Uthman ibn Affan’s Staff and the Reported Affliction of Jahjah

Classical Sunni works preserve an episode involving Uthman ibn Affan, may Allah be pleased with him, while he was standing on the pulpit. A man called Jahjah al-Ghifari came forward, took a staff from Uthman’s hand, and broke it. In the version recorded by al-Lalaka'i, Jahjah broke the staff across his own knee. Other classical reports preserve the same central act even when some surrounding details are worded differently.

The account then turns to the consequence that made the incident memorable. The sources say that Jahjah was struck by an affliction called al-akila after breaking the staff. Several versions place the affliction in his knee. Abu Nu'aym preserves another report from Ibn Umar in which al-akila is said to have affected Jahjah’s hand, and that version adds that he died from it before a full year had passed. Ibn Asakir also preserves a report from Ibn Umar in which the breaking of the staff is followed by the appearance of al-akila.

The way classical authors arranged the story is also significant. Al-Lalaka'i placed the incident in his section on the karamat of Uthman ibn Affan, while Abu Nu'aym included the Ibn Umar report among the extraordinary signs associated with Uthman. In these works, the event is therefore remembered not simply as a quarrel over a staff, but as a striking sequence in which an act committed against Uthman was followed by a severe and destructive affliction.

The narrations do not give every detail in exactly the same form. Some place al-akila in the knee and another places it in the hand. A number of later reports also add that the staff had belonged to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and remained in use among the caliphs, while other versions simply describe a staff held by Uthman. The old term al-akila is therefore best left as the disease-name found in the sources themselves; those reports do not identify it with a specific modern medical diagnosis.

The story closes with the same memorable order preserved across the classical material: Uthman ibn Affan was on the pulpit, Jahjah took and broke the staff, al-akila was then reported to have struck him, and some reports from Ibn Umar add that he died within about a year. Sunni authors who preserved the account treated it as an extraordinary sign or karamah connected with Uthman, while the differing details of hand, knee, and staff provenance remain separate parts of the transmitted record.