Our teacher, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Dhahabī, said at the close of his biographical notice on ʿUthmān and his merits (1)—after citing the words just mentioned:

“Those who slew him or incited others to slay him were themselves slain and have gone on to face Allāh’s pardon and mercy; those who abandoned him were, in turn, abandoned, and their lives became embittered. After him, sovereignty passed to his deputy Muʿāwiya and his sons (2), then to his vizier Marwān and eight of his descendants. They had found his life too long and had grown weary of him despite his virtue and his precedents, so a man from among his own cousins ruled over them for some eighty-odd years. The judgment belongs to Allāh, the Most High, the All-Great.” These are al-Dhahabī’s words verbatim.

Some (3) of the ahādīth transmitted concerning the virtues of the Commander of the Believers ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān

He is ʿUthmān (4) ibn ʿAffān ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ ibn Umayya ibn ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy ibn Kilāb ibn Murra ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy ibn Ghālib ibn Fihr ibn Mālik ibn al-Naḍr ibn Kināna ibn Khuzayma ibn Mudrika ibn Ilyās ibn Muḍar ibn Nizār ibn Maʿadd ibn ʿAdnān; his kunyas are Abū ʿAmr and Abū ʿAbd Allāh. He was Qurashī, Umayyad, the Commander of the Believers, Dhū al-Nūrayn (“the Possessor of the Two Lights”), the man of the two migrations, and the husband of two (Prophetic) daughters. His mother was Arwā bint Kurayz ibn Rabīʿa ibn ʿAbd Shams; her mother was Umm Ḥakīm—better known as al-Bayḍāʾ—daughter of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the paternal aunt of the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ. He was one of the ten who were promised Paradise, one of the six members of the consultative council, and one of the three from that council to whom the caliphate finally devolved; it was then confirmed for him by the consensus of the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār—may Allāh be pleased with them. Thus he became (5) the third of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and of the divinely led Imāms (6) whom we have been commanded to follow and emulate.

ʿUthmān—may Allāh be pleased with him—embraced Islām early at the hands of Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq. The reason for his conversion is remarkable (7), as reported by the ḥadīth-master Ibn ʿAsākir (8). In brief: When he heard that the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ had married his daughter Ruqayya—who was of striking beauty—to her cousin ʿUtba ibn Abī Lahab, he regretted not having married her himself. He returned home distressed and found with his family his aunt Saʿdā bint Kurayz, who was a soothsayer. She said to him (9):

[rajaz verse follows]