This is a mursal report, and the chain that reaches Saʿīd is weak.

Many forged hadiths have been circulated on this subject, and for that reason we have deliberately refrained from citing them, as they are not authentic. [His father al-Ḥakam had been among the fiercest enemies of the Prophet ﷺ; he only embraced Islam on the Day of the Conquest. After coming to Madinah, al-Ḥakam was expelled by the Prophet ﷺ to al-Ṭāʾif, where he later died.

Marwān was one of the principal instigators of the siege of ʿUthmān, for he fabricated a letter in the caliph’s name to Egypt ordering the killing of those delegates. While serving as governor of Madinah on behalf of Muʿāwiyah, he would curse ʿAlī from the pulpit every Friday. Al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī once said to him, “Indeed Allah cursed your father al-Ḥakam—while you were still in his loins—through the tongue of His Prophet, who said: ‘May Allah curse al-Ḥakam and everything he fathered.’” Allah knows best] (1).

As mentioned earlier, when Marwān reached the area of al-Jābiyah, Ḥassān ibn Mālik ibn Baḥdal was pleased by his arrival and pledged allegiance to him; the people of Jordan also pledged, on the condition that once affairs had settled Marwān would relinquish overall authority to Khālid ibn Yazīd, retaining for himself the governorship of Ḥimṣ, while ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd would remain governor of Damascus. The pledge of allegiance to Marwān was taken on Monday, the fifteenth of Dhū al-Qaʿdah in the year 64 AH, as stated by al-Layth ibn Saʿd and others.

Al-Layth added that the battle of Marj Rāhiṭ occurred in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of that same year, two days after ʿĪd al-Naḥr. They relate that al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Qays was defeated, and the rule of Syria and Egypt became firmly Marwān’s. Once his authority in those lands was secure, he took the pledge of succession for his son ʿAbd al-Malik, and after him for his son ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—the father of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—abandoning the previous pledge to Khālid ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah because he deemed him unfit for the caliphate. Ḥassān ibn Mālik (2) ibn Baḥdal—though he was Khālid’s maternal uncle—agreed with him and shouldered the burden of securing ʿAbd al-Malik’s allegiance.

Later, Khālid’s mother plotted against Marwān and poisoned him—some say she placed a cushion over his face while he slept and he died of suffocation. She and her handmaids then raised the cry, “The Commander of the Believers has died suddenly!” His son ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān thereupon assumed power, as we shall recount.

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Madhʿūr related: A certain scholar told me that the last words Marwān spoke were, “Paradise is assured for whoever fears the Fire.”

The inscription on his signet ring read: “Might belongs to Allah.”

Al-Aṣmaʿī narrated—through ʿAdī ibn Abī ʿAmmār, from his father, from Ḥarb ibn Ziyād—that the inscription on Marwān’s signet ring was: “I have believed in the Almighty, the Most Merciful.”