Twenty years before this time, Abu Bakr had been Caliph and the first conquests in Mesopotamia and Syria had planted the first Arab Muslim towns. Approximately sixteen years before this time, the garrison cities of Kufa, Basra and Fustat had been built, with Damascus serving as another garrison city. Thousands of men from all over Arabia had poured into the new garrison cities. Sometimes they were on active campaign in Persia or North Africa, but they established families in the garrison cities. They brought back captives, too.
Captive women who were handed over as part of a fighter’s profit share could be sold or just absorbed into their own households. Many of the Arab men kept at least one female slave to help their wives, and of course some kept more. The Quran permitted them to marry no more than four women, but it also permitted them to have a sexual relationship with a slave as long as she consented. In the post-conquest years, there was a baby boom. The oldest of this boom generation were turning twenty in 654, with a flock of younger men coming into their teens. Many of these kids were bilingual, speaking Arabic in town, but Armenian, Aramaic, Turkic, Coptic or even Berber with their mothers.
In Arabia’s past, there had been standard ways of supporting children, especially since its wealth consisted mostly of animals that could reproduce. But in the garrison cities, they did not have land or flocks. They lived on a paycheck from the government, with pay rising with experience, but especially rising with racking up more battles. When men died, their widows were enrolled for the stipend, but it was not clear what the children would inherit. If a man sired twenty children, his town house and army stipend did not go far.
There was a very large rising generation of Muslim teenagers who felt insecure about their economic futures. Islam’s philosophy was ferociously egalitarian, but the reality in the territories was unequal. Many of the young men felt that there was social discrimination against the half-Arabs, since their mothers came from the conquered people. They wanted land and animals, but during Uthman’s Caliphate, they saw land captured from the Persian nobles being given to Arab aristocrats. Uthman was doing this partly to secure land for the Islamic State near Medina, trading the Arab men land near at home for land far away. Naturally, those who owned land near to Medina and Mecca tended to be Qurayshi relatives and even Umayyads. Naturally, the land that they were handed tended to be rich alluvial soil that everyone coveted.
One of the leaders among the dissatisfied young people was Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, the baby who had been born to Abu Bakr’s young wife while they were traveling to Mecca for Muhammad’s last Hajj. When Abu Bakr died, Ali took in the young widow and her son, which made extra sense given that she had also been married to Ali’s brother, so most of her children were already his kin. Young Muhammad grew up at the center of power in Medina, with his stepfather Ali acting as leading teacher and judge, his half-sister A’isha still deeply involved in politics, and his half-brothers and their kin in the army. He would have been raised with very strict austerity and piety, so as he became a man during Uthman’s years, criticism of the new luxury and aristocracy would come naturally.
In every garrison city, an Umayyad was the Governor. The oldest of them, Mu’awiya, had been ruling in Damascus since it was conquered. Uthman’s foster-brother Abdullah was Governor in Fustat, Egypt, having replaced the popular general Amr. The governor of Basra was another cousin, Abdallah ibn Amir. Kufa had been governed by two cousins of Uthman’s; the first was Uthman’s half-brother Walid. Walid was famously unfit for office. He was arrogant and entitled, and he drank. When he drunk-vomited in the mosque, his career should have been over.
The Kufans sent a delegation to Medina to ask for him to be sacked, but Uthman turned them away. They went to A’isha, who was no friend to Uthman. By this time, Uthman was about eighty, and A’isha said publicly that he was heading into dementia. A’isha took up the cause of getting Walid fired. She stood up in the mosque and waved a sandal above her head. She called out that it was the Prophet’s sandal and it hadn’t even fallen apart from age yet, but Muhammad’s sunna (tradition) was already forgotten. The people in the mosque took off their sandals, waving them in the air to support her. Walid was recalled, but nobody was satisfied, since Uthman was so reluctant to fire him and refused to give any other punishment.
The second and current governor in Kufa was a better choice, though another Umayyad. He was Sa’id who had been on the Quran editing committee. He was respected in every way, but he too ran into conflict with the new generation in Kufa. He was overseeing the transfer of state land to Arab aristocrats, while the dissatisfied generation petitioned for the land to be kept by the state. The man who complained loudest was severely beaten by the Kufan elite, so to pacify the city, Sa’id exiled those men. When Uthman called him to Medina to confer, the elites took over the city and would not let Sa’id back in. He retired to Medina in disgrace.
- After the Prophet, by Lesley Hazelton.
- The Heirs of Muhammad, by Barnaby Rogerson