The Rightly Guided Caliphs: ‛Uthmān

‛Uthmān ibn Άffān served as caliph from 644 to 656. His primary historical significance is not in further conquests, though the Muslims did expand their control over the remains of the Sasanian (Persian) Empire during his caliphate. The Muslims also took Cypress from the Byzantine Empire and expanded their northern African territories west to Tripoli. In a real sense, it was ‛Uthmān who made possible the beginnings of Muslim theology, because it was at his direction that the Qur'ān was made into a standardized written work.

The written Qur'ān

Prior to that time, the revelations of the Prophet had been preserved in oral form. Today, we tend to think immediately of how accurately the original versions had been transmitted. And, of course, that was a consideration during ‛Uthmān's reign as well. But, unaccustomed as we are today to the oral tradition in such matters, it's easy to underestimate how well oral tradition can preserve such sayings. There were a whole group of Qur'ān reciters who preserved and carefully studied the sayings.

Hans Küng in Der Islam (2004) discusses the nature of the Qur'ān with reference to current methods of Biblical criticism and analysis. One difference is important to keep in mind in thinking of comparing the Qur'ān to the Christian Gospels and the transmitted sayings and stories about Jesus. Whatever the nature of their respective connections to the divine, Jesus in his human role was a carpenter and a charismatic preacher in a backwater province of the Roman Empire, while Muhammad was the leader of a major political movement. In purely secular historical terms, it's likely that the sayings of Muhammad were preserved in something closer to their original forms than those of Jesus, although Jesus' followers had a strong motivation to preserve his sayings, as well.

The codification of the Qur'ān into a standard form reduced the power of the group of "Qur'ān readers" who had grown up as an influential part of the religious community. As Karen Armstrong writes in Islam (2000):

The Quran-reciters, who knew the scripture by heart and had become the chief religious authorities, were also incensed when Uthman insisted that only one version of the sacred text be used in the garrison towns, and suppressed variants, which many of them preferred, but which differed in minor details.

‛Uthmān's governing strategy

‛Uthmān's politics involved centralizing the administration of the caliphate. And one of the major factors in the Muslim successes were the caliphs' willingness to adapt the useful administrative and governmental institutions of the conquered Byzantine and Sasanian (Persian) areas. But, as Küng points out, the centralized administration was also mixed with his strong suport of his own Umayyad family. The legitimacy issues of that time have not gone away, because within a few years they would porduce the Shi'a branch of Islam, the second largest branch of the faith today.
But although ‛Uthmān recognized the need for a more centralized administration for the large empire they were building, he himself was not a particulary efficient caliph. Or, as Küng puts it, he "did not represent the energetic leaderhip personality those times required."

‛Uthmān's policies of centralism and nepotism began to draw active and vocal opposition among Muslims who thought adherence to the faith should carry greater weight than traditional familial ties. In 656, a group of dissidents from various parts of the caliphate gathered in Mecca to protest outside the caliph's residence. A group of Egyptian dissidents broke into the house and killed ‛Uthmān.

The religious development of Islam

The theological emphasis in the Qur'ān is on God and the responsibility of human beings. The question of how to understand the ultimate power of God in relationship to the responsibility of humanity to act rightly and our power to choose has always been the "core problem" of Muslimm theology, says Küng.

The Islamic religioius traditions, or "sunna," were initially very localized, often merging Islamic ideas with local practices and viewpoints. And at this time there was no unified Muslim legal tradition.

The Qur'ān itself is not a legal manual. Islamic law at this time was primarily directed at administering the conquered territories. In this, the Muslims largely adapted the legal practices of the conquered territories. Küng notes grimly that during this period one of the legal practices adopted was stoning as a punishment for adultery, an "innovation with fatal aftereffects into our own time."

Küng summarizes the legal admixture developed in this time as follows: "So then Roman-Byzantine as well as Talmudic-rabbinical and finally also Sasanian-Persian concepts became part of the developing Islamic law." In Küng's six-paradigm model of the development of Islam, the period of the Rightly Guided Caliphs is part of the first paradigm, the "original Islamic community" paradigm. In this paradigm, one cannot speak of "a specific Islamic law in the narrow sense of the concept." The following period, that of the Umayyad dynasty, would see major developments in Islamic law.

Tags: islam, hans küng's der islam, karen armstrong, quran, rightly guided caliphs, uthman