Once the entire community had finally rallied to ʿAbd al-Malik after the death of Ibn al-Zubayr, as will be related below, the household of ʿAmr came to pay him homage. He was on the verge of killing them, but some of them spoke with such courtesy that he was deeply moved to pity. ʿAbd al-Malik said to them:
“Your father gave me the choice—to kill me or to be killed by me—so I preferred to kill him rather than be killed. As for you, I have every desire to treat you well, to honour the ties of kinship between us, and to safeguard your rights.” He then rewarded them richly and admitted them to his favour.

ʿAbd al-Malik had earlier sent a message to the wife of ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd: “Send me the letter of safe-conduct I once wrote for ʿAmr.” She replied, “I buried it with him so that he may bring it against you before Allah on the Day of Resurrection.” ⦗1⦘

Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam had once given ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd nothing more than a verbal promise that he would be heir apparent after Marwān’s son ʿAbd al-Malik. Buoyed by that pledge, ʿAmr’s ambitions swelled. Meanwhile, ʿAbd al-Malik had disliked him intensely since childhood, and this was how he dealt with him when both were grown.

Ibn Jarīr ⦗2⦘ relates that Khālid ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah once asked ʿAbd al-Malik, “I am amazed at you and at ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd—how did you manage to catch him off guard and kill him?” ʿAbd al-Malik replied with these verses:

I drew him near to calm his dread,⦗3⦘
then sprang⦗4⦘ upon him with the leap of one firmly resolved,⦗5⦘
out of wrath and zeal for my religion—for⦗6⦘
the wrong-doer’s road is never that of the benefactor.

Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ ⦗7⦘ notes that these lines were composed by al-Ḍabbī ibn Abī Rāfiʿ; ʿAbd al-Malik was merely quoting them.

Ibn Durayd, transmitting from Abū Ḥātim, from al-Shaʿbī, reports that ʿAbd al-Malik said:

“ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd was dearer to me than the very lifeblood of my eyes, yet by Allah two male camels cannot remain in one herd without one driving the other away. We are, as the brother of Banū Yarbuʿ said:

I reward the one who does me good with good—
for good deeds merit a generous return;
And I repay the one who harms me with harm—
just as a sandal matches the sandal it is paired with.”

Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ adds: Abū al-Yaqẓān recited the following about ʿAbd al-Malik’s killing of ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd:

Steady, unshaken, it struck its foe—
that right hand which spilled the lifeblood of Ibn Saʿīd.
I found Ibn Marwān, though lacking arrows in his quiver,
a harsh man who smites the people, anything but dull-witted.