Second, it may be said:

This is a manifest lie. Neither Uthmān nor any of the other Rightly Guided Caliphs ever gave anyone anything approaching this amount. It is well known that Muāwiya gave (1) more than Uthmān did to those whose loyalty he sought to win. Even so, the most he gave Hasan ibn Ali was one hundred thousand or three hundred thousand [dirhams] (2). It is reported that he never gave anyone that much before.

It is true that Uthmān gave some of his relatives grants for which he was criticized. His justification for doing so has already been discussed, and the general response given below will address it as well. There were two legal interpretations on which he based his giving to them, each of which is the position of a group of jurists:

The first is that whatever property Allah granted a prophet for his use passes to whoever assumes authority after him. This is the position of a group of jurists, who narrated concerning it a well-known hadith traced back to the Prophet (3). This is not the place for an extensive discussion of the particulars of these issues.

They said [that] (4) “near relatives” during the Prophet’s lifetime—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—meant his own relatives, whereas after his death it meant the relatives of whoever assumed authority after him.

They also said that Abū Bakr and Umar did not have (5) relatives as Uthmān did. Banū Abd Shams were among the largest clans of Quraysh, and none matched them except Banū Makhzūm. A person is commanded to maintain ties of kinship from his own wealth. If they held that the ruler could maintain his relatives from the public treasury, out of what Allah assigned to near relatives, then on this basis they were entitled to be supported from