and al-Yamāmah. He then relieved him of the governorship of Kūfa, appointing ʿĪsā ibn Mūsā in his stead and assigning its judiciary to Ibn Abī Laylā. The deputy governor of Basra was Sufyān ibn Muʿāwiyah al-Muhallabī, with al-Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭāʾah as its judge. Over Sind he placed Manṣūr ibn Jumhūr; over Fars, Muḥammad ibn al-Ashʿath; and over Armenia, Azerbaijan, and al-Jazīrah, Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr. Greater Syria and its districts were entrusted to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlī, the Caliph’s uncle; Egypt to Abū ʿAwn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Yazīd; Khurasan and its dependencies to Abū Muslim al-Khurasānī; and the bureau of land-tax to Khālid ibn Barmak. The pilgrimage that year was led by Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī.
Mention of the notable figures who died in that year:
Marwān ibn Muḥammad ibn Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, Abū ʿAbd al-Malik al-Umawī, the last Caliph of the Umayyad line, was killed in the final ten days of Dhū al-Ḥijjah of this year, as has been related in detail (1).
His vizier, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Yaḥyā ibn Saʿd (2)—a client of Banū ʿĀmir ibn Luʾayy and the renowned, eloquent scribe whose name became proverbial, people saying, “Letter-writing began with ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and ended with Ibn al-ʿAmīd.” He was the leading authority in epistolary composition and all its branches, the exemplar in the craft, and his collected letters filled one thousand folios. Originally from Qaysariyya, he later settled in Syria and mastered the discipline under Sālim, the client of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. Yaʿqūb ibn Dāwūd, the vizier of al-Mahdī, wrote in his presence and graduated under him, and his own son Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd also excelled in calligraphy. He began by teaching children, yet circumstances eventually elevated him to Marwān’s vizierate. Al-Saffāḥ later killed him and mutilated his body, though clemency would have befit a man of his stature.
Among his choice sayings is: “Knowledge is a tree whose fruit is words, and reflection is an ocean whose pearls are wisdom.”
On seeing a man write an ugly hand he said, “Lengthen the shaving of your pen and make it stout; slant your incision and draw it to the right.” The man reports, “I did so, and my script improved” (3).
A man once asked him to compose a letter to one of the notables recommending him. He wrote: “The right of the bearer of my letter upon you equals his right upon me, for he deemed you worthy of his hope and me fit to pursue his need. I have discharged his request; now you affirm his expectation” (4).
He would often recite this line of poetry: