with the people of Egypt to fight him. They took turns engaging in battle and resting, a practice that came to be known as “the Day of Tarāwīḥ.” The killing continued among the notables of the city, so many were slain, and on that day ʿAbd Allah b. Yazīd b. Maʿdīkarib al-Kalāʿī, one of the aristocracy, was killed.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān then made peace with Marwān on the condition that he be allowed to leave for Mecca with his wealth and family. Marwān accepted, wrote with his own hand a letter of safe-conduct for the people of Egypt, and the fighters dispersed. The populace set about burying their dead and mourning them, while Marwān beheaded eighty men who had refused to pledge allegiance to him and executed al-Ukaydir b. Ḥamla al-Lakhamī—one of those who had murdered ʿUthmān. This was on the fifteenth of Jumādā al-Ākhira, the very day ʿAbd Allah b. ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ died; they were unable to carry his bier out, so they buried him in his own house.
Marwān took control of Egypt and stayed there for a month. He then appointed his son ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz governor, left with him his brother Bishr b. Marwān and Mūsā b. Nuṣayr as his minister, instructed him to treat the elders kindly, and returned to Syria. (1)
In that same year Marwān equipped two armies: one under Ḥubaysh b. Dulaja al-Qaynī (2) to seize Madina for him—its story will be mentioned later—and the other under ʿUbayd Allah b. Ziyād to Iraq to wrest it from Ibn al-Zubayr’s deputies. On the road they encountered the Army of the Penitents led by Sulaymān b. Ṣurad, whose affair has already been described. The Syrian army continued toward Iraq, but when they reached al-Jazīra the news of Marwān b. al-Ḥakam’s death reached them.
He died in Ramadan of that same year. The cause of his death was that he married Umm Khālid, the widow of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya—she was Umm Hāshim bt. Hāshim b. ʿUtba b. Rabīʿa—intending thereby to belittle her son Khālid in people’s eyes, for many had contemplated making him ruler after his brother Muʿāwiya. By marrying his mother, Marwān hoped to diminish him. One day Khālid entered upon Marwān while the latter was maligning him before his companions; when Khālid sat down Marwān addressed him, saying, “You son of the moist date—of the backside!” Khālid went to his mother and told her what he had said. She replied, “Keep it to yourself; do not let him know you have informed me.”
When Marwān later visited her he asked, “Has Khālid spoken ill of me to you?” She answered, “What could he possibly say, when he loves and honors you?” Marwān then lay down to sleep in her chamber. Once he was sound asleep she took a pillow, placed it over his face, and she and her maidservants pressed upon it until he suffocated. This occurred on the third of Ramadan in the year 65 AH, in Damascus. He was sixty-three years old—some say eighty-one. His reign lasted nine months; others say ten months minus three days.