Note 432 — Chapter XXIX · ELECTION OF OTHMAN. DZUL HIJJ, A.H. XXIII.—MOHARRAM, A.H. XXIX. NOVEMBER, A.D. 644.

When some one proposed his son Abdallah, Omar was angry and declared that the government had been long enough in his family. ‘Besides’ (alluding apparently to some scandal in his domestic life) ‘how could I appoint a man who was so weak as not to divorce his wife?’ They say, also, that Omar once praised Sâlim, the freedman of Hodzeifa, slain at Yemâma, as one who would have been fit for the Caliphate—‘a man beloved of the Prophet, and a lover of the Lord.’ But this could only have been as a mere figure of speech.