Then he said:
“O Allah, set right the stumble, pardon the slip, and, through Your forbearance, overlook the ignorance of one who hopes for none but You. Truly, Your forgiveness is vast; no sinner has any refuge from his sin except by fleeing to You.”⦗1⦘

Ibn Durayd transmitted it from Abū Ḥātim, from Abū ʿUbaydah, from Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ with the same wording, adding: “Then he died.”

Another narrator said: He fainted; when he regained consciousness he said to his family, “Fear Allah, for Allah protects whoever fears Him, and He does not protect the one who does not fear.” He then died—may Allah have mercy on him.

Abū Mikhnaf related—on the authority of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Nawfal—that when Muʿāwiyah died, al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Qays mounted the pulpit with Muʿāwiyah’s shrouds in his hands and addressed the people. After praising and extolling Allah he said:
“Muʿāwiyah, who was the rampart, aid, and cutting edge of the Arabs—through whom Allah quenched turmoil, granted authority over His servants, and opened lands—has now died. Here are his shrouds: we shall wrap him in them, lower him into his grave, and leave him alone with his deeds; thereafter comes the barzakh until the Day of Resurrection. Whoever wishes to attend him, let him be present at the first prayer.” He then descended and dispatched a courier to Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah, informing him and urging him to come.

There is unanimous agreement that he died in Damascus in Rajab of the year 60 AH. One group said it was the night of Thursday, mid-Rajab, year 60; others said the night of Thursday with eight nights of Rajab remaining—this was related by Ibn Isḥāq and several others. Yet another view, reported by al-Layth, places it on the fourth of Rajab, while Saʿd ibn Ibrāhīm held that it occurred at the very beginning of the month.

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq and al-Shāfiʿī stated that his son Yazīd led the funeral prayer. Several chains also report that Muʿāwiyah had instructed that he be shrouded in the garment of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ that the Prophet had once given him and which he had preserved for this day, and that the strands of the Prophet’s hair and clippings of his nails in Muʿāwiyah’s possession be placed in his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.

Others maintained that his son Yazīd was absent, so al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Qays led the funeral prayer after the ẓuhr prayer in the mosque of Damascus. He was then buried—some say in the governor’s residence, the Green Palace; others say in the cemetery of Bāb al-Ṣaghīr, which is the majority opinion—and Allah knows best. At the time he was seventy-eight years old, though some said he had passed eighty.

After that, al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Qays rode out at the head of an army to meet Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah—who was at Ḥawwārīn⦗2⦘—and when they reached Thaniyyat al-ʿUqab⦗3⦘ they encountered Yazīd’s baggage train. Yazīd himself was riding a bukhtī camel, the signs of grief plain upon him, and he greeted him