The Breaking of Uthman ibn Affan’s Staff and the Reported Punitive Affliction

Classical reports preserve an incident from the time of Uthman ibn Affan, may Allah be pleased with him, in which a man called Jahjah al-Ghifari confronted him while he was on the pulpit. The man took a staff from Uthman’s hand and broke it. Al-Lalaka'i’s version adds that Jahjah broke the staff across his own knee. Other routes preserve the same core act without requiring every surrounding detail to be identical.

The extraordinary element in the report comes afterward. The sources state that Jahjah was struck by an affliction called al-akila. Some versions place the affliction in his knee, while Abu Nu'aym’s connected route through Malik, from Nafi, from Ibn Umar places it in his hand and adds that he died from it before a year had passed. Ibn Asakir also preserves a connected Ibn Umar route through Ubayd Allah ibn Umar and Nafi in which the breaking of the staff is followed by the onset of al-akila.

These route differences matter because the event should not be presented as though every source gives one perfectly uniform description. Al-Lalaka'i includes the incident in his section on the karamat of Uthman, but his own route through Sulayman ibn Yasar is not a direct eyewitness chain to the event. The core report is strengthened by separate connected preservation through Ibn Umar, including the route used by Abu Nu'aym and another preserved by Ibn Asakir. Ibn Hajar also records more than one transmission through Nafi from Ibn Umar, showing that the incident circulated through multiple connected routes.

Later versions add further details, including the claim that the staff had belonged to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and remained in use by the caliphs. Because that provenance is not equally present in the core routes, it should remain a secondary variant rather than become the center of the public story. Likewise, the exact biographical identification of every person called Jahjah is not necessary to the event itself.

The strongest evidence-based conclusion is therefore measured: classical sources report that Jahjah broke the staff taken from Uthman, that a destructive affliction called al-akila followed, and that some connected Ibn Umar routes add his death within about a year. Classical Sunni authors framed the event as an extraordinary sign or karamah associated with Uthman. The sources do not establish a modern medical diagnosis for al-akila, and they do not justify presenting the differing hand and knee versions as if they were one identical detail.