38 – With his chain of transmission he related: A group of Quraysh once said, “We do not think anything has ever made Muʿāwiyah lose his temper.” Some replied, “Yes—mention his mother and he grows angry.” Mālik ibn Asmāʾ al-Munā al-Qurashī—his mother, nicknamed al-Munā because of her beauty—said, “By Allah, I shall provoke him if you promise me a reward.”

That year Muʿāwiyah had come to the pilgrimage, so Mālik approached him and said, “Commander of the Faithful, how strikingly your eyes resemble your mother’s.” Muʿāwiyah answered, “Those are the very eyes that so often pleased Abū Sufyān. Nephew, find out what you were promised, take it, and do not turn us into a marketplace.” The youth went back and collected his fee.

One of the men then said to him, “I will give you twice what you have just received if you go to ʿAmr ibn al-Zubayr and liken him to his mother.” So he went and said, “Son of al-Zubayr, how much your face resembles your mother’s!” ʿAmr ordered that he be beaten, and they struck him until he died.

Muʿāwiyah sent the blood money to the victim’s mother with these lines:

Say to Asmāʾ al-Munā, the mother of Mālik:
By the life of God, it was I who had Mālik slain.