Ibn Isḥāq, quoting his father, said: “I saw Muʿāwiyah at al-Abṭaḥ with head and beard completely white, as though he had suffered hemiplegia (1).

Muṣʿab al-Zubayrī related that Muʿāwiyah used to say, “I embraced Islam in the Year of al-Qaḍiyyah.”

Ibn Saʿd reported: Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar told us, Abu Bakr ibn Abī Sabrah told me, from ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAnsī, that Muʿāwiyah said, “When the year of al-Ḥudaybiyah came and they barred the Messenger of Allah ﷺ from the Sacred House and the truce was written between them, faith settled in my heart. I mentioned this to my mother, and she said, ‘Beware of opposing your father.’ So I concealed my Islam. By Allah, the Messenger of Allah had departed from al-Ḥudaybiyah while I already believed in him, and he entered Mecca the next year for the compensatory ʿumrah while I was a Muslim. When Abu Sufyān learned of my Islam he said to me one day, ‘Your brother is better than you; he is still on my religion.’ I answered, ‘I have not neglected what is best for myself.’ I openly professed my Islam on the Day of the Conquest; the Prophet ﷺ welcomed me, and I served as his scribe (2).”

Al-Wāqidī then said: “He accompanied the Prophet at Ḥunayn, and the Prophet gave him one hundred camels and forty uqiyyahs of silver from the spoils.”

I say: Al-Wāqidī does not know what he is talking about. If Muʿāwiyah, as he transmits, had been an early Muslim, why would the Prophet ﷺ have offered him conciliatory gifts? And had the Prophet really given him such wealth, he would not have said—when Muʿāwiyah proposed to Fāṭimah bint Qays—“As for Muʿāwiyah, he is a pauper who has no money” (3).

Al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ghallābī (4) transmitted from Abu al-Ḥasan al-Kūfī that Zayd (5)