Muʿāwiyah’s illness became grave and people began to speak of his death. He said to his household: “Pack my eyes with ithmid (antimony-kohl) and soak my head with oil.” They did so, drenching his face with oil; then a couch was prepared for him and he sat up, saying, “Prop me up.”
He then ordered, “Give the people leave to enter; let them greet me while standing, and let no one sit.” So a man would come in, greet him standing, and on seeing him with kohl-darkened eyes and anointed face would remark, “People say the Commander of the Believers is dying, yet he looks the soundest of men!”
When they had left, Muʿāwiyah recited:
My show of fortitude before the gloaters—I display it to them,
Proving that I never bend to the turns of time;
Yet when death sinks its talons deep,
I find that every charm and amulet is useless.
He was suffering from al-niqābah—that is, luqa—and he died that very day, may Allah have mercy on him.⦗1⦘
Muḥammad ⦗2⦘ ibn ʿUqbah said: When death descended upon Muʿāwiyah he exclaimed, “Would that I had been a man of Quraysh living in Dhū-Tuwa⦗3⦘ and had never been charged with this office at all.”
Abū al-Sāʾib al-Makhzūmī said: When the moment of death came to Muʿāwiyah he recited:
If You call me strictly to account, O Lord,
That reckoning will be a torment I cannot bear;
But if You pass over (my sins), then let it be a pardon—
Forgive a sinner whose sins are like dust.⦗4⦘
Someone else reported: When Muʿāwiyah was in the throes of death his family kept turning him over, and he said to them, “What an old man you are turning over—if Allah spares him from the punishment of the Fire tomorrow!”
Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn said: As Muʿāwiyah lay dying he would place one cheek upon the ground, turn his face, place the other cheek, weep, and say, “O Allah, You have said in Your Book: ‘Indeed, Allah does not forgive that partners be associated with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whomever He wills’ (Quran 4:48). O Allah, count me among those whom You will to forgive.”
Al-ʿUtbi, on the authority of his father, related: While Muʿāwiyah was in his final agony he recited the words of a poet:
It is death—there is no escape from death;
What we fear after death is even more grievous and more dreadful.⦗5⦘