352 – Muhammad ibn Qudamah al-Jawhari narrated to me; he said: A man from Basra related to me, from his father, who said: Mubarak ibn Fadalah narrated to me, from ʿAli ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAbbas, who said:

I once visited ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwan on a bitterly cold day. He was wrapped in a cloak whose lining was saffron-dyed silk from Qūh and whose outer layer was a grey brocade, with four braziers set around him. Noticing how the cold made me tremble, he remarked, “It seems today is nothing but cold.” I replied, “May Allah set right the affairs of the Commander of the Believers; the people of Syria think no colder day has ever come upon them.”

He then spoke about this worldly life, censuring and disparaging it, and said, “Consider Muʿawiyah: he lived forty years—twenty as a governor and twenty as caliph. Now all that remains of him is this little mound, with a lone tuft of grass growing over it. By Allah, how perceptive Ibn Ḥantamah was regarding this world!”