He—may Allah have mercy on him—also reports, in the biography of Muhammad ibn Sulayman ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Nawfali, that he said (1):
“I was with ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAli when he first entered Damascus. He seized it by the sword and allowed killing there for three hours. He then turned its congregational mosque into a stable for his horses and camels for seventy days. After that he exhumed the graves of the Umayyads: from Muʿawiyah’s tomb he found nothing but a thin black thread like dust; from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwan’s grave he brought up his skull; and in each grave he would recover limb after limb—except for Hisham ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, whom he found whole, nothing of him having decayed save the tip of his nose. He flogged him with whips while he was dead, crucified him for several days, then burned him, pounded the ashes, and scattered them to the wind. He did this because Hisham had once ordered seven hundred lashes for his brother Muhammad ibn ʿAli—having suspected him of killing a young son of his—and then exiled him to al-Humaymah in al-Balqaʾ (2).
He continued: ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAli then hunted down the Umayyads, both the caliphs’ descendants and others, and in a single day killed ninety-two thousand of them at a river near al-Ramla. He spread leather mats over their bodies, laid a banquet upon them, and ate while they were still quivering beneath it. Such tyranny and injustice will surely be requited by Allah; in the end he passed away and none of what he wanted or hoped for endured—as will be seen in his biography. He also sent Hisham ibn ʿAbd al-Malik’s wife, ʿAbdah bint ʿAbd Allah ibn Yazid ibn Muʿawiyah—the lady with the mole—into the wilderness on foot, barefoot, and bare-headed, her face, body, and clothing uncovered, accompanied by a band of Khurasanis. They brought her back and killed her. Every bone of any deceased Umayyad they could find was then burned, and ʿAbd Allah remained there for fifteen days.
He summoned al-Awzaʿi and had him stand before him. He said, ‘O Abu ʿAmr, what do you say about what we have done?’ I replied, ‘I do not know, except that Yahya ibn Saʿid al-Ansari narrated to me from Muhammad ibn Ibrahim, from ʿAlqamah, from ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, who said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Actions are only by intentions,”’ and I mentioned the rest of the hadith. Al-Awzaʿi said: I waited for my head to fall between my legs, then I was led out, and he sent me one hundred dinars.
ʿAbd Allah then set off in pursuit of Marwan. He encamped by the River al-Kuswah (3), appointed Yahya ibn Jaʿfar al-Hashimi governor over Damascus, and moved on to the Jordan, where people came to him clad in black. He then marched to Baysan, proceeded to Marj al-Rum, and finally reached the River Abi Futrus (4).