Al-Ṭabarānī also reports that Ibn al-Zubayr once entered upon his mother and said, “In death there is relief.” She was then one hundred years old; not a single tooth had fallen from her mouth, nor had her eyesight failed. She replied, “I do not wish to die until I witness one of your two ends: either you attain rule and my eyes are cooled, or you are killed and I seek my reward with Allah.”

He left her reciting:
“I will never barter life for the price of disgrace,
Nor climb a ladder merely to escape death.”

Turning then to the household of al-Zubayr, he exhorted them: “Let each of you keep his sword as he first directed it; defend yourselves with your own hands as though I had commanded you. By Allah, I have never hung back from a single engagement—I have always been in the first rank—and no wound has ever hurt me save with the pain of its remedy.”

He then charged, wielding two swords. The first man he met was al-Aswad; he struck him with one of the swords and severed his leg. Al-Aswad cried out, “Ah, son of the adulteress!” Ibn al-Zubayr retorted, “Silence, son of Hām! Could Asmāʾ ever be an adulteress?” He then drove them out of the mosque.

A group of his followers were on the mosque roof, hurling bricks at his enemies. One brick, thrown unintentionally, struck the crown of his head and split it; yet he remained standing, saying,
“Had my peer been only one, I would have overcome him,”
then reciting,
“Our wounds do not bleed upon our heels;
It is on our feet that the blood drips.”

He fell, and two of his freedmen threw themselves over him, saying, “The servant shields his master and seeks shelter with him.” His foes then reached him and severed his head.

Al-Ṭabarānī further relates—on the authority of Isḥāq ibn Abī Isḥāq—“I was present when ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr was slain in the Sacred Mosque. The troops kept pouring in through the mosque gates, and every time a company entered, he would charge at them and drive them out. While he was in that state, a balcony from the mosque collapsed, fell upon his head, and felled him. As he lay there he recited:
‘Asmāʾ, Asmāʾ, do not weep for me;
All that remains is my lineage and my faith,
And a tempered sword made supple in my right hand.’”

It is also reported that his mother said to al-Ḥajjāj, “Has the rider not yet dismounted?”
He replied, “Your son, the hypocrite.”
She retorted, “By Allah, he was no hypocrite; he fasted by day, prayed by night, and upheld the ties of kinship.”
He said, “Away with you, old woman, for you have grown senile.”
She answered, “By Allah, I have not lost my senses since I heard the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—say: ‘From Thaqīf there shall emerge a liar and a ruthless destroyer. The liar we have already seen; the destroyer is you.’”

Mujāhid said: “I was with Ibn ʿUmar when he passed by Ibn al-Zubayr; he paused, invoked mercy upon him, then turned to me and said:” }