are those who maintain that he was past forty when he died; Allah knows best.

After his death he was carried to Damascus, where his son Muʿāwiyah ibn Yazīd—the Commander of the Believers at the time—led the funeral prayer over him, and he was laid to rest in the Bāb al-Ṣaghīr cemetery.

During his reign the canal called “Yazīd,” at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn, was enlarged; it had been only a small stream, and he widened it until it conveyed several times its former flow.

Ibn ʿAsākir relates: Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-Muẓaffar al-ʿAbdī—the chief judge of Bahrain—narrated to us in his own words, and also wrote it for me in his own hand, saying:

“I saw Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah in a dream. I asked him, ‘Did you kill al-Ḥusayn?’ He replied, ‘No.’ I then said, ‘Has Allah forgiven you?’ He answered, ‘Yes, and He has admitted me into Paradise.’ I asked, ‘What, then, of the report that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, saw Muʿāwiyah carrying Yazīd and said, “A man from the people of Paradise is carrying a man from the people of the Fire”?’ He responded, ‘It is not authentic.’ ”

Ibn ʿAsākir comments: “And what he said is correct, for Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah was not born during the Prophet’s lifetime—peace and blessings be upon him—but rather more than twenty years after the Hijrah.”

Abū Jaʿfar ibn Jarīr said:
[The children of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah and their number]

Among them were:

• Muʿāwiyah ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah, whose kunya was Abū Laylā. Concerning him the poet says (1):
I behold a civil strife whose first spark has now been lit;
After Abū Laylā, sovereignty shall belong to the strongest.

• Khālid ibn Yazīd, known as Abū Hāshim—who claimed to have mastered the science of alchemy—and Abū Sufyān; their mother was Umm Hāshim bint Abī Hāshim ibn ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah ibn ʿAbd Shams. After Yazīd, she was married by Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam. She is the one of whom the poet said:
Enjoy yourself, O mother of Khālid—
Many a striver ends up like one who sits.

• ʿAbd Allāh (2) ibn Yazīd, nicknamed al-Aswār (3), who was among the finest archers of the Arabs. His mother was Umm Kulthūm bint ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿĀmir. Regarding him the poet recited:
People claim that the best of Quraysh—
All of them—whenever al-Aswār is named.