Uthman's Mission Into Makkah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

After ʿUmar declined to go himself, fearing his well-known enmity with Quraysh and having no clan left in Makkah to protect him, and nominated the nobler, gentler ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the Prophet ﷺ sent ʿUthmān into Makkah. ʿUthmān's Umayyad lineage placed him close to the Qurashī elite: descended from Umayya (whose brother was Hāshim), he was only four generations removed from the common ancestor, far nearer than Abū Bakr or ʿUmar, and a relative of Abū Sufyān, by then the city's leading figure.

Approaching by the road of Baldaḥ, ʿUthmān was stopped and mocked by the Qurashī guards, who told him there was no hope of entry and no room to negotiate. He was about to turn back when his own first cousin, Abbān ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ, an older, well-respected man, intervened. Dr. Qadhi notes that in Jāhilī custom, entry to the city required a sponsor's protection (amān), effectively a visa. Abbān dismounted, placed ʿUthmān on his own horse and saddle as a public mark of honour, pledged to protect him, and personally escorted him through Makkah to meet its leaders.

ʿUthmān met Abū Sufyān and the other chiefs, but every one of them repeated the same refrain, that they would never let it be said among the Arabs that the Muslims had forced their way in, and refused entry that year. The Prophet ﷺ had also instructed ʿUthmān, if he could get in, to seek out the Muslim converts still trapped in Makkah, those held in chains and tortured, unable to emigrate, and tell them that Allah was aware of their plight and would soon make a way out for them. ʿUthmān found and reassured them. Then, for reasons unrecorded, his mission dragged on far longer than anyone expected, likely the whole of a day as he met leader after leader, and no word of him reached the Muslim camp, a silence that would soon give rise to a fateful rumour.