at the beginning of Ramadan in the year 65 AH.

Mālik said: “Marwān once reflected and exclaimed, ‘For forty years I have been reciting the Book of Allah, and now I find myself spilling blood and caught up in these affairs (1)!’ ”

Ibn Saʿd said: “People faulted ʿUthmān for bringing Marwān close and for the way he handled matters.”

Marwān fought on the Day of the Camel with extraordinary ferocity. When he saw the defeat (2), he loosed an arrow at Ṭalḥah and killed him. Marwān himself was wounded that day, so he was carried to a woman’s house where they treated him, and he went into hiding. ʿAlī granted him safe-conduct; Marwān gave him the pledge of allegiance and was sent back to Madinah.

On the day of al-Ḥarra he stood beside Musrif ibn ʿUqbah, egging him on to fight the people of Madinah.

He secured the allegiance for his two sons—ʿAbd al-Malik and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—after him, dissuaded the people from supporting Khālid ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah, belittled him, and one day reviled him outright. Marwān was married to Khālid’s mother, who then nursed a grudge against him. While he was asleep she, together with her maidservants, pounced on him and smothered him with a pillow, sitting on its edges until he died; they screamed, and it was assumed that he had passed away suddenly (3).

Others said that he died of the plague.

103 – Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥudhayfah, Abū al-Qāsim al-ʿAbshamī*
He was the emir, Abū al-Qāsim al-ʿAbshamī, one of the noblemen; he was born to his father after the latter had emigrated