in Egypt in the year 84 AH, whereupon ʿAbd al-Malik invested his two sons, al-Walīd and Sulaymān, with the covenant of succession and dispatched letters to every province instructing the people to pledge allegiance to them. At that time his governor over Medina was Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl al-Makhzūmī.

Hishām summoned the townspeople to give the pledge, and they complied, but Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib refused, saying, “I shall wait and see.” Hishām therefore flogged him with sixty lashes and paraded him through the city in a tubbān of hair-cloth until they reached the crest of the Thaniyya. When they turned back with him he asked, “Where are you taking me now?” They said, “To the prison.” He replied, “By Allah, had I not thought you were going to crucify me, I would never have put on this loincloth.”

They brought him back and locked him up, and Hishām wrote to ʿAbd al-Malik informing him of Saʿīd’s refusal. ʿAbd al-Malik wrote back, reproaching him for what he had done: “Saʿīd—by Allah—needed you to maintain kinship with him far more than he needed to be struck, and we know he nurses no rebellion.” (1)

Abu Bakr ibn Abī Sabrah told me, on the authority of al-Miswar ibn Rifāʿah, that Qabīṣah ibn Dhuʾayb entered upon ʿAbd al-Malik with Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl’s letter describing how he had beaten Saʿīd and paraded him. Qabīṣah said, “O Commander of the Believers, Hishām is taking such matters into his own hands! By Allah, Saʿīd is never more frail, nor more unyielding, than when he is being flogged. If he should refuse to pledge, nothing would come of it; he is not one whose dissent need be feared. Write to him, O Commander of the Believers.”

ʿAbd al-Malik answered, “Write to him yourself on my behalf. Tell him how I view the matter and that Hishām’s beating of him was against my wishes.”

Qabīṣah wrote accordingly to Saʿīd, and when Saʿīd read the letter he said, “Allah will judge between me and the one who has wronged me.” (2)

ʿAbd Allah ibn Yazīd al-Hudhalī narrated: I entered upon Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib in prison and saw that a sheep had been slaughtered for him; its skin had been laid over his back, and fresh rods were set beside him. Whenever he looked at his upper arms he would say, “O Allah, grant me victory over Hishām.”