rolled up in layers. When they spread it out, there appeared a red cloth; they spread that out as well, and inside it was a yellow cloth, in which were two phalluses, one chestnut-coloured and the other bay. A poet lampooned Banū Nahd on account of the pair (1):

The nobles came back with captive women as spoil,
While Banū Nahd exulted in two phalluses in a casket;
One chestnut, one bay, each of them large and full—
They deemed them booty; what a blunder indeed! (2)

They say that the people of Jurjān then broke the pact they had concluded with Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ and refused to pay the tribute he had imposed on them—some put it at one hundred thousand dinars, others at two hundred thousand, and still others at three hundred thousand. He later dispatched (3) Yazīd ibn al-Muhallab against them, as we shall recount, Allah willing.

In this same year ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān dismissed al-Walīd ibn ʿUqbah from Kūfah and appointed Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ in his place. The reason for the dismissal was that al-Walīd had led the Kūfans in the dawn prayer as four rakʿahs; then he turned to the congregation and asked, “Shall I add more for you?” Someone retorted, “We have been getting ‘more’ from you since this morning!” After that a group—said to have had a prior grievance against him—took the matter up with ʿUthmān. Some testified that he had drunk wine; another testified that he had seen him vomit it. ʿUthmān ordered that he be brought forward and flogged. It is reported that ʿAlī removed his outer garment and that Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ administered the lashes in the presence of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, who then deposed him and appointed Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ governor of Kūfah (4).

In this same year the Prophet’s ﷺ signet-ring slipped from ʿUthmān’s hand into the well of Arīs (5), two miles outside Medina and one of the scantest of its wells. Despite the outlay of considerable funds and exhaustive efforts to retrieve it, its whereabouts have never been discovered to this very hour. ʿUthmān therefore had another ring made of silver, engraved with the words “Muḥammad, Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” When ʿUthmān was killed that ring too disappeared, and no one knows (6) who took it.

Ibn Jarīr (7) records here a lengthy hadith: that the Prophet ﷺ at first had a ring made of gold and then of silver; that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb sent it to Chosroes and Dihyah to Caesar; and that the same ring remained successively in the hands of the Prophet, then Abū Bakr, then ʿUmar, and then ʿUthmān for six years before it finally fell into the well of Arīs. Parts of this account have already been cited in the Ṣaḥīḥ (8).