I say: Jerusalem was opened after his death, in the caliphate of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. Thereafter the great plague struck al-Shām—the Plague of ʿAmwās—also during ʿUmar’s rule, and it claimed Muʿādh ibn Jabal, Abū ʿUbaydah ibn al-Jar­rāḥ, and a multitude of others. That was the first plague to afflict the Muslims, exactly as he had foretold when he said they would be seized by a plague like the one that attacks sheep. Next, wealth poured forth in the caliphate of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān: a man would be handed one hundred dinars yet still be displeased, and money became so plentiful that a horse could be bought for its weight. Then the all-embracing civil strife broke out—there was not an Arab household it did not enter—when ʿUthmān was killed, and the conflict erupted among the Muslims, or rather among the rulers,