26 – My father narrated to me, from Hisham ibn Muhammad, who said: Maʿqil ibn Maʿqil told us:

“My grandfather, Muʿawiyah ibn Suwayd al-Muzani, built one of the largest houses anyone had ever put up, yet he had no children. His cousin, ʿAmr ibn al-Nuʿman ibn Muqarrin, did have children, and the house stood between the two of them. Muʿawiyah fell seriously ill. ʿAmr visited him, then left saying, ‘Muʿawiyah will die childless; I shall tear down this wall and become the citizen with the most spacious house Allah has ever created!’ Overhearing him, Muʿawiyah recited:

[al-Baḥr al-Ṭawīl]
Lo! Is that the kinsman who pins his hope on the estate of one without heirs,
Counting on my death—yet when I die, no man lives forever?
He yearns for my demise as the days turn,
Though never in my lifetime has he thanked me for a single favor.
Had he died before me, I would not have inherited him; and if I die first,
My property will bring him no blessing worthy of an envier’s spite.
When those I love lower me into a narrow, hollowed niche of earth,
With only my arm as a pillow beneath my head,
They will say, ‘Do not go far away,’ even as they bury me,
Having settled me in the dwelling of the distant departed.

Muʿawiyah recovered from that illness, a child was born to him, and his cousin never inherited a thing from him."