In that same year Najdah the Ḥarūrī, who had overrun al-Yamāmah, was killed. (1)

Still that year ʿAbd Allah ibn Thawr rose up in al-Yamāmah. (2)

This is the biographical entry for Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr (3)—may Allah have mercy on him.

He is Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām ibn Khuwaylid ibn Asad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā ibn Quṣayy ibn Kilāb, Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Qurashī—also called Abū ʿĪsā al-Asadī. His mother was al-Rabāb (4) bint Anīf al-Kalbiyyah. He was among the handsomest of men, the bravest of heart, and the most generous of hand. He is said to have transmitted reports from ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.

He also narrated ḥadith from his father al-Zubayr, from Saʿd, and from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī.

Those who narrated from him include al-Ḥakam ibn ʿUtaybah (5), ʿAmr ibn Dīnār al-Jumaḥī, and Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid.

He once joined a delegation to Muʿāwiyah, used to sit in the company of Abū Hurayrah, and was counted among the most comely of men.

Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār relates that the poet Jamīl looked at him while he was standing at ʿArafah and remarked, “Here stands a youth whom I would hate for Buthaynah to behold.”

Al-Shaʿbī said, “Never have I seen an emir on the pulpit more handsome than he,” a judgment echoed by Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid.

Al-Ḥasan (al-Baṣrī) declared, “He is the most handsome man in Basra.”

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (6) states: “He governed the two Iraqi provinces on behalf of his brother ʿAbd Allah until ʿAbd al-Malik killed him at Maskin, a site near Awānā on the Dujayl River by Dayr al-Jāthaliq; to this day his grave is well known there.”

We have already detailed how he put al-Mukhtār ibn Abī ʿUbayd to death, and how, in a single morning, he slew seven thousand of al-Mukhtār’s followers.

Al-Wāqidī said: When Muṣʿab killed al-Mukhtār, the people barricaded in the palace from among al-Mukhtār’s adherents asked Muṣʿab for safe-conduct