the same—“Between you and me stands the Book of Allah”—and moved to strike him with a sword. ʿUthmān warded off the blow with his hand, and it was severed. He exclaimed, “By Allah, this is the very first hand that ever wrote the mufassal chapters.” A man nicknamed “al-Mawt al-Aswad” (the Black Death) then came in and throttled him before striking with the sword. By Allah, I have never felt anything softer than his throat; I choked him until I saw his soul quiver within his body like a jinn.

Al-Zuhrī said: He was slain at the time of the ʿAṣr prayer. A slave of ʿUthmān rushed at Kinānah ibn Bishr and killed him; Sūdān then charged the slave and killed him.

Abū Naḍrah reported from Abū Saʿīd: They struck him, and his blood splattered onto the Qur’an at the verse, “So Allah will suffice you against them, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing” (2:137).

ʿImrān ibn Ḥidīr related—unless it was ʿAbd Allah ibn Shaqīq who told me—that the first