Mujālid transmitted, on the authority of al-Shaʿbī, who said:
“The master strategists (duhāt) of the Arabs are four: Muʿāwiyah, ʿAmr, al-Mughīrah, and Ziyād. Muʿāwiyah is noted for deliberation and forbearance; ʿAmr, for unravelling the most demanding dilemmas; al-Mughīrah, for swift, surprise action; and Ziyād, for managing affairs both minor and major.”

Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (1) said: “In the pre-Islamic era ʿAmr ranked among the horsemen and champions of Quraysh, and they were unanimous in praising him for that.”

He was also a poet of fine verse; many of his lines have been preserved from various occasions. Among them are:
“If a man never shuns a dish he fancies,
Nor reins a wayward heart wherever it may roam,
He may sate his craving yet leave behind a stigma
That, once recalled, will fill the mouths with blame.” (2)

He was older than ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and would say, “I still remember the very night on which ʿUmar was born.”

We have already presented a number of his accounts in al-Maghāzī, in the story of his mission to the Negus, in the biography of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, and in the annals, including his conquest of the province of Egypt and his governorship there during ʿUmar’s caliphate and the early years of ʿUthmān’s rule.

Later, Muʿāwiyah reinstated him over the province and granted him its entire revenues for six years in recognition of the support he had given him, yet under Muʿāwiyah’s authority he actually governed Egypt for only a little more than two years.

He left behind enormous hoards of gold—heaps upon heaps.

I have set down a further selection of his reports in my Tārīkh al-Islām (3), and the ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir composed an extensive biography of him. (4)