He was in truth no fit man for the caliphate; all his zeal leaned toward amusement and singing-girls.
It is said that after Ḥabāba’s death he strolled through his palace with a slave-girl who recited:
Sorrow enough for the distraught, love-stricken heart
To see the lodgings of the one it longs for empty and forlorn.
At the verse he screamed, fell unconscious, and died a few days later.
One report states that he died in the countryside of the Jordan district, having succumbed to a form of consumption.
Abū Mushir said he died in Irbid.
Others relate that his death occurred on the twenty-fifth of Shaʿbān in the year 105 AH.
Thus his reign lasted four years and one month.
He bequeathed the caliphate to his brother Hishām, and after him to his own son al-Walīd ibn Yazīd—the little reprobate—and he left behind eleven sons.
- Kuthayyir ʿAzzah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Aswad al-Khuzaʿī
One of the foremost poets. He bore the kunya Abū Ṣakhr and was a Medinan by origin.
He composed panegyrics for ʿAbd al-Malik and other leading figures.
Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār said: “He was a Shīʿī who believed in the transmigration of souls; he was also a khashabī (1) who affirmed the doctrine of the return. He was passionately enamoured of ʿAzzah and celebrated her in his verse. Some critics place him ahead of al-Farazdaq and the other great poets.”
He and ʿIkrimah died on the same day, in the year 107 AH.