One strong antagonist to Moawiya remained, in the person of Ziyād. This remarkable man was said to be a bastard of Abu Sofiān, the father of Moawiya, and was, by his mother, the brother of Abu Bakra, a man of great wealth and position at Basra. He thus belonged to the tribe of Thaqīf at Tāif, which produced many very prominent men. At the age of fourteen years Ziyād was charged with the financial administration of the Basrian army. He had won the affection of Omar, by his knowledge of the Koran and the Sunna of the Prophet, and by the fact that he had employed the first money he earned to purchase the freedom of his mother Somayya. He was a faithful servant of Ali and put down for him the revolt excited by Moawiya’s partisans in Basra. Thence he marched into Fārs and Kirman, where he maintained peace and kept the inhabitants in their allegiance to Ali. After Ali’s death he fortified himself in his castle near Istakhr and refused to submit. Moawiya, therefore, sent Bosr b. Abi Artāt to Basra, with orders to capture Ziyād’s three sons, and to force Ziyād into submission by threatening to kill them. Ziyād was obdurate; and it was due to his brother Abu Bakra, who persuaded Moawiya to cancel the order, that the threat was not executed. On his return to Damascus, Moawiya charged Moghīra b. Sho’ba to bring his countryman to reason. Abdallah b. ‘Āmir was made governor of Basra.
As soon as Moawiya had his hands free, he directed all his forces against the Greeks. Immediately after the submission of Irak, he had denounced the existing treaty, and as early as 662 had sent his troops against the Alans and the Greeks. Since then, no year passed without a campaign. Twice he made a serious effort to conquer Constantinople, in 669 when he besieged it for three months, and in 674. On the second occasion his fleet occupied Cyzicus, which it held till shortly after his death in 680, when a treaty was signed. In Africa also the extension of Mahommedan power was pursued energetically. In 670 took place the famous march of ‘Okba (‘Oqba) b. Nāfi’ and the foundation of Kairawan, where the great mosque still bears his name. Our information about these events, though very full, is untrustworthy, while of the events in Asia Minor the accounts are scarce and short. The Arabic historians are still absorbed by the events in Irak and Khorasan.
The talented prefect of Kufa, Moghīra b. Sho’ba, eventually broke down the resistance of Ziyād, who came to Damascus to render an account of his administration, which the caliph ratified. Moawiya seems also to have acknowledged him as the son of Abu Sofiān, and thus as his brother; in 664 this recognition was openly declared.[13] In the next year Ziyād was appointed governor of Basra and the eastern provinces belonging to it. As the austere champion of the precepts of Islam, he soon restored order in the whole district. Outwardly, this was the case in Kufa also. A rising of Kharijites in the year 663 had ended in the death of their chief. But the Shi‘ites were dissatisfied and even dared to give public utterance to their hostility. Moghīra contented himself with a warning. He was already aged and had no mind to enter on a conflict. He died about the year 670, and his province also was entrusted to Ziyād, who appointed ‘Amr b. Horaith as his vicegerent. At a Friday service in the great mosque ‘Amr was insulted and pelted with pebbles. Ziyād then came himself, arrested the leader of the Shi‘ites, and sent fourteen rebels to Damascus, among them several men of consideration. Seven of them who refused to pledge themselves to obedience were put to death; the Shi‘ites considered them as martyrs and accused Moawiya of committing a great crime. But in Kufa peace was restored, and this not by military force, but by the headmen of the tribes. We must not forget that Kufa and Basra were military colonies, and that each tribe had its own quarter of the city. A wholesome diversion was provided by the serious resumption of the policy of eastern expansion, which had been interrupted by the civil war. For this purpose Irak had to furnish the largest contingent. The first army sent by Ziyād into Khorasan recaptured Merv, Herat and Balkh, conquered Tokhāristān and advanced as far as the Oxus. In 673 ‘Obaidallah, the son of Ziyād, crossed the river, occupied Bokhara, and returned laden with booty taken from the wandering Turkish tribes of Transoxiana. He brought 2000 Turkish archers with him to Basra, the first Turkish slaves to enter the Moslem empire. Sa‘īd, son of the caliph Othman, whom Moawiya made governor of Khorasan, in 674 marched against Samarkand. Other generals penetrated as far as the Indus and conquered Kabul, Sijistan, Makrān and Kandahar.
Ziyād governed Irak with the greatest vigour, but as long as discontent did not issue in action, he let men alone. At his death (672-673), order was so generally restored that “nobody had any more to fear for life or estate, and even the unprotected woman was safe in her house without having her door bolted.”
Moawiya was a typical Arab sayyid (gentleman). He governed, not by force, but by his superior intelligence, his self-control, his mildness and magnanimity. The following anecdote may illustrate this. One of Moawiya’s estates bordered on that of Abdallah b. Zobair, who complained in a somewhat truculent letter that Moawiya’s slaves had been guilty of trespassing. Moawiya, disregarding his son Yazid’s advice that he should exact condign punishment for Zobair’s disrespect, replied in flattering terms, regretting the trespass and resigning both slaves and estate to Zobair. In reply Zobair protested his loyalty to Moawiya, who thereupon pointed a moral for the instruction of Yazid.
Moawiya has been accused of having poisoned more than one of his adversaries, among them Malik Ashtar, Abdarrahmān the son of the great captain Khālid b. Walīd, and Hasan b. Ali. As for the latter, European scholars have long been agreed that the imputation is groundless. As to Abdarrahmān the story is in the highest degree improbable. Madāinī says that Moawiya was prompted to it, because when he consulted the Syrians about the choice of his son Yazid as his successor, they had proposed Abdarrahmān. The absurdity of this is obvious, for Abdarrahmān died in the year 666.[14] Others say[15] that Moawiya was afraid lest Abdarrahmān should become too popular. Now, Abdarrahmān had not only been a faithful ally of Moawiya in the wars with Ali, but after the peace devoted all his energy to the Greek war. It is almost incredible that Moawiya out of petty jealousy would have deprived himself of one of his best men. The probability is that Abdarrahmān was ill when returning from the frontier, that Moawiya sent him his own medical man, the Christian doctor Ibn Othāl, and that the rumour arose that the doctor had poisoned him. It is remarkable withal that this rumour circulated, not in Homs (Emesa), where Abdarrahmān died, but in Medina. There a young relation of Abdarrahmān was so roused by the taunt that the death of his kinsman was unavenged, that he killed Ibn Othal near the mosque of Damascus. Moawiya imprisoned him and let him pay a high ransom, the law not permitting the talio against a Moslem for having killed a Christian. The story that this relative was Khālid, the son of Abdarrahmān, is absurd inasmuch as Moawiya made this Khālid commander against the Greeks in succession to his father. In the third case—that of Malik Ashtar—the evidence is equally inadequate. In fact, since Moawiya did not turn the weapon of assassination against such men as Abdallah b. Zobair and Hosain b. Ali, it is unlikely that he used it against less dangerous persons. These two men were the chief obstacles to Moawiya’s plan for securing the Caliphate for his son Yazid. The leadership with the Arabic tribes was as a rule hereditary, the son succeeding his father, but only if he was personally fit for the position, and was acknowledged as such by the principal men of the tribe. The hereditary principle had not been recognized by Islam in the cases of Abu Bekr, Omar and Othman; it had had some influence upon the choice of Ali, the husband of Fatima and the cousin of the Prophet. But it had been adopted entirely for the election of Hasan. The example of Abu Bekr proved that the caliph had the right to appoint his successor. But this appointment must be sanctioned by the principal men, as representing the community. Moawiya seems to have done his best to gain that approbation, but the details given by the historians are altogether unconvincing. This only seems to be certain, that the succession of Yazid was generally acknowledged before the death of his father, except in Medina. (See [Mahommedan Institutions].)
Moawiya died in the month of Rajab 60 (a.d. 680). His last words are said to have been: “Fear ye God, the Elevated and Mighty, for God, Praise be to Him, protects the man that fears Him; he who does not fear God, has no protection.” Moawiya was, in fact, a religious man and a strict disciple of the precepts of Islam. We can scarcely, therefore, credit the charges made by the adversaries of his chosen successor Yazid, that he was a drinker of wine, fond of pleasure, careless about religion. All the evidence shows that, during the reign of the Omayyads, life in Damascus and the rest of Syria was austere and in striking contrast to the dissolute manners which prevailed in Medina.
2. Rule of Yazid.—When Moawiya died, the opposition had already been organized. On his accession Yazid sent a circular to all his prefects, officially announcing his father’s death, and ordering them to administer the oath of allegiance to their subjects. In that sent to Walīd b. ‘Otba, the governor of Medina, he enclosed a private note charging him in particular to administer the oath to Hosain, Abdallah b. Omar and Abdallah b. Zobair, if necessary, by force. Walid sent a messenger inviting them to a conference, thus giving them time to assemble their followers and to escape to Mecca, where the prefect Omar b. Sa‘īd could do nothing against them. In the month Ramadan this Omar was made governor of Medina and sent an army against Ibn Zobair. This army was defeated, and from that time Ibn Zobair was supreme at Mecca.
On the news of Yazid’s accession, the numerous partisans of the family of Ali in Kufa sent addresses to Hosain, inviting him to take refuge with them, and promising to have him proclaimed caliph in Irak. Hosain, having learned that the majority of the inhabitants were apparently ready to support him strenuously, prepared to take action. Meanwhile Yazid, having been informed of the riotous behaviour of the Shi‘ites in Kufa, sent Obaidallah, son of the famous Ziyād and governor of Basra, to restore order. Using the same tactics as his father had used before, Obaidallah summoned the chiefs of the tribes and made them responsible for the conduct of their men. On the 8th of Dhu’l-Hijja Hosain set out from Mecca with all his family, expecting to be received with enthusiasm by the citizens of Kufa, but on his arrival at Kerbela west of the Euphrates, he was confronted by an army sent by Obaidallah under the command of Omar, son of the famous Sa‘d b. Abi Waqqās, the founder of Kufa. Hosain gave battle, vainly relying on the promised aid from Kufa, and fell with almost all his followers on the 10th of Muharram 61 (10th of October 680).
No other issue of this rash expedition could have been expected. But, as it involved the grandson of the Prophet, the son of Ali, and so many members of his family, Hosain’s devout partisans at Kufa, who by their overtures had been the principal cause of the disaster, regarded it as a tragedy, and the facts gradually acquired a wholly romantic colouring. Omar b. Sa‘d and his officers, Obaidallah and even Yazid came to be regarded as murderers, and their names have ever since been held accursed by all Shi‘ites. They observe the 10th of Muharram, the day of ‘Ashūra, as a day of public mourning. Among the Persians, stages are erected on that day in public places, and plays are acted, representing the misfortunes of the family of Ali.[16] “Revenge for Hosain” became the watchword of all Shi‘ites, and the Meshed Hosain (Tomb of the martyr Hosain) at Kerbela is to them the holiest place in the world (see [Kerbela]). Obaidallah sent the head of Hosain to Damascus, together with the women and children and Ali b. Hosain, who, being ill, had not taken part in the fight. Yazid was very sorry for the issue, and sent the prisoners under safe-conduct to Medina. Ali remained faithful to the caliph, taking no share in the revolt of the Medinians, and openly condemning the risings of the Shi‘ites.