ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Nawfal related: “I was travelling with Muʿāwiyah when he was returning from Ṣiffīn, I walking between him and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ. ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr then said, ‘Father, did you not hear the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say to ʿAmmār:
“Woe to you, son of Sumayyah! The rebellious faction will kill you”?’
ʿAmr thereupon said to Muʿāwiyah, ‘Do you not hear what he is saying?’ Muʿāwiyah replied, ‘You never cease confronting us with these bothersome things! Did we kill him? It was the people who brought him [to the battlefield] who killed him.’
Imām Aḥmad also transmitted this report through Abū Nuʿaym, from al-Thawrī, from al-Aʿmash, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ziyād, with identical wording (1)(2).
Muʿāwiyah’s assertion—‘He was killed by the one who put him before our swords’—is an exceedingly far-fetched interpretation. Were that valid, every commander would be deemed the killer of those who fall fighting for the sake of Allah, for he is the one who sets them before the enemy’s blades.
ʿAbd al-Razzaq reported: Ibn ʿUyaynah informed us, telling me from ʿAmr ibn Dīnār, from Ibn Abī Mulaykah, from al-Miswar ibn Makhramah, that ʿUmar said to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf: ‘Do you not know that we used to recite the verse “And strive for Allah with the striving that is due to Him” (al-Ḥajj 22:78) in the latter days just as you strove in the first?’ ʿAbd al-Raḥmān asked, ‘When will that be, Commander of the Believers?’ He replied, ‘When the sons of Umayyah are the rulers and the sons of al-Mughīrah are the ministers.’
Al-Bayhaqī cites this narration here, apparently using it as evidence for the chapter he next establishes concerning the two arbiters and what befell them, entitling it:
‘Chapter: What has been reported of the Prophet’s ﷺ foretelling of the two arbiters who were appointed in the time of ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him).’
He then relates: ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdān informed us; Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd al-Ṣaffār informed us; Ismāʿīl ibn al-Faḍl narrated to us; Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd narrated to us, from Jarīr, from Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd and Ḥabīb ibn Yasār, from Suwayd ibn Ghafalah, who said: ‘I was walking with ʿAlī along the bank of the Euphrates when he said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“Indeed, the Children of Israel differed among themselves, and their disagreement persisted until they appointed two arbiters who went astray and led astray all who followed them. Likewise, this community will differ, and their disagreement will continue among them until they appoint two arbiters who will go astray and lead astray all who follow them.”’ (3)
Al-Bayhaqī reproduces it exactly thus, without explaining any part of it. The report, however, is very weak; its flaw lies with this Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā—the blind al-Kindī—of whom Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said, ‘He is nothing.’
In reality, the two arbiters were among the best of the Companions: ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ al-Sahmī on behalf of the Syrians, and Abū Mūsā ʿAbd Allāh ibn Qays al-Ashʿarī on behalf of the Iraqis.