people can never patch what he has worn thin, however hard they toil to mend it;
nor will they ever unravel what he himself once made whole. (1)

Al-Shafiʿī said, “Yazīd stole these two lines (2) from the poet al-Aʿshā.” He then related that Yazīd had entered Damascus before his father’s death and that Muʿāwiyah had formally appointed him heir. This is the report of Ibn Isḥāq and several others, yet the majority maintain that Yazīd did not reach Damascus until after his father had died, and that he led the people in prayer at his grave, as we have already noted. Allah knows best.

Abū al-Ward al-ʿAnbarī eulogised Muʿāwiyah—may Allah be pleased with him—saying:

Shall I not mourn Muʿāwiyah son of Ḥarb,
O heralds who proclaim the end of the sacred month?
Dirges for him have spread through every mountain pass,
borne by mounts that bow beneath the reins like arrows.
Behold, even the silent stars above
lament for Muʿāwiyah of Syria. (3)

Ayman ibn Khuraym (4) likewise composed an elegy:

Misfortune has struck the women of the House of Ḥarb
with a blow that has left them frozen in stunned grief; (5)
It has turned their black tresses white
and their fair faces dark with sorrow.
Had you witnessed the tears of Hind and Ramlah
as they beat their cheeks in mourning,
You yourself would have wept like a desolate mother
whose only child has been taken by relentless fate.

[Account of the wives he married and the children born to him]

He had a son, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān—after whom he took his kunya (teknonym)—and another son, ʿAbd Allah, who was weak-minded. Their mother was Fākhtah bint Qarazah ibn [ʿAbd] (6)