and buried him. He had instructed his household to cook a sheep from his flock so that they might eat it after his death. ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān then sent for the family and incorporated them into (1) his own household.

[Then came the year thirty-three]

In that year, according to Abū Maʿshar, Cyprus was conquered, although the majority disagree and record its conquest earlier, as mentioned previously.

During the same year ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿd ibn Abī Sarḥ mounted a second expedition against Ifrīqiyyah after its people had violated the treaty.

That year as well, the Commander of the Believers dispatched a group of Qurʾān reciters from Kūfah to Syria. The cause was that they had spoken offensively in the assembly of Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ, who wrote to ʿUthmān about them. ʿUthmān replied ordering that they be banished from his province to Syria, and he wrote to Muʿāwiyah, the governor of Syria: “I have sent to you some reciters from among the people of Kūfah; lodge them, honor them, and win their hearts.” (2)

When they arrived, Muʿāwiyah billeted them, treated them generously, met with them, admonished them, and counseled them to keep to the community and abandon isolation and aloofness. (3) Their spokesman and interpreter, however, replied with words that were ugly and repulsive. Muʿāwiyah, in his forbearance, endured them. He then praised Quraysh—whom they had just reviled—and went on to extol and bless the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He also boasted of his father’s standing and of his family’s honor among their people, saying, among other things:

(I imagine) that if Abū Sufyān had fathered all mankind, he would not have begotten anyone but a resolute man.

Saʿṣaʿah ibn Ṣūḥān retorted, “You lie! All mankind were born to one who is better than Abū Sufyān: one whom Allah fashioned with His own Hand, breathed into him of His Spirit, and commanded the angels, so they prostrated to him. Among them were the righteous and the wicked, the foolish and the shrewd.”

Muʿāwiyah then offered them advice once more, but they persisted (4) in their error and continued in their ignorance and folly. He therefore expelled them from his territory and banished them from Syria, lest they confuse the minds of the common folk, (5) for their speech contained disparagement of Quraysh, charging that the tribe had been remiss and had neglected its duty to support the religion and curb the mischief-makers. What they really sought through this belittling, fault-finding, and conjecture about the unseen was simple defamation; they even cursed ʿUthmān and Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ.

They were ten men—though some say nine, which is more likely—among them: Kumayl ibn Ziyād; al-Ashṭar al-Nakhaʿī, whose name was Mālik ibn [al-Ḥārith]; Saʿṣaʿah ibn Ṣūḥān and his brother Zayd ibn Ṣūḥān; Kaʿb ibn Mālik al-Arhabī; al-Aswad ibn (6) Yazīd; ʿAlqamah ibn Qays—both of them from the tribe of Nakhaʿ—and Thābit ibn