[Then the year 116 AH began]
In it, Muʿāwiyah ibn Hishām led the summer expedition (ṣāʾifah), and in the same year a grave plague struck Syria and Iraq, its worst outbreak occurring in Wāsiṭ.
During Muḥarram of that year al-Junayd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Murrī, governor of Khurāsān, died of an illness that afflicted his abdomen. He had married al-Fāḍilah, daughter of Yazīd ibn al-Muhallab, which provoked the anger of the Commander of the Faithful, Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, who dismissed him and appointed ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAbd Allāh over Khurāsān, saying to him: “If you reach him before death overtakes him, take his life.” Yet ʿĀṣim had not reached Khurāsān before al-Junayd died, in that same Muḥarram, at Marw.
About him Abū al-Jarīr (1) ʿĪsā ibn ʿIṣmah composed this elegy:
Generosity and Junayd have perished together—
so peace be upon generosity and upon Junayd.
Both now lie in the hollow of Marw,
while no dove warbles upon the branches.
You were the prize (2) sought by the noble, but when
you died, munificence died and so did the noble. (3)
When ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAbd Allāh reached Khurāsān he subjected al-Junayd’s deputies to severe beatings and various punishments, and he oppressed them (4) with confiscations and penalties. Al-Ḥārith ibn Shurayḥ rebelled against him, confronted him in battle, and events ensued between them whose details are too long to relate. In the end al-Ḥārith ibn Shurayḥ was defeated and ʿĀṣim prevailed.
Al-Wāqidī said: In this same year the people were led in the pilgrimage by al-Walīd ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (5), who had been designated as successor after his uncle.
“There is neither stinginess nor humiliation, and nothing exists without its recompense—except the tear; for by it Allah forgives oceans of sins. Were someone in any community to weep out of fear of Allah, may Allah have mercy on that community.” (Reported by Ibn al-Jawzi in Sifat al-Safwa 2:109, in similar wording.)
He also said: “How wretched is a brother who cares for you when he is rich yet abandons you when you are poor.” (Reported by Ibn Abi al-Dunya in Makarim al-Akhlaq, p. 94, and in Al-Ikhwan, p. 217; and by Ibn al-Jawzi in Sifat al-Safwa 2:112.)
I said (the speaker here is the author of the addition in manuscript Q): The following verse is the third of a triplet, and these lines embody wisdom and asceticism regarding this world. He said:
“Indeed, this world has deluded men so that they have become … in a state beyond which there is no return.
Displeased with one affair that will never change … yet pleased with another affair that certainly will be changed.
And he longed for a matter whose humbler aspects he hoped for … yet faltered far from what he had hoped.”
(1) As in the principal manuscripts (B, H, Q); in al-Tabari’s History it appears as “Abu al-Juwairiya,” though no biography of him is attested.
(2) In manuscript Q and al-Tabari’s History it reads “Nuzha,” but the reading confirmed by (B, H) is preferred.
(3) Reported by al-Tabari in his History (7:94), with the verses in comparable wording.
(4) “asfahum”: taking them without planning or deliberation; from ‘asf, meaning to undertake an affair without consideration or prudence. One says, “asfahu ya’sifuhu ‘asfan.” See al-Lisan under “asf.”
(5) As in the principal manuscripts and al-Tabari’s History (7:98), and in Khalifa’s History (p. 347): “And al-Walid ibn Yazid ibn …”