It is related that she had a shroud brought for him, perfumed it with incense, and urged him to die fighting. With that resolve he went out and, on Tuesday, the seventeenth of Jumada al-Ula in the year 73 AH, he fought with great ferocity. A brick struck him and split his head, whereupon he fell face-down to the ground. He tried to rise but could not; leaning on his left elbow, he kept hacking with his sword at anyone who approached. A man from the Syrians advanced, struck him, and severed his leg; then the soldiers swarmed over him until they killed him and cut off his head. His death occurred close to al-Hajūn.

It is also said that he was killed while clinging to the curtains of the Kaʿbah—Allah knows best.

Al-Ḥajjāj then crucified him upside-down on the Kaddā Pass near al-Hajūn; when he took him down he buried him in the Jewish cemetery, as Muslim reports (1). Others say he was buried at al-Hajūn beneath the very spot where he had been crucified. A further report states that his mother Asmāʾ washed his mutilated body, applied embalming spices, shrouded him, prayed over him, and carried him to Madinah, where she buried him in the house of Ṣafiyyah bint Ḥuyayy. That house, they say, was later incorporated into the Mosque, so that he now lies within the Mosque alongside Abū Bakr and ʿUmar (2). Allah knows best.

ʿAbd al-Razzāq (3) narrates from Maʿmar, from Ayyūb, from Ibn Sīrīn, who said: When the head of al-Mukhtār was brought, ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr remarked, “Everything that Kaʿb al-Aḥbār used to tell us we found to be true—except his statement that a youth from Thaqīf will kill me, and here is that man’s head before me.” Ibn Sīrīn added, “He did not realize that al-Ḥajjāj had been kept in reserve for him.” This is transmitted through another chain as well.

I say: The prevailing opinion is that ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr was killed in 73 AH, on Tuesday, the seventeenth of Jumada al-Ula; some maintain it was the same date in Jumada al-Ākhira. Mālik and others reported that his death occurred at the turn of 72 AH (4), but the sound and widespread view is the first. His pledge of allegiance took place on the seventh of Rajab in 64 AH. He was born at the beginning of 1 AH—others say in Shawwāl of 2 AH—so he certainly lived beyond seventy years. Allah knows best.

As for his mother, she survived him for only one hundred days; some say ten, others five, but the first is the better-known report. Her biography will appear shortly (peace be upon her)—and likewise those of her father and her son.

His children were: Khubayb, Ḥamzah, ʿAbbād and Thābit, whose mother was Tamāḍir bint Manẓūr al-Fazārī; Hāshim, Qays, ʿUrwah—who was killed with his father—and al-Zubayr, whose mother was Umm Hāshim Zajlah bint Manẓūr; ʿĀmir, Mūsā, Umm Ḥakīm, Fāṭimah and Fākhtah, whose mother was Khaythamah bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām; Bakr and Ruqayyah, whose mother was ʿĀʾishah bint ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān; and ʿAbd Allah and Muṣʿab, born to a concubine.

He transmitted thirty-three hadiths with full chains of narration.