By Allah, by Allah, I shall never forget you, O grief of mine,
until my soul is torn from every limb of me.
He replied:
By Allah, no man who ends the night while you are his
has ever been disappointed, O joy of the eye in kith and in wealth.

The narrator continues:
He then bade her farewell and left.

Yazid intercepted him, summoned her as well, and said, “Tell me what happened during your night together—and speak the truth.”
They told him and recited the lines they had exchanged, without changing so much as a single letter of what he had overheard.

Yazid asked her, “Do you love him?”
She answered, “Yes, by Allah, O Commander of the Believers!
A love so fierce it courses through me like the soul within my body—
and can the soul be separated from the body?”

He then said to him, “Do you love her?”
He replied, “Yes, by Allah, O Commander of the Believers!
A passionate, long-standing love, no passing fancy,
within my breast it blazes like a raging fire.”

Yazid said, “You both describe a love of great intensity. Take her, O Ahwas; she is yours.” He also bestowed on him a splendid gift. Al-Ahwas returned with her to the Hijaz, his eyes shining with delight. (1)

[It is related that Yazid became notorious for his familiarity with wine, music, hunting, keeping youthful attendants, singing-girls, dogs, arranging bouts between rams, bears and monkeys; scarcely a day passed without his waking drunk. He would tie a monkey to a saddled horse with ropes and drive it about, dressing monkeys—and likewise the boys—in gold caps; he raced horses, and when a monkey died he grieved for it.
Some say that the cause of his death was that he picked up a she-monkey, set her bouncing about, and she bit him. Other tales are told of him—Allah knows best how true they are.] (2)

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Maḏʿūr said: A scholar related to me that the last words spoken by Yazid ibn Muʿāwiyah were: “O Allah, do not take me to account for what I neither loved nor intended; judge between me and ʿUbayd Allah ibn Ziyād.”

The inscription on his signet ring read: “I have believed in Allah the Almighty.”

Yazid died at Ḥuwwarīn—one of the villages near Damascus—on 14 Rabiʿ al-Awwal; others say on Thursday, the 15th of that month, in the year 64 AH. His rule began after the death of his father in mid-Rajab of the year 60 AH. He was born in the year 25—some say 26, others 27—AH. In spite of this, scholars differ about his exact age and the length of his reign. If you consider the figures I have set before you, the problem posed by these divergences disappears, for among them