Note 569 — Chapter XLVI · HASAN SUCCEEDS ALY.—ABDICATES IN FAVOUR OF MUAVIA. A.H. XL., XLI. A.D. 661.
Reading edition
His vagrant passions gained for him the unenviable nickname of The Divorcer, for it was only by continual divorces that he could harmonise his craving for new nuptials with the requirements of the Divine law, which limited his lawful wives to four. He is said to have exercised the power of divorce, as a matter of simple caprice, seventy (according to others ninety) times. The leading men complained to Aly that his son was continually marrying their daughters, and continually divorcing them. Aly replied that the remedy lay in their own hands; they should refuse to give him their daughters to wife. These divorced wives were irrespective of his concubines or slave-girls, upon the number and variety of whom there was no limit or check whatever.