Others said that he died while still owing eighty thousand dinars.
Saʿīd once observed: “Hearts are prone to change; a man ought not to be an admirer today and a detractor tomorrow.”
Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār reports: “Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ died in his palace at al-ʿArṣa, three miles from Madinah, and was carried to al-Baqīʿ in the year 59 AH.” Khalīfa and several others recorded that same date.
Musaddad, however, maintained that he died in the same year as Abū Hurayrah, namely 57 or 58 AH, while Abū Maʿshar fixed it at 58 AH.
It is also said that after his father’s death, ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ al-Ashdaq went to Muʿāwiyah and sold him the family residence and orchard at al-ʿArṣa for three hundred thousand dirhams—some say for one million. This, too, was reported by al-Zubayr.
About that very spot ʿAmr ibn al-Walīd ibn ʿUqbah recited:
“The palace with its palms, their tender spathes above them,
is dearer to the soul than the gates of Girūn.” (1)
Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ was moreover one of the men whom ʿUthmān enlisted to write the muṣḥaf;