—and they went so far as to slight the authority and inviolability of Nasr ibn Sayyār.(1)

They badgered him for their stipends, and—while he was still on the pulpit—they made him hear language so harsh that he loathed it, all of this having been conveyed to him through the mediation of Salm ibn Aḥwaz. The merchants walked out of the congregational mosque while he was delivering the sermon, and a large part of the congregation dispersed.

Nasr then said to them, among other things:

“By Allah, I have spread you out and folded you up, and folded you up and spread you out again, yet I cannot find ten of you truly firm in religion. Fear Allah! By Allah, if ever two swords are raised among you, each man will wish to be stripped of his family, his wealth, and his children—and that he had never witnessed it.”

He then quoted the line of al-Nābighah:(2)

If your own ill-fortune prevails over you,
I, at least, have striven for your welfare.

Al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḥusharij ibn al-Ward al-Juʿdī recited:

I lie awake, propped on my elbow, counting the stars
whenever their first lights rise toward me,
for a tribulation, fully shrouded, has dawned—
its cloak enfolds all who pray.
Whoever is in Khurasan or Iraq,
and whoever is in Syria—each is pierced and preoccupied by it.
The ignorant fool, usually rebuked for his folly,
and the prudent man walk in it alike.
Because of it people are plunged into a murky darkness,
an inky, trackless gloom whose depths are hidden.
The anguish is such that pregnant women
almost cast away the children they carry.
Day after day they set out into a blind obscurity
whose unseen perils cut them down,(3)
and no one can perceive its outcomes
except those no tongue can make clear:
like the froth on a young camel’s mouth,
or the scream of a woman in labor
while midwives gather round her.
It has come among us, casting reproach upon its own visage—
within it are crimson disasters, quaking calamities.

In this same year the Caliph required the princes and others to swear allegiance that, after him, the succession would go to his brother Ibrāhīm ibn al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, and after Ibrāhīm to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Ḥajjāj ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. He did so because of the illness that would eventually claim his life; this took place in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of the year, at the urging of a number of princes, grandees, and ministers.

In the same year Yazid removed Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad al-Thaqafī from the governorship of the Ḥijāz and appointed ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in his stead; the latter arrived there in the closing days of Dhū al-Qaʿdah.

That year also saw Marwān al-Ḥimār publicly break with Yazid ibn al-Walīd. He set out from the lands of Armenia claiming that he wished to avenge the blood of al-Walīd ibn Yazid; yet when he reached Ḥarrān he professed agreement and gave the oath of allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful, Yazid ibn al-Walīd.