When they had surrounded him and were about to put him to death, he cried out, “Woe to you—do not kill me! For we find in our books that whoever dares to slay kings, Allah punishes him with fire (1) in this world in addition to what awaits him hereafter. Spare me, and take me instead to the governor or to the Arabs, for they are ashamed to execute kings.” They refused, stripped the ornaments he was wearing, stuffed them into a sack, throttled him with a bow-string, and cast him into the river. His body caught on a branch, where a bishop named Ilyā discovered it. Remembering the kindness former Persian rulers had shown the Christians who lived among them, he took pity on the corpse, placed it in a coffin, and laid it in a mausoleum. The jewelry was then sent to the Commander of the Believers, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, but one earring was missing (2); he therefore summoned the dehqān of that district and made him pay for it.
Yazdegerd’s reign lasted twenty years—four of them in ease, the remainder (3) spent fleeing from land to land in fear of Islam and its people. He was the last Persian monarch ever to rule on earth, fulfilling the words of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him): “When Caesar dies, there will be no Caesar after him; when Kisra dies, there will be no Kisra after him. By Him in Whose hand is my soul, their treasures shall surely be spent in the path of Allah,” narrated by al-Bukhari (4). A sound hadith (5) also states that when the Prophet’s letter reached him, he tore it up; whereupon the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) prayed that Allah would tear him to pieces—and so it happened.
In the same year Ibn ʿĀmir captured many towns whose inhabitants had broken their treaty: some he took by force, others he accepted on renewed terms. Among the cities that concluded peace with him was Marw, for a payment of two million two hundred thousand—others say six million two hundred thousand. That year ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (may Allah be pleased with him) led the people in the pilgrimage.
[The year 32 AH then began]
In it Muʿāwiya campaigned against Byzantine territory until he reached the Narrows—the strait of Constantinople—with his wife ʿĀtika; some say she was Fāṭima bint Qurṭa, daughter of ʿAbd (ʿAmr ibn) Nawfal ibn ʿAbd Manāf, as related by Abū Maʿshar and al-Wāqidī.
That same year Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ placed Salmān ibn Rabīʿa in command of an army, ordering him to attack al-Bāb and writing to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rabīʿa, the regional deputy, to assist him. Salmān marched until he reached Balanjar, laid siege to it, and siege engines were set up against the town.