Muʿāwiyah said:
“My own death has been announced to me.” (1) (2)

Ibn Abī al-Dunyā relates:
Hārūn ibn Sufyān told me, from ʿAbd Allāh al-Sahmī; Thumāmah ibn Kulthūm told me that the last sermon Muʿāwiyah delivered he declared:

“People! Whoever has sown has now reaped. I have governed you, and no one who takes charge after me will be better than I am; rather, the one who will rule you will be worse than I, just as the one who ruled you before me was better than I.

O Yazīd! When my end draws near, entrust my washing to a perceptive man, for the perceptive man holds a rank with Allah. Let him bathe me thoroughly and raise his voice with the takbīr. Then go to the handkerchief kept in the treasury; inside is a garment that belonged to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and some clippings of his hair and nails. Place those clippings in my nose, my mouth, my ears, and my eyes, and put that garment next to my skin beneath the shroud.

O Yazīd! Observe Allah’s injunction concerning the parents. When you have wrapped me in my palm-rib bier and laid me in my grave, leave Muʿāwiyah to the Most Merciful of the merciful.” (3)

Some said that when Muʿāwiyah lay dying he kept reciting:

By my life, I have lived for a season of years,
And the world submitted to me at the crash of sharp blades;
Great riches, authority, and judgment were granted to me,
And every tyrant king surrendered to my sway.

Yet what once delighted me is become
Like a bygone decree from ages long past.
Would that I had never sought a kingdom for even an hour,
Nor chased the dazzling pleasures of luxurious life,
But lived like a man in two worn garments, content with a meagre share,
Until he visited the narrow confines of the grave. (4)

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd records:
ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad narrated to us, from Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥakam, from an informant, that when Muʿāwiyah lay dying he directed that half of his wealth be returned to the public treasury—apparently wishing thereby to clear his conscience—because ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb had divided the wealth of his governors.

They also relate that toward the end of his life he was gripped by intense cold; whenever he put on or covered himself with heavy clothing it weighed him down. A garment was therefore made for him from birds’ down, but even that later became burdensome, whereupon he exclaimed:

“Woe to you, O abode! I have ruled you for forty years—twenty as governor and twenty as caliph—yet this is how I fare within you and the end that awaits me from you! Woe to the world and to those who love it!”

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd further reports:
Abū ʿUbaydah narrated to us, from Abū Yaʿqūb al-Thaqafī, from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿUmayr, who said: “When…"