Hazrat Usman (RA) II
Please read this if you havent.
Right after the death of Hazrat Omar (RA), the most important issue was to elect a new Caliph who would be worthy enough to fill the space that had been left void. According to Tabari, Caliph Omar (RA) had prescribed a maximum of 3 day period to choose the next Caliph after his death from amongst the 6 people (the shura) that he had nominated. He wanted to ensure complete consensus on the selection of the next Caliph and, according to some narrations, ordered his son to kill anyone who would disagree with the rest 5 people in the group.
According to the Sunnis, there was a tie three candidates: Hazrat Usman (RA), Imam Ali (AS) and Hazrat Abdul Rehman bin Awf (RA). Hazrat Usman (RA) voted in favor of Hazrat Ali (RA) and Hazrat Ali (RA) voted in favor of Hazrat Usman (RA) and it was then that Hazrat Abdul Rehman (RA) withdrew his candidature. The tie remained and the next Caliph had to be decided by Hazrat Abdul Rehman’s (RA) vote. He favored Hazrat Usman (RA) and gave his oath of allegiance to Hazrat Usman (RA). Everyone else followed making Hazrat Usman (RA) the new caliph.
According to Shias, the election should not have taken place at all and also refute that Hazrat Ali (RA) gave his allegiance to Hazrat Usman (RA).
It was a surprise victory for Hazrat Usman (RA). He was already quite old and his soft, modest nature was did not seem to be a match for Hazrat Omar’s rigour and zeal. He knew he a had tough task ahead to win the hearts of war-hardened Muslims. But he had plans for certain reforms:
One of the first things that he did was to increase the stipend of war widows and also devised mechanisms for collection and distribution of zakaat. He used the skills that he had learned as a successful trader and lifted the ban placed by Hazrat Omar (RA) on the sale of agricultural lands in occupied territories. He developed a ‘filing system’ whereby each every correspondance was efficiently documented, even from the time of Hazrat Omar (RA) and it was during his Caliphate that the first Muslim coins were introduced. As the business flourished and money started to flow in for the Muslims, the strict austere measures ensured by Hazrat Omar (RA) started to relax. He allowed Muslims to construct large, lavish buildings and also own more property than they needed for their own personal use. Although it was a move to make the muslims more affluent, it shattered Hazrat Omar’s (RA) desire to keep the muslims sternly austere. It is a well known fact that a small group of Sahabas stayed away from all the luxuries and stayed in their simple houses in Medina.
Hazrat Usman’s (RA) reign as a Caliph saw the construction of 5 new mosques and an extension of both Masjid-ul-Haram and Masjid-al-Nabawi. One of his greatest contributions ever would be the copy of Quran that we have today. Although it had been carefully compiled during the reign of Hazrat Abu Bakar (RA), its only copy was with Hazrat Hafsa (RA). During his reign, several Muslim centers started to develop their own versions of the Qur’an and Hazrat Usman (RA) feared that the changes would lead to much greater problems in the future. Thus, he got several different copies of the Qur’an developed from Hazrat Hafsa’s (RA) copy and sent each one of them to different cities. All different versions of the Qur’an were burnt.
When’s the next update?
tomorrow i think, its a difficult one!