ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated:
Maʿmar related to us, from al-Zuhrī, from Ḥumayd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Al-Miswar ibn Makhramah said:

I went as a delegate to Muʿāwiyah. When I entered upon him—I think he said: I greeted him—he asked, “How goes your criticism of the leaders, O Miswar?”

I replied, “We have renounced that (1); show kindness concerning the matter for which we have come.”

He said, “You must speak to me frankly about yourself.”

So I left nothing that I used to fault him for without mentioning it to him. He then said, “You are not free of sin. Do you have misdeeds that you fear will destroy you if Allah does not forgive them for you?”

I answered, “Yes; [I have sins which, if He does not forgive them, I would perish because of them] (2).”

He said, “Then what entitles you more than me to hope for forgiveness? By Allah, the duties incumbent upon me—rectifying the affairs of the subjects, enforcing the prescribed penalties, reconciling people, striving in the path of Allah, and other momentous matters that only Allah can count while we cannot—are more numerous than the faults and sins you have just listed. Yet I follow a religion in which Allah accepts good deeds and pardons misdeeds. By Allah, were I offered a choice between Allah and anything else, I would choose Allah over everything beside Him.”

I reflected on what he had said and realized that he had defeated me in argument. Thereafter, whenever al-Miswar mentioned him, he would supplicate good for him (3).

Shuʿayb has also transmitted it from al-Zuhrī, from ʿUrwah, from al-Miswar in a similar vein.

Ibn Durayd recorded—through Abū Ḥātim, from al-ʿUtbi—that Muʿāwiyah said:

“O people! I am not the best among you; indeed, there are those among you who are better than I—ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAmr, and others of the virtuous. Yet perhaps I am the most beneficial to you in governance, the hardest on your enemy, and the one who brings you the fullest share.”

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd likewise related it, through Muḥammad ibn Muṣʿab, from Abū Bakr ibn Abī Maryam, from Thābit, the freedman of Muʿāwiyah, who said that he heard Muʿāwiyah say something to that effect (4).

Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, the preacher of Damascus, said:
ʿAmr ibn Wāqid narrated to us; Yūnus ibn Ḥalbas narrated: I heard Muʿāwiyah on the pulpit of Damascus one Friday say:

“O people, heed my words, for you will not find anyone more knowledgeable than I about the affairs of this world and the Hereafter. Keep your faces directed and your ranks aligned in prayer, or Allah will set your hearts at variance. Restrain your fools, or Allah will set your enemy over you and they will make you suffer grievously. Give in charity, and let no man say, ‘I have little,’ [for the charity of one who possesses little is better than the charity of the wealthy. Beware of slandering chaste women, and of a man saying] (5) ‘I heard’ or ‘It reached me,’ for if any of you were to slander a woman in the time of Noah, he would still be questioned about it on the Day of Resurrection.”