Uthman Returns and Refuses to Circle the Ka'bah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

News that the Muslims had taken the Pledge of al-Riḍwān reached Makkah, and Quraysh, rattled, according to al-Bayhaqī's Dalāʾil that they trembled at word of it, hurried ʿUthmān back. As he approached, some Companions supposed aloud that ʿUthmān, having been let into Makkah under protection, must surely have taken the chance to perform ṭawāf, and even envied him it, so deep was their longing, after six years, to see the Kaʿbah. The Prophet ﷺ answered, "Lā aẓunnuhu yafʿal" (لَا أَظُنُّهُ يَفْعَلُ, "I do not think he would do that"): ʿUthmān's own manners would never let him circle the House while the Prophet ﷺ and the Muslims were barred outside.

When ʿUthmān arrived and the Companions gathered round, one asked, half in jest, whether he had satisfied himself with the Kaʿbah. He replied that it was an evil thought, that he would sooner have stayed in Makkah a whole year than perform ṭawāf before the Prophet ﷺ did. Dr. Qadhi reads in this both the depth of ʿUthmān's adab toward the Prophet ﷺ and, in the Companions' envy, how intensely they revered the House of Allah and yearned to honour its rites, a longing worth measuring one's own eagerness against.