Othman, the Influential Third Khalifa of Isalm — and His Grisly Demise

Uthman ibn Affan, as he was also known, created the definitive version of the Quran and greatly improved the Islamic Empire’s infrastructure. 

Othman accomplished quite a bit during his time as khalifa — until he was brutally murdered by a mob.

The Prophet Mohammed had been dead for only 12 years, and already the religion he founded, Islam, was on its third leader, or khalifa. 

“Staggering wealth, dazzling beauty, two of the Prophet’s daughters for wives — what did this man lack?”

— Tamim Ansary, “Destiny Disrupted”

This painting depicts the election of Othman as the third khalifa of the budding religion of Islam.

The Third Khalifa: Othman

Othman (aka Uthman ibn Affan or Osman) was distantly related to Mohammad, as his fifth cousin once removed. Taking office at the age of 68, he was khalifa from 24-40 AH (644-661 CE). 

His father had been one of the richest men in Mecca, and Othman multiplied his family’s fortune many times over, earning him the nickname Othman the Wealthy.

He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, what did he do? Well, he also didn’t chase women — despite being known as quite the hottie.

Conversion and Repentance

Othman’s conversion to Islam didn’t go over well with his family, which was rabidly anti-Muslim. In fact, his stepfather had once tried to strangle Mohammed to death but was prevented by Abu Bakr. His two wives refused to convert, so he divorced them and married Mohammed’s gorgeous daughter, Ruqayya. After she died, Othman wed another of the Prophet’s daughters, Umm Kulthum. 

“Staggering wealth, dazzling beauty, two of the Prophet’s daughters for wives — what did this man lack?” asks Tamim Ansary in Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. “And yet Othman seemed haunted by the fear that he was not good enough. He spent much of his time fasting, praying and reading the Qur’an. Perhaps his extravagant donations to the public good were attempts to deserve the extraordinary good fortune he already enjoyed.”

For instance, to make up for abandoning a battlefield after a rumor spread that Mohammed had been killed, Othman would buy slaves and free one every Friday.

For some reason, Othman decided to organize the verses of the Qur’an according to length — and that’s how the holy book remains to this day.

Shaping the Qur’an, Launching Massive Building Projects

The first big project Othman undertook was to create a definitive edition of the Qur’an. Scholars eliminated redundancies, resolved discrepancies and evaluated dubious passages. The final product was a book in which the verses were pretty much arranged according to length, rather than thematically or chronologically. That doesn’t seem like the best way to organize a holy book, but there you go.

Othman’s policies greatly benefitted his own clan, the Umayyads, forming a powerful dynasty, seen here at the siege of Constantinople.

Another contentious decision Othman made was to lift Omar’s restrictions on Muslims buying land in conquered territories. In fact, wealthy Muslims could borrow from the public treasury to finance these purchases. Soon a class of elites, many from his own clan, the Umayyads, had acquired immense estates throughout the new empire.

Othman’s construction projects must have gone over better with the public. He built more than 5,000 mosques, prettied up Medina, dug canals, constructed highways, improved irrigation systems, upgraded ports, and installed wells and water systems.

Of course, he also constructed himself a lavish palace — though within it,  he “lived on bread, water and prayer,” Ansary says.

The tomb of Othman in Jannat al-Baqī’, the first Islamic cemetery, found in Medina

The End of Othman

Othman had set up his foster brother as governor of Egypt, but the man tried to squeeze too much money out of the people. A delegation petitioned Othman to remove the man as governor, which he agreed to. 

On their way back to Egypt, members of the delegation spotted a suspicious-looking slave of the khalifa and searched him. They discovered a letter telling the governor to arrest and execute them upon their return.

LEARN ABOUT Abu Bakr and Umar, the first two khalifas of Islam

The delegation turned around and marched into the palace. When they showed Othman the letter, he expressed shock and said he had never seen it before. This might indeed have been the case, but the once-peaceful petitioners had devolved into an angry mob. 

“[T]he rioters worked themselves into a frenzy, broke down palace doors and burst in with a roar. They found the khalifa in his study, and there in the flickering twilight of the old man’s lamp, in year 34 of the Muslim era, they beat their own leader to death,” Ansary writes. 

It was an ignominious end to the life of one of the most influential early leaders of Islam. –Wally

The Birth of Islam and the First Two Khalifas: Abu Bakr and Umar

Who were the first khalifas after the death of the Prophet Mohammed? And how did they shape the new religion of Islam?

The selection of Abu Bakr as the first successor to the Prophet Mohammed caused the Sunni-Shiite schism in Islam that remains to this day.

The time immediately after a spiritual leader’s death can make or break a budding religion — and determine in what direction it goes. 

So it was for Islam after the death of Mohammed. Muslims needed another leader, but how could anyone compare to the irreplaceable Prophet — especially since he had declared that there weren’t going to be any more God-guided messengers like himself?

Abu Bakr is chosen as the Prophet Mohammed’s successor.

A group of decision-makers unanimously decided upon Abu Bakr, a close companion of Mohammed, giving him the title khalifa (or, caliph, to the Western world). The designation was quite modest: It means “deputy.”

Not everyone was happy with the decision. Ali, whose father had adopted Mohammed, was essentially a brother to the Prophet. He was also the first male Muslim, and time and time again, he showed his valor in defending Mohammed and Islam. 

But Ali had his youth working against him. He was just over 30, while Abu Bakr was almost 60. At the time, choosing a younger man over an older one was unthinkable. In fact, the word for a tribal leader, sheikh, literally translates to “old man.”

The first khalifa Abu Bakr, founder of the Sunni branch of Islam

Abu Bakr, the First Khalifa: The Start of Sunni vs. Shi’i 

The disagreement between the two men’s factions eventually led to the major sects of Islam: Those who favored Ali developed into Shi’i, which means “Partisans.” Abu Bakr led the Sunnis. 

Tribes soon began to secede from the alliance that Mohammed had forged, refusing to pay the charity tax to the treasury at Medina. 

“Had Abu Bakr allowed these departures, Islam would surely have gone in a very different direction,” writes Tamim Ansary in Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. “It might have evolved into a set of practices and beliefs that people embraced individually. But Abu Bakr responded to the crisis by declaring secession to be treason.”

Abu Bakr held the role of khalifa for a short time (11-13 AH, or 632-634 CE) but set a hardline, all-or-nothing orthodoxy — in contrast to his genial persona as a kindly old man known to pass out candy to children on the street. (Note: The Islamic calendar follows a dating system designated AH, from the Latin anno hegirae, "in the year of the Hijra,” when Mohammed and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina and established the first Muslim community, or Umma.)

Abu Bakr died from a chill after a bath — but not before he named Omar as his successor.

The Second Khalifa: Omar the Powerful, Omar the Forgotten

A hot bath, a cold breeze — and, a mere two years into his role as khalifa, Abu Bakr was on his deathbed. Not wanting any arguments, he named Omar (aka Umar) as his successor, with young Ali passed over once again.

Omar was about as opposite as you could get from the gentle Abu Bakr. He was a large rough-and-tumble kind of dude, with a legendary temper. In fact, he had been on his way to kill Mohammed, when he passed his sister, reading under a tree. When she told him she had become a Muslim, he snatched the Qur’an from her hand. It was open to a verse that seemed to speak directly to Omar, and that was it. He was converted. 

Omar shaped the religion in numerous lasting ways — an impressive legacy despite not being well known. During his time as khalifa, from 13-24 AH (634-644 CE), “he set the course of Islamic theology, he shaped Islam as a political ideology, he gave Islamic civilization its characteristic stamp, and he built an empire that ended up being bigger than Rome,” Ansary writes. “Any one of these achievements could have earned him a place in the who’s who of history’s most influential figures; the sum of them make him something like a combination of Saint Paul, Karl Marx, Lorenzo di Medici and Napoleon. Yet most people outside Islam know him only as a name and perhaps a one- or two-sentence descriptor: he’s the second khalifa, a successor of Mohammed — that’s about it.”

Omar who? The second khalifa of Islam, should be known to all as the man who shaped the Muslim world and ruled over an empire larger than Rome’s.

Omar set out to make Islam a just and egalitarian community — while launching a military campaign that succeeded despite overwhelming odds. 

His choice to use the term jihad to describe a war of conquest kicked off the controversy that lasts to this day. Jihad translates to “struggling,” and is supposed to only apply to fighting in self-defense. In an ironic bit of moral gymnastics, Islam is believed to be a realm of peace, therefore violence against non-Muslims can be justified because that bloodshed is ultimately helping expand the realm of peace. That strikes me as a bogus argument. Then again, Jesus preached peace, yet Christians have used religion to validate countless atrocities, from the Crusades to modern-day homophobia. 

Omar marches into Jerusalem. The khalifa was tolerant when it came to religious worship, which made him popular with those he conquered.

When Omar defeated a city, he allowed the Christians and Jews to worship as they pleased; they just had to pay a tax that was less than they were paying their Byzantine overlords. This seemed like a good deal to them. 

“By the time Omar died, Islamic rule covered more than 2 million square miles. How is this possible?” Ansary asks. “Religious Muslims offer the simple explanation that Muslims had the irresistible supernatural aid of Allah. Academic historians explain the Byzantine and Sassanid empires had just fought a ruinous war with each other, and despite their seeming might, they were both rotten to the core and ready to fall.” 

In 634 CE, a Persian slave named Lu’lu stabbed Omar multiple times in the back. No one’s sure if it was personal or in revenge for a military defeat. Either way, the influential reign of the man some consider as the true founder of the Arab empire, came to an abrupt end. –Wally