…in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī,(1) then Muʿāwiyah, then his son Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah, then his son Muʿāwiyah ibn Yazīd, then Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, then his son ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, then his son al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, then Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, then ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, then Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, and then Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik.

These are fifteen; add to them al-Walīd ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. Should the authority of Ibn al-Zubayr before ʿAbd al-Malik also be taken into account, the total becomes sixteen. In any event, they are twelve before ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. According to this reckoning Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah would be numbered among the twelve, while ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—whom all the leading scholars unanimously praised, ranked among the rightly guided caliphs, and whose justice is universally acknowledged, to the point that even the Rāfiḍites concede it—would be excluded.

If someone were to say, “I will only include those over whom the entire Ummah was united,” he would, on that basis, be obliged to exclude ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and his son, because the people of Syria in their entirety did not pledge allegiance to them. Meanwhile, he would count Muʿāwiyah, his son Yazīd, and his grandson Muʿāwiyah ibn Yazīd, and he would disregard the days of Marwān and Ibn al-Zubayr, for the Ummah did not agree upon either of them. Proceeding along those lines, he would list the caliphs as: Abū Bakr, then ʿUmar, then ʿUthmān, then Muʿāwiyah, then Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah,(2) then ʿAbd al-Malik, then al-Walīd, then Sulaymān, then ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, then Yazīd, then Hishām. These are twelve, after whom comes al-Walīd ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, the profligate. Yet this approach is untenable, for it necessarily removes ʿAlī and his son al-Ḥasan from the twelve, a conclusion that contradicts the explicit statements of the Imams of Ahl al-Sunnah—and indeed of the Shiʿah as well.

It also runs counter to the explicit wording of the ḥadith of Safīnah, in which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“The caliphate after me will last thirty years; thereafter it will be a biting monarchy.”(3)

Safīnah himself explained how those thirty years were made up of the rule of the four, and we have already shown that the caliphate of al-Ḥasan—about six months—falls within that period as well. Afterward, sovereignty passed to Muʿāwiyah when al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī relinquished the matter to him. This ḥadith therefore forbids calling Muʿāwiyah a caliph and shows that the caliphate came to an end after the thirty-year span—not absolutely, but in the sense that its continuous succession ceased—without denying that rightly guided caliphs might still appear later on, as the ḥadith of Jābir ibn Samurah indicates.

Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād said: Rāshid ibn Saʿd narrated to us, from Ibn Luhayʿah, from Khālid ibn Abī ʿImrān, from Ḥudhayfah ibn al-Yamān, who said:

“There will be after ʿUthmān twelve kings from the sons of Umayyah.”

Someone asked him, “Caliphs?” He replied, “No—rather, kings.”(4)

Al-Bayhaqī also narrated—from Ḥātim ibn [Abī Ṣughayrah], from Abū Baḥr—who said: “Abū al-Jald was a neighbor…"