He said: “We met in the house of Makhramah to give the pledge of allegiance after ʿUthmān had been killed. Abū Juham ibn Ḥudhayfah announced, ‘Whoever among you pledges allegiance to us must not stand between us and qiṣāṣ (legal retribution).’ ʿAmmār replied, ‘Not for the blood of ʿUthmān.’ Abū Juham retorted, ‘Son of Sumayya, will you demand qiṣāṣ for lashes once dealt to you yet refuse it for the blood of ʿUthmān?’ They therefore dispersed that day without pledging.

ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn narrated from his father that Marwān said: ‘No one in that gathering defended our man more than your man’—meaning that ʿAlī shielded ʿUthmān the most. I asked him, ‘Why then do you curse him from the pulpits?’ He replied, ‘Public order will not hold unless we do so.’ Ibn Abī Khaythamah transmitted this with a strong chain from ʿUmar.

Al-Wāqidī, through Ibn Abī Sabrah, Saʿīd ibn Abī Zayd, al-Zuhrī and ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh, reported that on the day he was killed ʿUthmān had with his treasurer thirty million dirhams and one hundred and fifty thousand dinars; they were seized and disappeared. He also left a thousand camels at al-Rabadhah and charitable endowments worth two hundred thousand dinars.

Ibn Luhayʿa, from Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb, said: ‘It has reached me that most of the party who marched against ʿUthmān later went mad.’

Layth ibn Abī Sulaym, from Ṭāwūs, from Ibn ʿAbbās, heard ʿAlī declare, ‘By Allah, I did not kill ʿUthmān, nor did I order it; I was overpowered.’ He said this three times. Similar statements from ʿAlī come through other chains, and it is also related that he cursed the killers of ʿUthmān.

Al-Shaʿbī said, ‘I have never heard an elegy for ʿUthmān more beautiful than the verses of Kaʿb ibn Mālik:

He folded his hands and closed his door,
certain that Allah is never unaware.’