so join al-Hasan ibn Muʿāwiyah, your deputy in Mecca.’

He replied, ‘If I leave, these people will be slaughtered; therefore I shall not withdraw. As for you, you are released from any obligation to me.’

It is also reported that more than one person adjured him by Allah, yet he kept saying, ‘By Allah, you will not be put to trial through me twice.’ (1)

He then killed Riyāḥ and ʿAbbās ibn ʿUthmān, (2) and the people came to detest him. After performing the ʿAṣr prayer he hamstrung his horse, and the men of Banū Shujāʿ hamstrung their mounts and smashed the scabbards of their swords. He charged and routed the enemy twice, but some of them wheeled round behind him. Ḥumayd ibn Qaḥṭaba closed in on Muhammad, killed him, and severed his head. Muhammad had been carrying the Messenger of Allah’s ﷺ sword, Dhū l-Fiqār; an arrow struck him, death overtook him, and the sword was broken.

That account is not sound, however. Rather, it is said that he had already given the sword to a man who owed him four hundred dinars, telling him, ‘You will not meet any descendant of the Prophet’s family without his taking it from you and paying you what you are owed.’ When Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān later became governor of Medina, he took the sword from the man and settled the debt.

Muhammad fell at Ahjār al-Zayt on the fourteenth of Ramadan in 145 AH. Al-Wāqidī said that he lived fifty-three years. Another report states that several of his companions were crucified and that his head was carried about.

Ibn Ḥazm remarked: ‘A faction of the Jārūdiyya maintained that he neither died nor will die until he fills the earth with justice.’

He left four children: Ḥasan, ʿAbd Allāh, Fāṭima, and Zaynab.

106 – Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥasan al-ʿAlawī, the one who rose in Basra when his brother rebelled in Medina.