We have transmitted that Muʿāwiyah once declared in a sermon:
“O Allah, if You know that I appointed him because, in my judgment, he is qualified for the office, then perfect for him what I have assigned to him. But if You know that I appointed him only out of love for him, then do not perfect for him what I have assigned.”
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir relates (1) that Muʿāwiyah passed an evening in conversation during which his companions discussed the sort of woman who bears a distinguished child. After they had described her qualities, Muʿāwiyah said, “I wish I knew of a woman of that description!” One of those present replied, “I have found her, O Commander of the Believers.” “Who is she?” he asked. “My daughter, O Commander of the Believers.” Muʿāwiyah thereupon married her, and she bore him Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah—a noble, intelligent, and capable son.
Later he married another woman who gained his favor and bore him a second boy. He thereafter neglected Yazīd’s mother, lodging her beside his own residence. One day, as he stood watching with his second wife, he saw Yazīd’s mother grooming her son. The other wife exclaimed, “May Allah revile her—and what she is grooming!” Muʿāwiyah said, “Why? By Allah, her son is more outstanding than yours; and if you wish, I shall prove it to you.”
He summoned her son and said, “The Commander of the Believers is prepared to grant you whatever you desire; ask of me what you wish.” The boy replied, “I ask the Commander of the Believers to give me hunting dogs, horses, and attendants who will accompany me on the chase.” Muʿāwiyah answered, “We have ordered that for you.”
He then summoned Yazīd and addressed him as he had addressed his brother. Yazīd replied, “Would the Commander of the Believers excuse me, for the moment, from making a request?” “You must still state your need,” Muʿāwiyah insisted. Yazīd said, “I ask—may Allah prolong the life of the Commander of the Believers—to be his designated heir after him, for I have learned that a single day of justice shown to the subjects equals five hundred years of worship.” Muʿāwiyah said, “I grant you that.”
He then turned to his wife and said, “What do you think now?” She recognized and was convinced of Yazīd’s superiority over her own son.
Ibn al-Jawzī also records under this year the death of Umm Ḥarām bint Milḥān al-Anṣāriyyah, the wife of ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit. The sound opinion—and the only one cited by the scholars—is that she died in 27 AH, during the caliphate of ʿUthmān. She and her husband had accompanied Muʿāwiyah when he entered Cyprus; her mule stumbled, she died there, and her grave is in Cyprus. Remarkably, Ibn al-Jawzī includes in her biography the well-known hadith recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs: the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—once rested at noon in her house and, in a dream, saw members of his community riding upon the surface (4) of the sea like kings upon thrones, warriors in Allah’s cause. She asked him to supplicate that she be among them, and he prayed for her. He then slept again and saw the same vision. She said, “Pray to Allah to make me among them,” and he replied, “No; you are among the first ones” (5)—meaning those who conquered Cyprus, with whom she indeed went out in 27 AH. She was not among the later contingent who campaigned in Byzantine lands in 51 AH with Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah [and with them Abū Ayyūb, who died …].