they seized him, searched him, and found inside a water-skin a letter (1) purportedly issued in the name of ʿUthmān, ordering that one group of them be killed, another crucified, and the hands and feet of others cut off. The document bore a seal impressed with ʿUthmān’s signet, and the courier proved to be one of ʿUthmān’s own servants, riding his camel. When the rebels returned, they carried the letter about and showed it to the people. The townsfolk then spoke to the Commander of the Believers about the matter. He said, “Produce clear proof against me, for by Allah I neither wrote (2) it, nor dictated it, nor knew anything of it. A seal can be forged to resemble another seal.” The truthful believed him, whereas the liars denied him.
It is also said that the Egyptians had asked ʿUthmān to dismiss Ibn Abī Sarḥ from office and appoint Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr in his stead, and he had agreed. Yet when they encountered (3) that courier carrying the letter that ordered the killing of Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr [and others with him], they turned back (4) in fierce anger against him, circulated the letter among the people, and the allegation took root in many minds.
Ibn Jarīr (5) transmitted, through the chain of Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq from his uncle ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yasār, that the man who carried this message—said to be from ʿUthmān to Egypt—was Abū al-Aʿwar al-Sulamī, riding a camel that belonged to ʿUthmān.
Ibn Jarīr (6) further reported via this same chain that the Companions had supposedly written from Madinah to the provinces instructing the people to come and fight ʿUthmān. This is a slander against the Companions; the letters were forgeries written in their names, just as spurious letters had earlier been forged in the names of ʿAlī, Ṭalḥah, and al-Zubayr to the Khārijites—letters they categorically denied. In exactly the same way this letter was fabricated against ʿUthmān, for he neither commanded it nor even knew of it.
Throughout those days ʿUthmān continued to lead the people in prayer, regarding the rebels as more contemptible than dust. On one of the Fridays he ascended the pulpit holding the staff upon which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to lean in his sermons, and after him Abū Bakr and ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them). One of the rebels rose, reviled him, insulted him, and forced him down from the pulpit, and from that day the people sensed his vulnerability. Al-Wāqidī (7) said: Usāmah ibn Zayd related to me, from Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥāṭib, from his father, who said:
“While I was watching ʿUthmān deliver the sermon, leaning on the Prophet’s ﷺ staff—the same staff used by Abū Bakr and ʿUmar—Jahjāh cried out, ‘Stand up, O Naʿthal (8), and come down from this pulpit!’ He snatched the staff and broke it across his right knee, whereupon a splinter lodged in it; the wound festered until gangrene set in, and I later saw it crawling with worms.”