The minister Abū ʿUbayd Allāh related: al-Manṣūr once asked me, “What did your Syrian elders used to say?”
I replied, “I found them saying that when a man is invested as caliph, whatever sins he has already committed are forgiven.”
He said, “Indeed—by Allah—and what is yet to come as well (1)! Do you know what the caliph is? Through him the prayer is established, the pilgrimage carried out, jihad pursued, and the enemy confronted …”
He then listed so many virtues of the caliphate that I had never heard anyone mention their like, and he added, “By Allah (2), had I known in the Umayyad era what I know today of the caliph’s due, I would have gone to one of their men and pledged allegiance to him.”
His son asked, “Was al-Walīd one of them?”
He replied, “May Allah disgrace al-Walīd and the one who seated him on the caliphal throne!”
[The son] said, “And was Marwān one of them?”
He answered, “By Allah, what a man he was—how resolute, politically astute, and scrupulous he was concerning the fayʾ (state booty)!”
The son said, “Then why did you kill him?”
He said, “Because of a matter that had already been decreed in Allah’s knowledge, exalted be He.”
Khalīfa (3) reports: Marwān marched out to fight the al-musawwida (4) with one hundred and fifty thousand men and encamped near Mosul. There he and ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī, al-Manṣūr’s uncle, met in Jumādā II of the year 132 AH; Marwān’s forces were routed and he fled. ʿAbd Allāh then seized al-Jazīrah, advanced upon Syria, and Marwān fled to Palestine. When he heard that Damascus had fallen, he made for Egypt and pressed on toward Upper Egypt. They caught up with him and attacked him by night at Būṣīr, where he fought until he was killed.
He lived sixty-two years and was slain in Dhū l-Ḥijjah of 132 AH. With his death the Umayyad caliphate came to an end, and al-Saffāḥ had already been given the oath of allegiance nine months before Marwān al-Ḥimār’s demise.
One illustration of Marwān’s despotism was that Yazīd ibn Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī, the governor, had