and thus the charge of anonymity is lifted from him completely.
I say, however, that there is room for doubt as to whether he actually witnessed the incident involving al-Ḥasan and Muʿāwiyah; he may have transmitted it in mursal fashion from someone who is not reliable—and Allah knows best.
I asked our shaykh, the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Ḥajjāj al-Mizzī (may Allah have mercy on him) about this ḥadīth, and he said: “It is a munkar ḥadīth.”
As for the remark of al-Qāsim ibn al-Faḍl (may Allah have mercy on him) that he calculated the Umayyad dominion and found it to be precisely one thousand months, not a day more and not a day less, this is exceedingly odd and open to objection. One cannot possibly include within that period the caliphate of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (may Allah be pleased with him), which lasted twelve years—neither in outward form nor in substance—for his tenure is praiseworthy, he being one of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the just Imams who judged by the truth and acted with justice.
Moreover, this ḥadīth was advanced only to censure their dynasty, yet even its supposed indication of censure is doubtful. What it establishes is merely that the Night of Power is better than the thousand months that constitute their rule, and the Night of Power is itself a night of goodness, immense worth, and abundant blessing, as Allah the Exalted has described it. Preferring that blessed night to their reign therefore does not necessarily entail condemnation of their reign. Reflect on this, for it is a subtle point that shows there is reason to question the authenticity of the ḥadīth, since it was narrated solely to disparage their period of rule. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, knows best.
If, on the other hand, one begins their dynasty from the time Muʿāwiyah assumed the caliphate after receiving it from al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, that took place in the year 40—or 41—AH, a year known as “the Year of Unity,” because on that occasion all the Muslims gathered behind one imām. The ḥadīth related in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī from Abū Bakrah has already been cited: he heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say concerning al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, “This son of mine is indeed a leader, and perhaps Allah will, through him, reconcile two great factions of the Muslims.” (1) This came to pass in that very year—praise and favor belong to Allah.
The authority of the Banū Umayyah then remained unbroken from that year until 132 AH, when it passed to the Banū al-ʿAbbās, as we shall relate (2). The total comes to ninety-two years, which does not correspond to one thousand months, for a thousand months equal eighty-three years and four months.
Should someone object, “I will subtract from that the reign of Ibn al-Zubayr, which lasted nine years; this leaves eighty-three years,” the reply is that, even after excluding Ibn al-Zubayr’s term, what remains still does not match a thousand months with the exactitude—“not a day more nor a day less”—that he asserted; it is only an approximation. This is one answer.
A second answer is that Ibn al-Zubayr’s authority covered the Ḥijāz, Ahwāz, and Iraq during part of his rule, and, according to some, Egypt as well, while the Umayyads never lost their grip on Syria, nor was their dominion extinguished altogether at that time.
A third answer is that such a reckoning would inevitably include the reign of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz within the Umayyad span, and the implication of what he claimed would be that ʿUmar’s rule was blameworthy. No imam of Islam holds this view; on the contrary, they explicitly declare that he was one of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, even ranking his days as a continuation of theirs.